Russian Arms Trade in Latin America

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors explain that the beginning of contemporary Russia’s arms trade with Latin America can be traced back to the 1960s, i.e., to the Soviet times. Nevertheless, Cuba was almost the exclusive receptionist of these arms for many years despite some contracts to supply armaments to Peru and Nicaragua. In the 1990s, however, Moscow, slowly but steadily, started considering the Latin American arms market as one of the options to reorient its arms exports from the markets lost in Eastern Europe and elsewhere due to the Soviet collapse. The emergence of Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico—among other nations that decided to buy arms “made in Russia”—signals the strategy’s change. The authors argue that despite the emergence of new settings that aim to facilitate Russian arms sales to Latin America and seemly have much less to do with ideological motivations than during the Soviet period, there must be no doubt that Moscow’s interest is not only commercial profits. Instead, the evidence suggests that Russia is using arms sales as one of the ways to enhance its international and regional influence. Thus, for the Russian government, the most important benefits from the military–technical cooperation with Latin America and the Caribbean are the strengthened political relations with Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Brazil, and Argentina rather than commercial profits.