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What the National Security Strategy Might Mean for Conventional Arms Transfers

12/22/2017

This is the ninth and final blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Shannon Dick

The Trump administration recently released its National Security Strategy (NSS), presenting the administration’s broad priorities for confronting global security challenges. Among other things, the strategy reflects Trump’s “America First” approach to U.S. engagement in the world and, with that, a focus on economic concerns. One subtle but important implication of such a focus will be the impact on U.S. conventional arms transfer policies and how the administration uses arms sales as a tool to support U.S. national security policy priorities and foreign policy ideals.

The NSS references conventional arms transfer-related issues in three specific instances: twice in discussion about renewed capabilities and once in discussion about approaches to regional security in Africa. The inclusion of conventional arms in the NSS, however, reflects larger themes of investing in U.S. industry, facilitating exports, and reducing restraints.

Indeed, references to conventional weapons in the NSS reflect the administration’s emphasis on augmenting U.S. military capabilities and bolstering the defense industry. In one instance, for example, the NSS highlights military modernization as a means to reinforce the United States comparative advantage in the global market for security and influence.

MODERNIZATION: Ensuring that the U.S. military can defeat our adversaries requires weapon systems that clearly overmatch theirs in lethality. Where possible, we must improve existing systems to maximize returns on prior investments. In other areas, we should seek new capabilities that create clear advantages for our military while posing costly dilemmas for our adversaries. We must eliminate bureaucratic impediments to innovation and embrace less expensive and time-intensive commercial off-the-shelf solutions. Departments and agencies must work with industry to experiment, prototype, and rapidly field new capabilities that can be easily upgraded as new technologies come online.

As part of the effort to “renew capabilities,” the NSS also prioritizes easing processes and procedures for U.S. defense industry – particularly with regard to supporting weapons exports.

ENCOURAGE HOMELAND INVESTMENT: The United States will promote policies and incentives that return key national security industries to American shores. Where possible, the U.S. Government will work with industry partners to strengthen U.S. competitiveness in key technologies and manufacturing capabilities. In addition, we will reform regulations and processes to facilitate the export of U.S. military equipment.

At the end of the NSS, the administration does draw attention to the negative consequences of irresponsible and illegal arms transfers in its discussion of various security concerns in Africa.

MILITARY AND SECURITY: We will continue to work with partners to improve the ability of their security services to counter terrorism, human trafficking, and the illegal trade in arms and natural resources. We will work with partners to defeat terrorist organizations and others who threaten U.S. citizens and the homeland

Overall, however, the NSS emphasizes the economy of arms sales and the benefits to be had from more investment in and export of U.S. military equipment. Yet such an approach to arms transfer control policies – that is, one that reorients the focus of U.S. policy to the competitiveness of U.S. defense companies – may overlook other fundamental tenets of U.S. policy governing weapons sales, such as the potential risks to civilian lives and human rights.

Before the NSS’s release, the Trump administration had already demonstrated a willingness to ease restrictions on certain international arms sales. In June, for example, the Trump administration approved the transfer of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia despite concerns about civilian casualties. The weapons deliveries were originally blocked in December 2016 due to mounting concerns about the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen, and the heavy toll that airstrikes placed (and continue to place) on civilians. In August, Trump reversed course on an earlier decision to halt the sale of attack aircraft to Nigeria due to known human rights abuses. And in September, the administration approved a multi-billion-dollar arms sale to Bahrain that had previously been conditioned on improvements in the country’s human rights record – improvements that arguably have not been met.

In the end, the Trump administration’s approach to conventional arms transfers may result in more weapons sales to a wider array of actors. While such an approach may support industry’s bottom line, it could also present a number of challenges to longer-term security and foreign policy considerations.

Shannon Dick is a research associate in the Managing Across Boundaries Initiative at the Stimson Center and a Forum-listed emerging expert

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Finding Leadership Outside the White House

12/21/2017

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This is the eighth blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Jeff Abramson

Less than one year into the Trump administration, it is clear that the United States is unlikely to provide positive leadership in promoting responsible arms trade and weapons use. While the Obama administration certainly did not shy away from arms deals, it did sign the Arms Trade Treaty and withhold some arms transfers due to human rights concerns. What restraint Obama showed, Trump has jettisoned, evidenced in arms sales notifications of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) to Saudi Arabia in May, F-16s to Bahrain in September, and Super Tucanos to Nigeria in August – all deals that Obama had put on hold.

Further under Trump, drone use/air strikes have dramatically increased in number and/or in numbers of civilians harmed. The Defense Department has backed away from a policy that would have barred the use of certain cluster munitions, in particular older ones with an awful record for humanitarian harm. The administration also appears set to make it easier to sell small arms by transferring their control to the Commerce Department, completing the last steps of a controversial export reform initiative. In December, the United States abstained on the annual UN General Assembly resolution supporting the ATT, saying during First Committee that it was reviewing its policy. These and other indicators suggest that US arms use and trade, as well as any eventual new US conventional arms transfer policy, will simply remove the concept of restraint and further undermine commitment to and promotion of human rights.

