China's Billion-Dollar Aid Appetite

Why is Beijing winning health grants at the expense of African countries?
-Jack C. Chow

Back in 2001, I was the lead U.S. negotiator in international talks meant to transform the way that poor countries fight some of the world's most pernicious diseases -- HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Our vision looked like this: Instead of each country spending on its own, rich countries would pool donations into one coordinated fund that would give grants to help resource-strapped countries purchase medicines, build health programs, and prevent the diseases from spreading. We imagined the bulk of the money ending up in places like Lesotho, Haiti, and Uganda, where these three diseases have reached crisis levels. So it might surprise and concern you -- as much as it still does me -- to learn that one of the top grant recipients isn't in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, or impoverished Central Asia. It's a country with $2.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves: China.

Over the eight years since the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria first launched, China has applied for and been awarded nearly $1 billion in grants, becoming the fourth-largest recipient of funds behind Ethiopia, India, and Tanzania. Already, the country has drawn nearly $500 million from this credit line and soon expects to receive $165 million in new grants. China's aggregate award from the fund is nearly three times larger than that of South Africa, one of the most affected countries from these three diseases. Moreover, China has won malaria grant money totaling $149 million (and $89 million more might be on the way) -- in a country where only 38 deaths from the mosquito-borne illness were reported last year. That is more than the $122 million awarded to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which reported nearly 25,000 malaria deaths during the same period. In fact, only seven sub-Saharan African countries receive more malaria aid than China -- and 29 countries in Africa get less. Combined, those 29 countries report 64,000 deaths from the disease each year.

China has aggressively pursued Global Fund grants and has continued to win significant amounts with every passing year. Beijing does make a nominal contribution to the fund of $2 million annually, meaning that it has donated $16 million over the last eight years. By comparison, the United States, the leading donor, has committed $5.5 billion, and France has offered $2.5 billion over the same period. These contributing countries expect no financial return for their gift, but China has recouped its spending by 60 times.

Even more alarming, China's persistent appetite threatens to undermine the entire premise behind the Global Fund. The organization's leadership is trying to solicit between $13 billion and $20 billion to cover its next three years of operations -- a tall order at a time of global recession. Donors will grow even more reluctant if they realize that substantial funds are being awarded to a country that can more than pay for its own health programs.

How did China ever become eligible for grants in the first place? In short, because of a loophole. The Global Fund decides eligibility for grants based on the World Bank's classification system, which divides countries by income. High-income countries such as the United States, the European industrial countries, and Japan are ineligible. Low-income countries, including many in sub-Saharan Africa, are grant-eligible. In between, so-called lower-middle-income countries like China are eligible if the grants are part of a cost-sharing program through which the fund pays up to 65 percent and the country pays the rest. (China stays in this lower-middle-income category because its huge population keeps per capita figures down.) The country competes with the likes of Bolivia, Cameroon, and India in this category. But because the fund's pot of money isn't allocated by income group, any grants that China wins reduce the remaining money available for all eligible countries.

For a country like Cameroon, cost-sharing grants make a lot of sense. By giving part of the full amount, the fund can spur the host government into investing more of its discretionary budget in health. The extra cash can build health infrastructure and capacity, preparing the country to wean itself from foreign funds. But in China's case, the argument for a Global Fund grant is tenuous at best. During the depths of the world economic crisis in 2008, China put forth a massive economic stimulus package of $586 billion that included new health and education spending of $27 billion. The government announced its intention to boost rural health coverage with $125 billion in spending over the next several years. Even a fraction of that promised amount would negate any need by China to draw upon the Global Fund.

This is not to say, of course, that China's health system does not face formidable challenges. Indeed, global health policymakers worry that HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in particular could rise dramatically as the country urbanizes and industrializes and a new middle class veers away from traditional social mores. Everyone remembers the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003 that practically shut down major cities in China. And beyond specific threats, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the chief implementer of the Global Fund portfolio and officiator of the government's public health strategy, has hard work ahead to build up China's health workforce and medical infrastructure.

But China might want these grants for reasons having more to do with politics than public health. The Health Ministry is the only member of China's policymaking State Council not led by a political party member. As such, its ability to compete for domestic funds pales in comparison with other assertive, powerful ministries led by longstanding party leaders. So the Health Ministry might be driven to external funding by political necessity. Or, China might value obtaining the technical assistance of international health agencies such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Global Fund grants provide a means of securing their advice and services. China's participation on the fund's board might also be useful to Beijing's global politics, confirming its importance on the world stage.

Whatever benefits China gains from seeking grants, however, stack up poorly against expensive opportunity costs exacted upon needier countries. The $1 billion awarded to China could have been used by the poorest countries to distribute 67 million anti-malarial bed nets, 4.5 million curative tuberculosis treatments, or nearly 2 million courses of anti-retroviral therapy for AIDS patients (a number equivalent to all those living with the disease in Kenya).

It is intriguing that health ministers from the poorest countries have expressed neither concern nor opposition to China winning grants. Nor has there been any substantial public challenge to or debate about the money China has received from the Global Fund. Part of the reason might be structural; the fund's large 26-member board (which includes representatives of countries, regions, organizations, and the Global Fund itself) operates based on consensus, and its meetings are time-constrained forums that pressure members to make rapid decisions. Changing eligibility policy, for example to exclude China, would entail time-intensive negotiations that may well pit groups of grantees against one another. The board also approves grants en bloc, relying upon the advice of technical experts who review them for feasibility and public health impact, not fairness, balance, or a country's ability to pay.

Even so, there is likely more behind the silence than just procedure. For many of the poorer countries that lose out, opposing China in international forums would risk incurring Beijing's diplomatic wrath. Health ministers are skittish to imperil their country's broader interactions with China, which in the case of African countries, often entails Chinese loans, grants, infrastructure projects, and investment -- and indeed, even further, health aid. In turn, African countries seeking access to the burgeoning Chinese market must curry Beijing's favor. Any country that openly opposes China at the Global Fund might see these economic links broken or be put at a disadvantage to competitors. And so the neediest countries endure a loss of grant money to China through their collective silence.

Donor governments have also been mute or reluctant to oppose China at the Global Fund, perhaps for similar reasons of not wishing to provoke a reaction that impacts other diplomatic or political equities elsewhere. In the United States, neither Congress nor the White House has voiced open concern that an amount equivalent to President Barack Obama's entire fiscal 2011 Global Fund budget request of $1 billion has gone to a country that can afford to pay its own way.

