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6 An Assessment of the Multilateral Export Control System The rapid diffusion of technology and the globalization of production and marketing of high-technology products leave the United States little choice but to work to improve and bring additional Western countries into the system of multilateral export controls. The issue is how effective and reliable an instrument the system is or can be made to be and what approach the United States should take in improving upon it. By persuasion and pressure the United States has led its allies to agree to a broad set of controls on trade with the Soviet bloc. But U.S. policymakers have often acted outside the consensus, with or without multilateral consultation. The United States has imposed and maintained unilateral national security controls; foreign policy controls on the export to the Soviet Union of goods and technologies that have no military importance; and controls on reexports of U.S. products, parts, and components from CoCom countries. Some of these measures have posed few problems in alliance relations, but others have been major irritants. The panel believes that the multilateral system is so essential to the effective denial or significant delay of strategic products and technology to the Soviet Union, and that restrictions on West-West trade and technology exchange are sufficiently harmful to U.S. economic and Western security interests, that the United States ought now to pursue the objective of developing a community of common controls in dual use technology among cooperating Western countries. This concept implies the construction of a common external "wall" of export controls to the East accompanied by a significant liberalization of controls within the 135
~36 BALANCING THE NATIONAL INTEREST West. To be successful a community of common controls must in time include not only the industrialized allies but also a number of advanced or rapidly industrializing non-CoCom countries. The panel recognizes that this objective will require major policy adjustments by both the United States and its major trading partners. Furthermore, there may be an incentive for one or more countries to remain outside the community as an island of unrestricted trading activity. This could only be prevented by strict community control of exports to the noncomplying country. Such contingencies need to be addressed in developing the community. Nevertheless, recent improve- ments in CoCom and moderately successful diplomatic initiatives with certain neutral European countries have made the concept of a commu- nity of common controls in dual use technology a realistic objective for U.S. export control policy. This chapter considers the adjustments that have already been made in multilateral export controls and the obstacles to further progress. First, it addresses the state of the CoCom arrangement its rejuvenation in recent years and its remaining deficiencies. Second, it considers the extent to which U.S. policies support or undermine international cooperation on national security export controls. Finally, it reviews the progress and pitfalls in securing the cooperation of leading countries that are not parties to CoCom. PROGRESS IN COCOM Since 1980 CoCom has attracted unprecedented attention at high political levels in member governments. In the wake of the Afghanistan invasion, the United States persuaded its CoCom partners to adopt a policy of allowing no exceptions for exports to the Soviet Union of items falling within the CoCom general embargo. The U.S. government not only has tightened its own strategic export controls but also has led a major effort to revitalize the multilateral system.* At the Ottawa summit of Western leaders in July 1981, President Reagan persuaded the allies to call the first ministerial-level meeting of CoCom in 25 years. The meeting took place in January 1982 and was followed by two other high-level meetings-in April 1983 and February 1985. The 1982 ministerial meeting reaffirmed the strategic and political objectives of the organization; launched a comprehensive review of the *Efforts by the Departments of Defense and State have led to: (1) important progress in CoCom list reviews, (2) the shift of emphasis from product control to technology control, and (3) improved administrative and technical support capabilities within the CoCom secretariat.
