-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.motherjones.com/arms/
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Arms Around the World
It was the early 1990s and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton
was on the campaign trail making promises: "I expect to review our
arms sales policy and to take it up with the other major arms sellers
of the world as a part of a long-term effort to reduce the
proliferation of weapons."
Ah, campaign promises. But the economy was in the doldrums, and the
prospect of cutting arms sales -- sugar daddy to one of the nation's
largest industries -- didn't thrill either labor or corporate
America. What's more, the Gulf War had just ended the previous year,
and it was the best extended commercial an arms salesman could ask
for. (Indeed, some arms manufacturers incorporated bombing videos
into their promotional materials.) Countries were clamoring for the
high-tech weapons that made for such good TV.
So, once elected, Bill Clinton did what he does best: He took
advantage of the opportunity. Rather than insert human-rights
concerns into the arms-sales equation, as did his Democratic
predecessor President Carter, Clinto
n decided to aggressively continue the sales policies of President Bush, himself no
slouch when it came to selling U.S. arms.
Early on, Clinton required our diplomats to shill for arms merchants to their host
countries. The results were immediate: During Clinton's first year in office, U.S.
arms sales more than doubled. From 1993 to 1997, the U.
S. government sold, approved, or gave away $190 billion in weapons to virtually every
nation on earth.
The arms industry, meanwhile, has greased the wheels. It filled the Democratic Party
coffers to the tune of nearly $2 million in the 1998 election cycle.
To examine the Clinton administration's eagerness to arm the world, the MoJo Wire has
compiled a detailed look at America's top weapons customers during the Clinton years,
tallying their total 1993-97 purchases through bo
th the Pentagon (so-called "Foreign Military Sales," or FMS) and U.S. manufacturers
("Direct Commercial Sales," or DCS).
What we found is that while the U.S. obviously sells weapons to NATO countries and
relatively democratic allies like Japan and South Korea, it also has a nasty habit of
arming both sides in a conflict, as well as countrie
s with blighted democracy or human-rights records, like Indonesia, Colombia, and Saudi
Arabia.
All of this might be justified as a way to maintain a strong manufacturing job-base in
the U.S., but some of these sales actually result in jobs being shipped abroad --
while arms manufacturers get tax breaks for merging,
resulting in further layoffs here at home.
We examined the top dozen of these arms-exporting corporations, showing which does
business where and how each has taken advantage of myriad federal tax breaks,
reimbursements, and golden parachutes -- as well as the eage
rness of Congress to keep one of the economy's largest employing segments happy.
In a separate story, we detail the arms industry's lobbying strategies in Washington:
how it keeps the export pipeline wide open, and easily outmaneuvers Congress'
occasional attempt to tie arms sales to human-rights reco
rds.
Lastly, we list organizations that you can join or support to help influence U.S. and
corporate policies toward arms sales around the world.
U.S. market share of worldwide arms sales
Source
Below is a sample of some of our most interesting findings:
Shipping Jobs Overseas
According to the Pentagon, the defense industry laid off 795,000 American workers
between 1992 and 1997. At the same time, many of these corporations were sweetening
their arms deals to other countries by offering "offset
s" -- incentives provided to foreign countries in exchange for the purchase of
military goods and services. The programs often include agreements to manufacture some
or all of the products in the purchasing country.
Turkey, for example, agreed to buy 160 F-16s from General Dynamics in 1987 (for
delivery through 1994) for an estimated $4 billion -- on the condition that most of
the planes be built in Turkey. The offset resulted in 1,5
00 jobs going to Turkey. In 1992, General Dynamics entered into a similar F-16 offset
deal with South Korea and brought 400 Koreans to its Fort Worth, Texas, plant for
training, after having laid off 10,000 workers in the
previous two years.
Lockheed Martin has continued the trend since it bought General Dynamics' F-16 program
in 1993: In vying for a contract to supply fighters to Poland, it is offering to build
an assembly plant there for all future F-16 sal
es to Central Europe -- so the planes won't be made in the U.S. at all. Makes you feel
patriotic, doesn't it?
Corporate Pork
Under a Defense Department policy initiated in 1993, U.S. taxpayers wind up covering a
big chunk of the cost of defense-corporation mergers. The tally so far has reached
$856.2 million in perfectly legal write-offs, inclu
ding $405 million for the Lockheed/Martin Marietta merger, to name one example.
Because of the policy, Lockheed was able to bill the Pentagon up front for $2.4
million of CEO Norman Augustine's salary.
In 1996, Congress created the Defense Export Loan Guarantee program to finance U.S.
weapons sales to foreign countries. Its first beneficiary? A United Industrial sale of
pilotless aircraft and training systems to cash-st
rapped Romania. If Romania defaults on its payments (not a bad bet for a country in
economic turmoil), U.S. taxpayers will be left holding the bag: $16.7 million. But
United Industrial gets paid either way.
Arming Both Sides
The Clinton administration has not been shy about arming potential foes in regional
conflicts. For example, two of America's biggest arms customers are Greece and Turkey,
which have been threatening to go to war with each
other for decades over the tiny Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
Both countries stake a claim to the island, more than a third of which has been
occupied by Turkish forces since 1974, and the two have clashed hundreds of times in
the 25 years since.
Though barred by Congress from selling offensive weapons to Cyprus itself, in 1997 the
U.S. sold (or allowed American corporations to sell) more than $270 million worth of
weapons to Greece and nearly $750 million worth t
o Turkey. Now if there's a war, the two NATO allies can blast away at one another with
far greater efficiency, thanks to the U.S. defense industry and its cheerleader, Bill
Clinton.
Acknowledgments and Sources
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