This has left the fund's leadership as the only front left for trying to change China's stance. Based on China's national income and the rate of other donor contributions, the Global Fund recommends that China should give $96 million over the next three years, amounting to 16 times its current annual donation. In 2007, prior to China's hosting of a board meeting in Kunming, the fund asked China's government to up its donor commitment, but the appeal went nowhere. In June, with fundraising pressures escalating, the fund's executive director, Michel Kazatchkine, met in Beijing with Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang, who issued a vague promise to cooperate with international organizations to expand disease prevention and treatment, but made no announcement to refrain from taking new grants or signaled any intent to become a major donor.

Not even a rival country's actions seem to have convinced Beijing. In recent years, nearby Russia has transformed itself from recipient to donor, and it has done so under arguably less favorable economic conditions than those in China today. In 2006, then President Vladimir Putin pledged to repay the Global Fund $270 million over four years, covering the past assistance it received, and announced $156 million in new domestic spending for HIV treatment. Now four years out, Russia has paid in $250 million to the Global Fund, essentially fulfilling Putin's pledge.

It is audacious for China to assert that it needs international health assistance on par with the world's poorest countries. In fact, at the same time it is drawing from the Global Fund, China is building its entire global image as one of economic growth, accumulating wealth and international stature. To boost its public profile and prestige, China spent billions to host the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo. Surely it could spend another $1 billion of its cash on health as well. And why not take it one step further? By becoming a Global Fund donor, China could win acclaim with the West and the world's poorest -- earning exactly the kind of respect that a rising power deserves.

-Jack C. Chow served as U.S. ambassador on global HIV/AIDS from 2001 to 2003 and was the lead U.S. negotiator at talks that established the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He is currently distinguished service professor of global health at Carnegie Mellon University in Heinz College's School of Public Policy and Management.

The Caucasus Cauldron

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited some interesting spots over the July 4 weekend. Her itinerary included Poland and Ukraine, both intriguing choices in light of the recent Obama-Medvedev talks in Washington. But she also traveled to a region that has not been on the American radar screen much in the last two years — namely, the Caucasus — visiting Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The stop in Poland coincided with the signing of a new agreement on ballistic missile defense and was designed to sustain U.S.-Polish relations in the face of the German-Russian discussions we have discussed. The stop in Ukraine was meant simply to show the flag in a country rapidly moving into the Russian orbit. In both cases, the trip was about the Russians. Regardless of how warm the atmospherics are between the United States and Russia, the fact is that the Russians are continuing to rebuild their regional influence and are taking advantage of European disequilibrium to build new relationships there, too. The United States, still focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, has limited surplus capacity to apply to resisting the Russians. No amount of atmospherics can hide that fact, certainly not from the Poles or the Ukrainians. Therefore, if not a substantial contribution, the secretary of state’s visit was a symbolic one. But when there is little of substance, symbols matter.

That the Poland and Ukraine stops so obviously were about the Russians makes the stops in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia all the more interesting. Clinton’s statements during the Caucasian leg of her visit were positive, as one would expect. She expressed her support for Georgia without committing the United States to any arms shipments for Georgia to resist the Russians, who currently are stationed inside Georgia’s northern secessionist regions. In Azerbaijan and Armenia, she called on both countries to settle the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region within western Azerbaijan proper. Armenia took control of the region by force following the Soviet collapse. For Azerbaijan, the return of Nagorno-Karabakh under a U.N. resolution is fundamental to its national security and political strategy. For Armenia, retreat is not politically possible.

This means Clinton’s call for negotiations and her offer of U.S. help are not particularly significant, especially since the call was for Washington to help under the guise of international, not bilateral, negotiations. This is particularly true after Clinton seemed to indicate that the collapse in Turkish-Armenian talks was Turkey’s responsibility and that it was up to Turkey to make the next move. Given that her visit to the region seems on the surface to have achieved little — and indeed, little seems to have been intended — it is worth taking time to understand why she went there in the first place, and the region’s strategic significance.

The Strategic Significance of the Caucasus

The Caucasus is the point where Russia, Iran and Turkey meet. For most of the 19th century, the three powers dueled for dominance of the region. This dispute froze during the Soviet period but is certainly in motion again. With none of these primary powers directly controlling the region, there are secondary competitions involving Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, both among these secondary powers and between the secondary powers and the major powers. And given that the region involves the Russians, Iranians and Turks, it is inevitable that the global power would have an interest as well — hence, Hillary Clinton’s visit.

Of all the regions of the world, this one is among the most potentially explosive. It is the most likely to draw in major powers and the most likely to involve the United States. It is quiet now — but like the Balkans in 1990, quiet does not necessarily reassure any of the players. Therefore, seven players are involved in a very small space. Think of it as a cauldron framed by Russia, Iran and Turkey, occasionally stirred by Washington, for whom each of the other three major powers poses special challenges of varying degrees.

The Caucasus region dominates a land bridge between the Black and Caspian seas. The bridge connects Turkey and Iran to the south with Russia in the north. The region is divided between two mountain ranges, the Greater Caucasus to the north and the Lesser Caucasus in the south; and two plains divided from one another, one in Western Georgia on the Black Sea and another, larger plain in the east in Azerbaijan along the Kura River. A narrow river valley cuts through Georgia, connecting the two plains.

The Greater Caucasus Mountains serve as the southern frontier of Russia. To the north of these mountains, running east to west, lies the Russian agricultural heartland, flat and without any natural barriers. Thus, ever since the beginning of the 19th century, Russia has fought for a significant portion of the Caucasus to block any ambitions by the Turkish or Persian empires. The Caucasus mountains are so difficult to traverse by major military forces that as long as Russia maintains a hold somewhere in the Caucasus, its southern frontier is secure. During the latter part of the 19th century and for most of the Soviet period (except a brief time at the beginning of the era), the Soviet position in the Caucasus ran along the frontier with Turkey and Persia (later Iran). Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were incorporated into the Soviet Union, giving the Soviets a deep penetration of the Caucasus and, along with this, security.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the three Caucasian republics broke free of Moscow, pushing Russia’s frontier north by between about 160 to 320 kilometers (100-200 miles). The Russians still maintained a position in the Caucasus, but their position was not secure. The northern portion of the Caucasus consisted of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and others, all of which had significant Islamist insurgencies under way. If the Russians abandoned the northeastern Caucasus, their position was breached. But if they stood, they faced an interminable fight.

