Source: By Fabius Maximus....(click for link)
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 20, 2010: Summary: This discusses an often unsavory aspect of one the few remaining American export industries. We close our eyes to it. The people of the nations on the side of this trade often find it difficult to do so.Contents
- An introduction by George Bernard Shaw
- Introduction by Tom Englehardt: Pimping Weapons to the World
- The Main Feature: “America’s Global Weapons Monopoly – Don’t Call It “the Global Arms Trade” by Frida Berrigan
- About the author, the classic work about the arms industry, and an Afterword
(1) An introduction by George Bernard Shaw
CUSINS. What on earth is the true faith of an Armorer?
UNDERSHAFT. To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes.
- The first Undershaft wrote up in his shop If God Gave the Hand, Let Not Man Withhold the Sword.
- The second wrote up All Have the Right to Fight; None have the Right to Judge.
- The third wrote up To Man the Weapon; To Heaven the Victory.
- The fourth had no literary turn; so he did not write up anything; but he sold cannons to Napoleon under the nose of George the Third.
- The fifth wrote up Peace Shall Not Prevail Save with a Sword in her Hand.
- The sixth, my master, was the best of all. He wrote up Nothing is Ever Done in this World Until Men Are Parepared to Kill One Another If It Is Not Done.
- After that, there was nothing left for the seventh to say. So he wrote up, simply,Unashamed.
— From the play “Major Barbara”
(2) An Introduction by Tom Englehardt: Pimping Weapons to the World
As last week ended, the American and British military in Afghanistan finally launched a long awaited operation to occupy the city of Marja in Taliban-controlled Helmand Province.According to Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal, to win “hearts and minds,” the U.S. Army and Marines were arriving with “a government in a box” — Afghan governing and security structures evidently ready to be unpacked as part of the sort of nation-building operation that once would have staggered the American officer corps.
Not surprisingly, when it comes to the Afghan War, “hearts and minds” pieces are now a dime a dozen in the U.S. press. (Can McChrystal’s new counterinsurgency strategy of “protecting the people” work? Will the Afghans start to love us, love themselves, and reject the Taliban?) In one recent piece about Marines in a Taliban “stronghold” near the southern city of Kandahar, “Forces Strain to Hire Afghans,” Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov described the crisis a U.S. Army captain faced. He had more than a million dollars to spend on reconstruction projects meant to gain local loyalties, and few Afghan takers. The third paragraph of his piece went like this: “Yet, the only construction work here so far has been the hammering of U.S. Navy Seabees, or construction troops, erecting a vast American base overlooking Senjaray. The town’s unemployed men prefer to stay home, for fear of Taliban retribution.”
This is fairly typical of U.S. press coverage of the Afghan War. That “vast American base,” just now under construction, is noticed and mentioned in passing by an American reporter, and then never comes up again. Yet it is one of approximately 400 bases built or being built in the country, as Nick Turse of TomDispatch.com recently discovered — a staggering Pentagon military construction splurge that is almost never reported on. It’s simply taken for granted.
As TomDispatch regular and weapons-export expert Frida Berrigan of the New American Foundation points out, the American position in what U.S. news reports always call “the global arms trade” is similarly taken for granted. If the Hollywood export Avatar sweeps the world, bringing in multi-billions, it’s front-page news. If American arms exports sweep the world, bringing in multi-billions, you’re lucky to find out about it deep inside your ever-thinning daily newspaper (and such stories seldom even make it onto the TV news). If we sell weaponry repeatedly to the Indonesians or the Saudis or the Qataris or the Israelis, it’s a ho-hum matter. The norm. Like those bases in Afghanistan. It’s only if some country with clout screams bloody murder, as the Chinese recently did about a massive arms deal with Taiwan, that we have news; or if some other country sells weapons to whatever state is eager, as France recently agreed to dowith the Russians, and the Americans responsible for distributing most of the advanced weaponry on the planet disapprove, is attention paid. Go figure.
(3) The main feature: “America’s Global Weapons Monopoly – Don’t Call It “the Global Arms Trade”
By Frida Berrigan, TomDispatch, 16 February 2010 — Reposted with permission.
On the relatively rare occasions when the media turns its attention to U.S. weapons sales abroad and shines its not-so-bright spotlight on the latest set of facts and figures, it invariably speaks of “the global arms trade.”
Let’s consider that label for a moment, word by word:
- It is global, since there are few places on the planet that lie beyond the reach of the weapons industry.
- Arms sounds so old-fashioned and anodyne when what we’re talking about is advanced technology designed to kill and maim.
- And trade suggests a give and take among many parties when, if we’re looking at the figures for that “trade” in a clear-eyed way, there is really just one seller and so many buyers.
How about updating it this way: “the global weapons monopoly.”
