Web Of Deceit: Britain's Real Foreign Policy

by Mark Curtis

  The story of arms exports under the Blair government is one of complicity in massive human rights abuses in several countries, exacerbating regional tensions in areas of conflict and violating its own and the EU’s (already very elastic) guidelines. Although British arms exports receive occasional critical media coverage, usually as ‘exceptions’ to otherwise benign government policies, the overall picture is much more serious than usually presented.

  The message to the arms companies

  The Blair government has been saying two things on arms exports, depending on the audience. First, there is the message to the public.

  British governments know that arms exports are not terribly popular. In a 1998 survey, 41 per cent of people said they were against all arms exports, rising to 47 per cent among women.2 The government therefore tries to convince the public, first, that a ‘responsible’ arms trade is possible and second, that Britain has one. The problem is that both are plainly untrue, which makes it a little harder.

  Many in the media appear to have taken seriously the idea that Labour is trying to adopt a more ‘ethical’ policy on arms exports than the Conservatives. But there is a more interesting side to the Blair government’s rhetoric on arms exports: in reality, it barely even claims to promote a policy much different to the Tories. The government has only ever promised a ‘responsible’ and ‘properly regulated’ arms trade. This pales by comparison with the grandiose rhetoric on foreign policy overall, where Labour leaders claim they want to make Britain a ‘force for good’ in the world – no small task – or Blair’s grand ‘doctrine of international community’. These are purely fabricated propositions that bear no relation whatsoever to actual British policy in the world. But where arms exports are concerned, propagandists have only been working on the sidelines – the government has never really promised that much by way of a more ‘ethical’ policy.

  So, the government’s second message is to the arms manufacturers and related businesses within British military industry. To them, the message has been crystal clear – business as usual on arms exports, with no major difference from the Tories. Indeed, this has been the overwhelmingly stronger message of the two, despite the gullibility of the media.

  The strategy of business as usual is seriously hard to miss. Labour has bent over backwards and double to reassure military industry of its support. Three months before winning the 1997 election, Tony Blair said in the internal newsletter of BAE Systems – Britain’s biggest arms company – that a Labour government would be:

  committed to creating the conditions in which the defence industries can thrive and prosper. Winning export orders is vital to the long term success of Britain’s defence industry. A Labour government will work with the industry to win export orders.

  This followed Labour’s election manifesto, proclaiming support for ‘a strong UK defence industry, which is a strategic part of our industrial base as well as our defence effort’.3

  Six months into the new government, Defence Minister Lord Gilbert told parliament of plans to ‘involve industry in the concept phase of new systems that we need to procure’. This was to be a partnership involving military industry designing systems for tasks outlined by the government. ‘Industry has responded extremely enthusiastically to our initiatives in that way’, he said. He added that ‘its export achievements are quite remarkable’, shown by the fact that ‘the British defence industry obtained nearly one quarter of the world defence market last year’.4

  A year into the new government, Defence Secretary George Robertson confirmed again (he really didn’t need to, by now) that ‘the defence industry is in very safe hands’, mentioning the ‘importance of the British defence industry, which I spend much of my time helping when visiting foreign lands’.5

  This message could not fail to be heard loud and clear by industry. Nicholas Oliver, director of Procurement Services International, said on television one month after Labour’s election victory that ‘Mr Blair’s view is that the type of equipment that the Conservatives have given export licences to would present no difficulty for the Labour government.’ Oliver was referring to Indonesia, an obvious candidate for any major change in arms exports policy. Yet even here it was understood there would be no change.6

  The beneficiaries of business as usual are of course arms corporations, notably the two largest, BAE Systems and GEC-Marconi, who benefit from massive government subsidies. There are various estimates as to how much, but it is likely to be close to £1 billion a year in taxpayer support to companies to develop new weapons systems and promote exports. Around a third of government export credits are for arms exports. The heavily subsidised arms industry is one of the few areas in the British economy not exposed to the wonders of the ‘free market’.7

  On balance, it is likely that the arms industry costs the taxpayer money. Britain’s military industry is not as important to the economy as its supporters claim. Around 90,000 jobs are linked to arms exports and military procurement supports around 10 per cent of manufacturing employment, but this represents less than 2 per cent of total employment. Military spending often diverts resources away from more profitable civilian uses while subsidies are a direct cost to taxpayers. Many academic studies conclude that military spending has a negative effect on economic growth and that reductions in military spending can improve economic performance.8

  Labour established a new Defence Diversification Agency (DDA) in 1999 – but it had already allayed any fears of the arms companies that it would do anything so radical as convert military into civilian industry. Defence Secretary George Robertson reassured them that ‘we are talking about defence diversification and not defence conversion. We are not in the business of running down defence production facilities and converting them to purely civilian use.’ The DDA has been concerned as much with exploiting civil technology for military use as vice versa, and anyway has a minuscule budget of £2 million a year.9

