I NOTE with interest David Pratt’s article on the international arms trade (“Arms even a shop window for the hypocritical and grotesque”, The Herald, September 8).
It is depressing that arms trading is still seen to be such an essential part of UK industry. We are of course not alone in this. The six leading arms exporting countries are the United States, Russia, France, China, Germany and UK. Is it co-incidental five of these are the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the original members of the nuclear weapons club? It would seem that international influence and respect are still seen to be tied to the success and power of each nation’s military-industrial complex. A statistic worth consideration is that the budget of the UN peace-keeping forces is less than 0.5 per cent of world military expenditure. Perhaps a move towards the concept of the UK having an ethical foreign policy might include a genuine effort to promote the understanding and funding of peace making in place of support for weapons manufacture.
Duncan MacIntyre,
74 Montgomery Street, Eaglesham.
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