A 12-Step Arms Approach
By Frida Berrigan
They don’t call the United States the sole superpower for nothing. Paul Wolfowitz might be looking for a new job right now, but the term he used to describe the pervasiveness of U.S. power back when he was a mere deputy secretary of defense — hyperpower — still fits the bill. Consider some of the areas in which the United States is still No. 1: • First in weapons sales: In fiscal 2006, the Pentagon broke its own re-cent record, inking arms sales agreements worth $21 billion. • First in sales of surface-to-air missiles: From 2001 to 2005, the U.S. delivered 2,099 surface-to-air missiles to nations in the developing world, 20 percent more than Russia, the next largest supplier. • First in sales of military ships: During that same period, the United States sent 10 “major surface combatants,” such as aircraft carriers and destroyers, to developing nations. Collectively, the four major European weapons producers shipped 13. Rest assured, governments around the world, often at one anothers’ throats, will want U.S. weapons long after their people have turned up their noses at a range of once dominant American consumer goods. The trade publication Defense News, for instance, recently reported that Turkey and the United States signed a $1.78 billion deal for Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes. As it happens, these planes are already ubiquitous — Israel flies them; so does the United Arab Emirates, Poland, South Korea, Venezuela, Oman and Portugal, among others. The Turkish air force already has 215 F-16 fighter planes and plans to buy 100 of Lockheed Martin’s new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as well, in a deal estimated at $10.7 billion over the next 15 years. That’s $10.7 billion on fighter planes for a country that ranks 94th on the United Nations’ human development index. Here’s the strange thing: This genuine, gold-medal manufacturing-and-sales job on weapons simply never gets the attention it deserves. As a result, most Americans have no idea how proud they should be of their weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon — essentially our global sales force. There’s tons of data on the weapons trade, but who knows about any of it? I help produce one of a dozen or so sober annual (or semiannual) reports quantifying the business of war making, so I know that these reports get desultory, obligatory media attention. Only once in a blue moon do they get the sort of treatment that befits the country’s No. 1 product line. Even when there is coverage, stories on the arms trade can’t possibly convey the feel of a business that has always preferred the shadows to the sun. The connection between the factory that makes a weapons system and the community where that weapon “does its duty” is invariably missing in action, as are the relationships among the companies making the weapons and the generals (on-duty and retired) and politicians making the deals. In other words, the most successful (and most deadly) U.S. export remains our invisible one. Maybe the only way to break through this paralysis of analysis would be to stop talking about weapons sales as a trade and the export of precision-guided missiles and start thinking about them in another language entirely — the language of drugs. After all, what does a drug dealer do? He creates a need and then fills it. He encourages an appetite or an addiction, and then feeds it. Arms dealers do the same thing. They suggest to foreign officials that their military just might need a slight upgrade. After all, they’ll point out, haven’t you noticed that your neighbor just upgraded in jets, submarines and tanks? And didn’t you guys fight a war a few years back? Doesn’t that make you feel insecure? And what’s the point in feeling insecure for another moment when, for just a few billion bucks, we’ll get you suited up with the latest military model, even better than what we sold them — or you the last time around. Why do officials in Turkey, which already has 215 fighter planes, need 100 more in an even higher-tech version? They don’t, but Lockheed Martin, working with the Pentagon, made them think they did. The United States doesn’t need stronger arms control laws. It needs a global sobriety coach and some kind of 12-step program for the dealer-nation as well. Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate at the World Policy Institute’s Arms Trade Resource Center. A longer version of this comment appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
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