Merchants of Death Take No Holiday
Armed For Profit

By Frida Berrigan

s President Clinton praised Turkey’s strides toward democracy and freedom in a speech before the Turkish Parliament November 15, trade unionists and leftist demonstrators who had gathered in Ankara’s main square were beaten by riot police and hauled off to jail. “There has been impressive momentum in the past few years,” Clinton declared, “and I hope there will be continued progress, especially in the area of freedom of expression.”

Among the items that crowded the agenda of the 54 nations gathered in Istanbul for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe summit were eradicating torture and promoting freedom of the media. Those goals are particularly relevant for Turkey, where torture is commonplace and journalists are jailed for criticizing the government. But Clinton’s speech before Turkey’s Parliament did not address U.S. arms sales to Turkey or acknowledge that U.S. weapons are used to silence dissent, oppress civilians and fight a civil war with the Kurdish minority. Nor did he admit that the United States’ continued commitment to providing 80 percent of Turkey’s weaponry amounts to a seal of approval for the weapons’ illegal and reprehensible use.

Turkey is not the only country that uses U.S. weapons to oppress its people, strengthen an undemocratic government and attack its neighbors. Israel, Morocco, Somalia, Liberia, Kenya, Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, Guatemala, Uganda, Colombia and Mexico are just a few more. In 1997 a total of $8.3 billion in U.S. arms transfers went to undemocratic regimes. The presence of U.S. weapons in those countries, with their grim histories of conflict and human rights abuses, exposes the contradictory nature of U.S. arms export policy. Officially the United States sells military equipment and services for the purposes of internal security, legitimate self-defense, participation in U.N. peacekeeping missions or operations consistent with the U.N. charter. But if that were U.S. arms export practice, none of the countries mentioned would possess U.S. weapons.

How Sales Fuel Conflicts
The United States, despite public embrace of arms controls, dominates the world’s weapons market, accounting for close to half of arms sold globally: $21.3 billion in 1997. In 1996 U.S. military equipment or training was delivered to 168 of the world’s 190 independent states. In 1995-96, of 42 ongoing conflicts, 39 involved U.S.-supplied weaponry; in nearly half the cases (19 out of 42), the United States was a major supplier accounting for 25 percent or more of all arms exports worldwide.

More disturbing still, in many of these cases both sides are fighting with U.S.-supplied arms. In 1995 Ecuador seized a stretch of Peru’s border. Peru counterattacked. In the air war that followed, Ecuador shot down one of Peru’s planes, an A-37 Dragonfly counterinsurgency aircraft. The United States had provided the plane to Peru, probably as part of President Bush’s Andean anti-drug initiative. Altogether, Peru’s military had benefitted from Washington’s weapons largesse to the tune of $293 million in military aid between 1990 and 1994. But what makes the downing of Peru’s plane shocking is that the United States had also beefed up Ecuador’s military with $21 million in security assistance in five years. While Ecuador and Peru’s border war was a flash in the pan, the U.S. policy of arming both sides of conflicts is not. Greece and Turkey brandish U.S. weapons in their war over Cyprus. Israel and Persian Gulf sheikdoms threaten each other with U.S. weapons. China and Taiwan’s tensions are fueled in part by U.S. weapons.

Death and Profits
Economic factors and profit for the arms industry motivate weapons export policy. President Clinton rode into office with a lot of flowery promises about curbing arms sales, but his investigation of arms export policy concluded that arms sales are a necessary part of the policy to preserve industrial jobs and keep down the costs of domestic weapons production.

Yet the notion that weapons sales abroad are good for the U.S. economy is challenged by the reality that for every billion dollars spent, 21,000 military jobs are created—as opposed to 40,000 the same amount could create in the health care sector, 35,000 in education, 31,000 in the housing sector and almost 26,000 in mass transit. Clearly, it is not the job market that is benefitted by weapons sales; indeed, in the two-and-a-half years from early 1992 to mid-1995, the six top defense-industry companies laid off 178,000 U.S. workers, during a period in which the CEOs of the same companies were vastly increasing their own salaries, tripling them from an average of $1.3 million (each) in 1989 to $4 million in 1994.

Those enormous profits look even greater when one considers that the companies don’t have to invest much to design, test and build weapons. The U.S. arms industry enjoys subsidies that no other industry in the world benefits from. Since 1981 the United States has passed on $450 billion in funding for research, testing, development and evaluation for advanced weaponry, most of which has been sold abroad. In 1996 alone, U.S. government support for arms sales totaled almost $8 billion. “Foreign sales are gravy” for the industry, points out Lawrence Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan.

In addition, the arms industry has its wares marketed by the U.S. federal government. From the $26 million in public money spent on arms bazaars around the world to the reorganization of the Commerce Department to promote arms sales, Clinton has overseen the development of a massive federal infrastructure to advertise, promote and administer weapons sales abroad. Currently there are almost 6,500 full-time federal employees in four agencies working to sell weapons to the world—and the defense industry pockets the profits.

As a package, these perks add up to huge incentives for the arms industry to push for foreign sales and to keep a sharp lookout for new markets to exploit. The Aerospace Industries Association succeeded in opening the Latin American market to high-tech weaponry and fighter planes in 1997. AIA and other industry lobbyists pushed for the expansion of NATO to new Eastern European members in order to expand their markets for U.S. weapons. But what is good for the profit margins of Lockheed, Boeing and Raytheon is not necessarily good for the countries that buy their weapons, or for the people who live in those countries.

Cases in Point
A quick look at the use of U.S. arms in Turkey and Indonesia provide ample reason for the United States to reexamine its policy of selling weapons to whomever will lay the money down.

