Spare a thought these icy days of January for the arms industry. Recession has had such a devastating effect on makers of tanks and warplanes that the European Defence Agency is holding a conference later this month to mull over what can be done. According to the EDA, military spending has been “declining steadily” on this continent since 2005.
Pause for a moment. Is that really something to be exercised about? There is little to celebrate about the economic downturn but lower expenditure on the tools of war and oppression might offer one reason to be cheerful.
Unfortunately, the EDA’s own data hints that the situation is not as dramatic as the words “declining steadily” imply. In 2006, the 26 countries belonging to the agency spent 201 billion euros on the military. That fell to 194 billion euros in 2010. Significantly, though, the figure for 2010 was the same as that for the previous year. You don’t need to be a mathematical whizz-kid to discern a pattern here: rather than declining steadily, expenditure appears to be levelling off.
The EDA’s number-crunchers have calculated that at 520 billion euros, the US spent 2.7 times more on the military than the agency’s participating states in 2010. The suits and uniforms of Brussels seem to regard this imbalance as a bad thing. I, on the other hand, take solace in the fact that Europe isn’t aping that imperial leviathan across the Atlantic as wholeheartedly as it could.
Bywords for corruption
My solace is nonetheless slender. Over the Christmas break, I read Andrew Feinstein’s book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade. It traces how the firms which pushed for the establishment of the EDA have become bywords for corruption.
When the EDA was launched in 2004, the three giants of Europe’s weapons industry – Thales, EADS and BAE Systems – issued a joint statement predicting that the agency would play a “vital role” in stimulating greater investment in war (OK, I have resorted to paraphrasing). Feinstein devotes several chapters of his 672-page tome to the shenanigans of BAE.
In 2010, BAE was fined 400 million dollars in the US, the largest ever penalty imposed on a British corporation. That followed BAE’s admission of guilt that it had written false letters to the American authorities 10 years earlier. The authorities were investigating kickbacks that the company had paid while seeking deals in Saudi Arabia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Feinstein explains meticulously how BAE not only gave bribes, it was granted permission to do so by Britain’s powers that be. Back in 1977, Britain issued the “Cooper directive” – named after an official in its ministry of defence – which authorised the payment of secret commissions by British firms angling for government-to-government contracts. The directive was a response to an official memo, stating that the Saudi royal family expected money under the table if they were to buy weapons from the West.
A one-time member of Parliament for the African National Congress, Feinstein indicates that the human cost of arms sales can’t merely be totted up using casualty figures from the battlefield (where such figures exist). As a legislator, he took part in a probe over a major arms purchasing decision announced by the South African government in 1999. Feinstein calls BAE “the villain in the piece”, citing estimates that 300 million dollars was paid in bribes and commissions to senior politicians, middlemen, civil servants and the ANC itself (Feinstein came under intense pressure from party colleagues not to cause them embarrassment but – pun intended – stuck by his guns). By 2018, the total price tag for this deal could exceed 6 billion dollars. In the five years following the decision, 365,000 South Africans perished from AIDS; for every rand spent on keeping people with HIV alive, 6.75 rand went on buying weapons.
Blair: saviour of Africa?
Do you remember how Tony Blair decided that eradicating African poverty should be the central theme of Britain’s presidencies of the EU and G8 in 2005? Blair doubled up as a “saviour” of Africa and a salesman for BAE during his term as prime minister. One of his most disgusting acts was to persuade the president of Tanzania, one of the world’s poorest countries, to spend 40 million dollars on a radar system for military aircraft.
BAE is not the only company on Feinstein’s radar screen (pun intended once again). He highlights how Thales of France was ordered in 2010 to pay a fine of over 800 million dollars to Taiwan after being convicted of inflating the price of frigates supplied as part of an arms deal struck in the early 1990s.
On paper, the European Union’s institutions and offices have a strong policy against fraud. Yet they remain happy to court arms companies, even when those firms are implicated in large-scale corruption. Thales recently gave a demonstration to Frontex, the EU border management agency, of a pilotless drone (or unmanned aerial vehicle) in a Greek military base. Named the Fulmar, the plane in question is Spanish-owned but uses equipment designed by Thales. Intriguingly, it can be launched from a catapult, rather than a runway.
Frontex sees its role as keeping foreigners out of Europe and doesn’t appear perturbed by how the people in question are usually impoverished and in need of help. It comes as no surprise then that its racist endeavours are being aided by others who are far better known for corruption than compassion.
●First published by New Europe, 22-28 January 2012.
Showing posts with label European Defence Agency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label European Defence Agency. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, July 4, 2011
Dodgy arms dealers dictate policies
To William Hague, the wave of protests in the Middle East and North Africa this year constitute “the most important event of the early twenty-first century”. The foreign secretary’s paeans to freedom have been effusive but evasive. One salient fact that he neglected to mention in a May address to London’s Mansion House is that Britain has helped suppress some of the very same protests.
