Another Man's Genius.

"This will always be our response to international boycotts and threats against us," said President P.W. Botha as he unveiled the Cheetah, South Africa's advanced combat aircraft. The South Africans said that the plane was a secret project of the government's Armaments Corporation.

Claiming the new aircraft was more than a match for neighboring Angola's MiG-23s, Gen. Magnus Malan, the white government's defense minister, told the assembled industrialists and foreign press corps that the Cheetah "signaled a new era of self sufficiency and enhanced operational capability for the South African Air Force." It was proof of the technological leadership of the South African arms industry, asserted President Botha.

The Cheetah was also the one major item an international arms embargo had managed to deny South Africa. The South Africans, who in July 1986 were anxiously following the progress of sanctions legislation in the U.S., lost no time in driving that point home.

In its nightly broadcast to North America, Radio South Africa said the "futility" of the UN's 1977 arms embargo was recognized 18 months ago by the UN General Assembly, which called on member countries to stop importing arms from South Africa. After all, they were supposed to be applying an arms boycott against the country...The arms embargo has achieved the opposite of what it was intended to achieve. In the last two decades the country has built up the tenth largest arms industry in the world and this achievement was the direct response of the misguided attempt to isolate South Africa and make it more vulnerable to outside pressures.'

In all their jubilation, the South Africans omitted one key detail: Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) had played a major role in creating the Cheetah out of the carcass of an aging Mirage III-C. The Cheetah was the latest of a number of projects on which the state-owned IAI and other Israeli weapons manufacturers had collaborated with the South Africans.

 
1.1) The Development of Israel's Arms Industry.

De Gaulle's halting of the arms flow at such a critical juncture also provided Israel with the impetus to embark on a crash program to develop an arms industry.

In this endeavor, Israel was not starting from scratch. As early as 1921, Jewish settlers in Palestine had made hand grenades and explosives for use against Arabs protesting their presence. The history of the Jewish state's foundation is laden with tales of weapons obtained abroad by hook or by crook, and of secret workshops in British-ruled Palestine where primitive small arms were constructed.

After the establishment of Israel in 1948 these munitions factories were brought above ground and incorporated into a government-owned military industry. As the great powers, for varying geopolitical reasons, were slow to sell arms to the new state, the Israelis pressed ahead, producing the Uzi submachine gun in 1952 ,and by 1965 had developed the rudiments of aviation, munitions, and electronics industries. Israel's objective was a guaranteed source of supply, but as early as 1954 it also began marketing weapons.

In 1967, shaken by de Gaulle's abrupt cancellation of major contracts for aircraft and patrol boats, the Israelis embarked on a crash effort to lower their future political vulnerability by striving toward self-sufficiency in weapons production. They opted to invest funds that had previously been earmarked for purchases overseas into the indigenous arms industry

In keeping with the decision immediately after the war to proceed with an intensified effort to develop and enlarge Israel's own weapons industry, cost-benefit calculations were set aside in favor of producing essential items in Israel.

With some critical technological inputs from abroad some arriving in the form of foreign investment and purchase of foreign technology, some pilfered, such as plans for the Mirage combat aircraft which were stolen by Mossad, Israel's secret service, from the French Dassault company's Swiss licensee, making possible the task of designing and building the Mirage copy Kfir jet fighter the arms industry expanded rapidly. Israeli determination was further spurred by displeasure with the amount of time it took the U.S. to resupply Israel during the 1973 war.

By the end of the 1970s, the Israeli military industry was supplying 40 percent of Israel's military needs. But production runs solely for the domestic market resulted in high costs per item. The longer production runs necessary to lower unit costs created an imperative to export.

The government began a concerted marketing campaign, through diplomatic and military contacts, as well as news releases and exhibits at fairs. In later years a sales force of retired military officers eager for commissions fanned out over the globe. While the secrecy of the Israeli government makes it impossible to exactly calculate the volume of Israel's weapons sales abroad, the general consensus of analysts of the international arms trade indicates that between 1972 and 1980 Israel's arms exports soared, particularly in the latter part of that span, rising from $50 million to top $1 billion, and, with the possible exception of 1983, have remained over $1 billion annually. A 1986 estimate puts annual sales at "more than $1.25 billion". Since 1982 Israel has been ranked among the world's top ten arms producers.

The importance to the overall economy of the arms manufacturing sector also increased, with weapons exports estimated to have comprised 31 percent of industrial exports in 1975, up from 14 percent in 1967 and more recently 30 to 40 percent of Israel's industrial output. The arms industry employs "anywhere from 58,000 to as many as 120,000 Israelis," or, taking the lower figure, percent of the industrial labor force, with the biggest unit, Israel Aircraft Industries, the nation's largest employer, carrying 20,000 on its payroll.

