Tomgram: William Hartung, How to Arm a "Volatile" Planet
By William Hartung
Posted on July 26, 2016, Printed on July 26, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176169/ ;
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: TD is leaving the last day of the Democratic
Convention to Hillary C. Next post will be on Sunday, July 31st. Tom]
As is often the case, I opened the Monday newspaper curious to find out how
the weekend had gone at the movies. The headline read, "'Ghostbusters' Is
No. 2 Behind 'Secret Life of Pets.'" That meant Universal Studios' animated
film had again been the big winner, taking in an estimated $50.6 million for
a two-week domestic total of $203.2 million. In the industry, it was feared
that China, the world's number two market and gaining fast, might not let
another hit, Ghostbusters, be shown, given its paranormal themes. Still,
all in all, it had been an upbeat week for one of the two dominant American
product lines that go boom in the night and also have a remarkable grip on
their respective global markets. The first of those -- think action films,
superhero movies, and space operas -- comes out of Hollywood and, in
multiplexes globally, one thing is guaranteed: you're not going to get the
next Avengers sequel or Fast and Furious 23 from Russia, France, or China.
Not surprisingly, since Hollywood rakes in billions of dollars annually from
the rest of the planet for entertaining us all, weekly news about its
business successes and failures is a regular feature of our world.
And, oh yes, then there's that other business, the one that actually makes
things that go boom in the night. I'm talking, of course, about the weapons
trade. As TomDispatch regular Bill Hartung, author of Prophets of War:
Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, points
out today, it has an almost monopolistic grip on its global market and, like
Hollywood, regularly has cheery news to offer about the billions of dollars
it pulls in from countries at war or fearing future conflicts. In fact, for
a business that -- bottom line -- kills people rather than simply thrilling
them with bloody mayhem, it, too, has a remarkably upbeat sense of itself.
Take Thomas Kennedy, CEO of Raytheon, a major arms maker, presently cleaning
up when, as Defense News reports, it comes to the "missile defense
interceptor, as well as air-to-ground missiles and air-to-air combat
missiles fired by fighter jets" that it's selling across the Middle East
(and in some cases in Asia, too). The company is projecting a revenue rise
of 3%-5% this year and, according to Defense One, "When investors visiting
Raytheon's factories ask 'How's business?' Kennedy tends to respond like
this: 'Did you notice you couldn't get a parking space?... 'Where else can
you find a factory in America that you can't get a parking space?'"
So here's the puzzle: two major industries with certain similarities grip
their global markets in similarly overwhelming ways. One is the focus of
almost constant reportage and attention, the other largely avoids notice in
our world. Why is that? Fortunately, TomDispatch can call on Hartung's
expertise when it comes to the remarkably little known "success" story of
America's weapons makers to offer the sort of picture of one of this
country's stellar industries that you won't find anywhere else. Tom
There's No Business Like the Arms Business
Weapons "R" Us (But You'd Never Know It)
By William D. Hartung
When 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.
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 U.S. weapons
transfers, including cluster bombs, to Saudi Arabia, or of the disastrous
dispensation of weaponry to U.S. 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, U.S. 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.
So here's a question that's puzzled me for years (and I'm something of an
arms wonk): Why do other major U.S. 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?
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%, the world's second largest supplier, Russia, lagged far
behind. Washington's "leadership" in this field has never truly been
challenged. The U.S. share has fluctuated between one-third and one-half of
the global market for the past two decades, peaking at an almost
monopolistic 70% 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.
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.
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.
Under Hewson, Lockheed has set a goal of getting at least 25% of its
revenues from weapons exports, and Boeing has done that company one better.
It's seeking to make overseas arms sales 30% of its business.
Good News From the Middle East (If You're an Arms Maker)
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 U.S. 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.
In a typical sale, the U.S. 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 U.S.-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 U.S.
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
U.S.-supplied system. The bureaucracy that helps make all of this happen,
the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, is funded from a 3.5% surcharge on
the deals it negotiates. This gives it all the more incentive to sell, sell,
sell.
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.
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.
Though seldom thought of this way, the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.
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 U.S. arms. For example, 36 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.
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:
"[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."
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.
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).
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 U.S.
military assistance to that country by up to 25% -- 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.
"Volatility" in Asia and Europe
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.
At the same time, in the good-news-never-ends department, growing fears of
North Korea's nuclear program have stoked a demand for U.S.-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 U.S. arms sales
to Vietnam is likely to open yet another significant market for U.S. firms.
In the past two years alone, the U.S. 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.
In addition, the Obama administration has gone to great lengths to build a
defense relationship with India, a development guaranteed to benefit U.S.
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 U.S. 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.
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 U.S. weapons in
Europe of late, with more than $6 billion in deals struck over the past two
years alone -- more, that is, than the U.S. has sold to all other European
countries combined.
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.
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% in the region in
response to the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The rise in Poland's
outlays, at 22%, was particularly steep.
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.
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.
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 U.S. weapons contractors.
