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Collins: Contemporary Security Studies

Chapter 17

Instructions

Choose your answers from a-d by clicking the radio button next to each choice and then press 'Submit' to get your score.

Question 1

What can we understand by the concept of the arms dynamic?

a) The arms dynamic commonly refers to the set of pressures that make actors (primary arms producing states) acquire armed forces and change their capacity and class.

b) The arms dynamic is understood by analyses of the motivations underpinning the acquisition of arms to be those sets of pressures experienced by part-producers or non-producers who are reliant and defense imports and who may therefore be open to different sets of pressures.

c) The arms dynamic is generally understood to be the analyses of the entire set of processes that make actors (primary major arms producers and secondary partial or non-arms producers) acquire arms at different levels of intensity

d) The arms dynamic refers to the theorization of the processes and pressures that have different levels of intensity between actors (normally states) and may involve arms competition/ acquisition, maintenance or non-proliferation

Question 2

What issues may be drawn from the action-reaction model of the arms dynamic as an explanatory tool?

a) The action-reaction model assumes that actors increasing the quantity or quality of their military forces will provoke an immediate response. This can extend to incorporate anticipatory reactions to potential developments because interests guiding the development of weapons systems will be rooted in the competitive pressures of the international system

b) The action-reaction model provides the framework for which broader factors such as political culture and economic constraints which may limit the ability of governments to react to an increase in the quantity or quality of military forces by a potential adversary

c) Specific studies of the weapons acquisition process tend to highlight the fact that strategic necessity may often be of marginal significance in the decision to procure specific weapons.

d) The arms reaction explanation provides a model by which the scale of activity required to produce an identifiable response, and the form in which the reaction take, can be assessed by quantitative like-for-like measures in the quality and quantity of the respondent's armed forces.

Question 3

In what ways do domestic factors explain the arms dynamic?

a) Domestic factor explanations refer to the bureaucratic or organizational explanations emphasise the idea that defense procurement decisions can be understood either as the outcome of bureaucratic politics - bargaining between different sets of policy actors - or as a reflection of particular organizational cultures

b) Domestic factor explanations refer to the domestic political considerations that may have a role in defense budgeting and weapons acquisition and may concern the way in which public opinion influences defense spending or the way in which politicians may increase defense spending to gain support e.g. promotion of defense and weapons contractors that will benefit their constituents, "pork barrel" politics

c) Domestic factor explanations have been dominated by economic explanations: increases in defense spending are used to boost the economy; a viable defense industrial base can create a need to keep companies and skilled workers in being rather than as a function of military necessity; and military expenditure and war production may be linked to the needs of capitalism

d) All of the above

Question 4

What is the technological explanation of the arms dynamic?

a) Specific Western military programs provided to allies have produced a global military culture which has established the possession of capital-intensive high-tech weapons supported by professional armies as the norm. This underlines broader relations of dependency between developed suppliers and developing recipients and also made arms acquisition a very expensive pursuit

b) The predominance of military research and development activity is interrelated within the broader action-reaction and domestic factor process which coalesce to create a self-perpetuating push for the development of weapons technology

c) The idea of a technological imperative provides a view of military modernization as a process that is fuelled and shaped by an underlying process of permanent technological change in the military sector which has "spin off" effects on processes of underlying advances in the civil sector, producing what some see as a revolution in civil affairs.

d) Technology and the influence of technologists are accepted by analyses of technological imperative explanations as an independent force in the arms dynamic and may be distinguished from processes of social forces, military culture, the direction of resources and strategic goals that effect policy. Within the military modernization is an autonomous trend regulated by technological developments.

Question 5

What can we understand by the term 'The symbolic meaning of weapons'?

a) The practice of foreign policy is concerned with responding to objective threats not about the manufacturing of the other against which an imagined political community can be forged. In this context the acquisition of armies is an outcome of both anarchical international societies and the territorial demarcation of that society into separate entities which make performative acts in response to the sets of pressures that forces actors to respond

b) Symbolic explanations suggest that both the acquisition and prohibition of weapons is a function of the strategic necessity and inherent qualities which they might have, fuelled by the perpetual modernization of the military. Motivations for the acquisition of defense technology are to do with the military application of technology enabling state actors to fight wars using modern weaponry systems.

c) Given that there is a natural limit on most national defense budgets and the costs of modern weaponry produce a strategic necessity resulting in a growing mismatch between defense budgets and the ability of actors to fight independent wars. The decision to acquire or to prohibit is conditioned by the realpolitik need to attach meanings to describe weapons in a manner which does not negate the state's international position and maximizes the national prestige.

d) The decision to provide or prohibit the supply of weapons may be a function of the specific meaning attached to them, from this perspective what is interesting is the attachment of meaning where none previously existed. Some analyses have highlighted how the language used to describe the transfer of conventional weapons invokes a commercial metaphor that is implicitly legitimizing.

