The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade by Andrew Feinstein

by Andrew Feinstein

The Shadow World is the harrowing behind-the-scenes tale of the global arms trade, revealing the deadly collusion among senior politicians, weapons manufacturers, felonious arms dealers, and the military that compromises our security and undermines our democracy.Pulling back the curtain on this secretive world, Andrew Feinstein reveals the corruption and the cover-ups behind weapons deals ranging from the largest in history—between the British and Saudi governments—to the role Israel plays in helping U.S. weapons manufacturers sidestep economic sanctions. He exposes in forensic detail both the formal government-togovernment trade in arms and the shadow world of illicit weapons dealing, and lays bare the shocking and inextricable links between the two. Drawing on his experience as a member of the African National Congress who resigned when the ANC refused to launch an investigation into a corrupt major South African arms deal, Feinstein illuminates the impact this network has not only on conflicts around the world but also on the democratic institutions of the United States and the United Kingdom.Based on pathbreaking reporting and unprecedented access to top-secret information and major players in this clandestine realm, The Shadow World places us in the midst of the arms trade’s dramatic wheeling and dealing, from corporate boardrooms to seedy out-of-the-way hotels, and reveals the profound danger this network represents to all of us.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, War, Military Fiction, Economics, Crime

Paperback

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Andrew Feinstein was elected an ANC member of parliament in South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. He resigned in 2001 in protest at the ANC government’s refusal to allow an unfettered investigation into an arms deal that was tainted by allegations of high-level corruption. His political memoir, After the Party: A personal and political journey inside the ANC, was published in 2007.

Feinstein lives in London, where he chairs the Aids charity Friends of the Treatment Action Campaign, and lectures and writes on South Africa. He was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Cape Town.

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a complete and utter failure. Luckily, it isn't really a book: it's a gigantic finger pointed at the world by Humanity as she slowly, desperately tries to make headway against the absolute idiocy that is the actually existing human species.

I have a hard time imagining anyone who would read this and come away feeling anything other than horrified disgust at the degree to which government, industry and armed forces are tied together, in Europe, the U.K., the U.S., and most horrifically in Africa and the Middle East. There is no genuine political ideology anywhere that could approve of the relationship between, for instance, Lockheed Martin, the United States Air Force, and the American Government. Corporate welfare is bad enough to unite libertarians and communists; corporate welfare dollars being used to make over-priced, under-performing death machines is really a whole 'nother turkey.

At the same time, I have a hard time imagining anyone who would read this and come away feeling anything other than tremendous fatigue. Feinstein obviously knows *everything*, except how to fit all the facts he knows into a digestible form. What we have here is, instead, a fact explosion. There is no good reason for this book to be almost 600 pages long. There are a number of bad reasons: i) Feinstein focuses on arms companies' garden-variety corruption in Saudi Arabia for long portions of the book, which is a bit like complaining about how the mass murderer down the street doesn't take good enough care of her lawn. ii) He tries to pack the history of Africa into the middle of the book to show that weapons get used on people. That's horrific, no doubt, but also accomplishes little. iii) He's unable to resist a good conspiracy theory, so we end up with hard to digest, hard to verify tales about shadowy underworld figures cutting deals within deals within money laundering within deals, all of which detracts from the really overwhelming horrors of, in particular, the relationship between BAE and the U.K. government, or that between the U.S. arms industry and its government. iv) Feinstein writes like a freshman who can't really be bothered with things like sentence structure.

So, in short, six stars for content, minus two for the organization and prose. You absolutely must read the intro, chapters 3, 5, 7, and sections III and IV. The rest is awful, awful window dressing.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

In summer 2011, having become convinced that the machinations of what Dwight Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex" represents one of the most serious threats to peace and freedom everywhere, I set about trying to find a book on it. Nothing really seemed to deal with that subject directly, although there were books on particular weapons, wars, and companies. Then I found The Shadow World by Andrew Feinstein: it looked like a close fit. As for being up to date, it was not even yet published; I had to preorder it.

So I did. The book duly arrived in November, and I started reading it in December. One thing that impressed me off the bat was an endorsement on the back cover by Desmond Tutu. "How did he get that?" I wondered. Because I removed the dust jacket without reading the flap blurb, I had to wait until about 100 pages into the book to learn that Mr. Feinstein had been a member of the African National Congress and a Member of Parliament for South Africa. In that capacity he had had occasion to investigate improprieties in arms deals there, and became something of an expert on the topic, as well as a passionate critic of the arms trade generally.