Two months earlier, Saudi troops invaded Bahrain to defend a beleaguered monarchy, bringing numerous tanks supplied by BAE Systems with them. Known as Tacticas, these tanks were made in the northern English city of Newcastle (with final assembly in Belgium). Saudi Arabia ordered over 260 of these vehicles in 2006, on the proviso they would be delivered in 2008. While the relevant licenses were issued under a Labour government, the current coalition in London hasn’t revoked any export permits for arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
BAE is a byword for dodgy deals. Early last year, it paid a fine of $400 million to avoid being sued for corruption – over sales to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere – by the US Department of Justice. A British Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAE’s Saudi connections was shelved in 2006 on the order of that other valiant defender of liberty Tony Blair.
Its tarnished reputation does not seem to bother European Union’s officials, however. The European Defence Agency has tasked BAE with drawing up a blueprint for meeting the Union’s requirements on “precision guided ammunition” by the end of this year. Precision-guided weapons are supposed to allow targets be selected with pinpoint accuracy but they are invariably used to butcher the innocent.
This is one of many troubling activities by the EDA that elicits virtually no criticism in the press. The agency is obsessed with pilotless drones – or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) - and believes it’s imperative that they are used for everything bar washing the dishes. Research by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, estimates that for every “militant” killed in US drone attacks undertaken as part of its “war on terror”, 10 civilians have also been killed.
An EDA paper on drones that I stumbled upon indicates that the agency’s contractors have a twisted worldview. This paper was written for the agency by BMT Defence Services, a designer of warships. It referred to scenarios BMT was studying on the use of drones and indicated that the analytical system it had devised could enable distinctions to be drawn “between friendly and potentially hostile population groups”.
Although the agency’s staff routinely reel off three-letter acronyms, only one such acronym is apt in this case: WTF. What is the real message here: that population groups opposed to the military invasion of their country can be considered as “legitimate” targets? That notion is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Israel, home to some of the world’s leading weapons firms, declared Gaza an “enemy entity” in 2007. By the end of the following year, Israel was testing out its state-of-the-art drones on this “hostile population”. The “collateral damage” included children and pregnant women.
During last month’s Paris Air Show – a jamboree for the arms industry – the EDA formally signed a cooperation accord with the European Space Agency, a nominally civilian body. At a briefing beforehand, journalists were assured that the EDA has no intention of introducing weapons into Space. Rather, the agency’s focus is on bits of debris floating around in parts of the universe and the threats they could pose to this planet.
I am sceptical of that assurance. The history of the EU’s adventures in Space are that projects that appear benign end up having other applications. In 2002, the European Commission recommended that Galileo, the satellite navigation system, should be civilian in nature. By 2008, the same institution indicated that the military would comprise about half of all clients with access to Galileo’s encrypted signals.
Moreover, some informed analysts predict that the drones so dear to the EDA’s heart will soon make extensive use of satellite technology. A 2010 study by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs argued that improved satellite communications capacities will be “absolutely essential” for drones over the coming two decades.
There is a more fundamental reason why the EDA should be regarded as sinister: it is the brainchild of the arms industry. After pushing for an agency of its type to be established for many years, weapons manufacturers saw their wish come true in 2004. BAE and its French equivalent Thales were then represented on an official working group that drafted part of the EU constitution, which was subsequently copied and pasted into the Lisbon Treaty. To their delight, that treaty allows the agency to take “any useful measure” to “strengthen the industrial and technological base” of Europe’s arms industry.
One probable consequence of that clause is that the Union’s scientific research programme will be used to develop the weapons of the future. Indeed, this may already be happening. Thales is the top recipient of grants earmarked for “security” projects under the current multi-annual programme, which runs from 2007 to 2013. While all these schemes are supposed to be non-military, there are no safeguards in place to prevent the fruits of EU-funded research being used for aggressive purposes.
The arms industry thrives on the destruction of human life and the denial of human rights. Its level of influence is pernicious.
·First published by New Europe, 3-9 July 2011
Two months earlier, Saudi troops invaded Bahrain to defend a beleaguered monarchy, bringing numerous tanks supplied by BAE Systems with them. Known as Tacticas, these tanks were made in the northern English city of Newcastle (with final assembly in Belgium). Saudi Arabia ordered over 260 of these vehicles in 2006, on the proviso they would be delivered in 2008. While the relevant licenses were issued under a Labour government, the current coalition in London hasn’t revoked any export permits for arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
BAE is a byword for dodgy deals. Early last year, it paid a fine of $400 million to avoid being sued for corruption – over sales to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere – by the US Department of Justice. A British Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAE’s Saudi connections was shelved in 2006 on the order of that other valiant defender of liberty Tony Blair.
Its tarnished reputation does not seem to bother European Union’s officials, however. The European Defence Agency has tasked BAE with drawing up a blueprint for meeting the Union’s requirements on “precision guided ammunition” by the end of this year. Precision-guided weapons are supposed to allow targets be selected with pinpoint accuracy but they are invariably used to butcher the innocent.
This is one of many troubling activities by the EDA that elicits virtually no criticism in the press. The agency is obsessed with pilotless drones – or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) - and believes it’s imperative that they are used for everything bar washing the dishes. Research by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, estimates that for every “militant” killed in US drone attacks undertaken as part of its “war on terror”, 10 civilians have also been killed.
An EDA paper on drones that I stumbled upon indicates that the agency’s contractors have a twisted worldview. This paper was written for the agency by BMT Defence Services, a designer of warships. It referred to scenarios BMT was studying on the use of drones and indicated that the analytical system it had devised could enable distinctions to be drawn “between friendly and potentially hostile population groups”.