Georgia borders most of the Russian frontier. In the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union, various Georgian regions attempted to secede from Georgia with Russian encouragement. From the Georgian point of view, Russia represented a threat. But from the Russian point of view, Georgia represented a double threat. First, the Russians suspected the Georgians of supporting Chechen rebels in the 1990s — a charge the Georgians deny. The more important threat was that the United States selected Georgia as its main ally in the region. The choice made sense if the United States was conducting an encirclement strategy of Russia, which Washington was doing in the 1990s (though it became somewhat distracted from this strategy after 2001). In response to what it saw as U.S. pressure around its periphery, the Russians countered in Georgia in 2008 to demonstrate U.S. impotence in the region.

The Russians also maintained a close relationship with Armenia, where they continue to station more than 3,000 troops. The Armenians are deeply hostile to the Turks over demands that Turkey admit to massacres of large number of Armenians in 1915-16. The Armenians and Turks were recently involved in negotiations over the normalization of relations, but these talks collapsed — in our view, because of Russian interference. The issue was further complicated when a U.S. congressional committee passed a resolution in March condemning Turkey for committing genocide, infuriating the Turks.

One of the countercharges against Armenia is that it has conducted its own massacres of Azerbaijanis. Around the time of the Soviet breakup, it conducted a war against Azerbaijan, replete with the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis in a region known as Nagorno-Karabakh in western Azerbaijan, leaving Azerbaijan with a massive refugee problem. While the U.N. Security Council condemned the invasion, the conflict has been frozen, to use the jargon of diplomats.

The Importance of Azerbaijan

For its part, Azerbaijan cannot afford to fight a war against Russian troops in Armenia while it also shares a northern border with Russia. Azerbaijan also faces a significant Iranian problem. There are more Azerbaijanis living in Iran than in Azerbaijan; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a prominent Azerbaijani-Iranian. The Soviets occupied all of Azerbaijan during World War II but were forced to retreat under British and American pressure after the war, leaving most of Azerbaijan inside Iran. The remainder became a Soviet republic and then an independent state.

The Azerbaijanis are deeply concerned about the Iranians. Azerbaijan is profoundly different from Iran. It is Muslim but heavily secular. It maintains close and formal relations with Israel. It has supported the war in Afghanistan and made logistical facilities available to the United States. The Azerbaijanis claim that Iran is sending clerics north to build Shiite schools that threaten the regime. Obviously, Iran also operates an intelligence network there.

Adding to the complexity, Azerbaijan has long been a major producer of oil and has recently become an exporter of natural gas near the capital of Baku, exporting it to Turkey via a pipeline passing through Georgia. From the Turkish point of view, this provides alternative sources of energy to Russia and Iran, something that obviously pleases the United States. It is also an obvious reason why Russia sees Azerbaijan as undermining its position as the region’s dominant energy exporter.

The Russians have an interest, demonstrated in 2008, to move southward into Georgia. Obviously, if they were able to do this — preferably by a change in government and policy in Tbilisi — they would link up with their position in Armenia, becoming a force both on the Turkish border and facing Azerbaijan. The Russians would like to be able to integrate Azerbaijan’s exports into its broader energy policy, which would concentrate power in Russian hands and increase Russian influence on Russia’s periphery. This was made clear by Russia’s recent offer to buy all of Azerbaijan’s natural gas at European-level prices. The Turks would obviously oppose this for the same reason the Russians would want it. Hence, the Turks must support Georgia.

Iran, which should be viewed as an Azerbaijani country as well as a Persian one, has two reasons to want to dominate Azerbaijan. First, it would give Tehran access to Baku oil, and second, it would give Tehran strategic bargaining power with the Russians, something it does not currently have. In addition, talk of present unrest in Iran notwithstanding, Iran’s single most vulnerable point in the long term is the potential for Azerbaijanis living in Iran to want to unite with an independent Azerbaijani state. This is not in the offing, but if any critical vulnerability exists in the Iranian polity, this is it.

Consider this from the American side. When we look at the map, we notice that Azerbaijan borders both Russia and Iran. That strategic position alone makes it a major asset to the United States. Add to it oil in Baku and investment by U.S. companies, and Azerbaijan becomes even more attractive. Add to this that its oil exports support Turkey and weaken Russian influence, and its value goes up again. Finally, add to it that Turkey infuriated Azerbaijan by negotiating with Armenia without tying the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh to any Turkish-Armenian settlement. Altogether, the United States has the opportunity to forge a beneficial relationship with Azerbaijan that would put U.S. hands on one of Turkey’s sources of oil. At a time when the Turks recognize a declining dependence on the United States, anything that could increase that dependence helps Washington. Moreover, Azerbaijan is a platform from which Washington could make the Iranians uncomfortable, or from which to conduct negotiations with Iran.

An American strategy should include Georgia, but Georgia is always going to be weaker than Russia, and unless the United States is prepared to commit major forces there, the Russians can act, overtly and covertly, at their discretion. A Georgian strategy requires a strong rear base, which Azerbaijan provides, not only strategically but also as a source of capital for Georgia. Georgian-Azerbaijani relations are good, and in the long run so is Turkey’s relation with these two countries.

For Azerbaijan, the burning issue is Nagorno-Karabakh. This is not a burning issue for the United States, but the creation of a stable platform in the region is. Armenia, by far the weakest country economically, is allied with the Russians, and it has Russian troops on its territory. Given that the United States has no interest in who governs Nagorno-Karabakh and there is a U.N. resolution on the table favoring Azerbaijan that serves as cover, it is difficult to understand why the United States is effectively neutral. If the United States is committed to Georgia, which is official policy, then it follows that satisfying Azerbaijan and bringing it into a close relationship to the United States would be beneficial to Washington’s ability to manage relations with Russia, Iran and Turkey.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Azerbaijan a month ago and Clinton visited this weekend. As complex as the politics of this region are to outsiders, they are clearly increasing in importance to the United States. We could put it this way: Bosnia and Kosovo were obscure concepts to the world until they blew up. Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are equally obscure now. They will not remain obscure unless strategic measures are taken. It is not clear to us that Clinton was simply making a courtesy call or had strategy on her mind. But the logic of the American position is that it should think strategically about the Caucasus, and in doing so, logic and regional dynamics point to a strong relationship with Azerbaijan.