According to a recently published report by the World Policy Institute and the Federation of American Scientists, over the next eight years Turkey plans to spend an estimated $31 billion— and up to $150 billion through 2030—on upgrading the Turkish armed forces. Topping Turkey’s wish list are attack helicopters, utility and heavy lift helicopters, battle tanks, submarines and early warning aircraft. U.S. arms firms are banking on being chosen for big-ticket contracts, and with good reason: Their foot is already in the door. U.S. weapons already account for 80 percent of Turkey’s imported war chest.

During the first five years of the Clinton administration the U.S. sold nearly $5 billion worth of weaponry to Turkey, with more than $1 billion in 1997 alone. Turkey has used these weapons in an aggressive and disproportionately armed civil war against the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, which is seeking recognition for Turkey’s oppressed Kurdish minority.

A detailed report from Human Rights Watch, “Weapons Transfers and the Violation of the Laws of War in Turkey,” documented the use of U.S.-supplied heavy weaponry like F-16 fighters, military helicopters and armored personnel carriers, as well as small arms like M-16 rifles and M-203 grenade launchers, in human rights abuses and the violations of the laws of war on the part of the Turkish security forces. “The most egregious examples of Turkey’s reliance on U.S. weaponry in committing abuses are its use of U.S.-supplied fighter-bombers to attack civilian villages and its use of U.S.-supplied helicopters in support of a wide range of abusive practices, including the punitive destruction of villages, extrajudicial executions, torture, and indiscriminate fire.” Recent Turkish crackdowns on freedom of the press have made up-to-date reports difficult to come by, but U.S. weapons continue to be used against the Kurds.

As for Indonesia, since that country illegally occupied East Timor in 1975, the United States has approved sales of more than $1 billion in U.S. weaponry to the regime in Jakarta, including F-16 fighter planes, military helicopters and M-16 combat rifles. Despite White House press representative Mike McCurry’s assurances that, “our goal in arms transfers to the region is to promote stability,” recent events have shown U.S. weapons fueling the conflict, increasing the bloodshed and undermining stability and democratic formation.

The Indonesian military and its militia forces were responsible for the massive bloodshed in the aftermath of East Timor’s vote for independence in early September (see NVA, November-December 1999). Reports from the scene noted that the reign of terror in East Timor was conducted in part with U.S.-supplied weaponry, such as M-16 rifles, passed on to the anti-independence death squads by representatives of the Indonesian government.

Colombia to Congo
The cases of Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo further highlight the disastrous impact of uncontrolled arms sales. In Colombia the “War on Drugs” has provided a stream of weapons to a country with a long history of repression. It is well documented that weapons sold by the United States have not just attacked coca fields and drug runners, but civilian villages and peasant organizers. In fact, Congress is deciding on a $1.3 billion package for Colombia, that will include training and funding for counter-drug battalions, up to 30 Black Hawk helicopters and additional radar and surveillance aircraft for interdiction efforts. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, decades of U.S. weapons transfers and continued military training to both sides of the conflict have fanned the fires of war. The United States has helped build the arsenals of eight of the nine governments directly involved in the war that has ravaged the DRC since 1997. U.S. military transfers in the form of direct government-to-government weapons deliveries, commercial sales and military training to the states directly involved has totaled more than $125 million since the end of the Cold War.

Boomerang!
In addition to the use of U.S. weapons to prop up repressive regimes in Turkey and Indonesia and against those—and other nations’—own people and neighbors, a new phenomenon has recently emerged that puts into starker relief the flaws in our weapons export policy: The last five times U.S. soldiers have marched into conflict they have faced U.S.-origin weapons. This “Boomerang Effect” is a deadly consequence of a weapons export policy motivated by corporate profit margins instead of sound foreign policy. Panama was armed and trained by the United States. Before the Persian Gulf War, Iraq received $500 million in military technology, including howitzers and cluster bombs. The United States and Italy competed to be Somalia’s Number One arms dealer before U.S. soldiers chased the “warlords” all over Mogadishu. Most recently, before the breakup of Yugoslavia, the U.S. sent at least $163 million worth of weaponry over a 10-year period, and from1987 to 1991 the U.S. accounted for 13 percent of Yugoslavia’s weapons.

Stemming the Flow
A small step was made recently to curb U.S. arms exports when Congress passed legislation urging the President to establish concrete human rights criteria for arms sales. Critics say the bill lacks teeth because it does not force the United States to use these criteria in arms sales decisions. Arms control advocates are committed to pushing for full implementation of the Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers. The full code would require a country to meet the following conditions in order to purchase U.S. weaponry:
• a democratic form of government
• respect for basic human rights of its citizens
• non-aggression (against other states)
• full participation in the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms.

Despite the fact that the code’s criteria are all primary foreign policy tenets of past and present U.S. administrations, 85 percent of U.S. arms transfers during 1990-95 went to states that did not meet those criteria. That alone is reason enough to pass the code.

A new resource from the World Policy Institute (to be released early in Summer 2000) examines U.S. weapons sales to countries at war and profiles the use of U.S. weapons in human rights violations, extrajudicial killings and violations of the laws of war. This report piles more evidence onto the already buckling stack that supports the position that the United States needs to stop pursuing an arms sales policy that puts profit before people. Finally, when trying to persuade people—elected officials, policy-makers or civilians—that U.S. arms sales are a problem, it is often helpful to point out that U.S. weapons belong to all of us who pay federal taxes. Those tax dollars go to research, design, build, market and sell weapons. Federal employees whose salaries are paid by our tax dollars work around the clock to convince foreign governments that they need those weapons. To the extent that we own them—that we’ve paid for them—it must be our responsibility to curb their sale, their use and their existence.

Frida Berrigan is a Research Associate at the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute of the New School. For copies of the center’s reports, e-mail berrigaf@newschool.