While the resolution adds to the global WMD non-proliferation regime, there are concerns among several states about the instrumental use of the Security Council to bypass duly constituted multilateral negotiating forums. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 2014 (IPS)

The United Nations claims that a key Security Council resolution adopted unanimously back in 2004 has been instrumental in keeping weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) from the hands of terrorists and insurgent groups worldwide.

At a meeting Wednesday to mark its 10th anniversary, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said resolution 1540 has helped make important inroads against the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons over the last decade.The five major nuclear powers have consistently asserted they don't want WMDs to fall into the "wrong hands" - a code phrase for terrorists and insurgent groups.

But that only tells part of the story, he said, expressing regrets over “the setbacks and disappointments”, including the recent use of chemical weapons in Syria.

“However, through multilateral agreement, over 90 percent of Syria’s chemical weapons have been removed from the country even as the conflict has intensified,” Eliasson added.

A U.N. team investigating the use of these deadly weapons in Syria last year found “clear and convincing evidence” of Sarin gas attacks against civilians, including children.

But the team was not mandated either by the General Assembly or the Security Council to probe whether the weapons were used by government military forces or armed insurgents – leaving the question of accountability wide open.

The mandate was only to determine whether chemical weapons had been used, not by whom.

Tariq Rauf, director Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the resolution was adopted a decade ago to close the gaps in the domestic legislation of member states.

The primary aim was to prevent the spread or access to WMD materials and technologies to non-state actors such as terrorist groups or criminals through the implementation of legislation providing for effective controls and criminal penalties.

He said the resolution does not duplicate nor impinge upon existing multilateral non-proliferation treaties and organisations, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Eliasson told Wednesday’s meeting it is critical for every country to implement the resolution.

“Terrorists and traffickers tend to target countries whose customs, borders, imports, exports, ports and airports are less well monitored or controlled,” he said.

One promising trend, he pointed out, is the preparation of voluntary national implementation action plans.

At the recent Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, 32 countries released a joint statement reaffirming a commitment to submit such action plans to the ‘1540 Committee’ coordinating the implementation of the resolution.

The Western powers have expressed concern that terrorist groups, specifically Al-Qaeda, may be attempting to acquire WMDs.

Still over the last 10 years following the adoption of the resolution, North Korea has gone nuclear while Iran is accused of trying to develop nuclear weapons (which it vehemently denies).

And Saudi Arabia has threatened to go nuclear if Iran joins the group of nine nuclear weapons states: including the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council, namely, the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, along with India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

The five major nuclear powers have consistently asserted they don’t want WMDs to fall into the “wrong hands” – a code word for terrorists and insurgent groups.

But Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says “there are no right hands for wrong weapons.”

The anti-nuclear activists, who call for a total elimination of WMDs, say there are “no right hands or wrong hands” for nuclear weapons which should be removed from everyone’s hands.

Rauf told IPS the resolution adopted under chapter VII of the U.N. Charter is mandatory for all U.N. member states. It complements but does not replace nor is it a substitute for multilaterally negotiated arms control treaties.

A Security Council committee to promote implementation of 1540 has been set up to assist states in their implementation of the resolution. However, he said not all member states are reporting to the committee as the reporting format is considered quite complex and taxes the capacity of many states.

While the resolution adds to the global WMD non-proliferation regime, there are concerns among several states about the instrumental use of the Security Council to bypass duly constituted multilateral negotiating forums such as the Conference on Disarmament, and the U.N. General Assembly, where more or all states are represented.

He said the Security Council is not considered a globally democratic body as it has permanent members with a veto and a very small number of other states elected for two year terms.

In sum, the resolution is a useful instrument but it cannot be compared in importance or legitimacy to global WMD treaties since such treaties have been duly negotiated in open multilateral forums where member states have a say and thus have greater legitimacy and authority, he declared.

The U.N.'s Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, says it is governments' responsibility to inform the public about military expenditures - and to justify them. Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 2014 (IPS)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has relentlessly advocated drastic cuts in global military spending in favour of sustainable development, will be sorely disappointed by the latest findings in a report released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The decline in arms spending in the West, says SIPRI, has been offset by a rise in military expenditures by emerging non-Western and developing nations who are, ironically, the strongest candidates for development aid."Four hours of military spending is equal to the total budgets of all international disarmament and non-proliferation organisations combined." -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Asked whether there are any future prospects of reversing this trend, Dr. Sam Perlo-Freeman, director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure Programme, told IPS, “At present, there is little or no prospect of a large-scale transfer of resources from military spending to spending on human and economic development.”

Of the top 15 military spenders in 2013, eight were non-Western nations: China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea, Brazil, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The Western countries in the top 15 were the United States, France, UK, Germany, Italy and Australia, plus Japan. Canada, a former high spender, dropped out of the list in 2013.

The increase in military spending in emerging and developing countries continues unabated, said Perlo-Freeman.

“While in some cases it is the natural result of economic growth or a response to genuine security needs, in other cases it represents a squandering of natural resource revenues, the dominance of autocratic regimes, or emerging regional arms races,” he added.

World military expenditure totalled 1.75 trillion dollars in 2013, a fall of 1.9 percent in real terms since 2012, according to SIPRI.

The fall in the global total comes from decreases in Western countries, led by the United States.

But military spending in the rest of the world increased by 1.8 percent.

Bemoaning the rise in arms spending, the secretary-general said last year the world spends more on the military in one month than it does on development all year.

“And four hours of military spending is equal to the total budgets of all international disarmament and non-proliferation organisations combined,” he noted.

The bottom line: the world is over-armed and peace is under-funded, said Ban. Bloated military budgets, he said, promote proliferation, derail arms control, doom disarmament and detract from social and economic development.

Last week, a U.N. expert came out strongly against rising arms expenditures on the occasion of the Global Day of Action on Military Spending.

The U.N.’s Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, called upon all governments “to proactively inform the public about military expenditures and to justify them.

“Every democracy must involve civil society in the process of establishing budgets, and all sectors of society must be consulted to determine what the real priorities of the population are,” he said in a statement released here.

Lobbies, including military contractors and other representatives of the military-industrial complex, must not be allowed to hijack these priorities to the detriment of the population’s real needs, he added.

According to SIPRI, the fall in U.S. spending in 2013, by 7.8 percent, is the result of the end of the war in Iraq, the beginning of the drawdown from Afghanistan, and the effects of automatic budget cuts passed by the U.S. Congress in 2011.

Meanwhile, austerity policies continued to determine trends in Western and Central Europe and in other Western countries.

Perlo-Freeman told IPS the worst conflict in the world today, in Syria, which has killed over 150,000 people, is still less severe than the worst conflicts of even 15 years ago, such as the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which led to the deaths of millions.

