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ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE. I haven't yet read Larry Kahaner's AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War, but I reallly want to. Kahaner summarized the meaning of the AK-47 thus in a recent WaPo piece:
The AK-47 has become the world's most prolific and effective combat weapon, a device so cheap and simple that it can be bought in many countries for less than the cost of a live chicken. Depicted on the flag and currency of several countries, waved by guerrillas and rebels everywhere, the AK is responsible for about a quarter-million deaths every year. It is the firearm of choice for at least 50 legitimate standing armies and countless fighting forces from Africa and the Middle East to Central America and Los Angeles. It has become a cultural icon, its signature form -- that banana-shaped magazine -- defining in our consciousness the contours of a deadly weapon.As a political scientist I'm forced to quibble with some of Kahaner's characterizations; I wonder, for example, how the market would have replaced the AK-47 if it had never been invented. On the other hand, this leads to some interesting thoughts about how a product of the Soviet national security state has so often turned out to be the answer in the modern small arms market, and about how the AK has, as an impediment to the ability of the United States to carry out its foreign policy, outlasted the superpower that created it. --Robert Farley