"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"

China- String of pearls strategy

Getting Asia right means getting India right

On the positive side of the ledger, President Obama can claim credit for intensifying U.S. outreach to Indonesia -- although formalization of a new Comprehensive Partnership remains unfulfilled given the postponement of the President's trip there to launch it. President Obama also deserves plaudits for committing the United States to exploring membership in the East Asia Summit, meeting with ASEAN heads of state, and fostering strong relations with key ally South Korea. Here again, however, the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, whose implementation should be a centerpiece of the relationship, remains stalled; President Obama seems unwilling to push Congress to ratify it. In another welcome trade-related move, the President has expressed his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This is a worthy minilateral trade initiative, but it excludes Asia's big economies and is no substitute for a wider Asia-Pacific trade liberalization agenda. These are all early steps in the right direction, but they do not amount to strategic accomplishments.

On the negative side of the roster, there is no question that President Obama has been dealt a particularly difficult hand in relations with core Asian ally Japan -- where a veritable political revolution last August deposed America's staunch allies in the Liberal Democratic Party and brought to power a new and untested government. It has defined itself in office in part by opposing a previously agreed plan to realign American forces in Okinawa, leading to growing concern over the future of the alliance. The U.S. administration has struggled with how to handle this unresolved conflict -- which has been badly mismanaged by Prime Minister Hatoyama and his colleagues. Resolution may be in sight, but the whole affair risks tarnishing the alliance at a time when Chinese and North Korean assertiveness is intensifying.

Indeed, President Obama has been on the receiving end, until recently, of an increasingly sharp-elbowed China's projection of its power and influence in world affairs, which has created the rockiest period in Sino-American relations since the EP-3 incident of 2001. Here, a firmer and more balanced approach to China early on -- one that prioritized U.S. relations with allies in Asia a little more and reassured China a little less -- could have paid strategic dividends. But the administration's recent recalibration of its policy promises a sturdier defense of American interests and values and, by extension, a more stable relationship. It may even result in a Chinese decision to allow the renmimbi to appreciate. This would be an important accomplishment indeed -- one that China should take in its own interests, given its overheating economy. It would be welcomed by India, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, and other U.S. partners in Asia whose competitiveness has suffered from China's artificially cheap currency.


Setting aside the complex crisis in U.S.-Japan relations and the ups-and-downs of U.S.-China relations, it is U.S. relations with India that have perhaps taken the biggest hit over the past year. This is a shame: building a strategic partnership with the world's biggest democracy, Asia's other rising giant, has been a bipartisan endeavor since President Clinton visited the country in 2000 and launched a new era of cooperation. The transformation in Indo-U.S. relations subsequently overseen by President Bush and symbolized by the civilian-nuclear deal would not have been possible without the strong support of Congressional Democrats - including Indian-Americans' then-favorite Senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. For their part, successive Indian prime ministers have worked hard to shed the baggage of Cold War non-alignment in favor of a growing partnership with the United States to help catalyze India's rise in the international system.

So why the sense of malaise in relations between the world's largest democracies? I would posit four factors. First, President Obama and his team don't approach India with an eye on its value as an Asian balancer in a region being reshaped by China's explosive rise. Second, President Obama's selective and narrowly defined realism doesn't allow much scope for values-based cooperation between the two countries -- or even for U.S. recognition of the intrinsic importance of India's success in a world where China's model of authoritarian development is on the march. Third, President Obama's emphasis on multilateral diplomacy (on climate change and a nuclear test ban, for instance) puts the two countries on opposite sides of complicated issues that push them apart -- unlike on many bilateral issues, like defense cooperation and counterterrorism, where their interests closely align, and on which the relationship previously hinged. Fourth, and most pointedly, the Obama administration has made a strategic decision to ally with Pakistan to wind down the war in Afghanistan. This has elevated Rawalpindi over New Delhi in U.S. policy. It has encouraged Pakistan to leverage its American friends to put pressure on India in ways that re-hyphenate Indo-Pak ties -- to the detriment of Indo-U.S. relations.

President Obama's Asia policy remains a work in progress with some real possibilities to advance key relationships. But losing India may do more to weaken the U.S. position in Asia than any number of accomplishments in relations with Japan, South Korea, and other partners. A few important Obama administration officials understand this, but so far they remain a minority.

Why India Is No Villain

Barbara Crossette is wrong: This rising power helps solve far more problems than it creates.

According to the Financial Times' Lucy Kellaway, "Elephant in the Room" was the most popular cliché to appear in major newspapers and journals in 2009. It is perhaps appropriate then that Barbara Crossette's latest diatribe against India appeared in Foreign Policy under that headline. Although it claims to show that India causes "the most global consternation" and "gives global governance the biggest headache," it is merely a series of rants and newsroom clichés selected entirely arbitrarily to support the author's prejudice.

Listing India's alleged failings, Crossette makes the unfathomable assertion that it is India that causes the most consternation and the biggest headache for the world -- more than Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Pakistan, and China. Without an attempt to compare the failings across countries (And why only these countries? Why leave out the West and the rest?), it is logically impossible to arrive at the conclusion that one of them is the biggest culprit. But once you trade logic for hyperbole, you can fit just about any animal you like into the room. For Crossette, it is the pachyderm.

Consider these facts instead: The only country to have militarily intervened to halt an ongoing genocide is India, which it did in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1971. After the December 2004 tsunami, it was India's navy that was the first international responder, deploying within 24 hours and delivering humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Maldives. It subsequently coordinated operations with the United States, Japan, and Australia. India has been involved in U.N. peacekeeping from the very beginning and remains one of the biggest troop contributors to this day, often putting its soldiers in danger in conflicts that have nothing to do with national interests. Indian naval ships are also involved in maritime security operations from Somalia to the Strait of Malacca. Even this partial list is enough to prove that India is not, as Crossette believes, "a country of outsize ambition but anemic influence."

Let's take a closer look at Crossette's rap sheet. First, she agrees with a quote from an article that appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a journal that advocates arms control (hardly a neutral source), arguing that India's refusals to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty make it "comparable to other defiant nuclear states [and] will undoubtedly contribute to a deteriorating security environment in Asia." She doesn't explain how, because she would be hard-pressed to prove that India's "contribution" is comparable to that of China, which helped put the bomb in the hands of the likes of Pakistan, or North Korea, which brazenly violated the treaty it signed. Actions matter more than signatures.

Second, on the Doha round of trade negotiations, Crossette blames India for single-handedly foiling a deal that "nobody loved, but one that would have benefited developing countries most." Does she really know better than the developing countries themselves? It seems odd that they would not love a deal that "would have benefited [them] most." It is just as presumptuous and illogical to blame the failure of Doha on India alone. Gideon Rachman, for instance, argues that "the Doha round ultimately broke down because of a stand-off between the United States, India, China and the European Union over agricultural trade." Turns out it takes more than one hand to wreck a multilateral deal.