ASSESSING MULTILATERAL EXPORT CONTROLS 137 CoCom International List; called for national controls of "equal effec- tiveness," including measures to deal with the reexport of controlled equipment and technology from third countries; and urged improved administration and enforcement of CoCom controls. The 1983 meeting took place during the allies' confrontation over construction of the Siberian gas pipeline and focused on the details of what was by then a full agenda, as well as on the deficiencies of the CoCom establishment in Paris inadequate staff, space, and equipment. The 1985 meeting ratified the outcome of the list review process; adopted a new procedure of continuous reviews; called attention to the diversion of goods in transit; approved expedited processing of exception requests for the People's Republic of China; and endorsed work on the means of dealing with the export of intangible technical know-how. As a consequence of these agreements, CoCom members have tight- ened some of their licensing and enforcement procedures; admitted Spain to membership; upgraded Paris headquarters operations; launched a diplomatic effort to obtain the cooperation of nonmember countries; created a group of advisers with military expertise, most of them representing defense ministries; and added to the control list certain types of machine tools, dry docks, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, robotics, superalloy technology, telecommunications switching equip- ment, and software. Perhaps most importantly, a 10-year debate over the levels of computer hardware and associated technology that should be denied to the Soviet military was finally resolved by a compromise, removing lower-level computers from the International List. In the panel's judgment the combination of a more up-to-date control list and the commitment of most member countries to adhere to it in trade with the Eastern bloc makes CoCom a reasonably effective, albeit imperfect, instrument of control on which the United States can rely with much greater confidence than the arrangement merited only a few years ago. COCOM DEFICIENCIES Intra-CoCom Differences It is widely believed both in the United States and abroad that some CoCom nations are more assiduous than others in their adherence to CoCom restrictions against direct sales of militarily useful goods and technologies to the Soviet bloc. Goods that might not be sold if they were of U.S. origin may be approved for sale to the bloc by another CoCom country. Governments differ in their interpretations of the relevant technical parameters. In situations of uncertainty about whether or not
138 BALANCING THE NATIONAL INTEREST equipment is controlled, U.S. firms tend to err on the side of caution by refusing to do business or by requesting an export approval; foreign firms are more likely to accept the order and ship the goods. This is particularly likely to occur in countries whose governments have not allocated adequate resources to enforcement of export controls and have not otherwise stressed the importance of compliance with export controls to their domestic producers. Correcting such deficiencies and reconciling interpretations of the International List have been principal objectives of the United States- not only in CoCom negotiations but also in dealings with individual governments. Much remains to be accomplished, but the underlying allied consensus does enable the reconciliation of differences when a sound strategic rationale exists for items subject to control. There are more serious differences among CoCom countries, with adverse consequences for both technology security and U.S. competi- tiveness, in the treatment of exports of CoCom-controlled items to other Western destinations that are potential points of diversion to the Eastern bloc. With few exceptions,* all CoCom countries license the export of controlled dual use products to one another and to third countries as a precaution against diversion. A crucial control consideration in West- West trade generally is the reliability of customers. In conjunction with individual licenses,! therefore, various CoCom members employ several instruments, depending on the country destination, to ensure the reliabil- ity of consignees. These instruments include: (1) requiring from the recipient's government an import certificate (IC) and/or delivery verifica- tion (DV) statement usually pledging that the item will not be reexported to a proscribed country; (2) conducting a prelicense or postshipment investigation of the consignee (an "end-user checked; (3) demanding from the recipient (i.e., consignee) a declaration of the intended end use of the item or a letter of assurance against its reexport to a proscribed country; (4) maintaining a list of diverters or suspected diverters for use in screening original license applications; and (5) in the U.S. case alone, requiring that some reexports have the approval of the government of the country of origin. Formal requirements and informal practice, however, vary consider *Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States all issue bulk licenses restricted to West-West trade. Apart from the U.S. special license arrange- ments, the panel was able to acquire only incomplete information on the conditions for obtaining and using licenses under these systems. "Validated licenses are not required for direct trade between the United States and Canada and vice versa.