This is an admittedly bleak initial picture, but there are many places the world can and should look for leadership outside of a US administration espousing an “America First” world view. Perhaps surprisingly, the first place to look is the US Congress. The close 47-53 Senate vote in June in opposition to the PGM sale to Saudi Arabia is an indicator that the Senate could take a more proactive role, especially if the rumored additional $7 billion in PGM sales come before it. Republican Senator Rand Paul and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy partnered on that work and together or separately merit watching in 2018. So too does Republican Senator Todd Young, especially in relation to the humanitarian situation in Yemen. Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy reacted quickly to the cluster munition policy reversal, and along with Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Ben Cardin have identified the need for Congressional involvement in any changes that would send small arms to Commerce control. A number of members of the House of Representatives have also taken up US weapons sales and use. A short list includes Democrats Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan and Republican Walter Jones, who co-wrote a New York Times oped critical of US support to Saudi Arabia, as well as Republican Justin Amash, and Democrat Ted Lieu, who has long expressed concerned about potential US complicity in war crimes.

Arming Saudi Arabia, or rather a commitment not to do so is also an appropriate litmus test on international leadership as the Saudi-led coalition continues to use weapons to the detriment of civilians in Yemen. In 2017, the European Parliament again called for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia -- a call not heeded by suppliers such as France and the United Kingdom, but one other European countries can and do support. Related, Sweden’s pending “democracy criterion” in arms sales is worth watching for an impact nationally and regionally. So too is Japan’s leadership of the Arms Trade Treaty for the 2018 Conference of States Parties, where thus far countries have frustratingly refused to directly address the inconsistency of arming the Saudis.

The recent conclusion of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the international civil society coalition that fought hard for the treaty (ICAN), draws global attention to the truth that leadership need not come from the normal “big players.” Those countries, led by the permanent five members of the Security Council (P5), tend to put traditional state-centered security over the needs of individuals (aka human security). But human security is at the heart of the nuclear ban treaty and a host of other successful treaties and initiatives broadly classified as “humanitarian disarmament.” On key treaties in this realm, Nicaragua is taking on the presidency of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Afghanistan will have leadership of the Mine Ban Treaty. They have the potential to bring a different type of leadership to arms-related issues in 2018. So too do some of the countries that were at the heart of the nuclear ban treaty, such as Mexico and New Zealand, who were also progressive voices during the Arms Trade Treaty negotiation.

The Nobel Peace Prize also reminds us that civil society campaigns play a critical role. In 2018, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots will continue calling for all countries to ban the development of fully autonomous weapons (“killer robots”). The countries participating in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) working group may choose that path, which a growing number (22) are supporting. Leading roboticists and artificial intelligence experts are banding together with that message and writing letters to governments, spurring national parliamentary debates. In another campaign, the International Network on Explosive Weapons is helping to build momentum to address and end the practice of using explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas. These weapons are particularly devastating to civilians and civilian infrastructure, causing both immediate harm at the time of use and ongoing suffering from the disruption of economic and social activity.

Members of industry and the financial sector will also have the opportunity to display leadership. Late in 2016, German arms manufacturer Heckler and Koch announced that it would no longer sell weapons to undemocratic and corrupt countries. More recently in Japan, four banks and insurance companies recently announced that they would ban investments in cluster munition producers, joining a growing group that have made similar commitments in other countries.

While the future is always difficult to predict, in 2018 it would be wise to look outside the White House for leadership on proper restraint in the use and sale of weapons – without which, we can unfortunately foresee new suffering by civilians and the undermining of their human rights.

Jeff Abramson is a non-resident senior fellow at the Arms Control Association.

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Recent Drone Proliferation and What May Lie Ahead

12/20/2017

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This is the seventh blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Dan Gettinger

This post is an adapted from a forthcoming report about developments in the world of drones in 2017, to be published by the Center for the Study of the Drone next week.

Many of the trends in drone proliferation that emerged in 2016 continued into 2017 and are likely to persist in 2018. With new deals and drones, China pursued international customers for its strike-capable drones in 2017. Other countries embarked on or expanded their own programs to develop or acquire drones. And non-state actors continued to modify and deploy small armed drones, raising fresh concerns that these systems might be used to attack civilian targets.

2017

China continued to push exports of its medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned systems in 2017. In March, Chinese media reported that China would construct a factory in Saudi Arabia to produce the Caihong-series (CH) surveillance and strike drones. China also revealed that it had made its largest sale ever of the Wing Loong II, another strike-capable drone, to an unnamed customer in the Middle East. In December, it was reported that China had successfully delivered new CH-5 drones to Egypt, which is believed to already operate the Wing Loong. While these reports have yet to be confirmed by outlets outside of China, they are in line with a pattern of growth in Chinese drone exports over the past several years. In the coming year, we expect additional deliveries of Chinese drones to global customers. New Chinese drones unveiled in 2017 like the Tengoen TB001 and Beihang TYW-1 MALE UAVs, the AT200 cargo drone, and the AVIC AV500W rotary drone, could follow the Caihong and Wing Loong drones into the international market.

Other countries took steps to acquire or upgrade their own drones. In June, Canada announced that it will acquire a variety of unmanned systems—including armed drones—for its military. France, meanwhile, has opted to arm its fleet of MQ-9 Reapers, becoming the third country after Italy and the U.K. to fly armed U.S.-made drones. At the MAKS 2017 airshow, Russia unveiled the Kronshtadt Orion-EH, a medium-altitude long-endurance drone that has been under development since 2011 and that could eventually be armed. Kazakhstan displayed a host of drones at its May 7 military parade, including the Russian-made Orlan-10 reconnaissance drone and China’s AVIC Wing Loong. The Turkish military took delivery of additional Kale-Baykar Bayraktar TB-2 drones, a mid-sized UAV that can be armed with mini smart munitions. South Korea announced plans to establish a military unit dedicated to fielding a swarm of drones and the Czech Republic announced plans to dramatically expand military unmanned aircraft procurement with the goal of acquiring a strike-capable system by 2021.

