Controls on security-related international transfers

In recent years, a central issue for the states that cooperate in the development of export control laws on security-related items has been whether a principle of discrimination or a principle of global equity should underpin their efforts. After the end of the cold war, an export control system that had been clearly based on discrimination against explicitly identified adversaries was gradually reformed, introducing more general rules that were to be applied by national licensing authorities on a case-by-case basis. Recently, largely under prompting by the United States, there has been greater support for a hybrid approach in which controls are tightened on a small number of countries of concern, while technology is allowed to flow more freely within trusted communities of countries. In developing common guidelines, export control regimes have tended to emphasize objective criteria that minimize the risk of divergent national interpretations when making licensing decisions. 1 Whether a country applies comprehensive safeguards to the nuclear activities undertaken on its territory is one such criterion. 2 In 2008 the Nuclear Supplier Group’s (NSG) decision to exempt India from this aspect of its guidelines raised the question of whether the identification of sensitive destinations was a political decision or whether objective criteria could be the basis for national export licensing. Recent developments in a number of export control regimes are examined in section II. This section pays particular attention to the NSG’s decisions related to India. It also reports developments regarding United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 of 2004. 3 Section III discusses changes in the export controls applied by the European Union (EU) to the transfer of items specially designed and developed for military use as well 1 An ‘export control regime’ is a multilateral cooperation arrangement that tries to improve the effectiveness of the national export controls of the countries that participate in them.