Over the following 10 years or so Mr. Feinstein, with the help of a research team, dug into the arms business from multiple angles: its history, its leading suppliers, its personalities, specific arms deals large and small, government involvement, notable attempted prosecutions; and some of its key outputs: body counts, forced migrations, perpetual political instability, and widespread impoverishment.

Aristophanes satirized how the sword- and shield-makers of ancient Athens were militant and pro-war; and that phenomenon has not changed in any way except scale. The makers of weapons are now some of the world's biggest corporations, like Lockheed Martin and BAE, and they want and need to sell their products. The best time to do this is when weapons are being consumed in armed conflict. And some of their key salespeople are their own governments.

It's very hard to find anything good to say about the industry—and I shrink from using the word industry because to me this suggests some kind of legitimate competitive business that produces things for which there is a real public demand. But Mr. Feinstein shows how this is very far from being the case here. The industry as a whole is deeply corrupt, root and branch. Large weapons makers spend years bribing whole parliaments into buying their systems, one representative at a time. Senior ministers and heads of state are often on the payroll. For a multi-billion-dollar weapons deal to a developing country like Saudi Arabia, 30% of the total will be bribes. Maybe more. Most of these activities are, to be sure, illegal. But weapons makers operate under the special protection of their governments, and even in those rare cases when prosecutions are undertaken by zealous bureaucrats, they are generally scotched by the governing executive.

In the United States, the weapons capital of the universe, the military-industrial complex has expanded into what is known as the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC): an intricate, self-lubricating clockwork of congressional pork, "campaign contributions", cost-plus noncompetitive contracts, and revolving-door career-switches between the Pentagon, the White House, and military contractors. The dollar figures involved are stupendous. It is a juggernaut.

The very complexity of this shadow world and its many effects make it difficult to organize an account of it, and in reading I felt a little bit as though I was being shown many sides of this business, but without a single overarching point being developed, other than, "this is bad." I also felt I was at times being patronized by the author by his reliance on value-charged modifiers. Flipping the book open at random, on page 194 I see that in an account about payoffs to a Tanzanian government minister, the author says, "Displaying remarkable insensitivity, Chenge referred to the money in his account [$1.2 million] as 'pocket change'." This reader did not need his attention drawn to the minister's "insensitivity."

Another example from page 105: "None of the parties to the IBC agreement knew how to organize money transfers in a way that would obscure the origins of their ill-gotten gains." Here again, the term ill-gotten felt like an effort to make sure I understood that what these guys were doing was wrong. There are many more examples throughout the book.

However, these reservations aside, I feel that this book is a great service to humanity, and we owe the author a debt. There is a wealth of carefully documented evidence here of how the arms industry works at all levels and in almost all places. The ills that result are many and large. Mr. Feinstein's passion and disgust are amply justified. We should bear in mind that when we hear people justifying these activities and these transactions, those doing the justifying are mostly receiving large--often extremely large--cash payments from those very transactions.

Think about it.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a formidable account of the global arms trade. It’s not a pretty picture. It’s laden with corruption and shoddy characters making millions of dollars. Hardly any of them pose the moral question: “why am I doing this”? What is the purpose of all these deals for faster jets and small arms that number in the hundreds of thousands? The money and the killing fields are ever-expanding.

It’s all outlined, in sometimes excruciating detail, in Andrew Feinstein’s book. The United States is selling, by the dozens, high-tech jets to Saudi Arabia – the richest authoritarian country on the planet. Saddam died a few years ago – what do they need so many for? It’s almost like these immoral states (Saudi Arabia, Libya) are collectors – lining up their tanks, planes, artillery… for an impressive show.

The sordidness of all these transaction sales are given in detail; for instance – purportedly Poland sells weapons to Latvia, some end up there and the rest are re-routed to Somalia. And this is a simple outline. As Mr. Feinstein well illustrates any weapons deal implicates bribes in the millions of dollars – it’s the standard protocol.

