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| March 9, 2000 |
| March 9, 2000 |
UN Hosts First Prepcom for 2001 Small Arms Conference
By Rachel Stohl, Senior Analyst, rstohl@cdi.org
Representatives from UN Member States joined 37 NGOs in New York last week for the first preparatory committee (Prepcom) for the 2001 United Nations Conference on Illicit Weapons Trafficking in All its Aspects. The 2001 Conference, established by UN Resolution 54/54V, is to focus on coordinated international action to deal with the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons.
The outcome of the Conference is still undecided, but the majority of governments believe that the Conference will establish a program of action for international, regional, and national initiatives. Most experts do not believe that a global treaty on small arms will emerge from the deliberations.
Unfortunately, the initial Prepcom meeting in New York led to few significant decisions on the Conference. The most significant decision was the election of the Conference Chairman, Carlos dos Santos (Mozambique) and 25 Vice-Chairmen. The majority of decisions, however, were put off for future Prepcom sessions. One of the most crucial debates concerns the role of civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the Conference. The resolution creating the Conference requested the Prepcom to "take a decision on the modalities of attendance of non-governmental organizations at its sessions." Past Prepcoms on other weapons issues have allowed NGOs to attend the formal plenary sessions, make written materials available to participants, receive Conference documents, and make a limited number of presentations to the Conference plenary. The Prepcom process will eventually have to decide the role of NGOs in the Conference proceedings, but the formal decision has been put off for now.
The other major point of contention in the proceeding is what "all its [illicit weapons trafficking] aspects" in the Conference title means. Some governments argue that "all its aspects" clearly points to the legal trade as well as illicit trade. Those governments are pushing for the inclusion of provisions that would harmonize export control laws, including establishing criteria for legal weapons exports.
Lee Feinstein, the Head of the U.S. Delegation, told the Prepcom, "as a supplier nation, we [the United States] recognize our special responsibility to maintain the highest standards of restraint and to keep our own house in order." Feinstein said that the "international community should pursue an integrated, comprehensive approach; in countries of origin and countries of conflict, among buyers, sellers, and brokers, and with governments, as well as non-governmental organizations. The Conference should consider: further coordination and promotion of efforts to support the destruction of excess weapons and adequate stockpile security; greater transparency; strengthening the observance of embargoes established by the United Nations; development of model regulations, or standards, on the adequacy of firearms marking techniques; and procedures in partnership with the firearms manufacturers."
Some countries such as Canada, South Africa, Mexico, and the European Union want the Conference to "recognize the interrelationship that exits between illicit trafficking and smuggling and the licit trade" and "analyze those aspects of the legal trade that are directly related with the trafficking and production of small arms and light weapons, given the fact that a large percentage of illicit transfers start with arms, which in the beginning, were transferred legally." Others, such as Pakistan, want the focus of the Conference to be purely on the illicit trade.
Some countries sought a compromise role. Singapore said the Conference should "focus on illicit transfers, with exception of losses of small arms owing to lax national controls, and the illicit diversion of legally traded small arms to the black market." But, Thailand and Papua New Guinea (on behalf of the South Pacific group) felt the Conference should focus on the illicit trade as well as measures to prevent diversion of legal arm sales.
The United Nations had previously called for no less than three Prepcom sessions to decide the Conference logistics. The next Prepcom will take place in New York January 8-19, 2001 and is slated to discuss the draft program of action for the Conference. The third session will be March 19-30 in an undecided location, possibly in Kenya. A decision on the exact dates and location of the 2001 Conference has not yet been made. The decision has been referred to the next General Assembly.
The Billions For "Defense" Jeopardize Our Safety
Oscar Lurie, Research Associate, olurie@cdi.org
The President calls it "Defense" and asks Congress to appropriate $278 billion for FY2001. Based on its recent behavior, Congress is likely to vote more, and will also label the appropriation "Defense."
But the lion's share of this money is not spent by the Pentagon on protecting American citizens. It goes to supporting U.S. military activities, including interventions, throughout the world. Were this budget and the organization it finances called the "Military Department," then attitudes might be quite different. Americans are willing to pay for defense, but they would probably be much less willing to spend billions of dollars if the money were labeled "Foreign Military Operations."
Secretary Cohen's decision that all members of the armed forces must receive a series of inoculations to protect them against anthrax reveals much about the Pentagon's operational philosophy. Aside from its natural occurrence in the soil, anthrax doesn't exist in the U.S. as a disease. But U.S. policymakers fear that other nations may be ready to use anthrax as a weapon against U.S. forces engaged in a foreign conflict. The Pentagon has its own buzzword for such danger -- an "asymmetric threat." Its strategists believe that hostile groups or states, when confronted by overwhelming American military power, will be so desperate that they will resort to biological and chemical warfare. Hence the need for inoculating the troops against anthrax.
