As the global economy continues its slow recovery from the 2008–2009 worldwide recession, armament sales appear to have been one of the few recession-proof export sectors. The greater Middle East has been main emporium for such purchases. While the United States and Russia remain the world’s two leading armaments exporters, other countries have also rushed in to fill niche markets, such as small arms, training aircraft and light artillery. Notably, Finland has been increasing its arms exports to the point where questions have begun to be raised in the parliament about the morality of such exports to volatile regions. So far, the government in Helsinki has been providing bland assurances that Finnish armaments are not being used to violate human rights around the world.
On October 23, Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä insisted, during his weekly interview on YLE Radio, that the country’s armaments export policy remained unchanged. But the following day, European Parliament Member Liisa Jaakonsaari, of the Sosialidemokraatit party (SDP), questioned Sipilä’s assurances that human rights remained at the core of the country’s armament export policy by pointing to Finnish weapons sales to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan (Helsinki Times, October 24). Moreover, according to the think tank SaferGlobe Finland’s recently released report, “2016 Finnish Arms Export,” in 2015 Finland’s arms exports were worth $108 million (€99 million), with more than half going to the Middle East, including to be used in war-torn Yemen (Yleisradio Oy, October 23). SaferGlobe’s report noted that the Middle East has now supplanted the European Union as Finland’s primary armaments export market.
The reorientation of Finnish arms exports away from Europe toward Middle Eastern and Asian markets has been nearly a decade in the making. In the early 2000s, 84 percent of Finnish arms exports were to the European Union. Between 2011 and 2015, the EU’s proportion of Finnish arms exports had dropped by nearly a third, to 52 percent. By 2015, Middle Eastern customers overtook the EU for the first time (Saferglobe.fi, October 26, 2015).
Recent Finnish arms exports to post-Soviet Central Asian states Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have also coming under parliamentary scrutiny. Reportedly, Finland exported 50 advanced TRG M10 snipers rifles and 100,000 rounds to Turkmenistan in September 2015. The following year, Finland also exported 150 units of the same rifle to Uzbekistan (Hs.fi, October 23). Defending Finnish armament sales to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, on October 24 Finnish Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö stated that such deals were only concluded after careful consideration of each individual case. As for the possibility of Uzbekistan’s military forces using Finnish armaments to repress human rights, Niinistö observed that, “On the whole, Uzbekistan in recent years has been relatively stable and the risk that [our] rifles would be used in violation of human rights, is considered to be minor” (Yleisradio Oy, October 24). Considering the relatively small footprint Finnish arms exporters currently represent in Central Asian and Middle Eastern markets, for the moment Moscow appears comfortable with Finland’s growing entry into Russia’s traditional markets in Eurasia and the Middle East.