I worked for a medium-sized company and after SOX auditing was introduced, any code changes to the accounting systems – no matter how insignificant – had to be signed off by managers, accountants… I learnt from this book that the Pentagon, which deals in billions of dollars, has not been audited for twenty years! The U.S. has a parallel government running within Congress – the Pentagon - and the private companies supplying armaments that are not accountable to the taxpayer. Billions of dollars are spent and wasted in this self-perpetuating cycle which is corroding democracy in the U.S. – and by extension the rest of the world. Abundant examples are provided by Mr. Feinstein of the armaments industry corrupting government decisions.

It was also interesting to read that whereas the ratio of contractors to U.S. military personnel in the Second World War was 1:7 (one contractor to seven soldiers) and in Vietnam 1:6; there are now in Iraq/Afghanistan 1.18 contractors per U.S. soldier! The payment of these contracting companies is constantly increasing and their actions unaccountable.

This is an engrossing book. I did find that Mr. Feinstein overrates the role of the U.S. and Charlie Wilson in the downfall of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It was Pakistan’s I.S.I. and the Saudi’s who provided men and money to defeat the Soviet forces. The I.S.I. controlled all the movement of men and supplies (weapons) across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. I would also have liked to learn more about land-mines which (as far as I know) can be active for several years.

Mr. Feinstein describes how Africa has become decimated by arms dealers. The less government (or the more a state borders on failing) the more these dealers can run amuck. There is no morality in selling arms to Africa. The deals can be barter for diamonds or oil or minerals (like coltan in the Congo). This book provides us a horrendous view of this amoral world.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well after reading this seems living in peace for certain parts of the world is only a dream. It's just terrible reading some of the little side stories. The villians really are living in the western countries.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just after World War II, big business, the military, and the trans-Atlantc governments began working together to rebuild their militaries. It became obvious that the industrial production of war materiel is profitable and more profits results in more power. Within a decade, America had entered the Korean War and, soon after that, the war in Vietnam. In the latter of those two invasions, the public became aware of the relation between capitalism and military conquest and the term Military Industrial Complex emerged into common usage. After all, businesses manufacture arms with the intention of selling them for profit, but the arms have no inherent value unless they get used and so they either get rolled over to another buyer or used on the battlefield. Some weapons also fall into the hands of grey or black marketeer brokers or dealers, finding their way into the Third World and put used to commit all manner of atrocities and human rights violations. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union also put a lot of guns into circulation worldwide since organized crime gangs with easy access to unguarded military bases, mostly in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics in Central Asia, grew rich by selling guns on the black market. All of this is documented in The Shadow World by the South African, former ANC parliamentarian and human rights advocate Andrew Feinstein.

The whole story in this book really starts after World War II when an ex-Nazi military officer used his contacts with the network of war criminals in South Africa to form the Merex corporation. Merex emerged from the dust of the great war as a semi-legal company that grew in stature due to their willingness to ship arms to militaries in troubled regions of the world. By the 1990s, they were doing business with dictators in Africa and all sides of the Yugoslavian civil war out of an office in Virginia. With help and protection from Western governments, they brokered and sold weaponry in deals involving intelligence agencies, terrorist groups, organized crime gangs, logging companies, and legitimate businesses. Sometimes American manufactured arms ended up in the hands of enemy nations in places like Iran and Afghanistan.

Then on the more legally sanctioned side, Feinstein explores the Al Yamamah arms deal made between BAE Systems of the U.K. and Saudi Arabia in which state of the art air force defense systems were sold to the latter nation at cut rate prices. BAE initially scoffed at the transaction but after copious kickbacks were paid and the Saudis agreed to dramatically lower the price of crude oil, the deal went through. BAE and other weapons manufacturing companies saw the potential for reaping massive profits by budgeting bribery into their expense accounts and Al Yamamah became a template for maximizing business deals in the nations of the Global South.

The importance of Al Yamamah becomes easier to understand as Feinstein explains how American weapon dealers pressured South Africa and Tanzania into purchasing anti-missile defense systems that they ultimately had no use for. This was done by funneling money into the bank accounts of corrupt politicians, all done through slush funds, overcharges, and hidden charges in legitimate banking transactions. Then sometimes it was simply a matter of handing over a suitcase full of money to the right person. The author shows how damaging this kind of corruption can be to a developing nation since in the case of Tanzania, the government cut money out of their budgets for education, infrastructure development, and job creation programs in order to purchase military technology they couldn’t even use. You also have to wonder what effect this corruption can have on a population of people who are trying to build their nation and uplift themselves out of poverty. It either sends the message that corruption is the way to get things done or else you might as well give up trying in life since if you have no access to influential people or lack any kind of service you can offer in exchange for large sums of money, you are hopelessly doomed to poverty. When people feel like they’ve got nothing to lose, it shouldn’t surprise you if they turn to crime, terrorism, or religious extremism in order to get by.

