backwater project. The climate of mutual distrust—between those who would seek to regulate and destroy more military assault rifles and those who claim that any such steps risk infringing the right of American citizens to bear arms—is of such an order that those who direct American foreign policy often steer clear of the issue. There is also a psychological hurdle. The near ubiquity of military assault rifles in conflict zones can send the subliminal signal that nothing can be done, except perhaps to arm more people against those who already have the guns. This is a typical course. Where armed groups threaten a perceived American interest, a common solution is to send in more guns to counter them. In this way, the United States military, since 2001, became one of the largest known purchasers of Kalashnikov assault rifles, which it has handed out by the tens of thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The processes of arms reduction are not completely idled. Some aspects of nonproliferation have broad international support, and certain procedural and legislative elements of trafficking control are here to stay. But the efforts are patchwork and are undermined by inattentive and uninterested governments, and by governments that actively flout the rules. Local successes have occurred. More successes remain possible. Diligent researchers and nongovernment groups, along with individual officers, can stop bad practices here and there. But there is little momentum and many loopholes, and there is little reason to think that on the grand scale much will be done to keep the flow of illegal infantry arms in check. The case of Leonid Minin, the Ukrainian-Israeli arms dealer arrested near Milan, illustrated the state of affairs. Caught with documents describing the illegal shipment of nearly fourteen thousand Kalashnikovs and 9 million rounds of ammunition, Minin was released from custody after Italian courts ruled that Italy had no jurisdiction over his black-market brokering activities elsewhere. He walked. Had he been convicted and remained in jail, the trade would have continued. Where assault rifles are wanted, recent history shows, they appear. They move across borders like any other contraband, like heroin or hashish, like illegal immigrants, almost like rain. They are liquid. Demand ensures supply.
The comparison to illicit drugs has its limits. Like narcotics, assault rifles are difficult to find, secure, and remove once they have been distributed within a population. Unlike narcotics, they are not consumable. They remain in their users’ possession, sometimes for decades. From 2001 through 2009, it was possible to find Kalashnikov assault rifles in Afghanistan bearing manufacturing stamps from as far back as 1953.2 These were some of the very first AK-47s made. They had been forged, machined, and assembled nearly six decades before in Izhevsk. If they had been accompanied by log books revealing the names of those who had carried them, each would likely tell of years in the hands of Soviet conscripts, then of a period of reissue to the Soviet Union’s Afghan forces. They survived from there, in militias and caches, until they resurfaced in the hands of the current generation of Afghan police officers and soldiers, the proxies of the United States, alongside Kalashnikovs that originated in arms plants throughout the former communist bloc—Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Russia, China, and elsewhere. The wooden stocks of these most aged AK-47s showed dents and dings. Otherwise most of these rifles appeared to be in excellent order, ready to fire for decades more.
Of all the methods to limit illegal trafficking in military arms, only one way is sure: destruction. Destruction can happen any number of ways. The most straightforward and effective method is to destroy excess rifles in government stockpiles, or those that are collected in conflict zones. Programs along these lines have faced obstacles of all sorts, ranging from practical to ideological. The urge to redistribute the arms often outweighs suggestions to destroy them. In this way, efforts to disarm Iraq and Afghanistan failed. Few arms were collected, and commanders who did obtain working rifles often reissued them to people considered, at least at the moment, supportive of the American military’s mission. In stockpiles, other pressures prevented destruction, and many of the nations that have the largest stocks of weapons—Ukraine, for example—have participated in destruction programs only on a small scale. No sustained will has emerged to cut up the guns, in part because guns and ammunition can still be converted to money. The United States sent mixed messages and created uncomfortable situations in the Eastern bloc. During the past decade, one arm of the United States government, the State Department, was encouraging ministries to destroy excess weapons. Another, the Department of Defense, was shopping for the same items in the same countries and often purchasing through some of the same black-market middlemen who have been accused of smuggling.[46]
Is there an end? Yes. But the end of the Kalashnikov’s role as a primary tool for killing will not result, in all likelihood, from any disarmament program or policies. The final factor will be time. Kalashnikovs are sturdy, but not indestructible. They can and do break—sometimes when backed over by an armored vehicle or car, sometimes when struck by bullets or shrapnel, occasionally when warped by fire. If left exposed and unattended long enough, they can succumb to pitting, corrosion, and rust. With the passing of many years, the combined tally of these forces will bring an end to these weapons. This will not be a short time. It will not even be decades. But in another half- century, or century, the rifles will have broken, one by one, and the chance exists that they will no longer be a significant factor in war, terror, atrocity, and crime, and they will stop being a barometer of the insecurity gripping many regions of the world. Until that time, they will remain in view and in use. Mikhail Kalashnikov was right. The AK-47 is one of the great legacies of the Soviet period. Its descendants will outlast the Soviet Union for decades more, products intended to strengthen nations that have made many nations weaker and put more people at risk.
A NOTE ABOUT THE M-16 SERIES OF RIFLES IN 2010
A chapter in this book describes problems surrounding the introduction in Vietnam of the M-16 as a standard rifle for the United States armed forces. It is not an ambition here to trace the full evolution of the M-16 series in the decades since. Nonetheless, a few words are in order to distinguish the M-16 of the 1960s from its descendants.
The M-16 series, which was hurried into production as the Pentagon’s response to the Kalashnikov, is more than fifty years old. Since the public controversy of 1967, this rifle and its offspring, including the M-4 carbine, have undergone many modifications, as has the ammunition they fire. The changes in design and in manufacturing standards have resulted in performance different from what troops experienced in Southeast Asia. The current generation of M-16s and M-4s are generally regarded by Marines and soldiers who carry them as reliable—not as reliable as the Kalashnikov, but arms that work.
The series’ reputation does remain checkered. Part of this is a lingering hangover. The stories of failures in Vietnam have never been fully shaken. Misgivings are also related to accounts of rifles overheating in intensive combat or malfunctioning in sandy environments, and to complaints about the lethality of the rifles and their ammunition against lightly clad men. (This last complaint would seem related more to bullet composition than to the rifles.) Investigating each of these complaints is essential for public trust. But discussions about the current rifles should not confuse accounts of the M-16’s failures in Vietnam with questions about performance of M-16 variants in current wars. Recent complaints are of an entirely different order.
Further to understanding the events depicted in this book, the current manufacturers of the American military’s M-4 and M-16 rifles are Colt Defense LLC and FN Herstal USA. The Colt firm, located in West Hartford, Connecticut, is a successor company of Colt’s Firearms Division of Colt Industries, which manufactured the original M-16 line for the Pentagon. Colt Industries, and its firearms division, no longer exist.
NOTES
This book’s epigraph—“Inventors seldom benefit themselves. They benefit the people.”—is from “Made the Gatling Gun: Inventor Sought to Decrease the Horrors of War. An Interview with Dr. Gatling,” published in the
Prologue: Stalin’s Tools of War
