Carlos Menem was not a bad president of the Argentine. Though his tenure of office was marked by a series of lurid corruption scandals, there were many who felt that this was a small price to pay for a man who brought the country stability after the long darkness of military rule between 1976-1983. Menem did much to restore his country’s pride and confidence after the brutality of military rule and the humiliating defeat of the Galtieri junta by the British over the Falklands.
The past has, however, now caught up with Menem who stands accused, with three other members of his old government, of conspiring to ship arms illegally to Ecuador and Croatia between 1991 and 1995. This is rather a different matter from the standard bribery and plundering of the national territory. It concerns the Argentine’s behavior in the face of international rules on avoiding the supply of arms to war zones.
Sources indicate that Argentinean weaponry supplied to the Croatians was used in their oppression of their Muslim neighbors in Bosnia Herzegovina, as well as in their campaign against invading Serbs. The full details of the transaction have yet to come out, but investigators are saying that so important were the supplies, they could not have left the Argentine without the authority of people at the very top of the Menem government. Thus the controversial former president now aged 71, stands accused with his former armed forces chief, Martin Balza, his old foreign minister Guido di Tella and another former minister, Erman Gonzalez.
Both Argentina and Brazil have worked hard to develop their own arms industries, making everything from attack aircraft to personal weapons. However, in the modern world economy, it is no longer economically feasible for a country to develop weapons purely for its own use. Export markets have to be found and competition is fierce, as any international arms show will demonstrate. The British and the French, the Swiss and Italians and to a lesser extent the Germans are no slouches themselves at building and selling devastating weaponry of most kinds. They also have the financial muscle to bully their way into Third World markets.
From a commercial point of view, it is against this dominance that the lesser arms-producing countries must compete. It may be that Menem may choose to defend himself and his government by citing the difficult problems of competing against long-established arms producers. Maybe he will perhaps claim that though he broke the law in flouting the arms embargoes, he did so for the sake of his country’s struggling economy.
It appears, however, that there is evidence that both the arms deals were helped on their way by bribery paid to top Argentinean officials. If it is demonstrated that money actually found its way into the president’s pocket, then the legal defense of “national economic interest” will fail spectacularly.
But there will be a more serious consequence if the case does end in Menem’s disgrace. He did make many Argentineans feel good about themselves and their country for the first time in many years. He raised its international profile and enhanced its credibility.. His disgrace will be a blow to many.
