Arming the World
By WALTER ISAACSON
Out of control and no limits in sight
The scene was shocking, but it was an aptly ironic image of the times. A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize shot by soldiers--his own--wielding Soviet AK-47s (market price: $750), who had jumped from a Soviet Zil truck (price: $18,000) that was towing a North Korean antitank gun ($35,000). In the background American-made M60 battle tanks ($2 million each) rumbled on in the parade of Egyptian military might, while six French Mirage jet fighters ($2.5 million) flew overhead in tight formation.
Across the Islamic world, from Tripoli to Tehran, the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was celebrated by bursts of bullets from every revolutionary's favorite automatic weapon. More than 10 million AK-47s, designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov, are now in circulation throughout the world.
And in the wake of Sadat's murder, how was tribute paid to the memory of this man? With wreaths of weaponry, offered Sin the name of peace. As a war ing to Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, whose country as a veritable Soviet arsenal, U.S Secretary of State Alexander Haig promised to speed shipments of new bombers and tanks to Egypt. An American, delegation visited the Sudan where Libya's Soviet-supplied jets have been bombing border villages, and promised to try to deliver quickly $100 million worth of military equipment to a jittery President Gaafar Nimeiri. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in Pakistan, where she urged more Western weapons sales to protect that country from a possible attack by Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan. Then she flew in one of Pakistan's Soviet Mi-8 helicopters to the Khyber Pass, where she talked to an Afghan border guard sporting, of course, an AK-47.
There is no question that Egypt and Pakistan all have legitimate security concerns. Yet last week's pronouncements provided further proof of what has long since become an alarming and accelerating commonplace: for large and small nations alike, weapons sales have become the chief tool of diplomacy. "They are now major strands in the warp and woof of world politics," writes Foreign Policy Analyst Andrew Pierre in a forthcoming book, The Global Politics of Arms Sales.
"They are foreign policy writ large." No longer content with surplus materiel from the arsenals of the superpowers, smaller nations are demanding state-of-the-art equipment in everything from fighters to frigates. Even as they deplore the buildup and fear its consequences, the major arms sellers echo the old dirge of 19th century slave traders: "If we don't sell, someone else will." The only effective restraint on the seller, it seems, is the difficulty in beating competitors to the most lucrative contracts.
Not only nations are being armed. Inevitably, weapons flow into the hands of self-proclaimed freedom fighters, terrorists and fanatics and, alas, the children whose legacy it is to be born into a world of arms. One of the 20th century's enduring images may be that of a sad-eyed adolescent cuddling an automatic rifle as if it were a toy.
The world arms bazaar is a Rubik's Cube of complex and shifting relationships and one of the world's largest businesses; last year weapons transfers amounted to perhaps $120 billion.* Weapons are indisputably a growth industry ^ of the '70s and '80s. During the past decade, sales have leaped forward as " never before, spurred by a superpower struggle to gain Third World allies and a leap in oil prices that brought eager buyers into the market.
Last year alone, agreements with the Third World jumped a whopping 43%. The trade now about equals the world's transfers of food.
The Soviets have spurted upward to challenge the U.S. for the dubious distinction of being the dominant merchant of death. But President Reagan has ended most of the restraints imposed by Jimmy Carter, in the interest of supporting any nation that satisfies his loose definition of a bastion against Communism. No longer are close allies considered the best buyers. The most cultivated customers, both for the Soviets and the Western powers, are developing countries. More than $18.3 billion in major weapons were delivered last year to the Third World-- compared with $8 billion in 1975--and contracts were signed for $41 billion in future deliveries. Total economic aid to developing countries by industrialized countries averages around $20 billion a year.
An admixture of wealth, rivalry and instability has made the Middle East a brimming cauldron of the trade, accounting for a third of the world's arms deals. From 1973 to 1980, Middle East and South Asian countries received from the major exporters 4,050 combat planes; 25,250 tanks, self-propelled guns and artillery; 21,680 armored personnel carriers; 26,020 surface-to-air missiles, and countless rifles and machine guns.
