It may sound like a joke when one says that the arms trade, illicit or otherwise, is one of the most lucrative in the world, but the truth is not too far off. There are 200 million firearms in circulation in the United States alone, at worldwide, at least 1 in 12 are armed. The illicit arms trade is clearly illustrated in independent documentary/movie Lord Of War starring Nicholas Cage, which is set in the 80s and based on actual events, with the producers working closely with actual illicit firearms suppliers (also known as gunrunners).
This movie depicts how Yuri Orlov (who was partially based on a real-life gunrunner Viktor Bout, who was arrested earlier this year), an Ukrainian-American who decided that his destiny lay in the illicit arms trade simply because he was “good at it”. He supplied weapons to everyone, from Colombian drug lords to the dictator of Liberia, essentially fuelling and keeping the bloody civil wars in the Western African region alive. His first big break at arms trafficking came when the Cold War ended – the Soviet troops left Ukraine, leaving behind inventories of weapons, most of them the Kalashnikova automatic rifle (otherwise better known as the AK-47), all of which nobody had any use of with the sudden absence of an enemy to protect themselves from, and which Orlov made good use of selling them off to supply warlords.
Prior to that, in the aftermath of the 1982 Lebanon war, the American troops left the country and left their munitions behind, because it was apparently “cheaper to buy new guns than to ship these back” , and Orlov similarly cashed in on the stockpile. These two occurrences depict a vicious cycle in war – when powerful nations (such as the United States) intervene in skirmishes or civil wars between lesser nations, they put forward their support in the form of a constant supply of troops and weapons. And when the fight boils over, the men leave without the guns, which are then sold by such gunrunners to leaders or powerful figures of other nations, getting violence elsewhere underway and exacerbating it.
Yet Orlov’s conquests were not without obstacles – Interpol agent Jack Valentine (portrayed by Ethan Hawke) was time and again on his tail persistently. And yet, after numerous occasions where Orlov successfully evades him, when he finally manages to have Orlov under police custody, he finds that he is unable to prosecute Orlov. Quoting directly from the movie, Orlov tells Valentine that “the reason I’ll be released is the same reason you think I’ll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of your (the USA’s) enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss – the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year – sometimes it’s embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can’t be seen supplying. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I’m a necessary evil.”
And indeed, the world’s five leading arms suppliers are the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China – ironically the five permanent members of the United Nations’ Security Council, which is responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. With the most powerful nations in the world taking on double roles, engaged in movements and campaigns rooting for world peace while supplying what precisely exacerbates what they are trying to eliminate, peace on a regional scale (particularly in the African continent) already seems like a task impossible to achieve, let alone globally.
