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History of CoCom (1949-1993), by Marco Giulio Barone “

History of CoCom

(1948-1993)

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by Marco Giulio Barone

The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) was the executive body of a General Council (GC) of Western states that in 1948 decided to contain the Eastern block’s technological and industrial base and capabilities. That said, CoCom had a 45 year long history and different phases throughout the Cold War1. Still, les-

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1 Richard T. Cupitt and John R. McIntyre, CoCom: East-West Trade Relations, The List review process, a paper presented to the International Studies Association Convention, Toronto, March 1979. John H. Gibbons (Dir.), Technology and East- West Trade, Advisory Panel for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, November 1979. Ronnie Goldberg (Project Dir.),Technology and East-West Trade, OTA, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., November 1979 [«Chapter VIII: Multilateral Export Control Policy: The Coordinating Committee (CoCom)», pp. 153-170]. Angela E. Stent, From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955-1980, Cambridge U. P., 1981: 2003. Gary K. Bertsch, East-West strategic trade. COCOM, and the Atlantic alliance, Atlantic Institute for International Affairs, 1983. Gary K. Bertsch and John R. McIntyre (Eds.), National Security and Technology Transfer: The Strategic Dimensions of East-West Trade, Boulder, Westview, 1983. Yoko Yasuhara, Myth of Free Trade: COCOM and CHINCOM, 1945-1952, Vol. 2. Madison, University of Wisconsin, 1984. Jakob Tanner, Bundeshaushalt, Währung und Kriegswirtschaft. Eine finanzsociologische Analyse der Schweiz zwischen 1938 und 1953, Limmat Verlag, Zürich, 1986. A. Schaller, Schweizer Neutralität im West-Ost-Handel, Das Hotz-Linder-Agreement vom 23. Juli 1951. Haupt, Bern/Stuttgart 1987. Carlo Jean, «Rapporti economici e problemi del trasferimento delle tecnologie critiche», Rivista Militare, marzo-aprile 1987, pp. 39-48. Bertsch (Ed.), Controlling EastWest Trade and Technology Transfer: Power, Politics and Policies, The Center for EastWest Trade Policy Controlling, Georgia University, Durham, Duke U. P., 1988. Alan P. Dobson, The Politics of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, 1940-1987, Brighton, Wheatsheaf, 1988, pp. 127-34. Vibeke Sørensen, «Economic Recovery versus Containment: The Anglo-American Controversy over East-West Trade, 1947-51», Co-operation and Conflict, vol. 24, June 1989, pp. 69-97. Wendy A. Wrubel, «The Toshiba-Kongsberg Incident: Shortcomings of CoCom, and Recommendations for Increased Effectiveness of Export Controls to the East Bloc», American University International Law Review, Vol. 4, issue 1, (1989), pp. 241-273. Stuart Macdonald, Strategic export controls: hurting the East or weakening the West?, Economist Intelligence Unit, 1990. Yoko Yasuhara, «The Myth of free Trade: The Origins of COCOM 1945-1990», The Japanese Journal of American

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sons learned from that experience were many, and stimulated studies and politics on economic tools for international relations. Hence, it is worth presenting its history in order to have a broader view on export control policies in the past and their consequences in the long term.

europe and the U. S. after the WW ii: shared needs, different goals

In the immediate aftermaths of the WWII the balance of forces amongst the big powers was not well defined yet. The two big winners were clearly the United States and Russia, but their path to victory was very different. The U.S. had developed an unmatched industrial potential, while Russia was a starving nation that had to rebuild its economy almost from the beginning. Conversely, Great Britain was declining and France had lost its status of big power. Italy and Germany were poor and heavily reliant on foreign aids.