Question 6

What predominant trends can be discerned in defense expenditure?

a) The high-technology defense trade is becoming politicized and seen primarily as being used in conflicts whereas somewhat counter-intuitively the supply of low-tech small arms is seen as increasingly de-politicized seen primarily in terms of the economic supply market.

b) There is an over supply in the defense trade and this means that at the low-technological end of arms expenditure are low cost and in abundant availability, whilst at the high-technological end competition make sales intense. This has lead analysts to characterize the market as a buyer's market.

c) The high point in global defense expenditures has come in the post-9/11 environment when significant percentages of gross domestic product (GDP) were challenged into defense spending for the prosecution of the Global War on Terror. Procurement of defense equipment has increasingly been acquired through domestic procurement i.e. states are increasingly buying from a defense firms in their own economy.

d) Within the defense trade the distinction between high-technology and low-technology in the market is becoming increasingly blurred because most countries are both significant importers and exporters of both arms. Every unit they sell abroad gives a higher unit price on domestic defense industries making competition between the technologies less significant

Question 7

How might we categorize suppliers and recipients in the defense markets?

a) Since the 1990s the United States has stood unchallenged as the pre-eminent supplier; delivery levels rising in the years 1991-1999 and the battlefield performance of US weaponry. It has been argued by critics that market access is not level for defense industries as the geo-strategic position and interests of the US significantly advantages American firms. The supply-recipient relationship in the defense trade is very much the distribution of power between US and other suppliers and their interactions in the market.

b) The supplier-recipient trend in the defense trade is distinguished between established actors and new market entrants. Despite advantageous positioning competition a number of states are seeking to access the defense. New supplier market entrants are seeking to create a niche in the market. In the case of the Ukraine this has brought it into direct competition with Russia by undercutting Moscow and offering newly manufactured Soviet-era weaponry at very low prices.

c) The defense trade can be categorized into hierarchical levels of supply capacity based on their innovative capacity, technological sophistication, extent of independent production and research across an extensive range of defense equipment.

d) The defense market is determined by the levels of defense sales commensurate to the level of investment and expenditure. For example West European states whilst losing ground to the US in high-technology sales have retained a primary supply position as market suppliers by strengthening defense sales levels through financing and offset deals.

Question 8

What impact did the end of the Cold War have on market opportunities?

a) There have been important structural changes that are affecting recipients on the demand of weapon with old Cold War protagonists for the most part seeking to increase the scale of high-technology procurement. The current reality is that there are an increased number of recipients than there are suppliers. In these market conditions competition for technology is high and suppliers can play recipients off against each other

b) The rise in the black arms trade controlled by crime syndicates primarily serves insurgents and the acquisition of arms by combatants in conflict zones. 'Conflict goods' or 'conflict commodities' have been brought by these groups on the black market. Trafficking routes into conflict zones are characterized a market providing high value items to support the insurgency.

c) The rise in non-state recipients have become an increasingly salient feature of the arms trade, with sales opportunities considered as too politically or legally risky have been actively pursued by some suppliers. Moreover, the use of middle-men and brokers has allowed some states to benefit from making transfers to non-state actors without having to pay any direct political price.

d) The plethora of low technology weapons on the market place has resulted in state actors taking measures to close the scope of opportunity for non-state brokers; firstly, the imposition of an arms embargo has reduced the sales opportunity for an entrepreneurial supplier; secondly, by making the political costs too high for the recipient state; and thirdly by increasing the transportation costs.

Question 9

In what ways has the post-Cold War defense trade moved away from the supply of complete weapons systems?

a) In an era of constrained procurement budgets, the emphasis has been placed on various forms of force-multipliers to be incorporated into existing platforms as opposed to making new purchases, in conjunction with indigenous modernization programs which offer the opportunity to hybridize weapons systems: marrying western technologies to eastern platforms or vice versa..

b) A major trend in the international market is towards the supply of technologies whose spread is increasingly difficult to control. Dual-use technologies have both legitimate civil and military applications and there is an increasing demand on states to loosen controls over dual-use exports based on the argument that security risks attached to sales are lower. In addition to the deliberate marketing of the goods as militarily useful there is an increasing range of goods not marketed with military intent but having military applicability.

c) The hybridization of weapons systems has made possible a new type of defense sale: systems integration to make different systems work together. However the work requires highly skilled personnel and not all systems combine well. Furthermore, too much technology in one system can prove to be cost ineffective; technological problems can be too expensive to fix, an they can only be fixed by a small number of trained personnel

d) All of the above

Question 10

In what ways might it be possible to talk of a revolution in military affairs?

a) Developments on the non-weapons side of the defense trade have included electronic warfare technologies, sensors, radars, and night vision equipment. The developments of these technologies act as force multipliers through the permission of real-time relay of vital information to the battlefield and by allowing all-weather and night use of military hardware.

b) Of particular importance has been the developments of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), originally conceived in terms of reconnaissance missions, are being operationalized in a variety of lethal missions. The UAV removes the threat of losing valuable personnel over hostile territory.

c) The technological advancements have the potential to revolutionize the battlefield. However to date the only country to benefit has been the US and moreover the US technological edge has not proved useful in counterinsurgency campaigns though there is some limited adaptation of some of these technologies for urban guerilla warfare.

d) All of the above.

View print version

Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 17.