There are certainly tensions in many parts of the world, most notably between Russia and Ukraine at the moment, but inter-state armed conflict is still extremely rare, he added.

“I think the increases in military spending in many parts of the world can rather be traced to a continuing belief in the centrality of military power to conceptions of national security and national greatness,” he said.

He said the United States has set a very clear example in this regard, most especially under the administration of President George W. Bush (2001-2009), but even now the notion that U.S. global military supremacy is a national necessity is effectively unchallenged in the political mainstream.

Other major powers, especially Russia and China, do not view this U.S. dominance in their neighbourhoods with equanimity, or accept their subordinate position in the system.

While neither can challenge the U.S.’s global role, each has been seeking to increase their own military power sufficiently to be able to exert regional influence and not be subject to U.S. dominance, he noted.

This pattern is repeated at lower levels, amongst middle powers such as India.

“Even in much more peaceful regions, Brazil, which has always sought a higher status in the international system, regards having a strong, modern military as an essential part of this,” Perlo-Freeman said.

However, Brazil’s spending has leveled off in recent years, as its economy has not been as strong as in the past and as it has other pressing social priorities that compete with military spending.

There are other important factors as well – one is simply economic growth, which tends to lift military spending along with other areas of spending, said Perlo-Freeman.

USS Ronald Reagan and other ships from RIMPAC 2010 transit the Pacific. The United States, a Pacific power whose military spending is not included in the Asia figures, has also played an important role in driving up the expenditures in the region. Credit: U.S. Navy photo

By John Feffer
WASHINGTON, Apr 14 2014 (IPS)

For the second year in a row, the world is spending a little less on the military. Asia, however, has failed to get the memo. The region is spending more at a time when many others are spending less.

Last year, Asia saw a 3.6 percent increase in military spending, according to figures just released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The region — which includes East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and Oceania — posted topping off a 62 percent increase over the last decade.To a certain extent, the arms race in Asia is connected not to the vast expansion of the Pentagon since 2001 but rather to the relative decline of Asia in U.S. priorities over much of that period.

In 2012, for the first time Asia outpaced Europe in its military spending. That year, the world’s top five importers of armaments all came from Asia: India, China, Pakistan, South Korea, and (incredibly) the city-state of Singapore.

China is responsible for the lion’s share of the increases in East Asia, having increased its spending by 170 percent over the last decade. It has also announced a 12.2 percent increase for 2014.

But China is not the only driver of regional military spending. South Asia – specifically the confrontation between India and Pakistan – is responsible for a large chunk of the military spending in the region. Rival territorial claims over tiny islands  — and the vast resources that lie beneath and around them — in both Northeast and Southeast Asia are pushing the claimants to boost their maritime capabilities.

Even Japan, which has traditionally kept its military spending to under one percent of GDP, is getting into the act. Tokyo has promised of a 2.8 percent increase in 2014-15.

The United States, a Pacific power whose military spending is not included in the Asia figures, has also played an important role in driving up the expenditures in the region. The Barack Obama administration’s “Pacific pivot” is designed to reboot the U.S. security presence in this strategically critical part of the world.

To a certain extent, the arms race in Asia is connected not to the vast expansion of the Pentagon since 2001 but rather to the relative decline of Asia in U.S. priorities over much of that period.

As U.S. allies, South Korea and Japan were expected to shoulder more of the security burden in the region while the United States pursued national security objects in the Middle East and Central Asia.

China, meanwhile, pursued a “peaceful rise” that also involved an attempt to acquire a military strength comparable to its economic strength. At the same time, China more vigorously advanced its claims in the South China Sea even as other parties to the conflict put forward their counter claims.

The Pacific pivot has been billed as a way to halt the relative decline of U.S. influence in Asia. So far, however, this highly touted “rebalancing” has largely been a shifting around of U.S. forces in the region.

The fulcrum of the pivot is Okinawa, where the United States and Japan have been negotiating for nearly two decades to close an outdated Marine Air Force base in Okinawa and transfer those Marines to existing, expanding, and proposed facilities elsewhere.

Aside from this complex operation, a few Littoral Combat Ships have gone to Singapore. The Pentagon has proposed putting slightly more of its overall fleet in the Pacific (a 60-40 split compared to the current 50-50). And Washington has welcomed closer coordination with partners like the Philippines and Vietnam.

Instead of a significant upgrade to U.S. capabilities in the region, the pivot is largely a signal to Washington’s allies that the partnerships remain strong and a warning to Washington’s adversaries that, even if U.S. military spending is on a slight downward tilt, the Pentagon possesses more than enough firepower to deter their power projection.

This signaling function of the pivot dovetails with another facet of U.S. security policy: arms exports. The growth of the Pentagon over the last 10 years has been accompanied by a growth in U.S. military exports, which more than doubled during the period 2002 to 2012 from 8.3 to 18.8 billion dollars.

The modest reduction in Pentagon spending will not necessarily lead to a corresponding decline in exports. In fact, the opposite is likely to be true, as was the case during the last Pentagon slowdown in the 1990s. The Obama administration has pushed through a streamlining of the licensing process in order to facilitate an increase in military exports – in part to compensate U.S. arms manufacturers for a decline in orders from the Pentagon.

Asia and Oceania represent the primary target for U.S. military exports, absorbing nearly half of all shipments. Of that number, East Asia represents approximately one-quarter (South Asia accounts for nearly half).

The biggest-ticket item is the F-35 fighter jet, which Washington has already sold to Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Long-range missile defence systems have been sold to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Overall between 2009 and 2013, Australia and South Korea have been the top U.S. clients. With its projected increase in military spending, Japan will also likely rise much higher on the list.

The more advanced weaponry U.S. allies purchase, the more they are locked into future acquisitions. The United States emphasises “interoperability” among its allies. Not only are purchasers dependent on the United States for spare parts and upgrades, but they must consider the overall system of command and control (which is now C5I — Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Combat systems and Intelligence).

Although a French fighter jet or a Russian naval vessel might be a cheaper option in a competitive bid, the purchasing country must also consider how the item integrates with the rest of its hardware and software.

The United States has argued that its overwhelming military presence in the region and lack of interest in territorial gain have dampened conflict in Asia. But the security environment has changed dramatically since the United States first presented itself as a guarantor of regional stability.

Japan no longer abides by a strict interpretation of its “peace constitution.” North Korea has developed nuclear weapons. China has dramatically increased its capabilities. South Korea has created its own indigenous military manufacturing sector and greatly expanded its exports. Territorial disputes in the South China, Yellow, and East China Seas have sharpened. The only flashpoint that has become more peaceful in the last few years has been the Taiwan Strait.

The continued increase in military spending by countries in East Asia and the massive influx of arms into the region are both symptoms and drivers of conflict. Until and unless the region restrains its appetite for military upgrades, the risk of clashes and even all-out war will remain high.

