Did you know that arms sales are the UK’s number one export? Without its military industrial complex footing the Bill, The Land of Hope and Glory’s socialist economy would collapse. No wonder the left-leaning political press (e.g., the guardian.co.uk) aren’t exactly up-in-arms about arms sales to repressive regimes. “How can Britain, one of the world’s leading arms exporters, honour its stated commitment to promote human rights throughout the world?” the lede leads. “With difficulty,” it pronounces. What follows is the journalistic equivalent of a mild rebuke. Kinda like torture via fifty lashes with a wet noodle. To wit:
Vince Cable, the business secretary, has admitted as much. “We do trade with governments that are not democratic and have bad human rights records”, he told a crossparty group of senior MPs. “We do business with repressive governments and there’s no denying that”.
Cable’s refreshing admission of what we all know anyway did not satisfy members of the Commons committee on arms export controls on Tuesday night, not least the chairman, the former Conservative defence minister, Sir John Stanley. He accused the government of adopting a “rosy tinted” and “over optimistic” view of “authoritarian regimes”.
The MPs were questioning Cable and William Hague, the foreign secretary, about Whitehall’s approval of exports, including crowd control ammunition, guns and ammunition to Libya, Bahrain, and Egypt, in the period leading up to the Arab Spring last year. The MPs also raised questions about reports that Saudi Arabia sent troops in British trucks to Bahrain during the protests in the Gulf state last year.
Hey, who knew? Maybe . . . lots of people. Back in April of last year, the right-leaning Daily Mail reported that UK approved ÂŁ2.3bn in arms exports over 21 months. What’s more:
Military export licenses to Libya alone since the start of 2009 totalled ÂŁ61.3million, according to Department for Business figures.
The UK also awarded Bahrain ÂŁ6million of licences covering submachine guns, sniper rifles, CS hand grenades, smoke canisters, stun grenades and riot control agents. At least 26 citizens have been killed and 1,000 injured as the Gulf state cracked down on freedom campaigners.
Britain also approved arms licenses totalling ÂŁ1.7billion to Saudi Arabia, ÂŁ20.4million to Egypt, ÂŁ276.9million to Algeria and ÂŁ52.8million to the United Arab Emirates.
Body armour and night vision goggles have been approved for Yemen, small arms ammunition for Syria, and sniper rifles, aircraft components and armoured personnel carriers for Saudi Arabia.
According to aljazeera.com, the U.S. racked-up $1.1b worth of arms sales to five slightly dodgy Middle Eastern countries in the same time period. I guess you never really know about these Arab Spring fling things. Back to today’s Guardian:
Under official UK guidelines, no arms exports would be allowed that would exacerbate regional conflict or be used for internal oppression. “We don’t have perfect foresight”, Cable told the MPs.
Hague went further. “In the case of Libya no one predicted what was going to happen”, he said as though Gaddafi had only turned into a dictator last year after Libyans in Benghazi began to rise up.
As far as Saudi Arabia was concerned, he said the government had raised concerns about its treatment of women and foreign workers. But 99 percent of Britain’s exports to the Kingdom consisted of Typhoon jets. “They are not relevant to our concerns about these rights”, said Hague.
And Saudi forces were sent into Bahrain last year “to guard installations but not to take part in dealing with unrest in Bahrain so they did not fall foul [of the export guidelines]”.
So what did we learn today? Money walks and bullshit talks. No surprise there. Now, can we talk about how official United States arms sales to the Mexican government and police have armed narco-terrorists? No. Good day then.
UK arms makers have to find customers since no one in England is buying guns at the moment.
🙂
So… The general public cannot be trusted with a Webley .38 because people might get shot… Buuuut, rogue nations can have a boat load of automatic rifles, grenades, mortars to wipe out whole villages… Yea, so glad I’m of Irish & German decent.
Welcome to the club! I think most people in the Mid West are of this make up.
A oppressive regime selling arms to oppressive regimes. Move along, nothing to see here.
You got that right!
“In the case of Libya no one predicted what was going to happen”….
And they said that with a straight face. Stevie Wonder saw that about to happen.
This exactly the reason why we need to enact the UN Small Arms treaty. Wait, you mean that won’t stop repressive “governments” from purchasing arms (both large and small) on the international market? It will only disarm the people? Still, we must think of the children and do something!
The repressive regimes want the general populace disarmed so this is dream legislation for them. Hillary is loving it!
“In the case of Libya no one predicted what was going to happen”
After the 2008 Financial Collapse politicians said essentially the same about no on could know that the Bubble would Burst. Funny, everyone on the gold and silver sites, Austrian economists, and others knew it was going to burst.
It’s an interesting characteristic of bubbles: they always burst.
UK Sells Arms to Repressive Regimes
So the UK buys its own arms?
They prefer German and Italian guns. Unless, of course, you mean pheasant guns? But, pssst, ya wanna buy 50 great planes cheap?
The big problem with this is the UN wants to ban small arms worldwide and here we have a nation with super restrictive guns laws taking steps to help the UN justify their actions.
You know the US has been backing many of these same governments, right?
Yeah, but we are behind in sales. We need to try harder. One out of 10 people in the world have a gun. The question is…How do we arm the other 9?
Your boss sells more in a day than I do in a year. Nice effort on your part though. Maybe you’ll even get a medal.
UK approved ÂŁ2.3bn in arms exports over 21 months.
the U.S. racked-up $1.1b worth of arms sales to five slightly dodgy Middle Eastern countries in the same time period.
The US is pathetic! We need to get our weapons manufacturers of their butts and start exporting more!
First, the Kingdom of Sweden sells more arms abroad (calculated in dollars per capita) than any other nation, including the US, Britain, and Russia.
Second, you have to understand: The US and UK governments know exactly who should or shouldn’t have a nice new container of war toys. They have a very sensible detailed plan for how to efficiently convert weapons sales into budding democracies. So far that plan has been working very w…. OK, maybe it doesn’t appear to be working, uh, flawlessly, but they’re working on it. Yep, they are!
Tut tut. Big deal.
Let’s be honest. If those countries don’t buy from US/UK/Germany/Italy etc they will bring their money to Russia/China etc who would gladly accept it. Small arms or high tech weapons, does it really matter? The exported vehicles are usually monkey models anyway. Frankly it doesn’t matter whether the bullet that killed came from an AK or HK, or that the bomb was carried by a MiG or a Typhoon.
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