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More arms for US's
'friends'
By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK - The United States has
accelerated arms sales to some of the world's most
repressive and undemocratic regimes since
September 11, 2001, according to a new report from
leading arms trade researchers.
The
report, from the Arms Trade Resource Center at New
York-based New School University's World Policy
Institute, says the increase in sales and military
grants is a payoff to countries that have either
joined what the White House calls its "war on
terror" or have backed the United States in its
military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
A majority of US arms sales to the
developing world also go to regimes "defined as
undemocratic by our own State Department" or
Foreign Ministry, says the study. According to the
report, US-supplied arms are involved in a
majority of the world's active conflicts,
including those in Angola, Chad, Ethiopia,
Colombia, Pakistan, Israel and the Philippines.
The study cites the recent decision by the
administration of President George W Bush to
provide new F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan, while
pledging comparable high-tech military hardware to
India - thereby providing US arms to both sides in
a long-brewing conflict among two nuclear-armed
rivals.
Moreover, the tens of millions of
dollars in US arms transfers to Uzbekistan - where
many anti-government demonstrators were killed
recently - "exemplify the negative consequences of
arming repressive regimes", it says.
According to the study, countries defined
as "undemocratic" in the State Department's annual
human-rights report are also major recipients of
US military aid or weapons systems. These include:
Saudi Arabia (US$1.1 billion in 2003), Egypt ($1
billion), Kuwait ($153 million), the United Arab
Emirates ($110 million), and Uzbekistan ($33
million).
"Arming repressive regimes while
simultaneously proclaiming a campaign against
tyranny undermines the credibility of the United
States and makes it harder to hold other nations
to high standards of conduct on human rights and
other key issues," said Frida Berrigan, co-author
of the study, "US Weapons at War 2005: Promoting
Freedom or Fueling Conflict?"
The largest
US military aid program - labeled Foreign Military
Financing (FMF) - increased by as much as 68% from
2001 to 2003, rising from $3.5 billion to nearly
$6 billion. Under FMF, recipient nations get
outright US grants on condition these funds are
used only for the purchase of US weapons systems,
thereby ploughing the money back into the
multi-billion-dollar US defense industry.
The only two countries that are exceptions
to the rule are Israel and Egypt, close US allies
who are permitted to use FMF funds to buy weapons
from their domestic armaments industries,
according to the US Defense Department.
The biggest FMF increases went to
countries engaged as US allies in the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. These included Jordan (a $525
million increase from 2001 to 2003), Afghanistan
($191 million increase), Pakistan ($224 million
increase), and Bahrain ($90 million increase). All
of the increases, both in arms sales and FMF, were
in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks on
the United States.
Two dozen nations,
including Afghanistan, Algeria, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan and Uruguay, either became first-time
recipients of FMF during this period or were
restored to the program after long absences. As a
result, the number of countries receiving FMF
assistance increased from 48 to 71 between 2001
and 2005 - a 47.9% increase.
Natalie J
Goldring, executive director of the security
studies program at the School of Foreign Service
at Washington-based Georgetown University, said
the Bush administration had failed to demonstrate
any link between open-ended weapons transfers and
success in fighting terrorists.
"This
report indicates that the opposite may well be the
case. By lifting controls over weapons transfers,
we are more likely to increase the risks of these
weapons falling into our adversaries' hands,"
Goldring told Inter Press Service.
She
said US law prohibits weapons transfers to
countries that systematically abuse the rights of
their citizens. Enforcing these laws would produce
dramatic improvements in the US's arms transfer
policy - but the Bush administration has failed to
do so, Goldring added.
Berrigan of the
World Policy Institute said that no single policy
is more at odds with Bush's pledge to "end tyranny
in our world" than the US role as the world's
leading arms exporting nation. "Although arms
sales are often justified on the basis of their
purported benefits - from securing access to
overseas military facilities to rewarding
coalition partners - these alleged benefits come
at a high price," she said.
According to
the study, in times of crisis, such as the tsunami
that killed more than 300,000 people, the US
public has been very generous.
"And they
assume their government is as well. While the
United States doles out billions of dollars in
foreign aid every year, Washington tends to favor
military aid and weapons sales over other forms of
aid, de-prioritizing humanitarian, health and
development aid, even though these types of
foreign aid have long-term constructive impact,"
the study says.
The Bush administration's
arms trade policies mirror the those of 30 years
ago, when then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger
traveled the world, "treating arms transfers as if
they were party favors," Goldring said. "These
policies are short-sighted and may well create the
very threats they are intended to combat."
Weapons manufacturers, meanwhile, are
profiting from an upsurge in contracts to produce
US-supplied weapons, Goldring said. "But these
transfers place current and future US military
personnel at risk of attacks from American weapons
that have fallen into the wrong hands. Once
transferred, we have little control over these
weapons."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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