In such an increasingly volatile environment, regional security agreements – on North Korea’s nuclear programme, the several territorial disputes, or new technological threats like cyberwarfare – will be even more difficult to achieve.

Most importantly, because of these budget priorities, the region will have fewer resources and less political will to address other pressing threats, such as climate change, which cannot be defeated with fighter jets or the latest generation of battle ship.

Saudi Arabia is now the world's fifth largest arms importer, moving up from the 18th largest in 2004-2008. Credit: Radio Nederland Wereldomroep/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 2014 (IPS)

The Middle East continues to be one of the world’s most lucrative arms markets, with two Gulf nations – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – taking the lead, according to a new study released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

During 2009-2013, 22 percent of arms transfers to the region went to the UAE, 20 percent to Saudi Arabia and 15 percent to Turkey."The Gulf is the Eldorado for Western arms merchants and governments that want to recycle some of the wealth generated from oil." -- Toby C. Jones

The United States accounted for 42 percent of total arms supplies to the region, SIPRI said.

The rising arms purchases are attributed to several factors, including perceived threats from Iran, the growing Sunni-Shia sectarian strife, widespread fears of domestic terrorism, political instability and hefty oil incomes.

“I definitely think it is a mixture of all of those factors,” said Nicole Auger, a military analyst covering Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a U.S.-based defence market research firm.

The Middle East defence market, she told IPS, is growing substantially as a result of civil unrest, international instability – especially between Iran and Gulf States – and higher oil prices.

Toby C. Jones, an associate history professor at Rutgers University, told IPS, “The Gulf is the Eldorado for Western arms merchants and governments that want to recycle some of the wealth generated from oil.”

There is no collection of states on the planet with more money and more enthusiasm for purchasing expensive weapons systems than in the Gulf, he pointed out.

Whatever strategic value these weapons have or do not have, it is important to keep in mind these weapons are mostly useless for “actual” war, which is why the United States continues to keep such a huge military presence in the region, he added.

“There is almost literally nothing else states could possibly buy that allow for recycling some of the Gulf’s cash,” he said.

Weapons sales generate a lot of virtual bang for the buck, said Jones, a former fellow at Princeton University’s Oil, Energy and Middle East Project and author of ‘Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia’.

Iran, which is barred from importing most types of major arms due to U.N. sanctions, received only one percent of the region’s arms imports in 2009-2013, according to SIPRI.

During the same period, the UAE was ranked the world’s fourth largest arms importer and Saudi Arabia the fifth largest (having been the 18th largest in 2004-2008).

Both countries have large outstanding orders for arms or advanced procurement plan, SIPRI said.

The top three arms importers, however, were India, China and Pakistan. And the five largest arms suppliers during 2009-2013 were the United States (29 percent of global arms exports), Russia (27 percent), Germany (seven percent), China (six percent) and France (five percent).

Auger told IPS, “I would pin Iran as the number one driver: its ongoing role in supporting rebel Shiite groups, cultivating political-military proxy allies in Hamas and Hezbollah and more recently its effort to keep Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in power.”

The Middle East’s major interest right now in upgrading or purchasing missile defence networks is almost all in preparation to defend against long-range attacks from Iran.

Also, Iran appears to be the major reason behind the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) trying again to form the U.S.-backed joint military command, she added.

These GCC countries include Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

Auger said internal security would be a close second following the 2011 uprisings, the ongoing unrest in certain nations and the continuing threat of established and emerging Islamic fundamentalist groups.

“This is evident due to the new focus on special operations, electronic surveillance, and cybersecurity equipment,” she said.

The influx of revenue among the energy-exporting nations and the high oil price trend obviously plays a part as well, she added.

Last year’s 10.5-billion-dollar arms deal, one of the largest in the Middle East in recent years, included the sale of 26 F-16 fighter planes to UAE and sophisticated air-launched and air-to-ground missiles to Saudi Arabia.

These missiles were mostly to arm 154 F-15 fighter planes, to be delivered beginning 2015, purchased from the United States in 2010 at a staggering cost of 29.5 billion dollars.

The missiles were meant “to address the threat posed by Iran”, according to a senior U.S. official quoted in a news report.

The arms contract also included 1,000 GBU-35 “bunker busting” bombs to Saudi Arabia and 5,000 to UAE – bombs ideally suited to destroy underground nuclear installations.

But despite the sale of these weapons to Middle Eastern nations, the United States has always maintained it will continue to “guarantee Israel’s qualitative military edge” over Arab nations.

Jones told IPS the Arab Gulf states are politically vulnerable at home and the last three years have been particularly contentious.

While the region has not seen the kind of unrest that shook other parts of the Middle East, except for Bahrain and Kuwait, the regimes in Riyadh and elsewhere are anxious about the possibility there could be a rise in revolutionary fervour.

“They always have been, but these anxieties are more acute in this particular moment. So buying lots of weapons is often connected to domestic policing and counter-revolutionary concerns,” he said.

These weapons will likely never be used in a serious way in a regional conflict, he added.

Jones pointed out the purchasing of weapons, especially long range and complex weapons systems, has little to do with these states’ interest in going to war with Iran or even defending against it. “They have the United States for that,” he said.

But, in buying weapons like these, Gulf regimes claim they are also looking after U.S. energy concerns in a tough neighbourhood.

“These are specious claims, designed to reinforce American anxieties about dangers in the region in order to keep the U.S. military there,” Jones said.

The Arab states need “crisis” to be a permanent condition in order to maximise the West’s and especially Washington’s security commitment – whether crisis is real or not, he added.

Crews of an Egyptian ranger battalion in Jeep YJ light vehicles circa 1992. The soldiers standing are holding Russian-made SA-7 Grail surface-to-air missiles. Credit: public domain

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 2014 (IPS)

Russia, which is at loggerheads with Washington over the spreading political crisis in Ukraine, is threatening to undermine a longstanding military relationship between the United States and one of its traditional allies in the Middle East: Egypt.

A photograph of Russian President Vladimir Putin shaking hands with Egypt’s de facto leader Field Marshal Abdel Fateh Al Sisi was flashed across newspapers and TV screens in the Arab world last month.Although advanced surface-to-air missile systems have a much lower price-tag than larger systems such as combat aircraft, their transfer could have significant military effects.

Sisi, who is planning to run in the country’s presidential elections later this year, was in Moscow to negotiate a hefty two-billion-dollar arms deal with Russia.

“The U.S. government has built the modern Egyptian military over the course of the last three decades,” Dr Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS.

“Egypt would have to turn its military upside-down to switch to Russian weapons at this point,” she noted.

