America’s Peace Dividend, by Ann Markusen (ed.)

 

Comments on William Hartung's
"A Tale Of Three Arms Trades: The Changing Dynamics of
Conventional Weapons Proliferation, 1991-2000"

Joel L. Johnson

 

I agree with Mr. Hartung that the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Persian Gulf war, and the United Nations intervention in Somalia each had a major impact on the international arms trade. Not surprisingly, however, we often differ in our interpretations of the interplay of those events and the actual effect on arms purchasing and selling nations.

At the outset, there is a tone to Mr. Hartung’s paper which displays such a hostility towards the arms transfer process in general, and the role of the U.S. government and industry in particular, that undercuts the force of his arguments to the more dispassionate reader. For example, he writes in his second paragraph: "The end of U.S.-Soviet confrontation meant that U.S. arms transfers could no longer be justified on the basis of stopping the spread of communist influence, a trusty rationale that had been relied upon to explain U.S. support for a motley collection of Cold War era dictators and despots. In the absence of this all purpose, lesser-of-two-evils argument for arms sales and military aid, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and interested citizens were forced to reassess the practice of relying on U.S. government-approved weapons trafficking as a routine instrument of American foreign policy."

A less emotional description of events might have stated: "The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that subsidized Soviet arms transfers to client states was nearly terminated. This reduced Soviet arms transfers from an annual rate of around $20 billion a year in the 1980s to $1-3 billion in the late nineties. This sharp reduction greatly reduced the threat to neighboring states. Responding to that reduced threat, U.S. military financing and grants were essentially eliminated except to Israel and Egypt, which were relatively independent of Cold War dynamics.

The end of Soviet-U.S. competition also meant that the U.S. government could increase the importance of factors other than Cold War politics in making arms transfer decisions. As a result, more attention was paid in the nineties to such factors as human rights, democratic forms of government, and avoidance of arms proliferation. Such a formulation would make clear that the Cold War did not simply provide rhetorical justification for U.S. arms transfers, but rather was for many years the driving force behind such transfers, particularly with respect to the provision of government grants and loans to purchase U.S. arms.

In any event, the most important impact on arms transfers at the end of the Soviet era was a reduction in total arms shipments of 40-50%, mostly the result of a decline in Soviet arms exports. It might be noted that a case could probably be made that Soviet arms shipments, which were mostly subsidized, as well as economic assistance to many of the same countries receiving weapons aid, was a drain on the Soviet economy that certainly contributed to its eventual collapse.

While Soviet arms transfers dropped drastically in the 1990s, exports from the industrial democracies, particularly the U.S., did not. Mathematically, of course, this meant that the share of the world’s diminished arms trade accounted for by countries such as the U.S. roughly doubled. (The U.S.' share rose to between 40-45%). Perhaps more importantly, the bulk of those exports were paid for by cash, not by foreign assistance funds.

One question that might be asked is why in the post Cold War period arms transfers outside of the Soviet bloc did not fall. One suspects several reasons. First, without the discipline of the two superpowers, many countries felt they had to play a larger role in providing for their own defense. Second, and perhaps more importantly, many of the countries that had been successfully kept out of the Soviet Bloc, particularly in East and Southeast Asia, had enjoyed strong economic growth and were hence able to modernize their military forces. Finally, the enormous investment made by the U.S. in its military equipment during the Cold War convinced a number of European countries that it was more cost effective to purchase U.S. equipment than to rely on their own domestic production.

Fundamentally, the end of the Cold War has made the control of arms trade more difficult. Ironically, as the only superpower, U.S. influence on other western industrial countries has decreased, as they are less inclined to defer to U.S. views without the fear of the Soviet Union hanging over them. With the possible exception of the United Kingdom, only the U.S. is a global power and must be concerned about the effect of arms transfers anywhere in the world. Further complicating efforts at conventional arms control is the fact that two of the five major arms producers, Russia and China, generally produce inferior products to those of the West. They thus find their principal markets in countries that are off-limits to the U.S. and Western Europe. Thus those countries that have the least to gain politically from arms control agreements, China and Russia, have the most to lose.

Finally, the end of the Cold War brought about sharp reductions in military budgets in the Western democracies. In the case of the U.S., procurement of military hardware dropped from the peak of the Reagan buildup in 1989 by roughly 60% over the ensuing half a decade. As exports remained more or less constant over the same period, the importance of exports to keeping open domestic production lines increased markedly. For example, in 1989 exports of military aerospace products accounted for about 7% of total production. A decade later exports were nearly one-third of output. Similar declines in defense budgets in Europe and Russia placed comparable pressure on their defense industries to export. Not surprisingly, as Mr. Hartung notes, purchasers have tried to take advantage of this buyers' market by demanding better deals, including better technology, lower prices, and increased offsets.