A bizarre showcase for all this lethal hardware is the 13-month-old Persian Gulf conflict. Iraq has been using Soviet MiG jets, French Mirage jets, Brazilian Urutu armored personnel carriers, and Soviet T-72 tanks to fight Iran's American F-4 jets, British Chieftain tanks and Italian-built Chinook helicopters. "The Iran-Iraq arms buildup is a classic case of internal pressures and external fears combining to produce a disaster," says a diplomat who has served in both countries.
Alhough the U.S. and the Soviet Union have halted direct shipments to the combatants, the flow of arms to the warring parties seems inexorably controlled by demand.
Egypt has sent to Baghdad, via Jordan, some of the obsolete Soviet weapons that it is replacing with American arms. In the midst of the fighting, France delivered to Iraq four Mirage jets that had been ordered before the war broke out. Iran has turned to North Korea and even Israel in search of spare parts and supplies. Many of the deals have been negotiated by shadowy European middlemen who deal in cash commissions, not moral questions.
Says one who knows the trade: "Things are bound to turn up on the international arms market, including U.S. equipment abandoned in Viet Nam, when countries like Iran are offering cash for American weapons in quantity."
Small arms are a smaller problem. On the outskirts of Tabriz in northern Iran, as in hundreds of similar sites in the Third World, entrepreneurs have set up tent city arms bazaars offering everything from used Soviet and Chinese AK-47s (Soviet model: $150; Chinese copy: $75) to new U.S. Colt .45 automatic pistols ($300), all of which have found their way from armies to the underground.
An even livelier, or perhaps deadlier, trade is in war-torn Lebanon. Says one expert: "There are more machine guns than
umbrellas in this country. If you wanted ten tons of explosives tomorrow, all you'd have to do is put up the cash." Among the dealers is a former President of the country. One reason for the giant market is that Lebanon has about 40 different armed militias.
They occasionally purchase their weapons directly from the 30,000 Syrian soldiers stationed in the country, who can always get more from the Soviets. British Writer Anthony Sampson describes one recycling process in his book The Arms Bazaar:
"Ghana had a stock of Kalashnikovs bought from Nigeria, which had previously been bought by the Biafran army from Israel, which had captured them from the Egyptians and Syrians in the 1967 war. Ghana was now glad to sell them off profitably to the Lebanese Christians, and thus they returned to the Middle East."
The 14,000-man force of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon is amply supplied with AK-47s, as well as American M-16s and even some famed Israeli UZI submachine guns that were acquired from Arab dealers on the West Bank.
Also in the P.L.O. arsenal are 60 Soviet T-34 tanks. Sympathetic Arab countries such as Algeria, Syria and Libya generally do the buying for the Palestinians with financing provided by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Estimates are that the P.L.O. received $100 million worth of arms last year alone.
Saudi Arabia has replaced Iran as the largest importer in the region. Like the late Shah, who allegedly slept with copies of Aviation Week & Space Technology next to his bed, the Saudis feel that for their cash on the barrel they are entitled to the very best. While public attention has been focused on the congressional debate over the proposed sale of five AW ACS surveillance planes to the Saudis, it has gone all but unnoticed that the $8.5 billion package also includes 1,177 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and equipment to enhance the range of the 60 F-15 fighters they have on order. Riyadh last year also purchased from the U.S. two fighter jets, 15 training planes, 18 howitzers, 118 battle tanks, 140,000 tons of ammunition and 1,000 antitank missiles. Total 1980 sales agreements with the U.S.: $4.5 billion. France also clinched a grand deal: a $3.1 billion naval package that included four missile-firing frigates.
Unlike the oil powers of the Middle East, most African nations can ill afford to spruce up their arsenals.
But the persistence of regional conflicts has made the continent a fertile market for arms sales. The superpower struggle on the strategic Horn of Africa has led the U.S. to propose arms supplies, in return for the right to use naval and air facilities, to Kenya and Somalia despite the fact that the two countries are bitter enemies and that until the end of 1977 So malia was a Soviet client. Kenya has a defense agreement with Somalia's neighbor and enemy Ethiopia, a onetime ally of the U.S., whose army is now being equipped by the Soviets and trained by Cubans and East Germans. The complex tensions of the area could easily escalate into a superpower showdown should Somalia, one of the continent's poorest countries, with a per capita income of $130, be tempted by its arms connection with the U.S. to increase its support for the rebels in Ethiopia's Ogaden region.