  British arms corporations occupy a special place within the elite. As well as receiving massive subsidies from the taxpayer to secure often huge private profits, MI6 routinely passes commercial intelligence to them. Former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson has said that in 1993 MI6 helped BAE (then called British Aerospace) win a £500 million deal to sell Hawk jets to Indonesia by supplying details of a competing bid from French manufacturer Dassault. Similar intelligence was passed to BAE to help it win orders for Tornado fighters and Hawks as part of a £1.7 billion package with Malaysia. This was linked to the Pergau dam ‘aid’ package of £234 million in which the Conservative government was found to have acted illegally.10

  New Labour clearly has a special relationship with the big arms manufacturers. BAE’s Chairman, Sir Richard Evans, has been described by the Observer as ‘one of the few businessmen who can see Blair on request’. The Labour party also holds nearly 30,000 shares in BAE Systems, which is reported to have donated £5,000 to Labour funds in 1998 and 2000 and sponsored a ministerial question-and-answer session at the 1999 party conference. Labour also has more than 45,000 shares in GEC and Vickers, according to a report by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.

  Then there is the ‘revolving door’ between government and the corporations. For example, Raytheon systems, the British subsidiary of giant US arms corporation Raytheon, appointed Sir Robert Harman-Joyce as chairman in 2000; he retired from the Ministry of Defence in 1999 as chief of defence procurement. Former Conservative Defence minister, Lord Freeman, is on the board of Thomson-CSF, a huge French arms manufacturer.11

  There are good reasons, therefore, for business as usual, and it soon became obvious that nothing would change with the new government in 1997. ‘There’ll be differences at the margins, but little more’, one well-placed official said during the new government’s review of arms exports criteria a month after taking office.12

  The guidelines eventually announced by New Labour confirmed this. They state that export licences will not be issued ‘for the sale of arms to regimes that might use
them for internal repression or external aggression’. Except that the word ‘might’ was substituted for ‘are likely to’, this was identical to the formula used by the Conservative government.

  The guidelines are clearly more intended to promote than prevent arms exports. They say that ‘full weight should be given to the UK’s national interests when considering applications for licences’. These ‘national interests’ are listed as the effects on Britain’s security interests, on the relationship with the recipient country, the effect on economic and commercial interests and the protection of the UK’s strategic industrial base.13

  Both the Scott report on arms to Iraq and even the Green Paper produced by the Conservatives in 1996 had specifically addressed the need for arms exports to avoid contributing to human rights abuses. But the Labour government refused to simply ban exports to countries abusing human rights, saying instead that specific arms exports should ‘avoid contributing to internal repression’.

  According to Neil Cooper, an expert on arms exports at the University of Plymouth:

  Judged solely on its own language Labour’s arms sales policy is actually less ethical than its own policy in the eighties, less ethical than that of a number of other states, less ethical than the EU code, less ethical than Scott and less ethical than the Green Paper on export controls produced by the Conservatives.14

  The government also worked avidly to water down the EU code of conduct on arms sales that was eventually adopted in 1998. Nordic countries, for example, had wanted a permanent blacklist of countries with poor human rights records. Instead, the EU code adopts much of the same language as the British guidelines.

  That the new EU code was also riven with qualifications was noticed by three senior retired British military officers. They argued for tighter restrictions on arms exports than the EU code, since European troops have faced ‘military equipment supplied by their own governments in peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia’.15

  In outlining these guidelines the government was in effect announcing – for all to hear – that nothing would change. Note that we are still dealing with the publicly stated guidelines on arms exports, not actual policy. The point I am making is that the government is not in reality even pretending to implement an ‘ethical’ policy on arms exports. It has been more concerned with reassuring military industry of continuing government support.

  Even where it might have been easier to adopt more ‘ethical’ policies, government policy has frankly been embarrassing. For example, New Labour has made a lot out of its decision to ban landmines in support of the international treaty doing so. When the Guardian first reported the ban under the heading ‘Britain bans use and sale of mines’, it also wrote that this had been delayed until 2005 as a concession to the military, because ‘adequate alternative weapons would not be readily available earlier’. Military officials said that ‘alternatives, such as better surveillance techniques and more advanced conventional bombs, including mortars and shells, were being developed’. The Financial Times reported the military’s belief that it would have alternative ‘area denial’ weapons by 2005 to ‘replace land mines’. The government has also decided to proceed with the procurement of a vehicle-launched scatterable anti-tank mine ordered by the last government (anti-tank mines not being covered in the landmines ban).16

  My view is that the guidelines (and actual policy) are enabling the government to make four clear pledges to its major audience and intended beneficiaries – the arms corporations. This is the government’s real policy on arms exports. These pledges are being tragically borne out in practice and the human consequences are severe.