Ironically, if and when the arms deal is signed, the funding will come from money pledged by three strong U.S. allies in the region: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who themselves depend heavily on U.S. weapons for survival.

All three countries pledged more than 12 billion dollars to Egypt last year for two reasons: first, to provide economic support to a bankrupt Sisi regime, which ousted the government of former President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, and second, to counter the U.S. threat to reduce or cut off billions of dollars in military grants and suspend arms supplies to Cairo.

The U.S. had expressed its displeasure at the ouster of Morsi, the head of the first democratically elected government in Egypt.

Despite these tensions, Goldring said the Egyptian military will continue to be dominated by U.S. weapons for the foreseeable future.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), more than 80 percent of Egyptian weapons deliveries (by dollar value) in recent years have been supplied by the United States.

The U.S. government has provided roughly 1.3 billion dollars of military assistance each year since Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979.

“While attention has focused on the dollar value of the agreement, it is more important to focus on the types of [Russian] weapons that are transferred,” said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with the Arms Transfers Programme of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the deal would include air defence systems, MiG-29 or Sukhoi fighter aircraft, combat and transport helicopters and anti-tank missiles.

That Egypt would be looking for such weapons to augment what it gets from the United States is not surprising, he noted. Egypt has since long sought to diversify its arms suppliers in order not to be dependent on Washington.

Wezeman said there have been reports that Egypt is looking for new combat aircraft from another supplier than the United States to replace its ageing Soviet and Chinese models, and that it has looked at options from China, Russia or even surplus fighter planes of French origin from the UAE.

Goldring told IPS the types of weapons transferred will determine the military effects of the sale.

Although advanced surface-to-air missile systems have a much lower price-tag than larger systems such as combat aircraft, their transfer could have significant military effects, she noted.

Before the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Egypt was equipped mostly with Soviet weapons systems.

Goldring said the upgrading of these weapons, obtained from the then-Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, is less likely to be militarily significant.

“This [Russian] sale isn’t just about the potential military effects, it’s also about world politics,” she said.

By funding the Egyptian purchase, the Saudi government shows its preference for the Egyptian military government over the Muslim Brotherhood and former Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi, Goldring noted.

In turn, Russia gets cash from Saudi Arabia for providing the weapons.

The sale could also potentially help Russia further weaken ties between Egypt and the United States, she added.

The Saudis have pledged massive quantities of aid to the military government, beginning with a pledge of five billion dollars just a week after the military took power in July 2013.

The Saudis also organised contributions from the UAE of three billion dollars and four billion dollars from Kuwait, for a total pledge of 12 billion dollars.

Wezeman said the deal, when completed, does not mean that Russia will become the sole or dominant arms supplier to Egypt, taking advantage of the current rift in relations between Egypt and Washington.

He said the United States still plans to resume its large military aid and Egypt is shopping for arms elsewhere too.

Despite the fact that European Union (EU) states had agreed to carefully review their arms exports to Egypt after the violence of last August, they don’t seem to have lost their appetite for selling weapons to Egypt altogether, said Wezeman.

Just last week, it was reported that Egypt was very close to signing a one-billion-euro deal with a French company for four to six new missile-armed corvettes for its navy.

And last year, there were reports Egypt had ordered two submarines from Germany, now under construction (with two more to be ordered this year).

Wezeman said Egypt has also been a longstanding market for Chinese arms and there is no doubt China will work hard to maintain that relationship.

Troops of the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) cheer after taking control, with assistance from the Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) of the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), of a highly strategic position of the M23, an area known as Three Towers on the hills of Kibati, five 5 kilometres north of Goma. Credit: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 2013 (IPS)

As U.N. peacekeeping operations assume a more agressive role in conflict zones, the first concrete results came last week when the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) defeated the M23 rebel group after a 20-month-long insurgency.

That victory was thanks in part to the support provided by the 25,240-strong U.N. Stabilisation Mission in DRC (MONUSCO), but more importantly, the 3,000-strong first-ever U.N. Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) created by the Security Council last March.

An African diplomat told IPS the success in DRC may change the dynamics of peacekeeping in some of the other U.N. operations in Africa, including in Darfur, South Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire.

But any change in the mandate of the 15 peacekeeping operations – eight of which are in Africa – has to be approved by the Security Council, he added.

By accident or by design, the United Nations is currently seeking to strengthen the military component of its peacekeeping operations with “force enablers”, including military and transport helicopters, armoured personnel carriers (APCs), night vision equipment and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Traditionally, U.N. peacekeepers were armed only with light weapons, never heavy artillery.

“I see several priorities for the year ahead,” said Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous.

One is to meet the shortfalls in equipment by strengthening the military and police capabilities on the ground, he said. South Africa, one of three countries in the FIB, along with Tanzania and Malawi, has already agreed to provide three of its home-made military helicopters and two utility helicopters to MONUSCO.

Two other countries, Bangladesh and Ukraine, are already providing attack helicopters to the same peace mission in the Congo.

Western nations are also providing military equipment, including 10 APCs each from the United States and the European Union, plus two from the United Kingdom. Sweden has provided a transport aircraft for a limited period of two months.

Asked if these weapons are being purchased or provided gratis, Kieran Dwyer, chief of the public affairs division at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support, told IPS the United Nations does not purchase military equipment such as attack helicopters.

“Member states provide these,” he said, explaining that troop-contributing countries also equip their own personnel.

Some worry that the shift from defensive to offensive operations, as in DRC, may create dangers for humanitarian organisations in conflict zones.

Michael Hofman, a senior humanitarian specialist with Doctors Without Borders, was quoted by the New York Times Wednesday as saying: “You can have a helicopter, one day used to deliver the Force Intervention Brigade troops to attack a village, and next day, to deliver aid to the same village.”

“In this case, it is not even a blurring of the lines,” he added.

Currently, the three major troop contributors to U.N. peacekeeping missions are Bangladesh (8,780 military troops and civilian personnel), Pakistan (8,200) and India (7,840).

In contrast, the five big powers in the Security Council are providing relatively small number of troops: China, (1,995 troops), France (1,770), Russia (362), UK (281) and the United States (82).

The supply of weapons by developing nations, along with their troops, is also providing a boost to their domestic arms industries.

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Arms Transfers Programme of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS many arms and other military equipment used by South African armed forces are produced locally.

Some of them, like the Rooivalk helicopter used in DRC, have been designed in South Africa, and others are increasingly from foreign designs produced under licence in South Africa, he said.

India, the third largest troop contributor, has a large arms industry that assembles and produces Russian-designed armoured vehicles. It also produces its own helicopter based on European technology, but currently it is more likely to deploy helicopters supplied directly from Russia or produced under licence from Eurocopter, Wezeman said.

“India has a nascent UAV industry but I have not heard of Indian UAVs being operational because until now India relies mainly on UAVs supplied by Israel,” said Wezeman.

