Many British MPs join 200 legislators from 13 countries in opposition to their countries’ arms exports to Israel

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Source: Political Concern

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Work for a more peaceful world: stop the arms trade and respect international law by withdrawing US troops from Iraq and Syria: Ben Chacko

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The killing of three US soldiers along the Jordan-Syria border risks a spiralling Middle East war, a risk heightened by the reflex blaming of Iran and the clamour for revenge driven by hawkish US politicians in an election year.

Ben Chacko (right) has noted that attacks on US forces are always presented in mass media as unprovoked. British politicians too will depict them as acts of illegal terrorism which need to be punished to shore up the “international rules-based order.” He continues:

“We should therefore be clear: US troops would not be under attack in the Middle East if they were not stationed in the Middle East, often against the wishes of the host countries”.

Bloomberg reports that the US has about 47,000 troops stationed across the region, commenting that Americans don’t know of them but Iranian-backed groups do.

US military personnel at the Buehring base camp in Udairi, in the northwestern region of Kuwait, on May 10, 2023.

Sunday’s attack was launched by a group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. US troops in Iraq have come under fire dozens of times since Israel’s invasion of Gaza began.

“What won’t be mentioned in most media reports”, Chacko observes, “is that the Iraqi government has told them to leave. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said earlier this month that their “destabilising” presence incited spillover attacks from the Gaza war that could escalate into a new civil war in the long-suffering country”.

The Iraqi parliament voted to expel all US troops more than four years ago, after the US illegally murdered Iranian general Qassim Soleimani while he was visiting Iraq as its government’s guest.

Stationing troops in a country against its wishes is not upholding an “international rules-based order” — it is an act of contempt for international law.

Tower 22, where the three US soldiers were killed, is close to the intersection of Jordan, Syria and Iraq and is described as a “critical logistical base for US forces in Syria.” US forces are certainly not in Syria at its government’s invitation. Officially, 900 troops remain there to prevent a revival of the Islamic State terror group.

Ex-president Donald Trump was more honest when he admitted they were there “only for the oil.” Syrian authorities have complained that the US illegally exports about 80% of the country’s oil output through contracts signed with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the north-east.

Iran has links to many armed groups in the region, with the spread of Iran-backed militias in Iraq one of the many unintended consequences of Britain and the US’s unprovoked attack on the latter. But if the Middle East and north Africa have been flooded with weapons, it is not primarily by Iran.

The destruction of Libya by NATO powers in 2010-11 saw militant groups seize stockpiles of weapons and ammo that were then sold abroad, a key factor in the jihadist insurgencies that have plagued the Sahel ever since.

Rockets, shells and heavy ordinance inside an abandoned bunker complex near the eastern Libyan city of Ajdabiyah

The US threw lorryloads of armaments into the Syrian civil war, admitting itself that many of the recipients ended up aligning with Isis. At the weekend, the New York Times reported that a fair proportion of Hamas’s arsenal in Gaza is actually Israeli in origin: “The very weapons that Israeli forces used to enforce a blockade of Gaza are now being used against them”.

The way to stop attacks like this, prompting a downward spiral, is to work for peace.

Israel’s allies need to cut off the weapons and logistical support enabling its Gaza genocide, which is the cause of the current escalation in attacks on Western forces and Israel-linked shipping.

The US should be pressed to respect international law and withdraw its troops from Iraq and Syria, where they are not welcome.

And we should call time on an arms trade that spreads murder and mayhem throughout the world, routinely blowing up in the faces of the countries which provide these arms to a staggering array of customers, in pursuit of short-term outcomes in conflicts like those in Libya or Syria, without thought of what may follow (Ben Chacko).

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Just seen: Al Jazeera: US and Iraq agree to start talks to end presence of US-led coalition. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says talks will take place as part of a military commission that was agreed upon in August 2023.

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Global investor urges others to bury thoughts of environmental, social and governance

Anne Simpson, the former head of sustainability at the Calpers pension fund, who now runs responsible investing at Franklin Templeton, made a surprising declaration. “I think it’s time for RIP ESG,” she told a conference in New York (FT).

She finds that the war in Ukraine has forced advocates of Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing to reconsider some of their approaches, because energy security and poverty reduction have suddenly become as important as the green transition. Box ticking around carbon emissions alone, in other words, does not work.

Asserting that the Russian invasion has forced liberals to rethink the role of arms companies, Anne Simpson (right) observes/rejoices that businesses once dismissed as merchants of death are now key to defeating a brutal invasion. Governments across the democratic world are supplying Ukraine with weapons from dwindling stockpiles. Military spending is surging. It includes a €100bn special fund from previously ambivalent Germany. The EU is planning to finance weapons for Ukraine out of its own budget (FT).

