The True German Export Control Policy: Profiteering At The Expense Of Western Security?

In the wake of a series of revelations about dangerous West German technology transfers to Iraq and Libya, the Center for Security Policy released an analysis which concludes that such transfers are the product of an as yet unchanging, cynical willingness at the highest levels of German industry and officialdom to subordinate common Western security interests to narrow parochialism and greed.

This analysis, entitled Rabtagate: The Inside Story of German Collusion in the Libyan Chemical Warfare Program, draws heavily upon a newly obtained West German government document. This official document — dubbed A Report Concerning the Possible Involvement of Germans in the Establishment of a Chemical Weapon Facility in Libya and submitted by the Kohl government to the Bundestag last year — depicts a chronic, if not wanton, disregard of elementary technology security by both the Federal Republic of Germany and its enterprises.

"With each passing day, evidence mounts that West Germany’s lax attitude toward the proper administration of export control policies and the significant shortcomings in its related legislation and regulations are producing a hemorrhage militarily relevant Western technology to undesirable end-users," Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director, said today. "There is every reason to believe that the private and governmental impulses that demonstrably contributed to Moammar Ghaddafi’s acquisition of a chemical warfare manufacturing capability are providing other disreputable sorts with equally dangerous weapons and related technology."

Jennifer J. White, a senior associate at the Center who led the analysis of the German government’s report, added, "Just as Toshiba was denied access to U.S. markets for its role in the 1980s in supplying advanced machine tools to the Soviet submarine industry, West German companies engaged in the illicit sale of such things as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons-related technologies to renegade nations should be subject to U.S. import sanctions. At the very least, the United States should think twice about acceding to German demands for still greater liberalization of the existing multilateral export control regime."

Copies of Rabtagate may be obtained by contacting the Center. A reprint of a related editorial by Gaffney, entitled "German Profits Uber Allies," which was published yesterday in the Washington Times, is attached.