Pakistan has an arms industry that licence-produces items like armoured vehicles and small arms designed in a variety of countries, including the United States and China. But Pakistan imports its helicopters.

Bangladesh has a very basic arms industry and is very dependent on arms imports, including attack helicopters provided for U.N. missions.

Nicole Auger, a military analyst covering Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a leader in defence market intelligence, told IPS South Africa has a fast developing arms industry capable of providing the type of weapons used in U.N. peacekeeping operations. These include helicopters, armoured vehicles and UAVs.

She said South Africa relies heavily on foreign partnerships and outside assistance; in many cases a South African defence company will exchange the ownership stake for technology or financial assistance.

UAVs, which were deployed for the first time by U.N. peacekeepers in DRC, seem to be a focus for the South African defence industry right now, she noted. Denel’s Seeker 400 is expected to fly later this year. And its Bateleur MALE is also under development.

Additional domestic UAVs with longer range systems are also under development in South Africa, she added.

As of now, the 15 peacekeeping missions have a total strength of 114,000 personnel and the U.N’s 2013-2014 budget for peacekeeping is about 7.5 billion dollars.

On Tuesday, the largest deregulation in the history of U.S. arms exports took place as part of the Barack Obama administration’s export reform initiative.

But a day after the new reforms came into effect, former government officials and critics from the human rights community are warning of the serious human rights consequences and of the negative long-term impact for U.S. foreign policy.“This could further facilitate the commission of human rights abuses around the world.” -- Amnesty's Adotei Akwei

The reforms are part of the Export Control Reform Initiative (ECRI) brought forward by the Obama administration in 2010, with the goal of simplifying U.S. export practices by eliminating redundant restrictions and regulations.

The most problematic aspect of the reforms is the extensive deregulation of military exports by categorising them as ‘dual-use’ goods, which currently face no trade restrictions under international commercial law.

But according to critics, this large deregulation of armaments trade will have serious long-term consequences for U.S. military strategy and for human rights abuses across the globe.

The arms export reforms will transfer the oversight of military export items from the U.S. Department of State to the U.S. Department of Commerce. This change will only increase the risks connected with arms exports, critics say.

“Unlike standard armaments, dual-use goods currently face little or no restriction because they’ve always been considered normal commercial goods,” said William J. Lowell, a former U.S. State Department official and now the managing director of Lowell Defense Trade, a national security consulting firm here.

The military items that will move to Commerce Department oversight are primarily small parts such as aircraft components, electronic equipment, night vision equipment, and automatic firearms. Credit: West Midlands Police/cc by 2.0

“What this deregulation does is move as much as 75 percent of our arms exports to the Commerce Department, with no regulation,” Lowell told IPS.

No regulation

The military items that will move to Commerce Department oversight are primarily small parts such as aircraft components, electronic equipment, night vision equipment, and automatic firearms.

But these are the items that will inevitably threaten U.S. military strategy, critics suggest.

“When you allow these items to be traded with no restrictions and no licensing, you’re basically allowing places like China and Iran to obtain our military technology and our spare parts with no restrictions whatsoever,” Steven W. Pelak, a former U.S. Justice Department official and now a partner at Holland & Hart, an international law firm, said here on Wednesday. “In the long-term, this can put American lives at risk.”

And while some emphasise the potential backfiring effect of the new deregulation on U.S. interests, others highlight the damaging effect the reforms will have on the international arms export regime.

Since World War II, the U.S. has been in the forefront in urging other countries to control conventional arms more closely, Lowell says.

“We’re the world’s largest arms provider. And now we’re basically retreating from our leadership,” he told IPS. “This means that other countries, like Russia, will be only too happy to agree with decontrolling some of their international arms transfers.”

Human rights abuses

And as critics consider the implications for U.S. foreign policy and military stability in troublesome areas around the world, human rights advocates warn of the human rights abuses that are going to take place after the deregulation.

“We’re seriously concerned that the reforms will open a floodgate of weapons technology and equipment to governments that have bad human rights records,” Adotei Akwei, the managing director for government relations at Amnesty International USA, a global human rights movement, told IPS. “This could further facilitate the commission of human rights abuses around the world.”

Indeed, according to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia, the second-largest arms exporter after the U.S., has provided Algeria, where human rights records are troublesome, with over 90 percent the country’s armaments between 2008 and 2012.

The trend may spread to other problematic spots, including Sub-Saharan Africa. In early 2012, Sierra Leone’s People’s Party raised concerns over large imports of small weapons and ammunition from China, as it feared the weapons could be used to persecute political opponents in the upcoming elections, the SIPRI reports.

Human rights activists fear that these types of scenarios will only increase after the extensive export deregulation measures took effect on Tuesday.

“We in the human rights community have been fighting for the past 30 years to try to bring more oversight and regulation to the global trade in arms because of the link with human rights violations such as killings, displacement of population, and torture,” Amnesty International USA’s Akwei told IPS. “And now we see the U.S. stepping back from these commitments. It is extremely alarming.”

Unclear motives

It is still unclear why the U.S. administration has opted for this arms export deregulation, the largest and most comprehensive in the country’s history.

The shift from the State to the Commerce Department also comes with a change in the definition of what constitutes a “military item.” Before the reforms, the U.S. State Department maintained jurisdiction and control over all items on the U.S. Munitions List, the list containing all military-related items requiring an export license prior to being shipped to foreign countries.

Now, however, the Commerce Department defines a military item as an item that is “inherently military or [one that] possess[es] parameters or characteristics that provide a critical military or intelligence advantage to the United States.”

According to critics, the new definition is alarming.

“This definition is so unclear that the U.S. military industry simply won’t know what will fall under that category. Because of this confusion, we’ll see a real damage for U.S. industry,” Holland & Hart’s Pelak said Wednesday.

And as opponents wonder why the U.S. government will implement reforms that will damage its national industry, U.S. servicemen warn of the deadly consequences of such a massive deregulation.

Kevin McDonnell, a retired U.S. Army Colonel, recently noted that exporting night vision equipment to foreign states, now allowed under Commerce Department rules, would put U.S. lives at risk.

“In enemy hands, these devices can enable hostile forces to track and fire on our aircraft at night,” he says. “The direct result is the loss of American lives.”

Professor Ake Sellstrom (left), head of the chemical weapons team working in Syria, hands over the report on the Aug. 21, 2013 Al-Ghouta massacre to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 2013 (IPS)

After an intense investigation of the military attack on civilians in Syria last month, a U.N. team of arms inspectors has reached a predictable conclusion: the deadly attack had all the trappings of the widespread use of chemical weapons.

But the team left an equally important question unanswered: who was responsible for that attack?

