By Stephen Blank
Recent transactions reflect some underlying trends in the global arms market.
Few analysts regularly track the minutiae of arms sales. Who sells what to whom and for what purpose often gets overlooked in regional security analyses. But given Asia’s dynamism, tracking those kinds of questions actually reveals quite a lot about regional security trends.
Take Kazakhstan’s recent arms deals. They tell us a great deal about the global arms market and its interaction with security dynamics in Asia in general and Central Asia and Kazakhstan in particular. Kazakhstan has recently contracted with South Africa to produce and maintain armored military vehicles for local and regional export markets. The two countries also collaborate in space research programs and Kazakhstan’s launch platform at Baikonur has launched South African (and many other countries’) space satellites.
In the meantime, Kazakhstan has signed an accord on security cooperation with Israel that provides a general “umbrella” for cultivating defense trade and future cooperation. This accord formalizes more than a decade of Israeli arms sales to Kazakhstan. Apparently Kazakhstan is especially interested in unmanned systems, border security, command control capabilities and satellite communications – in other words, the leading sectors of military technology.
Read the full story at The Diplomat