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| Editor: Kathryn Schultz | Publisher: Adam Luther |
| ISSUE #3 | July 31,1997 |
| Editor: Kathryn Schultz | Publisher: Adam Luther |
| ISSUE #3 | July 31,1997 |
According to U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA), "other factors, including short-term economic benefits from sales, dominate the U.S. Government's decision making process concerning arms sales and the nature of the recipient regimes appears to be of little consequence." This comes as a surprise to very few. What is notable, however, is the fact that Congress may do something about it.
On 24 July 1997, Senator Kerry introduced the Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers Act of 1997. This bill would place restrictions on military assistance and arms transfers to governments that are not democratic, do not respect human rights, are engaged in armed aggression, or are not participating in the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms. This follows passage earlier this year of similar legislation in the House of Representatives as an amendment to the bill to authorize State Department activities for fiscal year 1998.
In introducing the Code Senator Kerry pointed out that "like many other aspects of our national security structure, arms sales and other military assistance must be adjusted to the realities of the post-cold-war era." He called for an evaluation of "the effect that arms transfers have on regional stability, the promotion of democracy and the protection of human rights."
Kerry also noted the following pertinent facts:
Editor's Note: You can read the full text of the legislation and Senator Kerry's comments as reprinted in the Congressional Record online (http://mail2.cdi.org:80/archives/armstrade/jul/0195.html). For more information on arms trade issues, visit CDI's Arms Trade Data Base (http://www.cdi.org/atdb) and/or subscribe to David Isenberg's arms trade e-mail list. To subscribe to that list, send an e-mail message to majordomo@cdi.org with: subscribe armtrade [Insert YOUR email address] in the body of the message or go to http://mail2.cdi.org/archives/subscribe.html and follow instructions. The archives of the arms trade list are also online (http://mail2.cdi.org/archives/armstrade).
The Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released in May, suggested a number of ways to free up dollars to fund major new weapons purchases. One way was through modest reductions in some planned weapons purchases. The QDR recommendations included reducing the purchase of F-22 fighters from 438 aircraft to 339. Originally the Air Force had put the total cost of the F-22 program at $71 billion, of which $48 billion would go into actual production of the aircraft.
In an interview with "Defense Daily" (July 8, 1997), Air Force acquisition chief Arthur Money indicated that plans to cut the number of F-22s purchased by 99 would reduce costs of the production phase by $5 billion. Serious concerns have been raised, however, about the ability of the Air Force and the plane's builders, Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, to control production costs.
Earlier this year, a report released by the Pentagon's Cost Analysis Improvement Group, a panel specially convened to look into the costs of the F-22 program, indicated that production costs of the 438 aircraft could exceed estimates by as much as $16 billion. In response to the study, the Air Force called on contractors to devise ways of cutting program costs.
Together the service and contractors devised a plan to reduce total program costs by $15 billion through such measures as multi-year contracts and improved production methods. Serious questions remain, however, about whether the projected savings will materialize.
The research and development (R&D) portion of the program is already more than $2 billion above original estimates. Both the House and Senate have proposed reducing program's R&D budget for next year by amounts ranging from $40 to $400 million. Meanwhile, an Air Force white paper released earlier this year indicated that a $500 million cut in the current R&D budget could add $8 billion to the total cost of the program.
Immediately following the Madrid summit of NATO, President Clinton and the secretaries of state and defense toured virtually all countries of Central and Eastern Europe. They urged the nations selected for membership to carry out military reforms, and consoled the peoples in the rejected states. Apart from the politically sensitive Baltic states, there was one notable omission in the U.S. administration's itinerary: the Slovak Republic.
The Slovak government has been a target of criticism by both the United States and the European Union (EU) for alleged anti-democratic tendencies. The government of Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar responded by accusing both bodies of meddling in Slovakia's internal affairs and, for the most part, ignored all changes proposed by the critics. Not surprisingly, Slovakia is out of the contest for NATO membership. It did not even win a mention among the "countries aspiring to NATO membership" in Madrid's final communique.
Why can exclusion cause problems? Buoyed by the non-attention, anti-democratic forces will be better able to promote an alliance with Russia. In a Europe again dividing in two parts, Slovakia's size, location, and relative military weakness can hardly guarantee the ability to defend itself. If the West shows little or no support, maybe Russia will.
