Code of Conduct -- U.S. Legislative
History
Arms Transfer Code of Conduct: Action in
the 104th Congress
House Action
Senate Action
On 23 May 1996, the Senate Appropriations Committee held a
hearing (published as S.Hrg. 104-222) on the Code of Conduct.
Testifying on behalf of the Clinton Administration were Under
Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
Lynn Davis, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John
Shattuck, and the Director of the Defense Security Assistance
Agency Lt. Gen. Thomas Rhame. While all of the administration
witnesses expressed support for the Code of Conduct bill's four
criteria, they opposed making these conditions U.S. law.
A non-governmental panel testified in support of the Code,
including Lawrence J. Korb (a former Assistant Secretary of Defense
in the Reagan Administration), William D. Hartung (Senior Research
Fellow at the World Policy
Institute and author of And Weapons for All), Holly
J. Burkhalter (Washington Director of Human
Rights Watch), and Lora Lumpe (Director of the Arms
Sales Monitoring Project). Click
here for Lora Lumpe's testimony before the Senate Special
Hearing on Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, 23 May 1995.
On 25 July, 1996, Sen. Byron Dorgan offered the Code
of Conduct on Arms Transfers as an amendment to the fiscal
year 1997 Foreign Operations Appropriations (H.R.3540). One hour
was alotted for debating the measure. Several Senators spoke
in support, including Sen. Dorgan, Hatfield, Kerry, Feinstein,
Pell, Kassebaum, and Jeffords. Sen. Mitch McConnell spoke against
it, and Sen. Kit Bond offered a motion to table (kill) the Code
amendment. Click here to see
the debate and vote (in sum, Sen. Bond's amendment won by a vote
of 65-35).
Arms Transfer Code of
Conduct: Action in the 105th Congress
This bill had great success in the first session of the 105th
Congress: it was included by the House of Representatives as
part of the State Department authorization act.
On 10 June 1997, the House of Representatives unanimously
accepted the Code as an amendment to HR 1757--the FY 1998-99
State Department authorization act. Click
here to read the amendment and statements made
in support of it. No member spoke against it.
The Senate did not include the Code in its version of the
bill, so the language needed to be accepted by the House-Senate
conference committee appointed to reconcile differences between
the two chambers' bills. These meetings started at the end of
July, but did not complete a final version of the State Department
authorization act before Congress adjourned in November. A number
of contentious issues unrelated to the Code stalled negotiations.
This committee reconvened to finish its business late in the
evening of 10 March. There, in highly irregular fashion, Republicans
from the House and Senate agreed to a conference report which
did not include the Code.
Late in the summer of 1998, Representative Sam Gedjensen (D-CT)
introduced a "multilateral code of conduct" which imitated
the language in the McKinney/Rohrabacher calling for U.S. participation
in efforts to establish a multilateral code of conduct on arms
transfers, but did nothing to restrain current U.S. exports or
military aid. Code of Conduct supporters dubbed this proposal
the "faux Code," and Oscar Arias, a leader of the campaign
for an international Code of Conduct, and Rep. McKinney wrote
letters
to Gedjensen asking him to reconsider. These letters and
the work of grassroots activists kept the multilateral-only code
from being voted on under suspension of the rules.
In the Senate, John Kerry (D-MA), along with fourteen cosponsors,
continues to build support for S. 1067, The Code of Conduct on
Arms Transfers Act of 1997.
The European Union passed its own version of an arms transfer
Code of Conduct in June 1998. Saferworld,
a British NGO, has material online about the European
Code, as does the British
American Security Information Council.
Arms Transfer Code of
Conduct: Action in the 106th Congress
Reps. Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) and Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) worked
together on a compromise Code of Conduct bill that combines Gejdenson’s
international code—which asks the President to "attempt
to achieve" an international arms sales code of conduct
with Wassenaar Arrangement countries—with important portions
of McKinney’s U.S. Code of Conduct. This legislation would
incorporate definitions for the original Code criteria (democracy,
respect for human rights, non-aggression and transparency) and
would require the State Department to include in its annual Human
Rights report an assessment of states’ compliance with these
criteria. This text has been passed by the House International
Relations Committee as an amendment to the Security Assistance
Act (H.R. 973) and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act (H.R.
1211).
McKinney’s full U.S. Code of Conduct was introduced in
the House as a stand-alone bill on June 17, 1999, as H.R.
2269 with sixty-five original co-sponsors.
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