Abstract
Apartheid South Africa was the object of a long-term international embargo of armaments and other military equipment. These were actually voluntary and mandatory, multilateral and unilateral, embargoes that began in 1963 and were in force until mid-1994. Initially intended to halt weapons and technology flows that the minority government could use for internal repression against the majority population, sanctions were also later intended to decrease South Africa’s ability to threaten its neighbors, and to undermine South Africa’s ability to continue its illegal occupation of South West Africa/Namibia. What impact did the arms embargo have on South Africa?
However Utopian this may be, in the visible future the dynamic equilibrium of politics will work in favor of civilianism to the extent that people — that is large populations, including the lower classes — continue to be positively valued for military purposes. Hitherto the dependence of arms production upon a huge labor force has been a factor making for a degree of democratization.
(Harold Lasswell)2
Amy Nash provided research assistance. Peter Batchelor and Jacklyn Cock gave generous intellectual support. I also learned from David Fig, Norma Kriger, Kim Nossal, and Meg Voorhes. Navy Captain Derek Christian, Captain Robert (Rusty) Higgs, and Air Force Colonels P. B. Willcock and Brian Wilford and Air Force Major Arthur Piercy (retired) of the South African National Defence Force spoke candidly about military operations and the effects of sanctions.
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Notes
I do not take up two elements of the arms embargo — how and why multilateral embargo implementation is successful or unsuccessful, and political uses of isolation to bolster the target regime. On this, see L. L. Martin, Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992);
M. Mastanduno, Economic Containment: CoCom and the Politics of East-West Trade (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992);
M. P. Doxey, Economic Sanctions and International Enforcement (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). I also do not discuss nuclear sanctions; see D. Fig, “Sanctions and the Nuclear Industry” Chapter 4 in this volume.
S. Landgren, Embargo Disimplemented: South Africa’s Military Industry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 14.
K. Krause, Arms and the State: Patterns of Military Production and Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 13.
C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 1990–1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 223.
See M. Brzoska, “South Africa: Evading the Embargo,” in M. Brozska and T. Ohlson, Arms Production in the Third World (London: Taylor and Francis, 1986), pp. 193–214: 194–5;
R. Matthews, “The Development of the South African Military Industrial Complex,” Defense Analysis 4 (1988), pp. 7–24: 7–9.
P. Batchelor, “South Africa’s Military Industry: History and Overview” (Cape Town: Centre for Conflict Resolution, 1996), unpublished photocopy, table 5.
S. Jones and A. Mullen, The South African Economy, 1910–1990 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), p. 231.
A. Black, “Manufacturing Development and Economic Crisis: A Reversion to Primary Production?” in S. Gelb, ed., South Africa’s Economic Crisis (Cape Town: David Phillip, 1991), pp. 156–74.
G. Huston, “Capital Accumulation, Influx Control, and the State in South Africa, 1970–1982,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 7 (1988), pp. 111–31: 125. These measures were implemented more or less successfully over the next several years.
A. Sparks, The Mind of South Africa (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 314.
R. Vayrynen, “The Role of Transnational Corporations in the Military Sector of South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 5, (1981).
S. Willett, Open Arms for the Prodigal Son: The Future of South Africa’s Arms Trade Policies (London: British-American Security Information Council, 1994), p. 6;
F. Smyth, “Arms and Mandela,” The Washington Post, 22 May 1994.
T. Deen, “Pretoria Arms Policy Upsets UN,” InterPress Service, 3 June 1994.
D. Silverberg, “The New Armscor,” Armed Forces Journal International (May 1994), pp. 45–8. Financial Mail “Public Sector Corporations,” p. 251; “Survival of the Fittest,” p. 30.
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© 1999 Neta C. Crawford
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Crawford, N.C. (1999). How Arms Embargoes Work. In: Crawford, N.C., Klotz, A. (eds) How Sanctions Work. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403915917_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403915917_3
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