Arming the trade

Najma Sadeque

 

The US Foreign Assistance Act explicitly lays down that "No security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."
The EU Code of Conduct for Arms Exports 1998 elaborates even more clearly for the leaderships of all the states of the European Union that:
'The President shall consider the following criteria. .. The government of the country... was chosen by and permits free and fair elections... respects human rights... does not persistently engage in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including extra judicial or arbitrary executions, disappearances, torture or severe mistreatment, prolonged arbitrary imprisonment..." - 'Member States will not issue an export license if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression. . . [including] torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, summary or arbitrary executions, disappearances, arbitrary detentions and other major violations of human rights. '
For all the lofty goals that are meant to reassure their respective citizenry about how their country's weapons are used and the fate of the people on whom those weapons are used. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute pointed states: "... human rights have not been a major barrier to weapons sales at any time in history. The world's worst dictators, despots, human rights abusers and anti-democratic regimes have been the customers of all of the major arms supplying countries in the world - and continue to be so."
The public is given to understand that wars are generally fought for ideological reasons, or to grab the natural resources of other countries -- a trend set by colonialism, and that has turned quite blatant in recent decades, reaching an arrogant and shameful peak under the present Bush regime.
However, the history of the arms trade shows a startlingly different picture. While the above reasons are true, there is yet another highly motivating reason whether or not the above factors exist. - Arms manufacture and trade is big business; in fact, the biggest in the world because it is a monopoly business, mostly in the hands of a handful of corporations and countries that don't have to bother about competition because there isn't any.
According to their current yearbook, 'Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, 'released last month by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditure in 2005 reached a mind-boggling US $ 1,118 billion, a rise by over one-third within a single decade. This increase, says SIPRI, has been accompanied by a 15% rise in the combined weapons sales of the 100 largest weapons-producing companies during 2004. - This, despite the fact there's no Cold War, no other rival superpower, and not even a group of powers that can come near a fraction of America's lethal arsenal.
"Waging war is a means of generating money, exerting political power, and providing employment," writes Gideon Burrows in his book, 'No-nonsense guide to the Arms Trade', "In some areas of the developing world, children grow up knowing nothing else but bloodshed, dead, injured or maimed relatives, the daily risk of landmines; even bearing arms themselves. If they survive long enough to procreate, their own children will know only the same. …. Earth is a planet at war, and to a large extent this is a consequence of the legal and illicit sale of arms. In crude but plain terms, without weaponry, combat would be more limited in scale. In most conflict zones in the world, war is a way of life."
With the World Trade Organisation (WTO), things don't get more difficult with rules and regulations or monitoring; they just get easier for the arms merchants, because its various trade agreements do not apply to the arms trade. In fact, militaries are specifically exempt from global trade rules. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which is the main document, clearly states that a country cannot be prevented from taking any action 'it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests... relating to the traffic in arms, ammunition and implements of war and such traffic in other goods and materials as is carried on directly for the purpose of supplying a military establishment.'
There are no international restrictions whatsoever on what weapons countries can buy or sell - even though it contradicts US criteria and law - or how they are priced, where they buy from, how much subsidies they can lavish on their own arms industry. WTO especially does not prevent Western nations, especially, (unlike Japan, for example, which has the capability) from subsidizing their own arms industries.
It leaves most developing countries at a huge disadvantage. Saddled with debt and misleading, self-entrapping advice from the international financial institutions almost from the start, most have not been able to set up their own arms industries, except perhaps for a limited amount of small arms. They therefore purchase their heavy and advanced-tech weaponry from the west that forces them to pay prices way beyond what the weapons are really worth since they have no choice - it's a matter of take-it-or-leave it. It simply impoverishes already poor countries further since the total military bill in reality invariably accounts for more or far more than half what is spent on the country's needs and running expenses. The so-called 'legal' small arms and light weapons trade constitutes the bulk of small arms sales - about 90 percent of the annual legal global trade which is estimated at $4-6 billion.
The winners of this global game, the major arms-exporting countries - all of which belong to the G8 -- spend fortunes promoting and marketing the weapons for sale on behalf of their domestic arms companies. Even diplomats and politicians get into the act, and are accompanied by highly-publicized arms exhibitions and conferences.
Consequently, the trade rules - or their absence - richly benefit the already wealthy, industrialized countries, not only in economic goods but in the arms trade as well. The argument is often made that building national arms industries, even for small arms, creates many jobs and earns a lot of foreign exchange. It doesn't. Since many other countries harbour the same idea about a specialized manufacture that demands highly skilled workers, while local private investment is not forthcoming on scale in this area, this isn't true. For that matter, it doesn't bring huge social and economic benefits to the people of the arms-exporting industrialized countries either; it only enriches the arms manufacturing corporations and the middle-men, official or unofficial, in and outside government.