William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and
Security Project at the Center for International Policy and a senior advisor
to the Security Assistance Monitor. He is the author of Prophets of War:
Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 William D. Hartung
C 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176169
Tomgram: William Hartung, How to Arm a "Volatile" Planet
By William Hartung
Posted on July 26, 2016, Printed on July 26, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176169/ ;
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: TD is leaving the last day of the Democratic
Convention to Hillary C. Next post will be on Sunday, July 31st. Tom]
As is often the case, I opened the Monday newspaper curious to find out how
the weekend had gone at the movies. The headline read, "'Ghostbusters' Is
No. 2 Behind 'Secret Life of Pets.'" That meant Universal Studios' animated
film had again been the big winner, taking in an estimated $50.6 million for
a two-week domestic total of $203.2 million. In the industry, it was feared
that China, the world's number two market and gaining fast, might not let
another hit, Ghostbusters, be shown, given its paranormal themes. Still, all
in all, it had been an upbeat week for one of the two dominant American
product lines that go boom in the night and also have a remarkable grip on
their respective global markets. The first of those -- think action films,
superhero movies, and space operas -- comes out of Hollywood and, in
multiplexes globally, one thing is guaranteed: you're not going to get the
next Avengers sequel or Fast and Furious 23 from Russia, France, or China.
Not surprisingly, since Hollywood rakes in billions of dollars annually from
the rest of the planet for entertaining us all, weekly news about its
business successes and failures is a regular feature of our world.
And, oh yes, then there's that other business, the one that actually makes
things that go boom in the night. I'm talking, of course, about the weapons
trade. As TomDispatch regular Bill Hartung, author of Prophets of War:
Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, points
out today, it has an almost monopolistic grip on its global market and, like
Hollywood, regularly has cheery news to offer about the billions of dollars
it pulls in from countries at war or fearing future conflicts. In fact, for
a business that -- bottom line -- kills people rather than simply thrilling
them with bloody mayhem, it, too, has a remarkably upbeat sense of itself.
Take Thomas Kennedy, CEO of Raytheon, a major arms maker, presently cleaning
up when, as Defense News reports, it comes to the "missile defense
interceptorhttp://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/show-daily/farnborough/2
016/07/12/raytheon-touts-patriot-anti-missile-performance-yemen-war/86998912
/, as well as air-to-ground missiles and air-to-air combat missiles fired by
fighter jets" that it's selling across the Middle East (and in some cases in
Asia, too). The company is projecting a revenue rise of 3%-5% this year and,
according to Defense One, "When investors visiting Raytheon's factories ask
'How's business?' Kennedy tends to respond like this: 'Did you notice you
couldn't get a parking space?... 'Where else can you find a factory in
America that you can't get a parking space?'"
So here's the puzzle: two major industries with certain similarities grip
their global markets in similarly overwhelming ways. One is the focus of
almost constant reportage and attention, the other largely avoids notice in
our world. Why is that? Fortunately, TomDispatch can call on Hartung's
expertise when it comes to the remarkably little known "success" story of
America's weapons makers to offer the sort of picture of one of this
country's stellar industries that you won't find anywhere else. Tom
There's No Business Like the Arms Business
Weapons "R" Us (But You'd Never Know It)
By William D. Hartung
When 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.
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 U.S. weapons
transfers, including cluster bombs, to Saudi Arabia, or of the disastrous
dispensation of weaponry to U.S. 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, U.S. 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.
So here's a question that's puzzled me for years (and I'm something of an
arms wonk): Why do other major U.S. 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?
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%, the
world's second largest supplier, Russia, lagged far behind. Washington's
"leadership" in this field has never truly been challenged. The U.S. share
has fluctuated between one-third and one-half of the global market for the
past two decades, peaking at an almost monopolistic 70% 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.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568586973/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568586973/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20To 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.
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.
Under Hewson, Lockheed has set a goal of getting at least 25% of its
revenues from weapons exports, and Boeing has done that company one better.
It's seeking to make overseas arms sales 30% of its business.
Good News From the Middle East (If You're an Arms Maker)
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 U.S. 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.
In a typical sale, the U.S. 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 U.S.-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 U.S.
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
U.S.-supplied system. The bureaucracy that helps make all of this happen,
the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, is funded from a 3.5% surcharge on
the deals it negotiates. This gives it all the more incentive to sell, sell,
sell.
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.
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.
Though seldom thought of this way, the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.
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 U.S. arms. For example, 36 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.
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:
"[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."
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.
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).
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 U.S.
military assistance to that country by up to 25% -- 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.
"Volatility" in Asia and Europe
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.
At the same time, in the good-news-never-ends department, growing fears of
North Korea's nuclear program have stoked a demand for U.S.-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 U.S. arms sales
to Vietnam is likely to open yet another significant market for U.S. firms.
In the past two years alone, the U.S. 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.
In addition, the Obama administration has gone to great lengths to build a
defense relationship with India, a development guaranteed to benefit U.S.
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 U.S. 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.
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 U.S. weapons in
Europe of late, with more than $6 billion in deals struck over the past two
years alone -- more, that is, than the U.S. has sold to all other European
countries combined.
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.
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% in the region in
response to the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The rise in Poland's
outlays, at 22%, was particularly steep.
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.
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.
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 U.S. weapons contractors.
William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and
Security Project at the Center for International Policy and a senior advisor
to the Security Assistance Monitor. He is the author of Prophets of War:
Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 William D. Hartung
C 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176169
