Arms on the Amazon
South America Goes Ballistic--with French Assistance
The Brazilian Bomb: South America goes Ballistic
August 13, 1990 By Gary Milhollin and Gerard White
NEW REPUBLIC
August 13, 1990, p. 10-11
As the United States worries about missiles in the hands of Iraq and other countries in the Middle East, an egregious case of missile proliferation is taking shape in its own back yard. A group of European companies has agreed to sell Brazil the technology to build a rocket motor capable of launching an intercontinental ballistic missile. If the sale goes through, the first non-U.S. ICBM will take up residence in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil will be able to sell long-range missiles to Iraq and Libya (its leading arms clients), and international efforts to stop the spread of large missiles to developing countries will crash to a halt.
The outlines of the deal are clear. The French company Societe Européenne de Propulsion (SEP) is joining forces with Volvo in Sweden, MAN in West Germany, and FN Motors in Belgium to teach Brazil how to produce the powerful Viking rocket engine, developed by France to lift satellites for the European Space Agency. Other European firms—including Saab Space, Alcatel-Kirk, Sfena, and Contraves—will supply Brazilian engineers with extensive training in on-board computers, guidance systems, and the techniques of launching multistage rockets. All of this assistance will enable Brazil to build accurate missiles big enough to carry nuclear warheads.
There is a simple motivation behind the deal: greed. These corporations own a majority share of Arianespace, a holding company for the European Space Agency’s Ariane launch vehicle. Rocket technology is being used as a convenient sweetener to lure Brazil into hiring the Ariane for satellite launches instead of McDonnell-Douglas’s Delta launcher. (McDonnell-Douglas can’t make a similar offer without violating the U.S. Arms Export Control Act.)
France and the Ariane group are practiced in this sort of deal, having traded missile technology for satellite launch contracts since at least 1975. In fact, since its creation, the Ariane group has garnered more than half of the world’s satellite launch market—at the expense of international security. In the mid-1970s SEP invited Indian engineers to participate in the Viking’s development and later licensed India to produce the Viking at home. The French propulsion technology contributed to the development of India’s intermediate-range Agni missile. Not surprisingly, India showed its gratitude by hiring the French-dominated Ariane to launch its satellites. In 1988 Arianespace booked two more Indian satellite launches. At about the same time, France offered India another powerful engine for India’s newest space rocket—also a secret deal.
The agreement with Brazil shows every sign of working the same way. Brazil is now turning its largest and most successful space rocket, the Sonda IV, into an intermediate-range, nuclear-capable missile. The con-version is being handled by a research arm of the Brazilian Air Force called CTA (the Aerospace Technology Center). Besides converting the Sonda IV to a missile, CTA is also converting natural uranium into nuclear-weapon-grade material at a secret installation, according to press reports confirmed by US. officials. There is no reason to expect that CTA will keep Brazil’s obligatory promise to restrict the European rocket technology to peaceful use. In fact, Brazil is already breaking a peaceful use pledge to West Germany. To import German nuclear equipment, Brazil promised to allow inter-national inspectors to verify that it would not be used to make atomic bombs. Not only has Brazil refused to allow inspections, it has even shifted German-trained engineers from the civilian to the military side of its nuclear program.
Brazil is one of the world’s largest arms exporters to the Third World. Its first three space rockets, the Sonda I, II, and III, were all developed into surface-to-surface missiles that Iraq, Libya, and Saudi Arabia purchased right off the production line. U.S. officials have con-firmed reports that Brazil is currently trying to produce a nuclear-capable missile for Libya and Iraq. Both Libya and Iraq already make poison gas for missile warheads and want to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq has sent a representative to look at a Brazilian missile prototype, and Libya has offered to finance Brazil’s missile development program in exchange for a supply of missiles and the technology to make them.
Brazil has publicly rebuffed US. complaints about its cooperation with Libya and Iraq. In 1987 the Missile Technology Control Regime (Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, West Germany, and the United States) agreed to restrict sales of any rocket that could carry a 500 kilogram payload a distance of more than 300 kilometers—limits the Viking clearly exceeds. Also a part of this nuclear non-proliferation treaty is an agreement not to sell the technology to produce such rockets. The Regime is the only international device for slowing missile proliferation. Although only a “gentle-man’s agreement” without international legal status or sanctions, it helps stigmatize such sales by providing a focus for international disapproval.
Brazil, which has publicly rejected the treaty, is exactly the kind of country the Regime’s drafters had in mind when they agreed to restrict missile technology. If France and Germany sell their production technology to Brazil, the Regime will be fatally undermined. No member country will abstain from sales that other members are freely making, and ballistic missiles will spread unchecked. The Ariane group—and the governments of France, Belgium, Sweden, West Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark—all seem perfectly willing to trigger such a free-for-all.
