Canada's Saudi Arms Deal Is History Repeating
Written by: Tyler Shipley
This week, labour and community activists staged a day of protest against the massive Canadian arms deal with Saudi Arabia. This action drew attention to the horrific uses the Saudi dictatorship is putting to those weapons, and this deal is part of a long Canadian tradition.
In fact, this isn’t even the first time Canada has tried to sell weapons to the Saudi dictators: in 1986, external affairs minister Joe Clark went to Riyadh to sell armoured vehicles, claiming (as the Liberals do today) that it was part of Canada’s commitment to peace.
This article highlights the long continuities in Canadian arms sales, because the details on the current Saudi deal are well described already by others. Historical details are drawn from and cited in Canada in the World.
Arming the Saudi War Machine
The $15 billion deal signed in 2014 with Saudi Arabia is the largest arms deal in Canadian history. The Saudi dictatorship is one of the most repressive right wing theocracies in the world and its war against Yemen (ostensibly to defeat Houthi ‘terrorists’ but really about consolidating Saudi regional power) has cost more than 50,000 lives and pushed Yemen to the brink of the worst famine in a century.
Saudi Arabia does not produce its own weapons, so it relies on equipment purchased by suppliers like Canada. Canadian officials have repeatedly - and recently - lied about the light armoured vehicles (calling them ‘jeeps’) and denied that the Saudi regime was using them in Yemen.
The company profiting from carnage in Yemen is Global Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, a branch of a US company chaired by Phebe Novakovic (former CIA, DoD, now a major power broker in Washington). The company’s major shareholders are large investment firms like the Vanguard Group, meaning that the profits ultimately flow to a wide range of Wall St / Bay St companies and individuals. It really is the entire capitalist class itself getting rich from this conflict.
So Canada is breaking its own laws and directly contributing to arguably the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century, but why? Does Justin Trudeau care more about the profits of Longview Asset Management than families in Yemen? Yes, probably, but this issue runs much deeper than Justin himself.
The Long Shadow of Canadian Arms
Canada’s long history as a weapons dealer is about two things: profits and politics. Naturally, any capitalist state serves its capitalist class in generating profits, and this includes the arms industry. But equally important here is that this is not simply free market fundamentalism: Canada sells weapons to its right wing allies, not to its enemies. This is clear in scanning a century of war profiteering.
Even before it sold arms, Canada was selling the materials it knew were being used for arms. For instance, even as fascist Japan in the 1930s conquered and enslaved Korea, Manchuria and China, Canada continued doing roaring business, providing the metals being used for Japanese weapons.
When the winds shifted and Canada found itself at war with Japan, it played a central role in researching and providing the materials (uranium, mined by Dene people without their knowledge of its purpose) for the atomic bombs that would obliterate Japanese cities and civilians.
By the post-war era, Canada had developed a legitimate arms industry and those weapons would be sold (and in some cases donated) to European powers trying to crush independence movements around the world.
Consider a few examples: Canada donated weapons to France at it tried to crush the Algerian liberation movement. France had violently occupied Algeria since the 1840s, and some 1.5 million lives were lost in the Algerian struggle for freedom. Canada also provided weapons to help Britain crush rebellions in Kenya and Malaysia, to help the Dutch attack Indonesia’s freedom movement, to help Belgium maintain its domination of the Congo, and to help Portugal control Angola. This list could certainly go on.
More than 400 Canadian companies provided $2.4 billion worth of weapons to support the American war in Vietnam, from engines to ammo to grenade to green berets. “With luck,” said the Toronto Star, “our explosives could be hailing down on a Vietnamese village in six weeks.”
A Canadian company furnished the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza with war planes in the 1940s, beginning a long tradition of arming Latin American dictators in Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Chile and Colombia.
Though often overlooked in the west, one of the 20th century’s worst nightmares was the reign of Suharto in Indonesia - whose victims included millions of Indonesian, Timorese, and Papuan leftists - and who also received arms from Canada.
Canada was one of the arms suppliers for Apartheid South Africa, weapons that were used not only to maintain the structural racism of that country but also in an attempt to invade and conquer Namibia and Angola.
In the 1980s, Canada sold arms to *both sides* of the Iran-Iraq War, a macabre decision that served both the profits of the manufacturers but also the western powers’ political goal of weakening both states in order that neither could become a regional power.
Over the past three decades, Canada has become the world’s 6th largest arms exporter (2nd highest provider to the Middle East). Its weapons assist Israel’s genocide in Palestine, help the dictator of Honduras kill his opponents, and arm fascist militias in Ukraine.
Profits and Politics
Again, it is not only about profits. Canada did not sell weapons to left movements fighting against colonialism. It did not provide arms to elected or popular left govts to help them protect themselves. In fact, Canada often sold weapons to right wing terrorists fighting against their govts.
For example, despite Canada’s having funnelled arms to support the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, it was ultimately overthrown by the popular left wing Sandinistas in 1979. The Sandinistas won the ensuing election but Canada provided weapons to the Contra paramilitaries who attacked the new govt and terrorized the country for a decade.
The only thing that has ever interrupted this pattern is popular action. Canada did have to back down from supporting both the Contras and Apartheid South Africa when both local and international opposition shamed the Canadian govt into changing course. This lesson is worth remembering in 2020.
Canada is directly complicit in the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the Saudi dictatorship right now in Yemen. This is part of a long pattern and it will only stop with serious and committed action to force it to stop.
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