Military Ambitions Research Articles

The International Arms Trade

It all began in the distant past when a nation or a subnational group discovered that effective defense or its political and military ambitions could be achieved better with arms produced elsewhere than with domestically produced weapons. This was the experience of our own revolutionary forces 200 years ago. Sovereignty confers on governments the responsibility for national security. Sovereignty, therefore, implies that a military force makes a nation a credible and independent member of the international community. If a country is unable to produce the weapons its leaders consider essential for those military forces, it can secure them from a supplier country which has political, military, and/or economic reasons for exporting them. Until the mid1930s, governments of supplier countries only occasionally interfered with the export of arms. Large armaments firms like Krupp, DuPont, and Vickers sold munitions and arms worldwide without restrictions. As arms became more sophisticated, and were sold to belligerents during the thirties, there was increased concern about involvement in foreign wars. Most Western nations began to put restrictions, such as export licenses and end-use requirements, on commercial sales. Today, the sale of weapons has become a government-to-government or government-regulated activity. Most countries would rather deal directly with the government of a supplier country in negotiating and completing sales, largely because of credit availability and certain complementary services, such as

Myths and the Convulsions of History

Some original forms of state emerge from the clan structures in central Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries, beyond the reach of any European influence. The oral epic traditions which echo these events draw from the founts of Bantu mythic thought. The Luba national epic recounts the dramatic origin of its sacred royalty and describes the passage from a primitive culture to a refined civilization, from an uneventful history to one full of movement; but above all it abandons itself to a singular meditation on the ritual usage of fire, on family and death, on time and space, on the rainbow and lightning. If we take the fantastic seriously, symbolic patterns appear which filter the historical tradition and transform it into metaphysics. The reeling King Woot seems to play in reverse the Luba role, on the royal scene of Kuba mythology, where almost Biblical figures could be recognized: the tower of Babel throws its shadow on the adventures of an African Noah who first abandons himself to drunkenness, then to incest, delivering society to the diversity of languages and plunging the universe into primordial chaos. A transition between the myth and the tale, the founding epic of the Lunda state is bathed three times in blood: the blood of the warriors, of the women, and of the beasts who fall prey to a marvelously seductive hunter. Looking closely, we see that this Prince-stranger, initiator of a line of anointed royalty, carries on his shoulders, as does his Luba counterpart, a part of the universe. The cosmogony is veiled in the myth but transparent in the ritual, in the actions and mysterious words of the initiates into mungonge religious society: men with eyes of light are the counterpart of animals with eyes of darkness, as the star of day is opposed to the sinister hyena-moon. The founding epic of the Bemba state tells, like the Kuba myth, of the fascination of the principle of pleasure among a migrating aristocracy, somewhat decadent in comparison with the rude warrior or hunter heroes in the Luba and Lunda epics. But all these narratives, in the final analysis, form one sole myth, which develops its autonomous structures under the turbulence of an historical adventure each time different. More than unfolding the particular story of each kingdom, these legendary chronicles of Zaïre, Zambia and Angola reveal that the powerful political organisations set up by the Bantu to the south of the great forest are not isolated from eacb other: they administrate in common an intellectual patrimony which breaks loose from the ideological role that the kings, whether drunk on palm wine or on military ambition, try to make them play for their own glory: myths and rites obey their own codes, recognize no master but one, which they give themselves in their own kingdom: the Imaginary.The text which follows here is concerned in particular with the epic of the Bemba people, whose dominating aristocracy imposed an anointed royalty on some 100,000 people formerly grouped in matrilinear clans.

The Manchurian Iron and Steel Industry and Its Resource Base

THE future of Chinese industrialization depends in part on a resurgence of basic industry in Manchuria. The recent release of wartime data enables us to evaluate the possibilities. In the period from 1932 to 1944 one of the largest iron and steel centers on the Asiatic continent came into being in Manchuria, comparable in size with the developments at Kuznetsk and in India. To understand the nature of this Japanese creation, it is necessary to examine the relationship that existed between industry and that of Japan. Since the RussoJapanese War, Japan had been a heavy investor in Manchuria and by I930 had succeeded in eliminating most foreign competition. After the Manchurian Incident in 193 I and the establishment of effective Japanese control Manchuria became an integral part of the Yen Bloc economy. The economic structure, however, assumed a peculiar pattern. In Korea and Formosa, Japan had followed the time-hallowed pattern of colonial exploitation. Manchuria, on the other hand, was to be developed as an extension of the homeland. Capital and effort were poured into the creation here of a mainland industrial base strong enough to support Japan's military ambitions on the continent. The larger part of the effort was devoted to the iron and steel industry. THE RESOURCE BASE: IRON ORE

Curtailment of Armaments

what we are going to do about it? Shall we accept the situation as incurable, the appalling consequences as inevitable, or shall we as a great people, afforded a providential opportunity, extend the invitation and point the way to a sane and reasonable agreement among the nations for the curbing of military ambition and for the limitation of military and naval establishments within bounds calculated to the maintenance of the world's peace? Will the world accept our invitation? e are going to do abou it? ll e a cept the situation as incur, the a palling consequences as It unquestionably will, because all nations realize they can not maintain the burdens of competitive armaments. Will the nations keep their pledges? They will-at least, until the conditions which would persuade them to enter into such agreements had entirely passed away; and long before that time we may reasonably hope that all nations shall have learned to settle their differences without the armed conflicts that leaves even the victor exhausted and impoverished.