Although the agency’s staff routinely reel off three-letter acronyms, only one such acronym is apt in this case: WTF. What is the real message here: that population groups opposed to the military invasion of their country can be considered as “legitimate” targets? That notion is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Israel, home to some of the world’s leading weapons firms, declared Gaza an “enemy entity” in 2007. By the end of the following year, Israel was testing out its state-of-the-art drones on this “hostile population”. The “collateral damage” included children and pregnant women.
During last month’s Paris Air Show – a jamboree for the arms industry – the EDA formally signed a cooperation accord with the European Space Agency, a nominally civilian body. At a briefing beforehand, journalists were assured that the EDA has no intention of introducing weapons into Space. Rather, the agency’s focus is on bits of debris floating around in parts of the universe and the threats they could pose to this planet.
I am sceptical of that assurance. The history of the EU’s adventures in Space are that projects that appear benign end up having other applications. In 2002, the European Commission recommended that Galileo, the satellite navigation system, should be civilian in nature. By 2008, the same institution indicated that the military would comprise about half of all clients with access to Galileo’s encrypted signals.
Moreover, some informed analysts predict that the drones so dear to the EDA’s heart will soon make extensive use of satellite technology. A 2010 study by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs argued that improved satellite communications capacities will be “absolutely essential” for drones over the coming two decades.
There is a more fundamental reason why the EDA should be regarded as sinister: it is the brainchild of the arms industry. After pushing for an agency of its type to be established for many years, weapons manufacturers saw their wish come true in 2004. BAE and its French equivalent Thales were then represented on an official working group that drafted part of the EU constitution, which was subsequently copied and pasted into the Lisbon Treaty. To their delight, that treaty allows the agency to take “any useful measure” to “strengthen the industrial and technological base” of Europe’s arms industry.
One probable consequence of that clause is that the Union’s scientific research programme will be used to develop the weapons of the future. Indeed, this may already be happening. Thales is the top recipient of grants earmarked for “security” projects under the current multi-annual programme, which runs from 2007 to 2013. While all these schemes are supposed to be non-military, there are no safeguards in place to prevent the fruits of EU-funded research being used for aggressive purposes.
The arms industry thrives on the destruction of human life and the denial of human rights. Its level of influence is pernicious.
·First published by New Europe, 3-9 July 2011
Monday, November 1, 2010
Killing by remote control
Top Gun, the 1980s blockbuster that made Tom Cruise’s bank account as large as his ego, was a blatant recruiting video for the American military. Following its success, the number of young men who applied to become fighter pilots rose by 500%, according to the US Navy.
Nearly a quarter-century later, Top Gun director Tony Scott is talking about making a sequel that will address how much warfare has changed in the interim. For his research, Scott plans to hang out in Nevada, the launching pad for drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan. His sources will be “these geeks”, who operate unmanned aircraft “then party all night,” he told HitFix, an entertainment website.
Officials working for the European Defence Agency (EDA) lead far less glitzy lives than Hollywood film-makers. Yet they share Scott’s priapic fascination with digital-era killing machines.
With military spending being shrunk in many EU countries, the agency is strenuously advocating that governments should “compensate” for cutbacks by focusing on improving their technological capabilities. Speaking in early October, the EDA’s deputy chief executive Carlo Magrassi identified the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – also known as pilotless drones - as a priority for his team.
Magrassi tried to make drones sound respectable by stating that they can be used for “border control, environmental purposes or disaster relief”. But if he thinks they have been developed to monitor dolphins and rescue earthquake victims, I suggest he checks out the Irish-language documentary “Ag Filleadh Ar Gaza” (“Returning to Gaza”; watch it with English subtitles on www.tg4.ie). Its most harrowing scene was filmed among the rubble of the al-Dayah family’s home in Gaza City. Twenty-two members of that family – including 12 children and a pregnant woman – were murdered early one morning in January 2009 when they were attacked by an Israeli drone. Some of their corpses were burned so badly that they could not be identified; others have still not been recovered.
Last week a European Commission spokeswoman tried to avoid saying anything about the death sentence imposed on Tariq Aziz by claiming that the EU’s position on the death penalty is well-known. If the Union’s opposition to capital punishment is really so well known, why don’t we hear it denouncing the extrajudicial executions carried out with the aid of pilotless drones? The EU’s silence might have something to do with the complicity of its governments in such killings.
Britain, for example, has been using armed drones called Reapers in Afghanistan since 2007. By the summer of this year, these aircraft had discharged weapons almost 100 times.
A bigger reason for the EU’s reticence could be its subservience to the United States. During 2009, US drones killed no fewer than 700 Pakistani civilians. The slaughter which Barack Obama is authorising there appears all the more abominable when you consider that the floods which devastated Pakistan in recent months have been used as a pretext to intensify drone strikes. The 22 drone attacks carried out in September this year were the highest number during a single month to date.
Although Leon Panetta, the CIA’s director, has argued that the drone programme is “the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership”, several learned scholars view America’s policies as unlawful. Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor with the Notre Dame Law School in Indiana, said recently that the US has no legal right to resort to air strikes in Yemen, Somalia or Pakistan because it is not formally engaged in armed conflict in those countries. David Glazier from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles has argued that troops involved in drone attacks could be prosecuted for any deaths or injuries they cause under the domestic laws of the countries where the attacks occur.
