Arms transfers and international behavior in the Arabian sea area

Abstract

International arms transfers to the major Arabian Sea nations reported by SIPRI for the period 1948–1978 are correlated with measures of international conflict and cooperation provided by the COPDAB events data summaries. In general the correlations between the two are found to be strong, with many correlations significant at the .001 level. The best predictor is the number of arms transfers, rather than the quantity of different types of weapons transferred. The order of the importance of various types of weapons (air, sea, land) is relatively consistent across different indicators. Correlations are highest with political and military conflict behavior, and generally higher for conflictual than for cooperative behavior. Generally transfers correlate with subsequent international behavior rather than previous international behavior. Within the Arabian Sea area, the correlations are strongest in the Middle East and weakest in the Horn of Africa. Correlations are generally higher when the transfer data is smoothed using a 3‐year centered moving average, though unsmoothed data does almost as well.