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Reflecting on the “new world disorder” of the 1990s, the phrase that keeps coming to mind is: small weapons, big consequences. Light arms and weaponry, such as pistols, carbines, small mortars, machine guns, grenades and in particular assault rifles, which by a landslide testimony were listed by Red Cross workers as the leading weaponry causing civilian deaths, have taken the place of fighter jets and tanks. In near imitation of this shift from mainly government-controlled heavy arms to civilian-circulated, cheaper and smaller arms, the era of what looked like united world turmoil in which there were two basic sides surging against each other has given way to more than 100 individual conflicts since 1990. Ethnic, religious and sectarian outbursts of war have killed over five million people, most of them in massive civilian slaughters; besides this and the other immediate effects such as tens of millions of refugees and orphans, widespread starvation, sickness and economic breakdown, there are the long-term results which include governmental corruption leading to the high possibility of an establishment of tyrannical dictatorship, repression and then the inevitable, agonized putrefying of all society.
The psychological influences of this modernized warfare must also be considered. Once the war has been fought and the dying have died, a new problem is suddenly added to the list. Torn countries must somehow cope with rampant mental illnesses, many of them incapacitating; youths trained as children to be killers face peace for the first time in their lives. Whether or not these child soldiers can even be reprogrammed, so to speak, and integrated back into a society where killing is fundamentally called murder and in fact punished, has yet to be established.
The effects are hardly restricted to the country in question. Worldwide security and structure is at risk. The international relief aid required for conflicting regions multiplied by five during the 1990s to reach $5 billion a year. Decades of slow building up until this point have been destroyed within months, or even weeks, by militias with a steady source of light arms. The international community has focused on the here and now, depleting long-term development aid and forgetting to teach people how to catch their own fish. Major weaponry has grown less popular following the end of the cold war, and a combination of cost and availability has partially led to the globally increasing attractiveness of lighter weapons. The legal trade of small arms and light weaponry could be dependably approximated at between $7 and $10 billion annually. Black-market channels add another $2 to $3 billion to that figure. Acknowledged aid programs and clandestine operations both account for the immense governmental transference of small arms as their own diminishing militaries sell off excess weapons to almost anyone. Proclamations that sales are kept under strict control can be deceitful; officially they are regulated, but these regulations are ignored on a general basis. Major suppliers include Russia of the AK-47 and the AK-74 which are used in 78 countries, China of the Type 56 rifle, Belgium of the FAL assault rifle used in 94 countries, Germany of the G3 rifle used in 64 countries, America of the M16 rifle in 67 countries, and Israel of the Uzi submachine gun used in 42 countries. In many places it is much cheaper to buy guns and weapons than a single meal. With such total permeation of every echelon of a country, even the untrained child becomes a menacing threat.
Enforceable control of the small-arms trade is essential. Several changes must take place in order for this to be possible. Identifying hazardous patterns in the ubiquitous trading of small arms relies on adequate information that is both precise and recent. This can allow for gathered stockpiles of weapons in volatile regions to be located and removed before incident. Major suppliers, including the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K. and France, must come to an official agreement on a system that severely restricts the legal export of arms, thus attacking a key lifeline of the commerce. Next, efforts must be made to stem the black-market production and trade in arms or else the legal-trade reductions will have only a minimized effect.
Ultimately, however, all of these efforts- though vital- are not the topmost priority. To solve the problem, start at the origin. Supply and demand is a powerful force acting as a heady incentive for arms dealers, both legal and otherwise. First the supply must be curtailed- but this is only an initial, short-term remedy and it falls far short of being a panacea. It will, however, serve to aid in the next, primary conquest- eradicating the demand. This is a necessarily sluggish process that will probably be slowed even further by rash antagonists and greedy, authoritarian officials.
It is an old familiar tune, but its urgency and importance has never weakened. To combat injustice, violation of rights and the general despotism that produces these violent, bloody and expensive explosions, there is only one clear path to take. Using the inverse of a Hayek-coined expression, this could be called the road from serfdom.
I believe that there is hope of a global adoption of democracy and the principals of individualism, competition and freedom. But it will not come quickly; I doubt that I, or anyone alive at this moment, will live to see the end of the war. Despite momentary defeat, hopelessness and distraction, we absolutely must not lose sight of the far-off goal. If we are ever to see a day when even the poverty-, disease- and feud-stricken peoples of Africa live in moderate health and the children can look forward to a future of education and earned prosperity, then we cannot afford to waste today. We can begin by opening the lines of international converse and trade, such as has been started with China. Isolation of suffering countries will serve to worsen their plight and, in the end, as well as meaning their destruction, we also will be affected by the backlash of our own actions in doing so. We must continually do our utmost to improve universal, unbiased education, because education is the key to opportunity and, if anything, the hope of freedom. And we must never forget that we ourselves are fallible and vulnerable, and be relentless with guarding and checking every step that we take. Even assuming wide support, however, the short-term solutions to stop this indiscriminate bloodshed will take some time to become effective, and in the meantime hundreds of thousands are being massacred while millions more perish and suffer by more protracted means. The near future looks to be much, much worse before we will begin to heal. The question is, will we survive the coming test of fire and be made stronger and more determined to implement the one valid cure by it, or will we allow it to send us into a knee-jerk, panicked search for frail and meaningless bandages?
