<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5">
<div style="display: block;" id="reader-header" class="header"> <font
size="-2"><a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-obama-administration-has-sold-more-weapons-than-any-other-administration-since-world-war-ii/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain">https://www.thenation.com/article/the-obama-administration-has-sold-more-weapons-than-any-other-administration-since-world-war-ii/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">The Obama Administration Has Brokered More
Weapons Sales Than Any Other Administration Since World War II</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">By William D. Hartung -
July 26, 2016<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div style="display: block;" id="moz-reader-content">
<div
xml:base="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-obama-administration-has-sold-more-weapons-than-any-other-administration-since-world-war-ii/"
id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<section class="article-body abody-219979">
<aside class="left full-width-mobile image wide indent"> <br>
</aside>
<p><span class="dropcap">W</span>hen American firms
dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion a
year, you’d expect to hear about it. Not so with the
global arms trade. It’s good for one or two stories a
year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual
statistics on the state of the business come out.</p>
<p>It’s not that no one writes about aspects of the arms
trade. There are occasional pieces that, for example,
take note of the impact of US weapons transfers,
including cluster bombs, to Saudi Arabia, or of the
disastrous dispensation of weaponry to US allies in
Syria, or of foreign sales of the costly, controversial
F-35 combat aircraft. And once in a while, if a foreign
leader meets with the president, US arms sales to his or
her country might generate an article or two. But the
sheer size of the American arms trade, the politics that
drive it, the companies that profit from it, and its
devastating global impacts are rarely discussed, much
less analyzed in any depth. </p>
<p>So here’s a question that’s puzzled me for years (and
I’m something of an arms wonk): Why do other major US
exports—from Hollywood movies to Midwestern grain
shipments to Boeing airliners—garner regular coverage
while trends in weapons exports remain in relative
obscurity? Are we ashamed of standing essentially alone
as the world’s number one arms dealer, or is our Weapons
“R” Us role such a commonplace that we take it for
granted, like death or taxes? </p>
<p>The numbers should stagger anyone. According to the
latest figures available from the Congressional Research
Service, the United States was credited with more than
half the value of all global arms transfer agreements in
2014, the most recent year for which full statistics are
available. At 14 percent, the world’s second largest
supplier, Russia, lagged far behind. Washington’s
“leadership” in this field has never truly been
challenged. The US share has fluctuated between
one-third and one-half of the global market for the past
two decades, peaking at an almost monopolistic 70
percent of all weapons sold in 2011. And the gold rush
continues. Vice Admiral Joe Rixey, who heads the
Pentagon’s arms sales agency, euphemistically known as
the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, estimates that
arms deals facilitated by the Pentagon topped $46
billion in 2015, and are on track to hit $40 billion in
2016. </p>
<p>To be completely accurate, there is one group of people
who pay remarkably close attention to these
trends—executives of the defense contractors that are
cashing in on this growth market. With the Pentagon and
related agencies taking in “only” about $600 billion a
year—high by historical standards but tens of billions
of dollars less than hoped for by the defense
industry—companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and
General Dynamics have been looking to global markets as
their major source of new revenue.</p>
<p>In a January 2015 investor call, for example, Lockheed
Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson was asked whether the Iran
nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration and
five other powers might reduce tensions in the Middle
East, undermining the company’s strategy of increasing
its arms exports to the region. She responded that
continuing “volatility” in both the Middle East and Asia
would make them “growth areas” for the foreseeable
future. In other words, no worries. As long as the world
stays at war or on the verge of it, Lockheed Martin’s
profits won’t suffer—and, of course, its products will
help ensure that any such “volatility” will prove lethal
indeed. </p>
<p>Under Hewson, Lockheed has set a goal of getting at
least 25 percent of its revenues from weapons exports,
and Boeing has done that company one better. It’s
seeking to make overseas arms sales 30 percent of its
business. </p>
<h6><font size="+1">Good News From the Middle East (If
You’re an Arms Maker)</font></h6>
<p>Arms deals are a way of life in Washington. From the
president on down, significant parts of the government
are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the
global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing
will live the good life. From the president on his trips
abroad to visit allied world leaders to the secretaries
of state and defense to the staffs of US embassies,
American officials regularly act as salespeople for the
arms firms. And the Pentagon is their enabler. From
brokering, facilitating, and literally banking the money
from arms deals to transferring weapons to favored
allies on the taxpayers’ dime, it is in essence the
world’s largest arms dealer. </p>
<p>In a typical sale, the US government is involved every
step of the way. The Pentagon often does assessments of
an allied nation’s armed forces in order to tell them
what they “need”—and of course what they always need is
billions of dollars in new US-supplied equipment. Then
the Pentagon helps negotiate the terms of the deal,
notifies Congress of its details, and collects the funds
from the foreign buyer, which it then gives to the US
supplier in the form of a defense contract. In most
deals, the Pentagon is also the point of contact for
maintenance and spare parts for any US-supplied system.