Drone use by non-state actors also expanded this year. In an analysis of documents captured from the Islamic State, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point found that ISIS had a formalized system for managing drone operations. While the Islamic State’s drone use declined along with its fortunes on the battlefield, other non-state actors have adapted drones to their own purposes. In Yemen, Houthi rebels unveiled a series of drones that appeared to be inspired by Iranian systems. According to a report by the Conflict Armament Research group, one of these drones was used to attack Saudi air defenses. In Mexico, authorities found a drone that was carrying a shrapnel-filled improvised explosive device. In the Philippines, authorities captured a militant who admitted to operating a drone during the attack on Piagapo city for the Maute group, a now-defunct terrorist group that was affiliated with ISIS. The rise in these incidents have inspired concerns about the use of drones to attack civilian targets. To prepare for the 2018 Winter Olympics, South Korean police simulated a drone attack on a stadium in a series of drills in December.

There were times during the past year when the proliferation of unmanned systems appeared to contribute to rising tensions between a few countries. In June, U.S. forces shot down two Iranian Shahed-129 strike-capable drones in Syria after they appeared to threaten U.S.-backed allies. A few weeks later, Iranian drones interfered with U.S. Navy operations in the Persian Gulf with one drone coming within 100 feet of a Navy jet. In response to complaints by U.S. Navy officials, Iran promised to continue its drone patrols in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, in the months following a scuffle between Indian and Chinese border guards over Chinese construction in the disputed region around the Doklam Plateau, both countries deployed drones to bases nearby. China has deployed several new Xianglong “Soar Dragon” high-altitude long-endurance drones and a CH-4 strike-capable drone to Shigatse Airport, and a BZK-005 surveillance drone to Lhasa Gongga Airport . India has also sent drones to the region, possibly basing a drone at Bagdogra Airport. In December, an Indian IAI Heron surveillance drone crashed on China’s side of the disputed border after a reported technical malfunction, leading China to file a complaint with India’s foreign ministry.

Looking Forward: United States May Contribute to Further Proliferation

It is likely that the U.S. will make a more aggressive effort to market unarmed U.S.-made drones overseas in the coming year. The Trump administration began a review of the U.S. drone export policies implemented by the Obama administration in mid-2017. In October, Reuters reported that the administration was close to completing an update to the policy, which is expected to loosen restrictions on U.S. drone exports and enable U.S. companies to sell surveillance drones like the MQ-9B Sky Guardian to customers other than NATO partners. In addition to resetting domestic policy, the U.S. may also push to renegotiate the Missile Technology Control Regime, a 1987 international agreement that established limits on missile and unmanned systems sales. Less clear, however, is whether the U.S. will continue to lead an effort to create international standards on drone exports or if such an agreement would be feasible without U.S. participation. Little in the way of concrete progress has been reported on this effort since it was announced October 2016 and, in the coming year, we’ll be looking to see if this effort gains traction inside the Trump administration and with the international community.

Dan Gettinger is co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College

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New European Defense Initiatives

12/19/2017

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This is the sixth blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Amy J. Nelson

With all eyes seemingly turned towards the United States’ drive to renew defense innovation and restructure its channels for procurement, Europe’s efforts to do likewise might be too easily overlooked—or worse yet, misunderstood. Over the past ten years, European countries have been steadily making strides towards revamping their militaries and enhancing collective capabilities, all while aiming to achieve “strategic autonomy” and prepare for next-generation warfare. Although this process got off to a slow, perhaps rocky, start initially, more recent European initiatives signal renewed effort and determination. The European Union (EU) may just succeed at making itself, not only a stronger military power, but also its own source of military innovation and manufacturing. We should expect to see additional benchmarks for this process in early 2018.

Following a long period of decline in defense spending, subsequent withering of European capabilities and low relative numbers of European forces, the EU is now actively pursuing its own military renewal. This European military renaissance, however, is hardly a bolt from the blue. Nor is it specifically a reaction to waning confidence in U.S. security guarantees due to the Trump administration being, well, the Trump administration. Arguably, the process began in 2007 with Lisbon Treaty reforms that included establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS) as a “coordination platform and a source of expertise and strategic advice.”These reforms suffered setbacks in wake of the 2008 financial crisis and resulting cuts in defense spending, and EEAS was ultimately never empowered with either funding or decision-making authority. As a consequence, EU states and their militaries found themselves ill-equipped to defend themselves.

More recently, in an attempt to overcome these initial obstacles and insufficiencies, Germany announced its Framework Nations Concept (FNC) in 2013 (yes, still pre-Trump), which was designed to organize and systematize defense cooperation in Europe. The concept is hardly as alarming as the “European army” it’s been made out to be. Since 1995, Europe has in fact been home to the EU’s Eurocorps and its sub-unit, the Franco-German Brigade (FGB), which is composed of German and French units. Despite the FGB being operational for decades, it has actually never been very capable—nor terribly “active” or “successful.” Nevertheless, it is likely to remain EU force headquarters.

The FNC stands to revamp the efficacy of these forces, though, by designating framework nations to coordinate clusters and provide logistical and command and control capabilities for them. Smaller nations will then be able to add their capabilities to these clusters. The idea is to allow Europe to execute “longer and more complex operations,” as well as streamline procurement and spending. Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine forced the evolution of the concept further, as well as a move to scale up of number of troops per cluster.