The United States had boosted its industrial base in order to meet the demands of two fronts. By the end of the war, such a consistent potential had to be reduced or, rather, readapted to serve the civil market. Yet, production was so large that the internal market might have been too narrow to replace the military in keeping high the demand. As a consequence,

Studies, No. 4, 1991, pp. 127-148. Hiroshi Oda, Law and Politics of West-East Technology Transfer, M. Nijhoff, Graham & Trotman, 1991. Abbo Junker, Das CoCom im internationalen Wirtschaftsrecht, Berhard Grossfeld, 1991. Tor Egil Førland, «Economic Warfare and Strategic Goods: A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing COCOM», Journal of Peace Research 28 (1991), No. 2, pp. 191-204. Id., Cold economic warfare: the creation and prime of CoCom, 1948-1954, Ph.D. diss., University of Oslo, 1991. Gary K. Bertsch and Steve Elliott-Govers (Eds.), Export Controls in Transition: Perspectives, Problems, and Prospects, Duke U. P., 1992. John H. Henshaw, The Origins of CoCom. Lessons for Contemporary Proliferation Control Regimes, The L. Henry Stimson Center, Report No. 7, May 1993. Ian Jackson, op. cit., pp. 58 ss («Compromise: America, CoCom and the Extension of the East-West Trade Embargo, 1950»). Dario Gerardi, «L’apport de la Suisse à l’économie de guerre italienne. Quelques réflexions autour d’un bilan chiffré, 1936-1945», Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte, Band 23, 2008. James K. Libbey, «CoCom, Comecon and the Economic Cold War», Russian History, vol. 37, No. 2, 2010, pp. 133-152. Frank Caim, Economic Statecraft During the Cold War: European Responses to the US Trade Embargo, Routledge, 2013. Jae-Seung Lee and Daniel Connolly, «Pipeline Politics between Europe and Russia: A Historical Review from the Cold War to the Post-Cold War», The Korean Journal of International Studies Vol.14, No.1, April 2016, pp. 105-129.

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expanding exportations represented the most viable option to safeguard the U.S. industrial base instead of reducing its reach and capabilities. Nevertheless, European countries were short of money and resources as well as Russia. So, if the U.S. wanted to export to those markets, Washington would have needed to revive them first. This was one of the main drivers that led to the Marshal plan. Initially, especially under Roosevelt, the plan had to include Russia. President Roosevelt is thought to believe that including Russia into the new world order since the beginning could have avoided major strategic confrontation.2 Besides, Russian economy was weak and the country had desperate need of importing goods, especially machineries and industrial know how. This notwithstanding, relations between Moscow and Washington deteriorated rapidly. The elections held after the WWII in European countries stressed the advancement of communist parties in Europe, thus fuelling U.S. fears that Moscow’s crusade for spreading communism could succeed. Furthermore, president Truman, who replaced president Roosevelt, was much less open to multilateralism than his predecessor. Hence, failed talks about Russian participation to the Marshall Plan favoured strengthening ties between Russia and Europe and increasing foreign trade amongst European countries and Russia more than U.S.-Russia ties. For Europe, trade ties with Russia were mutually useful and geographically feasible even in a time when lines of communication had to be restored. Still, European countries needed the Marshall plan more than relations with Russia, and the U.S. could leverage on it, at least in the period 1945-1950. By 1949, U.S. aid to Europe reached 6,3 billion dollar, while the whole amount of trade between European countries and Russia did not exceed 1,8 billion dollar.3 The situation changed during 1950s, as U.S. post-war aid decreased and East-West trade increased. But the Korean conflict and the Prague coup cut the hedge of negotiation for less strict limitations of strategic items’ trade. At that point, it became a shared need of Western countries to constrain the flow of strategically relevant commodities towards the communist bloc. However, there were substantial

2 Giuseppe Mammarella, Destini Incrociati – Europa e Stati Uniti 1900-2003, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2000, pp. 112-117 3 John H. Gibbons, Technology and East- West Trade, Advisory Panel for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, November 1979, p.154

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differences between the United States and its European allies, especially France, Great Britain, and Netherlands. To them, limits had to be put only to military significant items, while the U.S. pursued stricter controls on dual use technologies. In particular, Washington wanted to avoid that U.S. technology flowing to Europe to feed its future main foreign market could flow into its worst enemy’s hands, instead.