Top level officials responsible for the total welfare of our country see a broader danger. In the words of Defense Secretary Cohen: "The challenge of terrorism demands that we think the unthinkable -- attacks with weapons of mass destruction on American soil." Bill Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 63 goes further: "Because of our military strength, future enemies, whether nations, groups, or individuals, may seek to harm us in non-traditional ways including attacks within the United States." The President's 1999 National Security Strategy again warns of attacks on our citizens and infrastructure at home.
It is national policy that firemen, police, hazardous material specialists, health professionals, and other state and local personnel will be "first responders" to domestic attacks. The U.S. military is not being counted on to protect citizens from such terrorist attacks. While the President's 2001 budget provides $1.9 billion for national missile defense, it explicitly devotes only $35 million to military action against domestic terrorists. This small sum is used to fund programs in which the Reserves and National Guard train the first responders to deal with the consequences of chemical and biological attacks.
A close examination of the budget shows that the bulk of the funding for programs to mitigate the terrorist threat goes to the Department of Health and Human Services ($264 million) and the Justice Department: ($300 million for the FBI, and $185 million for counter terrorism training equipment, technical assistance, and technology development). The budget document is not clear as to whether any money is made available for acquisition and storage of vaccines against biological weapons.
Anthrax and smallpox are deadly diseases. Anthrax is inexpensive to make and has a fatality rate of 80 to 90 percent if untreated. But if sufficient federal money were available, our civilian population could be offered vaccination to protect against anthrax. Thousands of wool-workers and veterinarians have used the vaccine without serious side effects, and so have tens of thousands of military personnel.
Smallpox is highly contagious. Before it was eradicated by universal vaccination three decades ago, it was killing 2 million people a year. But with this "victory" over the disease, Americans stopped being vaccinated, so today about 90% of Americans are unprotected against the disease. Currently no manufacturing capability exists for smallpox vaccine, and less than 15 million doses are available. If more doses were required, it would take up to a year to produce them. Thus if a city were attacked by terrorists using smallpox, the disease could kill one third of its victims.
Several fundamental changes could significantly increase the health and safety of the American people. Billions could be diverted from the military budget to the procurement of assets for the benefit of us civilians. Stockpiles of vaccines and payments to medical personnel to administer them would be necessary first steps. The equipment that would be needed in the event of an attack, such as for detection and decontamination, also could be bought and stored in quantities appropriate to the size and other characteristics of our various population centers. This would be genuine defense, the kind that would garner strong support.
Taking steps to bolster preparedness in the homeland might require a significant change in military expenditures for personnel, readiness, and weapons for the Pentagon. But this might make our political leaders less willing to get involved in foreign conflicts. By lessening the exposure of our troops to states and groups that oppose U.S. policies and influence, we would reduce the opportunities for terrorist acts overseas and allow U.S. policymakers to concentrate on defense at home.
In 1999, the RAND organization, which does studies for the Pentagon that usually end up advocating larger military budgets, issued a report on terrorism stating that "military actions today usually support less than vital interests." It then advised the Secretary of Defense that "the United States must limit its foreign military commitments that do not represent vital interests."
Unfortunately, even RAND's rhetoric related to "homeland defense" has not been matched by the dollars to protect Americans from possible attacks employing biological and chemical agents. Some would argue that if the threats from these agents is serious enough to protect deployed troops against their possible use, homeland defense requires protecting the population against a possible attack. And if we're talking about defense, the money to protect the American people should come from the Pentagon's budget.
Pentagon Still Can't Pass an Audit
Christopher Hellman, Senior Analyst, chellman@cdi.org
The first in a series of audits of the Defense Department's Fiscal Year 1999 financial statements by the Pentagon's own Inspector General (IG) shows that none of the services is as yet capable of completing a financial audit, even though Congress enacted legislation in 1994 and 1996 setting new financial reporting requirements for the Pentagon.
The report, released last week, found that of $6.9 trillion in accounting entries, only $2.6 trillion could be fully documented and $2.3 trillion in accounting entries "[were] not supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine their validity." Information on the remaining $2 trillion in entries arrived too late and could not be examined, but it is reasonable to assume that the $2.3 trillion in undocumented entries -- representing one-third of all entries -- is a conservative figure.
