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2 Arms sales: How the US is not
winning friends By Zia Mian
The United States sells death and
destruction as a fundamental instrument of its
foreign policy. It sees arms sales as a way of
making and keeping strategic friends and tying
countries more directly to US military planning
and operations.
At its simplest, as Lt Gen
Jeffrey B Kohler, director of the Defense Security
Cooperation Agency, told the New York Times in
2006, the United States likes arms deals because
“it gives us access and influence and builds
friendships”. South Asia has
been
an important arena for this effort, and it teaches
some lessons the United States should not ignore.
A recent Congressional Research Service
report on international arms sales records that
last year the United States delivered nearly $8
billion worth of weapons to Third World countries.
This was about 40% of all such arms transfers. The
US also signed agreements to sell over $10 billion
worth of weapons, one-third of all arms deals with
Third World countries.
It is easy to put
this in perspective: $10 billon a year is the
estimated cost of meeting the UN Millennium
Development Goal for water and sanitation, which
would reduce by half the proportion of people in
the world without proper access to drinking water
and basic sanitation by 2015. Today, about 1.1
billion people do not have access to a minimal
amount of clean water and about 2.6 billion people
do not have access to basic sanitation.
The scale of recent US arms sales should
not be news. The US sold over $61 billion worth of
weapons to Third World countries from 1999-2006,
making it by far the leading international
supplier. Russia, the second largest arms dealer,
managed to sell less than half as much.
Arms vs influence in
Pakistan The largest Third World buyer of
weapons in 2006 was Pakistan. It purchased just
over $5 billion in arms. Almost $3 billion of its
purchases were new US-made F-16 fighter jets,
upgrades to the F-16s Pakistan bought in the
1980s, and bombs and missiles to arm these planes.
A White House press spokesman explained that the
sale of the jet fighters “demonstrates our
commitment to a long-term relationship with
Pakistan”.
The use of arms sales to show
commitment to Pakistan has gone on for over 50
years. The United States used military aid to
recruit and arm Pakistan as an ally in the Cold
War. A great fear, as a 1953 State Department
memorandum pointed out, was “a noticeable increase
in the activities of the mullahs in Pakistan.
There was reason to believe that in face of
growing doubts as to whether Pakistan had any real
friends, more and more Pakistanis were turning to
the mullahs for guidance. Were this trend to
continue the present government of enlightened and
Western-oriented leaders might well be threatened,
and members of a successive government would
probably be far less cooperative with the West
than the present incumbents.” This memo could have
been written today.
The United States has
failed to learn that paying Pakistan’s military
bills demonstrates commitment and friendship only
to Pakistan’s military. It does nothing for
Pakistan’s people. The US supported General Ayub
Khan, Pakistan’s first military leader, for a
decade (1958-1969), at great cost. He was brought
down by a tide of public protest.
The
United States also supported General Zia ul-Haq
(who ruled from 1977 to 1988), once he agreed to
help in the war against the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan. Washington gave Zia a $3.2 billion
aid package in 1982 and promised another $4
billion in 1988. This generosity bought precious
little. Pakistan’s government took the money and
used it buy weapons from the United States, built
nuclear weapons, and promoted radical Islamists at
home and in Afghanistan. The consequences are all
around us today.
Since September 11, 2001,
the United States has given over $10 billion to
Pakistan to buy or reward President General Pervez
Musharraf’s support for its newest war, the “war
on terror”. Pakistan has spent over $1.5 billion
of this amount on buying new weapons. To
understand the scale of this aid, consider
Pakistan’s total military budget in 2006,
estimated at about $4.5 billion. The United States
is now giving Pakistan aid to pay for the new deal
for F-16s, bombs, and missiles. It is likely to
win few friends.
There is little doubt
today about how unpopular the United States is in
Pakistan. A Pew poll released in September 2006
found that in Pakistan, the United States is
viewed less favorably even than India (with which
Pakistan has fought four wars). Just over 25% were
favorable toward the United States, compared to
one-third who felt that way toward India.
Attitudes toward the United States have
worsened. A 2007 poll found that only 15% of
Pakistanis had a favorable attitude towards the
United States. An August 2007 poll found that
Musharraf was less popular even than Osama bin
Laden; Musharraf had the support of 38% of
Pakistanis, bin Laden of 46%, and President George
W Bush found favor with only 9%. It is hard to
imagine a more damning indictment of a policy that
sought to make friends and build support.
This hostility toward the United States
will only get worse as it is seen to support
Musharraf’s efforts to remain president of
Pakistan.
Strategic relationship with
India India, Pakistan’s neighbor, historic
rival, and often bitter enemy, is the second
largest buyer of weapons in the Third World. It
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