ABSTRACT
Even after a cursory look at the debate on export controls in general and those aimed at chemical and biological dual-use materials, technologies and services in particular, one cannot avoid the impression that much of that debate is dominated by either rhetoric or ignorance (Roberts 1995). The rhetoric is provided by fundamental and dogmatic critics of these controls, many of which are to be found in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and who equal export controls with a strategy of export denial. Their criticism, however, has not been substantiated with figures as to how big a trade volume has been denied to them. Even the enumeration of a set of instances, in which exports were denied and end-uses were very obviously and unambiguously peaceful, has not been forthcoming from the camp of dogmatic export control critics. This – as well as the fact that most of the states who are accused of withholding essential technologies and material from developing states are trading states who have an interest in free, and not restricted trade – very much nurtures the suspicion that export controls are either misunderstood or misrepresented when they are portrayed primarily as a means to implement a strategy of export denial. This rhetoric has led many export control proponents to ignore these criticisms as outlandish and politically motivated, rather than based in fact. This perception, in turn, has prompted the mantra-like reiteration of the well-known western position that export controls are a mere manifestation of the non-transfer norms (see below) contained in the nuclear weapons control regime and the chemical and biological weapons prohibition regimes. As a result, a constructive debate on chemical and biological weapons-related export controls has been taking place only to a limited extent.
