The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) was established by the

Western Bloc The Western Bloc, also known as the Free Bloc, the Capitalist Bloc, the American Bloc, and the NATO Bloc, was a coalition of countries that were officially allied with the United States during the Cold War of 1947–1991. It was spearheaded by ...

in the first five years after the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, during the Cold War, to put an

embargo Economic sanctions are commercial and financial penalties applied by one or more countries against a targeted self-governing state, group, or individual. Economic sanctions are not necessarily imposed because of economic circumstances—they m ...

Comecon The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (, ; English abbreviation COMECON, CMEA, CEMA, or CAME) was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc#List of s ...

countries. CoCom ceased to function on March 31, 1994, and the then-current control list of embargoed goods was retained by the member nations until the successor, the

Wassenaar Arrangement The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies is a multilateral export control regime (MECR) with 42 participating states including many former Comecon (Warsaw Pact) countries established ...

, was established in 1996.

Membership

CoCom had 17 member states: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Laws and regulations

In the United States, CoCom compliance was implemented in the 1960s via the

Arms Export Control Act The Arms Export Control Act of 1976 (Title II of , codified at ) gives the President of the United States the authority to control the import and export of defense articles and defense services. The H.R. 13680 legislation was passed by the 94th ...

(AECA) and the State Department's regulatory supervision on AECA via International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which are still in effect.

Violations

Toshiba Machine Company of Japan and

Kongsberg Group Kongsberg Gruppen is an international technology group headquartered in Norway, that supplies high-technology systems to customers in the merchant marine, defence, aerospace, offshore oil and gas industries, and renewable and utilities industr ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

supplied eight computer-guided propeller milling machines to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

between 1982 and 1984, an action that violated the CoCom regulations. The

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

' position is that this greatly improved the ability of Soviet submarines to evade detection. Congress moved to sanction Toshiba, and ban imports of its products into the United States.

Legacy

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

technology, the term "CoCom Limits" also refers to a limit placed on GPS tracking devices that disables tracking when the device calculates that it is moving faster than at an altitude higher than . This was intended to prevent the use of GPS in intercontinental ballistic missile-like applications. Some manufacturers apply this limit only when both speed and altitude limits are reached, while other manufacturers disable tracking when either limit is reached. In the latter case, this causes some devices to refuse to operate in very-high-altitude balloons.

References

;Notes * Mastanduno, M. (1992). ''Economic containment: CoCom and the politics of East-West trade''. Cornell paperbacks. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y. * Noehrenberg, E. H. (1995). ''Multilateral export controls and international regime theory: the effectiveness of COCOM''. Pro Universitate. * Yasuhara, Y. (1991). ''The myth of free trade: the origins of COCOM 1945-1950''. The Japanese Journal of American Studies, 4. {{refend Export and import control History of international trade Arms control 1994 disestablishments Foreign relations of the Soviet Union Soviet Union–United States relations Embargoes Cold War Foreign trade of the Soviet Union Sanctions against Russia

Membership

Laws and regulations

Violations

Legacy

See also

References