More recent EU initiatives have gone a step beyond, focusing on pan-European harmonization and synchronization through joint procurement and industrial cooperation. In 2016, the EU presented its EU Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS), as an initiative to enhance coordination and investment in European security and defense, with the aim of establishing strategic autonomy, comprised of both operational and industrial autonomy. EUGS will use monies from the European Defense Fund (EDF) to conduct defense research, develop new technologies, and facilitate multinational cooperation, likely rendering the European Defense Agency something much more like an EU Department of Defense. EU funds are intended to be matched with co-financing from member states on a cluster-by-cluster basis.

To further deepen military integration within the broader clusters designated by the FNC, the EU is turning to a previously unutilized programmatic concept from the original Lisbon Treaty: Permanent Structured Cooperation on security and defense (PESCO). Through PESCO, member states will spearhead and participate in defense innovation projects. Although voluntary, the commitments states make to these projects will be binding. As it is currently envisioned, a PESCO council will establish policy priorities and standards for evaluation, while a separate PESCO body will develop specific defense projects, to be managed by contributing member states. PESCO was only formally launched in November of this year, and the European Council of the EU formally adopted it last week (December 11, 2017).

Up next, in early 2018, we should expect to see a list of projects slated for PESCO development, as well as further formalization of rules and procedures for the program. All eyes should also be turned towards the next meeting of the EUGS’s Coordinated Annual Review on Defense (CARD), which will identify force and capability gaps, and establish strategic priorities that will, in turn, determine specific PESCO projects to fill those gaps.

What also remains to be seen, of course, is whether these initiatives will yield significant projects on reasonable timelines. As they stand now, these defense initiatives are still in their “ideational” phase. For completed projects to emerge successfully, the EU needs to move—and move fast. As technologies increasingly come out of the private sector and originate in dual-use innovation, new military might is poised to spread rapidly—standing to, once again, set Europe behind the curve. As soon as EU states can acquire new weapons and systems more cheaply elsewhere, the glue binding these states with disparate budgets and security goals together, may weaken.

An additional potential stumbling block includes the fact some EU states have not yet joined the FNC, holding out hope that their own security priorities will be directly addressed by these new initiatives. France, moreover, has chosen to forego framework state status entirely, though remains party to existing and ongoing bi- and tri-lateral projects in Europe. These cooperative defense projects are already in full swing, driven and funded by select EU member states, and remain outside the new pan-European framework. It is not yet clear how these kinds of “private endeavors” will be integrated, if at all. It also remains unclear how new EU capabilities and strategic priorities will be integrated into the NATO framework. Finally, EU states will need to be able to effectively harness innovation coming out of their private sectors to produce cutting edge military equipment. Getting to a point where these kinds of public-private partnerships function with ease is no simple task.

Having a Europe with military forces that can by themselves serve as an effective deterrent to military aggression is, of course, a desirable security goal for all. Bringing it into existence may, however, ultimately force the question of where to go with arms control in Europe, given the atrophied Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, and now well-documented violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Additional follow-on effects include those that come from essentially creating a novel hub of military innovation that could, in the limit, pose a formidable challenge to the primacy of the US defense sector, as well as precipitate the chain reaction of increasing innovation, production, and ultimately diffusion of military technologies.

To a certain extent, this process of Europe seizing the reins and revamping its collective military capabilities is inevitable, particularly in the current security landscape. Its potential long-term effects range from beneficial to nefarious, although it’s too soon to say for sure what exactly to expect. If successful, PESCO projects may ultimately serve to add competition and fuel innovation to the defense industrial landscape, or contribute to already bloated global military-industrial complex, with new and more weapons and systems that can increasingly, digitally, evade controls, or both. In Europe, at least, the mood seems to be one of determination mixed with cautious optimism right now.

Amy J. Nelson, Ph.D. is a Robert Bosch Fellow in residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin. She is also a research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland and a nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center.

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Tackling the humanitarian harm from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas: What’s in store for 2018?

12/15/2017

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This is the fifth blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Laura Boillot

Shelling and bombing in towns and cities has continued to cause high levels of harm and destruction throughout the course of 2017. The battle over Mosul saw extensive use of mortars, rockets, and other unguided munitions, fundamentally inaccurate weapons that have devastated the city, with reports that 40,000 civilians died. In Raqqa, it was reported that 20,321 munitions were dropped on the city over a five month period, amounting to about 133 munitions every day, making 80% of the city uninhabitable.

These examples are particularly stark, but each year across the globe 60-70 countries experience explosive violence, with tens of thousands of civilians being killed and injured. Clear illustrations of this persistent pattern of harm can be found across different countries and contexts, including in Côte d’Ivoire, Gaza, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen – raising concerns over the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

Armed conflicts are increasingly being fought in towns and cities, with some 50 million people bearing the brunt of the consequences. Too often the weapon of choice in these situations are the tools of the military – weapons designed for use in open battlefields and that impact a wide area. But their use in civilian areas including villages, town and cities, puts civilians at excessive risk of harm and must change.

Beyond direct deaths, injuries, and trauma, civilians also suffer from living under the bombing: many are forced to flee their homes, and for those that stay - and those that want to return - the widespread destruction of buildings and essential infrastructure, and the services that they provide including health care, education, water, sanitation, power supply and transportation, are severely impeded.

What can we work towards in 2018?