That a federal agency as large and diverse as the Department of Defense cannot account for each and every transaction is no surprise. What is disturbing is the magnitude and the duration of the problem. The Federal Financial Management Act of 1994 and additional laws passed in 1996 require the Defense Department to submit audited financial statements each year. Neither the Defense Department nor any of the individual services have done so as of yet. And as the IG report notes, "DoD does not expect to have systems necessary to meet these new requirements before the year 2003."
As part of the financial review, the IG was also required to look at whether DoD followed existing laws which would eventually enable the agency to complete an audit. The IG found that "DoD did not fully comply with laws and regulations that had a direct and material affect on its ability to determine financial statement amounts."
During the period that the Defense Department is implementing new accounting practices and coordinating computer tracking of accounting entries, it is looking at interim measures to improve the current system. As part of this effort, the IG reports that "DoD has undertaken an interim track that includes the use of contractors to address many of the existing deficiencies."
Sound a little like letting the fox guard the chicken coop? In actuality, it makes a fair degree of sense, as private corporations are required to use standard accounting practices and are in many ways held to a more rigorous standard than their government counterparts. Failure to submit auditable financial records can result in criminal prosecutions. Not so for the government.
In fact, a 1994 General Accounting Office (GAO) study looking at Defense Department "problem disbursements" -- payments made by the Pentagon for which there was insufficient supporting documentation -- found that over a six month period, $751 million in checks had been returned to the Defense Department by contractors. Three quarters of the returned checks represented overpayments by the government. An additional GAO study found that the Columbus, Ohio, Defense Finance and Accounting (DFAS) Center, DoD's largest contract payment center, receives on average $1 billion in returned checks from defense contractors each year.
At a time when the chiefs of the military services are requesting $15 billion for Fiscal Year 2001 to meet "unfunded requirements" which they say cannot be paid for by the Pentagon's proposed $305 billion spending package, one is forced to ask the obvious question: how do they know?
For additional information, see "GAO Sees Reductions in Pentagon Mispayments," Weekly Defense Monitor, November 6, 1997. Click here to see the Inspector General's report #D-2000-91, February 25, 2000.
Chinese Navy One Of Many Arming Up In Asia
Corwin Vandermark, Research Assistant, cvanderm@cdi.org
Recent acquisitions by the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) have caused concern among those who believe that Beijing has ambitions to extend its influence throughout the waters surrounding Southeast Asia. While the PLAN is slowly preparing to expand into a blue-water capable force, it has a long way to go before it will become the undisputed naval power in Asia. Besides the United States Navy, current realities and long-term trends stand in the way of the PLAN playing a role larger than coastal defense.
The PLAN has purchased diesel submarines, anti-submarine helicopters, and an assortment of supersonic anti-ship missiles from Russia. The second of two Sovremenny-class destroyers is scheduled for delivery in November 2000. These, together with advanced Russian fighter planes, have improved China's military capabilities vis-a-vis Taiwan should Beijing decide to attack. However, China is still incapable of launching a successful invasion of the island, nor do recent acquisitions affect the capability of U.S. forces to inflict serious punishment in retaliation for such an attack.
Beyond Taiwan, there are fears that China is attempting to extend sovereignty over the Spratly archipelago and the South China Sea with the resources and shipping lanes found there. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines have long contested Chinese claims and they are each building up a defensive naval presence in response to China's activities and the rise of piracy in the region. Malaysia alone has added Russian Kilo-class submarines, two British-made light frigates carrying French Exocet ship-to-ship missiles, and four Italian missile corvettes. Vietnam, the Philippines, and Brunei are beefing up their own capabilities with the reasonably inexpensive yet potent combination of submarines and anti-ship missiles. Between 1994 and 1998, these four nations and Singapore imported more than $5.4 billion in major conventional weapons, with most of that sum going to naval and air defenses.
The pursuit by most nations of improved naval forces is not impelled solely by fears of China, but this fear is providing common cause against a perception of growing aggressiveness by the PLAN. While bilateral conflicts over the Spratlys have led to numerous confrontations between the neighboring countries, the five -- Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam -- that are members of ASEAN consider China to be the common threat, at least in terms of the South China Sea. If China tried to assert itself in the South China Sea, these nations would be able to put up a substantial resistance as long as they could set aside their political differences. The five can deploy a large array of naval forces and crucial air power in the area of the Spratlys that China presently can not.