According to a mandate given by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. team, led by Professor Ake Sellstrom of Sweden, did not have the authority to investigate culpability.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the rebel groups blame each other for the attack.

“The results are overwhelming and indisputable. The facts speak for themselves,” Ban told the Security Council Monday, immediately following the release of the team’s detailed report.

There must be accountability for the use of chemical weapons, he asserted. “Any use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere, is a crime.”

Ban told delegates the team has concluded that “chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale” in the Ghouta area of Damascus in the context of the ongoing conflict in Syria.

Dr. Ian Anthony, director of the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockolm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the next logical step would seem to be for the Security Council to evaluate the information as an urgent matter and come to a conclusion on the issue of who is responsible for the use of chemical weapons.

“The Security Council, with all its members acting together, then needs to chart a path forward,” he added.

The team interviewed more than 50 survivors, medical personnel and first responders. It applied a rigorous and objective selection process designed to identify survivors who may have been exposed to chemical agents, according to Ban.

The team also assessed symptoms and collected biomedical samples, including from hair, urine and blood.

Ban told delegates the team documented and sampled impact sites and munitions, and collected 30 soil and environmental samples far more than any previous such U.N. investigation.

The statements by survivors offer a vivid account of the events on that fateful day, Aug. 21.

He said survivors reported that immediately after the attack, they quickly experienced a range of symptoms, including shortness of breath, disorientation, eye irritation, blurred vision, nausea, vomiting and general weakness.

Many eventually lost consciousness. First responders described seeing a large number of individuals lying on the ground, many of them dead or unconscious.

The team also interviewed nine nurses and seven treating physicians, several of whom responded immediately to the incident.

“They reported seeing a large number of people lying in the streets without external signs of injury, some with laboured breathing, most of them unconscious,” Ban told delegates.

After the briefing, Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant of Britain told reporters “there is no doubt” chemical weapons were used by Syrian security forces, not rebels.

“These were not cottage industry weapons,” he added, implicitly accusing the Syrian government of the attack.

Reinforcing his argument, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters the 122 mm rockets used to deliver the chemical arms were “not improvised weapons” but professionally manufactured.

“There is no evidence that opposition forces are armed with sarin gas,” she added.

But Ambassador Vitaly Chukrin of Russia, a country strongly supportive of Assad, decried the attempt to “jump to conclusions”.

Poo-poohing the charges, he said if the Syrian government had in fact used chemical weapons, how is it that there wasn’t a single rebel casualty in the attack, which killed mostly civilian men, women and children.

“The rockets missed all their targets,” he added, with a tinge of sarcasm.

In a statement released Monday, Philippe Bolopion, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the fact that no perpetrator was clearly fingered in the Sellstrom report should further compel the Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC), so those behind the vicious Ghouta chemical attacks, and the other major crimes in Syria, can be held to account.

“Enforcing a red line on the future use of chemical weapons will take more than a deal on monitoring Syria’s stocks: it will require that those who pressed the chemical button face justice for their crime,” he added.

SIPRI’s Anthony told IPS that based on the U.N. team’s findings, the Security Council needs to craft a response that on the one hand holds the identified perpetrators accountable, and on the other hand does not either escalate the present conflict, or derail the prospects for progress towards ending the conflict through a political settlement.

The way forward must include implementing chemical weapons disarmament, he said.

Meanwhile, the U.N. team is expected to return to Syria “as soon as practical” to complete its investigation of an earlier chemical weapons attack in Khan Al Assal.

The team will issue its final report after that investigation.

When the 193-member U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) holds is first-ever high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament next September, there is little or no hope that any of the nuclear powers will make a firm commitment to gradually phase out or abandon their lethal arsenals.

At the beginning of 2013, eight states – UK, the United States, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel – possessed approximately 4,400 operational nuclear weapons, according to the latest Yearbook released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)."Our job is to help push the issue of the abolition of nuclear weapons up the political ladder so that they will cooperate on disarmament." -- Jonathan Granoff of the Global Security Institute

Nearly 2,000 of these are kept in a state of high operational alert, SIPRI said.

Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute and adjunct professor of International Law at the Widener University School of Law, told IPS, “What is needed to counteract the slow pace in arms control and disarmament is higher political profile.”

For example, he said, if certain leaders were to say at the General Assembly, “My country is one of 114 countries in a nuclear weapons-free zone. We want to help countries relying on nuclear weapons for security to obtain the benefits of helping to make the entire world a nuclear weapons-free zone.”

The SIPRI report highlights the need to bring commitments made solemnly at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in 2012 to advance nuclear disarmament into action.

Promises must mean something, said Granoff.

If all nuclear warheads are counted, says SIPRI, these eight states together possess a total of approximately 17,265 nuclear weapons, as compared with 19,000 at the beginning of 2012.

The decrease is due mainly to Russia and the United States further reducing their inventories of strategic nuclear weapons under the terms of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START), as well as retiring ageing and obsolescent weapons.

At the same time, says SIPRI, all five legally recognised nuclear weapons states – China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States – are either deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced programmes to do so, and appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals indefinitely.

Of the five, only China seems to be expanding its nuclear arsenal.

And of the others, India and Pakistan are both expanding their nuclear weapon stockpiles and missile delivery capabilities.

“Once again there was little to inspire hope that the nuclear weapon-possessing states are genuinely willing to give up their nuclear arsenals,” according to SIPRI.

“The long-term modernisation programmes under way in these states suggest that nuclear weapons are still a marker of international status and power,” says Shannon Kile, senior researcher at SIPRI’s Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-proliferation.

Asked if the upcoming UNGA disarmament conference will produce anything tangible towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, Kile told IPS that in light of current trends in global nuclear arsenals, the General Assembly cannot be reasonably expected to be able to adopt concrete measures that will require the nuclear weapon-possessing states to begin eliminating these weapons or to change their nuclear force postures and operational practices.

However, the positive role the UNGA can play in terms of strengthening existing norms and political commitments to pursue nuclear disarmament should not be underestimated, Kile said.

This involves, first and foremost, maintaining political pressure on the nuclear weapon-possessing states to reduce the role and salience of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies and defence postures.

This could be done, for example, by persuading these states to adopt explicit declaratory policies ruling out the first-use of nuclear weapons, and to provide legally-binding negative security assurances – that is, guarantees not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states.

In the longer term, he said, the UNGA can contribute to and strengthen efforts to devalue nuclear weapons as a currency of international geopolitics and to delegitimise their possession.

“This will admittedly be a part of a long-term process that will require considerable patience and diplomatic persistence but its normative significance should not be overlooked,” Kile added.

Granoff told IPS the deals the administration of President Barack Obama believed it had to make to get the START Treaty ratified in the U.S. Senate included modernisation of aspects of the nuclear arsenal. Some modernisation simply keeps the weapons in a stable situation while others actually improve accuracy and reliability and could be construed as a form of vertical proliferation, he said.

