where the guns come from, where they go

February 1, 2008 8:02 PM

The flow of arms around the world, from 1950 to todayAn interesting Java representation of the flow of arms around the world, year by year from 1950 to today. View, discuss amongst yourselves. via
posted by HuronBob (10 comments total)

I got it to run a few times, but darn is it painfully slow. Looks like a really neat concept; hopefully it'll be working a little better later on. Cool link, though.

After much playing and refreshing and waiting, I did get a year page to come up once, for 1985. Seems like there are some drilldown functions that I can't get to work now.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:41 PM on February 1, 2008

That map makes it look like all the arms from this country come from Chicago. But it's cool (although, v. slow), thx.
posted by Skygazer at 8:44 PM on February 1, 2008

pretty.
posted by panamax at 9:15 PM on February 1, 2008

yeah... I also had some problems with the interface...but, if you give it a chance...it provides an interesting graphic interface to the arms sales process...

It is a bit dismaying that so many of the lines start from the U.S.....
posted by HuronBob at 9:15 PM on February 1, 2008

I still couldn't get the interface to work that well, but the pages that explain where the data comes from are interesting.

While it's probably not a bad measure of overall 'volume' of hardware sales, what the numbers boil down to are basically item counts weighted by type and average price; they aren't really a reflection either of direct cost or of military effectiveness. One assumption stuck out in particular as disconnected from reality:

"It is assumed that such real prices roughly reflect the military resource value of a system. For example, a combat aircraft bought for $10 million may be assumed to be a resource twice as great as one bought for $5 million, and a submarine bought for $100 million may be assumed to be 10 times the resource a $10 million combat aircraft would represent."

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and completely ignores the asymmetric nature of some weapon systems -- including ones that can be hugely destabilizing. (E.g. stuff covered under the MTCR.)

Using the TIV metric, it's entirely possible for a country that's playing by the rules and buying defensive weapons to look, on first glance, like it's being far more aggressive in terms of arming itself than a neighbor, even though in reality its stance might be the opposite. Likewise, perhaps much more so, for sales. A single country selling a small number of cheap, highly asymmetric systems could have a far greater effect than another country selling a larger number of expensive, more conventional systems.

They also calculate secondhand weapons at 40% of new, which is odd because if they're being sold as weapons (as opposed to as scrap, or surplus) they're doubtless perceived as militarily significant to the buyer. Discounting them in the calculations might make sense if they were trying to assess the financial impact, but it seems weird to build in depreciation if they're trying to measure overall flows of armament hardware.

Still cool, but I'd be very, very careful before drawing too many conclusions.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:57 PM on February 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

What's with the line of arms apparently coming from the Canadian tundra?

I wasn't aware that we produced anything out there except aurora and caribou turds.
posted by CheeseburgerBrown at 4:27 AM on February 2, 2008

I just got around to seeing Lord of War with Nicolas Cage. It's allegedly 'based on true events' and all that. How far off the mark is it?
posted by ZachsMind at 5:55 AM on February 2, 2008

ZM, try Merchant of Death: it's about Viktor Bout one of the models for the characters in Lord of War. Also, Amnesty seems to like the movie.
posted by ahughey at 7:06 AM on February 2, 2008

It is a bit dismaying that so many of the lines start from the U.S.....

According to the SIPRI data, more than 80% of worldwide arms exports over the last two decades have come from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
posted by ahughey at 7:26 AM on February 2, 2008

ZachsMind: "I just got around to seeing Lord of War with Nicolas Cage. It's allegedly 'based on true events' and all that. How far off the mark is it?"

Well, during the much lauded opening scene (the bullet-manufacturing one), they don't put any gunpowder in. In terms of accuracy, it's pretty much all downhill from there.

I thought this review (from a "peace and justice" radio station, no less!) was right on the money:

More preoccupied with attitude than accuracy, Lord Of War conceives of a Brighton Beach small time gun runner turned international major player arms dealer who functions equally beyond governments and historical fact. Hollywood's fascination with rags to riches lore tends to strain credibility ... Lord Of War's free lance gun racketeer Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) is no exception. It's as if the instant happy endings of shows like American Idol are having an added unhealthy impact on Hollywood so-called biopics. Staking out that dubious "based on a true story" claim from the start that always makes critics cringe or shake their heads in dismay, Andrew Niccol's Lord Of War attaches its bogus story to the notorious real life Victor Bout.

Wiki on Bout. There is a book written about him, which I've not read, although the same author has a intro/primer article here (PDF) that you might find interesting. He lives quite openly in Moscow, barred from leaving by outstanding warrants but protected by the Russians as long as he stays there. The reality is somewhat less sexy than the movie.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:11 AM on February 2, 2008