Perhaps the most astute observations on drones are those of Philip Alston, a former United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. Alston has voiced his disquiet at the “Playstation mentality” surrounding these killings. “Young military personnel raised on a diet of video games now kill real people remotely using joysticks,” he wrote earlier this year. “Far removed from the human consequences of their actions, how will this generation of fighters value the right to life? How will commanders and policymakers keep themselves immune from the deceptively antiseptic nature of drone killings?”
The arms industry is intimately involved in the EDA’s work on drones. At the moment unmanned aerial systems (UAS) may only be flown in airspace where no other vehicles are allowed. But the EDA is determined that passengers on Ryanair and Easyjet flights will see drones whizzing past them before too long. And so it has launched SIGAT (Study on the Insertion of UAS in the General Air Traffic). Its partners in this endeavour include BAE, Dassault, Sagem and EADS.
Sagem, a French company, is especially active. Next year it is scheduled to start designing new drones as part of a “joint venture” with Elbit, the Israeli company which manufactured some of the most lethal weaponry tested out in Gaza in 2008 and last year. Elbit has signalled that it hopes this initiative will help increase its sales throughout Europe.
The result of this cooperation could be that Europe’s arsenals are stocked with arms invented with the specific aim of inflicting suffering in Palestine. Just because these weapons are remote controlled doesn’t mean our governments won’t have blood on their hands.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 31 October-6 November 2010
Nearly a quarter-century later, Top Gun director Tony Scott is talking about making a sequel that will address how much warfare has changed in the interim. For his research, Scott plans to hang out in Nevada, the launching pad for drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan. His sources will be “these geeks”, who operate unmanned aircraft “then party all night,” he told HitFix, an entertainment website.
Officials working for the European Defence Agency (EDA) lead far less glitzy lives than Hollywood film-makers. Yet they share Scott’s priapic fascination with digital-era killing machines.
With military spending being shrunk in many EU countries, the agency is strenuously advocating that governments should “compensate” for cutbacks by focusing on improving their technological capabilities. Speaking in early October, the EDA’s deputy chief executive Carlo Magrassi identified the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – also known as pilotless drones - as a priority for his team.
Magrassi tried to make drones sound respectable by stating that they can be used for “border control, environmental purposes or disaster relief”. But if he thinks they have been developed to monitor dolphins and rescue earthquake victims, I suggest he checks out the Irish-language documentary “Ag Filleadh Ar Gaza” (“Returning to Gaza”; watch it with English subtitles on www.tg4.ie). Its most harrowing scene was filmed among the rubble of the al-Dayah family’s home in Gaza City. Twenty-two members of that family – including 12 children and a pregnant woman – were murdered early one morning in January 2009 when they were attacked by an Israeli drone. Some of their corpses were burned so badly that they could not be identified; others have still not been recovered.
Last week a European Commission spokeswoman tried to avoid saying anything about the death sentence imposed on Tariq Aziz by claiming that the EU’s position on the death penalty is well-known. If the Union’s opposition to capital punishment is really so well known, why don’t we hear it denouncing the extrajudicial executions carried out with the aid of pilotless drones? The EU’s silence might have something to do with the complicity of its governments in such killings.
Britain, for example, has been using armed drones called Reapers in Afghanistan since 2007. By the summer of this year, these aircraft had discharged weapons almost 100 times.
A bigger reason for the EU’s reticence could be its subservience to the United States. During 2009, US drones killed no fewer than 700 Pakistani civilians. The slaughter which Barack Obama is authorising there appears all the more abominable when you consider that the floods which devastated Pakistan in recent months have been used as a pretext to intensify drone strikes. The 22 drone attacks carried out in September this year were the highest number during a single month to date.
Although Leon Panetta, the CIA’s director, has argued that the drone programme is “the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership”, several learned scholars view America’s policies as unlawful. Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor with the Notre Dame Law School in Indiana, said recently that the US has no legal right to resort to air strikes in Yemen, Somalia or Pakistan because it is not formally engaged in armed conflict in those countries. David Glazier from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles has argued that troops involved in drone attacks could be prosecuted for any deaths or injuries they cause under the domestic laws of the countries where the attacks occur.
Perhaps the most astute observations on drones are those of Philip Alston, a former United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. Alston has voiced his disquiet at the “Playstation mentality” surrounding these killings. “Young military personnel raised on a diet of video games now kill real people remotely using joysticks,” he wrote earlier this year. “Far removed from the human consequences of their actions, how will this generation of fighters value the right to life? How will commanders and policymakers keep themselves immune from the deceptively antiseptic nature of drone killings?”
The arms industry is intimately involved in the EDA’s work on drones. At the moment unmanned aerial systems (UAS) may only be flown in airspace where no other vehicles are allowed. But the EDA is determined that passengers on Ryanair and Easyjet flights will see drones whizzing past them before too long. And so it has launched SIGAT (Study on the Insertion of UAS in the General Air Traffic). Its partners in this endeavour include BAE, Dassault, Sagem and EADS.
