Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls

Based on Wikipedia: Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls

In 1982, two Japanese and Norwegian companies quietly shipped eight precision milling machines to the Soviet Union. These weren't ordinary machines—they could carve submarine propellers with such accuracy that Soviet subs became dramatically harder for American sonar to detect. The sale violated international agreements and sparked a scandal that would see executives arrested and Toshiba products banned from American military stores.

This was exactly what CoCom was supposed to prevent.

The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls—mercifully shortened to CoCom—was the Cold War's attempt to build a technological fence around the communist world. For forty-five years, from 1949 to 1994, Western nations tried to keep their most advanced technologies out of Soviet hands. The story of how they tried, how they often failed, and what it all meant is surprisingly relevant today, as policymakers debate whether to resurrect something similar to contain China's technological rise.

The Gentleman's Agreement

CoCom was born from fear.

In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, years ahead of Western predictions. American policymakers were rattled. Many remembered how the United States had helped industrialize Japan in the 1930s, selling them machine tools, steel, and technical expertise—only to face that industrial might at Pearl Harbor and across the Pacific. They were determined not to repeat the mistake with Stalin.

Within months of the Soviet nuclear test, representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France met secretly to discuss coordinating their export policies. The result was peculiar by the standards of international agreements: CoCom was never formalized by treaty. There was no grand signing ceremony, no ratification by legislatures. It was, in the diplomatic parlance of the era, a "gentleman's agreement"—an informal understanding that operated through consensus.

This informality was both a feature and a bug. It allowed flexibility and avoided the political complications of formal treaties. But it also meant CoCom had no real enforcement teeth. Every decision required unanimous consent from all members, which made the committee sluggish and susceptible to national interests trumping collective security.

The United States, frustrated by what it saw as European foot-dragging, passed the Battle Act in 1951. The law threatened to cut foreign aid to any ally that traded prohibited goods with communist nations. It was a blunt instrument, essentially telling allies: cooperate with our export controls or lose American support.

This coercive approach would set the tone for decades of trans-Atlantic friction.

What CoCom Actually Controlled

CoCom maintained three separate control lists, each targeting different categories of sensitive goods.

The Nuclear List was the most restricted. It covered everything needed to build nuclear weapons: uranium enrichment equipment, centrifuge components, nuclear reactor technology, and related materials. These items were essentially banned from export to the Eastern Bloc under any circumstances.

The International Munitions List covered conventional military equipment: guided missiles, advanced avionics systems, radar technology, and other weapons-related items. Think of it as a catalog of things that could directly hurt you on a battlefield.

The Industrial List was the trickiest category. It contained "dual-use" items—technologies that had legitimate civilian applications but could also enhance military capabilities. Supercomputers, advanced semiconductors, precision machine tools, telecommunications equipment. A supercomputer might design better aircraft wings for commercial jets, or it might simulate nuclear explosions. The same milling machine that shapes car parts could carve submarine propellers.

This dual-use problem would plague CoCom throughout its existence. Where exactly do you draw the line? Every restriction that blocked Soviet military development also potentially blocked legitimate commerce and scientific exchange.

The Enforcement Problem

On paper, CoCom had seventeen member nations by the late 1980s, including nearly all of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In practice, it had a staff of fourteen people and no real power to inspect or sanction violators.

The committee could recommend. It could cajole. It could not compel.

This created perverse incentives. Each member nation implemented CoCom guidelines through its own domestic laws, leading to a patchwork of regulations. The United States, typically the most hawkish member, often imposed stricter controls than CoCom required. European nations, meanwhile, complained that American policies were volatile and politically motivated—tightening restrictions when convenient, relaxing them when American companies stood to benefit.

The accusation of American hypocrisy had some merit. European members pointed out that U.S. corporations could evade domestic credit restrictions by exporting through European subsidiaries, while the American-controlled re-export licensing system could delay French or German exports to Soviet bloc countries. It looked, to suspicious European eyes, like the United States was using export controls as a competitive weapon against its own allies.

A particularly embarrassing example emerged in the late 1970s. President Jimmy Carter had denied an export license to Sperry-Univac, an American computer company, for a sale to the Soviet Union. The denial came after American officials had persuaded European competitors to abandon similar deals. Then Carter reversed himself and approved the Sperry-Univac sale. European partners were furious. It appeared that the United States had manipulated the system to eliminate their competition before grabbing the business for an American firm.

