U.S. is the world's No. 1 dealer in armaments
This country is the top purveyor of high-tech arms to areas where analysts believe the likelihood of war is highest.
Bryan Bender, Boston Globe
startribune.com
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, U.S. 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 U.S. interests.
The report was compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
$6.2 billion in deals
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.
And, new contracts for future weapons deliveries topped $44 billion last year -- the highest overall since 1998, according to the report. Most were designated for developing nations.
Many of the U.S. 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, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations."This was equally true for the Soviet Union and its allies," the report said.
Economic motives
Yet there is growing evidence that the sales are increasingly more about dollars for the U.S. 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 and contracts signed for future deliveries.
On Oct. 26, when a U.N. 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 U.N.'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 U.N. task force is set to make its recommendations to the General Assembly next year.
Unfulfilled pledges
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 U.N. Security Council -- the United States, Russia, France, Britain, and China -- pledged to limit the sale of arms to the volatile Middle East.
More than a decade later, those pledges have gone unfulfilled. The United States is not the only culprit.
Adding to war zones
But it is the United States that remains the top purveyor of high-tech arms to areas where analysts think the likelihood of armed conflict is 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 a war.
"From Angola, Chad, and Ethiopia, to Colombia, Pakistan, and the Philippines, transfers through the two largest U.S. arms sales programs ... to these conflict nations totaled nearly $1 billion in 2003," the report found.
Meanwhile, more than half of the countries buying U.S. arms -- 13 of 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.
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