The middle passages of this book are dull. The author goes into extensive detail about the economics and legality of international arms dealing. Everything written here is relevant and important to his case, not to mention well-supported with extensive citations, but it is the kind of dry writing that slows the whole book down.

It picks up again when Feinstein gets into the role of the U.S.A. in the arns trade be it legal, illegal, or some combination of the two. One major topic covered is the Reagan era involvement in the Iran – Iraq War. Even though America was supporting Saddam Hussein at that time, they were also profiting from the war by selling arms illegally to Iran in what became known as the Iran – Contra Scandal. To add an even sleazier layer onto the story, the arms America sold to Iran were Soviet manufactured weapons purchased from Poland, considered and enemy Eastern Bloc nation at the time, in order to fund a fascist dictatorship in Nicaragua that overthrew a democratically elected government. So America bought arms from communists, sold them to an Islamic fundamentalist enemy state in order to pay for a Latin American dictatorship in order to stop communism. Brilliant.

But the dealings of the George W. Bush administration make Ronald Reagan’s senile international buggery look moral in comparison. Long before the election in 2000 and the September 11 terrorist attacks, Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were drawing up plans for the invasion of Iraq. All three men had deep ties to the oil and arms industry, being former board members and executives of companies like Haliburton and Lockheed Martin, and they filled the Bush cabinet almost entirely with executives from the arms industry. Feinstein points out how the Bush – Cheney team were little more than war profiteers whose personal fortunes increased from millions to billions during the Iraq War against former U.S. ally Saddam Hussein. American soldiers got killed, maimed, and psychologically scarred for that. And the fact that, aside from war profiteers, there were no winners in the Iraq War, only losers.

Along with that, the author explains the menage-a-tois between the arms industry, congress, and the American military. Congressional spending on war materiel is grossly exaggerated beyond any practical needs and members of all three institutions pass through the revolving doors between them as many corporate executives become lobbyists, politicians, or military bureaucrats. Massive amounts of money pass through hands in the form of earmarking and pork barrel spending, two terms that serve as euphemisms for legalized bribery. There are a massive number of pigs feeding off the arms industry trough and most, but not all of them, have deep ties in the Republican party. Those are the same Republicans who make millions by doing nothing more than licking the grease off their own palms while whining about the loafers on welfare who get nothing but crumbs from public assistance. Is this the projection of a guilty conscience? A mean-spirited mockery of the American lower classes? A cynical ploy to polarize American society by humiliating and scapegoating America’s most downtrodden citizens? A professional psychologist could answer that question providing they aren’t being given the squeeze by some conservative funding organization.

So how can a book like this be evaluated? It can’t really be approached from a literary perspective since that isn’t its purpose though it can be said that, despite a couple parts that drag, most of it is engaging and well-written. It is hard to evaluate the content as well unless you have the means to fact check this dense mass of information, all of which is extensively documented with legitimate citations. For the most part, it all sounds plausible as hell even though most of the information is far beyond our abilities to verify. It can be a frustrating read too because most of us don’t have the ability to do anything about the issues raised in this study.

The Shadow World is an outstanding work of quality muckraking. It hits hard and clearly presents a dilemma that needs to be addressed. We live in a world of complex societies that interact in complex ways. Militaries are necessary as are the war materiel they need to function. But like anything else, the military can be misused and abused, sometimes resulting in unnecessary wars, genocides, mass murder, and terrorist attacks. On top of all this, there are corporate profiteers who value bloated profit margins over quality of life like an aristocratic class of psychopaths. All the while, their greed is satisfied under the guise of providing a legitimate and necessary service. As a reader you may not be able to don anything to fix this absurd situation that is utterly devoid of heroes, but this book does feel as though it contains important information and gives you a chance to evaluate your moral stance in relation to politics, economics, corruption, and violence. Maybe that is all a narrative like this can do until the human race finds a saner way to live.