In 2008, according to an authoritative report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), $55.2 billion in weapons deals were concluded worldwide. Of that total, the United States was responsible for $37.8 billion in weapons sales agreements, or 68.4% of the total “trade.” Some of these agreements were long-term ones and did not result in 2008 deliveries of weapons systems, but these latest figures are a good gauge of the global appetite for weapons. It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to recognize that, when one nation accounts for nearly 70% of weapons sales, the term “global arms trade” doesn’t quite cut it.
Consider the “competition” and reality comes into focus. Take a guess on which country is the number two weapons exporter on the planet: China? Russia? No, Italy, with a relatively paltry $3.7 billion in agreements with other countries or just 9% of the U.S. market share. Russia, that former Cold War superpower in the “trade,” was close behind Italy, with only $3.5 billion in arms agreements.
U.S. weapons manufacturers have come a long way, baby, since those Cold War days when the United States really did have a major competitor. For instance, the Congressional Research Service’s data for 1990, the last year of the Soviet Union’s existence, shows global weapons sales totaling $32.7 billion, with the United States accounting for $12.1 billion of that or 37% of the market. For its part, the Soviet Union was responsible for a competitive $10.7 billion in deals inked that year. France, China, and the United Kingdom accounted for most of the rest.
Since then, the global appetite for weapons has only grown more voracious, while the number of purveyors has shrunk to the point where the Pentagon could hang out a sign: “We arm the world.” No kidding, it’s true.
Cambodia ($304,000), Comoros ($895,000), Colombia ($256 million), Guinea ($200,000), Greece ($225 million), Great Britain ($1.1 billion), the Philippines ($72.9 million), Poland ($79.8 million), and Peru ($16.4 million) all buy U.S. arms, as does almost every country not in that list. U.S. weapons, and only U.S. weapons, are coveted by presidents and prime ministers, generals and strongmen.
From the Pentagon’s own data (which differs from that in the CRS report), here are the top ten nations which made Foreign Military Sales agreements with the Pentagon, and so with U.S. weapons makers, in 2008:
- Saudi Arabia $6.06 billion
- Iraq $2.50 billion
- Morocco $2.41 billion
- Egypt $2.31 billion
- Israel $1.32 billion
- Australia $1.13 billion
- South Korea $1.12 billion
- Great Britain $1.10 billion
- India $1 billion
- Japan $840 million
That’s more than $17 billion in weapons right there. Some of these countries are consistently eager buyers, and some are not. Morocco, for example, is only in that top-ten list because it was green-lighted to buy 24 of Lockheed Martin’s F-16 fighter planes at $360 million (or so) for each aircraft, an expensive one-shot deal. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia (which inked $14.71 billion in weapons agreements between 2001 and 2008), Egypt ($13.25 billion) and Israel ($11.27 billion) are such regular customers that they should have the equivalent of one of those “buy 10, get the 11th free” punch cards doled out by your favorite coffee shop.
To sum up, the U.S. has a virtual global monopoly on exporting tools of force and destruction. Call it market saturation. Call it anything you like, just not the “global arms trade.”
Getting Even More Competitive?
It used to be that the United States exported goods, products, and machinery of all sorts in prodigious quantities: cars and trucks, steel and computers, and high-tech gizmos. But those days are largely over.
The Obama administration now wants to launch a green manufacturing revolution in the U.S., and in February, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced a new “National Export Initiative” with the aim of doubling American exports, a move he said would support the creation of two million new jobs. The U.S. could, of course, lose the renewable-energy race to China and that new exports program may never get off the ground. In one area, however, the U.S. ismanufacturing products that are distinctly wanted — things that go boom in the night — and there the Pentagon is working hard to increase market share.
Don’t for a second think that the American global monopoly on weapons sales is accidental or unintentional. The constant and lucrative growth of this market for U.S. weapons makers has been ensured by shrewd strategic planning. Washington is constantly thinking of new and inventive ways to flog its deadly wares throughout the world.
How do you improve on near perfection? In the interest of enhancing that “competitive” edge in weapons sales, the Obama administration isinvestigating the possibility of revising export laws to make it even easier to sell military technology abroad. As Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morell explained in January, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants to see “wholesale changes to the rules and regulations on government technology exports” in the name of “competitiveness.”
When he says “government technology exports,” Morell of course means weapons and other military technologies. “Tinkering with our antiquated, bureaucratic, overly cumbersome system is not enough to maintain our competitiveness in the global economy and also help our friends and allies buy the equipment they need to contribute to global security,” he continued, “[Gates] strongly supports the administration’s efforts to completely reform our export control regime, starting ideally with a blank sheet of paper.”
