{"id":1078,"date":"2017-09-14T12:39:49","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T11:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2020-02-19T17:01:59","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T17:01:59","slug":"expert-comment-brexit-could-affect-global-efforts-to-control-arms-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/2017\/09\/14\/expert-comment-brexit-could-affect-global-efforts-to-control-arms-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"Expert comment: Brexit could affect global efforts to control arms trade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Dr Maria Garcia-Alonso, a senior lecturer in economics, comments in response to Michael Fallon\u2019s statements that the UK will \u201cspread its wings across the world\u201d with defence and arms exports post-Brexit.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2018As\u00a0the\u00a0arms trade is exempted from agreements\u00a0to limit exports subsidies, governments are free to promote their\u00a0arms exports\u00a0in a variety of ways.\u00a0While\u00a0the government\u00a0has to\u00a0wait to negotiate\u00a0other\u00a0trade agreements\u00a0until Brexit comes into effect,\u00a0<strong>it\u00a0remains\u00a0free to promote arms trade deals around the world<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018In a world where countries are free to subsidise exports, there are <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/j.0036-9292.2005.00346.x\/abstract\"><span style=\"color: #0066cc\">increased incentives to set laxer controls<\/span><\/a> over the technologies <strong>they export and their target recipients<\/strong>. Each individual country looking after its own interest\u00a0and thinking \u201cif I don\u2019t sell someone else will\u201d leads to a worse result for all countries involved. A way out of this situation is <strong>credible coordination among exporter countries<\/strong>. Some of the UK main competitors in the arms trade are also EU countries\u00a0with whom the UK agreed an arms export control regime.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/disarmament\/convarms\/att\/\"><span style=\"color: #0066cc\">Arms Trade Treaty<\/span><\/a> \u00a0was <strong>the first international agreement aimed to control conventional arms proliferation<\/strong> by encouraging groups of exporting countries to coordinate their exports decisions and avoid undercutting each other. <strong>Brexit casts a long shadow over this only incipient effort to resolve a difficult coordination problem<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Failure to find a way to protect this aspect of security in the Brexit negotiations <strong>will likely lead to a more uncertain world<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>-ENDS-<\/p>\n<p>Article by <span style=\"color: #0066cc\">Dan Worth, University of Kent Press Office<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Maria Garcia-Alonso, a senior lecturer in economics, comments in response to Michael Fallon\u2019s statements that the UK will \u201cspread its wings across the world\u201d &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/2017\/09\/14\/expert-comment-brexit-could-affect-global-efforts-to-control-arms-trade\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37654,"featured_media":1938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,94130,70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1079,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions\/1079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}