As for your point about military spending, I do agree - why are billions being spent on companies such as BAE, when our frontline troops in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq don’t have basic equipment? We were in a global arms race (the cold war), but we finally realised that it wasn’t a good thing, stopped and made peace with each other. The race now has new entrants however, and we shouldn’t be complacent with our allies.

The problem with ethics and morals is that it is unique to each person. My current housemate works in an animal research lab that batch tests anti-cancer drugs on rats. She obviously has no ethical problem with this job, but the people who picket her workplace do. At the end of the day, the University academics aren’t going to research areas that they feel they can’t ethically or morally, but who are we to dictate other peoples ethics?

As a Computer Science student, one of my lecturers does do research for BAE. He mentioned it in a lecture once. What was he researching? A system for distributing toilet waste around the new A380 superjumbo to ensure the best possible weight distribution.

I’m not claiming that BAE is ethical, however I do think that the terms “ethical” and “unethical” do get banded around a lot, and, like many things in the real world, ethics is not a black and white matter, but more of a spectrum. Take for example the recent Viking Raid charter - Gildan didn’t let employees unionise. Some condemned them for this action for being unethical, but as far as the spectrum goes in my eyes, this is only a fairly light shade of grey.

More generally, it’s a kind of playground mentality that the only way to avoid attack and have influence is to be bigger and stronger than the opposition. Translating this to the world stage is unduly pessimistic. If we do accept this then we resign ourselves to always having to bow before the US since there is no realistic prospect of our ever equalling their military strength, whatever action we take. The situation with China will soon be the same. I prefer to hope that we will always stand up to other nations where we believe them to be wrong and back up our words with reason rather than weapons. Similarly, I hope that other nations will always stand up to us when we are in the wrong, regardless of how strong or weak we are at the time. Perhaps this is idealistic but I hope not. Progress is being made and people across the world are beginning to see not only that might does not make right but that the mighty can be defeated through non-violent means and that even the weakest nations and individuals can make a stand against tyranny.

I believe that the issue should be considered in the absolute terms of how much military hardware is produced globally rather than the relative terms of how the UK’s position in relation to China is affected. An increase in military investment in the UK (such as in BAE) will only lead to an increase in military spending in China and enable the Chinese government to more easily justify this increase to its citizens (this may in fact mean that the UK’s position in relation to China is not improved but as I’ve said I don’t believe this is the key issue). In both countries those who would benefit from more worthy investments will lose out; this would be particularly serious in China where poverty is more widespread than in the UK and where it’s even more certain that provision for the poorest in society should be a much greater priority than military investment.

The only real way to help curb the trend in worldwide arms spending is to set an example by taking responsibility for what we do, irrespective of what other nations are doing, and cut down our own military investments. You are probably right that an immediate cessation of all military investment could be disastrous but a more gradual climbdown would not be. Discouraging association between universities and arms manufacturers seems a pretty reasonable first step. Universities are, after all, meant to be places of learning, aspiration and understanding whereas the production of weapons seems symptomatic of the belief that the possibility of understanding between people is already doomed to failure. I think it represents a rather sad state of affairs where reducing rather than increasing our arms spending (and thereby freeing up money to combat problems in our country and worldwide) is at all controversial. I think it is something that needs to be done to avoid a global arms race and a situation of tension and a constant threat of war that would be detrimental to everyone. Ultimately, either we live together or we die together and every weapon produced pushes us closer to the latter of those two options.

P.S Sorry that this response is so ridiculously long; if I was a better writer I’m sure I could have made my points much more succinctly. Secondly this is by no means all directed at Chris, or the writer of the original article (which this poorly-written diatribe probably rivals in length) but is intended as a more general response to the issue.

David: No, it’s okay to support BAE because they don’t just focus on military applications, but also on things with civilian applications.

Also, at the end of the day, unfortunately the state of the world is that we need the ability to defend ourselves. If we stopped all military investment in the UK, we would either have to rely on external countries (which is never really wise, look at why the EU is developing Galileo instead of relying on American GPS) or let ourselves fall behind in military hardware, possibly leaving us vulnerable to unknown states such as North Korea or China.

This article relies on an unstated and implausible assumption; that what’s good for Britain is what’s objectively good and should be the only standard by which a company is measured. In fact, British interests may well not match with world interests. In particular, I submit that the interests of people around the world in not having their families or themselves killed by weapons developed by BAE outweigh the relatively trivial interests of a few graduates in getting a job with BAE.

I’m sure it’s quite easy to be pro-BAE when you’re unlikely to be on the receiving end of any of the weapons they’ve developed. And this doesn’t just encompass those that British troops are fighting, don’t forget that BAE have also supplied Saudi Arabia; a regime with an appalling human rights record.

To answer your question, the circumstances under which we would be best placed to tackle the arms trade and human trafficking would be those whereby we helped channel graduates into organisations that directly target these problems rather than into unethical companies like BAE who, if they did help us solve any of these problems, would do so only as a by-product, and who, I believe, propogate rather than diminish human suffering overall.