Beware Moscow’s End Run On COCOM

The Center for Security Policy today released an analysis of a shift in the existing multilateral technology transfer regime now being urged on the Bush Administration by the Soviet Union, allied governments and some U.S. business leaders. This shift would permit the granting of blanket exemptions from current export controls on sales of advanced “dual-use” technologies to be sold to East European nations like Poland and Hungary.

The Center’s analysis, entitled Block the End Run on COCOM: No Blanket Exemptions for Moscow’s Warsaw Pact Allies, notes that such exemptions would — under present circumstancesremain closely linked to those of the Soviet Union to obtain militarily relevant technologies the Kremlin is anxious to acquire. This analysis also identifies various forms of leverage the Soviet Union can bring to bear on Poland and Hungary (and other would-be recipients of Western technological largesse) to ensure that diversions of valuable equipment and technical know-how continue to flow to the USSR through these states, irrespective of commitments the latters’ governments might make to the contrary. — enable nations whose military, police and intelligence services

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director, said on releasing the paper, “The Bush Administration needs to establish a policy quickly that wholesale changes in East Europeans’ access to sophisticated ‘dual-use’ Western technology will not occur so long as Moscow can exploit such an arrangement to obtain indirectly what it may not obtain legally and directly from COCOM.”

Gaffney added, “Unfortunately, if such an eminently sensible policy — which, recent polling data suggests enjoys the broad support of the American people (an NBC-Wall Street Journal — is to be credible with U.S. allies, the Administration will have to take a more responsible approach to its own technology decontrol decisions.” poll released on 6 December 1989 showed that the public disapproved of selling high technology products with potential military applications to the USSR by a margin of 17% in favor to 77% opposed)

“For example, Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher should immediately reexamine advice he evidently is receiving to the effect that a proposal by U S West to install a fiber-optic telecommunications network in the USSR would be acceptable provided it utilizes less than state-of-the-art fiber-optic technology,” Gaffney noted. “In fact, any fiber optic system will greatly enhance the effectiveness, survivability and security of Soviet military communications — a development absolutely contrary to U.S. security interests. If this and similar deals are permitted to go forward, material harm will be done to Western defense and intelligence capabilities and efforts to maintain any vestige of discipline in East-West technology flows will be undermined.