The bureaucracy that helps make all of this happen, the
Defense Security Cooperation Agency, is funded from a
3.5 percent surcharge on the deals it negotiates. This
gives it all the more incentive to sell, sell, sell. </p>
<p>And the pressure for yet more of the same is always
intense, in part because the weapons makers are careful
to spread their production facilities to as many states
and localities as possible. In this way, they ensure
that endless support for government promotion of major
arms sales becomes part and parcel of domestic politics.
</p>
<p>General Dynamics, for instance, has managed to keep its
tank plants in Ohio and Michigan running through a
combination of add-ons to the Army budget—funds inserted
into that budget by Congress even though the Pentagon
didn’t request them—and exports to Saudi Arabia. Boeing
is banking on a proposed deal to sell 40 F-18s to Kuwait
to keep its St. Louis production line open, and is
currently jousting with the Obama administration to get
it to move more quickly on the deal. Not surprisingly,
members of Congress and local business leaders in such
states become strong supporters of weapons exports. </p>
<p>Though seldom thought of this way, the US political
system is also a global arms distribution system of the
first order. In this context, the Obama administration
has proven itself a good friend to arms exporting firms.
During President Obama’s first six years in office,
Washington entered into agreements to sell more than
$190 billion in weaponry worldwide—more, that is, than
any US administration since World War II. In addition,
Team Obama has loosened restrictions on arms exports,
making it possible to send abroad a whole new range of
weapons and weapons components—including Black Hawk and
Huey helicopters and engines for C-17 transport
planes—with far less scrutiny than was previously
required. </p>
<p>This has been good news for the industry, which had
been pressing for such changes for decades with little
success. But the weaker regulations also make it
potentially easier for arms smugglers and human rights
abusers to get their hands on US arms. For example, 36
US allies—from Argentina and Bulgaria to Romania and
Turkey—will no longer need licenses from the State
Department to import weapons and weapons parts from the
United States. This will make it far easier for
smuggling networks to set up front companies in such
countries and get US arms and arms components that they
can then pass on to third parties like Iran or China.
Already a common practice, it will only increase under
the new regulations. </p>
<p>The degree to which the Obama administration has been
willing to bend over backward to help weapons exporters
was underscored at a 2013 hearing on those
administration export “reforms.” Tom Kelly, then the
deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s
Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, caught the spirit
of the era when asked whether the administration was
doing enough to promote American arms exports. He
responded: </p>
<p>“[We are] advocating on behalf of our companies and
doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go
through… and that is something we are doing every day,
basically [on] every continent in the world… and we’re
constantly thinking of how we can do better.” </p>
<p>One place where, with a helping hand from the Obama
administration and the Pentagon, the arms industry has
been doing a lot better of late is the Middle East.
Washington has brokered deals for more than $50 billion
in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia alone for everything
from F-15 fighter aircraft and Apache attack helicopters
to combat ships and missile defense systems. </p>
<p>The most damaging deals, if not the most lucrative,
have been the sales of bombs and missiles to the Saudis
for their brutal war in Yemen, where thousands of
civilians have been killed and millions of people are
going hungry. Members of Congress like Michigan
Representative John Conyers and Connecticut Senator
Chris Murphy have pressed for legislation that would at
least stem the flow of the most deadly of the weaponry
being sent for use there, but they have yet to overcome
the considerable clout of the Saudis in Washington (and,
of course, that of the arms industry as well). </p>
<p>When it comes to the arms business, however, there’s no
end to the good news from the Middle East. Take the
administration’s proposed new 10-year aid deal with
Israel. If enacted as currently planned, it would boost
US military assistance to that country by up to 25
percent—to roughly $4 billion per year. At the same
time, it would phase out a provision that had allowed
Israel to spend one-quarter of Washington’s aid
developing its own defense industry. In other words, all
that money, the full $4 billion in taxpayer dollars,
will now flow directly into the coffers of companies
like Lockheed Martin, which is in the midst of
completing a multi-billion-dollar deal to sell the
Israelis F-35s. </p>
<h6><font size="+1">“Volatility” in Asia and Europe</font></h6>
<p>As Lockheed Martin’s Marillyn Hewson noted, however,
the Middle East is hardly the only growth area for that
firm or others like it. The dispute between China and
its neighbors over the control of the South China Sea
(which is in many ways an incipient conflict over
whether that country or the United States will control
that part of the Pacific Ocean) has opened up new vistas
when it comes to the sale of American warships and other
military equipment to Washington’s East Asian allies.