It is on the third point -- climate change -- that Crossette's proclivity for being selective with facts stands out most. She mentions the Indian environment minister's refusal to agree to binding carbon emission targets five months before the Copenhagen talks, but ignores his statement in Parliament five days before the negotiations pledging 20 to 25 percent carbon emission intensity cuts from the 2005 levels by 2020. Nonbinding yes, but nevertheless a serious commitment. And no country's commitments at Copenhagen were binding. She also ignores that in the end, the Copenhagen "deal" came about in part due to India's bridging of the differences between the United States and China.

Fourth, on the basis of one data point -- the scandal over a pay increase to Paul Wolfowitz's girlfriend that precipitated his resignation as president of the World Bank -- Crossette alleges that India "attacks individuals." Wolfowitz, she says, was ousted "not because his relationship with a female official caused a public furor, but because he had turned his attention to Indian corruption and fraud in the diversion of bank funds." It is undeniable that there is corruption in India, but Crossette glosses over the fact that in the interview she quotes, Steve Berkman alleges that World Bank officials were involved in it too. What the latter actually said, as paraphrased by a journalist for Rediff India Abroad, is that "the international bureaucrats who run the Bank ... are the ones who conspired to nail Wolfowitz using the mini-scandal with his girlfriend to call for his ouster." Where does that leave Crossette's argument?

Fifth, Crossette claims that India "regularly refuses visas for international rights advocates," a failing that she supposes occurs because such advocates are critical of the government. Granting that there is a case for India to be more liberal in its visa regime, the country does not lack robust, committed, and vocal human rights activists. Tune in to any Indian television channel. On the other hand, the U.N. Human Rights Council is not exactly a shining example of how the international community protects human rights. Domestic activism and the liberal democratic institutions that allow it are perhaps far more effective in safeguarding human rights.

Ultimately, Crossette's suggestion that India presents a "headache" for global governance is a manifestation of an outdated mindset. It ignores the growing convergence of interests between India and the United States on the biggest challenges of this century: from establishing a liberal, democratic order to managing the rise of China to containing jihadi terrorism to addressing climate change and a host of other challenges. For those worried about rising elephants, make room if you don't want to be squeezed.

I Don't Want to Hold Your Hand

How Saudi Arabia and the United States have grown apart.


What will be the image that frames the news reporting of June 29's White House meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia? Surely not another bow toward the desert monarch, as caught on video at the London G-20 meeting in April 2009. Or what hypercritics saw as a further deferential bob in Riyadh last June, when the president leaned forward so the shorter king could confer on him the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit, a chunky necklace that Obama took off within seconds.

Of course, what the White House staff most wants to avoid is any image as awkward as the shot of President George W. Bush and then Crown Prince Abdullah walking arm in arm at the start of a meeting at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch in April 2002. The shot was memorialized by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 and, with Moore himself superimposed in place of Abdullah, became the poster for the movie, plastered on thousands of theater walls across the United States.

More... We will have to wait for W's biography for his explanation of this gaucheness, which came to define his presidency. However, the prevailing assumption is that Abdullah, then the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia because of the ill health of King Fahd, had thrown Bush off balance by threatening to walk out of the summit before it started. Abdullah insisted on being able to take home a diplomatic prize -- anything to make his visit worthwhile. This demand wrong-footed Bush, who had thought the Saudis would still be -- and should have been -- on the defensive because of widespread accusations about their historical tolerance of the Islamic extremism that spawned the 9/11 attacks nearly eight months earlier. Bush grabbed Abdullah's arm as a way of saying: "Stay. Let's talk about it." The rest is history.

Obama and Abdullah already has met just two days before at the G-20 summit in Canada, but Abdullah is coming to Washington to talk one-on-one about Palestine and Iran. On the former issue, Abdullah thinks that Obama "gets it," as he has been tougher on the Israelis than Bush or Bill Clinton. On Iran, however, the Saudi king fears that his country's historically closest ally is naive, and dangerously so, for putting so much faith in diplomacy. The same emotional approach that causes Abdullah to anguish about the Palestinians also explains his distrust and antipathy toward the Iranians, whom he sees as typically untrustworthy Shiite challengers to Sunni, and therefore Saudi, custodianship of the holy places of Islam.

Despite the official blandishments, there are clear indications that under Abdullah, and especially since 2001, Saudi Arabia has put distance into its relationship with the United States. Abdullah is trying to gain more room to maneuver in the Sunni-Shiite rivalry and between extremists and moderates within Sunni Islam. To do so, he has to erode the notion that the House of Saud is a pawn of Uncle Sam.

A clear example of this distancing is the foundation of U.S.-Saudi ties: oil. Saudi Arabia, despite having the world's largest oil reserves, is no longer the largest global producer -- Russia takes that title. And though for many years, in a clear statement of diplomatic priorities, the kingdom was the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States, it has now slipped behind Canada and Mexico. With the years of ritual denunciations from both Bush and Obama regarding U.S. "dependence on foreign oil," Washington can hardly complain, but the net result is less U.S. influence in Saudi Arabia.

On Iran, there is a widening if not unbridgeable gap between the two countries. The kingdom's own signals of the policy differences between Riyadh and Washington might well include the June 12 London Times story, which reported that the kingdom would allow Israeli jets to fly over its territory to complete a bombing raid on Iran's nuclear facilities. Although officially denied by Saudi officials, the Times stood by its report. Its editor would not run such a story without being confident of the sources.
The kingdom's own pursuit of (peaceful) nuclear energy is a clear sign that Riyadh thinks that the United States cannot or will not stop Iran's program. A June 17 Reuters story quoted an energy advisor to the kingdom as saying that not only was Saudi Arabia looking at nuclear power plants, but it should also be allowed to enrich the necessary uranium fuel itself. That mirrors the Iranian stance, though the ability to make low-enriched uranium for power plants is, but for a few technical tweaks, the same technology needed to make highly enriched uranium for an atomic weapon.

Saudi Arabia's ability to master this technology is doubtful -- but its ambition is not. By his own admission, Pakistan's controversial nuclear expert, Abdul Qadeer Khan, now notionally free after years of house arrest on allegations of rogue nuclear trading, visited the kingdom around 50 times and was on the technology subcommittee of the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank. According to Khan's 11-page confession letter, a senior prince at one point even offered Saudi citizenship to Khan and some of his aides. (They declined.)

