I recently heard that Russia is trying to vamp up their arms sales by selling increased military products to the middle east. Russia along with the rest of the world has come under economic difficulty in recent times. The nation is seeking to repair their damaged economy with increased arms sales. This got me wondering – does the US have a right to police global arms sales? As the premier global superpower, don’t we have a duty to ensure that weapons aren’t falling into the wrong hands? Isn’t that just good stewardship? However I could also see the questions of objection like “who can say who deserves to have weapons and who doesn’t” or “why does America get to be the global police?” For a short but blunt answer, America gets to police other nations because America has the most powerful military in the world.
Saudi Arabia and Syria are the focus of the arms sales campaign for Russia. First and formost, Russia has some obstacles to overcome if they want to supply weapons ot these nations. Many nations in the Middle East distrust Russian equipment and believe it to be unreliable. Russia needs to first combat this image and establish itself as a distributor of reliable military products before these nations will sign weapons trade deals.
Russia will also be going after past customers such as Libya, Algeria, and Yemen, all of which purchased weapons during the cold war. My questions in the beginning were prompted by thoughts of Russia supplying weapons to nations which could potentially be enemies of the US. Should we allow that?