In 1945-47 the U.S. faced the strategic dilemma of whether or not developing trade with Russia. Washington took the war against Japan as a lesson learned. Much of the offensive capability the Japanese had been able to develop came from U.S. know-how and trade flowing to the country in the years before hostilities. As a consequence, the U.S. did not intend to help Russia developing significant capabilities that could have been used back against it – especially given Russian wish and will to spread communist ideology worldwide. So, before becoming an international issue for U.S. agenda, trade control issues were a U.S. internal debate that included the president, the relevant departments, and the influence of the public opinion (in some cases). Finally, in December 1947, the National Security Council introduced export controls for items sold to Russia. In 1948, the debate took to the Foreign Assistance Bill, according to which controlling export of strategic items had to be considered a precondition to receive U.S. loans and aids.4 Initially, president Truman would have desired continuing Roosevelt’s wish of strong East-West trade ties to include East Europe and Russia into the new world order. Yet this line was much criticized. The Commerce Department was the stricter censor of strategic export, as it urged for granular control of all the export eastward. Instead, the Department of State wanted to broaden the number of controlled items only. Nonetheless, the Czechoslovak crisis pushed the U.S. toward a further wealth of diffidence, and thus to the approval to the «amendment Karl Mundt» to the Economic Cooperation Act (1948).5 In short, ECA demanded to the recipient countries of the Marshall Plan to control their export items towards the ‘non-Marshall’ countries. Furthermore, on March 1948, the National Security Council issued the guidelines for negotiating

4 Yoko Yasuhara, «The Myth of Free Trade: the Origins of CoCom 1945-1950», The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No.4, 1991, pp.128-130 5 Yasuhara, op. cit.

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with European countries concerning the East-West trade issue. The United States recognized that European recovery had to be fed by East-West commerce, yet it wanted to make sure restrictions were limited. Moreover, the U.S. intended to avoid Russian counter-measures such as embargoes on manganese, chrome, and platinum. Therefore the decision on which items putting under control and what restraints should have been applied were carried out through the so called “quid-pro-quo” principle (e.g. possibility of use for military purposes). To sum up, Averell Harriman, U.S. responsible for the Marshall Plan in Europe, was in charge of negotiating according to three key documents: the National Security Council decision of 17 December 1947, the Cabinet decision of March 26, 1948, and the Economic Cooperation Act section 117 (D). Negotiations had to be run at the bilateral level (rather than within the OEEC) in order to use specific leverages for each country the U.S. had to convince to join the export control program.6

the establishment of CoCom

After months of negotiations, in October 1948, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden met in Paris to discuss the implementation of export control of the items of Section 117 (D). European countries were wary of U.S. intentions as well as afraid of Russia’s possible retaliations. As a consequence, negotiations were tense and a deal was hard to find. At the end, the United Kingdom and France decided to endorse Washington’s list autonomously. The U.S. list was divided into two different sub-lists, 1A and 1B. The 1A list includes 163 priority items to embargo or to consider strategic while the 1B list includes several non-strategic items to export limitedly, according to pre-defined quotas. Sweden, Netherlands and Switzerland withdrew and regretted to join the U.S. project. Nevertheless, one year later, in 1949, the establishment of NATO – and the consequent MDAA (Mutual Defence Assistant Act) – increased the grip the U.S. could have on European governments. Following this new wealth of diplomatic pressure (especially through bilateral meetings) the U.S., France, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, and Belgium gathered once again in Paris in October 1949 (Sweden and Switzerland were missing, Denmark

6 Hunter, D., Western trade pressure on the Soviet Union: and interdependence perspective on sanctions, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 1991 pp.18-22

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and Norway attended as observers). The final outcome of the meeting will be that export control of strategic items would have taken place aside of NATO and OEEC, therefore through a dedicated body. Finally, on January 13, 1950, countries of the working group on export control established a CG (Consultive Group) which executive body was named CoCom (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls).7 These bodies would have had to discuss and coordinate export control efforts concerning three lists of sensitive items.8 Although the U.S. Battle Act (1951) reports that six European countries (Belgium, France, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Italy, and Netherlands) were part of the initial group, it has to be specified that Luxembourg was not present and that Netherlands had been continuing protesting against U.S. export control policies. Nevertheless, the establishment of CoCom represented a strategic success for the U.S. In fact, 288 items of the U.S. list 1B were now put under control in Europe as well. Hence, U.S. export control agenda had been internationalized and had the potential of becoming more effective. Although the agreement was non-binding, CoCom had to perform several delicate duties, namely establishing and reviewing lists of technologies to control, approving/denying export licenses for sensitive items, and coordinating national efforts to control export of listed technologies.9 Furthermore, to be effective, the group had to include at least all of the Marshall Plan recipient and/or NATO members. So, U.S. diplomatic effort on bilateral ties continued to drag in the other allies. In 1950, the initial group was fleshed out by the access of Canada, Denmark, Norway, and West Germany. Japan joined the group two years later (1952), and Greece, Portugal and Turkey in 1953 (Spain 1985, Australia 1989).10 Countries that decided to preserve their autonomy in export control policies were tackled separately by the U.S. through bilateral agreements that mirrored the CoCom standards and

