Farewell to Arms: Arms Embargo Busting and Arms Control in the European Union

• In Event: Arms and Profit

Abstract

My paper seeks to understand what drives EU member states to bust arms embargoes put in place by the United States, United Nations, and the EU itself. Using a time-series cross-sectional data set between 1960-2011, I conduct a series of multilevel logistic regressions that show how EU arms embargo busting is strongly driven by the arms sales conducted by member state's competitors. I intend to show how the crowded marketplace in the European Union drives arms manufacturers to place pressure on their home governments to permit arm sales to continue in spite of the presence of arms embargoes on states targeted by arms embargoes. I argue that this behavior is at odd with EU and UN efforts at arms control and argue that economic and domestic political benefits from busting arms embargoes outweigh the costs that EU member states may face from the international community, interest groups, and other EU member states with smaller and less influential arms industries. My paper concludes with policy guidance on reconciling macroeconomic imperatives with normative ones.

Author

• Keith A Preble, SUNY, University at Albany