Playing with Words While Yemen Burns: Managing Criticism of UK Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12484 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Author | Anna Stavrianakis |
Playing with Words While Yemen Burns:
Managing Criticism of UK Arms Sales
to Saudi Arabia
Anna Stavrianakis
University of Sussex
Abstract
This survey article examines the ways in which the UK government has attempted to manage criticism of its arms exports to
Saudi Arabia. Hitting the headlines since 2015 due to widespread, credible allegations of serious violations of international
humanitarian law committed by the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen, UK arms sales are now subject to unusual levels
of parliamentary, media, NGO and legal scrutiny. The article outlines the government’s strategies for managing criticism in
order to both deal with domestic dissent and maintain good relations with the Saudi government. Paying attention to such
strategies is an important means of analysing how arms transfers are justified and facilitated, and how governments manage
the contradictory pressures to both promote and restrict arms exports.
On 21 July 2016, on the day the UK Parliament was break-
ing for summer recess, the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office (FCO) issued a set of corrections to its statements
about arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Having previously sta-
ted that the Saudi-led coalition was not targeting civilians
and had not breached international humanitarian law (IHL)
in the war in Yemen, the essence of the corrections was
that the UK government ‘have not assessed that there has
been a breach’of IHL, and ‘has not assessed that the ...
coalition is targeting civilians’(Ellwood, 2016a). While claim-
ing that the amendments did not constitute a change in
policy, but rather a clarification for the record, the response
was scathing. Hilary Benn MP’s tweeted response called it
‘extraordinary’that such a response was ‘smuggled out on
the last day of the session’(Benn 2016). Amnesty Interna-
tional (2016a) described it as ‘jaw-dropping’, beyond double-
speak and ‘grossly misleading parliament.’Oxfam accused
the government of being ‘in denial and disarray’,‘flagrantly’
ignoring its international commitments (Graham-Harrison
2016).
The government’s shift in public messaging came in the
run-up to a judicial review of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Held in February 2017 at the High Court in London, the case
was brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), who
argued that the ongoing supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia
breaks UK law, which stipulates that the government will
not export weapons if there is a clear risk that they might
be used in serious violations of IHL. The judicial review,
which eventually found in favour of the government, has
been the highest profile element of a longer controversy:
since the start of the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in the
war in Yemen in March 2015, UK arms exports have become
highly politicised, making headline news and forcing the
government to justify its policies in the face of criticism. The
corrections to the public record ahead of the hearing raise
the issue of how the government has attempted to handle
controversy over its arms export policy.
This article surveys the ways in which the UK government
has attempted to manage criticism over its arms export pol-
icy towards Saudi Arabia. It identifies the key strategies used
by the UK government to manage domestic criticism –
some specific to the Saudi case, and some generic –as well
as those deployed to maintain and manage the relationship
with the Saudi government. Paying attention to the discur-
sive strategies deployed by the state to manage criticism
and navigate the pressures coming from different audiences
helps us understand how arms exports are justified and
facilitated. The Saudi case is distinctive, given its centrality
to UK arms export and wider foreign policy, and the impor-
tance and longevity of weapons sales to the bilateral rela-
tionship. The war in Yemen has created one of the world’s
largest humanitarian crises, though, to which the UK govern-
ment also claims to be responding effectively. This makes
the Saudi case a good test of the competing commitments
of the UK government, and of the UN Arms Trade Treaty
(ATT), which entered into force in 2014 and to which the UK
is a State Party. How states manage contradictory pressures
on sensitive policy areas, and how war and violence are
facilitated through arms transfers, form the more general
context in which such a case should be considered.
UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia
The use of UK-supplied weapons by the Saudi-led coalition
in the war in Yemen has generated the biggest parliamen-
tary, media and public outcry since the 1980s ‘arms to Iraq’
Global Policy (2017) 8:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12484 ©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 8 . Issue 4 . November 2017 563
Survey Article
To continue reading
Request your trial