In sum, the end of the Cold War sharply decreased overall arms shipments, but most notably, decreased arms shipments between the Soviet bloc and its client states. Remaining arms transfers are primarily on a cash, non subsidized basis. Conventional arms control agreements are likely to be more difficult, unless enticements can be offered to countries such as China and Russia to cooperate (e.g., greater participation in civil space programs in exchange for reducing exports of missiles and related technology). Arms producers, facing lower domestic defense budgets, are more dependent on arms exports to maintain their defense industrial base, and purchasing nations are taking advantage of those market conditions.

With respect to the Gulf War, once again Mr. Hartung tends to lump together the U.S. and all other arms suppliers as being equally guilty (and embarrassed) about arming Iraq. In point of fact, there were no U.S. weapons in Iraq. On the contrary, for two decades the rest of the world provided weapons to the world’s fourth largest army, while the U.S. did not.

It is true that Iraq obtained some dual use products from the U.S. that may have aided their defense industrial base. Such exports, however, did not reflect a failure of the export licensing system, but rather a failed foreign policy. It was the explicit policy of the Reagan administration to allow some high technology trade with Iraq, in hopes of both moderating Iraqi behavior towards the West, and helping discourage Iran from hostile moves towards Iraq.

The war had at least four other impacts on future arms trade. As Mr. Hartung acknowledges, the U.S.-led coalition did win the war, primarily with U.S. forces and equipment. While the war may not go down as one of history’s greatest victories, it must surely go down as one of its greatest defeats. The world’s fourth largest army managed to inflict less casualties on U.S. forces than they would have suffered had the troops been home in the U.S. during the same period with access to automobiles and alcohol. Unquestionably other countries were both impressed by the quality of U.S. military equipment, and by the fact that only the U.S. had the military capability of helping its friends under duress. Both observations suggested that there were clear advantages to purchasing U.S. equipment and maintaining close relationships with the U.S. military.

Second, the war was fought as a coalition effort, which particularly increased the interest on the part of the U.S. military in encouraging allies to have equipment that was interoperable with the U.S.' The simplest way to have such interoperable equipment is for other countries to obtain weapons from the U.S. Some in the U.S. military that might have been concerned about sharing our more advanced hardware and technologies with other countries, decided that the risks associated with sharing such hardware and technologies were less than the risk of fighting alongside allies who had inferior or incompatible equipment.

Third, allies and adversaries were impressed at the extensive use by U.S. troops of intelligence gathering satellites, airborne platforms, GPS units, information processing equipment, and communications gear. This suggested that in the future all militaries would have to spend more resources on the kind of equipment and software that is increasingly produced in the commercial sector. This will certainly make the issue of dual use transfers even more complex in the future.

Finally, the image of Scud missiles falling on both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and of Arab troops fighting (however effectively) alongside U.S. forces, dramatically changed the U.S. politics of arms transfers to the Middle East. Prior to Desert Storm, proposed transfers of sophisticated arms to Arab countries could generally be counted on to raise a storm of protest in the Congress. Subsequent to Desert Storm, there have been no significant Congressional challenges to arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, or other pro-Western Arab states.

Somalia is seen by Mr. Hartung as a watershed in dealing with small countries where small arms play a critical role in inflicting local casualties among the local populace. Many of those weapons were left over from the Cold War, or purchased by local warlords with revenue from exploiting local resources. Somalia is not so much a watershed as one of a series of post Cold War episodes where the Western powers in general, and the U.S. in particular, are trying to cobble together a sensible policy on when to intervene and when not to. Such incidents include Rawanda, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo.

While this is not the place to debate general post Cold War policy, some observations might be made. First, what makes policy in these incidents so difficult is not that they are important, but in the grand scheme of things, that they are so unimportant. Western countries, including the United States, could understand committing lives and resources to the great clashes of the twentieth century, when millions lost their lives and the future nature of Western civilization was at stake. However, the stakes in countries such as Somalia are relatively small and local, and there is no political consensus on how to deal with them.

It is certainly true that small arms are a problem, and many are left over from the Cold War. Arguing about whether it made sense for the U.S. government to provide some weapons to Somalia at a time when the Soviet Union was pouring more than a $1 billion a year of arms to the Mengistu dictatorship is rather beside the point. The unfortunate fact of life is that a Cold War that lasted half a century and was fought all across the globe was not a tidy undertaking, and there are aftereffects that must be dealt with, including arms held by some unpleasant governments and private parties.

I certainly agree with Mr. Hartung that the problem of dealing with such small arms is a most complex one. There are certainly many arms left over from the Cold War. It is also true that many countries produce and export small arms, and therefore any supply side control system will be extremely difficult to negotiate and enforce. Furthermore, all militaries and police forces require such weapons, unlike the case of antipersonnel land mines, which have much more limited uses. Thus there are no simple analogies for the control of small arms.

In sum, the end of the Cold War has reduced the threat of Armageddon, but increased the level of regional and civil conflict. Weapons will play a role in the persecution and containment of such conflicts. There will be a role for arms transfers and arms control in the post cold war period, but defining both are likely to be more, not less, difficult. Academics, governments, and industry will all have a role to play in developing sensible policies for these new challenges.

 

America’s Peace Dividend