(Reuters/KCNA KCNA )North Korean leader Kim Jong Un greeting a women's subunit during a rocket-launching drill.
Several countries have managed to build massive arsenals despite being under various forms of international sanction.
China has anti-satellite weapons, advanced fighter jets, and ballistic missiles, despite the US banning all weapons-related trade with Beijing after the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre.
The Arab League maintains an official boycott on Israel — which nevertheless has the strongest military in the Middle East. And EU and US sanctions haven't wiped out Russia's ongoing military modernization drive.
But China, Israel, and Russia face far fewer barriers to the international weapons market than the true rogue states: that is, the US-listed state sponsors of terrorism.
And that is ironically a source of strength for these countries, which trade with one another. This is demonstrated by the below map, compiled with information from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's global weapons transfer database for 2014.
(Skye Gould/Business Insider)
Today there are four of them (though Cuba is set to be delisted after last year's diplomatic thaw), and a few are notable military powers in their own right.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps is fighting in Iraq and Syria. Syria's Assad regime has held out against secular rebels and a range of jihadist groups for over four years. Sudan's regime has survived through simultaneous civil wars and a deep economic trough.
North Korea, which was removed from the list in 2008 in an eventually failed bid to jumpstart flagging disarmament talks, is under a heavy sanctions regime and has 1.2 million soldiers, thousands of artillery pieces, and nuclear weapons.
These countries managed to build up their military capabilities partly because of their international isolation.
For instance, 30 years of western sanctions required Iran to develop the one of the most extensive domestic arms industries in the Middle East — if it could buy weapons from the US or Europe, Iran would not have had to build its own battleships and submarines. North Korea has a substantial indigenous weapons capability as well, ranging from ballistic missiles to small arms.
(KCNA KCNA/REUTERS)A new type of anti-ship cruise missile to be equipped at Korean People's Army (KPA) naval units is tested in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on February 7.
Iran provides all sorts of weaponry and military aid to Syria. Though it isn't marked on this map, which shows weapons transfers only from 2014, Iran helped set up Sudan's domestic arms industry and has provided arms to the government in Khartoum that later ended up with pro-government militant groups. Russia and China will sell to just about whomever they want to. Belarus, which has long been under various sanctions because of its government's human-rights record, will also sell to Sudan.