The Soviet Response: Steal What You Cannot Buy

The Soviet Union officially ignored CoCom. In public forums, Soviet leaders rarely acknowledged its existence. Behind closed doors, however, they devoted enormous resources to circumventing it.

The KGB and GRU—Soviet military intelligence—deployed thousands of officers across Western Europe and the United States specifically to acquire restricted technology. These "technology collection officers" used several methods.

Some established front companies—legitimate-looking businesses that were actually Soviet intelligence operations designed to purchase controlled equipment. A Swedish trading company might order American computer parts, ostensibly for domestic use, then ship them onward to Moscow.

Others exploited geographic loopholes through what American intelligence called "territorial diversions." Restricted technology would be purchased legally in the United States, exported to a neutral country like Switzerland or Sweden where controls were looser, then re-exported to the Soviet Union. The complex routing made enforcement nearly impossible.

By the early 1980s, according to a CIA assessment, approximately seventy percent of military-relevant Western technologies reaching the Soviet Union arrived through these intelligence channels. Only thirty percent came through legal trade, student exchanges, or published scientific literature.

The sophistication of Soviet procurement networks was remarkable. Consider the Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX 11/782 computer, a powerful machine that the Soviets desperately wanted for military applications. Soviet intelligence constructed an elaborate acquisition route that bounced through South Africa, West Germany, and Sweden before American authorities managed to intervene. The operation demonstrated both Soviet determination and CoCom's limitations.

The Toshiba-Kongsberg Scandal

The submarine propeller case mentioned at the start deserves closer examination because it crystallized everything wrong—and arguably everything right—about CoCom.

Between 1982 and 1984, Toshiba Machine Company of Japan and Kongsberg Vapenfabrikk of Norway secretly exported computer-controlled milling machines to the Soviet Union. These machines could carve metal with extraordinary precision, and the Soviets used them to manufacture quieter submarine propellers. Quiet submarines are harder to track, which directly threatened Western naval superiority.

American defense officials claimed the sale had given Soviet submarines a significant acoustic advantage, potentially costing billions of dollars in additional anti-submarine warfare investments to compensate.

The scandal broke in 1987. The U.S. Congress erupted. Lawmakers publicly smashed Toshiba products on the Capitol steps. Japan banned Toshiba from bidding on government contracts. Norway arrested Kongsberg executives. The U.S. House of Representatives moved to ban Toshiba imports entirely.

But here's the twist: during the investigation into Toshiba-Kongsberg, Norwegian police discovered that Forest-Liné, a French machine tool company, had exported tens of millions of dollars worth of similar precision equipment to the Soviets. The French machines helped manufacture aircraft fuselages and turbine blades for jet engines. Four Forest-Liné executives were arrested.

The lesson was clear. CoCom restrictions could be violated not just by rogue operators but by major corporations in allied nations. Enforcement depended on domestic political will, which varied enormously across member states.

The View from Moscow

Soviet leaders understood CoCom as economic warfare—not merely trade restriction but a deliberate strategy to strangle socialist development and demonstrate capitalist technological superiority.

This interpretation wasn't entirely wrong. American policymakers explicitly designed export controls to deny the Soviets access to technologies that would enhance their military and economic capabilities. The goal was containment: keep the Soviet Union weak, unable to match Western technological progress, and eventually force it to reform or collapse.

Yet Soviet technological stagnation had deeper roots than Western export controls. The centrally planned economy struggled to innovate. The ideological demands of Marxism-Leninism distorted scientific priorities. Short-sighted policy decisions created dependency on Western technology even when domestic alternatives might have been developed.

By the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was openly frustrated. In mid-1989, as Cold War tensions eased and Eastern European countries broke free of Moscow's orbit, Gorbachev complained that East-West relations had been "bled white by CoCom." Many of its remaining high-tech bans, he said, were "utterly ridiculous."

He had a point. As the Soviet threat receded, CoCom's elaborate restrictions looked increasingly like Cold War theater rather than serious security policy.

The End and the Aftermath

CoCom officially disbanded on March 31, 1994.

The Berlin Wall had fallen five years earlier. The Soviet Union itself had dissolved in 1991. The elaborate export control system designed to contain communist technological development had outlived its original purpose.

But export restrictions didn't disappear. Member nations maintained many CoCom rules domestically until 1996, when the Wassenaar Arrangement replaced CoCom with a new framework. Wassenaar was less restrictive and less confrontational—designed to prevent weapons proliferation generally rather than to target a specific adversary.

The United States retained its own robust export control system through laws like the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). These domestic controls often exceeded international requirements, continuing the pattern of American strictness that had characterized CoCom's entire existence.