ASSESSING MULTILATERAL EXPORT CONTROLS 139 ably from one CoCom country to another. Consequently, controls on International List items in West-West trade are inconsistently adminis- tered. For example, major CoCom partners have not been willing to maintain extraterritorial controls and do not cooperate in the enforcement of U.S. reexport restrictions. Few CoCom members conduct prelicense and end-use checks in the West or have formal mechanisms comparable to the U.S. Table of Denial Orders for denying export rights to known or suspected diverters. All CoCom members request import certificate and delivery verification documents from only a handful of nonmember countries (see Table 6-11. Because efforts to improve CoCom surveillance of exports to third countries have been only marginally successful, such surveillance remains the weakest link in the multilateral system. The United States has been inclined to compensate for the weaknesses and differences in the CoCom system by "going it alone." The only plausible explanation for U.S. reexport controls on multilaterally con- trolled commodities exported to other CoCom member countries is that we do not have confidence that their control systems will reliably prevent diversion. The U.S. approach, however, is ineffective for two reasons. First, if direct controls by the host government do not adequately deter questionable sales, indirect controls asserted from a considerable dis- tance are unlikely to be any more effective. Second, because the CoCom countries are not merely conduits of U.S. goods and technology but the source of equally sophisticated items of interest to the Soviet bloc, any policy that fails to address directly the weaknesses of CoCom is self- deluding. Thus, while there are problems with the CoCom system, it is the panel's view that there is no viable alternative to reliance on the multilateral approach to export control that CoCom represents. The United States should build on the widely shared perception of the Soviet threat and create incentives for governments and industry to cooperate in more vigorous and effective multilateral controls. Scope of the International List One of the impediments to more effective enforcement and cooper- ation, especially in terms of the control of exports to third countries, is the scope of the CoCom International List. As the panel confirmed in discussions with officials in Europe and Asia, many member countries believe the list far exceeds CoCom's grasp. Given finite resources, it is impractical to enforce sweeping controls. Overly broad coverage also reduces the credibility of the control system and encourages laxness on the part of public officials and industry. Curtailing the control list would have the further advantage of encouraging the cooperation of newly
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ASSESSING MULTILATERAL EXPORT CONTROLS 141 industrializing countries that are becoming producers of lower-level controlled technology. As a practical matter, CoCom may be able to control effectively only those commodities and technologies where only a few non-CoCom countries friendly to Western interests have developed indigenous capabilities. A1- though some non-CoCom countries have agreed to control reexports of CoCom country origin, they have for the most part refused to control indigenous goods and technologies that fall within CoCom control parame- ters. Thus, to maintain the effectiveness of its restrictions, CoCom is obliged to update continually its control parameters in accordance with the cooper- ation it has-or has not-obtained from relevant non-CoCom nations. The CoCom List Review Process Because of its investment in strategic technologies, its leadership role in the alliance, and its global security interests outside the alliance, the United States has typically advocated more extensive controls than its CoCom partners at every list review. The existence of a much larger export control bureaucracy in the United States may also account for the greater number of U.S. control proposals. Individually and collectively, other CoCom members devote less effort to defining what controls are advisable and could be effective. As a result, many CoCom members take a reactive stance in the list review process, a stance often influenced by domestic commercial pressures. More thorough assessments by other major CoCom nations (Canada, France, Great Britain, Japan, and West Germany), comparable to those carried out by the United States, would contribute to the development of well-documented proposals for decontrol and to the evolution of a control list that is based on a solid consensus and equally supported and enforced by all members. The CoCom rule of unanimity is an unnecessary obstacle to removing items from the CoCom list. Unanimous agreement to add items is essential; all members must agree on the wisdom of new controls. The requirement for unanimity to remove items from the list, however, undermines the credibility of the embargo. One objection may force the other CoCom members into giving lip service to controls that they no longer believe are tenable and that they may subsequently undermine through lax enforcement. A mechanism for implementing less-than- unanimous judgments favoring decontrol would have at least two positive effects: It would ameliorate the current situation in which there is, de facto, a lack of multilateral cooperation in controlling some items; and it would increase the effectiveness of the general embargo. The capabilities being developed and acquired by competitive non- CoCom countries probably warrant even shorter list review cycles than