[Eoin Flynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

One reads about the wilfully ignorant in the world who allow human driven climate change to proceed unabated. Such people are unintentionally evil and spectacularly dim.

But this book... This is a catalogue of dealings of actively malevolent people. People who facilitate the deaths of hundreds of thousands - millions, even. All in the name of capitalist avarice.

It makes apparent precisely how corrupt the already infamous military-industrial complex (as the author points out, it should be more appropriately called the military-industrial-congressional complex) that underpins american politics is.

It sheds light on what a c*nt Margaret Thatcher really was. But most people likely already assumed that. More interestingly the author also shows the fetid underbellies of a number of other politicians who have, for the most part, managed to appear pure and clean to the general populace.

It is a terrifying book. Quite dry and tedious for some to read, no doubt. But worth slogging through to raise one's consciousness about the worst human wrought atrocities in the world and how they are promoted.

[El Lector Enmascarado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me atrevería a decir que para entender el mundo en el que vivimos es más importante leer este libro que leer a diario la prensa de información durante una década. Porque mucho de lo fortuito, de lo inesperado, de lo extraordinario que nos da la prensa cotidiana no son sino los epifenómenos del tráfico de armas. ¿La revolución digital? Se produjo gracias al tráfico de armas. ¿La crisis económica de 2008? Se produjo por culpa del tráfico de armas. Rolls Royce, Apple, Starbucks o EMI participan en la producción de elementos ancilares de la industria del armamento. ¿Puede tacharse todo ello de «tráfico», de crimen o chanchullo? Una de las cosas más impactantes que uno aprende leyendo este libro es que, en lo que atañe la compra-venta de armas, la legalidad es solo un estado coyuntural y difuso.

El panorama es desolador, pero considero una obligación cívica enfrentarse a él. En materia de guerra y paz, no existe la política internacional; lo que existe, en su lugar, son movimientos de armamento completamente desprovistos de racionalidad, que únicamente benefician a los intermediarios. Un ejemplo elocuente, entre otros: muchas de las armas con las que Hezbolá lucha contra el estado de Israel proceden del arsenal que Irán empleó contra Irak en los 90... y que había sido vendido por Israel.

[Tariq Mahmood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A panoramic view of the shady world of Arms trade. What really impressed me was the candour with which the author dissected both the Developed and the undeveloped countries. He took no prisoners and was not shy to name names of the big players. It has become clear to me how much dependence is placed on arms industry by the Western countries. They are desperate to keep investing this bottomless industry in the name of national security for the immense profit of a select few.

It is also frightening to read about the state of some dysfunctional African nations where bullets and guns have become the currency of choice. It almost gave me a sci-fi movie image when I read about the way Israel was planning to use drones to shoot anything getting close to its wall with Palestine.

The book is a must read for anyone interested in politics. It will explain how inter country relationships work and when they don't work. Why certain dictators become acceptable leaders and others are considered as pariahs. How governments use our money to invest into defence projects which were never meant to work.

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly long and detailed history that proves how horrifically corrupt and corrupting the arms trade is (and not only the illegal arms trade). Fascinating, but also very, very long. Man did I need something more positive and less horrifyingly depressing and awful after this, luckily my next audiobook was "Utopia for Realists."

[Grant Charlton · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the book does have lots of interesting information, but it is a bit of information overload. Fact after fact to the point of being difficult to process. Has a lot of potential but was written more like an academic paper than for the general public.

[Helen Meads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst the subject matter of this book, the arms trade, was in much need of an expose, Feinstein crams in so much detail, the book is hard to read. Feinstein was in need of a good editor, who might have pointed out the need for signposting and reprises in order to follow the many threads.

Having said that, the general impact of the book is utterly devastating. Democracies are undermined by shady dealings, whose secrecy is justified on the spurious grounds of national security (even where national security is not in point). Major companies are corrupt and it is hard to resist the conclusion that western governments are, too. The accumulated wealth of Tony Blair is just one example, but Thatcher, Major, Bush and others are deeply implicated, as well.

The chapters on America’s shop window and the rampart arming of African regimes were particularly harrowing, but the book as a whole is, too, and deeply deeply depressing.

