The Foundations and Construction of Global SALW Trade

Abstract

The global level structures and processes of SALW spread are dominated by the legal (authorised) trade. This trade is inadequately understood, due particularly to limited systematic data. However, a lack of research on how this global trade was constructed and has developed has contributed to a lack of a sense of structure or dynamic. Views of the global legal trade are framed almost exclusively by reflections on recent transfers and references to the breadth of the global distribution of sources and suppliers. However, global level SALW spread processes are the product of development and interaction of structures that have been constructed over time. These structural features include the nature and distribution of sources and the ways in which broad systemic structures shape the nature of the global SALW trade. This chapter explores the structures and construction, of the global legal SALW trade. It discerns that the evolution of the global SALW trade has not been merely a subset of broad developments in the overall arms trade. It has distinct structures and processes of the spread of SALW that have had their own dynamics and characteristics.