142 BALANCING THE NATIONAL INTEREST those contemplated at the end of the 1985 round of CoCom discussions. To reduce the current 4-year cycle to, for example, 2 years would probably require a reduction in list coverage. This could be facilitated by adding a "sunset" provision, perhaps limited to administrative exception note items, that would cause these items to be removed automatically during the next regular CoCom list review unless their continued inclu- sion was rejustified and agreed upon. The CoCom Exceptions Process If an exporter wishes to ship goods or technologies on the International List to a Soviet bloc destination for civilian use, he must apply to his own government for permission. If national discretion authority does not apply, a government that is supportive of the sale must seek an exception at CoCom to the general embargo. CoCom approval of the exception request requires unanimous consent. There are several problems with the exceptions process. The primary one is that member governments frequently interpret CoCom require- ments or particular cases differently. For example, members may differ in their judgments about a product's technical characteristics and thus about the level of CoCom controls that apply to its export: whether it is eligible for shipment at national discretion, whether it should receive favorable CoCom consideration, or whether it requires full CoCom consideration and approval. Or members may disagree about the conditions under which an exception to the general embargo or favor- able consideration may be granted. These conditions may be restric- tions on the end use and end user or a requirement to substitute equipment with lower technical parameters for the item in the original application. There is a widespread suspicion that members frequently object to other countries' exception applications or otherwise manipulate the exceptions process to benefit their own exporters. Individual members may adopt a more liberal interpretation of what constitutes a "safe" export and, in bringing such cases to CoCom as an exception request, create an impression that they seek a commercial edge. The fact that the United States has consistently submitted a majority of the requests for exceptions formerly, for the Soviet Union, and more recently, for the People's Republic of China-is often interpreted abroad as an effort to get into the market first. In the United States it is taken as evidence of stricter U.S. adherence to multilateral controls. Especially on its visits to European and Asian countries, the panel sought evidence of U.S. use of the exceptions process for unfair commercial advantage. It found no evidence to support this allegation.
ASSESSING MULTILATERAL EXPORT CONTROLS 143 Another problematic feature of the exceptions process arises from member governments' needs for technical, end-use, end-user, and other commercial information to make informed judgments. Governments of the larger CoCom countries have sufficient in-house technical expertise, but governments of smaller nations often rely on industry advisers to assist in the evaluations. Even though the data are "sanitized" to protect proprietary information, such reviews by industry have fostered the suspicion that these governments may be seeking to promote commercial interests by providing their producers with access to valuable commercial intelligence. The reliance of some member governments on private technical advice has been an argument for enlarging the role of defense ministries in national export control processes generally and in CoCom deliberations specifically. CoCom members have established a group of military experts representing the CoCom governments to consider the military relevance to the Soviet Union of particular Western technologies.* This organization meets independently of CoCom and reports its findings to the member governments. Another proposal is to strengthen the technical stab of CoCom so that smaller nations can participate in technical assessments without having to rely on industry assistance. Finally, the CoCom exception decision process and the ability of member governments to weigh exception requests could be improved if CoCom established a "precedents file" containing exception decisions, commodity descriptions, and end-user information. Currently, these data are not computerized nor are they readily available for review by CoCom members. Transparency of CoCom Decision Making Most firms try to avoid the waste of time, money, and customer good- will entailed in having a license application rejected. Difficult as it often is, especially for U.S. exporters, to discern the basis of national government export control decisions, the CoCom decision process and the criteria applied within it are even more obscure. This situation could be remedied if additional information on CoCom procedures and on commodities and end users approved or denied were made available. CoCom members could agree to submit appropriate information on approved and denied cases within a reasonable time (e.g., delayed 6 months) and sanitized in such a way that the information would not be useful for competitive *See Joseph Fitchett, "West to Assess Exports With Military Use," International Herald Tribune (October 12-13, 1985).