A very difficult, but necessary read.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been trying to understand the cold war better, because when I was reading the history of the atomic bomb and nuclear (un)safety, I had a bunch of questions, largely around why did the cold war seem.... way more 'fake' than I had assumed?
- Why were the plans for nuclear war not anything like a real plan, but literally a plan to place 3 nukes on every population center and installation of any kind in Russia and China [despite that
- Why was the U.S spending hundreds of millions on missile systems that didn't work, and this was just mentioned in a single off hand comment?
- Why was it so politically advantageous, at all levels all the up to the president, to pretend that Russia was much more dangerous than it actually was? Examples of this include Kennedy campaigning on the missile gap, George H.W. Bush setting up Team B to come up with an alternate analysis of the missile count to show more missiles, other incidents involving Reagan, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld]

On attempting to answer the second question, I started thinking about the Military Industrial Complex, which I had previously just assumed was a slur used by hippies who want to feel comfortable being angry about something.

The phrase comes from a speech president Eisenhower made before he left office, as a warning. It turns out a concern of his was how to demilitarize the united states after WW2, since the entire country had been turned into a war economy. Part of his strategy was to implement the New Look policy (1953), which emphasized a shift towards nuclear weapons as a cheap alternative to a large military force. He then implemented a series of propaganda campaigns, such as radio and tv programs, to emphasize that the Russians also had nukes and we needed to make more, as cover to allow him downsize the traditional military. This somewhat backfired because people were more terrified than expected, and politicians were able to capitalize on the fear and demand that we increase our our defenses and build more missiles. All within this, military contractors were doing their best to sell as much as possible to military, capitalizing on the defense budget. At least, this is my current understanding of part of the tale that is told less often. (New look did lots of other things talked about more often, like support non-communist allies abroad, contemplate escalation to nuclear war from conventional war, etc, that contributed to increased conflict)

Which brings us to the military contractors, famously Lockheed Martin. What's going on here? First off, as seen in Skunk Works, part of their business was making the best planes the U.S. airforce has ever seen, often quite quickly and under budget. This was going on while other parts of the business where having huge cost overruns, overcharging the government, and bribing members of other countries to buy their airplanes.

Here's some info from the current book[the shadow world]
- so it's pretty common for arms manufacturers to give commissions to the people in the other country that help the purchase of airplane/guns/missles/rpgs/etc. This is illegal in some countries and is called a bribe, but often it's not illegal because they are doing it in a roundabout way, or between countries. The author often seemed to think of this as super bad, but salespeople get commissions and if you help your government buy 70 billion dollars of stuff, why should I care if some prince or executive gets a bonus of 200k or a million?
- answer: Often the commissions are about 1-2% of the sale, so it can be a lot more than 200k.
- a lot of the times arms sales are illegal, but they happen anyways. For example, if the U.S. Congress blocks your sales of airplanes, you can construct a runway that is halfway across the the u.s. Canadian border, and move them to Canada, then deliver them to your country!
- generally, it seems like the defense industry is a pretty inefficient market, too-big-to-fail, bureaucratic, etc. It seems like this is an issue that both the government and those within the industry are upset about, and it largely comes down to new regulations being needed, and having been needed for a long time, but never getting implemented. (Why?)
- Arms deals pretty much vary from slightly shady to very shady. Book covered many arms networks and dealers in depth.

This journalist seemed to operate as if the Merchants of Death hypothesis was true, namely that arms dealers purposefully lobby for war and perpetuate conflict with a profit motive. It's also true that governments and warlords have a desire for weapons, and I have a hard time faulting weapons dealers for giving into molochian incentives --- if they didn't sell, someone else would. But throughout the book I kept being reminded of Stephen Pinker's thesis, where despite these massive arms deals, war and violence has generally diminished. In some cases it was clear that the arms trade increased the violence, as the Rwandan genocide happened only once they were able to acquire the arms shipments allowing them to do so. Just in general, something about this in this area is confusing to me.

On the political connections between the defense contractors and the government --- some of what I'm supposed to be upset about here seems to rely on assumptions that I don't understand. Why is it bad that there is a revolving door between the DoD and defense contractors? Isn't there a revolving door among many other parts of the private sector and government? (Banking... lobbying...) Sometimes I think that I might need a better imagination to understand how government *could* be, but it seems most ideas completely ignore the constraints of human nature.

Then with the lobbying of Lockheed --- I don't understand why politicians are so influenced by jobs and money going to their district? Do voters really care about jobs?

