{"id":186222,"date":"2021-06-07T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=186222"},"modified":"2021-06-01T06:45:52","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T05:45:52","slug":"usa-dominant-again-in-arms-sales-selling-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/06\/usa-dominant-again-in-arms-sales-selling-death\/","title":{"rendered":"USA Dominant again in Arms Sales: Selling Death"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and others are again profiting at the expense of so many of the rest of us. <\/em>And Again\u2026 and Again\u2026 and Again<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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A Lockheed-Martin F22A Raptor in flight.
(Ronnie Macdonald \/ Flickr)(CC BY 2.0)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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25 May 2021 – <\/em>When it comes to trade in the tools of death and destruction, no one tops the United States of America.In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis<\/a> of trends in global arms sales and the winner \u2014 as always \u2014 was the U.S. of A. Between 2016 and 2020, this country accounted for 37% of total international weapons deliveries, nearly twice the level of its closest rival, Russia, and more than six times that of Washington\u2019s threat du jour, China.<\/p>\n

Sadly, this was no surprise to arms-trade analysts.\u00a0 The U.S. has held that top spot<\/a> for 28 of the past 30 years, posting massive sales numbers regardless of which party held power in the White House or Congress.\u00a0 This is, of course, the definition of good news for weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, even if it\u2019s bad news for so many of the rest of us, especially those who suffer from the use of those arms by militaries in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates.\u00a0 The recent bombing and leveling of Gaza by the U.S.-financed and supplied<\/a> Israeli military is just the latest example of the devastating toll exacted by American weapons transfers in these years.<\/p>\n

While it is well known that the United States provides substantial aid to Israel, the degree to which the Israeli military relies on U.S. planes, bombs, and missiles is not fully appreciated. According to statistics compiled<\/a> by the Center for International Policy\u2019s Security Assistance Monitor, the United States has provided Israel with $63 billion in security assistance over the past two decades, more than 90% of it through the State Department\u2019s Foreign Military Financing, which provides funds to buy U.S. weaponry.\u00a0 But Washington\u2019s support for the Israeli state goes back much further. Total U.S. military and economic aid to Israel exceeds $236 billion<\/a> (in inflation-adjusted 2018 dollars) since its founding \u2014 nearly a quarter of a trillion<\/em> dollars.<\/p>\n

King of the Arms Dealers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Donald Trump, sometimes referred to<\/a> by President Joe Biden as \u201cthe other guy,\u201d warmly embraced the role of arms-dealer-in-chief and not just by sustaining massive U.S. arms aid for Israel, but throughout the Middle East and beyond. \u00a0In a May 2017 visit<\/a> to Saudi Arabia \u2014 his first foreign trip \u2014 Trump would tout a mammoth (if, as it turned out, highly exaggerated) $110-billion<\/a> arms deal with that kingdom.<\/p>\n

On one level, the Saudi deal was a publicity stunt meant to show that President Trump could, in his own words, negotiate agreements that would benefit the U.S. economy. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a pal of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the architect<\/a> of Saudi Arabia\u2019s devastating intervention in Yemen, even put in a call<\/a> to then-Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson. His desire: to get a better deal for the Saudi regime on a multibillion-dollar missile defense system that Lockheed was planning to sell it.\u00a0 The point of the call was to put together the biggest arms package imaginable in advance of his father-in-law\u2019s trip to Riyadh.<\/p>\n

When Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia to immense local fanfare<\/a>, he milked the deal for all it was worth. Calling<\/a> the future Saudi sales \u201ctremendous,\u201d he assured the world that they would create<\/a> \u201cjobs, jobs, jobs\u201d in the United States.<\/p>\n

That arms package, however, did far more than burnish Trump\u2019s reputation as a deal maker and jobs creator.\u00a0 It represented an endorsement of the Saudi-led coalition\u2019s brutal war in Yemen, which has now resulted in the deaths<\/a> of nearly a quarter of a million people and put millions<\/a> of others on the brink of famine.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t for a second think that Trump was alone in enabling that intervention. The kingdom had received a record $115 billion<\/a> in arms offers \u2014 notifications to Congress that don\u2019t always result in final sales \u2014 over the eight years of the Obama administration, including for combat aircraft, bombs, missiles, tanks, and attack helicopters, many of which have since been used in Yemen.\u00a0 After repeated Saudi air strikes<\/a> on civilian targets, the Obama foreign-policy team finally decided to slow Washington\u2019s support for that war effort, moving in December 2016 to stop<\/a> a multibillion-dollar bomb sale. Upon taking office, however, Trump reversed course<\/a> and pushed that deal forward, despite Saudi actions that Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) said<\/a> \u201clook like war crimes to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump made it abundantly clear, in fact, that his reasons for arming Saudi Arabia were anything but strategic.\u00a0 In an infamous March 2018 White House meeting with Mohammed bin Salman, he even brandished<\/a> a map of the United States to show which places were likely to benefit most from those Saudi arms deals, including election swing states Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.\u00a0 He doubled down on that economic argument after the October 2018 murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Washington Post<\/em> columnist Jamal Khashoggi at that country\u2019s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, even as calls to cut off sales to the regime mounted in Congress.\u00a0 The president made it clear<\/a> then that jobs and profits, not human rights, were paramount to him, stating:<\/p>\n

