New Mideast Arms Race Feared in War’s Aftermath : Weaponry: U.S. policies in many instances encourage sales--particularly to nations considered friendly.

WASHINGTON —  In his triumphal postwar speech to Congress early this month, President Bush said it would be “tragic” if the nations of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf were to embark upon a new arms race.

Yet the chances are now excellent that there will soon be an explosion of new weapons sales to the Middle East. And the Bush Administration’s policies are in many instances encouraging these sales--particularly to countries considered friendly to the United States, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

“Over the next nine to 12 months, you will see increased sales to those who were our partners in arms during the war, so that others in the region can see that tangling with them isn’t a worthwhile objective,” said Joel L. Johnson, international vice president of the Aerospace Industries Assn. of America, a trade group for U.S. defense contractors.

Some Bush Administration officials freely concede that, while the United States maintains a public commitment to Mideast arms control, the issue will take a back seat to other U.S. objectives, such as seeking regional stability through new defense cooperation agreements that may include arms sales.

“One should not get overly optimistic or idealistic about arms control,” Richard N. Haass, senior director for Near East affairs on the National Security Council, told a group of arms control specialists here the other day. “Conventional arms controls may tend to lock you in, and you may not want to be locked in, because the situation is fast evolving . . . and we are not neutral. There are some (Mideast) countries we are closer to than others.”

A State Department official was even more negative about the prospects for limiting arms sales in the Middle East. In the wake of the Gulf War, he said, “there’s just no way in hell we’re going to say no to our friends in the region” when they seek to buy new U.S. weaponry.

History is now on the verge of repeating itself.

Over the past four decades, efforts at Mideast arms control have failed for several reasons. One has been the lack of any international agreement to limit arms sales in the region. Another is the intense commercial competition for Mideast arms sales, which provide a potential market of billions of dollars. Third, the countries that were selling the weapons--including the United States--too often deluded themselves into believing that their arms sales would help make the region more stable.

During the early 1950s, the United States, Britain and France agreed to limit arms sales in the Middle East. But the agreement fell apart after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser succeeded in buying Soviet Bloc armaments.

“In the Middle East, the Soviets and the United States have used arms to make alliances,” said Michael T. Klare, a professor at Hampshire College and an expert on arms sales. “That is the way we sought to spread our influence. It goes back to . . . 1954, when Nasser turned away from the West and toward the Soviets. Since then, both sides have played a game of trying to woo away the other guy’s clients with arms.”

The United States helped plant the seeds of future Mideast policy disasters when it sold huge amounts of arms to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran in the 1970s and when it gave the green light for large Western arms and technology sales to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

Now, in the wake of the defeat of the Iraqi army, some experts argue that there is a rare opportunity for the United States and its allies to break out of the pattern of escalating arms purchases that have helped make the Middle East so volatile.

“I’m a bit of a pessimist about the Mideast, and I’m a bit of a pessimist about arms control--but war tends to concentrate the mind,” said Samuel L. Lewis, former U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Indeed, some U.S. officials say they are now somewhat more optimistic about the chances for restricting the sales to the Middle East of what are called “unconventional” arms: ballistic missiles and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

“It’s going to be a long time before the Germans sell the Iraqis chemical-warfare production facilities again,” a State Department expert asserted. “I think people have learned their lessons. Nobody is going back to the good old days of laissez-faire when it comes to selling technology for non-conventional weapons.”

U.S. officials point out that there are now international agreements to limit the transfer of these weapons of mass destruction. A so-called nuclear suppliers’ group of Western nations restricts the sale of technology that can be used for nuclear weapons. And similar groups have been formed to limit the sale of technology or components used in making chemical weapons or missiles.

Yet some skeptics doubt that these limits can be enforced, even among the United States and its Western allies.

“The declarations we’re hearing, from our own diplomats and from the German government, are not the same ones we’re hearing from German prosecutors,” said Gary Milhollan of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. Milhollan points to reports over the last seven months that a number of German firms have broken the international trade embargo against Iraq.

Also, a number of nations that export arms--including the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Brazil--have not signed the international agreements. China and North Korea, for example, are not members of the international group restricting sales of missile technology, and both countries have been actively involved in selling missiles in the Middle East.

“China and North Korea are a problem,” a State Department official conceded. The Times reported in November that North Korea had agreed to sell Syria new Scud-C missiles, and Secretary of State James A. Baker III confirmed last week that these missiles are now being delivered to Syria.

One expert, W. Seth Carus of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says the Gulf War shows how hard it will be to enforce or to verify any agreement limiting the development of ballistic missiles in the Middle East.

“When the fighting ended, Gen. (H. Norman) Schwarzkopf claimed that our estimate of Iraq’s launcher force may have been off by a factor of 10,” Carus said, referring to the U.S. commander in the Gulf.

” . . . It is simply not possible to subject every Third World country to intense intelligence surveillance on a routine basis,” Carus said. “If we had problems discovering missile-related activities in . . . Iraq, how can even we have confidence in our coverage of the large number of countries attempting to acquire or develop surface-to-surface missiles?”

When it comes to conventional arms--such as planes, helicopters, tanks and artillery--few experts believe that there will even be much of an effort now to limit new sales to the Mideast.

“Countries rely on the sale of armaments as an essential element of statecraft,” said Janne Nolan, a Brookings Institution arms expert.