  Pledge one – We arm both sides in conflicts

  Britain is currently arming around fifty countries undergoing major conflict or civil war, to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. It is traditional British practice to arm both sides in a conflict. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade has noted that:

  Arms companies within the UK are thriving upon deliberately supplying opposing warring states. Not only are they allowed to do this but, as events like DSEI [an arms exhibition] show, the UK government is actively involved in promoting the opportunity to do it. The government routinely secures arms contracts with both sides of a confrontation through subsidies, promotions, arms exhibitions and ministerial visits.17

  Britain provided military equipment to both Iran and Iraq during their war in the 1980s. An array of equipment went to Iraq, the favoured location. But MI6 worked with an Iranian-born arms dealer, Jamshid Hashemi, to help supply foreign arms to Iran, in direct violation of the government’s guidelines banning weapons to both countries. In one deal with Iran, MI6 sanctioned the supply of fifteen British-made motorboats reinforced to carry heavy machine guns. The boats, exported via Greece, were used against civilian shipping in the tanker war in the Gulf in the mid-1980s.18

  Britain currently arms Greece and Turkey, countries that have come close to war in disputes over Cyprus and sea boundaries. It also provides arms-related equipment to both China and Taiwan, both poised for serious confrontation. In the past it has armed Israel and Lebanon, while Israel was occupying the south of Lebanon.

  Britain is now arming both Pakistan and India as tensions rise on the Indian subcontinent and an all-out war is a real prospect. The government has rejected repeated calls to stop the arms flow. Indeed, arms exports have been stepped up as tensions have increased. In 1999, for example, £8.3 million worth of arms was supplied to India and £1.5 million to Pakistan. In 2000, nearly 700 export licences worth £64 million were approved to both countries. Britain sold £122 million worth of arms to India and £17.5 million to Pakistan in the two years up to February 2002. This was often for similar equipment, including combat helicopter parts, aircraft radar and small arms. Export licences continue to be issued as India mounts its largest military build-up in thirty years along the Kashmir line of control, as Pakistan tests new ballistic missiles, and as both deploy tactical nuclear weapons near their border.19

  In January 2002, Tony Blair visited India and Pakistan saying that ‘we can have a calming influence’ and warning of the ‘enormous problems the whole of the world would face if things went wrong’. Behind the scenes, Blair was pushing to sell India sixty Hawk aircraft at a cost of £1 billion. British lobbying for this deal has been ongoing throughout the crisis on the Indian subcontinent. The Hawks can be used as ground attack aircraft and would be used to train Indian pilots to fly fast jets, including Jaguar bombers previously sold by Britain. These Jaguars (126 of which are being produced in India under licence) are capable of being adapted to carry nuclear weapons. The media has reported that plans are under way to upgrade their performance with Israeli help.20

  Blair’s visit was one in a long line of lobbying by British officials. After a visit to India in late 2000 Defence minister Geoff Hoon said he hoped the Hawk deal would go ahead and that he envisaged ‘all manner of further collaboration with BAE Systems’ and India.21

  Six weeks after Blair’s lobbying mission, British arms companies attended an arms fair in New Delhi, where Britain had one of the biggest pavilions, funded with support from the DTI. With official blessing, British arms companies were offering India howitzers, anti-aircraft guns, missiles and tanks. It was reported to be likely that the same delegations would visit Pakistan’s state-sponsored arms fair later that year.22

  It can hardly be doubted that arms exports to India and Pakistan might be used in combat. The government issued a licence to Vickers to export tank spare parts to India; these tanks were subsequently lined up on the border with Pakistan. In response to a letter from Edward Gamier MP, Foreign Office minister Peter Hain wrote that ‘while there is a theoretical risk that India might use tanks offensively in the future, the criteria make clear that this is not sufficient grounds to refuse an application’.23

  So much for Britain’s export guidelines. The government states that it will ‘not issue an export licence if there is a clearly identif
iable risk that the intended recipient would use the proposed export aggressively against another country, or to assert by force a territorial claim’. ‘The need not to affect adversely regional stability in any significant way will also be considered.’24

  Britain has sold to Pakistan mortars, armoured personnel carriers, combat aircraft, production equipment for assault rifles and machine guns. London has not let Pakistan’s nuclear tests (conducted in July 1998) or the overthrow of a democratically elected government (in October 1999) seriously get in the way. ‘No informal embargo, freeze or moratorium on exports of arms and military equipment to Pakistan was ever in force’, the government has said.25

  No export licences were, however, issued to Pakistan for a while after the coup and a de facto moratorium may have been in place. By January 2000, the Guardian reported a debate in Whitehall on whether the government should resume normal business with Pakistan. It published leaked minutes of a meeting which noted ‘the Whitehall consensus in favour of processing outstanding export licence applications to Pakistan’ but that Clare Short and Robin Cook were opposed. It noted eighty outstanding licence applications and that ‘exporters are becoming increasingly impatient and suspicious’.26

  The inevitable happened. In July 2000 the government announced that a number of licences to Pakistan had been approved. Some had been refused and the export of small arms and ammunition would be blocked.27 But it meant pretty much business as usual.

  High British principles were also absent regarding the murderous war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which claimed three million lives until a tentative peace accord was reached in July 2002. Britain sold arms to Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola, who intervened to support the DRC regime, at the same time as supplying Uganda and Rwanda, who were fighting the DRC and its allies. Representatives from opposing sides (Uganda and Angola) were invited to a major British arms exhibition in September 2001. The International Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria said that ‘Britain is inflaming the situation by arming both sides.’28