Per la Pau / Peace in Progress

Andrew Feinstein. The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade. Farrar, 2011.

Andrew Feinstein was a member of the African National Congress until it refused to investigate a corruption case related to an arms sale to South Africa. Following this experience, he has investigated the behind-the-scenes of the global arms trade and this is exactly what he explains in this book. After an exhaustive search of declassified documents, Feinstein details the specific connections among politicians, arms manufacturers, arms dealers and armies around the world.

Each of the arms sales analyzed involves government to government transactions, but also the deals that take place in the shadow world of illicit trade and, particularly, the frequent relations between often these two sides of the same coin. Operations on the five continents in which several people of the United States and Britain play a crucial role, not always reaching the mass media and, therefore, leaving the public opinion unaware of what's going on.

One of the values ??of this research is that it specifies each of the phases of the arms trade process, with the obvious consequences that a system of widespread corruption has for democracy, socio-economic development and human rights violations worldwide. The stories it contains, written with force and precision, exhort us to continue to push for an international arms trade treaty as soon as possible.

J.A.