[Addi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative book about an improtant and timely area of concern. But written rather too dryly, the details a bit too pedantic. This book exists in that indeterminate space between academic and popular non-fiction. A step either way, and some editorial panache, and you have a book where Feinstein has clearly very important things to tell about the corrupt and corrupting world of global arms trade, which brings Jewish apartheid states, radical Islamist regimes, American presidents, European 'socialists' and west-african warlords in a a circle jerk of pure evil.

[David Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only a few days ago I was involved in an unpleasant incident in the Sahel that would not have happened had it not been for the proliferation of arms in the region.
Thirteen years after publication, Andrew Feinstein's The Shadow World is as relevant as ever, in fact, probably even more relevant.
There's no need for me to review this oft-reviewed masterpiece. All good things said about this book are true, and more. The research is mind-boggling. The content is disturbing to the max. Read this to understand the true nature of politics - power, money, greed. The politicians are owned. They are owned by the Military Industrial Congressional Complex - that revolving door through which senior members of government go back and forth between their government jobs and senior positions on boards of the defence and security industry.
There isn't a war the US won't invest in, from today's weapons supplied to Ukraine to keeping the Israeli army imersed in bullets to fire at Palestinians.
Andrew, with deep inside knowledge of arms and corruption within the ANC, was aware of the crooked nature of senior ANC officials even before the first democratic elections. Thabo Mbeki took corruption to new soaring heights by ignoring the plight if AIDS victims in order to skim off vast amounts of cash when purchasing uneccessary and and inappropriate aircraft for the country's ari force - equipment air force experts told government that it was inappropriate for the needs of a country without an outside security threat.
The UK, Canada, Brazil, and numerous other countries also have vast amounts of blood on their hands. Laws are by-passed when there's a lot of money to be made from arms sales, and some of the world's most unsavoury characters work hand in hand, often with government contracts, to ensure that no big sale is missed, no matter to whom, even if it means supplying more than one side in a conflict. Life is an afterthought, if at all. Bravo Andrew Feinstein! Never give up. You are an inspiration.

[Starr Crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly thorough, well-researched book that brings to light decades worth of weapons/arms transfers and the players involved in building the rampant international military industrial complex we know today. Andrew Feinstein deserves praise for the research and courage that went into this book. It implicates many elected officials and weapons manufacturers (like BAE, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, etc) and traces the movement between board members of these companies to some of our nation’s most prestigious seats and back again. Retired generals, Senators, Vice President’s, you name it. It’s astonishing that this malfeasance is public knowledge and allowed to happen. So much conflict of interest, so much lining of pockets, so much greed and death just so a few queefs can be rich and powerful.

I appreciate that Feinstein closed with recommendations for transparency and mechanisms for international accountability and prosecution, but tbh, I’m cynical. The USA has threaded its military industrial complex into this shadow world, and as long as the people in power are also the people seeing profits from war, its not going anywhere.

“A very small elite was manufacturing the trade through a “fear industry”, he suggested. “Politicians, business executives and the intermediaries, do things in the arms trade, all of which is secret, behind a veil of national security, that they wouldn’t dare do in other trades – even corrupt other trades like oil and construction.”

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders after finishing this book. Feinstein does a commendable job educating the reader about the why and how of the beyond-FUBAR state of the world due to the global weapons trade. It is verifiably terrifying and depressing stuff. Feinstein certainly deserves his flowers for the extensive research that had to have gone into this book.
In addition to not having to read about this sobering subject anymore, I feel levity after finishing this book because its length and density made it a damn marathon. There is NO reason this book needed to be ~600 pages long. The author could not or would not write succinctly. If one is interested in this book but can’t stomach ~600 pages, I’ll summarize everything important:
1. The global weapons trade has Nazi roots
2. Africa is the most F’ed by the global weapons trade.
3. The US arms trade is rife with corruption (shocker)
4. BAE is bad. Very, very bad
5. Lockheed Martin might be worse

The Shadow World gets four stars for content and research behind it. It loses a star for its writing.

