The Unnoticed Arms Trade: Exports of Conventional Arms-Making Technology

W orld leaders have long recognized that proliferation of nuclear-weapons technology represents a grave threat to international security, and accordingly have taken at least some steps to inhibit traffic in such expertise. Unfortunately, proliferation of conventional arms-making technology has not been viewed with same degree of concern, and consequently little effort has been made to curb exports of this type. Such neglect is potentially very dangerous, however, because conventional arms proliferation poses many of same perils as nuclear proliferation: a substantial increase in world's collective war-making capabilities, and a corresponding decline in world's ability to negotiate curbs on use of these capabilities. Indeed, while export of conventional arms technology may not present as direct a threat of Armageddon as nuclear exports, it is adding to intensity of regional conflicts, and thus helping to create an environment in which nuclear war is more likely to occur. For this reason alone, conventional arms proliferation should be viewed with same concern as nuclear proliferation. There are, however, other important reasons for worrying about transfer of conventional arms technology. For United States-long most active supplier of arms-making technology-such transfers can have a damaging effect on national economy as other nations use their Americansupplied military know-how to enhance productivity and sophistication of their own civilian industries. This risk is especially present in U.S. technology transfers to Japan and Western Europe, which increasingly tend to emphasize acquisition of front-end technologies. The economic risk tends to increase, moreover, with time: as noted by J. Fred Bucy in an influential 1976 Defense Science Board report, the release of know-how is an irrever-sible decision. Once released, it can neither be taken back nor controlled. The receiver of know-how gains a competence which serves as a base for many subsequent gains.1 At same time, sales of military technology to