Mark Phythian

The illicit arms trade: Cold War and Post-Cold War

This article considers the principal changes that haveoccurred in the illicit arms trade across the Cold Warand post-Cold War periods. It discusses the changednature of demand and the sources and means ofillicitly supplying arms to areas of conflict. Througha number of case studies it highlights the declininguse of illicit arms supply as a foreign policy tool,and the extent to which involvement in the trade isnow determined more by profit than policyconsiderations, with all the implications thesechanges have for control initiatives.

Hunters in the backyard? The UK, the us and the question of arms sales to Castro's Cuba, 1959

The UK supplied arms to the Batista government in Cuba right up to the time of Batistas dramatic flight in December 1958. The new Castro governments request that the balance of an order for Sea Fury aircraft ‐ paid for by Batista ‐ be delivered, created a marked dilemma for the British government. Supply was economically desirable and would also bring political benefits. However, supply would also run counter to US interests. Later in 1959 the dilemma was heightened when the Cubans suggested exchanging the Sea Furies for more advanced Hunter aircraft. This case represents an intriguing example of the politics of British arms sales in the immediate post‐Suez era, and also a modest contribution to the ongoing debate which seeks to explain US reactions to the Cuban Revolution, and the question of whether or to what extent the US ‘pushed’ Castro into the arms of the USSR.

“Batting for Britain”: British arms sales in the Thatcher years

The Scott Inquiry into “arms-to-Iraq” was in many ways a fitting epitaph on the arms sales policy pursued by the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher from 1979–1990. As the Scott Report clearly showed, the Thatcher governments favoured a highly permissive approach to arms sales. It was an approach which invigorated the British arms export industry, but at the same time invited controversy and was not without cost. This article examines some of the methods, controversies and costs of the Thatcher governments arms sales drive.

Conclusion: Future Directions in the ‘War on Terror’

Given their countries’ historical experiences in dealing with ETA and the Provisional IRA, politicians in Spain and the United Kingdom were well placed to understand that the ‘war on terror’ was likely to be generational in scope. Hence, in the United Kingdom politicians have prepared the public for a long haul. Indeed, in 2006 Home Secretary John Reid explained that the conflict would continue for, ‘longer than a generation’, explaining: ‘When it came to the struggle against republican terrorism in Ireland and in the mainland here, that lasted 30 years, and there is no indication to me that this is going to be resolved any quicker than that’ (Woodward, 2006).

Labour's Defence Intellectual: A Defence

Denis Healey is one of the dominant figures of post-war Labour politics. His career is also one of the most interesting. Until the summer of 1945, when he famously addressed the Labour conference and warned that Britain should not act as a brake on the social revolution then engulfing Europe, Healey had been a left activist. Five months later he became the partys International Secretary and quickly became the chief apologist within the party for Ernest Bevins foreign policy a policy he had warned against in May 1945. In 1952 he embarked upon his long career as a Member of Parliament and quickly emerged as an expert on defence and the new science of nuclear strategy. Healey was both an intellectual in politics and a dedicated politician, rising to Cabinet rank in the 1960s as Defence Secretary and returning to office in the 1970s to become Chancellor. In the 1980s he helped to save Labour from Bennism, and reinvented himself as an avuncular figure in the process. But most of his work was done by the end of the Cold War, the episode in history with which he had been so engaged. Edward Pearce7s highly sympathetic biography, following on from his admiring treatment of Healey in his The Lost Leaders, offers the fullest account of Healey7s career to date. Unfortunately Pearce asks none of the questions which would make a biography of Healey worth the undertaking. Readers hoping for illumination as to precisely when and why Healey left the Communist Party will find no light here. His Damascene conversion to Bevins foreign policy is taken for granted as an act of common sense. His emergence as a defence expert is never explained; his links with American friends such as Henry Kissinger are never explored; his interventions on