Top Gun…

Very tediously, the US state department accused the Russians of selling attack helicopters to Syria. Obviously, it's revolting that any country should be helping that regime kill its civilians.

But let's not think for a second that Hillary Clinton has suddenly become some kind of peacenik. This isn't about principle: it's about realpolitik and tactics. It's a sales dispute. Let's just have a look at the countries to which the UK sells arms in the area.

This is the 2011 report. It involves £500m sales to Iran. £200m to Saudia Arabia (which used UK military equipment to help the Bahrainis to crush the democracy movement), £70m to Israel, which ruthlessly crushes dissent in the occupied territories, lots to the previous dictatorships in Egypt, ammunition to the Syrian regime, and lots of other sales to the whole panoply of vicious dictatorships which sell us oil.

Talking of Bahrain, I wonder why the US had nothing to say about 70% of its population being denied any kind of political or economic freedom. Oh yes, it's because it's the main port for the US Navy fleet in the area. Which is why the US is still selling the regime weapons.

Like the UK, the US sells (and often just gives) weaponry to all these deeply unpleasant states. It's partly to keep the oil flowing. It's partly Keynesian economics: even US-funded weapons keep Americans in employment. It's also an economic trade-off which makes the flow of oil money to the East look slightly less imbalanced, and it's to some extent a trade-off for persuading these countries not to invade Israel… another recipient of American military largesse. The economic case is becoming more and more important, as these arms lobbyists and analysts demonstrate:

"US defence companies are definitely looking overseas as a market opportunity that may offset some of the reductions in the US military budget that almost everybody expects to be coming down the pipe. The supply is there coming from the companies, but that doesn't change the fact that there is also demand."
Brian Finlay, the director of the Managing Across Boundaries programme at the Stimson Centre in Washington, noted that US defence companies had formed a powerful lobby that has risen in prominence during the economic downturn.
"We're seeing arms producers across the country, and interests across the country really coalescing to form a pretty significant lobbying bloc, and to complete the perfect storm this is also happening at a time of fiscal restraint and a wider economic downturn here in the United States."
"Jobs are pretty hard to come by, and jobs that are available in these industries pay pretty well. They're good jobs. It makes it even a more potent political issue for the administration."

When nobody's buying cars, sporting goods or whatever else keeps an economy afloat, death's the only expanding market. There's always demand for things with which to kill people, and if demand does drop, you can always stoke up a little regional tension. Look at Greece, a country with no enemies but a vicious rivalry with Turkey, and spend over 4% of its budget on weaponry, the highest percentage in Europe. If they stop spending, you can expect Labour, Tory and Lib Dem MPs with military factories in their constituencies to start begging for Greece to be bailed out. Peace is very bad for the economy.

Arabs: our country needs YOU to go out and die for our marginal constituencies.

Everyone's a winner. Yay for democracy. When convenient.

BAe v Libyan civilians: the big showdown

Now that the UN has voted to bomb Libya, let's have a look at what Gaddafi will use to fight back.

The US, UK, France, Bosnia, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Colombia, South Africa and Portugal voted to take action. China, Russia, Brazil, Germany and India abstained.

Curiously enough, they're the ones that exported a lot of weapons to Libya. Then again, so did all the western countries that voted to take action. Clearly this is going to be a brilliant sales opportunity for FN rifles of Belgium, BAe, France's Mirage jets and a myriad of other suppliers: pages 160 and 161 of this EU report tells us that pretty much every EU country except for Ireland bunged the Libyans some kit in 2009-10, to the tune of billions of Euro. With all sides armed by the West, we'll really see what stuff functions well in these 'heightened circumstances' and what doesn't.

What has Britain sold them? £200m of stuff just in Jan-October 2010, according to the Guardian:

However, equipment listed as cleared for export to Libya last year include "teargas/irritant ammunition" and "training teargas/irritant ammunition", "military cameras" and components for "surveillance equipment and targeting equipment".

Other items cleared for supply to Libya were "accessories" for military small arms training, and technology for "military communications equipment", small arms ammunition, weapon sights, sniper rifles, "command and control vehicles", radio jamming equipment and what is described as "civil explosive detection/identification equipment". Also listed as cleared for export to Libya is "command communications control and intelligence equipment".

Private Eye says the UK has also flogged them £30m of military aircraft and 'bombing computers', APC's, water cannon, heavy machine guns, lots of anti-civilian weaponry and 'a spacecraft'. All this while the PM goes round calling for democracy.

In our story at the beginning of the week headed Bomber release 'will lead to contracts' we mentioned that BAE Systems could be one of the beneficiaries of the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi as contracts to upgrade Libya's defence equipment began to come into the UK.

We mentioned in the piece that MBDA Missile Systems, partly owned by BAE, was reckoned to have recently signed a contract to supply Libya with anti-tank missiles and that the former chief operating officer of MBDA Guy Griffiths went to Libya with Tony Blair in 2007.

We also mentioned in the piece that we had asked BAE to comment on our story but they had not come back to us. This wasn't to suggest that BAE was avoiding the issue, of course, and indeed it appears the reason we had no immediate response was simply down to key people being away during the summer break.

BAE has now given defencemanagement.com its response and it is as follows: 

"Regarding future business with Libya, BAE Systems, like all defence companies, would only consider business within constraints of UK and US defence export licensing policies."

My guess is that if you've been on a sales trip to Libya with the Prime Minister (this was 2009: David Cameron took a planeload with him a couple of weeks ago), then the 'constraints' are pretty relaxed. 


If you want to ask British Aerospace what they've sold Gaddafi, you can e-mail them. Rather helpfully, they've got a special address: 
libya@baesystems.com 
for quick ordering.