Congress approved the sale of $7 billion in new weapons to Saudi Arabia last year. Early this month, the Bush Administration asked for congressional approval to sell Egypt $1.6 billion worth of F-16 jets, along with bombs and air-to-ground missiles.

The Administration has also reportedly told Congress that it is considering $18 billion more in arms sales this year to Mideast governments that helped the United States during the Gulf War--including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Turkey. The largest share of these sales would go to Saudi Arabia.

Administration officials maintain that such arms transfers will help, not hinder, the chances for peace in the Middle East.

Arms control by itself is not “inherently stabilizing,” said Haass of the National Security Council. “The same weapons system can either be stabilizing or destabilizing, depending on the political attitude of the country you’re giving them to.”

But the Administration’s strategy presumes that the Mideast countries to which it sells arms now will not fall victim to revolution--as Iran did in 1979--or to overly aggressive ambitions, as Iraq has over the past decade.

The prospect of new U.S. sales to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states has attracted some criticism in Congress, especially among members who have been strong supporters of Israel, which has itself been the largest single recipient of U.S. military and economic aid in recent years.

“There is an overriding need for a change in U.S. and Western policy on arming this region,” said Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica). “A policy of unrestrained arms sales and high-technology assistance in the most volatile tinderbox on the globe does not yield stability. On the contrary, it creates instability.”

Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, agrees. Obey said he believes the Bush Administration should hold up on any new weapons sales while it tries to negotiate new arms control limits for the Mideast with other arms exporters, such as the Soviets, Chinese, British and French.

“What is the immediate threat?” Obey asked. “We have just blown the living hell out of the only threat in the region. . . . If we give new arms to the Saudis, and the Saudis continue to supply aid to the Syrians, and the Syrians buy new arms, and then the Israelis ask us for more, then we’re off to the races again.”

Supporters of renewed U.S. arms sales counter that without them, the United States would have to keep its own troops in the Mideast to preserve the peace.

“Congress can’t have it both ways,” said Johnson, the spokesman for the U.S. aerospace industry. “They can’t bring the troops home and also at the same time refuse to provide weapons to those countries we have been defending.”

Administration officials and spokesmen for the U.S. defense industry acknowledge that there are strong commercial pressures fueling the new Mideast arms sales. American defense firms argue that if they aren’t allowed to sell their high-tech weapons to the Saudis, Egyptians and other Mideast customers, then British, French and other companies will get the sales.

And some American companies claim that, with the Pentagon cutting back on its weapons purchases, the U.S. firms need new arms sales in the Middle East to keep their factories running.

“For several weapons systems, the Mideast sales are pivotal,” Johnson said. “Foreign sales would keep lines operating over the next couple of years.” For example, he said, Boeing needs to land new sales of AWACS (airborne warning and control system) planes to Saudi Arabia now to keep production going and have a chance at selling the planes to Japan later.

The pressure for commercial sales has also undercut U.S. efforts to restrict the export of American high-technology goods.

The authority for licensing high-tech exports rests with the Commerce Department. Its officials are supposed to block the transfer of any equipment that includes valuable technology the United States wants to safeguard or that could be used in making nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

But critics say the wave of U.S. sales to Iraq over the past few years demonstrates that the Commerce Department pays little attention to the job of protecting American technology from purchasers such as Hussein.

“There is a fundamental conflict,” said Jennifer J. White, senior associate at the Center for Security Policy. “Commerce is promoting exports. It should have no role in U.S. technology security.” Like other critics, she favors giving the primary role for regulating exports to the Defense Department.

Last Monday, under pressure from Congress, the Commerce Department made public an edited list of U.S. exports to Iraq from 1985 to 1990. The list confirmed earlier reports that the Administration had approved the sale of $1.5 billion in American high-technology exports to Baghdad during that five-year period.

Critics such as Milhollan of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control say that some of the transactions on that list raise questions about the entire system of export controls.

For example, in November, 1989, the Commerce Department authorized the export of a $139,535 radar testing system to Iraq, despite the fact that the manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard, warned the department that the buyer--an Iraqi government agency called the Salah al Din Establishment--”is involved in military matters,” according to government documents.

The Commerce Department never asked the Defense Department for its opinion on the transaction. Moreover, Commerce Department officials withheld from Congress key data that linked the Hewlett-Packard sale to military use.

Hewlett-Packard declined to comment on the sale.

Last fall, in the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Congress passed a new export-control law that would have imposed stiff sanctions--such as a ban on sales within the United States--on foreign governments or companies that export technology that can be used to develop chemical or biological weapons.

But President Bush vetoed the bill, arguing that “the mandatory imposition of unilateral sanctions, as provided in this bill, would harm U.S. economic interests and provoke friendly countries who are essential to our efforts to resist Iraqi aggression.”

A similar bill was passed by the Senate early this year and is now pending in the House. In an apparent effort to head off new legislation, the Administration earlier this month adopted new regulations that restrict some U.S. exports of chemicals that can be used in weapons programs.

Because of the continuing pressures from American industry--and the Administration’s desire to reward friendly countries in the Mideast with new arms sales--the only certain change in U.S. arms and export policies to result from the Gulf crisis may be an arms embargo against Iraq.

The Administration appears to have concluded that problems that led to the crisis should be blamed on a single aberrant country and not on the more general policies supporting arms exports.

A State Department official summed it up: “Everyone agrees that Iraq is a country we don’t want to ship a lot of tanks to right now. But there could be some disagreement about the Syrians, or about the Iranians.”