The worldwide arms race has accelerated, most dramatically in South America and Southeast Asia, despite the economic and financial slump, a report published yesterday said.
The average volume of arms sales increased by 22 percent over the past five years, compared with the previous five-year period, the report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) says.
The last two of these years were marked by worldwide economic turbulence, which has far from stabilized, yet the arms trade is booming, it found.
The report does not give the cost of the arms trade because most governments no longer release the figures. Britain stopped publishing the cost of its arms sales last year.
The US remains the world’s top arms exporter, accounting for 30 percent of the total, followed by Russia (23 percent), Germany (11 percent) and France (8 percent).
Britain, with 4 percent, saw a fall in the volume of its exports, as the delivery of 72 of its Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Saudi Arabia was only just getting under way in the period covered by the report.
Germany’s arms exports have risen by more than 100 percent, mainly because of sales of armored vehicles, the report said.
Arms sales to South America rose by 150 percent, raising the specter of an arms race in the region. Last year Venezuela received US$2.2 billion in credit from Russia for the purchase of air defense systems, artillery, armored cars and tanks.
“We see evidence of competitive behavior in arms acquisitions in South America. This clearly shows we need improved transparency and confidence-building measures to reduce tension in the region,” said Mark Bromley, SIPRI researcher and Latin America expert.
In Southeast Asia, arms sales to Indonesia and Malaysia increased significantly, while Singapore became the first country in the region to be among the world’s top 10 arms importers, since the end of the Vietnam war.
“In 2009, Vietnam became the latest Southeast Asian state to order long-range combat aircraft and submarines,” SIPRI Asia expert Siemon Wezeman said.
“The current wave of acquisitions could destabilize the region, jeopardizing decades of peace,” he said.
China was the world’s biggest arms importer over the past five years, with 9 percent of the total, followed by India, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Greece, traditionally a big weapons importer and now immersed in a serious economic crisis.
Combat aircraft accounted for 39 percent of major US weapons sales over the past five years, and for 40 percent of Russian arms sales, the report said.
The report also warns that deliveries of combat aircraft could fuel an arms race in the Middle East, North Africa, South America and South Asia.
Meanwhile, Pakistan is importing the first batch of 300 combat aircraft from China and an early warning aircraft from Sweden.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS