Arms Sales Research Articles

“Providing for the Common Defense?” The Outsourcing of America's National Security through the Commercial Sale of Arms and Arms Production

How can a democracy and the tenets of democratic society be preserved and protected amid the contemporary security challenges that pose a threat to democracy and its tenets? As democracies fashion their new security strategies to deal with these new threats, what are the chances that some of these cures might pose more harm than good? This paper describes what has emerged over the past decade as perhaps the greatest unintended consequence facing the United States and global security: the globalization of the conventional arms market and the commercialization and “foreignization” of the US military-industrial complex. President Eisenhower's 1961 warning has come home to roost in the early 2000s, now representing an “outsourcing of national security” at risk of escalating as much as deflating the security challenges facing American democracy today.

Constraints and Adjustments in Portugal's Policy toward Israel

Throughout most of its existence the State of Israel had only a handful of friends and allies. However, even during the era of pan-Arabism, when Arab nationalism held sway over the Middle East, eng...

Military diplomacy through arms transfers: A case study of China

Military diplomacy has long been one of the essential constituents of international diplomacy and an effective method to foster bilateral and regional relationships. Arms transfers serve as an important foreign policy tool and have become, a crucial dimension of world politics. Conventional arms transfers entail not only the provision of weapons/ equipment but carry with them a number of military commitments that have long‐term implications. The PLA has always had a significant role in shaping and implementing China's foreign policy. China has invariably used arms sales to promote military diplomacy and further its foreign policy interests. In the regional context, China has attempted to reduce India's influence by arming its neighbours and establishing strong military ties with them. The strategic avenues generated by China's arms trade are a good cue for India. With a high‐tech defence industry and production of world‐class military equipment, India is well placed to advance military diplomacy through arms sales.

The Arms Trade in Russian-Chinese Relations: Identity, Domestic Politics, and Geopolitical Positioning

Why would a declining power help arm a neighboring and once-hostile rising power? Current international relations literature cannot explain relationships in which one powerful country contributes directly to its long-term relative decline in order to make smaller, short-term gains. This study focuses on one example, the Treaty on Good Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, signed in Moscow on July 16, 2001. Presenting evidence that this alliance embodies a relationship that is based primarily on sales of arms from Russia to China, the authors argue that this association cannot be explained by current theory. Three variables appear most important to understanding the arms sales element of this case: declining relative position discloses the structural factors behind Russia's actions; domestic policy explains its willingness to make what had appeared as rash sacrifices; and identity issues explain the core motivations and interests of each actor.

The British government and the sale of arms to the lesser European powers, 1936-39

The British government and the sale of arms to the lesser European powers, 1936-39

Our war too: American women against the Axis

In the late 1930s, a number of American women - especially those allied with various peace and solationist groups - protested against the nation's entry into World War II. While their story is fairly well known, Margaret Paton-Walsh reveals a far less familiar story of women who fervently felt that American intervention was absolutely necessary. Paton-Walsh recounts how the United States became involved in the war, but does so through the eyes of American women who faced it as a necessary evil. Covering the period between 1935 and 1941, she examines how these women functioned as political actors - even though they were excluded from positions of power - through activism in women's organizations, informal women's networks, and even male-dominated lobbying groups. In the Great Debate over whether America should enter the war, some women favored aid to the Allies not because they hoped for war but because they hoped aid would forestall more direct U.S. involvement - and also because they believed war was preferable to a Nazi victory. Paton-Walsh shows that this activism involved some of the most prominent women of their day. Elizabeth Cutter Morrow - whose son-in-law, Charles Lindbergh, was an isolationist spokesman - supported the revision of the Neutrality Acts to allow the sale of arms to the Allies and expressed her support in a national radio broadcast. Soon other women joined this debate: Esther Brunauer of the AAUW, journalist Dorothy Thompson, and organizations like the League of Women Voters and National Women's Trade Union League broke from the pacifist tradition to advocate American aid for the Allied cause. Paton-Walsh shows how these women grasped the implications of the Lend-Lease program for America's entry into the war but supported it nevertheless. By late 1941, the Women's Division of the Fight for Freedom Committee had been established; no longer merely advocating aid to Britain to keep American boys out of battle, this organization supported direct American involvement in the war as a means of stopping Nazi oppression. While most historians have focused on women's pacifism, Paton-Walsh connects women more directly to world events and shows how those interventionists reformulated maternalist ideas to justify and explain their beliefs. Our War Too is a story of American women trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, to preserve both their principles and their peace. It expands our understandign of women as political actors and thinkers about foreign policy as it sheds new light on American public opinion over the build-up to the war.

The Supreme Court, Separation of Powers, and the Protection of Individual Rights during Periods of War or National Security Emergency

The Supreme Court, Separation of Powers, and the Protection of Individual Rights during Periods of War or National Security Emergency* ROBERT F. TURNER To paraphrase Lincoln, there is little that I could say on the history ofthe Supreme Court’s handling ofcivil-liberties issues during periods ofwar or national emergency that could add or detract from the truly masterlyjob ChiefJustice William Rehnquist has already done in All the Laws But One.1 I highly recommend that book to any who have not yet read it. Because the ChiefJustice has provided such an outstanding overview ofthe subject, I shall depart a bit from what I might otherwise have said on this topic. While I do not intend to challenge the Chief Justice’s book—I would give it a grade of AH—one of my goals this evening is to challenge another popular book. In 1990, my very able friend Professor Harold Koh, ofYale Law School, published a volume called The National Security Constitution. It was se­ lectedby the American Political Science Asso­ ciation forthe 1991 RichardE.NeustadtAward as “the bestbook on the Americanpresidency,” and has been tremendously influential in the academic community.2 In the book, Professor Koh argues against what he called “unchecked executive discretion”3 in foreign affairs. He ar­ gues two points that I believe are fundamen­ tally mistaken. First, he perceives a struggle within the judiciary between two foreign pol­ icyparadigms, each representedby a landmark twentieth-century Supreme Court decision. He then argues thatthe courts have been too reluc­ tant to intervene in this area. Professor Koh’s central thesis is that the Court’s landmark 1936 decision in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation* 324 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY The Court’s 1936 decision in Curtiss-Wright con­ cerned an alleged violation of a prohibition of sales of arms or munitions to certain countries in South America. These men and women worked the produc­ tion line at a St. Louis plant making airplanes for the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. was essentially, to use his word, “trumped” by Justice Robert H. Jackson’s concurring opin­ ion in the 1952 case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, often referred to as the “Steel-Seizure Case.”5 Candidly, I think Professor Koh has pre­ sented us with a false dichotomy. I see no fun­ damental conflict between Curtiss-Wright and Youngstown. For more than sixty years, the Supreme Court has been guided by CurtissWright in dealing with issues of foreign af­ fairs. The case has been cited time and again by the Court in literally scores of decisions since 1936, making it the most frequently cited foreign-affairs case in our history. Indeed, it is evident that Justice Jackson himself saw no conflict between his views in the Steel Seizure case and in the earlier Curtiss-Wright case, since he expressly cited Curtiss-Wright as con­ trolling authority for foreign-affairs cases in which the President acts with the concurrence of Congress6—a fact pattern he proceeded to distinguish from that ofthe Steel Seizure case. Those of you who are knowledgeable about Curtiss-Wright will likely realize by the time I am finished that 1 believe the Court achieved the right result—but for the wrong reasons. It remains the seminal case in the area of foreign affairs, however, and I think rightly so. 1 believe that Professor Koh has made a simple but serious error. Because administra­ tion lawyers, in attempting to justify President Truman’s order directing Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer to seize privately owned steel mills during the Korean War, made reference to his “Commander-in-Chief” and “war” powers, Koh asks us to view the case as comparable to Curtiss-Wright. Butas Columbia Law School’s Professor Louis Henkin correctly observed in his 1972 volume on Foreign Affairs and the Constitution, “Youngstown has not been con­ sidered a ‘foreign affairs case.’”7 Indeed, the distinction is clear from even a cursory reading ofboth Justice Hugo Black’s majority opinion and Justice Jackson’s concur­ rence. Consider this language from the opinion ofthe Court: The order cannot properly be sus­ tained as an exercise ofthe President’s military power as Commander in Chief of...

Arming the Ayatollahs: Economic Lobbies in Russia’s Iran Policy

Powerful special interest groups influence Russian policy on the sale of arms to Iran.

Swords into Market Shares: Technology, Economics and Security in the New Russia by Glenn E. s> Schweitzer (review)

REVIEWS I89 instrumentsof 'financialrepression',like high reserve requirements,may be conditional on the bankreformand successfuldisinflation. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies T. M. MICKIEWICZ University College London Schweitzer, Glenn E. Swords intoMarket Shares: Technology, Economics andSecurity in the New Russia. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, 2000. xx + 307pp. Notes. Tables. Figures.Appendices. Index. ?2 I.95. WILL economic historians of the future decide the planned economies collapsed because of the failureto innovate?An economic systembuilt on the premiseof incrementsof quantitativeinputsprovedincapableof incorporating qualitative shifts derived from technology. Despite the massive size of the Soviet researchbase, science-pushproved an ineffectivesubstituteformarketpullin encouraginginnovationexcept wherethe Statedeemed itsfundamental interests at stake. Thus, world-class rocketry, space missions and lasers, but the microcomputer remained as distant as communism. That was then, however. The issue now is the relationshipbetween innovation and economic renewal. Can Russia's technological capability, in sharp decline but still considerable, play its part in the revival of economy and society?Or will the transitionalcrisisdrageverythingof value in post-Soviet society down with it? This is the theme of Glenn Schweitzer's book, though given that he is an American and that the book, both in style and content, is written largely for an American audience, it is also concerned with what America should 'do' about the innovation-transition relationship in Russia. That is, there is an assumption that America can and should be involved; though the actual motives and outcomes, as Schweitzer himself describes,may prove problematic and controversial. The book is structuredin ten chapters. Chapters one to three look at the implicationsof the economic crisis;the prospectsfor innovation;and the role of the military-industrialcomplex (MIC).Chaptersfourto sixexamine specific dimensions of the innovation-transitionrelationship:the search for finance; problems of patents, copyrights and fiscal incentives; and the loss of human capital. Chapters seven and eight examine the potential of the sixty-five science cities and three of the ten nuclear cities. Chapter nine looks at American policy options and chapter ten the prospects for the future. Six appendicesprovide detailson the Russianscience and technology base. Schweitzer outlines the contraction of what had been one of the world's largest research sectors. The number of research scientists has halved to around 45o,ooo but with perhaps only I00,000 of these research active. Less than one per cent of those who have left the sector have emigrated, mostly to the West, though necessarilythese have tended to be the best and brightest. State funding for research has contracted twenty-fold in ten years and now provides only half of finance, the remainder coming from self-funding and domestic and foreign private sources. As this suggeststhe private sector has been largely unable or unwilling to fill the gap left by the collapse of public support.42,000 small enterpriseswere classed as innovative in I999 but only I90 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 2,000 were doing real R&D. Innovation expenditures of Russian large enterpriseswere only 2 per cent of US equivalents,and even thisdisguisedthe factthat much of what was definedas researchwas actuallytechnical support. The reasonsfor the lack of privatesupportfor innovation arewell known:the investment, legal and tax environments. But arguablyas significanthas been the reformstrategy,and in particularthe monetaryorthodoxy imposed in the 9gosto combat inflation. Innovation cannot be conducted on the basis of barter or promissorynotes and thus has been relentlesslysqueezed between the demonetarizationof the economy and the collapsingfiscalyield. With perhaps three-quartersof basic researchin Soviet times takingplace within the MIC, it has been impossibleto separatethe questionsof renewalof the researchbase and demilitarizationof the economy. Schweitzerarguesthat there has been a fundamental difference of interpretationbetween Russian managers and Western advisers as to what conversion means: the former viewing it as a supplement to militaryproduction, the latter as an alternative (p. 77). In the event neitherhasproven realistic.The largeamountsof civilian goods thatthe Soviet-eraMIC producedbecame unmarketableafterliberalization of trade, and significant investment to produce new goods has been absent. This has led to furtherconfrontation of interestsand interpretations between Russia and the West on related issues of non-proliferation,conventional arms sales, and dual-use technology. Schweitzer deals with these in a balanced way but behind this debate lurksan unavoidable question:has US interventionbeen designed to help Russia or itself? Ultimately Schweitzer is forced to concede that 'veryfew...

China's Strategic Modernization: The Russian Connection

Mr. Chairman, let me now turn to China, whose drive for recognition as a Great Power is one of the toughest challenges that we face. Beijing's goal of becoming a key world player and especially more powerful in East Asia has come sharply into focus. It is pursuing these goals through an ambitious economic reform agenda, military modernization, and a complex web of initiatives aimed at expanding China's international influence--especially relative to the United States.... Russian arms are a key component of this buildup. [But] arms sales are only one element of a burgeoning Sino-Russian relationship. Moscow and Beijing plan to sign a 'friendship treaty' later this year, highlighting common interests and a willingness to cooperate diplomatically against US policies that they see as unfriendly to their interest. -- George J. Tenet, Director, CIA (1) February 2001 The Chinese military is in the process of a long-term strategic modernization program. Uniformed and civilian leaders in Beijing have studied recent conflicts, including the United States' performance in the Gulf War and its more recent operation in Kosovo. Their studies have analyzed comparative Chinese shortfalls and identified improvements that need to be made in their forces and doctrine. China's military leaders are well aware of the gap in modem military capabilities that exists between the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and modem militaries exemplified by the US armed forces. Most foreign analyses concerning the existing and potential Chinese military threat emphasize recent equipment purchases from Russia and the trends these purchases portend. This article reviews and analyzes those acquisitions in relation to Chinese strategic modernization, draws overall conclusions, and then suggests that an expanded policy of engagement with China is the best course for the United States. The notion of containing China is not realistic. Instead, the United States should continue to improve its relations with China, to use its strong position of power and influence to build a solid foundation for US-China relations, and to shape that relationship to both countries' present and future mutual benefit. A Strategic Relationship of Mutual Necessity Russia clearly has become China's chief supplier of modern weapons and military technology. Virtually all of the weapons technology of the former Soviet Union, including its most advanced systems, is now for sale to the highest bidder--which has turned out to be China. About 70 percent of Russia's foreign arms sales went to China in 2000. (2) Some observers have characterized the Chinese approach toward purchasing Russian military equipment as buyers at a fire sale. (3) Russian arms merchants have introduced Chinese military leaders to a variety of hardware and technology that could greatly improve existing PLA capabilities. Thanks to the Russian connection, China can conceivably, through reverse engineering, leapfrog over obsolete intermediate technologies, perhaps developing state-of-the-art military capabilities comparable to those of the United States in a decade or less. (4) In the not-too-distant future, China may well be producing sophisticated weapon systems domestically. Elements of the defense industries in both China and Russia have established relationships with their counterpart organizations. The foundation for these relationships was set during then-President Boris Yeltsin's visit to Beijing in late April 1996. (5) These relationships continue to be endorsed. Indeed, they are supported even more strongly by Russia's current President, Vladimir Putin, based on his apparent intent to secure short-term gains in hard currency for the Russian economy and political clout from Russia's comeback in the global arms business. (6) Over the past five years, reports of negotiations for many advanced systems and technologies have been widespread, although they are generally vague and sometimes exaggerated. …

Rapprochement or Rivalry? Russia-China Relations in a Changing Asia. Edited by Sherman W. Garnett. Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000. x, 439 pp. $24.95 (paper).

The emerging relationship between China and Russia is perhaps the most important force redefining international relations in post-Cold War Asia. In the past five years, Russia and China have built a strategic partnership aimed at the 21st century, a development that deeply worries some Western observers and puzzles others. In this first comprehensive study of Russian-Chinese relations, Sherman Garnett and a team of 15 U.S., Russian, and Chinese scholars analyze the most important issues posed by the relationship, including cross-border trade, the impact of Russia's center-periphery politics, migration, arms sales, and (mis)perceptions of one another. The book assesses what will be one of the most important relationships, economically and strategically, in the dynamic region stretching from Central Asia to the Far East. It also weighs the prospects for real cooperation between Russia, a severely weakened power, and China, a power on the rise. Contributing authors include Stephen Blank, Sherman Garnett, Vilya Gel'bras, Harry Gelman, Li Jingjie, Michael McFaul, Lu Nanquan, Martha Olcott, Gilbert Rozman, Judith Thornton, Dmitri Trenin, Tamara Troyakova, Galina Vitkovskaya, Alexei Voskressenski, Elizabeth Wishnick, and Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya.

From “Strategic Partners” to “Strategic Competitors”: George W. Bush and the Politics of U.S. China Policy

Ever since Richard Nixon's 1972 “opening” to China, U.S. presidential election campaigns have been the occasion for the opposition party to strongly challenge the incumbent president's policy of engagement toward China. Once in power, however, successful challengers (Carter, Reagan, Clinton) have softened their criticism and accepted the strategic necessity of cooperation with China. In the first stage of this cycle, the 2000 election appeared to be no exception, as presidential challenger George W. Bush sharply criticized Bill Clinton's notion of a “strategic partnership” with the PRC and proposed instead that the U.S. and China were “strategic competitors.” This paper examines the first six months of the Bush presidency to see if the historic pattern of post-election reversion to the status-quo ante is repeating itself in the Bush Administration. Looking, inter alia, at the individual preferences of key administration policymakers, the administration's enhanced arms sale package to Taiwan, the president's pledge to do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan, and the mid-summer visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell to Beijing, the paper documents the existence of a sharp division between “soft” realists and “hard” realists within the Bush Administration; and it concludes that while there has been a perceptible shift toward a more adversarial outlook, it is too soon to tell whether this shift will be partly offset by the normal first-term “regression to the mean.”

