According to the latest statistics published by the Secretary of State for Industry, Spain is consolidating its positive trend in arms exports, reaching an increase of 101.5% in 2005. This is good news for the Spanish weapons industry. However, the data was published more or less at the same time that the Senate’s Defense Committee was approving the Law of Foreign Trade Control of Defense Equipment and Double Use. With this law, they are trying to extend the parliamentary control mechanisms and informative transparency about Spanish arms exports, which was badly needed.

 

The Socialists have immediately congratulated themselves for “being at the forefront in the struggle for weapons control,” and for fulfilling scrupulously, national and international norms on the matter. Of course, selling weapons to China and Iran, as the statistics show, enters in contradiction with some of the eight principles found in the European Union Code of Conduct. The code discusses human rights, regional stability, the buying country’s behavior before the international community, and risk of deflection and the existence of embargoes. The NGOs’ reports state this, but saying one thing and doing the other does not seem to matter to this government.

 

The EU’s Code of Conduct was not respected with the sale of military equipment to the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense in November 2005  by then Minister José Bono. According to Bono, it was a “historic sale” although “it was an exception because the Ministry was usually not involved in selling Defense items.” Naturally, it was the biggest order placed recently by a foreign country to the Spanish military industry: 12 airplanes and 8 frigates built respectively by EADS-CASA and Navantia for 1,700 million euros. When closing the operation, Bono listened to the poisonous praise pronounced by the Venezuelan caudillo in favor of the Spanish government because of its endurance facing American imperialism. Bono disregarded U.S. warnings about a regime increasingly detached from democracy and a cause of instability in the region. The “business transaction with pacific weapons”, as defined by Zapatero, inevitably cornered the United States to veto the use of American technology for the EADS-CASA sensors; this raised the price of the product, and entailed the sale cancellation of the airplanes.

 

Ultimately, it became a frightfully ridiculous situation: Spain appeared before the international community as the ally of the populist caudillo and the relations with Washington became even more strained. Yet today it is incomprehensible for everybody the motives for that sale, this government’s irresponsibility, and its diplomatic clumsiness. With Bono, the EU’s Code of Conduct was not only violated but there was also a total lack of informative transparency. In order to justify the sale, ZP said that it was all about weapons for pacific use – do pacific weapons exist? – but all this did not prevent him from attaching confidentiality clauses to the contract, rendering impossible to disclose the details of the operation.

Bono kept the details in secret, and Alonso is not in favor of disclosing general interest information. Why do they still hide it? One of the most recent times that the current Minister of Defense was asked about the sales contract of the Navantia’s frigates to Venezuela, he indicated that it was “an old and outdated” issue, passing the buck. This way of evading one's duty is familiar to all of us and it compels us to ask; Bono, Alonso, which one is the slickest guy?

 

©2008 Translated by Miryam Lindberg