Russia Displaces USA as #1 Arms Exporter

Space War

Russia has displaced the United States as the world's No. 1 arms exporter not just because its weapons are cheaper, but because many of them are very good.

According to Russian military commentator Nikita Petrov writing for RIA Novosti, in 2007 Russia earned more than $5.5 billion in weapons exports and has a backlog of orders worth more than $20 billion.

Different institutions have different measuring yardsticks for weapons exports and definitions on what they are. However, the U.S. Congressional Research Service estimated Russian arms sales as worth $7.1 billion in its report "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1998-2005."

The CRS, surprisingly to American eyes, ranked France, not the United States, as the second-largest arms exporter with 2005 sales worth more than $6.3 billion, just ahead of the United States with $6.3 billion.

As we have noted in previous articles, Russia has a number of advantages over the United States in its arms export business:

First, the record global prices for oil and gas, of which Russia is the world's largest combined producer and exporter, have filled the Russian treasury to bursting point, enabling the Kremlin to offer exceptionally favorable payment terms for arms export contracts.

Second, major nations with vastly ambitious armament programs like China, Iran and Venezuela will never buy their weapons from the United States and only reluctantly from U.S. allies, even if they were willing to sell: As all three have huge foreign currency reserves from export earnings, they offer a bonanza to Russian weapons producers.

Third, the volatility of U.S. politics and the well-understood record of successive U.S. congresses in imposing sanctions on previously concluded arms deals makes many countries wary of relying on the United States for their major armaments systems when export of these and their spare parts........