Last week, a colleague and I published a substantial paper on the faults inherent in the UN’s efforts to negotiate an arms-trade treaty. These faults are many and serious, but they come down, fundamentally, to the fact that too few states enforce their existing laws, or live up to their existing responsibilities, on the import and export of arms. A treaty will do nothing to remedy this disinterest, incapacity, or—in far too many cases—malfeasance.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal and other papers reported a case that illustrates these faults. In August, the UAE seized a shipment of military hardware from North Korea aboard a vessel bound for Iran. This is, needless to say, a violation of the UN Security Council ban on military exports from North Korea, but that did nothing to stop Iran from seeking to import them.
But Iran and North Korea were not the only nations involved. The weapons were carried on an Australian vessel, flying under a Bahamian flag. The exporting company was an Italian firm, working out of Shanghai, China, and the parent company of the Australian shipping firm is based in France. So all together, at least seven nations are implicated in this effort to breach the sanctions on North Korea. We can have confidence that Australia, at least, will treat this failure with appropriate seriousness. But it is much less easy to be sure of Italy, with its enormous trade ties to Iran, never mind China.
Fortunately, the weapons were not nuclear. The Wall Street Journal reports that they were “detonators and ammunition for rocket-propelled grenade launchers.” But that is bad enough: take a look about halfway down the page at one of Michael Yon’s latest dispatches from Afghanistan if you want to see what an RPG does to a professionally constructed military barricade. There is a very good chance that those North Korean RPGs were headed for Afghanistan, to be used by the Taliban against British and American soldiers.
Needless to say, Iran proclaims—in its submission on the projected UN treaty—that it “has enforced and continues to enforce measures to prevent and curb the illicit trafficking and transfer of such weapons.” This is a blatant lie. It has, further, the gall to claim that “the major problem of the developing countries” rests in the culpability of “certain major exporters of . . . [small] weapons,” i.e., “certain Western countries.” Like the other nations involved in this case—though in Iran’s case, the problem is evil intent, not a lack of attention—Iran is engaging in activities that violate its own laws and existing UN Security Council resolutions. Another UN treaty will not cure this problem—it will only give the bad states more cover to hide behind.
And that is something the UN specializes in. Indeed, since the UN works for all its member states—the bad ones as well as the good ones—it can scarcely do anything but incline toward covering up malfeasance. Yesterday, French officials harshly criticized IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, who called the Iranian nuclear threat “hyped.” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner replied that “it is clear on reading the IAEA documents that not a single question has been answered,” while another French official, speaking off the record, said “ElBaradei has been watering things down for a very long time and now we’ve had enough. . . . [IAEA inspectors have gathered] whole series of pieces of evidence, of proof.”
Proof indeed. It’s too bad that the French back the UN’s projected treaty. Their own complaints about the IAEA, and their circumstantial and perhaps unknowing involvement in the shipment of North Korean weapons to Iran, illustrate the fallacies inherent in believing that a UN treaty will be effective.