There is widespread and growing concern over the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas – these being weapons that are inherently inaccurate, weapons that have a large explosive content, or those that scatter explosives over a wide area, or a combination of these factors. A recent study in the Lancet on the impact of shelling in Syria, found “disproportionate lethal effects on civilians, calling into question the use of wide-area explosive weapons in urban areas.” This follows warnings not to use explosive weapons with a wide area impact in densely populated areas from the ICRC and the UN Secretary-General, who emphasised the “widespread” and “largely foreseeable” humanitarian harm such weapons use causes. Civil society organizations affiliated with the International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW) and other non-governmental organizations have also raised repeated concerns over the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in areas where there is a concentration of civilians. Greater recognition by states and other armed actors of this specific pattern of harm, which is largely foreseeable and has been extensively documented, is needed as a first step towards enhancing the protection of civilians, as well as a firm commitment not to use explosive weapons with wide area effects in towns and cities.

A focus on revising or otherwise developing specific operational policies and procedures that better guide the choice of weapons in populated areas that set an operational direction against the use of those that present the gravest risks to civilians and by doing such minimizing harm, is sorely needed. OCHA’s Compilation of Military Policies and Practice, which looks at existing policies and practices by militaries to protect civilians from explosive weapons, provides some useful examples of how militaries have restricted the use of explosive weapons to protect the civilian population and reduce civilian causalities, and how this choice has at the same time supported the strategic objective of their operations. Geneva Call reports that protecting civilians from the effects of weapons is also of concern to a number of non-state actors also, as documented in their latest report on this theme, Despite hostilities more and more often taking place in urban centers, few militaries have specific operational guidance on the use of explosive weapons in such challenging, densely populated environments. Whilst collateral damage estimates and other procedures help to provide important assessments, a specific focus on the choice of weapons as the primary instruments of violence and the cause of harm would be enormously beneficial in strengthening the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

A key focus of work for states and others concerned about the protection of civilians in armed conflict must be the development of an international political declaration on the prevention of harm from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. Austria and Mozambique are among the states that have been leading discussions on this issue following calls from the UN Secretary General to engage constructively in developing a political declaration. A declaration would set an important political standard, and provide operational direction for parties to armed conflict with a view to avoiding the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas. It could provide a framework for states to develop national measures and guidance, and a forum to discuss results and assess the effectiveness of such measures. Furthermore, it could contribute to assisting affected communities and individuals in addressing civilian harm from the effects of explosive weapons.

Whilst a political declaration would not solve this widespread problem overnight, a commitment led by a partnership of states and organizations dedicated to reducing humanitarian suffering would lay the foundations for greater action. This issue is urgent: treating it as such means that significant and concrete progress must be made in 2018.

Laura Boillot is the Coordinator of the International on Explosive Weapons (INEW) and Programme Manager for Article 36.

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Novel approaches to State responsibility for conflict pollution and environment damage

12/14/2017

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This is the fourth blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Wim Zwijnenburg

The ongoing fighting in the Middle East has painfully demonstrated how vital and fragile the role of environment in armed conflict is. Scorched earth tactics used by the so-called Islamic State left oil wells burning, polluted agricultural lands and rivers, and the war itself severely damaged urban and industrial areas -- all posing acute and chronic health risks to local populations living there or returning there. 2017 was also the year where again numerous warnings were given by UN organisations and experts on the risks of targeting sensitive civilian infrastructure as happened, for example, when water filtration stations in Donetsk (storing thousands of liters of toxic chloride) were hit by incoming fire, causing a severe chemical disaster.

Environmental degradation due to climate change is grabbing headlines and showing how important our environment is for well-being, peaceful existence, security, and stability. How conflict impacts the environmental, however, receives little attention from states and the international community. But times seem to be changing. At the third UN Environmental Assembly in Nairobi, states adopted a new resolution on conflict pollution, submitted by Iraq. The resolution acknowledges the intrinsic link between conflict, environmental damage and pollution. Among many other important references, it calls for identification, assessment and remediation of pollution caused by conflict and terrorist acts; inclusion of communities in post-conflict assessment work; and collection of data for identifying health outcomes that should be integrated into health registries and risk education programs. Therefore, the resolution is an important step towards mitigating the effects conflict pollution and toxic remnants of war can have on human health and the environment. This was the second resolution that takes on this subject; the first one, Protection of the environment in areas affected by armed conflict was adapted in 2016 at the second UN Environmental Assembly. There has been a long road since the first UNGA resolution A/47/37 on Protection of the Environment in Armed Conflict was introduced in 1992, with multiple discussions undertaken with the ICRC, the International Law Commission, and others in the interim to improve the work on conflict and environmental protection.

Wars and conflicts that rage on today continue to have disastrous environmental consequences, ranging from earlier cases of pollution in Iraq to the rise of civilian-run artisanal oil refining in Syria, and also broader environmental security struggles in Columbia and Lake Chad. Clearly, a comprehensive approach is needed on multiple levels that hold both state and non-state actors accountable for military activities before, during, and after conflict. The international community will need to step up its efforts to tackle the environmental health risks in and after conflict by providing expertise, capacity, and funding to affected states and international organisations. Implementing the UNEA resolution should involve exploring with civil society, the academic, and the scientific community how to minimize and prevent environmental damage in conflicts. Next, more work can also be done by the humanitarian community to support identification and monitoring environmental pollution in their response work, which should support faster clean-up and remediation. This can be done through the UN Cluster systems, and by engaging with experts to start a community of practice where various tools and techniques are shared in order to develop methods on data collection, analysis, and joint humanitarian response to toxic remnants of war.

2018 will see several donor conferences dealing with rebuilding Iraq and Syria where the environmental component should be a key element in reconstruction efforts. Furthermore, the ICRC Is likely to publish an update on their guidelines of military manuals where there can be room for improvement on discussion of targeting procedures. With these and other key opportunities, states should move forward in 2018 on the conflict and environment nexus, striving for progressive change that can help save lives, livelihoods and the environment we all depend on.