Sagem, a French company, is especially active. Next year it is scheduled to start designing new drones as part of a “joint venture” with Elbit, the Israeli company which manufactured some of the most lethal weaponry tested out in Gaza in 2008 and last year. Elbit has signalled that it hopes this initiative will help increase its sales throughout Europe.
The result of this cooperation could be that Europe’s arsenals are stocked with arms invented with the specific aim of inflicting suffering in Palestine. Just because these weapons are remote controlled doesn’t mean our governments won’t have blood on their hands.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 31 October-6 November 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Israel: NATO's other member state
Israel’s worst-kept secret has finally been revealed.
Documents published in recent days show that Israel not only has nuclear weapons –- something it has never officially acknowledged -- but that it considered selling them to South Africa’s white minority government in 1975. The evidence – contained in Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s new book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa” – appears strong and credible.
But will it cause Europe and America to rethink their relationship with Israel? The truth is that Israel already enjoys such a privileged level of access to their key institutions that any rethink is improbable – at least in the short-term. One of the most important aspects of this relationship relates to how Israel interacts with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
In December 2008, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visited the headquarters of NATO in Brussels to sign an "individual cooperation program" with its member states. By hooking up Israel to NATO's computer systems and facilitating its increased participation in the alliance's missions, this agreement has helped give Israel closer ties with NATO and its 28 member states than any other country outside the club.
Within a few weeks of that agreement being signed, Israel launched a brutal offensive against Gaza, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians. The slaughter did not deter then-NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer from making a public gesture of friendship with the Israeli state. While the death toll in Gaza was continuing to mount, he visited Israel in January 2009 to celebrate "the growing depth both of our practical cooperation and of our political dialogue." Even though Israel's armed forces caused almost all of the deaths in that three-week assault and had unilaterally broken off a ceasefire with Hamas by attacking it two months earlier, he repeated the official Israeli narrative of blaming the violence on Hamas.
Over the past week, NATO has published a paper recommending an update to the "strategic concept" that underpins its activities. Partly authored by Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, this report "NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement," signals that the alliance is mired in a Cold War funk. As well as advocating that the US, Britain and France hold on to their nuclear missiles as long as these weapons "remain a reality in international relations," it identifies the development of a missile defense shield as "an essential military mission." This system is -- if you believe the propaganda -- supposed to protect the member countries against Iran, which is singled out as the state most likely to present a fundamental security challenge in the coming decade. Substitute Iran for the Soviet Union and the case for the system is almost identical to that put forward by US President Ronald Reagan when proposing his "Star Wars" initiative in the 1980s.
NATO has already signaled that Israel will be involved in the development of the defense shield (an Orwellian term, given that the project will probably only ratchet up tensions in the Middle East). Earlier this month, NATO representatives took part in an armaments conference in Airport City, a "business park" near Tel Aviv. Alan Berry, a senior NATO official, confirmed that he and his colleagues were studying Israel's own military interceptors and had helped preliminary discussions about how Israel could take part in the defense shield project.
So far Turkey appears to be the only NATO member to have indicated there is an inherent double standard in seeking Israel's assistance to ward off a perceived threat from Iran. Unlike Iran (and most other nations), Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with the result that its nuclear weapons program has never been subject to international scrutiny. Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, is reported to have raised this anomaly with his NATO peers at a meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, last month, telling them that "no country should be exempted from joining this treaty."
Meanwhile, Israel's reputation for inventing some of the most technologically advanced weapons used in modern warfare is attracting an increasing level of attention from that other powerful club based in Brussels: the European Union.
Sources in the European Defense Agency (EDA) -- a body set up following lobbying by leading arms manufacturers and dedicated to boosting military expenditure by EU governments -- have told this writer they are particularly excited by Israel's pilotless drones or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Many officials in the EDA regard the agency's work on drones as its most important activity. In July, the EDA will participate in a major conference here aimed at convincing the public that these sophisticated spy-planes can help achieve such laudable objectives as protecting the environment.
This exercise bears all the hallmarks of what ecologists call "greenwash." Far from being invented to save the planet, drones have been used in numerous attacks by Israel on Palestinian civilians, as well as by NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Britain and the Netherlands are among the countries taking part in the war in Afghanistan to have signed contracts to buy or rent Israeli drones in recent months.
A spokeswoman for the EDA explained that while her agency keeps a close eye on Israel's arms industry, there are no plans for a formal cooperation agreement with Israel. The same cannot be said for the EU's multi-annual scientific research program, which has a budget of 53 billion euros ($66.7 billion) for the 2007-13 period. Israel is the largest foreign partner in this program and the country's arms-makers are intimately involved.
To prove that it was committed to former US President George W. Bush's "war on terror," the EU has decided in recent years to include security as a theme within the program. Nearly 60 projects have been financed under this category, with Israel taking part in 12 of them. Motorola Israel, for example, is signed up to a project designed to help the detection of "intruders" to buildings or areas deemed of high economic value. Motorola has ample experience in developing the kind of surveillance equipment that will probably feature in this project: it has installed a "virtual fence" around a network of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This "fence" uses thermal cameras and other sensory devices to pinpoint anyone -- such as a Palestinian -- who the Israeli authorities believe should not be allowed to enter settlements built illegally on Palestinian land in open violation of international law.