The recent Hague court decision rejecting Chinese claims
to those waters (and the Chinese rejection of it) is
only likely to increase the pace of arms buying in the
region. </p>
<p>At the same time, in the good-news-never-ends
department, growing fears of North Korea’s nuclear
program have stoked a demand for US-supplied missile
defense systems. The South Koreans have, in fact, just
agreed to deploy Lockheed Martin’s THAAD anti-missile
system. In addition, the Obama administration’s decision
to end the longstanding embargo on US arms sales to
Vietnam is likely to open yet another significant market
for US firms. In the past two years alone, the United
States has offered more than $15 billion worth of
weaponry to allies in East Asia, with Taiwan, Japan, and
South Korea accounting for the bulk of the sales. </p>
<p>In addition, the Obama administration has gone to great
lengths to build a defense relationship with India, a
development guaranteed to benefit US arms exporters.
Last year, Washington and New Delhi signed a 10-year
defense agreement that included pledges of future joint
work on aircraft engines and aircraft carrier designs.
In these years, the United States has made significant
inroads into the Indian arms market, which had
traditionally been dominated by the Soviet Union and
then Russia. Recent deals include a $5.8 billion sale of
Boeing C-17 transport aircraft and a $1.4 billion
agreement to provide support services related to a
planned purchase of Apache attack helicopters. </p>
<p>And don’t forget “volatile” Europe. Great Britain’s
recent Brexit vote introduced an uncertainty factor into
American arms exports to that country. The United
Kingdom has been by far the biggest purchaser of US
weapons in Europe of late, with more than $6 billion in
deals struck over the past two years alone—more, that
is, than the United States has sold to all other
European countries combined. </p>
<p>The British defense behemoth BAE is Lockheed Martin’s
principal foreign partner on the F-35 combat aircraft,
which at a projected cost of $1.4 trillion over its
lifetime already qualifies as the most expensive weapons
program in history. If Brexit-driven austerity were to
lead to a delay in, or the cancellation of, the F-35
deal (or any other major weapons shipments), it would be
a blow to American arms makers. But count on one thing:
were there to be even a hint that this might happen to
the F-35, lobbyists for BAE will mobilize to get the
deal privileged status, whatever other budget cuts may
be in the works. </p>
<p>On the bright side (if you happen to be a weapons
maker), any British reductions will certainly be more
than offset by opportunities in Eastern and Central
Europe, where a new Cold War seems to be gaining
traction. Between 2014 and 2015, according to the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
military spending increased by 13 percent in the region
in response to the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The
rise in Poland’s outlays, at 22 percent, was
particularly steep. </p>
<p>Under the circumstances, it should be obvious that
trends in the global arms trade are a major news story
and should be dealt with as such in the country most
responsible for putting more weapons of a more powerful
nature into the hands of those living in “volatile”
regions. It’s a monster business (in every sense of the
word) and certainly has far more dangerous consequences
than licensing a Hollywood blockbuster or selling
another Boeing airliner. </p>
<p>Historically, there have been rare occasions of public
protest against unbridled arms trafficking, as with the
backlash against “the merchants of death” after World
War I, or the controversy over who armed Saddam Hussein
that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Even now, small
numbers of congressional representatives, including John
Conyers, Chris Murphy, and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul,
continue to try to halt the sale of cluster munitions,
bombs, and missiles to Saudi Arabia. </p>
<p>There is, however, unlikely to be a genuine public
debate about the value of the arms business and
Washington’s place in it if it isn’t even considered a
subject worthy of more than an occasional media story.
In the meantime, the United States continues to hold
onto the number one role in the global arms trade, the
White House does its part, the Pentagon greases the
wheels, and the dollars roll in to profit-hungry US
weapons contractors. </p>
</section>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>