Nigeria is a country that could use more modern weapons and can also afford to buy them. Although rich in oil, the country's defense forces are considered toothless. President Shehu Alhaji Shagari reluctantly refrained from intervening when Libya invaded Chad last year, in part because he thought his men would be overpowered. Nigeria is now in the market for $6 billion worth of tanks, fighter planes, antitank weapons and antiaircraft guns, and has begun negotiating with Brazil for the technology to build its own automatic-rifle factory. Britain is trying to sell Nigeria its newest Vickers battle tank, which has already been supplied to Kenya.
Southeast Asia is tangled in a web of official and black market arms dealings. In the past year Thailand has bought 15 F-15 fighter jets, 35 tanks, three military transport planes and 59 howitzers. Last year's deliveries from the U.S.: $222 million. The Thais are also in the market for advanced fighter jets, either the new F-5G, designed by Northrop Corp. solely for export, or the more powerful F16. The Thais serve as a conduit for Chinese and other arms sent to the Khmer forces fighting in Cambodia against the Vietnamese. Hanoi, for its part, has been able to unload on the world market many weapons that the U.S. left behind in withdrawing from Viet Nam. Almost 800,000 M-16 rifles are still in Vietnamese hands.
Need often seems to have nothing to do with arms acquisitions. In the past two or three years, Zambia has bought $100 million worth of Soviet jet fighters and tanks with money that would have been better spent on reviving its copper industry. Colombia imported French Mirage jets and Israeli military transports. Peru has bought 18 jet trainers from the U.S., plus 16 fighter-bombers and 250 tanks from the Soviet Union, three destroyers from The Netherlands, 192 missiles from Italy, four submarines from West Germany and 48 naval missiles from France. Average annual purchases: $3 billion. Tiny Brunei (pop. 212,000), an oil-producing British protectorate on the north coast of Borneo, has bought eleven helicopters from the U.S., six more from West Germany and a set of Sabre and Rapier missiles from Britain.
The infamous "merchants of death," who sold their wares to all sides of conflicts during the early years of the 20th century, were private entrepreneurs such as Sir Basil Zaharoff of England and the Krupps of Germany. But by World War II, governments had emerged as the principal suppliers. Until recently the major powers relied more on economic and developmental aid in their attempts to influence other countries. Only in the late '60s did weapons sales become the major tool of diplomacy that they are today.
The U.S. has long been, and by some measures still is, the world's largest arms merchant. More than $17 billion in official Government sales and private commercial deals* involving 72 countries was recorded last year, up from $1.8 billion ten years ago. Over the past decade, the U.S.
supplied 45% of all the major weapons sold to the Third World. Under Richard Nixon, Washington's policy was aimed at arming strategic allies that could serve as regional protectors of American interests.
A prime example: Iran, which was sent $10 billion worth of weapons before the fall of the Shah. Jimmy Carter tried to reverse course and use arms sales only as an "exceptional foreign policy implement," arguing that "the virtually unrestrained spread of conventional weaponry threatens stability in every region of the world."
But his policy became riddled with exceptions: AW ACS were promised to Iran, F-15s were sold to Saudi Arabia, and F-5Es to Egypt. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the Carter Administration's policy of restraint was largely forgotten.
Under Reagan, the shift is explicit.
According to a directive written by National Security Adviser Richard Allen, "the U.S. views the transfer of conventional arms and other defense articles as an indispensable component of its foreign policy." Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance James Buckley admits that the Administration's arms policy "will include a larger number of sales to developing countries, which desperately need more effective means of defending themselves." Complains Democratic Senator Alan Cranston of California: "Reagan's policy on arms sales is to spew them everywhere."
