Forces Driving Third World Military Industrialization: Interests and Passions

Third World states are driven to pursue programs of military industrialization by both their interests and their passions. Interests are defined in instrumental terms, and I examine their importance in explaining the behavior of leading Third World arms producers. An analysis of time-series cross-section data for five countries from 1970 to 1990 suggests that domestic arms production has been motivated by regional conflict as well as a desire to diminish the potential leverage exercised by foreign arms suppliers. Opportunities for increased domestic arms production are provided by capital investment and, obviously, existing arms manufacturing capacity. But instrumentally defined interests (and opportunities to pursue them) provide only a partial explanation of military industrialization. Arms production in the Third World is also driven by states' passions, by their quest to become modern nation-states. These passions are hard to define in instrumental terms. They have developed through exposure to the global military culture, and this exposure may account for some of the residual variance in military industrialization that remains unexplained by state interests.