“Such activities should not be funded, but even if they are, they are not being brought into practice because of military geo strategic planning,” Granoff said.

However, he said, it is not the case that such actions affirm the status of nuclear weapons or a commitment to abrogate pledges under the NPT to move toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

“They only represent short term political deals necessary in an extremely difficult domestic partisan environment to achieve modest arms control measures,” Kile said.

But to say that the policy is not to move in the correct direction is incorrect, he added.

Granoff said there is a new open-ended working group in Geneva that will come up with recommendations.

Norway recently hosted a large conference with many countries highlighting the horrific humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. These activities bode well for our future, he said.

“It is odd that the P5 (UK, United States, Russia, France and China) did not participate in these activities,” Granoff added. “It shows, however, that they can cooperate and come up with the same strategy and positions when they want.

“Our job is to help push the issue of the abolition of nuclear weapons up the political ladder so that they will cooperate on disarmament,” he said.

Asked about the absence of North Korea from the list of nuclear weapon states, Kile told IPS, “The section of the Yearbook’s nuclear forces chapter dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapon capabilities notes that it is not known whether North Korea has produced operational (militarily usable) nuclear weapons.”

An operational weapon is not the same as a simple nuclear explosive device and would require more advanced design and engineering skills to build, he said.

“We have published in SIPRI Yearbook 2013 the estimate of six to eight nuclear weapons to indicate the maximum number that North Korea may possess, based on publicly-available information about its plutonium production activities.

“But again, it is unclear whether North Korea has actually produced operational nuclear weapons, so we did not include it in the table in the press release,” he added.

When the United States invaded Iraq back in March 2003, one of its primary objectives was to track down and destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) reportedly stockpiled by the regime of President Saddam Hussein.

By its own definition – and by U.N. standards – the United States was frantically searching for WMDs constituting three of the world’s most lethal armaments: nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons."Comparing the weapons used in the Boston bombings with nuclear weapons in particular is ludicrous." -- Dr. Natalie J. Goldring of Georgetown University

The search, apparently based on faulty U.S. intelligence, proved futile. But the acronym “WMD” became an integral part of military jargon worldwide as characterising NBCs.

Since last April’s bombings in Boston, Massachusetts, however, both the administration of President Barack Obama and the mainstream news media have offered a new definition of WMDs: shrapnel-packed, homemade pressure cooker bombs that killed three and wounded more than 250 during a marathon in that U.S. city.

That bomb has repeatedly been described as a “weapon of mass destruction”.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the weapons used in the Boston bombings were improvised explosive devices (IEDs), not weapons of mass destruction.

Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are commonly grouped together as weapons of mass destruction, she said. Combining these weapons in a single category makes it seem as though all three types of weapons are equivalent to one another. They’re not, said Goldring.

WMD hazard symbols, arranged vertically. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“Nuclear weapons are by far more destructive than existing chemical or biological weapons. Even so, all three types of weapons have the capability to be massively more damaging than the weapons used in Boston,” she said.

“Comparing the weapons used in the Boston bombings with nuclear weapons in particular is ludicrous,” said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

According to some military experts, the IEDs used in the Boston bombings are no different from the IEDs widely used against U.S. armed forces by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, told IPS, “If you want to confuse people, you blur the lines of distinction between things and also situations.”

She said an improvised explosive device as a “weapon of mass destruction” is just such an example, as is the broad use of “terrorist” and “terrorism” in the aftermath of Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“We also have the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ – a tad broad, to say the least,” said Williams, who led a highly successful global campaign that resulted in a worldwide ban on anti-personnel landmines.

She said it is easier for the U.S. government to continue to prosecute its borderless “war on terror” if people don’t quite understand or see distinctions. It’s all “too confusing” and best left in the hands of the “experts” in Washington, she added.

Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the use of the term WMD to describe the Boston bombs has been perceived as “weird”.

He said most people would think WMDs are the serious mass killer weapons – nuclear, biological, chemical, and potentially radiological. However, said Wezeman, the term WMD has been used loosely from the time it was probably first coined in 1937 to describe more or less every weapon.

There seem to be in the U.S. official terminology some 50 different definitions, he said.

“Considering the U.S. official terminology, WMD would more or less cover every type of slightly larger explosive weapon – IEDs, hand grenades, artillery shells, small cannon – as used daily by ‘terrorists’ as well as armed forces,” he added.

“Of course for most people and for normal usage, WMD remains just the nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological (CBRN) weapons,” Wezeman said.

Goldring told IPS, “As horrific as the Boston bombings were, the number of casualties caused by those bombings was a tiny fraction of the likely casualties if one or more nuclear weapons were exploded in a city.”

She pointed out that scientists estimate that if even a relatively small (10 kilotonne) nuclear weapon were exploded in a city, the entire area out about a mile in every direction would be largely destroyed.

“Calling the Boston bombs weapons of mass destruction is a political statement. It makes no sense from a substantive perspective,” she said.

If the Boston bombs are weapons of mass destruction, Goldring asked, “Does that mean all of the improvised explosive devices used in Afghanistan and Iraq are also defined as weapons of mass destruction?”

That simply makes no sense, she said, adding, “IEDs have caused enormous damage to military personnel and civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are not weapons of mass destruction.”

The "Green Hornet," an F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighter jet powered by a 50/50 biofuel blend. The U.S. is far and away the world's biggest military spender. Credit: U.S. Navy

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 15 2013 (IPS)

The spreading economic crisis is taking a bite out of Western military spending – even as the world’s developing nations, along with Russia and China, boosted their arms expenditures last year.

In a study released Monday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported a decline in military spending last year in the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan and Western and Central Europe.

The fall, described as the first since 1998, was attributed to major spending cuts primarily by austerity-driven and deficit-plagued Western nations.

“We are seeing what may be the beginning of a shift in the balance of world military spending, from the rich Western countries to emerging regions,” says Dr. Samuel Perlo-Freeman, director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, 18 of the 31 countries in the European Union, mostly countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), have cut military spending by more than 10 percent in real terms.

And, despite these cuts, members of NATO collectively spent a trillion dollars.

Still, the United States and its allies are responsible for the great majority of world military spending.

The United States, the world’s largest military spender, announced last week that its 2013 proposed defence budget will amount to about 526.6 billion dollars: a reduction of 3.9 billion dollars compared with its 2012 budget.

The 2013 budget will include “substantial reductions” for the U.S. army, which was heavily involved in military operations in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent in Iraq.

The drawdown in Afghanistan is primarily responsible for reduced spending by the United States.

The reductions were, however, “substantially offset” by increased spending in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America, according to SIPRI.

