Volume 22, Number 15 · October 2, 1975
The Boom in the Death Business
By Emma Rothschild
Arms Uncontrolled Research Institute by
prepared for the Stockholm International Peace Frank Barnaby, by Ronald Huisken
Harvard University Press, 232 pp., $12.50
The Arms Trade with the Third World
by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Holmes and Meier (revised and abridged edition), 362 pp., $15.00
World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook, 1975
MIT Press, 618 pp., $25.00
The newest increase in the arms trade is said to have amazed even the Department of Defense. Announcing recently that US foreign military sales were worth $9.5 billion in the 1975 fiscal year, the Defense Department described the pleasant news as 'unexpected.' In 1973, these US sales were worth some $3.9 billion. The entire value of the world's arms trade was $9.2 billion in 1973, according to the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and only $5.8 billion in 1970. 'Foreign military sales' (from aircraft and missiles to howitzers and military 'support services') are now worth almost a tenth of the value of all US exports, overshadowing the other stars of American foreign trade. In measuring sales for 1975, the Defense Department counted orders made during the year, rather than deliveries of weapons.[1] But $9.5 billion is twice the value of all US wheat exports, and three times the value of exports of computers.
Review, 4321 words
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