Political Post of the Week

Here’s an amazing US export:

So far, this year alone, the DOD has agreed to transfer more than $32Bn in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments.  That’s up from $12Bn in 2005.  According to the NYTimes: The trend, which started in 2006, is most pronounced in the Middle East, but it reaches into northern Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and even Canada. “This is not about being gunrunners,” said Bruce S. Lemkin, the Air Force deputy under secretary who is helping to coordinate many of the biggest sales. “This is about building a more secure world.”

Gee, it does sound a lot like gun running though, doesn’t it?  Sales are also booming for Russia, who competes with us to arm nations like India and Brazil with fighter jets. Less sophisticated weapons, and services to maintain these weapons systems, are often bought directly by foreign governments. That category of direct commercial sales has seen an enormous surge as well, as measured by export licenses issued this fiscal year covering an estimated $96 billion, up from $58 billion in 2005, according to the State Department, which must approve the licenses.

“Sure, this is a quick and easy way to cement alliances,” said William D. Hartung, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute. “But this is getting out of hand.”   Howard L. Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said: "This could turn into a spiraling arms race that in the end could decrease stability.” Saudi Arabia, this fiscal year alone, has signed at least $6 billion worth of agreements to buy weapons from the United States government — the highest figure for that country since 1993, which was another peak year in American weapons sales, after the first Persian Gulf war.  The US has moved from supplying 40% of the world’s arms in to 52% in 2006 so if someone, somewhere is being killed, it’s very likely by our stuff!

This is great stuff for our top defence contractors (2006 figures) like LMT ($36Bn – 91% of revs), BA ($31Bn – 50%), NOC ($24Bn – 78%), RTN ($20Bn – 96%), GD ($19Bn – 78%), LLL ($10Bn – 80%) and UTX ($8Bn – 16%) but what does it say about our foreign policy?  We supply both India and Pakistan with weapons – a neat trick since they each maintain more troops at each other’s boarder than we have in Iraq total.  Obviously, supplying India’s 1.1M man army is big business and it’s easy to say "someone has to do it" but what are we doing in the bigger picture if we are supplying almost 3 times more weapons than we did just 3 years ago?  Look at that cluster of circles in the Middle East – that’s our weapons in the hands of millions of soldiers who may hate their nearest enemy just slightly more than us.

If this were an article about Russia’s increase in weapons production, supplying the world with 3x more guns in unstable areas – what would the comments be then?  I don’t think this is about good capitalism, we are pursuing a foreign policy that promotes this environment.  This is the reality of "The Bush Doctrine" of preventive war, which holds that the United States government should depose foreign regimes that represent a threat to the security of the United States, even if such threats are not immediate and no attack is imminent.

Without very concrete political clarity, how does a foreign nation know if they are a possible threat to the United States?  What kind of environment does "you are either with us or against us" create as the cornerstone of foreign policy?  A good old fashiioned arms build-up is all well and good for the defense industry but, once everyone is armed to the teeth, there’s no more real money to be made until someone starts a war and smashes up all the toys.