[Evan H · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly terrible book. Feels like he is stuck at the level of a high school level politics student, who still believes there is simply good and bad in the world. In his view the big arms companies and the military industrial complex (inevitably he thinks of them as powerful white men) on the one side peddling arms to hapless nations on the other side. What a load of Marxist claptrap. Not a surprise given the foreword of the book was written by Jeremy Corbyn an avowed Marxist politician who openly espouses a view that Hezbolla and Hamas and other proscribed terror organisations are our only hope in defending against these white colonial imperialist American executives and their puppetmasters in the US government. Marxist nonsense, stay away. I’m so glad I was able to return it on kindle, it hurt me to think Feinstein would make a few dollars off me. Just to be safe I made an online donation to Westpoint Military Academy to balance the scales.

[Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Endemic waste and endless corruption,with a iarge quantity of death and destruction on the side. A stunningly depressing depiction of the "Military Industrial Complex" and all of it's offshoots. An exceedingly dense book that is literally overflowing with nightmarish facts and truths that will simply take your breath away. An entire industry of completely morally devoid personalities and companies. This is all that stuff that somehow, down deep you already know, but can't really comprehend that it could be true. Yet, it is, and even much worse than imagined. The next time you hear a politician, pundit or socalled" Miltary expert" tell you that we need to raise our military budget, you will understand immediately who and what they are!!! 5 stars for factual info, 3 stars for the machine gun presentation = 4 star book

[Baron Deschauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts well and then gets bogged down. I still gave it four stars because of the content. It is a depressing indictment on our role in the world's violence with nation states being the largest contributors to world violence through the sale of arms. The UK is the second largest exporter of arms (larger than Russia, France or China) with two-thirds of the arms going to the Middle East. Only the US is a larger exporter of arms. Depressing and I wish it was just a thriller that I could close and forget about. Unfortunately, it is real life and it is happening all around us. Consume in small doses but don't forget to try it.

[Strong Extraordinary Dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This really functions as a (very detailed) primer on the world's unofficial & criminal arms trade. If you want to learn about the large structures of the world's illegal arms trade, this is the place to start.

Heavy on detail, as others have commented, but that's necessary, I think, to give a good initial introduction to the student of these dark arts. Maybe 1/3 of the book deals with Saudi Arabia, which is probably appropriate.

I was entertained, somewhat educated (quickly forgot a lot of the details) and, at times, shocked.

[Nick Harriss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that goes behind the scenes of the worldwide arms industry. Similar in many ways to "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", but dealing with arms sales rather than infrastructure projects, it covers the unholy trinity of Machiavellian Western Governments, avaricious private contractors and corrupt politicians in developing countries. While the big picture stories were basically matters I was aware of, the author reveals a lot of details that never made it into news stories previously. Well worth reading.

[Avanti Victoire Rao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Feinstein at his best here. Fantastic work! The way he dismantles the myth of Thatcher and Blair (Left and Right) The silence around the Al-Yamamah arms deal is nerverecking.
Unfortunately, the arms trade is still thriving and with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is likely to get worse for us but even better for dodgy arms dealer.

[Fahad Tahir · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brave (and shocking) book detailing the workings of the arms trade, hidden in plain sight. It beggars belief how they get away with it time and time again, and the amounts of money involved.

It could have been better written/organised though. Sometimes there is so much in a chapter it's difficult to absorb and follow the topic. There should be subchapters for easier understanding.

[Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and well researched but quite dry. Exposing the shady international trade can be quite exciting or like this, just a long monolog of names, places, quantities with little historical background.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a remarkable investigation in all corners of the world, where the stories often overshadow Hollywood. Yet the author's voice is carefully tuned, without any sensationalism. It's very well written, really recommend!

[Sarah Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feinstein documents the dark web and horror of the global arms trade with exacting, extremely well researched detail. But at almost 600 pages it’a close detail exceeds what can be easily digested on this topic.

[sharaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains information that is: eye opening; about events that occur largely away from public view and important to bring to light; well cited; hard to read about elsewhere in such an encyclopaedic fashion; and critical for understanding how the world works. A dense read. Unembellished.

[Grrm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Неплохое чтиво на всегда интересную (мне) тему, но структура хромает. Мешанина деталей порой раздражает. Из-за их обилия сам нарратив порой теряется. Да и прыжки туда-сюда не всегда добавляют ясности и в хронологию, и в географию разворачивающихся представлений.

[figs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well-written from start to finish. Although I believe a strong military is essential, I think the shady tactics of the arms industry create inefficiencies and shift the burden to taxpayers.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, horrifying, saddening, maddening & verging on unbelievable.