The President has welcomed, or is favorably considering, a long list of new customers for the powerful F16. Among them: Pakistan, Egypt, Venezuela and South Korea. "Wherever we have trouble, they seem to think that, but for another F16, we would be lost," says Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts. In addition, the Administration is considering the sale of weapons to China, which will upset both the Soviet Union and American conservatives who oppose arming Communist countries.
While Reagan's policy is freehanded enough, it may prove initially less generous in practice. Reason: congressional determination to trim the annual foreign aid bill, the means by which most government-to-government arms sales are financed. The President asked for $6.7 billion in economic and military assistance for fiscal 1982, up from $5 billion spent in 1981. At a time when the nation is trying to cope with the new austerity, Congress may well reject any increases.
There are, in addition, specific congressional bans on arms sales to countries, like Pakistan, that have not signed the nuclear nonproliferation agreement, and those, like Argentina and Chile, with a bad record on human rights. The Administration wants to remove most of these restraints.
Once the Saudi AW ACS sale is resolved, the Administration's next battle will be to convince Congress that Pakistan's nuclear program should not preclude a proposed package of $3.8 billion in arms and aid. As Buckley told a House committee recently, the invasion of Afghanistan has made it more important "to keep the Soviets from thinking they can coerce, subvert or intimidate Pakistan." But many Congressmen are concerned that Pakistan will use its arms not to deter the Soviets but to challenge its historic enemy, India. Says India's President, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy: "This could upset the existing balance and start an arms race."
Indeed, it already has: the Indians, who are also plentifully supplied by the Soviets, have reduced an order for British Jaguar jets and turned to the French for 150 of the more powerful Mirage 2000s.
In justifying his Administration's policy, the President can point to the dramatic rise in Soviet arms shipments. The U.S.S.R. last year signed $15 billion worth of sales agreements with the Third World, up from $3.3 billion in 1973. The Kremlin concentrates on supplying actual hardware and delivering it quickly; by contrast, related technical support systems account for 40% of American sales, and shipments take twice as long as the Soviets'. Thus the Soviets far surpass the U.S. in deliveries of specific major weapons. Since 1977 they have sent to the Third World about twice as many tanks (5,750 to 3,030), three times as many artillery pieces (7,150 to 2,780), four times as many fighter jets (2,290 to 540) and twice as many antiaircraft missiles (11,400 to 4,960).
Libya is Moscow's biggest, and most conspicuous, Third World client. On a visit to the Soviet capital this spring, Gaddafi ordered supplies for the jets that have been bombing the Sudanese border villages. New MiG-25 and Sukhoi Su-20 fighter planes were delivered earlier this year to Tripoli, where the docks are dotted with unopened crates of Soviet arms. Another major Soviet client is Syria. Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass visited Moscow last month to meet with his Soviet counterpart, Dmitri Ustinov, and the country's top weapons designers. Tlass discussed the purchase of more MiG-25s and a group of T-72 and T-80 tanks, the most sophisticated in the Soviet arsenal.
Increasingly, the Soviets sell arms for economic as well as strategic reasons.
Sales for hard currency to such clients as Libya, Syria and Algeria and, until recently, Iraq have almost entirely supplanted grants and sweetheart deals. The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that weapons sales bring in roughly one-fourth of the foreign currency earned by Moscow.
That trade also provides the U.S.S.R. with a commercial link to key oil producers --which may be one reason why it is trying to sell arms to Kuwait, a sheikdom with firm ties to the capitalist world. Even though they ask for hard cash, the Soviets usually price their wares well below comparable Western weapons.
The world's third major weapons exporter is France. The French have quality products, aggressive marketing skills and few qualms about selling anything to anyone who can pay. Sales agreements with the Third World leaped from $500 million in 1973 to $8 billion last year, thus making armaments the country's most lucrative industry. More than 100 salesmen worked for three years to land the contract to upgrade the Saudi navy, beating out competitive bids by the British and Italians. France argues that it provides Third World customers with an alternative to superpower suppliers. "Nations can buy from us and still maintain their independence," says an official of the missile maker Matra, which exports 75% of its production.