7 Yasuhara, op. cit. 8 Initially, list I included 130 items to put under embargo, list II included items subject to quotas, and list III consisted of 13 disputed items to judge. The group met on a irregular basis, especially at CG level. CoCom, instead, started meeting roughly once per week for judging items, technologies, and measures to support at the national level. Meetings usually took place in Paris, at the U.S. embassy. 9 Lists were reviewed in 1954, 1958, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1971, 1974, 1975, 1979, 1982, 1989, 1991. 10 Yasuhara, op. cit.

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lists.11 In the meanwhile, the war of Korea had harshened the tones of ideological confrontation, and the People’s Republic of China was included in the bloc of country to limit export to. In fact, during the Korean War and until 1957 the CG established a special sub-commission (ChinCom) that had to handle the lists of restriction against China and North Korea. After 1957 ChinCom ceased its activities, which were included in CoCom’s workflows.

Despite of the Battle Act, after 1955 the U.S. grip on European countries decreased.12 As Europe was recovering, East-West trade grew in importance, while U.S. direct loans decreased. Criticism about U.S. strictness on the number and nature of technologies – and items – not to trade with Eastern countries raised again. So, while Canada, Italy and West Germany embraced the U.S. severe line, France and Great Britain repeatedly requested more flexibility. It is thought that they continued selling some of the forbidden items to the USSR, but there has been little evidence of how, when, and in what quantities for a long time. The most controversial items were those which possible military use was arguable. Nonetheless, each CoCom member could request exceptions and, if the others had nothing to object, the exception was allowed. It happened only rarely that exceptions were not conceded, but it is relevant noticing that most of requested exceptions had been coming from the U.S. (roughly half) as well as most of denials towards the others – as the U.S. tried continuously to restrain commerce towards East Europe.13

11 The independent countries included Austria, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand,

Sweden, and Switzerland. See Richard T. Cupitt, Reluctant Champions: U.S. Presidential

Policy and Strategic Export Controls, Truman, Eisenhower, Bush, and Clinton, Routledge,

New York, 2000, pp.71-72 . 12 The Battle Act authorized the U.S. to economically retaliate on its allies in case CoCom lists were not respected. However, the non-binding nature of the agreement and the lack of an enforcement body made such option not so viable, as it would have implied major diplomatic tensions. Washington has never used it against its allies. 13 «For example, of the 1,380 cases considered in 1974, only 12 were disapproved; in 1977 of 1,087 requests, 31 were rejected. The United States objected in 30 of the 31 disapproved cases.». See John H. Gibbons (Dir.), Technology and East-West Trade, Advisory Panel for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, November 1979, pp. 158-159

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evolving world, evolving organizations

