We arm the world: U.S. weapons sales fueling global conflict

It’s been less than three years since the adoption of the historic Arms Trade Treaty, and already the United States is leading the way in flouting this landmark accord, violating the letter and spirit of the international agreement by pumping the world full of weapons – fueling global conflict and undermining efforts to uphold human rights and stem the flow of refugees.

As the most recent data confirms, the U.S. remains the world’s largest supplier of weapons systems, with the monetary value of its arms agreements increasing steadily in recent years, despite the global security situation slipping further into chaos and a major refugee crisis destabilizing the entire European continent.

According to arms researcher Jeff Abramson, citing figures from the Congressional Research Service and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute:

The United States concluded $36.2 billion in arms transfer agreements worldwide in 2014, the most recent year detailed in the report. That total was up nearly $10 billion from the 2013 total and constituted just more than half of all global 2014 agreements, which were valued at $71.8 billion, slighly above the 2013 total of $70.2 billion. Nearly $30 billion of U.S. agreements in 2014 were with developing countries, including large-value pacts with Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea.

As a recent article by William Hartung further explains, the ballooning U.S. arms sales appear to be a coordinated strategy to wage proxy wars in the Middle East, based on a desire to shape events while avoiding more direct U.S. engagement (and meanwhile make billions of dollars in profits for U.S. arms manufacturers):

The Obama administration has made arms sales a central tool of its foreign policy, in part as a way of exerting military influence without having to put “boots on the ground” in large numbers, as the Bush administration did in Iraq—with disastrous consequences.

The Obama administration’s push for more Mideast arms sales has been a bonanza for U.S. weapons contractors, who have made increased exports a primary goal as Pentagon spending levels off.  Not only do foreign sales boost company profits, but they also help keep open production lines that would otherwise have to close due to declining orders from the Pentagon.

When it comes to the individual companies profiting off of the global arms bazaar, the following list drives home the point that U.S. arms manufacturers shoulder a disproportionate share of the responsibility for so much of the world’s death and suffering. In fact, six of the ten largest arms-producing companies are U.S.-based, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute:

1	Lockheed Martin (US)
2	Boeing (US)
3	BAE Systems (UK)
4	Raytheon (US)
5	Northrop Grumman (US)
6	General Dynamics (US)
7	EADS (trans-Europe)
8	United Technologies (US)
9	Finmeccanica (Italy)
10	Thales (France)

While all of these arms sales are having a destabilizing effect across the world, human rights and arms control advocates are raising particular concerns over the flow of the U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia, which is carrying out a brutal and indiscriminate military operation against civilians in neighboring Yemen.

As a major new report by the Control Arms Coalition explains,

The transfer of arms and ammunition to Saudi Arabia in particular is fuelling the conflict. Saudi Arabia was among the biggest markets for arms exporters during the past decade, and in 2014 became the largest importer of defence equipment worldwide. Many exporters to Saudi Arabia are States Parties or Signatories to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). …

The ATT now applies in full to all States Parties to the Treaty for whom it has entered into force. For those countries, the serious violations of IHL and IHRL in Yemen, and continuing transfers to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners in that context, represent a major test of their willingness to implement their legal obligations.

The United States signed the ATT in September 2013, and although the treaty has not been ratified by the Senate, with 130 signatories and 82 full states parties it is well on its way to becoming a peremptory norm of international law, also known as jus cogens, as defined by Oxford as “principles which form the norms of international law that cannot be set aside.”

Nevertheless, according to the Control Arms Coalition,

The US remains a significant supplier of arms to Saudi Arabia. Licensing data for 2015 has not yet been made available, but during the year, the State Department approved six major arms sales to the country, collectively worth US$20.8bn. They include the proposed transfer of 10 MH-60R and nine UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters,62 600 Patriot missiles, 63 battleships and missiles,64 and tank and artillery ammunition for the Royal Saudi Land Forces. In November the State Department notified Congress of plans to sell 18,440 aircraft bombs (both guided and general purpose) to Saudi Arabia, in a deal worth US$1.29bn. The package also included 1,500 warheads, as well as thousands of parts for these bombs such as fuses and tail kits to modify guidance systems.

The intransigence of the United States and its closest allies on the issue of arms transfers to Saudi Arabia compelled the Control Arms Coalition to issue a stinging rebuke today, criticizing the lack of progress this week at the Extraordinary Meeting of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty, which as Control Arms pointed out was only extraordinary because of the “refusal of States to actually discuss arms transfers.”

In a press release entitled “ATT Extraordinary Meeting Unfortunately Far Too Ordinary,” the coalition pointed out:

Despite irrefutable evidence of serious violations of international law in a conflict that has killed more than 35,000 people, several States Parties and Signatories to the ATT have continued sending weapons to Saudi Arabia, in violation of the Treaty’s obligations. Control Arms therefore made a request to the meeting for an Agenda item to discus the issue. This request was rejected by the President on the grounds that it would be “fraught with danger” to discuss the topic without sufficient time.

Prompted by the intolerable human suffering taking place in Yemen, campaigners are calling on governments “to set their hypocrisy aside and stop selling billions of dollars’ worth of deadly weapons to Saudi Arabia being used to attack Yemeni civilians.”

In a broader sense, the United States should also rethink its entire policy of flooding the planet with weapons – as this is obviously a destabilizing factor across the world, and a major contributor to both human rights violations and the ongoing refugee crisis.