by Frida Berrigan, Senior Research Associate, Arms Trade Resource Center [1]
Can arms sales and military aid - two major tools in Washington’s tool box - help President Bush in his pledge to “end tyranny in our world?”
No, says a new report from the Arms Trade Resource Center. The report, U.S. Weapons at War 2005: Promoting Freedom or Fueling Conflict? [2] finds the U.S. policies of arming and aiding friendly nations are at odds with the goals of democratization and furthering human rights throughout the world.
U.S. arms sales are often justified by pointing to what we get in return — secure access to overseas military facilities or coalition allies in conflicts such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — but these alleged benefits can come at a high price. Often, U.S. arms transfers fuel conflict, arm human rights abusers, or fall into the hands of U.S. adversaries. U.S. arms sometimes go to both sides in long brewing conflicts, ratcheting up tensions and giving both sides better firepower with which to threaten each other, as in the recent decisions to provide new F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan, while pledging comparable high-tech military hardware to its rival India. Far from serving as a force for security and stability, U.S. weapons sales frequently serve to empower unstable, undemocratic regimes to the detriment of U.S. and global security.
The report found that:
The greatest danger emanating from U.S. arms transfers and military aid programs is not in the numbers, but in the potential impacts on the image, credibility and security of the United States. Arming repressive regimes in all corners of the globe while simultaneously proclaiming a campaign for democracy and against tyranny undermines the credibility of the United States in international forums and makes it harder to hold other nations to high standards of conduct on human rights and other key issues.
Arming undemocratic governments all too often helps to enhance their power, frequently fueling conflict or enabling human rights abuses in the process. These blows to the reputation of the United States are in turn impediments to winning the “war of ideas” in the Muslim world and beyond, a critical element in drying up financial and political support for terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda.
Last but not least, in all too many cases, U.S. arms and military technology can boomerang: ending up in the hands of U.S. adversaries, as happened in the 1980s in Iraq and Panama, as well as with the right-wing fundamentalist “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, many of whom are now supporters of al-Qaeda.
As a first step, it is time to impose greater scrutiny on U.S. arms transfers and military aid programs. The superficial assumption that these are just tools in the foreign policy toolbox, to be used to win friends and intimidate adversaries as needed, must be challenged in this new era in U.S. security policy. A good starting point would be to find a way to reinforce and implement the underlying assumptions of U.S. arms export law, which calls for arming nations only for purposes of self-defense, and avoiding arms sales to nations that engage in patterns of systematic human rights abuses, either via new legislation or Executive Branch policy initiatives. Equally important, the automatic assumption that arms transfers are the preferred “barter” for access to military facilities or other security “goods” sought from other nations should be seriously re-considered. Economic aid, political support and other forms of support and engagement should be explored as alternatives whenever possible.
Links:
[1] http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/
[2] http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/wawjune2005.html