Wim Zwijnenburg is a Humanitarian Disarmament Project Leader at PAX, based in the Netherlands

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European arms export policy at the crossroads

12/13/2017

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This is the third blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Frank Slijper

With no quick end of the war in Yemen in sight, much of the work on arms trade controls in 2018 will continue to concentrate on the massive scale of transfers of weapons to the parties involved in the conflict; in particular, the arms trade with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). They are the two key actors in the so-called Saud-led coalition that has been fighting with Yemeni troops loyal to president Hadi against what used to be an alliance of Houthi fighters and soldiers loyal to ex-president Saleh. After the Houthi-Saleh alliance broke down in early December and Saleh was killed subsequently, it is hard to predict the outcome for the war, but the humanitarian crisis remains dire.

What has been clear throughout the conflict is that Saudi Arabia and UAE forces have continued to be main destinations of European (and US) arms and military support. Over the past nearly two decades, Saudi Arabia has been Europe’s number one arms destination, with the much smaller UAE at number three. These two oil-rich states have been a lifeline for Europe’s arms industry, especially in the UK and France.

This strong dependency of lucrative arms deals with the Gulf states explains much of Europe’s refusal to cut arms sales throughout the Yemen conflict, despite clear indications that these very weapons could be used in the conflict. The UK alone approved export licences for the Saudi regime worth more than 4.6 billion pounds since 2015. France is Europe’s main supplier to the Emirates, where Dassault receives full governmental support in its attempts to sell 60 Rafale fighter aircraft. Meanwhile it is going to upgrade their fleet of Mirage jets, which have been widely used in Yemen.

Europe has long boasted of having a highly advanced arms export control framework. That may be the case if you consider the level of guidance that come with the European Union’s Common Position on arms exports.

But if you consider the realities of recent major arm exports to the warring parties in Yemen, while claiming that exports need to be assessed against eight “far-reaching risk assessment criteria,” this is merely hollow rhetoric that is meaningless for millions of people in Yemen, who continue to suffer. Repeated demands from a majority of the European Parliament – through non-binding motions - for an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia have not led to decisive action – while it was no problem for EU ministers to agree to an arms embargo earlier this month against Venezuela, the number 49 arms export destination.

In 2018 the “legally binding” Common Position has its tenth anniversary, twenty years after the EU decided on a politically binding Code of Conduct guiding European arms export controls. These milestones mark undoubted advances (as well as some recent steps backwards) in terms of transparency in reporting arms transfers – something nearly non-existent twenty years ago. It has certainly not set “high common standards” reflected in real restraint in the face of blatant violations of human rights and the law of war. Only an immediate stop on arms transfers to all parties involved in the conflict in Yemen would give reason to celebrate the EU’s common export control system.

Frank Slijper is the Programme Leader on the Arms Trade at PAX, based in the Netherlands

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Sweden’s proposed “Democracy Criterion” for arms exports – taking the lead in export controls, or new words for old policies

12/12/2017

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This is the second blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Sam Perlo-Freeman

This month, the Swedish Parliament is expected to vote on a government proposal to strengthen Swedish arms export controls, among other things by adding a “democracy criterion” that will require a recipient state’s democratic status to be taken into account as a central factor when evaluating export license decisions. The proposed new law follows 6 years of discussions and a Parliamentary commission of inquiry, which reported in June 2017. It has the support of the governing Social Democrat-Green coalition and the center-right opposition parties, so its passage should be guaranteed.

Sweden, as part of the European Union, is already bound by the EU Common Position on arms exports, which requires an export license to be denied if, among other things, there is a clear risk that the equipment to be exported might be used for violations of human rights or international humanitarian law. However, this is always part of a case-by-case evaluation relating to the specific equipment being sold; the status of the recipient state as such plays no direct role in the criteria, except in the small number of cases where there is either a UN or an EU arms embargo. The democracy criterion would therefore be significantly stricter than the EU Common Position—and indeed most if not all major arms exporters.

In fact, Swedish law already goes beyond the Common Position in terms of considering the status of the recipient, in relation to human rights abuses, but the new law clearly strengthens this.

Specifically, the law requires that the proposed recipient state’s democratic status—relating to the existence of democratic institutions, the possibility for freedom of expression and respect for fundamental democratic principles—shall be a “central condition” in the evaluation of export license applications, and that serious failings in these will constitute an “obstacle” to approval. Regarding human rights, where the existing law states that “gross and systematic” violations of human rights constitute an obstacle to approving a license, the bar is lowered to “serious and systematic” abuses. The potential for a sale to counteract sustainable development is also to be considered, and there are further measures to improve transparency in arms sales.

What the law does not enact, however, is an absolute ban on arms exports to dictatorships or to human rights abusers; each export license application is still to be judged individually, based on an overall judgment taking into account numerous factors, including those relating to security and defense policy. Thus, arms sales to non-democratic states could still be approved if the government (through the export control agency, ISP, the Inspectorate for Strategic Products) decides that defense industrial considerations outweigh the recipient’s lack of democracy. As far as I can tell, the law does not specify exactly how these issues are to be weighed against one another.

This lack of a clear ban on arms sales to non-democratic regimes, even dictatorships, has led to criticism from the peace movement, and in Parliament by the Left Party. Svenska Freds (Swedish Peace) has been particularly critical of the proposed law as leaving open too many loopholes to allow, essentially, business as usual. The proposal states that lack of democracy will be an “obstacle” to license approval, but, asks Svenska Freds Chairperson Agnes Hellström, “How high an obstacle”?

