Abstract

In the last five years Georgia multiplied by fourteen its military spending and acquired impressive amounts of second-hand armaments. Adding to these masses of old equipment, often from Russian origin, are also modern armaments deliveries and military assistance, mainly provided by the United States and Israel. This unrestrained accumulation of armaments shows the premeditated character of Mikheïl Saakashvili’s offensive on South-Ossetia.

A great proportion of these weapons transfers towards Georgia was not declared in the UN Register of Conventional Arms. Also to underline is the undisguised complicity of several EU Member States in this Georgian arms race, in spite of the criteria established by the EU Code of conduct on arms export. This proves that the instruments of arms transfer controls do not correctly play their part in terms of conflict prevention, and points out the urgent necessity to transform the European Code into a legally binding instrument.