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America’s Peace Dividend, by Ann Markusen (ed.)
"A Tale of Three Arms Trades:
The Changing Dynamics of Conventional Weapons Proliferation, 1991-2000"
Dr. Natalie J. Goldring
Overall Evaluation
This is a strong, compact paper. It contains several useful ideas for future research. It also includes an interesting structural argument about differences between the trade in major conventional weapons, in dual-use items, and in light weapons.
Hartung’s attention to unintended consequences is a particularly important point. The United States has not had an especially good record of predicting which countries will be its friends two or three decades from now, which is the useful life of many of the weapons we are selling. Another area where unintended consequences may be is important is the effects of mergers and the extent to which they influence major conventional weapons sales of the future. This is an urgent issue; the likelihood of affecting policy in this area may decrease significantly in the near future, given the current level of technology dissemination and diffusion.
Hartung’s paper also stresses the range of weapons currently available and the potential consequences of their transfer. In particular, supplying current generation weapons risks the United States losing technological overmatch over potential adversaries by supplying current weapons that its forces may later face in combat. This is one of many potential negative effects of transfers of weapons and dual use systems. Other issues of concern include the proliferation of chemical and nuclear weapons capability that countries often pursue at the same time that they are developing conventional weapons arsenals.
Despite my general agreement with the paper, I also disagree in part with Hartung’s approach. With respect to structural changes, there may not have been as much change as Hartung contends. For example, US strategic objectives in the Middle East have been basically constant since World War II – retaining access to oil at reasonable prices, and keeping outside powers out. Similarly, from an economic perspective, the desire of military contractors to make money on weapons sales is not new. Nor is the inclination to sell current generation weapons in order to gain resources with which to purchase next generation weapons.
Hartung implies that the current buyers’ market for weaponry is new. But here, too, the 1970s provide a good role model. After the oil price increases of 1973–1974, several oil producing countries found themselves with the cash and the desire for modern weapons systems. They essentially inverted the buyer-seller relationship by making weapons sales tests of the bilateral relationship, especially with the United States.
Similarly, Hartung presents the restructuring of the Office of Munitions Control to the Office of Defense Trade Control as an indication of a much more industry friendly role,. Yet the State Department has frequently been friendly to industry in this regard, as industry’s interests and those of the country desks’ often tended to coincide.
I am not certain that the changes Hartung describes have truly "transformed the strategic, economic, and political incentives" for weapons imports and exports. In addition, in some respects the paper may be too compact. Several of the contentions and conclusions could benefit from further explanation; some examples follow.
Structure and Overall Perspective
The overall argument of Hartung’s piece is that three key events in the 1990s produced radical change in the dynamics of the global trade in weapons. From Hartung’s perspective, these are the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War, and the UN’s intervention in Somalia. Hartung uses these three events to focus his discussion of the changes in the last decade and possible policy recommendations.
First changing rationale – the end of the Soviet threat
In this section, Hartung documents the removal of the Cold War overlay on security issues. This accounts for much of the subsequent decrease in the international weapons trade, as Russia ceased to offer the concessionary terms that had previously been available from the Soviet Union. He also points to the elimination of the Coordinating Committee on Export Controls (COCOM) as a key event. He talks about the importance of dual-use items in enabling weapons production (though it would be useful to have more detail on this argument).
Second rationale – the Gulf War
There are two main arguments in this section. First, Hartung describes Western embarrassment at having armed Saddam, though generally not a US problem. There was a contradictory impulse to sell sell sell. In part, US weapons sales were also viewed by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as another means of "paying the United States back" for its contributions to the war effort.
The talks among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the "Perm Five") are an important piece of recent history. These countries still dominate the global weapons trade, But they were trying to achieve arms limitations on each other and not on themselves. Hartung rightly points out that while the F-16 sale to Taiwan was the excuse for the Chinese government to leave the Perm Five talks, the talks hadn’t been making progress even before that.
Third rationale – humanitarian intervention
From Hartung’s perspective, Somalia was the "opening salvo" into the pros and cons of humanitarian intervention. He uses the intervention in Somalia as a transition to point out the role of light weapons and how they received markedly more press after the intervention in Somalia.
Prospects for Control
Hartung argues that major conventional weapons, dual use systems, and light weapons are distinguished by "different players, different regulatory structures, different strategic consequences, and different economic dynamics." His argument is that all three need to be dealt with separately as a result.
Major conventional weapons
With respect to major conventional weapons, Hartung argues that one country’s friend is another country’s pariah. There is significant evidence to support this argument; one need only look at disputes between the United States and Russia over weapons transfers to Iran. He also refers to fairly consistent attempts to undermine any proposals or agreements. This is also a constant in historical terms.
Many countries have significant financial interests in maintaining and supporting a large trade in conventional weapons. This trade is perceived as lowering the per unit costs for countries’ own forces, allowing countries to modernize their equipment more frequently than might otherwise be the case, creating friends and allies who are dependent on the supplier for training, parts, and service, and the like. But while the potential short term benefits of weapons sales are often [over-] emphasized, the potential losses of life and longer-term costs to international stability are often ignored. The down side of weapons transfers includes potential exacerbation of arms races, increasing the risk of war and the costs should war occur, losing technological advantages over potential adversaries, and creating conditions that might lead to future military involvement.