In another example of greenwash, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is playing a prominent role in the "Clean Sky" project, which is supposed to encourage the development of less-polluting aircraft engines. Far from being an eco-warrior, IAI is a top supplier of warplanes to the Israeli army.
Earlier this year, Irishwoman Maire Geoghegan-Quinn became the new European commissioner for science and research. When her spokesperson Mark English was asked if she has any ethical concerns about how EU-funded projects have been opened up to Israeli firms who have field tested their weapons against Palestinian civilians, rather than answering that question, he said that all of the EU's research activities "maintain an exclusively civilian orientation." He added: "our rules, however, do not preclude enterprises, which are also active in the defense industry -- be they in the EU or in an associated country like Israel -- from participating."
It is deceptive for EU officials to claim that activities that involve arms companies are entirely civilian, especially when those companies hail from a highly militarized country like Israel and are directly implicated in the occupation and its attendant abuses of international law. As it happens, other officials have acknowledged that the EU institutions are preparing a blueprint for extending the scope of its scientific research programs into more hardcore military research.
Nobody should be surprised if Israel's merchants of death and destruction will gobble up an even greater chunk of the EU's research pie in the coming years. The only positive aspect of this ever-deepening relationship with Israel is that it helps shatter all illusions that the EU is serious when bragging routinely of its commitment to human rights.
•First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net)
Documents published in recent days show that Israel not only has nuclear weapons –- something it has never officially acknowledged -- but that it considered selling them to South Africa’s white minority government in 1975. The evidence – contained in Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s new book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa” – appears strong and credible.
But will it cause Europe and America to rethink their relationship with Israel? The truth is that Israel already enjoys such a privileged level of access to their key institutions that any rethink is improbable – at least in the short-term. One of the most important aspects of this relationship relates to how Israel interacts with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
In December 2008, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visited the headquarters of NATO in Brussels to sign an "individual cooperation program" with its member states. By hooking up Israel to NATO's computer systems and facilitating its increased participation in the alliance's missions, this agreement has helped give Israel closer ties with NATO and its 28 member states than any other country outside the club.
Within a few weeks of that agreement being signed, Israel launched a brutal offensive against Gaza, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians. The slaughter did not deter then-NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer from making a public gesture of friendship with the Israeli state. While the death toll in Gaza was continuing to mount, he visited Israel in January 2009 to celebrate "the growing depth both of our practical cooperation and of our political dialogue." Even though Israel's armed forces caused almost all of the deaths in that three-week assault and had unilaterally broken off a ceasefire with Hamas by attacking it two months earlier, he repeated the official Israeli narrative of blaming the violence on Hamas.
Over the past week, NATO has published a paper recommending an update to the "strategic concept" that underpins its activities. Partly authored by Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, this report "NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement," signals that the alliance is mired in a Cold War funk. As well as advocating that the US, Britain and France hold on to their nuclear missiles as long as these weapons "remain a reality in international relations," it identifies the development of a missile defense shield as "an essential military mission." This system is -- if you believe the propaganda -- supposed to protect the member countries against Iran, which is singled out as the state most likely to present a fundamental security challenge in the coming decade. Substitute Iran for the Soviet Union and the case for the system is almost identical to that put forward by US President Ronald Reagan when proposing his "Star Wars" initiative in the 1980s.
NATO has already signaled that Israel will be involved in the development of the defense shield (an Orwellian term, given that the project will probably only ratchet up tensions in the Middle East). Earlier this month, NATO representatives took part in an armaments conference in Airport City, a "business park" near Tel Aviv. Alan Berry, a senior NATO official, confirmed that he and his colleagues were studying Israel's own military interceptors and had helped preliminary discussions about how Israel could take part in the defense shield project.
So far Turkey appears to be the only NATO member to have indicated there is an inherent double standard in seeking Israel's assistance to ward off a perceived threat from Iran. Unlike Iran (and most other nations), Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with the result that its nuclear weapons program has never been subject to international scrutiny. Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, is reported to have raised this anomaly with his NATO peers at a meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, last month, telling them that "no country should be exempted from joining this treaty."
Meanwhile, Israel's reputation for inventing some of the most technologically advanced weapons used in modern warfare is attracting an increasing level of attention from that other powerful club based in Brussels: the European Union.
Sources in the European Defense Agency (EDA) -- a body set up following lobbying by leading arms manufacturers and dedicated to boosting military expenditure by EU governments -- have told this writer they are particularly excited by Israel's pilotless drones or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Many officials in the EDA regard the agency's work on drones as its most important activity. In July, the EDA will participate in a major conference here aimed at convincing the public that these sophisticated spy-planes can help achieve such laudable objectives as protecting the environment.
This exercise bears all the hallmarks of what ecologists call "greenwash." Far from being invented to save the planet, drones have been used in numerous attacks by Israel on Palestinian civilians, as well as by NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Britain and the Netherlands are among the countries taking part in the war in Afghanistan to have signed contracts to buy or rent Israeli drones in recent months.
A spokeswoman for the EDA explained that while her agency keeps a close eye on Israel's arms industry, there are no plans for a formal cooperation agreement with Israel. The same cannot be said for the EU's multi-annual scientific research program, which has a budget of 53 billion euros ($66.7 billion) for the 2007-13 period. Israel is the largest foreign partner in this program and the country's arms-makers are intimately involved.
