An Urgent To-Do List for U.S. Export Controls
An Urgent To-Do List for U.S. ExportControls
By Evelyn Farkas
Published: 17 July 2011
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Congress began considering competing bills to update export control laws. Within the administration, major reforms are underway to expedite the export of thousands of dual-use items to certain partners, and to streamline controls on military items as well.
But June 30, the greatest Cabinet proponent of export control reform, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, stepped down from his post. We should continue his work in this critical area.
Export control reform legislation, drafted and adopted in a bipartisan fashion, would improve American companies’ competitiveness abroad and increase national security.
Successive administrations and Congresses have called for the reform of the U.S. export control regime to keep pace with new threats and globalization. Export control reform, as championed by Gates, seeks to minimize the risks identified in the current system. Properly designed and implemented, it would:
■ Prohibit the transfer of critical military and dual-use technologies to countries, entities and individuals that pose a real or potential threat to the United States.
■ Protect the technological edge of the U.S. military.
■ Foster a strong defense industrial base.
■ Increase the effective life of U.S. weapons, potentially saving the U.S. taxpayer billions of dollars.
■ Facilitate interoperability and cooperation with U.S. allies and foreign partners, including NATO.
The expanding haystack of export control requests, many redundant or mundane, that the government is required to review makes it increasingly harder to ensure that the needle – an export that would endanger national security – won’t somehow escape the government’s attention.
The two lists of items that require licenses for export – the munitions list and dual-use Commerce Department list – have become outdated and include many items that are not critical technologies and are widely available from foreign sources. Moreover, a repeat export of an item to the same recipient requires a new license each time.
As a consequence, the Commerce Department issued about 21,000 licenses in 2008 (double the number from 10 years ago), and in 2010, the State Department processed 80,000 license requests. Yet more than 99 percent of all license applications from 2003 to 2007 were approved.
The delays and uncertainty of the export licensing process have discouraged even our allies, in some cases, from purchasing U.S. munitions or dual-use items. The cumulative effect is to make U.S. companies less competitive and to reduce the likelihood that we will be fighting with our allies using the same systems.
More must be done to reduce the national security risks that the current export control system imposes on the United States and its closest allies. The good news is that the mitigation checklist is clear, and there are several steps Congress and the private sector can take to match administration efforts.
Congress could:
■ Raise the thresholds for congressional notification of defense sales.
■ Establish a 20-day deadline for informal, or preconsultation, congressional reviews of defense sales.
■ Pass legislation that provides authority for the positive reforms Gates has championed, which would re-create a single control list and single licensing agency, rather than the competing lists and jurisdictionaldivides that currently exist.
Private industry could:
■ Collect data to track the impact of export controls on U.S. competitiveness and the defense industrial base, including loss of contracts and relocation of manufacturing or services.
■ Participate in a new public-private partnership to bolster compliance and share information about real and potential export control violations, especially on items related to weapons of mass destruction.
As we’ve seen in the Middle East, our military allies are a boon when they can fly, drive and sail with us. Meanwhile, maintaining accurate accounting and control over U.S. military and dual-use exports in this new era of nonstate actors is more critical than ever.
Awareness of these realities is sufficient reason for ourgovernment to achieve the long-sought reform of our outdated export controlregime. Secretary Gates’ departure ought to be the impetus for finally completing this unfinished work.
Evelyn Farkas, author of the American Security Projectmonograph, “U.S. Export Controls: Emerging Consensus on Increasing Risk,” and a senior adviser in the U.S. Department of Defense. This article represents her views alone.
