-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: November 14, 2006 2:15:55 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: It's Not "Democracy" the Bush Administration Is Selling
US is top purveyor
on weapons sales list
Shipments grow to unstable areas
By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe, November 13, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/11/13/
us_is_top_purveyor_on_weapons_sales_list/
WASHINGTON -- The United States last year provided nearly half of
the weapons sold to militaries in the developing world, as major
arms sales to the most unstable regions -- many already engaged in
conflict -- grew to the highest level in eight years, new US
government figures show.
According to the annual assessment, the United States supplied $8.1
billion worth of weapons to developing countries in 2005 -- 45.8
percent of the total and far more than second-ranked Russia with 15
percent and Britain with a little more than 13 percent.
Arms control specialists said the figures underscore how the
largely unchecked arms trade to the developing world has become a
major staple of the American weapons industry, even though
introducing many of the weapons risks fueling conflicts rather than
aiding long-term US interests.
The report was compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Research
Service.
"We are at a point in history where many of these sales are not
essential for the self-defense of these countries and the arms
being sold continue to fuel conflicts and tensions in unstable
areas," said Daryl G. Kimball , executive director of the
nonpartisan Arms Control Association in Washington. "It doesn't
make much sense over the long term."
The United States, for instance, also signed an estimated $6.2
billion worth of new deals last year to sell attack helicopters,
missiles, and other armaments to developing nations such as the
United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, and
Saudi Arabia. Developing nations are designated as all those except
in North America, Western Europe, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand.
In addition to weapons already delivered, new contracts for future
weapons deliveries topped $44 billion last year -- the highest
overall since 1998, according to the report. Nearly 70 percent of
them were designated for developing nations.
Many of the US sales are justified by American officials as
critical to the war on terrorism or other foreign policy goals such
as checking an emerging China. One such example is the recent
decision to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.
The United States has long relied on arms sales to prop up allies
or enhance collective defense arrangements.
"For decades, during the height of the Cold War, providing
conventional weapons to friendly states was an instrument of
foreign policy utilized by the United States and its allies,"
according to the report, titled "Conventional Arms Transfers to
Developing Nations."
"This was equally true for the Soviet Union and its allies," the
report said.
Yet there is growing evidence that the sales are increasingly more
about dollars and cents for the US military-industrial complex and
other major military economies. The trend began after the end of
the Cold War, when American, European, Russian, and other defense
industries were forced to consolidate and competition for foreign
sales heated up.
"Where before the principal motivation for arms sales by foreign
suppliers might have been to support a foreign policy objective,
today that motivation may be based as much on economic
considerations as those of foreign policy or national security
policy," said the congressional report, which detailed both arms
deliveries, or weapons actually delivered to customers, and arms
agreements, or contracts signed for future deliveries.
Washington's desire to maintain the status quo was on display at a
meeting at the United Nations on Oct. 26, when a UN panel voted to
study whether a new treaty might be possible to regulate the sale
of conventional arms. The United States was the only country out of
166 to vote no, though China and Russia were among a handful of
countries to abstain.
With that lone dissent, the UN's Disarmament and International
Security Committee approved a British proposal to draw up uniform
standards that might block arms sales considered destabilizing,
including those that might fuel ongoing conflicts, violate
embargoes, undermine democratic institutions, or contribute to
human rights abuses. A UN task force is set to make its
recommendations to the General Assembly next year.
But powerful interests in the global arms industry have long stood
in the way of controlling the arms flow to the developing world.
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, for example, the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Russia,
France, Britain, and China -- pledged to limit the sale of arms to
the volatile Middle East, attributing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
to the region having been awash in high-tech arsenals.
More than a decade later, those pledges have gone unfulfilled. The
United States is not the only culprit.
For the first time in eight years, Russia outpaced the United
States last year in the value of new arms transfer agreements
reached with developing nations, according to the Congressional
Research Service report, authored by Richard F. Grimmett .
Moscow inked major deals to sell missiles, warships, and other
hardware to such potential trouble spots as Iran and China,
according to the report, which is considered the most authoritative
breakdown of the global arms trade. China also agreed to provide
weapons to trouble spots such as Iran and North Korea, while major
Western European suppliers, such as Britain and France, also
concluded large orders with developing countries.
But it is the United States that by far remains the top purveyor of
high-tech arms to areas where analysts believe the likelihood of
armed conflict remains highest. A study last year by the
progressive World Policy Institute found that the United States
transferred weaponry to 18 of the 25 countries involved in an
ongoing war.
"From Angola, Chad, and Ethiopia, to Colombia, Pakistan, and the
Philippines, transfers through the two largest US arms sales
programs [Foreign Military sales and Commercial Sales] to these
conflict nations totaled nearly $1 billion in 2003," the report found.
Meanwhile, more than half of the countries buying US arms -- 13 of
the 25 -- were defined as undemocratic by the State Department's
annual Human Rights Report, including top recipients Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
The agreement last year to sell F-16s to Pakistan underscores the
larger trend, according to Wade Bouse , research director at the
Arms Control Association.
"F-16s with advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles are not for
fighting Al Qaeda," Bouse said. "They are for fighting India."
And India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan, is
considering a US offer to sell the country F-16s. "We are creating
our own market by selling to both sides of regional conflicts,"
Bouse said.
With more such lucrative deals in the offing, there is little sign
that the United States -- or other major suppliers -- wants a
treaty to control the sales.
"The US would be significantly affected if there was an arms treaty
that took into account human rights abuses and conflict areas,"
added William Hartung , director of the Arms Trade Resource Center
at the World Policy Institute in New York. "The US government still
wants to be able to do covert and semi-covert arms transfers. And a
certain amount of it is simply keeping factories running in certain
congressional districts."
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