To prove that it was committed to former US President George W. Bush's "war on terror," the EU has decided in recent years to include security as a theme within the program. Nearly 60 projects have been financed under this category, with Israel taking part in 12 of them. Motorola Israel, for example, is signed up to a project designed to help the detection of "intruders" to buildings or areas deemed of high economic value. Motorola has ample experience in developing the kind of surveillance equipment that will probably feature in this project: it has installed a "virtual fence" around a network of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This "fence" uses thermal cameras and other sensory devices to pinpoint anyone -- such as a Palestinian -- who the Israeli authorities believe should not be allowed to enter settlements built illegally on Palestinian land in open violation of international law.
In another example of greenwash, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is playing a prominent role in the "Clean Sky" project, which is supposed to encourage the development of less-polluting aircraft engines. Far from being an eco-warrior, IAI is a top supplier of warplanes to the Israeli army.
Earlier this year, Irishwoman Maire Geoghegan-Quinn became the new European commissioner for science and research. When her spokesperson Mark English was asked if she has any ethical concerns about how EU-funded projects have been opened up to Israeli firms who have field tested their weapons against Palestinian civilians, rather than answering that question, he said that all of the EU's research activities "maintain an exclusively civilian orientation." He added: "our rules, however, do not preclude enterprises, which are also active in the defense industry -- be they in the EU or in an associated country like Israel -- from participating."
It is deceptive for EU officials to claim that activities that involve arms companies are entirely civilian, especially when those companies hail from a highly militarized country like Israel and are directly implicated in the occupation and its attendant abuses of international law. As it happens, other officials have acknowledged that the EU institutions are preparing a blueprint for extending the scope of its scientific research programs into more hardcore military research.
Nobody should be surprised if Israel's merchants of death and destruction will gobble up an even greater chunk of the EU's research pie in the coming years. The only positive aspect of this ever-deepening relationship with Israel is that it helps shatter all illusions that the EU is serious when bragging routinely of its commitment to human rights.
•First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net)
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
EU Boosts Arms Manufacturers
Arms traders are to be given a central role in formulating a new European Union (EU) blueprint for stimulating weapons production, it has been confirmed.
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, announced Mar. 31 that it is to draw up an action plan for how small and medium-sized companies that manufacture military goods or their components can be strengthened.
Dagmar Metzger, an EU official overseeing support for the weapons industry, said that contact between civil servants in Brussels and arms traders will be increased. The AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD), an umbrella group for arms-makers, is to be intimately involved in deciding the plan’s contents.
Metzger would not comment on the ethical and human rights issues surrounding the arms trade. “We make defence industrial policy,” she said. “We are not talking about core military business. We are not supporting military exports, the production of weapons, arms, whatever. We are only talking about industrial policy, nothing else.”
She nonetheless acknowledged that EU officials are examining the possibility of establishing an internet-based service, through which small-scale arms companies could become aware of new calls for tender to supply armed forces across the Union. “The action plan shouldn’t be just a piece of paper,” she added. “It has to be filled with life.”
Six states account for an estimated 87 percent of all weapons production in the EU: France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Spain. Traditionally, the governments of these countries have been wary of developing weapons jointly with outsiders, while the military-industrial sector has been exempt from EU rules on competition applying to other economic activities. Last year, though, the Commission proposed two laws requiring that most military contracts published in one EU country should be open to firms in another and that the procedures covering the movement of weapons within the Union should be simplified.
According to observers, most of the EU’s policy decisions on armaments in recent years are almost identical to recommendations made by the arms lobby. In 2004, the arms trade received a considerable boost when the European Defence Agency (EDA) was established with the explicit objective of assisting EU governments to build up their arsenals. At that time, the three largest arms companies this side of the Atlantic – BAE, EADS and Thales – issued a joint statement predicting that the agency would be a “vital tool” in raising military expenditure. Between them, the firms involved had supplied the weapons that fuelled some of the bloodiest conflicts of the past 50 years. BAE’s precursor British Aerospace, for example, made the Hawk jets that Indonesia’s former military dictatorship used in attacks on civilians in East Timor, where one-third of the island’s 600,000-strong population was wiped out between 1975 and its eventual independence in 1999.
The idea of a web-service that would drum up business for smaller weapons-makers – with less than 250 staff - follows on from the ‘electronic bulletin board’ that the EDA runs for major firms. By mid-March this year, this database had published details of almost 480 contract opportunities. Some 290 contracts with a combined value of over 4 billion euros (5.4 billion dollars) have been awarded following their publication by the agency.
Tomas Baum, director of the Flemish Peace Institute, which conducts research on the global arms trade, said that the European Commission is eager to encourage arms production by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), rather than leaving such production to the usual corporate giants. “The Commission is very smart at playing the game,” he said. “There has been a very big resistance by (EU) member states to liberalising the internal market (for military goods). Now the Commission is using SMEs to again attack the hegemony of big industry in this area.”
Another item on the wish-list of arms companies is that they should enjoy greater access to the EU’s scientific research grants, which total 53 billion euros for the 2007-13 period. Since the 11 September 2001 atrocities, the Commission has rewritten the rules covering its multi-annual programmes for research to enable the funding of security projects of a nominally civilian nature such as those covering the emergency response to acts of large-scale violence. The possibility of widening the scope of the programme to include hardcore military research is being considered, EU officials have admitted.