Abdullah's determination to go nuclear, at least for generating electricity, is being encouraged by France, where he will travel after leaving the United States. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is noted for his tough approach on the Iran nuclear issue, has already pitched the idea during three visits to Saudi Arabia. If the kingdom pursues this, it will impact the centerpiece of U.S. nonproliferation efforts on the Arabia Peninsula: the so-called nuclear 123 Agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which won U.S. approval for nuclear power plants by renouncing enrichment technology. If Washington accepts Saudi enrichment, the UAE -- which in its bad old days, also offered Khan a passport -- would insist on renegotiating its deal.

The octogenarian King Abdullah often cuts a lonely figure in the clannish House of Saud. One almost sympathizes for him when he returns home and has to explain to his brother princes where the United States stands on key policy issues. Crown Prince Sultan, his designated successor and official stand-in during his absence, is reportedly enfeebled and unable to comprehend government affairs. Therefore, the ultra-cautious, conservative, and anti-Iranian views of Sultan's brother, Interior Minister Prince Nayef, who is emerging more clearly as the next in line, could be crucial. Both men were said to be involved in paying off Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11. So, even if the enduring image from this most recent summit is a bow or an embrace, it appears likely that the kingdom will diverge even further from its decades-old bond with Washington.

Honduras Is An Opportunity

For a successful foreign policy, it is not just essential that a nation have clear objectives, but that it can differentiate between crisis and opportunity and manage both. That ability seems to be absent so far in U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, at least regarding its policies toward Latin America. This is particularly obvious when Obama's foreign policy is contrasted with his predecessor Ronald Reagan's. A brief review of the U.S. interventions in Grenada in 1983 and in Honduras in 2009 illustrates the point.

The U.S. actions in Grenada and Honduras are separated by a quarter century and 1,500 miles; they have shared and contrasting characteristics. The United States did not initiate the events that led to the Grenada invasion in 1983, as it did not instigate the removal of the President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in 2009. In the former, a U.S. president utilized a real crisis to liberate a country and to signal to the world that he would fight for freedom elsewhere. In the latter, another administration demonstrated that it cannot differentiate between the friends and the enemies of freedom.

Twenty-six years ago this week, on October 25, 1983, Reagan made the dangerous and at the time loudly criticized decision to invade Grenada. This marked the first contraction of the Soviet empire in more than 50 years, and helped spur the fall of the Berlin Wall six years later and the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War two years after that. Seldom in history has such enormous consequence resulted from an unacknowledged event.

Grenada was the high-water mark of the Soviet empire's expansion. In 1979, during the irresolute presidency of Jimmy Carter, Grenada fell into the hands of Maurice Bishop, a Marxist "revolutionary" who -- supported by Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Libya, and other enemies of the United States -- imposed a dictatorial regime and turned the country into a base for communist expansion in the Caribbean.

Among other hostile moves, Bishop allowed Cuba to build an airbase large enough to accommodate Mig fighters and other military planes. Moreover, Bishop and his allies transformed Grenada into a base for political subversion of the Caribbean. When rival Marxist revolutionaries assassinated Bishop in 1983, the island descended into fratricidal violence. The lives of 800 foreign medical students, mostly American, were in danger. Against the wishes of some of his advisors, who preferred diplomacy, Reagan decided in 36 hours to invade and to remove the Marxist regime.

The invasion was deeply unpopular in the "international community," which denounced the move in a United Nations vote, 122 to 9. Only some neighboring nations in the Caribbean basin supported the United States. Even Reagan's closest ally, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, bitterly protested. Uniformly, U.S. and European media lambasted the White House. Many in Congress angrily condemned the invasion at first, only to support it later (it could be said they were against it before they were for it) when evidence of communist deceit became overwhelming. For example, U.S. soldiers discovered ammunition caches in boxes labeled "Cuban Economic Office, Grenada," demonstrating the danger the island country posed.
With Grenada's liberation, however, Reagan signaled that he was serious about combating Soviet aggression. Grenada was the first major use of U.S. military force since Vietnam; the first successful rollback of a communist state and thus the repudiation of the "Breshnev Doctrine," named after the former Soviet leader who held that no "socialist" state would be allowed to revert to capitalism; and the first military defeat of Castro's army, which at the time was running amok in Africa and supporting terrorists in Latin America.

A quarter century later, in Honduras in 2009, a corrupt and demagogic president distanced his country from the United States and joined ALBA, the anti-American alliance created by Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro. Zelaya attempted to subvert his country's laws in order to stay in power. But the institutions of democracy foiled him: The Honduran Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Zelaya had violated the Constitution and ordered his arrest. The president of the Congress, Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya's own party, replaced him, a move the elected legislature nearly unanimously ratified. All told, every institution of civil authority and civil society supported Zelaya's legal removal. As with Grenada, the "international community" objected -- in this case, on the grounds that the ouster was really a coup. Inexplicably, the United States joined along in the pro-Zelaya baying.

Simply put, Zelaya's removal was not a crisis; it was an opportunity. Hondurans had simultaneously re-established the rule of law that Zelaya attempted to fracture and broke with the anti-U.S. Chávez and Castro alliance. This was a legal, autonomous, and liberating action by Honduras's political institutions. The United States had no right to intervene against the pro-democracy Hondurans, even if a terrible mistake provided an excuse.

In the chaos caused by Zelaya's arrest, some Army officers put him on an airplane out of the country. This was a violation of Honduran law; the Army has acknowledged it and has attempted to justify it by claiming that leaving Zelaya in the country would lead to violence. Zelaya's many calls since his removal for his countrymen to replace him by force do justify the Army's fears, if not the act of deportation itself. He should have been detained and made to answer to the many crimes with which he has been charged.

But the deportation of Zelaya is no excuse for the Obama administration to join with the hemisphere's leftist despots, even with the cover of international organizations, in calling for the illegal restoration of the ousted leader. To repeat, Hondurans ousted Zelaya legally, in accordance with their constitution. The United States did not have to cut off aid and impose sanctions on one of the poorest nations in Latin America for having rid itself of an autocrat determined to turn Honduras into an undemocratic, hostile state.

Reagan was bold and agile enough to use the unexpected events on Grenada to change the course of history. Grenada was a crisis that Reagan turned into an opportunity. Honduras was an opportunity that Obama turned into a crisis. It is not too late to change course in Honduras and take advantage of an unexpected opportunity.