In the west the arms manufacturers often enjoy high subsidies in an enterprise that is not accountable and not open to public scrutiny, as well as tax cuts and insurance schemes. They make obscene profits, no doubt, but they line individual pockets, not spread among the people who have paid taxes to keep them afloat. In fact, the government - or the taxpayer, rather - ends up paying more money to keep them in business that the returns the weapons manufacturers bring to the government.
If allowed to be scrutinized, the western arms industries would be found to be anything but cost-effective or economically viable; it's mostly empty claims. Contrary to popular belief perpetuated by propaganda and an easily-manipulated media, without the taxpayer, the arms industries wouldn't be able to exist. If they had to depend on purely private investment, they would have been run out of business a long tie ago, and it would have been a safer and peaceful world, with all people enjoying their basic needs since their resources are not diverted to adventurism.
SIPRI highlights the following points :-
-- "The value of the combined arms sales of the top 100 companies in the world (excluding China) in 2003 was $236 billion.
--Of these top 100 companies, 38 are based in the U.S. and one in Canada. Together, these 39 accounted for 63% of arms sales by the top 100, while 42 European companies (including 6 based in Russia) accounted for another 30.5 percent of sales.
--The value of these companies' arms sales exceeds the GDP (gross domestic product) of most low-income countries; their total sales compare to the GDPs of medium-sized developed or industrializing countries.
-- A comparison for the entire group of top 100 companies shows that the value of their total sales in 2003 is roughly equal to the combined income of the world's 61 lowest income countries in 2003."
That's not all. These governments also subsidize arms exports - meaning, they indiscriminately throw about their taxpayers' money without the latter's permission or knowledge. The US defense and foreign aid budgets, for example, are the biggest single-source providers of federal funding to private arms corporations. In1996, the US Government spent almost $8 billion of taxpayer money to help arms manufacturers obtain $12 billion worth foreign arms orders.
To add insult to injury, they even extend credit to nations that want to buy but don't have ready-money for it. It takes a long time to recover the money, but that doesn't worry the lending government because the greater reward obtained is the grovelling dependency and docility of the indebted country who can then be exploited in many other ways as a result. And even if the money is never repaid, it doesn't hurt the government, since it is taxpayer money, and allowed to be used without transparency or accountability. Most western taxpayers haven't realized to this day that they are paying for weapons for their own government, but also foreign governments, many of whom use these to repress their own people, not to defend their territories.
All but Japan among the wealthy G8, produce and export weapons -- USA, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Russia. The biggest producers-exporters are USA, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, China and Italy. Others major players are Sweden, Israel, and the Ukraine. In other words, the global arms market is controlled by just six biggest arms-selling countries responsible for about 85 per cent of all arms transfers over the past six years. If that were not bad enough, four of these countries happen to be permanent members of the UN Security Council. So much for global security!
Needless to say, the US takes the lead. In 1998, around 54 per cent of US arms were sent to undemocratic regimes in the developing. Between 1991 to 1994, the US violated its own International Code of Conduct on Arms Sales by dispatched almost $7 billion worth of arms to countries guilty of the worst human rights violations. With the US setting the worst of precedents, others followed suit, even if not on the same over-arching scale. The huge profits made by arms-producing companies enable them to continuously to make massive political contributions (or more accurately, legitimized bribes) while maintaining a powerful lobby in Washington to keep applying pressure and influence on Congress and U.S. administrations.
To illustrate, SIPRI documents:-
--The top U.S. missile defense contractors contributed $4.1 million to 30 key members of Congress in the 2001 through 2006 election cycles. (World Policy Institute, 2005)
--In 1997, Lockeed Martin had a lobbying budget of $1.9 million to influence Congress. (Federation of American Scientists Report on Arms Trade, 1998)
--The current U.S. Vice-President has close ties to the 12th largest arms producer in the world, Halliburton, which received no-bid contracts for services, goods and work in Iraq. (Washington Post, NY Times, etc.)
--The U.S. provided, in 1999, $7,867 million dollars in subsidies, financing aid programs, promotional and support programs, export-import bank loans that helped the arms export business. (Policy Analysis, 1999)

Around half a million people around the world including women and children, are killed by these weapons. - An average of one person per minute. They cause the destruction not only of lives but also of infrastructure, livelihoods, economies, and the natural environment from which the necessary economic and social resources are drawn. An over-armed, trigger-happy world does not leave victim countries or lives endurable to live any longer.
Concludes the 'Education For Justice' Movement :" Today's weapons are quicker and more powerful than ever before. Military and security equipment is being misused by soldiers, paramilitaries, and police, to kill, wound, and commit atrocities against civilians during wars and in peace times also. The lack of control of the arms trade is fuelling conflict, poverty, and human rights abuses - worldwide. Every government is responsible."