``Peace dividend'' and the arms trade
By Pádraig MacDabhaid
Should the so-called ``peace dividend'' include job creation by U.S. companies who manufacture arms and fuel the international arms race?
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Through the ``peace dividend'' and its work with John Hume, Raytheon is in actual fact bringing U.S. guns into the heart of Irish politics
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This is a question being asked by the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre after it was announced that SDLP leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume had been instrumental in bringing U.S. arms firm Raytheon Systems Limited to Derry.
While the media has been lavishing praise on Hume for bringing 150 jobs to Derry, An Phoblacht has decided to take a closer look at the company which, through the ``peace dividend'' and its work with John Hume, is in actual fact bringing U.S. guns into the heart of Irish politics.
In March 1999, Raytheon announced its plans to set up a software house in the Six Counties. In its press release, it also claimed that it was bidding for three British Ministry of Defence (MoD) contracts and added that if it won one of the contracts, it would speed up the opening of its centre in Derry.
This has since caused controversy in the city, with many groups expressing concern over the possibility of the people of Derry assisting the MoD at a time when the MoD is doing all in its power to block the new Bloody Sunday inquiry.
John Hume, however, welcomed the company, saying: ``I am very encouraged by this initiative from Raytheon. The company has recognised that the dividend from peace is still flourishing.''
A closer examination of Raytheon shows that John Hume has clearly divorced economics from all ethical considerations. Clearly he has opted to take a beggars cannot be choosers attitude, thus avoiding the fact that we should not be creating jobs which are dependent on conflict and misery elsewhere in the world.
Raytheon promotes itself as an electronics firm, ``as one of the largest defence contractors in the world, with a turnover of around $20 billion''.
So what sort of defence work has Raytheon been involved in?
They supply the Saudi Arabian armed forces with weapons, a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. They also supply the Indonesian military with their vast armoury, which has been used to terrorise the people of East Timor since 1975.
Earlier this year, Tomahawk missiles, which have parts made by Raytheon, were fired at civilian targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.
Raytheon Vice-President Jerry Lockard boasted that, ``since Desert Storm in 1991, when it was first used in combat, more than 1,000 Tomahawks have been fired with a high degree of accuracy''.
In reality, a high degree of accuracy means hundreds of civilians dead in a bunker in Baghdad.
Just last year, Human Rights Watch approached companies in order to highlight the humanitarian impact of anti-personnel mines and asked them to renounce future involvement in producing these weapons. Raytheon were one of the companies which refused to do this.
The company's infamous reputation does not just lie within the arms industry itself. It is also well known for its mistreatment of workers.
In 1997, the company took over a base on the Caribbean island of Andros in the Bahamas and immediately began cutting wages and pension funds. When the workers formed a union to protest, Chris Kirkland, the union president, was sacked.
Raytheon also has links to the British Labour Party; the company made a substantial donation to the Labour Party in the run-up to the last Westminster election.
The donation was a signal that New Labour had put its unease with Raytheon behind it. In 1994, the company had laid off all 870 employees at its two plants in England. These same workers had cut overheads by 25% and increased productivity by a third.
Raytheon has constantly been involved in anti-trade union activity and has been through the U.S. courts for its trade union-busting activities.
There are also many consumer and human rights groups which are rightly worried at the apparent connections between many of the large technology companies and the world's intelligence agencies.
In 1995, Raytheon bought a company named E-Systems, a company with a very murky past.
Following U.S. Congressional investigations in the mid 1970s into alleged CIA drug dealing in Laos during the Vietnam War, a company called Air Asia was privatised. Air Asia was the ground service company for Air America, a CIA front which had constantly been accused of involvement in drug trafficking to fund the war in Vietnam. In 1975, it was reported that Air Asia was bought by a ``CIA-linked company called E-Systems''.
Shortly after buying Air Asia, E-Systems began doing maintenance work for the planes of Operation Condor which was a US funded anti-drug operation run by the Mexican government.
The operation was a disaster as no records were kept on how funds were used. A 1985 U.S. Congressional investigation revealed that not one drug dealer was arrested.
Since buying the controversial E-Systems company in 1995, Raytheon has been given a U.S. Navy contract to build two Radar complexes in Puerto Rico. Ironically, the purpose of these Radar sites is to stop drug trafficking from South America.
It would also appear that the political thinking of the CIA is quite similar to that of Raytheon.
In August of this year, a former head of a CIA division tasked with ``anti-terrorism'' appeared on U.S. television and used Ireland as an example of how, when you flood a country with jobs, political dissension decreases, thereby undermining the support base of any revolutionary groups.
A similar political motive for investment in the Six Counties was echoed by Daniel Burnham, Chairman of Raytheon, when he said he was delighted to assist in the economic development of the Six Counties and ``thereby promote peace and prosperity''.
Similar sentiments have been expressed by other U.S. companies such as Logicon, a company which provides technical assistance and the training to the US Army. Logicon has been chosen to administer the ``Northern Ireland Visa for Peace and Reconciliation Programme'' which will see 35,000 people under 35 given temporary visas to work in the U.S. for up to three years in order to promote peace.
By ``promoting peace and prosperity'' through economic investment, such companies and their supporters are again divorcing economics from ethical considerations and measuring morality through money.
Our peace, however, cannot cause misery to the rest of the world.
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