Where China is investing

The Heritage Foundation has pulled together a fascinating study of Chinese investment -- showing (with really nice charts and maps!) just where all of those yuan are heading overseas.

A few things to note, plus one question....

Sub-Saharan Africa is the biggest single region for investment for the Chinese. (Plus, $36.4 billion is a lot of investment in a region whose total GDP is $744 billion.)

China spends the most money in Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The resource-rich country is one of the very few on Earth whose economy has actually shrunk in the past 20 years (due to a brutal civil war).

For every dollar of U.S. investment, China spends 51 cents in Iran.

China invests nearly twice as much in west Asia as in east Asia -- a testament to its need for resources, more so than products.

China spends more in Australia than any other single country.

Why is China spending so much in Greece? Shipping?

Chinese Takeout

Cold economic realities dictate that China is going to be the big player in the new Afghan gold rush -- and Washington had better wake up to that fact, soon.

-BY AZIZ HUQ

The prospect of cobalt in Kandahar has sparked lively debate about whether new mineral wealth -- if it pans out -- will aid or hinder U.S. policies in Afghanistan, as well as whether the country will fall prey to the so-called resource curse, as political scientist Michael Ross and others fear. But a short-term focus on Afghan-U.S. relations might be a mistake: The real winner from new natural-resource wealth beyond the Khyber Pass will be China. If the United States really cares about stabilizing Afghanistan's central government and eliminating terrorist havens, it needs to start working now to persuade Beijing that these are shared goals.

First, some background: Chinese foreign investment and aid has accelerated dramatically over the past decade, especially in Africa. In November 2009 alone, for example, China's largesse amounted to $10 billion in low-interest loans and $1 billion in commercial loans to the continent. With Beijing as cheerleader, trade has soared from $1 billion in 1992 to $106.8 billion in 2008.

In part this is due to China's willingness to do business with undemocratic, corrupt, and brutal regimes -- for example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, and Zimbabwe. The DRC provides the best cautionary parallel to Afghanistan: The discovery in the late 1990s of copper, coltan, and other minerals in eastern Congo gave new life to a civil war that has now claimed upwards of 4 million lives. Flagging combatants were funded by mineral extraction, and much of those resources eventually flowed to China. The fact that violence is still simmering in eastern Congo -- and despite the costs that extraction imposes on the Congolese people -- has not been enough to deter Beijing from wooing Congo's government for access to the country's abundant resources.

So, if there's any thought that war in Afghanistan might dissuade Chinese investment there, it's best to dispense with that notion immediately.

China, which has a narrow land border with Afghanistan, already invests heavily in the war-torn Central Asian state. The state-owned China Metallurgical Group has a $3.5 billion copper mining venture in Logar province. Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei are building digital telephone switches, providing roughly 200,000 subscriber lines in Afghanistan. Even back in the war's early days in 2002 and 2003, when I worked in Afghanistan, the Chinese presence was acutely visible in Kabul, with Chinese laborers on many building sites and Chinese-run restaurants and guesthouses popping up all over the city. As Robert Kaplan has pointed out, these investments come with a gratuitous hidden subsidy from the United States -- which has defrayed the enormous costs of providing security amid war and looting.

With its massive wealth, appetite for risk, and willingness to underbid others on labor costs and human rights conditionality, China is the odds-on favorite for development of any new Afghan mineral resources. Chinese firms will control the flow of new funds, and the way those funds are distributed between the central and local governments. It's all well and good that Barack Obama's administration has recommitted to building civil projects in rural Afghanistan, but consider the relative scale of building a school to establishing a multimillion-dollar mine (not to mention the transport networks and infrastructure required to get the extracted minerals out) and it's easy to see what kind of influence the Chinese will bring to the table.

It is critical for Washington to start making the case to Chinese leaders that pure self-interest mandates they leverage this power wisely -- to promote stability, not catalyze new conflict, in Afghanistan. So far, China's investment in Logar has been in keeping with its "noninterventionist" foreign policy and was accompanied by development aid, but no overt political strings. Washington must require more from Beijing, however, to avoid upending all its hard-won gains.

The Obama administration has already asked China to contribute troops to the Afghan effort. This is a good first step, but a few hundred token soldiers will not make China a strategic partner in its Afghan campaign. It needs to persuade Beijing that the campaign is indeed China's campaign, too -- if not by touting democracy promotion and human rights, then surely economic benefit -- and that U.S. and Chinese strategies on Afghanistan converge.

This is not as hard as it sounds: As China-Africa expert Deborah Brautigam's careful work shows, China has on some occasions acted as a surprisingly responsible lender, for example using resource-backed infrastructure loans that force some gains to be reinvested in development. Although many have warned of a new Sino-colonialism, Brautigam's work suggests that perhaps China's awareness of its gargantuan and growing need for foreign export markets will make it a better "colonial" power than any European country ever was.

For China as much as the United States, the goal of a stable, central Afghan government that provides no haven for terrorists is a desirable goal. China has worried in the past about whether Afghanistan might provide a refuge for Uighur separatists. Leaving aside the ethics and wisdom of Chinese policies in the Uighur community's home region of Xinjiang, it's safe to say that Washington and Beijing share a common goal in preventing terrorism. Both countries would benefit from a stabilized government in Kabul that is able to command the loyalty and respect of provincial governments and populations. That, however, requires that Hamid Karzai's government deal with its endemic corruption problem. And though no one expects Afghanistan to turn into Norway, perhaps it can be nudged away from the DRC path and toward the model of a Saudi Arabia or a Kazakhstan.

When it comes to corruption, however, state-run Chinese firms have not seemed troubled by greasing the wheels of power brokers in Sudan, Zimbabwe, or elsewhere. Getting Beijing to understand the rot this breeds seems a hard sell for the Obama administration. If that fails, however, Chinese ears might perk up somewhat at the mention of how integral a stable central government in Kabul is to the security of Pakistan, a close ally of Beijing.

Stability in Pakistan should be an important goal for China. It is by now clear that the Taliban's campaign west of the Durand Line is inextricable from the destabilizing efforts of Islamist militants in Pakistan. If China does not want another nuclear basket case on its border, then it should care deeply about instability in Afghanistan. Currently, however, Beijing is still freeloading, relying on Washington to provide security for its limited interests. Perhaps the tantalizing prospect of $1 trillion in minerals might be enough to change the strategic equation.