Even if the Russian-lead counter-alliance to NATO does not materialize, a rogue country in the middle of Europe can cause enough headaches. Yugoslavia, and more recently Albania, have painfully demonstrated that armed conflicts in Europe are not a distant possibility. Slovakia contains a volatile mixture of ethnic feuds without the safeguards against conflict that developed democracies enjoy.
In recent weeks the heads of state of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic warned NATO of the dangers of isolating Slovakia. In a private interview for CDI, an Eastern European diplomat also admitted that no country wants to form NATO's eastern border, with all the dangers and responsibilities such a position entails.
Slovakia's situation illustrates the dangers of a selective approach that NATO adopted for expansion. NATO and the US administration gave no meaningful criteria by which applicants are judged, and no concrete answers to how far NATO expansion should reach. The creeping of the alliance eastward thus destabilizes the region as the nations outside NATO's borders are not certain what the new European security architecture will look like, and whether they will be included in it.
Editor's Note: Visit CDI's web site (http://www.cdi.org/issues/Europe) for more information on NATO expansion issues.
Last year in November, the Fourth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) convened in Geneva. At this conference, state parties reaffirmed their support for the Ad Hoc Committee created in 1994 to consider possible verification measures and draft proposals to strengthen the BWC. Further, they tasked the committee to "review its working methods, and move into a negotiating format." The Ad Hoc committee will report its findings at the Fifth Review Conference in 2001.
It is important that the Ad Hoc Committee focuses on establishing basic priorities for a nascent verification regime. The priorities of this stage should stem from the tenets of the Organization for the Prohibition for Chemical Weapons (OPCW) -- the verification regime for the CWC. While specific provisions cannot be translated from the OPCW, there are fundamental principles which can be applied.
First, biological agents could be "scheduled" or categorized, as chemical agents are in the OPCW. Since many biological agents are dual use technologies, state parties will need to negotiate what schedules will receive priority for destruction.
Second, challenge inspections should be implemented as a verification measure. Although challenge inspections will be more difficult in the BWC than in the CWC due to the small size of biological production facilities, they will still aid in locating and monitoring BW production sites.
Third, the BWC could incorporate a threshold for different biological agents, albeit at a different level than chemical thresholds. These thresholds would apply to both commercial and governmental producers of biological toxins and would vary depending on the toxicity of the agent.
Finally, the BWC should engage biotechnology industries in further negotiations regarding the categorization of various biological agents. The dual use nature of biotechnology mandates that the BWC gain the cooperation of the biotechnological industries in limiting proliferation of biological agents.
Incorporating these four steps into a BWC verification regime should create a skeletal framework for the negotiating stage. Although a comprehensive agreement on a verification regime will be laborious, it is important to note that the United States, China, and the Russian Federation are state parties to the convention; thus a verification regime approved by the state parties to the BWC would encompass a majority of the stockpiles and production facilities of biological weapons.
Editor's Note: Visit CDI's web site (http://www.cdi.org/issues/cbw) for more information on the BWC and CWC.
Sensationalistic news coverage depict employees of private security firms as a new breed of mercenaries -- bloodthirsty assassins who kill for profit. Yet individual soldiers who are currently employed or seek employment in private security companies such as Executive Outcomes (EO), Sandline International, and Military Professional Resources Incorporated are merely seizing the moment. Today, advertising and selling the art of war somehow appears to be legitimate. Promotional videos and glossy brochures of EO display soldiers training armies and offering services in battle strategies, clandestine warfare, medical aid, and sniper training.
The trend in global military downsizing continues to create a glut of professional military experts and soldiers. The end of the Cold War marked a decline in superpower involvement in regional conflicts creating a demand for military forces in many developing countries. Basic economics explains that the intersection of a supply and demand curve in the case at hand creates a market in which a high demand dictates a high price. Unemployed military experts are simply accepting offers in professions they know best, fueling the emergence of private security firms around the globe. Business suits by day and fatigues by night, these dually-outfitted mercenaries seek acceptance or apathy, both equally pernicious, among the public and international community.
Fortunately, high-profile private security firms so far have been working for legitimate governments -- those recognized by the UN -- and not extremist religious factions or anti-government rebel groups. This may not last. Mercenary companies pursuing quick profits might soon find that the only niche left in the international market is to work for "illegitimate' governments, or rogue states. This could, in turn, threaten regional stability throughout the world. This is only one of many serious issues surrounding the privatization of armed forces. Regardless of what images mercenaries might conjure, private security firms ultimately preach the idea that "might makes right," demonstrating that justice, in their eyes, is always the rule of the stronger.