144 BALANCING THE NATIONAL INTEREST purposes. The panel perceived a great deal of interest in such an arrangement during its overseas fact-finding missions. U.S. POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION Through foreign policy and economic cycles, the premise that Soviet acquisitions of leading Western dual use technologies represent a signif- icant military threat has not been seriously challenged anywhere in the Western alliance. Although there have been lapses in attention and frequent disputes over the scope and means of control, there has not been a major international quarrel over principle. This consensus underlies the success of the current administration in revitalizing CoCom despite the fact that its initiatives coincided with a deep recession, a succession of trade disputes, and the uproar over the Siberian gas pipeline embargo. The goal of U.S. policy should be to improve the multilateral control system to the point where removing controls from West-West trade is possible. However, the panel believes that there are two features of U.S. policy that impede progress toward this goal. One is the tendency to resort to foreign policy trade sanctions to penalize Soviet political behavior without clearly distinguishing them from strategic controls and without adequate consultation with our allies. The other is the use of extraterritorial controls that signal U.S. mistrust of our CoCom partners and offend their national sovereignty. Foreign Policy Pressures on CoCom CoCom is designed to restrict the flow of goods and technology to the Soviet bloc solely for national security reasons. This is resected in the criteria used by CoCom for placing goods and technologies on the International List. However, U.S. foreign policy considerations, separate from the West-East military rivalry, have on occasion intruded on the CoCom process. Particularly when dealing with the bloc nations, it is difficult to distinguish, clearly and consistently, measures that are aimed directly at the bloc's military strength from measures that are aimed at its economic growth and political adventurism. Obviously, a change in political orientation within the bloc can radically change the national security equation. For example, the radical changes in China's foreign and domestic economic policies since the Cultural Revolution have led to a far-reaching change in the West's perception of the national security risks entailed in selling sophisticated technology to the PRC. Neverthe- less, the CoCom controls are intended to focus only on national security quite narrowly defined.
ASSESSING MULTILATERAL EXPORT CONTROLS 145 The United States has taken a much more expansive view of what types of goods and technology pose a military risk and has sought to use CoCom to punish Soviet behavior for essentially foreign policy reasons. Exam- ples include the U.S. proposal after the invasion of Afghanistan to embargo turnkey projects amounting to more than $100 million and the U.S. initiative after the imposition of martial law in Poland to add oil and gas equipment and technology to the CoCom list. Such initiatives usually meet with allied resistance and may threaten the ability of CoCom to sustain the embargo of critical strategic items, even when undertaken after consultation with our CoCom partners. They are certainly damaging when taken abruptly and without prior discussion. CoCom cannot function effectively without agreement on the national security criteria to be used in compiling and implementing the Interna- tional List. There is nothing to prevent a member from using export policy to influence or express disapproval of another country's actions nor from trying to persuade its allies to join in a trade embargo. But such initiatives should not be presented as falling within the original CoCom mandate and should not be discussed or implemented within CoCom except after discussion and agreement in other venues such as NATO. Because controls based on foreign policy considerations are likely to produce dissension, it is wise to keep the CoCom process isolated from explicit foreign policy considerations. Extraterritorial Controls In some circumstances the United States attempts to exercise licensing control over reexports of U.S.-origin products from one foreign country to another. The objective of such controls is understandable: The United States seeks to ensure through the controls that products that were licensed for export from the United States to a particular foreign country do not find their way to proscribed destinations. In practice, however, the value of the controls is highly questionable. First, the controls are premised on the assumption that the jurisdic- tional reach of the United States extends to actions by foreign citizens that are undertaken outside the territory of the United States.* Many other countries simply do not accept that U.S. authority has such an *The acceptance of limits on the jurisdictional reach of the United States does not leave the United States without any power to deter diversion through reexport. If the U.S. license applicant makes false statements in the initial licensing application as to the intended destination of the product, then of course sanctions could be imposed on the applicant. Moreover, the United States could decline to approve licenses for further exports to a foreign recipient who has reexported products to a proscribed destination.
