by Alex Evans | Feb 22, 2011 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa, UK
Presumably like many of my fellow countrymen, I am writhing with embarrassment about my Prime Minister’s ugly little junket to the Middle East this week.
It is a thing of wonder that, even as the PM is accompanied by the heads of BAE Systems, QinetiQ and Thales UK, Number 10’s press briefings should insist that the primary purpose of Cameron’s trip is about “encouraging political reform”. Or that Cameron’s defence, when challenged about arms sales, is to argue that
The idea that we should expect small and democratic countries like Kuwait to be able to manufacture all their means of defence seems to me completely at odds with reality.
Right – small and democratic countries like:
- Bahrain. Last year, exports approved by the UK government included assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and submachine guns – oh yes, and tear gas and crowd control ammunition. (OK, Bahrain may not be exactly democratic. But it’s small, right?)
- Libya. Q3 2010 goods approved for export included “wall and door breaching projectile launchers, crowd control ammunition, small arms ammunition, tear gas/irritant ammunition, training tear gas/irritant ammunition … ammunition comprised £3.2m of the £4.7m million of military items licensed”
- Egypt. 2010 approved exports included “components for all-wheel drive vehicles with ballistic protection; military communications equipment; optical target surveillance equipment; components for armoured personnel carriers; components for semi-automatic pistols; and components for submachine guns”
- Saudi Arabia. 2010 exports included “armoured personnel carriers, ground vehicle military communications equipment, sniper rifles; small arms ammunition; weapon sights”; 2009 included “CS hand grenades, tear gas/irritant ammunition and tear gas/riot control agents”
These details are courtesy of Campaign Against the Arms Trade; but in fact, as the Guardian’s Datablog shows, there’s practically no country in the region that we don’t flog arms to.
You could – if you were feeling very charitable – take the view that lots of governments were selling lots of arms to countries in the Middle East, and that no-one anticipated the wave of repression now underway. That would seem to be the underlying implication of the government’s defensive line that it has now revoked export licenses to Bahrain and Libya – as if to say, ‘Ugly business, old chap; but who could possibly have known that these regimes were so ghastly?’
But for David Cameron cheerfully to head over to the Middle East even as the shooting’s underway in countries all around him, on an arms sales junket – wow. That truly puts Britain in a class of its own.
Update: This from a press release out today from Saferworld, the conflict prevention NGO:
…in 2010, the LibDex arms fair in Tripoli saw a large proportion of the exhibition hall taken up by UK companies. Yet throughout this period there were serious questions about Libya’s status as a responsible arms importer. Libya repeatedly attempted to source orders that far outstripped its defence needs and a 2008 UN report showed that Libya sent weapons originally sold to it by Spain, Belgium and Bulgaria on to Darfur in clear breach of the UN arms embargo on the region.
And also this:
Although the UK is to be credited for revoking export licences to Bahrain and Libya, and the EU yesterday announced that it was suspending all arms trade with Libya, the fact is that many of these licences should never have been issued in the first place and, in the face of recent events, this is somewhat a case of shutting the door after the horse has bolted. Although the problem is not confined to Libya alone, the way exports to the country have been approached is a clear illustration of the serious flaws in how EU members’ put their own rules into practice.
by Alex Evans | Feb 22, 2011 | What we're watching
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0[/youtube]
by Alex Evans | Feb 22, 2011 | Cooperation and coherence, Middle East and North Africa
Via Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic (who still have yet to send me a copy of their magazine two months after the subscription was paid for…).
Update: Searching through the full archive of Rumsfeld papers (online here), I find this gem from May 2003, in a memo from Rumsfeld to the President:
Mr President, we were concerned that going to war in Iraq could alienate our allies in the Gulf – today, our relationships there are stronger than ever. There was concern about the US acting unilaterally. Instead, you formed a 65-nation coalition and in the process strengthened the bonds of friendship with Britain and many other nations in Europe, both old and new.
A glass half full kind of guy, then.
Update 2: Donald shows how to do interagency cooperation in a 2002 memo to Paul Wolfowitz:
Call Condi Rice. She said to me that we have got to get the detainee mess sorted out, that nobody is able to get answers. I think she is getting this from the UK. Call her and find out what she is talking about. She always comes in with these cryptic messages as though the Pentagon is messed up, and I don’t have any idea what she is talking about.
by Claire Melamed | Feb 20, 2011 | Economics and development, South Asia, UK
Last week was aid to India week. There were three pieces on the subject on the Guardian website, plus the predictable ‘why oh why’ articles in the Daily Mail and the Express , and a five minute slot on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’. And not forgetting Andy Sumner right here on GD. But you know, I’ve read it all and I still don’t know what I think.
Let’s leave aside the national interest argument for a minute. Is there a development case for giving aid to India? And can we put numbers on it?
For some, the fact that one third of all poor people in the world live in India is reason enough to give it aid. Half of all India’s children are malnourished; our money can help them, so let’s send it over. And maybe that should be all there is to it. But for most people, somewhere in the moral calculus of aid is the idea that some countries, as well as some people, are needier than others.
How does India fare on the scale of need at a country level? India’s (in)famous space programme is of course exhibit A for cutting aid, and its plentiful supply of billionaires is exhibit B. But hold on a minute. According to Martin Ravallion of the World Bank, even if marginal tax rates on the Indian middle class were 100% this would still only provide enough money to reduce dollar a day poverty in the country by 20%. India is not rich enough to end poverty right now with its own resources, space programme or no space programme.
India’s growth rates are also sometimes cited as a reason not to give aid. The argument is that economic growth, forecast at nearly 9 per cent for next year, will end poverty without our help. Sadly, not for a very long time. Growth in India is surprisingly inefficient at reducing poverty. A comparison between India, China and Brazil found that each percentage increase in GDP reduced poverty by 3.2 per cent in Brazil, by 0.8 per cent in China, but by only 0.3 per cent in India. So even though the country is growing fast that doesn’t mean that poverty is going to be ending any time soon.
So – a country that has a space programme but is still too poor to end poverty. And a country where economic growth is firmly in the fast lane but where poverty reduction is stuck in a tailback behind a caravan. As ever, it’s the politics, stupid. Poverty reduction is frequently low on the list of priorities for national and local leaders. Instead, the focus is on showcasing India’s credentials as a big power – that space programme again – and on growing as fast as China, whatever the cost.
Perhaps all the arguments against aid to India are actually arguments in favour – if India is rich and fast growing but people are still so poor then maybe aid is justified on the grounds that people need support more if their government seems less able or willing to tackle the problem. But the aid that the UK sends to India is tiny – a fraction of one per cent of GDP. It can’t plug the gap. Anyway, some argue that aid can slow down political change by letting the government off the hook – though again, the amounts involved are probably too small to make this a serious problem. On the other side of the fence, the optimists hope that aid will speed up political change and poverty reduction, by catalysing changes and showing what can be done. That’s just as plausible.
Last week Andrew Mitchell made his choice clear. For the foreseeable future, aid to India continues. Politicians have to take these decisions. The rest of us have the luxury of uncertainty.