That means the United States must act alone. If President Bush really wanted to stop the Viking deal, he could threaten to cancel more than $50 million worth of SDI contracts held by Aerospatiale, SEP, Contraves, and other Ariane partners. Despite the appeal of this sanction, however, there is another that is faster, cheaper, and at least as powerful: publicity. Detailed public criticism of the offer to Brazil would produce exactly what the companies hope to avoid—public responsibility for their actions. Under cover of secrecy, the exporters can quietly argue their case for export licenses to key officials. With exposure, the deal would founder as the European public demanded explanations from the companies and their respective governments. Just over a year ago Bonn was publicly humiliated by revelations that German companies had sold poison gas technology to Libya for its plant at Rabta. Public disclosure forced the German government to stop its dangerous exports and tighten its lax controls.
The Viking deal is an important test. If it goes through, there is nothing to stop Ariane or other space-launch companies from selling the same technology to Argentina, Brazil’s rival, or to Pakistan, India’s rival. ICBMs could spring up around the globe. And the developed nations will find that for the first time since World War II their greatest threat will come not from super-power confrontation, but from their own exports.
GARY MILHOLLIN is a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and director of the Wisconsin project on Nuclear Arms Control. GERARD WHITE is assistant director of the project.
France will help Brazil develop nuclear-powered submarines, Macron says
Americas
President Emmanuel Macron and counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday celebrated the launch of Brazil's third French-designed submarine, which will help secure the country's immense coastline, dubbed the "Blue Amazon."
Issued on: 27/03/2024 - 18:03
Modified: 27/03/2024 - 18:10
By:
NEWS WIRES
The two men highlighted the importance of their countries' defense partnership during a time of major global unrest, at a ceremony at Brazil's ultra-modern naval base in Itaguai near Rio de Janeiro.
It is here that Brazil built the Tonelero, the third of four planned conventional diesel attack submarines, with training, equipment, and technical assistance from France.
Under cloudy skies, the submarine was christened by First Lady Rosangela da Silva, nicknamed "Janja."
France and Brazil's defense ties "will allow two important countries, each on a continent, to prepare so that we can face this adversity, without worrying about any type of war, because we are defenders of peace," said Lula.
Despite differences, notably on the Ukraine war, Macron said "the great peaceful powers of Brazil and France" had "the same vision of the world."
Macron is on a whirlwind tour of Brazil, a major economic ally, which kicked off Tuesday with the launch of a plan to raise over a billion dollars in green investments to protect the Brazilian and Guyanese Amazon.
Jungle bromance
The visit, the first by a French president to Latin America's economic giant in over a decade, is also a move to reset ties which had deteriorated significantly under former president Jair Bolsonaro.
A warm meeting between Macron and Lula in the Amazon, in which the two men were pictured beaming and clasping hands in the jungle, spawned a raft of internet memes about their bromance.
The cozy scenes -- a far cry from the days Bolsonaro lobbed insults at Macron's wife -- continued Wednesday at the submarine launch.
With its 8,500 kilometers of coastline, Brazil is seeking to ensure the security of what it calls the "blue Amazon," its immense exclusive economic zone through which more than 95 percent of its foreign trade passes and where it extracts 95 percent of its oil.
The construction of the submarines was outlined in a 2008 deal between Lula and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, which also included the purchase of 50 Caracal helicopters.
The fourth submarine, the Angostura, will be launched in 2025.
France skirts around nuclear sub
Brazil is also planning to build its first nuclear-powered submarine, the Alvaro Alberto, a project that has suffered significant delays, mainly due to budget constraints.
The French naval defense manufacturer Naval Group is supporting the design and construction of the submarine, except for the nuclear boiler which is being designed by the Brazilians.
Brasilia is however trying to convince Paris to increase technology transfers to help it integrate the reactor into the submarine and sell it equipment linked to nuclear propulsion.
France has been reticent to transfer such technology due to the challenges of nuclear proliferation.
"If Brazil wants to have access to knowledge of nuclear technology, it is not to wage war. We want this knowledge to assure all countries that want peace that Brazil will be at their side," said Lula.
Macron told Brazil "France will be at your side" during the development of the nuclear-powered submarines, without announcing specific assistance.
"I want us to open the chapter for new submarines... that we look nuclear propulsion in the face while being perfectly respectful of all non-proliferation commitments," he said.
Later on Wednesday, Macron arrived in the economic capital Sao Paulo, and blasted the long-stalled free trade agreement between the European Union and South America's Mercosur bloc.
The deal, which has recently run into fierce resistance from European farmers, "as it is negotiated today is a really bad agreement, for you and for us," Macron told an economic forum in the southeastern city.
"Let's build a new agreement ... one which is responsible from a development, climate and biodiversity point of view," he said of the pact, negotiations for which originally began 25 years ago.
After an agreement was reached in 2019, final approval of the deal was then blocked amid opposition from several countries including France, even as nations such as Spain, Germany and Brazil have championed its adoption.
(AFP)