The laws that regulate U.S. weapons exports are a jumbled mess, but in essence they delineate what the United States can sell to whom and through what bureaucratic mechanisms. According to U.S. law, for example, there are actually a few countries that cannot receive U.S. weapons. Myanmar under the military junta and Venezuela while led by Hugo Chavez are two examples. There are also some weapons systems that are not intended for export. Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor jet fighter was — until the Pentagon recently stopped buying the plane — deemed too sophisticated or sensitive to sell abroad. And there are reporting requirements that give members of Congress a window of opportunity within which they can question or oppose proposed weapons exports.
Given what’s being sold, these export controls are remarkably minimal in nature and are constantly under assault by the weapons industry. Bans on weapons sales to particular countries are regularly lifted through aggressive lobbying. (Indonesia, for example, was offered $50 million in weapons from 2006 to 2008 after an almost decade long congressional arms embargo.) The industry also works to relax controls on new technology exports to allies. Japan and Australia have mounted campaigns to win the ability to buy F-22 Raptors, potential sales that Lockheed Martin is now especially happy to entertain. The reporting window to Congress remains an important export control, but the time frame is shrinking as more countries are being “fast tracked,” making it harder for distracted representatives to react when a controversial sale comes up.
In addition to revising these export controls, the administration is looking at the issue of “dual-use” technologies. These are not weapons. They do not shoot or explode. Included are high-speed computer processors, surveillance and detection networks, and a host of other complex and evolving technologies that could have military as well as civilian applications. This category might also include intangible items like cyber-entities or access to controlled web environments.
Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and other major weapons manufacturers have invested billions of dollars from the Pentagon’s research and development budgets in exploring and perfecting such technologies, and now they are eager to sell them to foreign buyers along with the usual fighter planes, combat ships, and guided missiles. But the rules as they stand make this something less than a slam dunk. So the weapons industry and the Pentagon are arguing for “updating” the rules. If you translate updating as “loosening” the rules, then the United States would indeed be more “competitive,” but who exactly are we trying to beat?
Weapons Sales are Red Hot
“What’s Hot?” is the title of Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieranga’s blog entry for January 4, 2010. Wieranga is the Director of the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is charged with overseeing weapons exports, and such pillow talk is evidently more than acceptable — at least when it’s about weapons sales. In fact, Wieranga could barely restrain himself that day, adding: “Afghanistan is really HOT!” Admittedly, on that day the temperature in Kabul was just above freezing, but not at the Pentagon, where arms sales to Afghanistan evidently create a lot of heat.
As Wieranga went on to write, the Obama administration’s new 2010/2011 budget allocates $6 billion in weaponry for Afghan Security Forces. The Afghans will actually get those weapons for free, but U.S. weapons makers will make real money delivering them at taxpayers’ expense and, as the Vice Admiral pointed out, that “means there is a staggering amount of acquisition work to do.”
It’s not just Afghanistan that’s now in the torrid zone. Weapons sales all over the world will be smoking in 2010 and beyond.
The year began with a bang when Wieranga’s Agency announced that the Obama administration had decided to sell a nifty $6 billion in weapons to Taiwan. Even as the United States leans heavily on China for debt servicing, Washington is giving the Mainland a big raspberry by offering the island of 22 million off its coast (which Washington does not formally recognize as an independent nation), a lethal cocktail of weaponry that includes $3 billion in Black Hawk helicopters. This deal comes on top of more than $11 billion in U.S. weapons exports to Taiwan over the last decade, and is certain to set Chinese-U.S. relations back a step or two.
Other bonanzas on the horizon? Brazil wants new fighter planes and Boeing is battling a French company for the contract in a deal that could be worth a whopping $7 billion. India, once a major arms buyer from the Soviet Union, is now another big buy-American customer, with Boeing and Lockheed Martin vying to equip its air force with new fighter planes in deals that Boeing estimates may reach $11 billion.
Such deals are staggering. They contribute more bang and blast to a world already bristling with particularly lethal weaponry. They are a striking American success story in a time filled with failures. Put in the lurid but everyday terms of a nation weaned on reality television, the Pentagon is pimping for the U.S. weapons industry. The weapons industry, for its part, is a pusher for every kind of lethal technology. The two of them together are working to ensure that more of the same will flow out of the U.S. in ever easier and more lucrative ways.
Global arms trade? Send that one back to the Department of Euphemisms. Pimps and pushers with a lucrative global monopoly on a killing drug — maybe that’s the language we need. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to launch a “war on weapons.”
Copyright 2010 Frida Berrigan
About the author
Frida Berrigan is a Senior Program Associate with the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative.“Weapons at War 2008,” a report she co-authored with William D. Hartung, goes into much more detail about the politics and pratfalls of weapons exports.
Click here to see Frida Berrigan’s other articles at TomDispatch.
For more information about the arms industry
Read the classic study of the international armament industry: Merchants of Death By H.C. Engelbrecht and F.C. Hanighen (1934).
Afterword
Please email me if you have a correction to this post. Or email me if you wish to make a comment and either have expertise in this field or are mentioned in this post. Send messages to fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).
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