Other parties, including the Green Party and the generally right-wing Christian Democrats stated that they would have preferred a complete ban on arms sales to dictatorships, but accepted the cross-party proposal as a reasonable compromise. The two largest parties in the Swedish Parliament, the Social Democrats and the center-right Moderates both have strong traditional ties to the arms industry (via the unions and the business community respectively), and the former were the architects of the post-War policy of armed neutrality under which the Swedish arms industry—still remarkably advanced for a country of 10 million—was developed. Thus, a more absolute measure would have been unlikely to gain favor with these dominant players.

The question that will only be answered with time is, will the new regulations lead to a significant reduction in arms sales to undemocratic regimes, and perhaps a complete halt to sales to the worst dictatorships, or will the new form of words be simply used by the government to claim that it has fulfilled the promise of a ”democracy criterion,” while continuing with business as usual? (Also to be seen is whether the interests of sustaining an arms industry facing a severely limited domestic market will always be high enough to vault the democracy and human rights obstacles.)

A starting point for judging the new law is examining how Sweden’s and other major European exporters’ export control regimes are already willing to export to repressive regimes. (Please see note on data further below)

Share of exports to “Not-Free” countries

Country                                  Deliveries 2007-16               Licenses 2012-16
United Kingdom                                49%                                        38%
France 37%                                        51% (orders)
Germany 12%                                        36%
Italy 26% 15%
Spain 19% 13%
Sweden 15%                                        15%.

Sweden clearly comes toward the lower end on measures of deliveries (2007-2016) and recent licenses (2012-2016), with similar levels to Spain, although Germany has a lower share of deliveries over the longer period 2007-16. For licenses, the great bulk of Sweden’s export licenses to dictatorships come from a single $1.3 billion deal in 2016 to sell Saab Erieye Airborne Early Warning and Control systems to UAE—of particular concern given the UAE’s role in the air war against Yemen, where such advanced sensor systems could play a significant role. Sweden also sold an earlier version of the Erieye to Saudi Arabia in 2010 (delivered 2014). Other significant sales to “Not Free” countries include a 2012 sale of missiles and sensors to Algeria.[1]

One of the most controversial deals in Sweden in recent years, however, was the sale in 2008 and then 2010 of Gripen multi-role combat aircraft to Thailand. The deal was negotiated under the military regime that took power in Thailand through the coup of 2006, but the orders and deliveries took place between the restoration of civilian rule following the general election of December 2007, and the most recent coup of 2014. Nonetheless, the sale of such major equipment to a military establishment with a long history of coups, and where the return democracy was always highly fragile, was controversial. In the end, Sweden approved export licenses for delivery of around $100 million worth of military equipment to Thailand—now firmly in the grip of military rule—in 2016.[2]

While exports to Saudi Arabia have been a major focus of concern, in fact since the Erieye deal, export license approvals to the Saudis have been negligible; partly due to the breakdown in Swedish-Saudi relations following the non-renewal by Sweden in 2015 of a military cooperation agreement (although this agreement had produced few if any tangible results), but very likely also in part due to the high sensitivity of such sales. From 2014-16, license approvals to Saudi have amounted to just a few million crowns (less than $1 million).[3]

Thus, while Sweden does sell arms to dictatorships and human rights abusers, the evidence suggests that, in comparison with most other significant European arms producers, concerns over human rights do lead to some degree of restraint on the part of Swedish authorities. The new rules certainly have loopholes that will allow the Swedish government to sell arms to dictatorships when it really wants to, and it is possible that there will be no practical change; however, it seems likely that the strong level of pressure for restraint from both civil society, media and elements within Parliament, and the expectations of such accompanying the new law, will lead to some greater degree of caution on the part of ISP. For example, any significant licensing of arms sales to Saudi Arabia would immediately draw loud outcries and would (not unreasonably) be taken as proof that the new law is in practice meaningless. Sales to Saudi also jar heavily with Sweden’s declared feminist foreign policy. But a complete end to arms sales to undemocratic regimes is not on the cards.

Either way, assuming the new law is passed, Sweden will be a country worth watching to see if public opprobrium against the arms trade can create sufficient political will to make a more restrictive arms export policy a reality, in the face of the strong defense industrial pressure to maintain exports.

Samuel Perlo-Freeman is a Fellow at the World Peace Foundation (WPF), and Project Manager for the WPF project on Global Arms Business and Corruption

Notes on the data:

Analysis looked at the top 6 EU arms industries--the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden-- comparing across two measures: first, SIPRI data for deliveries of major conventional weapons over the period 2007-16, using their Trend Indicator Value (TIV) volume measure; second, the value of export licenses granted over the period 2012-16. For license values, unfortunately France changed their export licensing system in 2015 in a way that led to a massive increase in their license values, in a way that makes the data almost meaningless. Therefore, I used figures for export orders instead, which only France provides.[4]

For each measure, I looked at the total value of exports, and within this the share of the total going to countries classified as “Not Free” by Freedom House.

There are two caveat to the SIPRI TIV measure: first, it is a volume rather than a financial measure; since Western European countries have similar levels of income, unit costs are probably comparable, so this issue is not critical. Secondly, SIPRI data only includes major conventional weapons, which include some subsystems such as radars and engines, but not most. This tends to understate UK exports in particular, where a large proportion involves subsystems and components.