146 BALANCING THE NATIONAL INTEREST expansive reach. Indeed, some of our closest allies have legislation that is intended to block the United States' extraterritorial jurisdiction. The controls are thus premised on legal grounds that are questioned by those who are expected to comply. Second, and perhaps as a consequence of doubts as to the legal justification of U.S. efforts to control reexports, foreign compliance with U.S. restrictions appears to be lax. The data examined by the panel suggest that foreign-owned businesses in CoCom countries often ignore the requirement to seek U.S. authorization to reexport, especially when the U.S. content (parts, components, or technology) of the goods is minimal or has lost its identity. This failure to observe U.S. requirements is not, of course, a vehicle of diversion when the host government controls exports in accordance with CoCom agreements. Third, U.S. reexport controls impede progress toward a cooperative and unified system of controls among the allies. In every country visited by the panel on its European and Asian fact-finding missions, foreign businessmen and government officials expressed strong opposition to the U.S. system of reexport controls. The intensity of feeling is disproportionate to the burden that foreign companies currently bear, but the burden could become substantial if compliance were enforced. Moreover, the grievance extends beyond questions of legal jurisdiction and potential cost. The explanation for this hostility is far more funda- mental: Our reexport controls are seen as convicting with widely ac- cepted principles of international law and national sovereignty. Despite the existence of certain anecdotal evidence regarding their previous laxness in export control enforcement, our allies view current U.S. policy as reflecting mistrust as to whether CoCom partners or other countries that share our security concerns will adequately protect our common interest in preventing the diversion of sensitive products to the Soviet bloc. The Political Costs of U.S. Policy U.S. restrictions on West-West trade and technology transfer are becoming a significant irritant in allied relations. Especially in Western Europe, where U.S. export control policy has heightened prevalent feelings of technological and economic insecurity, the panel found that resentment against U.S. restrictions is surfacing in many quarters. As in the pipeline episode, the objections are mainly to the extraterritorial reach of U.S. law; but there is also concern about discrimination against friendly foreign nationals in access to U.S. research and suspicion regarding the terms of weapons cooperation agreements including those related to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). As many Europeans see
ASSESSING MULTILATERAL EXPORT CONTROLS 147 it, not only are they impeded in gaining access to the technology that would help Europe become competitive with the United States and Japan, but they are also hampered in their commercial applications of the technology (some of which they have helped to develop). In 1985 the North Atlantic Assembly proposed a new European agency to promote European technological independence and to bargain with the United States on technology transfer issues. In a lengthy resolution adopted in February 1986, the European Parliament was even more critical of the "unilateral and especially indiscriminate proliferation" of U.S. technology controls, proposing that the Commission of the European Community consider seeking a European Court of Justice ruling on the compatibility of CoCom rules with provisions of the Treaty of Rome (which established the European Community). The resolution also ad- vised European Economic Community member states to adopt legislation modeled on Great Britain's Protection of Trading Interests Act blocking the application of U.S. extraterritorial restrictions. These statements reflect a mood that was forcefully conveyed to the panel on its European fact-finding mission by government officials, politicians, and private sector leaders alike. They raised the prospect of eroding trust and cooperation among the NATO allies. The current friction over national security export controls should be viewed in the context of volatile but basically sound alliance relation- ships. National security export controls are only one of many prevailing irritants including traditional trade protection and subsidy issues, diffi- culties in coordinating macroeconomic policies, unilateral U.S. foreign policy controls, and obstacles (of which technology transfer policy is only one) to the creation of a two-way street in military equipment develop- ment and procurement. Moreover, West-West technology controls have not been an impediment to agreements to strengthen the multilateral export control system nor even to agreements on SDI collaboration. Fundamental differences over West-East strategic trade are likely to emerge only if there is a sharp divergence of perceptions regarding Soviet behavior under the new leadership and the prospects for West-East accommodation with the Gorbachev regime. So far no serious divergence has occurred. The test of U.S. export control policy, however, is not the level of formal international cooperation that it engenders but the adequacy of the export control performance of the allies and other Western countries at both the governmental and private sector levels. The risk from the imposition of controls to which there are strong objections is that such controls will gradually undermine the credibility of the system and thus the degree of compliance with it. Maintaining and extending a web of unilateral West-West restrictions also may drive the development, appli
