A Vanishing Normative Power? The Changing Dynamics of EU Arms Exports: Trade, Geopolitics and Ethics from the First Gulf War to the War in Ukraine

The arms trade is a unique domain where commercial, geopolitical, strategic and ethical drivers intersect. While arms exports might provide economic benefits and strengthen alliances, they also risk enabling human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law. We examine how the EU has managed these competing variables, from 1990 to the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2021, by answering these fundamental questions: How did the European Union (EU) prioritise these variables at different times during this period? Is there any correspondence between drivers of EU arms policy and EU foreign and security strategy? An empirical analysis based on an OLS regression with a Chow test suggests that strategic and geopolitical drivers dominated the 1990-98 period; ethical and rights-based considerations gained prominence from 1999 to 2008; economic factors took precedence between 2009-21; and since 2022, geopolitical drivers may have reasserted themselves at the expense of the others. This shifting balance in the drivers of EU arms exports broadly reflects the evolving priorities of the European Security Strategy since 1990.