There are likewise caveats to the license data: first, not all licenses turn into deliveries, and the ratio of licenses to deliveries over time varies considerably between countries. I have not checked if this varies also by recipient country. Second, export license data only covers individual licenses, which allow a single delivery of specified equipment. It does not include open or general licenses, which allow for multiple deliveries of a category of equipment, and which therefore do not carry a financial value. The UK makes particularly high use of open licenses, so that export license figures severely understate the value of UK exports. Again, whether this understatement differs significantly by type of recipient, and therefore may distort the shares below, is unclear. The value of license data is that it gives the most direct idea of export license decision-making by governments.

[1] SIPRI Arms Transfers Database
[2] Swedish arms export control report for 2016.
[3] Swedish arms export control reports.
[4] License and order values come from national reports on arms export controls, available from SIPRI at https://www.sipri.org/databases/national-reports; export for the UK, where data is taken from the Campaign Against Arms Trade database on UK arms export licenses, which presents data in a far more user-friendly fashion than government sources; see https://www.caat.org.uk/resources/export-licences.

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In 2018, the Trump Administration Will Continue to Tout the Job Impacts of Arms Exports

12/11/2017

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This is the first blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2018 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

William D. Hartung

Just as he did throughout his first year in office, during 2018 Donald Trump will no doubt continue to tout the domestic jobs associated with foreign arms deals as a signal achievement of his administration. The downsides of this emphasis include a relative neglect of human rights concerns, and a failure to gauge the negative strategic impacts of enabling questionable wars and fueling regional tensions. But there is scant evidence to suggest that the Trump administration will change course as a result.

Trump’s penchant for seeing arms sales as a jobs program was clear for all to see in his first foreign trip as president, a May 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia. With great fanfare, Trump announced that the United States would be selling $110 billion worth of weaponry to Riyadh – almost as much as the record levels offered during the eight years of the Obama administration. But upon closer scrutiny, tens of billions worth of sales that Trump was claiming credit for had been put together under the Obama administration. Other aspects of the deal involved vague promises of sales that may never come to fruition. Despite these facts, Trump threw up a nice fat number, and bragged that it would bring “jobs, jobs, jobs” to America. This is not to say that his administration will not seek major new sales to Riyadh, as evidenced by the October 2017 offer of $15 billion in missile defense technology to Saudi Arabia. But the $110 billion figure is a convenient fiction concocted for domestic consumption.

Similarly, in a November 2017 trip to Japan, Trump crowed about the “massive” amounts of weaponry Japan was going to buy from the U.S., “as they should.” And of course, he bragged about all the jobs that would bring to America. Trump’s number one example was the sale of Lockheed Martin F-35 combat aircraft to Japan.

There are two problems with Trump’s boasting. First, he seemed to be implying that he had something to do with brokering the F-35 sale to Japan. He did not. That offer was made during the Obama administration back in 2012. It seems like the only thing Trump truly likes about the Obama legacy is our ex-president’s ample arms sales offers – so much so that he routinely tries to take credit for them.

Second, and even worse, Trump has no idea of how few jobs the F-35 deal with Japan will actually create. As my colleagues at the Security Assistance Monitor have documented, the State Department has licensed a deal under which Japan will spend over $5 billion in exchange for the construction of an F-35 final assembly facility there. So, the Japanese purchase of F-35s will indeed create jobs – in Japan. Yes, the United States will be exporting F-35s to Japan. But it will also be exporting most of the jobs involved in building those aircraft. Another F-35 final assembly plant is being established in Italy to do much of the work involved in U.S. sales of the aircraft to its European allies.

The point that Trump seems to be missing is that most foreign arms sales these days involve “offsets” – investments in the recipient nation that, as the term suggests, help offset the huge costs of importing a modern weapons system. Under his Plan 2030, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (or MBS, as he is known more colloquially) has decreed that Saudi Arabia’s goal is to produce 50% of the value of any arms it imports in Saudi Arabia, up from 2% currently. U.S. firms like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have duly sworn allegiance to this goal, and a recently offered batch of Lockheed Martin/Sikorsky helicopters will be assembled in Saudi Arabia. In another example, Lockheed Martin is helping the UAE develop an industry to produce robotic machine tools that can be used in the defense and aerospace sectors, potentially in competition with U.S. and European firms. In other words, jobs in the UAE, brought to you by Lockheed Martin.

One of the ironies in Donald Trump’s continued bragging about the domestic jobs impact of arms exports is that weapons spending is virtually the least effective way to create jobs. A study by economists at the University of Massachusetts has demonstrated that almost any other activity – from infrastructure investment to alternative energy production to education – would create one and one-half to two times as many jobs per amount spent as weapons production. If jobs are the issue, the United States economy would be far better served by a focus on alternative energy technologies, a burgeoning field with a global market many times larger than the market for weaponry.

Things to look for in 2018 include the possibility of a sale of F-35s to the UAE – the first export of this aircraft to any Middle Eastern country other than Israel; more costly missile technology exports to the Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia; and a possible surge in the export of U.S. firearms in line with administration plans to deregulate major categories of these systems as it seeks to carry out the final phase of the Export Control Reform Initiative that was initiated by the Obama administration. Expect all of the above to be justified in significant part with cries of “jobs, jobs, jobs,” no matter how exaggerated those claims may be.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and a senior adviser to the center’s Security Assistance Monitor.

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Sweden’s proposed “Democracy Criterion” for arms exports – taking the lead in export controls, or new words for old policies

In 2018, the Trump Administration Will Continue to Tout the Job Impacts of Arms Exports

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