Conventional arms exports and stability in the Middle East.

• Author: Neumann, Robert G.
• Position: Continuity and Transformation: The Modern Middle East - Interview

It is commonly accepted that the Middle East is awash in conventional arms, with pressure for the delivery of ever more exotic, lethal equipment. It is also commonly asserted that such supplies are basically destabilizing and hence that some means or mechanism must be found to control, or at least to reduce, these massive arms sales. While these facts are true, I find the conclusions less than compelling. The overall arms-import problem in the Middle East, now and for the foreseeable future, is a consequence of relations among Israel, the Arab states and Iran, with Turkey as an uneasy but politically marginal player. The export of conventional weapons is, and will remain, dependent on supply and demand rather than on arms-control agreements.

Supply of Arms to the Middle East

It is an indisputable fact that the United States is the world's largest arms producer and exporter. A recent summary article states that U.S. arms sales amounted to $34 billion in the last fiscal year (FY 1994), although they are expected to decline to $13 billion in the current fiscal year (FY 1996) due to budget cuts and stretched-out production schedules in the U.S., as in many other countries.(1) While global figures vary, it is estimated that the U.S. accounts for 70 percent of the world market, with Russia and Germany ranking second and third, respectively.(2) The end of the Cold War has only exacerbated the drive by all producers and exporters to keep old customers and gain new ones.

Not only is there a rising demand for the quantity of weapons sold, but the quality of these weapons exports is also increasing steadily.(3) For example, cruise missiles of several types are especially in demand due to their accuracy and indetectability. Furthermore, it is argued with some plausibility that, had Iran and Iraq succeeded in obtaining additional diesel submarines, such acquisitions could have made a significant difference in the outcome of both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. William Hartung, in a new book, claims that indiscriminate sales to widely different and politically opposed countries demonstrate that profits and jobs, rather than ideological motives, spur this trade.(4) U.S. domestic politics also are involved as parts for these weapons are made in numerous states represented by powerful politicians. Georgia, the home state of powerful Democratic Senator Sam Nunn and the new Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, is an obvious beneficiary.

The arms trade is enormously complicated by the involvement of national and international interests and players. Few countries can buy these increasingly costly weapons without various types of offsets.(5) For instance, Israel, an important customer, has an enormous number of offset and co-production agreements with the U.S. that could not easily be upset or drastically reduced without producing significant political fallout in both countries.

Budget constraints in all purchaser countries, including the United States since the end of the Cold War, and the disappearance of the single most dangerous potential enemy of the U.S., the Soviet Union, have resulted in military budget cuts in the U.S. and other nations and a consequent reduction in funds at the disposal of arms industries in each country. Nevertheless, the production and export of such weapons remain highly significant to both the U.S. and Russian economies. Although deliberate efforts have been made, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, to disperse production over as wide an area as possible for demographic and economic reasons, the arms industry in the U.S. remains highly concentrated. In states like California, the economic and political effects of declining arms production are felt strongly. This is true to an even greater extent in Russia, where employment in the St. Petersburg area is highly dependent on weapons-industry exports.

Sophisticated weapons systems often require many years for design and development. Production lines for airplanes and tanks, once closed down, are neither quickly nor easily reopened. When private enterprise carries the brunt of such production shifts, the reopening of such lines (once threat perceptions change) cannot be undertaken without enormous government subsidies. Hence all producer countries, especially Russia and the U.S., but increasingly China and other growing secondary producers such as Brazil and India, have a strong political interest in keeping the arms market going.

Although waves of moral indignation against weapons exports rise quite high in the U.S. at certain times, the consequences of unilateral control efforts can be very drastic - and negative. In 1985, Congressional opposition to the sale of F- 15 planes to Saudi Arabia was demonstrated largely by supporters of Israel who professed to see a danger to the Jewish state. The Saudis, always irritated by the often rude Congressional debate, decided to buy British Tornado planes instead.(6) The result was the loss of a considerable number of jobs in the U.S., while security for Israel became even more tenuous. While the Saudis would have accepted some, though not all, downgrading of the F-15s, the Tornados were delivered by Britain without any downgrading or restrictions on their use.(7)

As far as Russia is concerned, its need for hard currency from foreign sales is so great that a voluntary reduction of its weapons exports is quite unlikely for the next 20 or 30 years. It is not entirely true that Russia has nothing to export except weapons; although the low standards of Russian quality control and other technical and managerial shortcomings are considerable, recent experience has shown that when Western investors or partners demand strict quality control, Russia is quite capable of competing on the world, and even the U.S., market. Russian weapons exports, especially fighter planes, have improved considerably since the last days of the Cold War and especially thereafter. What still hampers Russian weapons exports is a well-deserved reputation for poor servicing and unreliable follow-up, which puts off buyers. Also, the chaotic situation in Russia raises the question of the future reliability of sales and the availability of spare parts. Nevertheless, Russian arms sales are burgeoning, including to the Middle East.

There is little that can be done to stem the export of conventional arms. The idea that any country would long restrain its own exports while others do not is not likely to prevail. Certainly, in the U.S. the new Republican majority is even less inclined to reduce arms sales than were its Democratic predecessors, and an experience similar to the F-15 sale to Saudi Arabia is not likely to be repeated.(8)

One possible opportunity for the application of more rigorous arms control is in the field of information. Information exchange was the task of the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM), but COCOM was designed primarily to supervise technology transfers and the export of weapons to the Soviet Union, and therefore lost its raison d'etre at the end of the Cold War.(9)

A more recent effort called Perm (referring to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council) is designed to coordinate exports from the United States, Russia, Germany, China, Great Britain and France. But this committee does not meet very often and has little practical effect - it is little more than a registry for mutual information on weapons exports undertaken or approved by its members.(10)

Under the Clinton administration's leadership, an effort has been made to report weapons purchases by countries in the Middle East. A December 1994 meeting, held in Tunis, of representatives from 15 countries on the working level made some progress. In February 1995, the Clinton Administration issued a new policy, in the form of a Presidential Decision Directive, concerning the future of U.S. arms sales. Although originally designed to clarify the U.S.'s arms policy, the directive was generally viewed as a concession to the U.S. arms industry. The new policy assures "continued sales of major conventional weapons systems to key U.S. allies and friendly nations around the globe."(11) Therefore, U.S. arms sales to the Middle East and other regions are not likely to decline as a result of the implementation of this new policy. But even before the Democrats' electoral disaster of November 1994, the administration was tom between the "different ways of satisfying the anti-proliferation people on the one hand ... and keeping the arms industry happy on the other."(12) Little is likely to happen, at least until 1996, as a Republican majority forges ahead with its domestic reforms while an irresolute and divided administration catches up as well as it can. It is therefore safe to predict that no policies will be forthcoming that may cost jobs in the U.S.

The extent of the threat from a proliferation of Russian arms sales is difficult to measure in numerical terms. Although the quantity of Russian arms sales has certainly increased, the quality and effectiveness of these weapons remains questionable. The Russians, the chief military suppliers to Iraq, have maintained that incompetent Iraqi training and handling of Russian equipment was the main cause of the Iraqi defeat by the U.S.-led U.N. forces during the Gulf War. Similar arguments were made, with less vehemence, to explain Syria's defeat by Israel in 1973. Naturally, such "explanations" have to be viewed in relation to the natural desire of suppliers to explain away their clients' failure, even though they are not necessarily without foundation.

The highly centralized Soviet command-and-control system was well-suited to the authoritarian regimes of the Arab countries, but made for slower reaction time in crises and numerous glitches, so that even minor decisions had to be sent up to the very top command. However, it was not necessarily efficiency...