I saw a little blurb on a news show a while ago that scared me. The story essentially said that Russia wants to be the arms dealer to the world. Oh, great, just what we need, more arms across the world. In a quick Google search, I discovered news articles about Russian arms being sold to Jakarta, Iran, Venezuela, India, Algeria and Syria.
This is more scary than any terror organization.
During the cold war, we were essentially building arms to be used against the USSR as either a deterrent or as an active defense. Many of these weapons were not actually used. None of the nuclear arsenal was used except for testing.
Now, many of these arms are being sold to various countries that may or may not have good intent and may or may not be friendly to their neighbors. This can only continue to destabilize the world. As America sells arms and Russia sells arms, we are getting into a new arms race. We sell to Israel, Russia sells to Syria, and by proxy to Hezbollah. We sell to Pakistan, Russia sells to India, we sell to India, Russia sells to Pakistan. We call Venezuela a rogue nation, Russia sells arms there. These arms are then used in smaller battles or skirmishes.
What has this world come to. Why do we allow such idiocy to continue?
OK, I know the answer, money grubbing scum. Oh, and we never really resolved the cold war, so we will continue to fight these proxy wars to see which planes bombs, missiles, and missile defenses are better. That way, when the war really does flame out around the world, we know approximately how long we will last. My prediction is somewhere around 20 minutes.
Russia sold $8 Billion in arms in 2006, and looks to sell more in 2007. America, of course outsold Russia, to the tune of 11.5 billion. Russian wants to sell more. They are revamping their military industry, retooling their arms, and upgrading their own military with new generation weapons. According to the CS Monitor, India is partnering with Russia to make a 5th generation fighter plane – a competitor to our F/A22 raptor, the stealth fighter. Just what we need, more weapons.
I fear this build up not because of the old cold war, but because as we flood the world with new weapons, these weapons get into the hands of countries that may be our allies in this war, but may be our enemies in the next. This is essentially what happened in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
We need to end the madness. We need a new arms treaty that disallows any arms trading completely.