Who Arms the World’s Conflicts?

With Corporation support, a new interactive site by the World Peace Foundation examines more than 25 years of conflict and arms transfers and finds that all top 11 major arms exporting states have supplied weapons to war zones, including places with significant violations of international humanitarian law and other human rights abuses

By Carnegie Corporation of New York June 22, 2022

Scholarship & Policy

In December 2006, Somali troops of the Transitional Federal Government patrol at a training camp on the outskirts of Baidoa, Somalia. (Credit: AFP via Getty Images)

Does participation in war or armed conflict make it less likely for a country to receive arms from any of the major exporters? Research shows that arms transfers to a state increase the likelihood of conflict breaking out, and, once begun, extend the conflicts longer and make them deadlier. In response, policymakers have committed to a range of measures designed to control arms exports. Often focused on limiting sales when conflicts involve patterns of human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, there have also been heated debates about when sales should be limited or not.

A new interactive site “Who Arms War?” published by the World Peace Foundation and funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York, examines more than 25 years of conflict and arms transfers and finds that all top 11 major arms exporting states have supplied weapons to war zones, including places with significant violations of international humanitarian law and other human rights abuses.

The interactive is based on the report, Business as Usual: How Major Weapons Exporters Arm the World’s Conflicts, funded in part by the Corporation as part of the World Peace Foundation research program “Defense Industries, Foreign Policy, and Armed Conflict,” at the Fletcher School of Tufts University. The research program considers the reasons why, despite robust regulation mechanisms in key exporting countries and international monitoring efforts, the global arms trade has proven resistant to effective controls with direct enabling consequences on conflict situations.

The interactive site and study provide the first global analysis of how conflict in, or involving, a recipient state, impacts exporters’ willingness to supply arms by analyzing the top 11 global arms suppliers over the 10-year period between 2009 to 2018. The eleven top suppliers, listed in order by the volume of major conventional weapons transfers, were the United States, Russia, Germany, France, China, the United Kingdom, Spain, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and Ukraine.

Five Key Findings:

Everyone arms war. All major arms exporting states sold weapons to countries actively at war, with the United States as the top arms supplier.
Almost all wars receive arms. Of the 32 wars this century that were reviewed, all but one received weapons from the world's top exporting countries.
Ethical export policy is a myth. There are no clear cases of top exporters halting arms sales when conflict begins. On the contrary, several exporters show increased sales to states at war.
Money beats morals. Rather than conflict, the wealth and military spending of a particular country were stronger determinants of whether a given exporter would supply arms to them.
Relationships are key. An established arms supply relationship was one of the most powerful determinants of whether arms transfers would occur, regardless of the recipient’s conflict status.

To learn more, visit the interactive site “Who Arms War?” and read the full report Business as Usual: How Major Weapons Exporters Arm the World’s Conflicts.