The export imperative, in turn, brought its own set of problems, these centering on the overseas markets available to Israel and on its choice of customers from that list. For varying reasons, Israel was largely shut out of the Eastern Bloc, the Arab world and NATO countries. That Ieft its potential clientele to be found on the peripheries: pariahs such as South Africa and Guatemala, the strong-man regimes of Taiwan, Zaire, and Chile, and the occasional government wary of strings-attached arms purchases from the super powers.

Over the years Israel has sold weapons and often along with the weapons come Israeli advisers to Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua (under Somoza), Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador,Paraguay,Peru, Venezuela, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria, Rhodesia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire, Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua-New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and a number of European countries and several non-governmental factions. Sometimes even the least desirable customers have required some softening up: Greatly detailed stories abound of the huge bribes Israel has used to suborn defense ministries, with the sole objective of nailing down arms deals.

As time went on an additional problem arose: arms sales became the motor driving Israel's foreign policy. In times of economic crisis it became the supreme exigency. In September 1986, the Israeli defense minister explained to a press conference what was behind a raft of scandals involving Israeli arms exports and technology thefts (these last, most frequently from the U.S., have been an inevitable hallmark of a small country attempting to sustain a full-scale armaments industry). "...We cut our orders in our military industries" he said, "and I told them quite frankly: Either you'll fire people or find export markets."

The export markets open to Israel are frequently among the world's most unsavory; indeed, to be off limits to the superpowers they often are located inside the very gates of hell. Already under international censure for its oppression of the Palestinians in the territories it occupies, Israel's dealings with the scum of the world's tyrants - including the white clique in South Africa, Somoza of Nicaragua, Gen. Pinochet of Chile, Marcos of the Philippines, Duvalier of Haiti, Mobutu of Zaire, the allegedly cannibalistic Bokassa of the Central African Republic - invariably result in its further exclusion from more "respectable" circles. "A person who sleeps with dogs shouldn't be surprised to find himself covered with fleas,: comments the military correspondent for Israel's major daily newspaper.

Israeli critics, who term the phenomenon "arms diplomacy," warn that the export imperative has motivated a sequence of ad hoc, opportunistic decisions that have precluded the development of a coherent foreign policy, which, in turn, might over the long term mitigate Israel's isolated position in the world. Yet these critics are far from sanguine about the ability of Israel to set itself on a different course.

They point to the power of the "security establishment lobby," comprised of the upper echelon of Israel's political leadership (this has remained remarkably constant since the founding of the state), the top levels of the military, and the officials of the parastatal arms industries. As the U.S., there is a "revolving door'' in Israel, within, many of the top figures serving successively in two or all three of these sectors.

It is these men who find the clients and have insider access to the Ministerial Committee on Weapons transfers (MCL)) its members are the prime minister and the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, and trade and industry which will make the final decision on every sale. Such decisions are made secretly - the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, excluded. The cabinet, too, is often excluded. Critics of the hegemony of the arms export business say it has relegated the foreign ministry to a subordinate role in Israeli foreign policy making, and they see in its wake grave social and political consequences.

A sector has evolved in Israel, headed by an elite with identical social characteristics and marked by a fairly high degree of cohesiveness, whose decisions and actions have a significant effect not only on the country's economy and its foreign and defense policy but also on its social and value systems. No less important, however, is the issue of whether a closed system has been created whose activities and decisions undergo less public supervision and scrutiny than any other area of life in the country.

1.2) A Co-equal Type of Proxy.

Israeli analysts often argue that Israeli arms sales are dependent on U.S. approval; in a limited sense this is true. The U.S. has blocked at the behest of Britain the delivery of A-4 Skyhawks to Argentina, and it has in the past vetoed the export of the Kfir aircraft, leverage it is able to exert because of the Kfir's U.S. engine. However, the Carter Administration was unable to prevent Israeli nuclear cooperation with South Africa,

On the other hand, Israel has often obliged this or that sector of the U.S. government, selling arms where it would be embarrassing or illegal for the U.S. to do so: the contras, the Peoples Republic of China in the early 1980s and the Derg.government of Ethiopia are examples. In 1975, Israel followed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's advice and helped South Africa with its invasion of Angola. Even after the passage the following year of the Clark Amendment forbidding U.S. covert involvement in Angola, Israel apparently considered Kissinger's nod a continuing mandate.

Given the export imperative under which the Israeli government operates, this 1981 proposal from the chief economic coordinator in the Israeli cabinet, Yacov Meridor, should be taken with great seriousness:

We are going to say to the Americans, "Don't compete with us in South Africa, don't compete with us in the Caribbean or in any other country where you can't operate in the open." Let us do it. I even use the expression, "You sell the ammunition and equipment by proxy. Israel will be your proxy," and this would be worked out with a certain agreement with the United States where we will have certain markets...which will be left for us.