From 1950s to the beginning of 1970s CoCom did not experience significant modification of its structure and duties, except for the lists updates. There were now three lists: lists of military items, list of atomic/ nuclear materials and components, and a list of commercial goods. Lists were updated approximately every three years, after a period of negotiations amongst the members. The number of items decreased, but new technologies were included according to the advancement of Western countries. In the period 1951-1967 CoCom performed quite well. Despite of its known limits – such as the informal nature of the organization and the absence of enforcement procedures – shipment of strategic commodities to the USSR was limited to secondary diversionary activities and never inherited core goods and technologies. Even neutral non-CoCom countries respected lists issued by the U.S. According to estimates, Soviet military technology was lagging behind the U.S. from two to six years, especially concerning those that could have a role in advancing nuclear capacities. In early 1970s, the U.S. used to spend some 8 billion dollar per year in military research and development to maintain such technological hedge. The advantage was considered sufficient to keep up NATO credibility face to the Soviet Union. Furthermore, East-West trade had raised again and reached a volume of 12 billion dollar by 1972.14 Therefore, it seemed also that embargoes and restrictions were not impacting excessively growing economic opportunities for Western countries. However, such increase pushed once again European countries to request loosening export standards. To some of them, for instance the United Kingdom and France, exporting some of the listed technologies was becoming crucial to advance their trade ties, and they thought that several constraints were excessive. London and Paris believed that the increase of East-West trade was a sign of building mutual trust between Europe and the USSR, so a wealth of liberalization could be taken into account. As a consequence, negotiations of the lists in 1967 and 1971 had been much more difficult than before.

14 Study of CoCom (NSDM-159), Attachment to the Memorandum From the Chairman of the Inter-Agency Task Force To Review the COCOM System (Armstrong) to the Chairman of the National Security Council Under Secretaries Committee (Irwin), Washington, November 20, 1972 in Department of State - Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations Of

The United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. IV.

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Moreover, the number of request of exceptions had raised exponentially. For example, the value of exceptions in 1961 was 3,4 million dollar worth; ten years later it had reached 75 million dollar. In the same time frame the number of requests had risen from 147 per year to 635.15 The consequences of these trends manifested in 1967 and in 1972. In 1967 France asked CoCom to sell computers and other informatics devices to Czechoslovakia and Romania. The U.S. and Great Britain disagreed, but to change their opinion they asked for more information and detailed technical specifications of the materiel to sell. The French did not want to share more and, in addition, they had already signed a memorandum that Paris intended to honour. As a consequence, France decided to bypass CoCom. Washington was then in trouble, as it had to decide whether to sanction France according to the Battle Act – and impact negatively CoCom’s integrity – or to hold a more conciliatory attitude in order to encourage the Allies not to skip CoCom and, rather, to find a deal about similar cases. In effect, something similar to the French affair occurred a few years later, in similar terms. Great Britain was bargaining with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the sale of the Rolls Royce Spey turbofan, which was a dual use engine for both civil and military aircrafts. London communicated that it would have asked for an exception to CoCom, as the rules required, but warned Washington that, in case of denial, they would have sold anyway. Hence, the U.S. had to choose once again between maintaining strict standards or guaranteeing more liberal yet more widespread standards. At that time, Kissinger was forced by domestic political reasons to be strict on these issues publically, but he did not want to embrace the Battle Act against the British. So he tried officially to hamper the CoCom exception, but made Washington ‘look the other way’ when London made the deal and started supplying China.16 In effect, only after became known that the U.S. were unofficially adopting the same strategy. As China-USSR relations were deteriorating, Kissinger wanted to send Moscow the message that the U.S. wanted to strengthen some kind of defence ties with Beijing (the enemy of my enemy is my friend). So, he requested an exception as

15 Gibbons, op. cit., pp. 157-159 16 Henry Kissinger, Memorandum From the President’s National Security Adviser (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, May 30, 1973 in FRUS, 1969–1976, Vol. E–15, Part 2, Documents On Western Europe, 1973–1976, p.717

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well to sell a lot of 172 computers to China. Without a certain flexibility in the previous cases, such operation would not have been possible without raising criticism by the other members – that had requested loosening standards repeatedly. However, this way of doing brought negotiations out of the organization. Therefore, CoCom started being less effective, as the more influencing actors were deciding according to alternative dynamics. For instance, concerning China, the U.S. decided to differentiate its policy approach by «liberalizing sensitive exports to China on a case-by-case basis thereby creating a de facto differential». 17 Although the allies held a conciliatory attitude, it is significant noticing that intransigence was being abandoned, and exceptions were every year more frequent and substantial. Nevertheless, the U.S. did not want to modify public principles of CoCom, as this would have implied leaving the same room for action to the allies.

