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US pushing arms, reforming export
controls
By John Feffer
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell
okayed the arms deal with a tap of a finger, unveiling
the State Department's new D-Trade, a fast, paperless
process for granting licenses to US military contractors
for arms sales. After joking that State had only
recently junked its last vintage Wang computer, Powell
pushed one button to approve the sale of a pair of
night-vision goggles to the United Kingdom. US
government oversight of the arms trade had officially
entered the virtual age.
The electronic
licensing of D-Trade is only one of a range of pending
reforms that would substantially recast and expedite the
way the US government handles arms exports, from lowly
and innocuous spare parts to the latest unmanned aerial
vehicles. The implications for Asia are significant. The
United States hopes to facilitate arms sales to such
allies as Australia and South Korea, but also to expand
new relationships with Pakistan and Indonesia. Taiwan
was the world's largest arms importer in the late 1990s,
and the US wants a bigger piece of this market. The
Europeans, contemplating a lifting of the arms embargo
against China, are eyeing an equally lucrative market.
The global arms market is fiercely competitive,
and sellers are always looking for an edge. Although the
US is the world's largest arms exporter, controlling
nearly half of the international market of about US$30
billion a year, both the government and industry have
been pushing for the better part of a decade to increase
this market share. One way of boosting exports is to
make it easier for sellers to get licenses. Every year,
the US government processes more than 50,000 export
licenses for military goods. Defense contractors
frequently complain about bureaucratic delays, which
they argue make the US less competitive against other
high-ranking exporters such as Russia and France.
But what looks like a delay to one person is a
justifiable concern about national security or
proliferation to another. In streamlining the process of
exporting arms and equipment, skeptics question whether
the administration of President George W Bush is seizing
market share at the expense of national security.
"Since the late 1990s, industry has been pushing
the State Department to remove what they perceive are
barriers to defense trade cooperation and US
competitiveness in the international arms market," says
Matt Schroeder, an arms-trade specialist with the
Federation of American Scientists (FAS). "The problem is
that many of these barriers help to prevent military
technologies from ending up in the wrong hands."
Cutting red tape on innocuous
items
Joel Johnson of the Aerospace Industries
Association disagrees. He lists various components -
steering wheels, air conditioners, hydraulic hoses -
that have been only very slightly modified from their
commercial versions to serve military functions and yet
require separate licenses. "There's still an awful lot
in the system that shouldn't be there," he says. "Just
give me an 'officer of common sense' - I'd hold [these
components] up to him and he'd said, 'Nah, we're not
interested in that, that's not what we have in mind.'"
The push for arms-export reform originated in
the administration of former president Bill Clinton. As
part of its geo-economic philosophy, his administration
urged the defense industry to become more competitive,
enter new markets such as Eastern Europe and Latin
America, and ink global co-production agreements for the
latest high-tech bomber, the Joint Strike Fighter. The
Bush administration enthusiastically embraced this
policy. After September 11, 2001, the administration
used the "war on terrorism" to boost military aid to
countries such as the Philippines and India and to
provide anti-terrorism funding for the first time to
such countries as Tajikistan and Indonesia.
Last
month, the administration designated Pakistan a "major
non-NATO ally". Once a pariah state because of its
nuclear program with potential military uses, Pakistan
now has access to a wide range of US military goods,
even though it remains under a cloud for selling
advanced military technology to such countries as North
Korea and Libya.
The Bush administration also
wants systemic change in the arms export system. For
instance, the administration hopes to expedite sales to
the UK and Australia by granting them exemptions from
the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
The US provided an ITAR exemption to Canada but narrowed
it in 1999 after the discovery of several cases of
unauthorized re-export of US military goods.
The
arms-control community is concerned that something
similar will happen with the UK and Australia. Rachel
Stohl of the Center for Defense Information cites a
high-profile cases of arms-trade violations in the UK,
including the 1998 Sandline scandal in which the British
government broke a United Nations arms embargo by
supplying weapons to Sierra Leone. She also worries that
US weapons, such as small arms bound for Australia, will
end up in places such as Indonesia and the Philippines,
which are fighting insurgencies and separatist movements
that some label as terrorist. "I lose more sleep over
the United Kingdom than Australia," Stohl says, "but
because of the geographic position of Australia, we have
to be concerned there as well."
Export of
C-130 transports might be expedited
Also up for
its rolling quadrennial review is the US Munitions List
(USML). One possible item to be removed, according to a
source in the arms-control community, is the C-130
transport plane, which Pakistan has been offered through
a foreign military financing grant and which China also
would like to acquire. The China military market, which
the United States has not supplied since the 1980s, is
particularly controversial.
"Changes to the
Munitions List thus far have been modest and demonstrate
an acute awareness of the security threats posed by
decontrol of US defense articles," says Schroeder, the
FAS arms-trade specialist. "We hope that changes to the
remaining USML categories will reflect similar thinking
and priorities."
The European Union, meanwhile,
is debating lifting the arms embargo on China imposed
after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. According to
Ian Anthony, a researcher at the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, "The embargo was never
intended to be a permanent policy, and there does not
seem to be a large volume of trade with China in those
items of defense equipment that are not subject to the
current embargo. The statements from the European and
Chinese sides are that they do not anticipate any sudden
increase in arms sales - rather the removal of a
political impediment to improved EU-China relations." A
1998 code of conduct restricts EU arms sales to China
that could be used for waging war or suppressing
internal dissent.
The US sees this policy debate
very differently. A State Department official confirmed
that lifting the EU ban "cannot help but have a very
negative impact" on winning congressional approval for
facilitating arms trade with allies such as the UK,
"even if the European Union views this only as a
symbolic step".
The Bush administration has
further assailed the EU on this issue by pointing to
continued Chinese violations of human rights. Rachel
Stohl of the Center for Defense Information says the
human-rights argument is a red herring. "We can't
underestimate the power of competition behind these [US
arms export] reforms," she points out. "Markets are very
tight. The United States wants to make sure it has
access to these new markets."
All-or-nothing
controls make poor policy
Joel Johnson of the
Aerospace Industries Association proposes a compromise
on exports to China. "All-or-nothing controls are
probably poor policy," he says. "We should be sitting
down with our European brethren to talk about the
high-end things we don't want exported to China."
The Bush administration was expected to push
arms-trade reforms through more than a year ago. But a
string of more critical events - September 11, the war
in Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq - have delayed
the unveiling of plans to overhaul defense-trade
relations with allies. According to one State Department
official, "We're hoping to have it rolled out soon. It
has not yet gone to the president."
The delays
involve not only war but politics. The administration
"might have gotten tripped up on its own rhetoric of
'you're either with us or against us'," says William
Hartung, arms-trade expert and author of the recent book
How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy?
Isolationists within the Republican Party are not happy
with the idea of facilitating arms transfers to allies
that may not always support US policy. As Hartung
summarizes this argument, "If you can't trust them, it
doesn't make sense to sell them everything on an open
basis."
Although D-Trade is now up and running,
the other elements of the reforms may wait until after
the US elections in November. The State Department is
optimistic. But Hartung predicts that if the Bush
administration were smart, "it would wait until after
the elections - to avoid being accused of loosening
restrictions on the merchants of death". Joel Johnson
also expects further delays. "We'll have to wait until
after the elections. Congress will be sidetracked, the
executive branch will be sidetracked. In the next
administration, whether Bush or [Democratic presidential
contender John] Kerry, lots of people will change and
you'll have another shot at finding someone who thinks
export controls need to be changed."
John Feffer
(www.johnfeffer.com)
is the author, most recently, of North Korea,
South Korea: US Policy at a Time of Crisis.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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