It’s good to read that Ms Simpson sees little sign that European investors are rethinking as urged

The reluctance of ESG investors to buy defence stocks is described by her as an example of refusing to change your mind although the facts have changed. Before the crisis, more than 20% of mutual funds excluded weapons manufacturers, according to research by Deutsche Bank (below, cover illustration).

She thinks that the exclusion of defence stocks from ESG funds has three negative consequences.

• Firstly, it raises the cost of capital when arms makers invest. This means western governments will supply fewer weapons to Ukraine for the same cost.
• Secondly, ESG funds have missed out on decent returns from a good cause.

The third may be found by a more careful reader.

ESG aligned investment is a relatively slim proportion of the market: there’s still plenty of mainstream money available to pour into the merchants of death (BlackRock link).

A British government report says (paraphrased): sustainable, well-functioning and efficient infrastructure which delivers long-term benefits would help to build more resilient and inclusive economies and communities. It can promote inclusiveness by expanding access to vital services and improving economic opportunities for all.

Investing beneficiaries’ or clients’ money in defence stocks is not a good move compared with ESG infrastructure investments in projects that disperse economic benefits across the nation and increase well-being.

 

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Israeli arms exports serve political ends: Loewenstein

Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system intercepts rockets launched from Gaza City

Israel’s Ministry of Defense recently published a new record in defence exports: over $12.5 billion in 2022.

Their weapons exports are a means to an end, according to Jewish author Antony Loewenstein in his latest book, The Palestine Laboratory.

He recounts that since its birth in 1948, the state of Israel has sold its weapons to many troubled regions, including:

• apartheid South Africa;
• Chile during the Pinochet years;
• Myanmar, despite the well-documented atrocities against its Rohingya minority.

The Ukrainian government contacted Israel last October, after watching Israel’s Iron Dome missiles fly over Tel Aviv hunting down Hamas rockets, hoping to buy this air defence system to fend off the Iranian drones swarming through their skies (FT).

Though arming Ukraine appears to be a key foreign policy objective of the US, Israel’s military and financial patron, Israel refused: Loewenstein commented that it was not prepared to upset Moscow, with Russian forces entrenched next door in Syria.

In exchange, Israel has sought support — especially on Palestinian issues — in international arenas such as the UN, and more recently, in convincing neighbours such as the UAE and maybe soon Saudi Arabia, to recognise its existence.

Loewenstein condemns the Israeli state for its many well-documented failures to place human rights, especially those of Palestinians at, or near, the centre of its foreign and domestic policies, describing this as a failure of Zionism – whereas Israeli officials defend these decisions as hard-nosed realpolitik.

 

 

 

 

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Rearmament does not create jobs: Gianni Alioti’s evidence

Weapons continue to pass undisturbed even while migrants – themselves victims of arms exported from one country to another – are prevented from landing. Weaponwatch is armed only with knowledge, international solidarity and digital technology in order to build free moving networks of observers, unveiling the global trading system. Through ports we observe the movement of weapons through ports, as neither dockers nor seafarers are comfortable handling such high risk items. On occasion we refuse to handle them or let them land.

Gianni Alioti, head of the FIM-CISL International Office, has written a six page report arguing that the idea that the military industry is a backbone of the economic and employment system is just a myth, debunked by official sector data. The first two pages are summarised below. It is written in Italian.

He stresses that the prevailing ‘common sense’ must be challenged. Widespread misconceptions persist even within workers’ unions. The first is that investments and the growth of turnover in the military industry ensure important employment effects whereas over the last ten years turnover has increased and profits have risen by 773%, whilst employment has fallen by 16%.

The second is the importance of technological innovation in the military field for the ‘spinoffs’ for the civilian sector. That importance dissolved with the end of the Cold War and the development of microelectronics

The myth of the military industry as an essential sector of the economic and employment system characterized by highly advanced and ‘bearing’ technologies is today found only in ‘war propaganda’.

This is all the more true in our country where the degree of subordination of the Italian aerospace and defense industry (with a few exceptions of products and systems) to the US is very high. There are considerable constraints both on a technological and research level, and on a political and financial level (shareholders, markets, exports and supply chains).

We have the data that I have been monitoring for about twenty years on the trend of turnover and employment in the aeronautical industry at a European level, using the information contained in the annual reports of the ASD (AeroSpace and Defense Industries Association of Europe). Over a 40-year period, this sector has gone from 579,000 in 1980 to just over 537,000 employees in 2021 (minus 7.2 percent), after having dropped to around 400,000 employees in 1995 (Chart 1).