Declining effectiveness

As a consequence of the trends of 1960s and early 1970s, in 1979 the debate on military significance of strategic commodities – and the formal regime to adopt – raised again, especially after the beginning of the Afghan war. Moreover, the 1982 Falkland war added to the desire of U.S. administration to come back holding a strict attitude towards technology transfers. U.S. officials were afraid that the wealth of exceptions and (relative) liberalizations of 1960s and 1970s were counterproductive.18 In addition, the COCOM’s role seemed to decline, and this risked to loosen the U.S. grip on export control issues. Surprisingly, in this period France and Great Britain agreed on the need of containing international trade of dual use commodities. In fact, France supported the U.S. proposal of creating the Security and Technology Experts Meeting (STEM) within COCOM.19

17 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, Washington, January 2, 1980 in FRUS, 1977-1980, Vol. XIII, China, Document 287, p. 1030. 18 Despite of the COCOM regime, by the beginning of 1980s more than 5000 Soviet military projects benefited of Western know-how. The Soviet Union was used to gather 6-10000 pieces of hardware from Western countries and some 100000 documents per year, both legally and illegally. See U.S. Government, Soviet Acquisition of Military Significant Western Technology: An update, Washington D.C., September 1985, p.6 19 Gary K. Bertsch, Steven Elliott-Gower, Export Controls in Transition: Perspectives, Problems, and Prospects, p.14

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Moreover, in 1982, the U.S. proposed to expand the institutional structure of COCOM to better cope with the large number of issues arising in that period. By the end of 1980s COCOM got used to differentiate working groups and meeting, that could be HLM (High-Level Meeting, amongst sub-cabinet level delegates), ECM/CGM (Executive Committee Meeting/ Consulting Group Meeting, amongst policy makers/experts), STEM (Security and Technology Experts Meeting, amongst technical experts), tailored working groups.20

In 1985, the Third Country Initiative attempted to spread export control to as many as possible non-COCOM countries in Europe and Asia. COCOM members offered to several countries the possibility of waving export controls against them in exchange of their commitment to avoid any leak of received technologies to the Soviet Bloc. It was a reasonable tradeoff, as countries like Sweden, Switzerland, India, South Korea and many others could have access to advanced technology to push forward their national development agendas. On the contrary, the Soviet Union would have seen its room for manoeuvring constrained. In effect, technology advancements were already spreading and proliferation of military technology was already a growing trend. Therefore, establishing clear rules might have been better than trying to halting a trend that was already overwhelming the CoCom states’ control capabilities. At that time, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and other countries were attempting to develop their own military industrial base, especially in the field of ballistic missiles. Furthermore, the Toshiba-Kongsberg affaire, in 1987, pushed for a different regime by a broader number of states. It revealed that the leak of Western technology to the Soviet Union was consistent and had been going on since 1974. Machineries and documents the two companies leaked to the USSR triggered a relevant Soviet recovery in the field of submarine warfare. At that time, NATO countries were able to detect Soviet submarines up to 200 miles far, and the Soviet Union was lagging ten years behind NATO in submarine technologies. Shortly after those leaks, new Soviet classes of submarines (Mike, Akula, and Sierra) were one hundred times more silent than previous models. NATO could now detect them only at 10 miles.21 According

20 Samuel A. W. Evans, Revising Export Control Lists, Flemish Peace institute, March 2014. 21 Wendy A. Wrubel, «The Toshiba-Kongsberg Incident: Shortcomings of CoCom, and Rec-

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to the Pentagon, to re-establish the previous technologically hedge in that field, the U.S. would have had to spend 25-30 billion dollars in research and development in the 15-20 years ahead.22 In the U.S. there was a tough political debate between the Senate and the Administration. The Senate wanted to implement severe sanctions against the two companies, while the Administration did not want to risk CoCom’s integrity nor to undergo the detrimental effects of the sanctions against Toshiba and Kongsberg on U.S. economy. In effect, U.S. largest corporations such as IBM, Xerox, Honeywell and Westinghouse would have had serious troubles because of the strong ties with those groups. Hence, the Toshiba-Kongsberg affaire demonstrated that the world had changed and that increasing interdependence amongst international stakeholders deeply affected the possibility of controlling effectively the industry’s behaviour. Nonetheless, in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union reshuffled cards and reshaped the economic environment for the decades ahead.