148 BALANCING THE NATIONAL INTEREST cation, and marketing of some technology to countries that are weaker links in the chain of controls. NEGOTIATIONS WITH NON-COCOM FREE WORLD COUNTRIES The Export Administration Act requires that the United States take "all feasible steps to initiate and conclude negotiations with appropriate foreign governments for the purpose of securing cooperation" in control- ling exports and reexports of controlled goods and technology. Countries that agree to institute controls equivalent to those of CoCom shall be treated in the same manner as CoCom member countries with respect to U.S. licensing requirements (i.e., availability of the G-COM license for shipments of less-sensitive controlled items, availability of the proposed G-CEU license, and automatic licensing after 15 or 30 days). Cooperation from countries that are not members of CoCom has become important to the success of the CoCom control efforts; it will be critical in the future as several third countries become significant markets for CoCom-controlled goods and develop indigenous products that fall within CoCom control parameters. As CoCom seeks to unify its controls on exports to the Soviet bloc, the threat of leakage of controlled products and technology through non-CoCom Free World countries grows. Ap- proval for the shipment of controlled goods from CoCom to non-CoCom nations has come to be based in part on the nature of the commitments or controls these nations are willing to exercise to prevent reshipment of these items to proscribed destinations. CoCom members have formally agreed to urge non-CoCom nations to establish and strengthen their controls vis-a-vis proscribed nations. CoCom's Subcommittee on Export Controls has reviewed the policies of some 20 non-CoCom third countries and grouped them according to their relationship to CoCom and the adequacy of their current controls. These groups include: · nations sharing CoCom objectives such as New Zealand and Australia; · nations sharing CoCom objectives but lacking adequate controls such as South Korea and South Africa; · neutral nations that do not share CoCom objectives but apply some controls such as Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, and Ireland; · nations that do not share CoCom objectives and apply few if any controls such as Singapore, Malaysia, and India; · nations on which information is inadequate such as Hong Kong; and · nations that have a special ideological attachment to proscribed nations. The subcommittee also has set common objectives for member coun- tries to guide their individual bilateral approaches to these nations. The
ASSESSING MULTILATERAL EXPORT CONTROrS 149 United States, for example, has proposed a number of objectives with respect to third country controls on exports to CoCom-proscribed na- tions. In the U.S. view, third countries should be asked to: · assume responsibility for preventing reexports to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries of imported CoCom-controlled items that do not have reexport authorization from the originating CoCom countries; · monitor use of CoCom items in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries after obtaining reexport approval; · control the export to proscribed destinations of indigenously pro- duced products that are functionally equivalent to CoCom-controlled items; and · cooperate in enforcement measures. If accepted, these conditions would amount to an adoption by third countries of the CoCom control list, both for imported and indigenously produced items, and of CoCom-like reexport and enforcement procedures for authorized exports. Although important agreements to protect some CoCom- and U.S.- origin goods have been reached with a few countries, none of the agreements concluded to date comes close to meeting the comprehensive U.S. criteria. Agreements with the European neutrals include measures to implement controls on selected categories of CoCom-origin items and to coordinate these controls with the CoCom member country in which the controlled item originates. In most cases, indigenous products are not subject to such controls. To date, negotiations with third countries have proceeded bilaterally. The United States has conducted discussions with a number of govern- ments supported by occasional interventions by other CoCom members. To achieve effective control and to avoid placing U.S. exporters at a competitive disadvantage, it is important that these diplomatic efforts be closely coordinated in CoCom and that bilateral agreements concluded by the United States be followed as expeditiously as possible by agreements with other CoCom countries. U.S. insistence on cooperation with U.S. reexport controls encourages neither coordination in CoCom nor the cooperation of third countries. An approach that does not create inducements for third country participation is unlikely to succeed with many governments, especially those of non-European, politically neutral countries. Raising the thresholds of CoCom-controlled products, extending favorable U.S. licensing terms to cooperating countries, and offering the prospect of a relaxation of U.S. reexport controls are the key inducements available to the United States in its efforts to extend the multilateral control system.
