LONDON – No other main line, legitimate, business is as corrupt as the arms trade. That the obvious needs to be said again is only because of two more scandals that have surfaced, both involving murder, and still the countries that are responsible for 90% of the world’s arms sales continue to allow their arms companies to do their dirty business with only minimalist controls and interference.

First, on March 19th came the suicide of a former Belgium government minister who for ten years had been awaiting trial for the murder of a one time deputy prime minister, André Cools. Cools, it has been suspected, was killed to prevent him denouncing the illegal same of documents to an arms manufacturer. It was an offshoot of the same long running scandal that brought down the Belgian secretary-general of Nato over alleged bribes paid to the Socialist Party by Agusta, the Italian helicopter group and Dassault, the French plane maker.

Then two days later a furore erupted in Taiwan over a government report that alleged that France betrayed Taiwan’s confidence by passing top secret information to China about the sale of French frigates to Taiwan. The allegations now coursing through Taiwan’s outspoken press have many layers: from evidence that prominent political figures in Beijing were paid to mute their protest over the deal to suggestions that the decision to switch from buying the frigates from South Korea to the French company Thomson-CSF were shaped by payoffs. Already the former foreign minister of France, Roland Dumas, has been convicted of taking money improperly from his lover who, working as an arms lobbyist, was trying to influence him to drop his objections to the frigate sale. But this is not the all of it. A captain in the Taiwan navy, Yin Ching-feng who had investigated irregularities in the frigate deal was murdered and left on a beach in 1993. At the time military coroners quickly announced his death as suicide but in an independent autopsy arranged by his widow it was found he had had his head bashed in. Now the new government report recounts that military investigators had withheld evidence that would have proved his death as murder.

The whole arms sales industry is as seedy as it comes and its recent history of malfeasance alone is enough to fill volumes. Still unexplained, yet with reason to suspect arms companies or their lobbyists, are the death of an investigative British journalist in Chile and that of the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.

Shortly after the death of Olof Palme allegations swirled through the Swedish and Indian media about the arms manufacturer Bofors paying bribes to senior Indian government officials, including prime minister Rajiv Gandhi himself. Although it has proved impossible for Indian investigators to make all the connections and we may never know exactly what went on and whether Palme was implicated even in an indirect way it still leaves a nasty taste in many Swedish mouths today. Fourteen years ago, not long after Palme’s murder, I interviewed his successor, Ingvar Carlsson and some of the top officials charged with regulating arms sales. All came out with the same mantra: ” we need exports as our arms manufacturers couldn’t make it otherwise”. It seemed then as it does today that nothing, not even murder, could shake the deep political foundations of the arms business. And this as true for the U.S. or the U.K and France as it is for Sweden.

The economic commentator of the Financial Times, Samuel Brittan, who has spent a distinguished journalistic career puncturing the economic posturing of western governments has now joined battle with the arms industry. “The supposedly clinching argument”, he writes, “is that if Britain does not sell arms to odious dictatorships, the orders would go instead to other countries that will take the jobs instead”. This, he believes, is bogus economics. There is no great lump of labour engaged in making specific products like arms. Jobs are constantly changing in any advanced capitalist economy. In Britain alone well over 3 million people leave the unemployment registry each year, well over half to new jobs or training for new jobs. In comparison Britain’s arms exports employ a mere 130,000 workers. Even if arms, as they do, often provide a high marginal return, the resources involved can still be shifted to other exports.

Yet in country after country the arms exporters give the appearance of holding their governments by the tail. Despite early promises Prime Minister Tony Blair has delayed for years the introduction of legislation to overhaul Britain’s arms exports. While Canada has suggested a ban on arms sales to any “non-state actors” like rebel groups, terrorists and crime syndicates the Bush Administration has resisted a blanket prohibition, fearing that it would impinge on future efforts to provide covert military aid in foreign conflicts. Ironically, one example that used to be given was the “successful” role in aiding the resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Need one say more?

I can be reached by phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com

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