after the Cold War

In 1990 COCOM had to update lists once again. But at that time there were even more crucial issues. The collapse of the Soviet Union implied growing contacts with East European countries, which demanded a more liberal export regime. In effect, the end of major strategic confrontation meant that lists could be shortened and that East European countries could be co-opted into the export control regime. The U.S. and European countries had, once again, different ideas. The U.S. wanted to continue imposing strict controls while West European countries believed that the change of scenario allowed for loosening controls. Rather, export controls would have had to focus on proliferation issues concerning poorly accountable states.23 In particular, developed countries were expected to keep under

ommendations for Increased Effectiveness of Export Controls to the East Bloc», American

University International Law Review, Vol. IV, Issue I, p.257 22 Daniel Sneider, «Japan Disputes U.S. View of Damage Done by Toshiba Sale», Christian

Science Monitor, July 20, 1987, p.11. 23 Besides, since 1984, Armed Services research demonstrated that illegal technology transfer, intentional or not, had been spreading amongst COCOM countries. The mechanism was performing poorly, and raising the level of intransigence would unlikely have had a positive influence on COCOM members’ wish and will to cooperate. See Rand C. Lew-

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control technology transfers towards developing states.

Despite of U.S. initial diffidence, Washington was at the forefront in this change of perspective. At the beginning of 1990, following Polish, Hungarian and Czechoslovakian requests, the U.S. brought to the COCOM’s attention their wish to open to the West and to establish consistent commercial flows of commodities in the fields of machine tools, telecommunications, and computers.24 The main narrative was that advancing economic wealth was the way to peace, like the Franco-German experience demonstrated. Hence, East European countries would have wished experiencing the same appeasement experience. COCOM countries had to expect that, following those three, others would have joined. Negotiations were carried out bilaterally by the U.S., which periodically made the other members aware of the advancement of political-economic negotiations with the former enemies. On September 1, 1991, COCOM published the new lists, which were sensitively shortly than the previous. Special regimes were adopted on a bilateral basis for Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. In the meanwhile, by 1992, all of the Soviet troops on Polish territory would have withdrawn.

In the following two years, the dichotomy between developing and developed countries took the place of the NATO-USSR strategic confrontation in determining the main trend of military technology. As a consequence, COCOM lost significance and, rather, a broader body was needed to settle some general principles of arms trade and export of technologically significant commodities. On March 31, 1994, COCOM ceased its activities.25 After one year of negotiation between the U.S. and the Russian Federation, throughout 1995 high level meetings were held to establish some kind of successor to the COCOM. Finally, it has been replaced by the Wassenaar Arrangement, subscribed initially by 33 founding members. Today, the Wassenaar Arrangement’s lists categorize armaments and dual use commodities. Member states committed themselves to communicate

is, COCOM: an international attempt to control technology, Technology Transfer Society

Symposium, Dayton, Ohio, June 26, 1990, p.68 24 Gary K. Bertsch, Richard T. Cupitt, Steven Elliot-Gower (Eds.), International Cooperation on Nonproliferation Export Controls: Prospects for 1990 and beyond, pp.114-117 25 Paul Cornish, The Arms trade and Europe, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1995, p.35

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arms sales to the Secretariat in Vienna in order to track who sells what to whom, and where. Periodic meetings are held in Vienna to coordinate. The Wassenaar Arrangement includes today 41 countries26 .

Почтовый блок СССР 1979 года. К 50-летию принятия первого пятилетнего плана развития народного хозяйства СССР. 50th anniversary of the First Five-year plan (1929). USSR postage block, 1979 (Post of the Soviet Union, designer A. Šmidštejn).

26 Kenneth A. Dursht, «From Containment to Cooperation: Collective and the Wassenaar Arrangement», Cardozo Law Review, vol. 19, No. 3, December 1997, pp. 1079-1123. U. S., 106th Congress, Senate, The Wassenaar Arrangement and the Future of multilateral export controls: hearings before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, April 12, 2000, vol. 7479 (106-613 S. hgs). Samuel Ashley Evans, Technological Ambiguity and the Wassenaar

Arrangement, University of Oxford, 2009. Wassenaar Arrangement, Guidelines and Procedures, Including the Initial Elements, July 2014.

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