Drawing on documents, this is an analysis of British arms sales policy. It provides an overview of the course of British arms sales policy, sets the related issues in context, and explains Britain's continuing addiction to the arms sales fix.
This book seeks to reconstruct and elucidate the processes behind the decisions made by the Johnson Administration during the years 1965-68 to sell Israel M-48 tanks, A-4 Skyhawk planes and F-4 Phantom planes.
UK ties with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies are under the spotlight as never before. Huge controversy surrounds Britain’s alliances with these deeply repressive regimes, and the UK’s key supporting role in the disastrous Saudi-led intervention in Yemen has lent added urgency to the debate. What lies behind the British government’s decision to place politics before principles in the Gulf? Why have Anglo-Arabian relations grown even closer in recent years, despite ongoing, egregious human rights violations? In this ground-breaking analysis, David Wearing argues that the Gulf Arab monarchies constitute the UK’s most important and lucrative alliances in the global south. They are central both to the British government’s ambitions to retain its status in the world system, and to its post-Brexit economic strategy. Exploring the complex and intertwined structures of UK-Gulf relations in trade and investment, arms sales and military cooperation, and energy, Wearing shines a light on the shocking lengths to which the British state has gone in order to support these regimes. As these issues continue to make the headlines, this book lifts the lid on ‘AngloArabia’ and what’s at stake for both sides.
How did decolonization impact on Britain itself? And how did Britain manage its transition from colonial power to postcolonial nation? Sarah Stockwell explores this question principally via the history of the overseas engagements of key institutions that had acquired roles within Britain's imperial system: the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Bank of England, the Royal Mint, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Using a huge range of fresh archival sources, the author shows how these institutions fashioned new roles at the end of empire, reconfiguring their activities for a postcolonial world and deploying their expertise to deliver technical assistance essential for the development of institutions in new Commonwealth states. This study not only pioneers an entirely new approach to the history of the British end of the British empire, but also provides an equally novel cross-sectoral analysis of institution-building during decolonization and highlights the colonial roots of British postcolonial aid.
Forty years before COVID-19, socialists in Britain campaigned for workers to have the right to make ‘socially useful’ products, from hospital equipment to sustain the NHS to affordable heating systems for the impoverished elderly. This movement held one thing responsible above all else for the nation’s problems: the burden of defence spending. In the middle of the Cold War, the left put a direct challenge to the defence industry, the Labour government and trade unions. The response it received revealed much about a military-industrial state that prioritised the making and exporting of arms for political favour and profit. Looking at peace activism from the early 1970s to Labour’s landslide defeat in the 1983 general election, this book examines the conflict over the cost of Britain’s commitment to the Cold War and asserts that the wider left presented a comprehensive and implementable alternative to the stark choice between making weapons and joining the dole queue.
The Gulf monarchies have been generally perceived as status quo actors reliant on the USA for their security, but in response to regional events, particularly the Arab Spring of 2011, they are pursuing more activist foreign policies, which has allowed other international powers to play a larger role in regional affairs. This book analyses the changing dynamic in this region, with expert contributors providing original empirical case studies that examine the relations between the Gulf monarchies and extra-regional powers, including the USA, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, France, and the United Kingdom. At the theoretical level, these case studies explore the extent to which different international relations and international political economy theories explain change in these relationships as the regional, political and security environment shifts. Focusing on how and why external powers approach their relationships with the Gulf monarchies, contributors ask what motivates external powers to pursue deeper involvement in an unstable region that has seen three major conflicts in the past 40 years. Addressing an under-analysed, yet important topic, the volume will appeal to scholars in the fields of international relations and international political economy as well as area specialists on the Gulf and those working on the foreign policy issues of the extra-regional powers studied.
This ground-breaking book offers an extensive legal analysis-grounded in public, EU, and international law-of arms trade regulation, integrated with insights drawn from international relations. The sale of weapons and related technologies is, globally, one of the most politically controversial and ethically contentious forms of commerce. Intimately connected with sustaining repressive governments and violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, arms exports are also a central element in the economic and strategic policies of the governments of all large industrial states. They have also been the source of abundant corruption, and of serious challenges to the norms and effectiveness of constitutional accountability in democratic states. On paper, the arms trade is heavily regulated: national legislation and international treaties are in place which purport to prohibit certain transactions and limit others. Yet despite its importance, legal and international relations scholarship on the subject has been surprisingly limited. This book fills this gap in the literature by examining and comparing the export control regimes of eight leading nations - USA, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, China, and India - with chapters contributed by leading experts in the field of law and international relations.
This important new study provides a critical analysis of the foreign policies conducted during the first two terms of Tony Blair's government. It focuses upon the government's key foreign policy commitments; three of its most important international relationships (with the US, the European Union, and Africa); and how Blair's government dealt with five fundamental policy issues (political economy, defence, international development, intervention, and Iraq). It argues that throughout this period Labour's foreign policies attempted to paper over some important contradictions.
This book analyses US and UK efforts to shut down Pakistan’s nuclear programme in the 1970s, between the catalytic Indian nuclear test of May 1974 and the decline of sustained non-proliferation activity from mid-1979 onwards. It is a tale of cooperation between Washington and London, but also a story of divisions and disputes. The brutal economic realities of the decade, globalisation, and wider geopolitical challenges all complicated this relationship. Policy and action were also affected by changes elsewhere in the world. Iran’s 1979 revolution brought a new form of political Islamic radicalism to prominence. The fears engendered by the Ayatollah and his followers, coupled to the blustering rhetoric of Pakistani leaders, gave rise to the ‘Islamic bomb’, a nuclear weapon supposedly created by Pakistan to be shared amongst the Muslim ummah. This study thus combines cultural, diplomatic, economic, and political history to offer a rigorous, deeply researched account of a critical moment in nuclear history.
The New British Politics is one of the most comprehensive and successful introductions to British politics ever published. Now available in a fully revised and updated fourth edition, this clear, lively and authoritative text has an emphasis on law and order and the historical context of British politics. Written by internationally-known specialists, the book combines incisive and original analysis with direct presentation.