At the same time, the Gulf War gave military leaders a better idea of the risks of weapons transfers. Hartung also argues that it started a boomlet for second-tier suppliers trying to develop indigenous capabilities. But he doesn’t talk about how that dissipated; a decade later, many of those suppliers are not nearly as actively involved in the international arms market.
As other analysts have also done, Hartung points out the significant data problems with analyzing this problem. At present, the data are often inaccurate and unreliable. The main organizations tracking the international trade in arms include some major conventional weapons transfers, not all. Sources disagree on whether the most accurate gauge of weapons transfers is the dollar value of agreements to sell, or of deliveries. They are also inconsistent in evaluating the effects of currency fluctuations. In fact, in subsequent years, past-year figures often change because of these factors.
Current data sources are particularly unreliable with respect to dual-use items, transfers of weapons components, and light weapons. In particular, because light weapons tend to have a relatively low dollar value, they are often swamped by the major conventional weapons on those unusual occasions when they are included in sales figures.
Dual use transfers
The second type of weapons transfer Hartung focuses on is dual use exports. Here, he describes the tension between market forces and non-proliferation imperatives. The Gulf War indicated some of the uses to which dual use items could be put, and showed that the United States had an important role in Iraqi weapons development even without significant direct transfers of military equipment.
Hartung also raises an Important point about military vs. civilian standards on some key technologies. It would be useful to have more suggestions for dealing with this phenomenon. He suggests that the Missile Technology Control Regime could be a model in this regard. (More detail would be helpful here, as well as in the remainder of this section.)
Light weapons
Hartung argues that the most important development in arms control policy and research during the 1990s was the formation of a community on small arms and light weapons. This may well be the case with conventional weapons. Over the course of this decade, analysts and activists have brought the issue to the international policy agenda. In international, regional, and national fora, light weapons are now being given significantly more attention.
Nonetheless, many important problems remain. Weapons are frequently "recycled" from one conflict to another. In combination with post-conflict demobilization, weapons destruction can help prevent conflicts from reigniting. In addition, governments seem far more interested in talking about illicit weapons transfers than in dealing with important connections between legal and illegal sales.
Another important dimension that needs additional attention is the number of countries in which the police are themselves part of the security problem. Traditional conceptions of states as the protectors of their citizens are regularly (and sometimes quite systematically) being violated. It is dangerous to argue that state-to-state transfers are automatically legitimate; governments must be held accountable for their treatment of their citizens. Adoption of codes of conduct will help provide standards against which this behavior can be measured.
My own research has concentrated on three primary approaches for controlling light weapons. The first approach focuses on individual types of weapons, and is inspired in part by the success of the international campaign to ban landmines. Options include banning categories of weapons that are especially indiscriminate in their effects, such as landmines; restricting ammunition supplies; prohibiting coproduction or codevelopment of high-tech light weapons; and controlling new light weapons technologies such as advanced shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons.
My second approach concentrates on national and international control processes. This includes improving national controls and enforcement, as well as making certain that there is consistency in regional and global standards, destroying surplus stocks, implementing strong controls to ensure that the intended end user weapons actually receives them. These control processes can and should also include decreasing diversion and theft of weapons, increasing discovery and destruction if illegal weapons, eliminating covert aid and transfers, and more closely monitoring the legal trade in weapons. After all, if we don’t know which transfers are legal, how do we know which ones are illegal?
The third approach in my work addresses both conflicts and post-conflict scenarios. This includes regional confidence and security building measures, declaring and enforcing bans on transfers to countries in conflict, tightening border controls, increasing the effectiveness of disarmament measures after settlement of conflicts, and ordering the return and destruction of weapons as part of other arms control and disarmament processes.
Next Step
For all types of weapons transfers, it’s important to work to increase transparency, oversight, and control at national, regional, and global levels. It’s also critical to address both supply and demand measures. This is quite different from the typical arms control approach, which tends to focus on suppliers.
There are no magic or easy answers to these issues. Nonetheless, some policy choices could significantly decrease the killing, which should be our top priority. One such measure is the destruction of surplus weapons and weapons that remain when conflicts end. This is applicable to both light weapons and major conventional weapons.
There are many possible approaches to developing proposals for policy change on these issues. Hartung’s paper focuses primarily on arms control approaches, though it also considers economic factors in somewhat less depth. At the end of the paper he writes about the importance of developing a more holistic approach, though he focuses primarily on light weapons in this regard. To construct such an approach, it will be important to understand the contribution of other models, such as those used by public health and human rights groups. These are not simple issues, and Hartung rightly recognizes that several approaches may well be necessary to bring about significant change. As usual, he has contributed useful material and ideas for policy change to the debate.
Contact information:
Dr. Natalie J. Goldring
Executive Director
Program on General Disarmament
Department of Government and Politics
University of Maryland
3140 Tydings Hall
College Park, MD 20742
ngoldring@gvpt.umd.edu
phone +301-405-3537
fax +301-405-8822
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