In the same period, the overall turnover of the sector, at constant values, more than tripled. The gap between the trend in turnover and employment is impressive.

But the most surprising result emerges by disaggregating the data of the aeronautical sector between military and civilian. While the workers in the sector employed in the military field went from 382,000 to about 175,000 (54 percent less) between 1980 and 2021, employment in the civilian field, on the other hand, grew from 197,000 to almost 363 thousand (84 percent more).

Not having participated, as an equal partner of the French, Spanish and Germans in the creation of Airbus, has cost the marginality of the Italian industry in the conception, development and production of civil aircraft. Our country has chosen to participate only in the field of helicopters, turboprop and executive aircraft and become a simple sub-supplier of the industry US Air Force. In Italy 50 percent of jobs were lost in the military aeronautical sector, without any growth in the civil aeronautical sector (except for a 10 percent increase in the helicopter sector)*.

Gianni Alioti stresses: “Although talk of diversification and reconversion of the arms sector into the civilian sector may appear illusory, especially in a phase of rearmament and exponential increase in military spending like this, we must never tire of working towards a future perspective of peace and disarmament”.

 

*Source: elaboration by Gianni Alioti on data from the annual report ASD (AeroSpace and Defense Industries Association of Europe)

 

 

 

 

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Last year defence contractors warned that ESG would cause their shares to be shunned

Babcock’s aircraft carrier at the Rosyth shipyard

Last year the Financial Times reported that defence contractors were becoming increasingly concerned that the ‘sweeping trend’ for ethical investment (ESG) would lead to their shares being shunned by institutional investors.

David Lockwood (left), CEO of Babcock International – Britain’s second-biggest defence contractor – warned the Financial Times that anti-defence lobbyists are trying to hijack the ethical investment agenda for their own aims

Lockwood’s comments echoed those of Rupert Soames, chief executive of UK outsourcer Serco, who recently warned of “unintended consequences” from the rise in ESG standards that could force some public companies to go private.

Sir Roger Carr, chair of BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest defence group, spoke recently of the risk of some sectors being “blackballed.

The Norwegian investment fund KLP sold out of Rolls-Royce, the FTSE 100 aerospace company, because Rolls-Royce makes the nuclear reactors that power the Royal Navy’s Trident-missile submarines.

Canbriam, a New York based a global multi-specialist asset manager, ‘a recognized pioneer and leader in sustainable investment’ explains:

For many years, and with the gradual rise of ESG investing, investors have been excluding the defence sector from their investments due to the adverse nature of armaments which have often served to infringe human rights and led to devastating effects on human lives and the overall well-being of society . . . we have a fiduciary responsibility to invest on behalf of our clients in the most sustainable manner. Our clients trust us for our convictions and our ability to invest in a truly sustainable fashion, without wavering from the principles of sustainability due to global political events.

Its heading is uncompromising:

However, as investors bet on the promises of increased military spending by western governments to help Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, in recent months shares in defence companies have surged, rallylng 30% since October and eclipsing gains for wider stock markets (Financial Times).

And since US president Joe Biden underlined his support for Ukraine in February with a surprise visit to Kyiv, defence contractors have been waiting for governments to follow through and place new orders.

 

 

 

 

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March 2023 Update – Global Campaign on Military Spending UK

Our analysis of Jeremy Hunt’s Spring Statement shows the following: £7.1bn (or 15.7%) increase in UK core military spending this financial year (from £45.9bn in 2021/22 to £53.1bn in 2022/23)

The uplift granted to the military was higher than that for any other Government department (including health, education or climate).

In total the budget allocated a total of £13.1bn of additional public money to the military. In the runup to the budget announcement, Global Campaign on Military Spending (GCOMS)  laid out its stall with “Eight reasons the UK shouldn’t increase military spending”

Global Days of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS) 2023 13th April – 9th May

This year of war in Ukraine has meant a huge boost for militarism and military budgets across the world, especially in countries of the Global North. But GCOMS believes that the response should be quite the opposite: military spending should be drastically reduced, investing in common & human security instead…

The 12th edition of the GDAMS (coordinated by the International Peace Bureau) will take place from April 13 to May 9, 2023. Will your group be protesting military budgets & warmongering, and taking action for peace & justice?

If so, get in touch with your plans, GCOMS can provide help with promotion, banners and other campaign materials. It also has a small budget so don’t let costs be a barrier to action!