ARMING THE REVOLUTIONARY UNITED FRONT

On 7 July 1999, the government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) signed the Lomé Peace Agreement to end the civil war. A central component of this agreement called for the RUF to disarm. A year later, the RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, was in custody and the future of the peace accord in grave doubt. Far from disarming, all parties have been rearming at an alarming rate, in contravention of a 1997 UN arms embargo and despite a regional moratorium on the production, procurement and sale of small arms and light weapons. The political and security situation remains extremely fragile. This article explores the ease with which small arms and light weapons can be obtained, and questions the efficacy of existing armament and disarmament policies. Given the availability of arms, the weakness of the current government, the relative strength of the RUF, and the fluidity of alliances among the country's armed groups, the likelihood of continued conflict in Sierra Leone is great.

The Armed Forces of Russia in Asia

For decades Russia, whose largest frontier is with China, has deployed massive air and land forces in north-east Asia, and for many years Vladivostok was the largest non-US naval base in the north-east Asia Pacific. This book attempts to bring together the known facts about this aspect of north-Asian security affairs. It analyzes the strategic policies underpinning deployment, describes the strategic forces and their regional organization, and explores the role of Russia's regional military industry, regional arms sales, and regional military-co-operation activities.

U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan: Implications for the Future of the Sino-U.S. Relationship

The diplomatic strategy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to isolate Taiwan internationally has been particularly effective at reducing the number of countries engaged in arms sales to the island. Today, the U.S. is essentially the sole source of imported arms for Taiwan's military, and hence the increasing focus of the PRC's nationalist ire. Indeed, arms sales are the basis for one of the most important disputes between the U.S. and China, with far reaching implications for the future of bilateral relations. 1 The dispute rests in part on the differing interpretation and implementation of the U.S.-PRC Joint Communique of August 17, 1982, and the U.S. Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (TRA). Beijing maintains that arms sales are a flagrant violation of its sovereignty and the vaguely defined quantitative and qualitative ceilings on such sales agreed to by the U.S. in the Joint Communique have left it vulnerable to harsh Chinese criticism. The PRC views U.S. support for Taiwan under the jurisdiction of the TRA as the main obstacle to both Beijing's goal of reunification under the one country, two systems framework and the development of normal relations with the U.S. Nonetheless, the U.S. has demonstrated that it remains committed to meeting its obli-

U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan: Implications for the Future of the Sino-U.S. Relationship

U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan: Implications for the Future of the Sino-U.S. Relationship

Rwanda & the media: imagery, war & refuge

This article critically examines The New York Timesphotojournalistic coverage of Rwanda from 1989 through the events of 1994. It shows which stories were left out (French/South African arms sales, Belgian colonial heritage, and World Bank/IMF interventions) and which errors were retained (tribalism as causation, dark continent/exoticisation theories). The images that the media projected to the United States public show the multiple ways in which agency remains unproblematised especially with regard to gender and stigmatisation. Through these images, the rhetorics of journalism frame much of our understanding of global events and consequently our responses to them. Finally, this article ends by making an argument for using critical social theories to engage the media and politicians for change.

The Ethics of the International Arms Trade

Unless one is a pacifist there is little difficulty in theory in ethically justifying a country’s entitlement to produce or to purchase, or even to market, weapons for the preservation of internal order or external peace. In practice, however, the international arms industry gives considerable cause for ethical misgivings, which are here explored. “It is difficult to escape from the notion that the primary factor behind the international sale of arms is the generation of profits. If companies are left unchecked, there is considerable evidence that companies will exploit commercial opportunities to the detriment of ethical considerations.”

Human rights considerations and U.S. foreign policy: The Latin American experience

The question of the nature of the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and international human rights remains unanswered. While research exists, there is little consensus on the matter. Moreover, most of the research is limited in scope and methodology to case studies, analyses of a single year, or focusses solely on economic aid allocations as a proxy for U.S. foreign policy. This study comprehensively conceptualizes U.S. foreign policy by analyzing U.S. trade, investment, military arms sales, and various categories of foreign aid with the human rights practices of recipient nations in Latin America over a three year period. It was found that human rights tended not to be a consideration in allocating foreign aid and that it was linked to foreign investments and arms sales during only one of the three years studied. However, a strong relationship existed between human rights and bilateral trade with Latin America, in that the United States traded with nations having the best human rights records.

?Batting for Britain?: British arms sales in the Thatcher years

The Scott Inquiry into “arms-to-Iraq” was in many ways a fitting epitaph on the arms sales policy pursued by the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher from 1979–1990. As the Scott Report clearly showed, the Thatcher governments favoured a highly permissive approach to arms sales. It was an approach which invigorated the British arms export industry, but at the same time invited controversy and was not without cost. This article examines some of the methods, controversies and costs of the Thatcher governments' arms sales drive.