How do Arms Sales and Human Rights Work?

Two separate news stories in my reader last week have caused me to think about how states really think about human rights and arms transfers.  If you are inclined to think that arms sales should be responsible and that states should have to account for their behavior in order to procure more coercive power, then these two stories might make you happy. As someone who thinks a lot about the underlying premise of arms sales, these stories make me happy in other ways.

They are evidence, or at least confirmations, that the ways that I am thinking about arms sales is fruitful.  That is heartening, since I picked back up my book manuscript (dissertation) this past month and have been furiously cranking out new words, new ideas, and updates in a bid to have the book written by the end of this year. I won't spill too many words here about my new ideas (they're awesome, trust me), but I do want to outline how many (most?) states are responsible in their approach to arms sales.

The first story comes from RFE/RL and is a discussion of Hungary's bid to ease arms export sanctions to Belarus. They want to ease restrictions on some spare parts and gun parts. The EU put arms sanctions on Belarus in 2010 after government crackdowns.  It has eased off on sanctions in other areas after Belarus has improved its human rights record.  I am working on a paper that compares Kazakhstan and Belarus, so I have recently looked at Belarus's arms imports.  They don't really have a lot of sources for supply in the first place.

Imports to Belarus (1991-2016) [1]
Exporter	Years	Total Value	Percent
RUS	9	748	93.3
UKR	5	52	6.5
CHN	1	2	0.2

Up until last year only Russia, Ukraine, and China have provided to Belarus post independence (in terms of major conventional weapons).  The types of weapons that Hungary is asking for might not make it onto this list at all.  

The second story is about Germany and Hungary, two NATO allies. The German government and members of civil society have called for Germany and other states to stop supplying arms to Turkey because of their recent foray into Syria.  Germany has strict laws against supporting ongoing conflicts and providing arms to human rights abusers, and so the chance that Turkish troops could target civilians in their operations is the cause of this concern.  

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These stories tell me two things.  The first is that states do try to be responsible, and that human rights matter.  The second thing that it tells me is that aggregate numbers of weapons may not tell the whole story.  In the case of Turkey, for example, the sale of tanks (the weapons system that Turkey wants Germany to upgrade) took place from the 1980s through the 2000s.  In an aggregate study without very careful research design, it could appear that Germany doesn't take human rights or conflict involvement seriously when it comes to providing arms to other states. This is an issue that I think has crept into the arms transfer literature as it has tried to account for state choice.  Aggregate data may not be the best way to do that.  

Richard Johnson and I have a forthcoming article in ISQ that looks at this type of aggregate data, and the picture that we find is not rosy.  It may be, however, that we are simply looking a the wrong thing in the wrong way to find the answers we want.  To our credit, we make this point.  Our study was meant to replicate earlier studies in ways that tried to at least take into account a more nuanced picture of decision-making.  Our attempt used this same kind of aggregated data, however.

The takeaway for me is that we need more work on the fundamentals of arms sales.  We need a variety of work that looks at both macro trends and micro decision-making.  Both types of work need to be guided by theory in ways that it simply isn't now.

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1. Source: SIPRI TIV values (www.sipri.org).  Total value is Millions of USD.

Link-O-Rama: Russia's Domestic Market & Russian Arms Exports

Today I am sharing a number of links I keep saving in my Google Reader to get to later.  They deal with Russia and arms transfers primarily.  It is a mix of positive (for Russia) developments, negative developments, and some weirdness.  The weirdness is that Russia continues to fight against the rest of the world community on the arms to Syria issue. While it is true that arms sales to Libya have not yet been banned (primarily because of Russia's adamant opposition to the possibility), the consensus of the world is coalescing against the regime.  That is potentially long-term bad news for Russia's arms sales to that state.

However, the arms deal to Iraq (see below) is a sign that Russia may be able to regain some of its lost ground in the region.  The items from Libya are a bit confusing.

The bad news for Russia's arms industry is that it is losing past customers (even present allies) for its radar systems.

The last point I want to make before I get to the links is that Russia is really playing the embattled and encircled card on the issue of arms in general.  There is no doubt that the arms industry is a key component of Russia's foreign policy portfolio.

