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The
Subject of Arms Sales Should Now Be Brought to the
Boil
By JONATHAN
POWER
July 25th., 2000
LONDON - Twenty years ago, not long after the
current democratically elected president of Nigeria,
Olusegun Obasanjo, had voluntarily stepped down from his
position as the military president, he gave a speech to a
conference on disarmament attended by top political
leaders from West, East and South. Of all the speakers -
and some of them were great reformers like the late prime
minister of Sweden Olof Palme, the former U.S. Secretary
of State Cyrus Vance and Georgi Arbatov, foreign affairs
advisor to the Soviet president, Leonid Brezhnev -
Obasanjo was the most outspoken and demanding on his
prescriptions for limiting the international arms
trade.
"The industrialized countries", he said,"should not
assume too blithely that their policy of selling third
World countries more or less whatever they want is
universally accepted among developing countries." For
every Zia ul-Haq, Indira Ghandi or Middle East potentate
who wanted to buy the latest military hardware, argued
Obasanjo, there were Third World leaders who spent a lot
of time trying to fend off the pressures from their
military establishments to buy whatever baubles the arms
salesmen were now dangling before them. Obasanjo went so
far as to argue that, with the exception of movements
fighting sophisticated, then white-led, South Africa,
developing countries "should be limited to the arms they
can manufacture themselves".
If this seemed a way out statement then, today it is
perhaps only marginally less so. But Obasanjo is firm in
saying this is the position he still adheres to. He is an
enthusiast of those western legislators who on both sides
of the Atlantic have been pushing, in the face of
opposition from President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister
Tony Blair in particular, codes of conduct on arms sales.
Obasanjo looks aghast at the African wars that rage in
Sierra Leone, Angola, the Congo and between Ethiopia and
Eritrea and says bluntly they would not be so intense if
arms had not been fed to Africa in such profusion by the
politically competitive East and West in Cold War days
and today by misguided government-sponsored arms selling,
and by free lance small arms salesmen who operate without
fear of prosecution from their own governments in the
industrialized countries.
Obasanjo also makes the valid point that Saddam
Hussein would never have had the where-with-all to launch
his invasion of Kuwait and fight the UN coalition put
together by U.S. president George Bush if he had not been
sold sophisticated state-of-the-art weapons by a
competitively minded Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and
Francois Mitterand.
I arrived in London from the Nigerian capital, Abuja,
this week with this conversation with Obasanjo still on
my mind to find the British parliament locked in a deep
struggle on the issue of arms sales with Tony Blair. On
Tuesday four parliamentary committees unanimously
criticized the Blair administration for "undermining the
force" of a European Union resolution which Britain had
co-sponsored (after watering down a stronger Nordic
version) on limiting arms sales to Africa. Indeed, at one
point Blair had overruled his Foreign Secretary, Robin
Cook, who wanted to refuse Zimbabwe spare parts for its
Hawk fighter aircraft it was using in the Congolese civil
war.
So intense is the unease about British arms sales
policy in parliament, that both the Foreign Secretary and
the powerful Trade Secretary Stephen Byers have let it be
known to journalists that they are fighting a rearguard
action to persuade an unwilling prime minister to
introduce legislation before the next election to prevent
a repetition of past arms sales fiascos.
Besides Zimbabwe, they are drawing particular
attention to the "arms-to-Iraq" scandal during the
previous Conservative government, which led to a report
by a senior judge Lord Scott that found that the
government had misled parliament by not revealing a
decision to relax arms sales to Iraq.
In principle, Mr Blair has accepted the case for new
legislation - this was promised in a 1998 white paper. In
practice he is fighting shy even though it is undermining
Mr Cook's pledge to run an "ethical foreign policy". Both
Mr Cook and Mr Byers are arguing that controls on arms
sales would be popular with an electorate that has come
to see what damage the present loose arrangements can
inflict in fragile parts of the world, such as Sierra
Leone where British troops are part of the peacekeeping
force.
Nevertheless, the countervailing pressures on Mr Blair
are powerful. The arms industry is, as it is in many
large western countries, a significant employer and an
important contributor to the balance of payments. It is
unclear, say defenders of Mr Blair, that if Britain pulls
out of the business other industrialized countries won't
simply take their place.
But this is why it is important for Britain to be
shown to supporting the modest arms control arrangements
voted by the European Union, not undermining them as it
did over Zimbabwe. Moreover, Britain should make use of
its special relationship with the U.S. to persuade the
Clinton Administration to pick up the ball that its
Democratic predecessor, the government of Jimmy Carter,
dropped after it unilaterally withdrew from negotiations
on the subject with the Soviet Union. If there are enough
votes in the House of Representatives to pass a code of
conduct then clearly there is a sentiment in American
public opinion for tougher controls. Indeed, all the
industrialized countries should walk in step together, as
they have for the most part over land-mines. But someone
has to start the ball rolling.
Cynics say that agreements to limit the sale of arms
are doomed to failure. Yet as far back as the Middle Ages
there were understandings among the Christian nations not
to transfer weapons to the "infidel Turks". Later, in the
nineteenth century, the non-slaving nations of Europe
signed in Brussels the "general act for the repression of
the African slave trade", which prohibited the
introduction of arms and ammunition other than flintlock
guns and powder into the vast zone of the African
continent. More recently, there was the tripartite
declaration of 1950 signed by the U.S., Britain and
France to inhibit an arms race between the Arab states
and Israel by restraining sales. Tragically for the
Middle East, it lasted only five years. It crumbled
because the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia concluded a
major arms deal with Egypt; and France, unknown to her
two partners, signed a secret sales agreement with
Israel.
The precedents may not be totally encouraging, yet
they show a glimmer of light. A start should be made with
Africa, to clamp down both on official arms sales and the
activities of free-lance arms salesmen. If the UN
Security Council is prepared, as it recently did, to
clamp down on the trade in "blood diamonds" this issue
should be presented to it as a necessary corollary.
Britain, just as it did on the diamond issue, should lead
the way.
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By
JONATHAN POWER
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