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The full GCOMS UK Budget Briefing may be read here: https://demilitarize.org.uk/military-spending-boosted-more-than-health-education-environment-or-overseas-aid/

 

 

 

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Global arms sales soar for the seventh consecutive year

Rising arms sales  benefit the global security elite: Feinstein  

Despite all the protests against the manufacture and export of lethal weapons to oppressive regimes and the good news about Elbit systems in the last post, global arms sales have risen for the seventh consecutive year, according to new figures published this week.

Download the fact sheet here

A report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said that sales of weapons and associated services by the world’s 100 biggest military supplies companies rose by 1.9% to a staggering $592 billion (£484bn) in 2021, despite problems with the shipping of some components.

The Middle East’s growth in arms sales outstripped anywhere else in the world. SIPRI said that five Middle Eastern companies reported a 6.5 per cent surge in sales to $15bn (£12bn).

Israel’s Elbit Systems’ sales rose from $4.2bn (£3.4bn) in 2020 to $4.75bn (£3.8bn), The other companies were IAI, Rafael and Turkey’s ASELSAN and Turkish Aerospace.

Lucie Beraud-Sudreau, director of SIPRI’s military expenditure and arms production programme, said: “We might have expected even greater growth in arms sales in 2021 without persistent supply chain issues. Both larger and smaller arms companies said that their sales had been affected during the year. Some companies, such as Airbus and General Dynamics, also reported labour shortages.”

According to the institute, 40 US companies made sales totalling $299bn (£244bn) in 2021. Five US companies headed the list of top-selling arms manufacturers: Lockhead Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.

Andrew Feinstein, author of The Shadow World: Inside The Global Arms Trade, told a Morning Star journalist:

“This rise in arms sales, along with an increase in general defence spending to over $2 trillion (£1.6trn) in the past year, materially benefits the politicians, corporate executives, military and intelligence leaders and assorted intermediaries who constitute the global national security elite, while making the world a less safe place.

 

 

 

 

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Should the arms manufacturing sector fare better than health, education and social care?

 

As the global economy has contracted by more than 3% as forecasted, the sales of arms and military services increased by 1.3% in real terms, compared with 2019.

Ceren Sagir draws attention to the sales of the top 100 weapons companies in 2020 which were 17% higher last year than in 2015, according to the latest data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).

Despite the need for pandemic-related health staffing, schools’ ventilation, the support needed by lockdown affected businesses and carbon-reducing measures, 2020 was the sixth consecutive year of growth in arms sales to governments.

SIPRI researcher Alexandra Marksteiner said: “The industry giants were largely shielded by sustained government demand for military goods and services.

“In much of the world, military spending grew and some governments even accelerated payments to the arms industry in order to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.”

The top five arms firms were all from the United States, with Lockheed-Martin, which counts F-35 fighter jets and various types of missiles among its bestsellers.

Chinese firms accounted for the second-largest share and Britain was in third place, with arms sales up by 6.2% compared with 2019, BAE Systems being the highest-placed European firm.

The arms sales of the three Israeli companies listed in the top 100 reached $10.4bn (£76bn), 2% of the total.

Of the top-producing countries, only France and Russia saw their firms’ sales decline last year.

Sipri said that the firms had benefited from the broad injection of government cash into economies, as well as specific measures designed to help arms companies, such as accelerated payments or order schedules.

 

 

 

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Why has Israeli arms giant Elbit Systems lost two contracts?

An answer to a written parliamentary question submitted by shadow defence secretary John Healey (left) last month, revealed that Elbit sites in Oldham and London have closed down .

It has also lost two lucrative contracts with the Ministry of Defence; defence minister Alex Chalk confirmed that Elbit is no longer working on the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought crew training programme just seven months after it was selected to deliver the £160 million contract. The government is also negotiating Elbit’s departure from the  £123m Project Selborne contract, which was meant to run for 12 years.

Global arms expert Andrew Feinstein commented: “The loss of these contracts is a major crisis for Elbit and raises questions about the future of the controversial company in Britain. The government claims that it has happened as part of a ‘sovereignty’ drive, but the reality is that many other foreign defence companies continue to play vital roles as suppliers of equipment and services to the UK’s armed forces”.

Palestine Action Scotland Photo: Guy Smallman

For two years Palestine Action has campaigned against Israeli arms giant Elbit Systems which supplies weapons to the Israeli military. Andrew Feinstein added: “I strongly suspect that they have lost these contracts as a consequence of the direct action group Palestine Action having so successfully revealed the brutal reality of Elbit’s gross human rights abuses, especially in enforcing the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel.”

There was no comment on the Elbit website, which only reported that in November the company was awarded a smaller and far less contentious contract valued at approximately £17 million to supply Night Vision Goggles and through-life support to the British Army.

 

 

 

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