Switzerland as an arms exporter surprised me. I just wouldn't assume they would be in the business of producing arms let alone selling them. Unless this includes the exportation of arms to allied nations (UN Members)?
Switzerland is heavily militarized. Mandatory service, soldiers bring their guns home with them, tunnels and facilities underground all over the place. They are militantly neutral.
I think some of the posters misunderstand one thing: the European countries have a heavy cross-border consolidation of the arms industry. So the exports you see from, say, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland are the share of production that is statistically allocated to them. For example, Switzlerland is the home of a company that produces very advanced armored personnel carriers. The owner of this company is a German firm. The machine gun and anti-aircraft manufacturer Örlikon is also Swiss. And so on. The clients are mostly Middle Eastern and South-East Asian.
Neutral doesn't mean pacifist. In fact, in practice it often means you need to be armed to the teeth, because if anyone attacks you, you've got no allies coming to your aid. It also means you don't have treaties with allies to supply you with all those weapons. The result? You make them yourself. And if you're doing that, you may as well make a few extra and make a buck off it all. So that's what Switzerland does.
I think being a UN member hardly makes countries allies since nearly every country is a member, including ones that are outright enemies e.g. South and North Korea or Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Switzerland does not have any formal allies, or enemies for that matter. I guess it's as ander217 said and they can just supply all sides of a conflict. I did some research and found an article that said their biggest clients in 2019 were, in descending order, Denmark, Germany, Romania, Bangladesh, and the USA. So the first three can hardly be seen as threats to global peace, but Bangladesh and some of their other clients including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are more problematic and known for massive human rights violations.
If that's the case, then it seems like sales of rifles, knives, armor, etc would be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things since the Joint Strike Fighters are selling for over 100 million dollars per plane. How many rifles equals a tank or a plane
Remember that just because you export something doesn't mean that you produce it. Just like unofficial diplomatic communications go through intermediary countries, I imagine that companies in so called "neutral" countries still purchase arms from major manufacturers and send them in small quantities to less than desirable peoples. That was very very common in the pre 9/11 world.
These figures probably do not account for the black market and other illegal transactions. Or maybe thousands of old automatic rifles with ammunition are not as valuable as a couple of high-tech fighter jets. I'm not an expert, so I don't know the prices of these things.
Israel dealing with weapons?? Such peaceful people, always suffering, oppressed by their gigantic tough neighbours...I'm quite surprised by this news...
What a dumb strawman argument. Nobody ever said Israel was a hippie commune without any weapons. They've been fighting for their survival since day one. Of course they have weapons.
Israel has been in a state of war, that the Arab League declared, since the day after the Israeli declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate of Palestine. Though peace treaties were brokered with Egypt and Jordan, there has never been a sovereign Palestinian state that Israel recognized in order to establish relations with, and Israel is still technically in a state of war with some of the other countries that attacked them in '48. The last time Israel took any significant amount of land from anyone was in 1967, and this land was taken from Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, whom Israel was at war with at the time. Yasser Arafat did not declare Palestinian independence until 1988.
It actually has a lot to do with that. The biggest weapons sellers are all countries that produce the most weapons for their own use, and then sell off surplus or older supply to other countries. You're never going to see Costa Rica on this list.
Remember, Israel gave, or rather sold, Uzis to the world. From the Wikipedia article: "The Uzi has been exported to over 90 countries. Over its service lifetime, it has been manufactured by Israel Military Industries, FN Herstal, and other manufacturers. From the 1960s through the 1980s, more Uzi submachine guns were sold to more military, law enforcement and security markets than any other submachine gun ever made."
I'm surprised Austria (home of Glock) didn't make the list, although admittedly Glock firearms are not all manufactured in Austria.
I thought of Austria with Glock and Steyr. Also Belgium, which as you mention, has FN. But assuming the small arms don't add up as much as the larger weapon systems sold by other countries.
This quiz is quite eye opening. Western countries make massive profits selling weapons to be used in third world conflicts. Sort of a modern day colonialism.
One of your least insightful comments, I have to say. While true on its face, it completely misses all the context - all of history! Disappointing.
I may be off-base here, but I think I've detected a distinct libertarian streak in you. This is what is so galling about libertarians. You look at all the countries on this list and credit them with what they have accomplished. Then you disparage countries that have not done as well. Which of those two groups do you think has had less-involved government? Libertarians go on about how much better everything would be if government would just stop interfering, but they don't want to confront the reality of what happens in that context. Why not move to Somalia? You can do anything you want there without the government bothering you. Except you can't thrive there because nobody is protecting your work. You can't buy, sell, or invest securely. Anything might be taken or destroyed at any time and you have no recourse. Libertarianism is hollow.
South Korea has a very large arms industry partially owned and funded by the government, and quite a few of their vehicles and planes have been succesfully exported to other countries.
Of course Sweden produces lots of weapons. Being neutral, it cannot rely on buying weapons from elsewhere or it'd be in a really bad position should the weapon supplier decide to invade. Thus, both fighter planes and warships are locally designed and produced for national security purposes. However, for those companies to survive it's not really enough to supply one non-combattant country so foreign export will be necessary.
I'm a little surprised Brazil isn't on the list, given that some of these numbers are kind of small. There aren't too many producers of military aircraft in the world and they seem like high-ticket items. Not enough, I suppose.
Really surprised not to see Belgium on here, what with FN Herstal being an enormous (& very famous) arms company. Similarly to the Czech Republic, which had a historically successful weapons industry.
Stork builds parts for fighter jets.
DAF generally produces trucks, and also sells trucks to the military.
I'm surprised Austria (home of Glock) didn't make the list, although admittedly Glock firearms are not all manufactured in Austria.
I may be off-base here, but I think I've detected a distinct libertarian streak in you. This is what is so galling about libertarians. You look at all the countries on this list and credit them with what they have accomplished. Then you disparage countries that have not done as well. Which of those two groups do you think has had less-involved government? Libertarians go on about how much better everything would be if government would just stop interfering, but they don't want to confront the reality of what happens in that context. Why not move to Somalia? You can do anything you want there without the government bothering you. Except you can't thrive there because nobody is protecting your work. You can't buy, sell, or invest securely. Anything might be taken or destroyed at any time and you have no recourse. Libertarianism is hollow.
IDK if India is considered a 3rd world country..... but these thing should be there, as many nations want the BrahMos and Agni V nowadays.
The only way this wouldn't be true is if there are literally no bad actors.
Unilateral disarmament is suicide.
You can see the effects of having a weak military quite easily. Here's a few examples:
1) Thousands of Chinese ships showing up and vacuuming up all the fish off the coast of South America
2) Russia invading Ukraine (in fairness, Ukraine was not as weak as believed).
3) Armenia ethnically cleansing Nagoro-Karabakh
Better for the free and democratic nations of the world to maintain peace through strength.