Israel, the main foreign partner of the EU’s research programme, has been a key beneficiary of the decision to extend the remit to “security”. Israeli firms and universities, including those that have developed weapons and other technology used in the occupied Palestinian territories, have taken part in 12 of the 58 “security research” projects financed by the EU to date.
Frank Slijper from the Dutch Campaign Against the Arms Trade said that it would be logical for the Commission to recommend that purely military research should be financed directly from the EU’s budget. “The Commission and industry says time and again that there is no real boundary between civilian and military,” he added. “The two areas are so mixed.”
Slijper lamented that the growing EU support for the arms industry is not being subject to proper democratic scrutiny. “Brussels in general is very unreceptive to people who are critical of their views,” he said. “They want to bolster their projects and they don’t like people who start asking difficult questions about the ethical aspects of these projects. This is an area of the EU’s work that is happening outside the public view. People in Brussels prefer to keep it that way.”
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net)
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, announced Mar. 31 that it is to draw up an action plan for how small and medium-sized companies that manufacture military goods or their components can be strengthened.
Dagmar Metzger, an EU official overseeing support for the weapons industry, said that contact between civil servants in Brussels and arms traders will be increased. The AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD), an umbrella group for arms-makers, is to be intimately involved in deciding the plan’s contents.
Metzger would not comment on the ethical and human rights issues surrounding the arms trade. “We make defence industrial policy,” she said. “We are not talking about core military business. We are not supporting military exports, the production of weapons, arms, whatever. We are only talking about industrial policy, nothing else.”
She nonetheless acknowledged that EU officials are examining the possibility of establishing an internet-based service, through which small-scale arms companies could become aware of new calls for tender to supply armed forces across the Union. “The action plan shouldn’t be just a piece of paper,” she added. “It has to be filled with life.”
Six states account for an estimated 87 percent of all weapons production in the EU: France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Spain. Traditionally, the governments of these countries have been wary of developing weapons jointly with outsiders, while the military-industrial sector has been exempt from EU rules on competition applying to other economic activities. Last year, though, the Commission proposed two laws requiring that most military contracts published in one EU country should be open to firms in another and that the procedures covering the movement of weapons within the Union should be simplified.
According to observers, most of the EU’s policy decisions on armaments in recent years are almost identical to recommendations made by the arms lobby. In 2004, the arms trade received a considerable boost when the European Defence Agency (EDA) was established with the explicit objective of assisting EU governments to build up their arsenals. At that time, the three largest arms companies this side of the Atlantic – BAE, EADS and Thales – issued a joint statement predicting that the agency would be a “vital tool” in raising military expenditure. Between them, the firms involved had supplied the weapons that fuelled some of the bloodiest conflicts of the past 50 years. BAE’s precursor British Aerospace, for example, made the Hawk jets that Indonesia’s former military dictatorship used in attacks on civilians in East Timor, where one-third of the island’s 600,000-strong population was wiped out between 1975 and its eventual independence in 1999.
The idea of a web-service that would drum up business for smaller weapons-makers – with less than 250 staff - follows on from the ‘electronic bulletin board’ that the EDA runs for major firms. By mid-March this year, this database had published details of almost 480 contract opportunities. Some 290 contracts with a combined value of over 4 billion euros (5.4 billion dollars) have been awarded following their publication by the agency.
Tomas Baum, director of the Flemish Peace Institute, which conducts research on the global arms trade, said that the European Commission is eager to encourage arms production by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), rather than leaving such production to the usual corporate giants. “The Commission is very smart at playing the game,” he said. “There has been a very big resistance by (EU) member states to liberalising the internal market (for military goods). Now the Commission is using SMEs to again attack the hegemony of big industry in this area.”
Another item on the wish-list of arms companies is that they should enjoy greater access to the EU’s scientific research grants, which total 53 billion euros for the 2007-13 period. Since the 11 September 2001 atrocities, the Commission has rewritten the rules covering its multi-annual programmes for research to enable the funding of security projects of a nominally civilian nature such as those covering the emergency response to acts of large-scale violence. The possibility of widening the scope of the programme to include hardcore military research is being considered, EU officials have admitted.
Israel, the main foreign partner of the EU’s research programme, has been a key beneficiary of the decision to extend the remit to “security”. Israeli firms and universities, including those that have developed weapons and other technology used in the occupied Palestinian territories, have taken part in 12 of the 58 “security research” projects financed by the EU to date.
Frank Slijper from the Dutch Campaign Against the Arms Trade said that it would be logical for the Commission to recommend that purely military research should be financed directly from the EU’s budget. “The Commission and industry says time and again that there is no real boundary between civilian and military,” he added. “The two areas are so mixed.”
Slijper lamented that the growing EU support for the arms industry is not being subject to proper democratic scrutiny. “Brussels in general is very unreceptive to people who are critical of their views,” he said. “They want to bolster their projects and they don’t like people who start asking difficult questions about the ethical aspects of these projects. This is an area of the EU’s work that is happening outside the public view. People in Brussels prefer to keep it that way.”
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net)
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