Working together, China and the United States have a better chance of guiding Afghanistan to a happy outcome for all than will Washington on its own. To be sure, this is no easy task: There's plenty of evidence that aid conditionality by Western governments has not done as much good as hoped. But cold economic realities dictate that Chinese firms are likely going to be the big players in this new gold rush, and Washington had better wake up to the fact that it has a short window in which to convince Beijing to collaborate in making Kabul a better place.

--- Aziz Huq is an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago. In 2002 and 2003, he worked in Afghanistan as an analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG) and has since worked in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal for ICG.

Towards an Arms Trade Treaty

More than 740,000 people are killed as a result of armed violence every year. Many others are assaulted, forcibly displaced or otherwise left with lasting psychological and physical injuries. Through these and other consequences, armed violence generates an estimated ‘global cost of insecurity’ of 400bn USD per annum. Supporters of an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) seek to reduce the burden of armed violence through negotiating a global, legally binding instrument to regulate the trade in conventional arms. In December of last year, 151 UN Member States voted in support of convening a United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty in 2012. These States formally recognised:

that the absence of commonly agreed international standards for the transfer of conventional arms…is a contributory factor to armed conflict, the displacement of people, organized crime and terrorism, thereby undermining peace, reconciliation, safety, security, stability and sustainable social and economic development

An ATT would go far beyond existing instruments in regulating the arms trade: it would be global in reach and legally binding in force. Essentially, an ATT would regulate the legal trade in conventional arms with the aim of making it more responsible. More specifically, it would ‘establish common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms’.5 States would likely be required to assess applications for arms export licences against criteria specified by the Treaty, which would largely be drawn from existing obligations under international law. Applying the principles of the UN Charter, human rights treaties and customary international law to arms transfer decisions would be at the core of an ATT.

The Trade in Conventional Arms

The trade in conventional arms is conspicuously under-regulated. International regulatory efforts have traditionally focused on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, leaving conventional arms to proliferate unabatedly. Existing controls over the trade in conventional arms are inadequate and most often ineffective. UN Security Council embargoes, for example, are few and far between, whilst regional instruments, such as the EU Common Position on Arms Exports, vary in scope and often prove incompatible. Regional instruments are also incomprehensive – around 40 states remain outside international regulation – leaving gaps in the international regulatory structure for unscrupulous traders to exploit. According to the UK Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control andDisarmament, ‘the status quo of a multiplicity of national and regional arrangements for the arms trade is not fit for purpose in an interconnected globalised economy’. This means that under current international law, states may export arms without properly assessing the likelihood that the transfer would destabilise regional security, obstruct development or be used to commit gross violations of human rights.
Recent developments in the conventional arms trade have magnified the consequences of under-regulation. Since 2002, the volume of international arms transfers has risen steadily in response to heightened threat perceptions following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The ‘peace dividend’ that accompanied the ending of the cold war has been spent. Although it is not possible to place a precise figure on the financial value of the arms trade, for 2007, the last year for which sufficient data is available, it was estimated to be 51bn USD.7 These developments were accompanied by a growing recognition of the human cost of irresponsible transfers of conventional arms, and of small arms and light weapons in particular, and the need to subject the trade to stringent controls. It was in this context that the ATT process developed.

The Arms Trade Treaty Process

The idea of an ATT has a fifteen-year history in which the number of supporting states has risen from a handful to an overwhelming majority. In October 1995, Dr. Oscar Arias led a group of fellow Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in announcing their support for the international regulation of the trade in conventional arms. Non-governmental organisations and other civil society groups have been at the centre of the process ever since. Of the many advocacy initiatives undertaken in support of an ATT, the ‘Million Faces Petition’ of the Control Arms campaign drew the greatest international attention. The Petition, which comprised individual portraits as expressions of support, was formally submitted to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June 2006.
Within the UN system, the process began with General Assembly Resolution 61/89 of December 2006. Subsequent Resolutions, findings by a Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and discussions in Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) sessions propelled the process to where it is today.The United Kingdom has been the leading advocate of an ATT, both at the governmental level and through the aforementioned activities of civil society. The UK is a co-author and co-sponsor of all three ATT General Assembly Resolutions and was the first government to come out in support of the Treaty.
Resolution 61/89 (2007) requested the Secretary-General to seek the views of Member States towards an ATT. The majority of states that submitted reports deemed an ATT to be both feasible and desirable, laying the foundation for more concrete steps to be taken. However, the GGE and OEWG highlighted areas of contention as well as those of general agreement. Many states remain divided over the contents of the Treaty, and, in particular, over the scope of weapons and activities it should regulate and the transfer criteria it should specify. More sceptical states continue to emphasise their inherent rights to procure and export arms under international law and the sufficiency of existing regulatory instruments.
Two developments made 2009 a crucial year. First, the United States departed from its earlier position of voting against the ATT; the Obama administration is now supporting the process. Second, spurred on by the reversal of U.S. policy, the General Assembly decided to convene a United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty in 2012. A Preparatory Committee, composed of all UN Member States, will meet between now and then to lay the groundwork.
Last month, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) held the Concluding Seminar of a project it has been implementing for the European Union: ‘Promoting Discussion on an Arms Trade Treaty’.11 The project organised a series of regional seminars, from Amman to Kuala Lumpur to Vienna, with the aim of promoting discussion and an exchange of views among states, international organisations, civil society and industry. On the one hand, a high level of support was expressed for concluding a strong and robust ATT among seminar participants in every world region.
In addition to drawing attention to the consequences of irresponsible arms transfers, many participants stressed the inadequacy of regional instruments and the limited effectiveness of those that are not legally binding. It was also widely recognised that for an ATT to be effective, it would need to be sufficiently flexible to take account of regional specificities and to be supported through the provision of financial and technical assistance. On the other, discussions of the categories of weapons and types of transfer to become subject to international regulation echoed differences in opinion that had emerged earlier in the ATT process. A number of states remained sceptical about the need for a Treaty at all.
The persistence of disagreement and scepticism is particularly worrying for the majority of states and vibrant network of civil society activists who have been working towards an ATT. That the United States agreed to support an ATT on the condition that it is negotiated ‘on the basis of consensus’ means these worries are well-founded.12 However, much remains to be discussed between now and the commencement of Treaty negotiations in 2012, including whether ‘consensus’ really means consensus.13 Current problems are unlikely to prove fatal to the ATT process. The speed at which momentum has accumulated behind the process and the obstacles it has so far surmounted are testament to the commitment of states, civil society and the international community to successfully concluding an Arms Trade Treaty.