China, the second largest spender in 2012, increased its expenditure by 7.8 percent (11.5 billion dollars). Russia, the third largest spender, increased its expenditure by 16 percent (12.3 billion dollars).

According to the study, overall world military expenditure totalled 1.75 trillion dollars in 2012, a fall of 0.5 percent in real terms since 2011.

Asked whether military spending was primarily on arms purchases overseas or acquisitions from domestic weapons industries, Perlo-Freeman told IPS the figures include spending both on arms imports and on domestic procurement.

He pointed out that there are very few countries worldwide that rely on their domestic arms industries for “most” of their military equipment. These are probably limited to the United States, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Japan, and possibly China and Israel.

However, there are many more countries that produce some of their own equipment, but still rely on imports for certain major systems.

In Asia, he said, China has an increasingly advanced arms industry able to produce across all types of equipment, and have been gradually weaning themselves off Russian imports that they were previously highly dependent on.

However, they still import quite a lot, he added.

South Korea also has a strongly developing industry, although it still has to import equipment from the U.S., such as advanced combat aircraft.

India, he pointed out, has a large arms industry, but not a very effective one, probably due to an extremely inefficient bureaucracy in charge of the industry.

“Despite decades of effort, they have not succeeded in being able to develop and produce their own advanced weapons systems,” Perlo-Freeman noted.

“They have a local content of arms procurement of I think about 300 percent, but a lot of that consists of e.g. assembly from kit under license of other countries’ systems,” he said.

Elsewhere in Asia, Singapore has a significant industry with strength in certain niches, but still imports most of its equipment.

There are many other countries with some low level arms production, like Indonesia.

“And North Korea, of course, has a major industry, though that’s a rather special case,” Perlo-Freeman said.

In the Middle East, Israel has an extremely advanced arms industry, in some areas (e.g. it is a world leader in unmanned aerial vehicles). But it still imports – mostly under U.S. military aid – in particular major combat aircraft, which Israel doesn’t produce itself.

“They almost certainly could, but why bother when they get them for free from the U.S.?” he said.

He also said that Turkey has a well-developed industry in some areas, but still imports the majority of its equipment.

Iran has a local arms industry but it is not very advanced in most respects. It has imported a lot from Russia in the past, though now of course this is affected by sanctions.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan produce some armoured vehicles, but still import the great majority of their arms.

In Africa, the only country with a significant industry is South Africa, although it also imports a lot, he said.

In Latin America, the only country with a significant industry is Brazil, though again it still imports the great majority of its major equipment.

Chinese tanks in formation at Shenyang training base in China. Credit: public domain

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2013 (IPS)

After ranking ahead of Japan as the world’s second largest economy, China has reached another milestone: displacing the UK as the world’s fifth largest arms supplier.

In a new study released Monday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said, “This is the first time China has been in the top five arms exporters since the end of the Cold War (in 1992).”

Asked how Chinese arms compare with some of the more sophisticated Western weapons systems, Dr. Paul Holtom, senior researcher and director of the Arms Transfers Programme at SIPRI, told IPS, “It is perhaps also more pertinent to ask how Chinese weapons for export compare to those being offered by Russia, Ukraine etc. as it is with these suppliers that China is likely to be a rival in the short-to medium-term.”

Holtom said the profile of China’s recipients remains predominantly lower income states in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas.

China’s rise has been driven primarily by large-scale arms acquisitions by Pakistan, a country once described by a Chinese delegate as “our Israel”.

The United States is currently the largest supplier of weapons to Israel, a longtime political, economic and military ally, which is heavily protected against any forms of sanctions in the Security Council.

According to SIPRI, the five largest suppliers of major conventional weapons during the five-year period 2008-12 were the United States (30 percent of global arms exports), Russia (26 percent), Germany (seven percent), France (six percent) and China (five percent).

This is the first time that the UK has not been in the top five since at least 1950, the earliest year covered by SIPRI data.

Overall, the volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons grew by 17 percent between 2003-2007 and between 2008-12, according to the study.

Traditionally, the world’s five major arms exporters have been the five permanent members of the Security Council, the only U.N. body with the power to declare war and peace.

Germany, currently the third largest arms supplier, is a not a permanent member of the Security Council, but the UK is.

Besides being an exporter, China was also a key arms importer during the period 2008-12

Asia and Oceania accounted for almost half (47 percent) of global imports of major conventional weapons.

The top five importers of major conventional weapons worldwide were India (12 per cent of global imports), China (six percent), Pakistan (five percent), South Korea (five percent), and Singapore (four percent) – all in Asia.

These sales come at a time of heightening tensions over territorial disputes in the East and South China seas.

Asked if most developing countries were attracted to Chinese weapons due to discounted prices, or due to the fact that Beijing does not lay down political conditions, including human rights standards, Holtom told IPS it is difficult to definitively say what the main attraction is.

Cost and also the terms of the arrangements – e.g. long-term low interest loans, barter etc. – will obviously be an important element in procurement considerations, he pointed out.

The issue of “security of supply” could also be a factor.

From the perspective of some analysts in Moscow, for example, the decision to include S-300 SAM systems in the scope of the Russian arms embargo on Iran damaged Russia’s reputation with regards to a “secure source of arms supplies” and there is a fear that China will be a beneficiary of this.

Holtom said Wikileaks, the online organisation known to publish classified documents, indicates that Chinese companies are also sensitive to issues of human rights concerns and pressure from the United States.

“But it is likely to still be regarded as a ‘secure source of arms supplies’ compared with some of the other major suppliers that assess arms export against a wider range of criteria than China – e.g. European Union member states apply the eight criteria of the EU Common Position relating to serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, impact on conflict and instability and diversion risks,” he said.

He said China’s three principles on arms sales are: contribution to the self-defence capability of the recipient state; not harming the peace, security and stability of the region or world; non-interference in the recipient country’s internal affairs.

Holtom also pointed out there have been very significant developments with regards to the Chinese arms industry since the reforms of the late 1990s.

However, he said it is perhaps important to stress that some sectors are able to deliver more advanced systems than others, and that there is also a difference between systems that are being produced for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and those that are being produced for export.

The items that feature in SIPRI data on deliveries remain low-cost and dated systems, such as the F-7 combat aircraft.

However, the JF-17/FC-1 has been developed and delivered to Pakistan and this has been an important factor for China’s rise in the SIPRI statistics and there is interest from a number of states.

Like the J-10 combat aircraft, these items contain Russian components that could come into play with regards to export prospects and competition.

With regards to battle tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, frigates, anti-ship missiles and Man Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS), China has secured some clients that are perhaps attracted by the lower costs of these items and anecdotally there are comments that both the equipment, terms of the deals and training are improving.