Potential rivals to China are also arming to the south and west. To try to control separatist tendencies, Indonesia has begun a five-year program to enlarge its navy from 52,000 to 70,000 while its Marine Corps will add 10,000 men. Fourteen additional ships will be purchased to reinvigorate the aging fleet. If the political will were there, Jakarta could contribute its forces to an already formidable defensive armada against an aggressive China. Meanwhile, Russia is assisting India in its naval buildup, adding nuclear and diesel submarines and possibly the "Admiral Gorshkov" aircraft carrier. At present, New Delhi is more interested in a second-strike nuclear capability against Pakistan. However, if Beijing goes through with plans to build naval bases on the coast of Myanmar with the intention of gaining a foothold in the Indian Ocean, New Delhi will consider China a potential naval adversary. The United States, Japan, and other East Asian nations are concerned about the bases in Myanmar because they would put the PLAN on the west side of the Strait of Malacca, which flows between Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. The Strait is Asia's most vital shipping route and the avenue through which 25% of the world's oil supply travels.
Although Chinese naval ambitions are a common threat propelling the new naval arms race in Southeast Asia, many of the nations involved are developing naval capabilities to counter separate threats. And there is always Russia, which China must contend. Estimated Russian arms exports for 2000 will bring in more than $4 billion in hard currency that Moscow needs for research and development. Given continued arms sales over the next decade, this money will help rebuild Russia's once mighty military machine. If history tells us anything about the balance of power in the Far East, the eventual re-emergence of a formidable Russia, China's traditional competitor for control of the heart of the Asian continent, will force Beijing to shift resources from the PLAN's blue-water dreams to guarding its inland borders.
Appropriators Look to Boost Supplemental -- Congressional appropriators plan to add significantly to the emergency spending package submitted by the White House to pay for Fiscal Year 2000 military operations in Kosovo and to fund the drug war in Colombia. While the Administration originally requested $5.5 billion in funding, Congress is likely to boost the spending bill to $9 billion. Since the legislation is considered emergency spending, the funds do not count towards the spending caps set by the Balanced Budget Act. The money will be taken from the projected budget surplus.
Mozambican Floods Complicate Mine Clearing -- The flooding that has plagued Mozambique since February has severely complicated landmine clearing efforts in the country. Officials of the Mozambican Campaign Against Land Mines believe that the floods have moved landmines from previously identified areas to areas that have already been cleared. Mozambique is one of the world's most heavily mined countries and experts estimate that there are1800 minefields throughout the country left over from Mozambique's 16-year civil war. The exact number of landmines in Mozambique is unknown, but estimates range from 250,000 to 1 million. Deminers in Mozambique will have to start the laborious and dangerous process from the beginning.
Northrop Grumman Wants Piece of JSF -- Northrop Grumman representatives are lobbying Pentagon officials for a guaranteed portion of the Joint Strike Fighter program. Northrop is teamed with Lockheed Martin in its competition with Boeing for the JSF program. Northrop's effort is apparently the result of the government's 1998 decision to block its merger with Lockheed. Northrop's argument is that the government can't block a proposed merger on the grounds that it would create too much consolidation in the aerospace industry and then turn around and force the same company out of the fighter aircraft business.
U.A.E. To Purchase F-16s -- The United Arab Emirates has agreed to buy 80 F-16 fighter aircraft for $6.4 billion from Lockheed Martin. The aircraft will be built in Fort Worth, Texas. The deal provides $3 billion for research and development of technology not currently available on U.S. flown F-16s. The Defense Department has endorsed the contract, which was negotiated by the State Department through a direct commercial sale. Congress must still approve the sale.
Super Hornet Ready for Production -- Comments by Philip Coyle, the Defense Department's chief weapons tester, indicate that the Pentagon will approve the Navy's newest fighter, the F/A-18E/F "Super Hornet," for full production. A number of the aircraft have just completed a six month program of simulated combat testing. The Super Hornet has repeatedly come under fire by members of Congress and the General Accounting Office, which question the basic mission of the aircraft and the performance improvements the aircraft will have over the existing fleet of F/A-18s. For additional information, see "Navy's Super Hornet Suffers Setback," Weekly Defense Monitor, December 11, 1997.
This week on America's Defense Monitor: "An Environmental Industrial
Complex?"
The United States continues to spend vast sums developing new nuclear weapons. Behind the rhetoric, many of these government funded projects are jobs programs for high-tech industries in key congressional districts. Yet there is a growing consensus that public spending to fund high-tech solutions to the world's mounting environmental problems would be equally beneficial to American workers, while addressing a very real threat to our security and well-being. Should Americans subsidize this industry, too?
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