Putin wants to Re-arm Russia 

“In June, we in particular discussed implementation of a state armament program regarding aviation,” he said. “We will keep the issue under constant control.” 

“We will have no other historic chance to solve these ambitious tasks the country is now facing to ensure its defense capability in due time and with due quality when [the required] funds are available, thank God,” Putin said. “Tomorrow we will have none of these funds, and time will be lost.”

Part II

Russia will continue to build up its own defense capabilities according to foreseeable threats stated President Vladimir Putin at a meeting at the Defense Ministry, reports the Voice of Russia's correspondent from the session.

There are multiplying and expanding zones of instability on the planet: with non-stop armed conflicts in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the danger of radicalism and chaos being exported to Russia from neighboring regions. 

"At the same time there are methodical attempts being carried out to undermine the strategic balance," President Putin said.

Russia at War over Arms Sales

MOSCOW, March 2 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is facing a ‘real war’ aimed at hampering the country’s legal deliveries of weapons to Syria, the head of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation has said. 

“A real war has been declared against us,” Alexander Fomin told Ekho Moskvy radio on Friday without specifying who has declared the war. 

“The [Russian] ships are lured into ports and arrested there under various devised pretexts. When the ships are at sea, any insurance is canceled,” Fomin said adding that any attempts to deliver the contracted goods are being thwarted.

Libya and IRAQ
Iraq 

Indeed, when it became known that Iraq had problems with the Russian deal, there was widespread speculation that Washington had pressured Maliki to stop buying from Moscow to keep him dependent on the United States. 

That and the widespread accusations of corruption in the deal... 

Libya

There were denials all round at the time but the Americans, like the Russians, need hefty exports to keep assembly lines running amid massive cutbacks in domestic defense spending [1]. Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said Feb. 27 he will shortly ask the U.N. Security Council to lift the arms embargo imposed in 2011. 

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Monday that Moscow had reservations about that, given the Tripoli government's lack of authority and multiple security threats but he said Russia was ready to help the new Libya "facilitate the possible acquisition of arms." 

Russia's RIA Novosti new agency reports Algeria, another Cold War client, is another target, but Algiers has quarreled with Moscow on the quality of its arms and isn't expected to be a major buyer of Russian systems.

More on Libya

The Libyan authorities should do everything possible to stop the spread of Libyan weapons in the region and beyond, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Wednesday. 

Rebels in Libya, some of them from Islamist groups, ousted and killed long-standing dictator Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011 after a months-long uprising, in which they received assistance from NATO forces. Government arsenals across the country were looted during the conflict.

Wouldn't arms leakage present an opportunity for more sale to Libya in the long-run if they get the contracts?

Russia and Vietnam

Moscow will proceed with plans this year to help Vietnam launch a new submarine fleet and train the crews, Russian Defense Ministry Sergei Shoigu said on Wednesday.

Vietnam ordered six submarines in order to counter Chinese expansion in the area. 

Estonia (and Belarus)

TALLINN, March 7 (RIA Novosti) - Estonia’s Air Defense Forces have dismantled their last obsolete Soviet-made radars, the General Staff of the country’s armed forces said on Thursday. 

One P-37 type radar will be installed as a monument at the Amari military base, while another will be sent to an aviation museum. 

At present, two radar stations monitor Estonia’s airspace - a TPS-77 at Kallavere, in western Estonia and an ASR-8 at Amari, not far from Tallinn. 

In late March, a new radar station will be opened on Muhu Island featuring a medium-range Ground Master 430 3D air-defense radar [2] with an effective range of up to 470 kilometers (295 miles) and an altitude of up to 30 kilometers (100,000 feet). 

Another post-Soviet republic, Belarus, said in mid-February it would replace a Russian radar station with an indigenous one and dispose of its Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27 fighters.

The fact that even Belarus (Russia's erstwhile ally) is moving away from Russian-produced radar does not bode well for the reputation of Russian defense products.  This is a serious problem for Russia given its priority of exporting weapons.
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[1] One of the assumptions I make in my dissertation is that both the US and Russia can use arms transfers as foreign policy tools because their domestic markets can support the arms industry.  This assumption does not seem to be holding up well.

[2] These are manufactured by the Thales group, a French firm.