Introduction: do they have a future?

Arms producers and industries will survive so long as nation states face threats to their existence. Threats can be internal through civil wars, rebellions and terrorism or external through other nations or external groups threatening the existence of a nation state. As one expert has stated: “War has always been with us as a violent method of resolving disputes… The history of the world is primarily the history of war” (David 2009: 8).

Over time, wars have been fought between tribal groups, cities, regions and nation states. Conflicts have been of varying durations, ranging from days to years. There have been different causes, including conflict over resources, with wars to change the allocation of resources between different owners: examples include wars over land, mineral resources and water resources. Conflicts have also arisen over national borders, from longstanding grievances and for reasons related to race and religion, including ethnic cleansing. Personal factors can intervene in the form of a desire to remove dictators, protect the weak and a desire for revenge and conquest, and there is also the possibility of war due to mistakes and miscalculations. Political systems are relevant, with democracies dependent on voter preferences for conflict while totalitarian systems and dictatorships can ignore such preferences. Interestingly, the end of the Cold War has not meant the end of wars. Since 1991 there have been conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Chechnya, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Crimea, Ukraine, Yemen and Syria. Also, by 2017, there were signs of the re-emergence of the Cold War nuclear arms race between Russia and the US.

There is also the concept of the just war originally associated with Thomas Aquinas, which specifies the criteria under which war is morally justifiable, namely, where it is morally right to use armed force, and how the war should be fought. For example, the Allies in the Second World War believed that they were fighting a just war against Hitler and Nazi Germany. The just war concept has been extended to deal with the end of wars and the prosecution of war criminals.