\u201c$110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries \u2014 and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so it went.\u00a0 In the summer of 2019 Trump vetoed<\/a> an effort by Congress to block an $8.1-billion arms package that included bombs and support for the Royal Saudi Air Force and he continued to back the kingdom even in his final weeks in office. In December 2020, he offered<\/a> more than $500 million worth of bombs to that regime on the heels of a $23-billion package<\/a> to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its partner-in-crime in the Yemen war.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia and the UAE weren\u2019t the only beneficiaries of Trump\u2019s penchant for selling weapons.\u00a0 According to a report<\/a> by the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, his administration made arms sales offers of more than $110 billion to customers all over the world in 2020, a 75% increase over the yearly averages reached during the Obama administration, as well as in the first three years of his tenure.<\/p>\n

Will Biden Be Different?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Advocates of reining in U.S. weapons trafficking took note of Joe Biden\u2019s campaign-trail pledge<\/a> that, if elected, he would not \u201ccheck our values at the door\u201d in deciding whether to continue arming the Saudi regime.\u00a0 Hopes were further raised when, in his first foreign policy speech as president, he announced<\/a> that his administration would end \u201csupport for offensive operations in Yemen\u201d along with \u201crelevant arms sales.\u201d<\/p>\n

That statement, of course, left a potentially giant loophole on the question of which weapons would be considered in support of \u201coffensive operations,\u201d but it did at least appear to mark a sharp departure from the Trump era.\u00a0 In the wake of Biden\u2019s statement, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE were indeed put on hold<\/a>, pending a review of their potential consequences.<\/p>\n

Three months into Biden\u2019s term, however, the president\u2019s early pledge to rein in damaging arms deals are already eroding. The first blow was the news that the administration would indeed move forward<\/a> with a $23-billion arms package to the UAE, including F-35 combat aircraft, armed drones, and a staggering $10 billion worth of bombs and missiles. The decision was ill-advised on several fronts, most notably because of that country\u2019s role in Yemen\u2019s brutal civil war. There, despite scaling back its troops on the ground, it continues<\/a> to arm, train, and finance 90,000 militia members, including extremist groups with links to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.\u00a0 The UAE has also backed<\/a> armed opposition forces in Libya in violation of a United Nations embargo, launched<\/a> drone strikes there that killed scores of civilians, and cracked down<\/a> on dissidents at home and abroad. It regularly makes arbitrary arrests and uses torture.\u00a0 If arming the UAE isn\u2019t a case of \u201cchecking our values at the door,\u201d it\u2019s not clear what is.<\/p>\n

To its credit, the Biden administration committed<\/a> to suspending two Trump bomb deals with Saudi Arabia.\u00a0 Otherwise, it\u2019s not clear what (if any) other pending Saudi sales will be deemed \u201coffensive\u201d and blocked. Certainly, the new administration has allowed<\/a> U.S. government personnel and contractors to help maintain the effectiveness of the Saudi Air Force and so has continued to enable ongoing air strikes in Yemen that are notorious for killing civilians.\u00a0 The Biden team has also failed to forcefully pressure the Saudis to end<\/a> their blockade of that country, which United Nations agencies have determined<\/a> could put 400,000 Yemeni children at risk of death by starvation in the next year.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Biden administration has cleared a sale<\/a> of anti-ship missiles to the Egyptian regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the most repressive government in that nation\u2019s history, helmed by the man Donald Trump referred to<\/a> as \u201cmy favorite dictator.\u201d\u00a0 The missiles themselves are in no way useful for either internal repression or that country\u2019s scorched-earth anti-terror campaign<\/a> against rebels in its part of the Sinai peninsula \u2014 where civilians have been tortured and killed, and tens of thousands displaced from their homes \u2014 but the sale does represent a tacit endorsement of the regime\u2019s repressive activities.<\/p>\n

Guns, Anyone?<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Biden\u2019s early actions have undermined promises to take a different approach to arms sales, the story isn\u2019t over.\u00a0 Key members of Congress are planning to closely monitor<\/a> the UAE sale and perhaps intervene to prevent the delivery of the weapons.\u00a0 Questions have been raised<\/a> about what arms should go to Saudi Arabia and reforms<\/a> that would strengthen Congress\u2019s role in blocking objectionable arms transfers are being pressed by at least some members of the House and the Senate.<\/p>\n

One area where President Biden could readily begin to fulfill his campaign pledge to reduce the harm to civilians from U.S. arms sales would be firearms exports.\u00a0 The Trump administration significantly loosened<\/a> restrictions and regulations on the export of a wide range of guns, including semi-automatic firearms and sniper rifles. As a result, such exports surged<\/a> in 2020, with record sales of more than 175,000 military rifles and shotguns.<\/p>\n

In a distinctly deregulatory mood<\/a>, Trump\u2019s team moved sales of deadly firearms from the jurisdiction of the State Department, which had a mandate to vet any such deals for possible human-rights abuses, to the Commerce Department, whose main mission was simply to promote the export of just about anything.\u00a0 Trump\u2019s \u201creforms\u201d also eliminated<\/a> the need to pre-notify Congress on any major firearms sales, making it far harder to stop deals with repressive regimes.<\/p>\n

As he pledged<\/a> to do during his presidential campaign, President Biden could reverse Trump\u2019s approach without even seeking Congressional approval. The time to do so is now, given the damage such gun exports cause in places like the Philippines<\/a> and Mexico<\/a>, where U.S.-supplied firearms have been used to kill thousands of civilians, while repressing democratic movements and human-rights defenders.<\/p>\n

Who Benefits?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beyond the slightest doubt, a major \u2014 or perhaps even the<\/em> major \u2014 obstacle to reforming arms sales policies and practices is the weapons industry itself. That includes major contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, and General Dynamics that produce<\/a> fighter planes, bombs, armored vehicles, and other major weapons systems, as well as firearms makers like Sig Sauer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Raytheon stands out in this crowd because of its determined efforts to push through bomb sales to Saudi Arabia and the deep involvement of its former (or future) employees with the U.S. government.\u00a0 A former Raytheon lobbyist, Charles Faulkner, worked in the Trump State Department\u2019s Office of Legal Counsel and was involved<\/a> in deciding that Saudi Arabia was not \u2014 it was! \u2014 intentionally bombing civilians in Yemen. He then supported declaring a bogus \u201cemergency\u201d to ram through the sale of bombs and of aircraft support to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Raytheon has indeed insinuated itself in the halls of government in a fashion that should be deeply troubling even by the minimalist standards of the twenty-first-century military-industrial complex. Former Trump defense secretary Mark Esper was Raytheon\u2019s chief in-house lobbyist<\/a> before joining the administration, while current Biden defense secretary Lloyd Austin served<\/a> on Raytheon\u2019s board of directors.\u00a0 While Austin has pledged to recuse<\/a> himself from decisions involving the company, it\u2019s a pledge that will prove difficult to verify.<\/p>\n

Arms sales are Big Business \u2014 the caps are a must! \u2014 for the top weapons makers.\u00a0 Lockheed Martin gets roughly one-quarter<\/a> of its sales from foreign governments and Raytheon five percent<\/a> of its revenue from Saudi sales.\u00a0 American jobs allegedly tied to weapons exports are always the selling point for such dealings, but in reality, they\u2019ve been greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n

At most, arms sales account<\/a> for just more than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. employment. Many such sales, in fact, involve outsourcing<\/a> production, in whole or in part, to recipient nations, reducing the jobs impact here significantly. Though it\u2019s seldom noted, virtually any other form of spending creates more jobs<\/a> than weapons production. In addition, exporting green-technology products would create far larger<\/a> global markets for U.S. goods, should the government ever decide to support them in anything like the way it supports the arms industry.<\/p>\n

Given what\u2019s at stake for them economically, Raytheon and its cohorts spend vast sums attempting to influence both parties in Congress and any administration.\u00a0 In the past two decades, defense companies, led by the major arms exporting firms, spent<\/a> $285 million in campaign contributions alone and $2.5 billion on lobbying, according to statistics gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics.\u00a0 Any changes in arms export policy will mean forcefully taking on the arms lobby and generating enough citizen pressure to overcome its considerable influence in Washington.<\/p>\n

Given the political will to do so, there are many steps<\/a> the Biden administration and Congress could take to rein in runaway arms exports, especially since such deals are uniquely unpopular with the public.\u00a0 A September 2019 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, for example, found that 70%<\/a> of Americans think arms sales make the country less safe.<\/p>\n

The question is: Can such public sentiment be mobilized in favor of actions to stop at least the most egregious cases of U.S. weapons trafficking, even as the global arms trade rolls on?\u00a0 Selling death should be no joy for any country, so halting it is a goal well worth fighting for. Still, it remains to be seen whether the Biden administration will ever limit weapons sales or if it will simply continue to promote this country as the world\u2019s top arms exporter of all time.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________________.<\/em><\/p>\n

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William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of <\/em>Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Copyright 2019 William D. Hartung<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 tomdispatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 May 2021 – When it comes to trade in the tools of death and destruction, no one tops the United States of America. Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and others are again profiting at the expense of so many of the rest of us. And Again\u2026 and Again\u2026 and Again<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":186223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,1161,1188,1104,1058,1301,450,112,70,1594],"class_list":["post-186222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-arms-industry","tag-arms-race","tag-arms-trade","tag-arms-trade-treaty","tag-nuclear-war","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-pentagon","tag-usa","tag-war-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}