Arms Delivery to the Gulf Region Unmasks Federal Government
"The free flooding of German arms to the Gulf region eventually has to stop. The admission of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in a row of privileged arms recipients equalled a beatification of dictators and torturers – this would be Angela Merkel's final moral declaration of bankruptcy" comments Jan van Aken, Deputy Party Chair and spokesperson for external affairs of the faction DIE LINKE in the Bundestag, the latest "Spiegel" report according to which the Federal Government intends to urge the NATO to set up a list of strategic arms recipients.
To use arms exports as a means of external policy demasks any commitment of the Federal Government to a "value based external policy" as fundamentally content-free.
In the long run, these exports are highly dangerous – because regimes change, but the weapons remain. Thus, Iran even today produces G3 Assault Rifles in a factory once given to the Shah as a present. Thus, the Taliban in Afghanistan fight with weapons once delivered for the fight against Soviet Russia. Who values human rights and does not want to suffer a surprise must not deliver arms to violators of human rights or to crisis regions, just because it correlates with a short sighted external policy.
There is more to it than Leopard tanks for Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Only in the years 2000 to 2010 there was approval of German arms delivery to the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council amounting to 2.8 billion Euro, including whole arms factories. Not only the expansion of arms exports, but already the previous regulation is scandalous.