A Horror Story of Illegal Exports

CoCom's legacy remains contested.

Defenders argue it served Western security by slowing Soviet technological development during the most dangerous decades of the Cold War. Every year the Soviets had to wait for a particular technology was a year of Western advantage. Even imperfect enforcement was better than no restrictions at all.

Critics counter that CoCom was a leaky sieve. A British parliamentary review called the various violations a "horror story" of illegal exports. The Soviets ultimately acquired most of the technology they wanted through theft, diversions, or willing sellers. Meanwhile, the restrictions created constant friction with allies and may have slowed legitimate commerce and scientific cooperation.

The pipeline controversy of the early 1980s illustrated these tensions perfectly. The Reagan administration tried to embargo European equipment destined for a Soviet natural gas pipeline to Western Europe. The embargo was supposed to demonstrate Western resolve and deny Moscow hard currency earnings. Instead, it created a trans-Atlantic crisis when European allies refused to comply—and when it emerged that American firms had supplied similar equipment themselves. The embargo was eventually withdrawn, a humiliating retreat that damaged American credibility.

Technological Imperialism?

CoCom faced criticism not just from the Soviet Union but from the broader developing world.

Many countries in the Global South—particularly members of the Non-Aligned Movement, nations that refused to align with either Cold War bloc—viewed CoCom as "technological imperialism." The restrictions, they argued, weren't really about security. They were about preserving Western industrial and strategic supremacy by denying advanced technology to potential competitors.

There was something to this critique. The dual-use category was so broad that it captured technologies with obvious peaceful applications. Scientific instruments, telecommunications equipment, advanced materials—all potentially restricted because they might conceivably have military uses somewhere down the line.

From the perspective of a developing country trying to modernize its economy, CoCom looked less like a security measure than a cartel of rich nations protecting their technological monopolies.

The China Question

In the twenty-first century, the debate over export controls has found new urgency.

As China has emerged as America's primary strategic competitor, some analysts advocate creating a modern CoCom—a multilateral framework to restrict Chinese access to sensitive technologies like advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.

The arguments for a new CoCom echo the old ones. Chinese technological development poses security risks. Western companies selling advanced technology to China may be arming a future adversary. Coordinated restrictions among democratic allies would be more effective than unilateral American controls.

But critics remember CoCom's failures. Export controls never stopped the Soviets from acquiring most of what they wanted. A technology embargo might accelerate Chinese efforts to develop domestic alternatives, ultimately reducing Western leverage. In today's interconnected global economy, with supply chains stretching across dozens of countries, enforcement would be even more challenging than during the Cold War.

Moreover, the economic stakes are vastly higher. American technology companies earn enormous revenues in China. European allies depend on Chinese trade even more heavily. Would they accept CoCom-style restrictions that hurt their own economies to serve American strategic interests? The pipeline controversy of the 1980s suggests the answer might be no.

Lessons from a Gentleman's Agreement

CoCom's forty-five-year history offers several lessons for contemporary policymakers.

First, multilateral export controls require genuine multilateral commitment. An alliance where one dominant partner sets the rules and enforces them through threats will breed resentment and defection. European complaints about American hypocrisy weren't just diplomatic theater—they reflected real grievances that undermined collective action.

Second, determined adversaries will find ways around restrictions. The Soviet Union devoted enormous intelligence resources to circumventing CoCom, and they largely succeeded. Technology, unlike territory, is inherently hard to contain. It leaks through published research, defecting scientists, industrial espionage, and commercial channels.

Third, the dual-use problem has no clean solution. Any technology sophisticated enough to be strategically valuable probably has civilian applications too. Drawing lines between permitted and prohibited items will always be somewhat arbitrary, and those lines will always be contested.

Fourth, export controls create winners and losers even among allies. The company that loses a sale to restrictions watches its competitor in another country win the same contract. These commercial tensions can poison alliance relationships over time.

Finally, the fundamental question remains unresolved: does restricting technology actually enhance security, or does it merely delay the inevitable while creating diplomatic friction and economic costs? Reasonable people disagreed during the Cold War. They disagree today.

CoCom was born in fear and operated in frustration. It probably slowed Soviet technological development somewhat. It definitely annoyed American allies, created commercial distortions, and generated endless diplomatic headaches. Whether the security benefits outweighed these costs remains debatable.

But one thing is certain: as long as nations compete for technological supremacy, the temptation to build new fences around knowledge will remain. The question is whether we can do it any better than the gentleman's agreement of 1949.