The election of Socialist President Francois Mitterrand initially was seen as a threat to the trade. He fired Gerard Hibon, chief of the Direction des Affaires Internationales, which handles overseas arms deals. Sales to South Africa, Chile and Argentina were discouraged because of those nations' domestic policies, and an unofficial ban was placed on future sales to Libya after its invasion of Chad, a former French colony. "Right now we're in a period of reflection," says a top govern ment minister. But Mitterrand by no means wants France out of the business: on a visit to Saudi Arabia last month he assured King Khalid that sales to the Persian Gulf region would continue. They discussed potential Saudi investment in the planned Mirage 4000 jet and purchases of the Mirage 2000 fighter. Meanwhile, France is negotiating other potential transfers of military hardware to Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Italy is now crowding both Britain and West Germany in the arms business. This year, for example, it sold Iraq an entire $1.8 billion mini-navy: four frigates, six corvettes, a supply vessel and a floating dock. The Italians anchored one of their stylish new frigates next to the Doges' Palace in Venice during last year's seven-nation economic summit, not to provide protection but, as one naval officer confided, "as an advertisement in the hope that someone would buy one." Although the Italians specialize in naval hardware, the state-owned Oto Melara firm of La Spezia offers a speedy, 40-ton medium tank (price: $1.1 million) that is comparable to West Germany's Leopard 1, and SIAI-Marchetti offers an intermediate trainer, the S-211, that can easily be armed for counterinsurgency warfare. Zaire, Zimbabwe and Somalia have ordered some of the 521 Is, which cost about $1 million each.
West Germany is probably the exporter beset with the most moral qualms, particularly about shipping abroad weapons that might be used against Israel. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt last year proposed a sale to Saudi Arabia of 300 Leopard tanks for nearly $5 billion plus guaranteed access for ten years to Saudi oil. But the deal raised so much political furor in Germany that it now seems likely to be revoked. The Bonn government is currently formulating guidelines that are expected to reaffirm its traditional policy of not selling to regions of instability.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, trying to revive her country's slipping arms trade, is embroiled in a similar domestic dispute over the $22 million sale of a 6,200-ton destroyer and antiaircraft missiles to Chile. Charged M.P. Frank Allaun of the opposition Labor Party: "The supply of a sophisticated ship with missiles to a country where people are being tortured is immoral." Similarly, the government of Austria is being criticized for its proposed sale of 100 tanks to Chile. An Austrian spokesman said that Vienna is only trying to be fair: it has already sold 67 tanks to Argentina, which is involved in a border dispute with Chile.
One significant recent development in the arms trade is the emergence of two consumers as major exporters.
One is Brazil. A defense expert in Rio de Janeiro boasts that arms sales may reach $2 billion by 1985, equaling coffee as one of the country's top exports. The boom in this Brazilian industry, ironically, was caused in part by Jimmy Carter's attempt to limit arms shipments to South America. Brazil not only supplies itself and its neighbors with sophisticated tanks and planes but also sells to the Middle East. Its largest customer is Iraq, which has bought more than $800 million in weapons since 1976, including some 400 armored vehicles. Iraq is negotiating for $400 million in more tanks and munitions. In the past few months, Brazil has also sold $170 million of equipment to Ecuador, $89 million to Colombia, and is negotiating deals with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia and China.
Despite its heavy reliance on American weapons for defense, Israel competes with its U.S. suppliers on world markets. Although the Israelis offer everything from gunboats to antitank shells, its best-known weapons are the UZI submachine gun and the sophisticated Kfir fighter jet, a modification of France's Mirage 5. More than 10,000 uzis were sold in the U.S. alone last year; they are used by the Secret Service to protect the President, and a modified version is wielded by hunters in Michigan to kill deer. In order to underwrite the cost of producing Kfir jets for its own use, Israel must export up to 25% of them. Because the jet contains a General Electric engine, the U.S. can restrict its export. Carter, as part of his aim of keeping such advanced technology out of Latin America, blocked a proposed sale of 24 Kfirs to Ecuador, which bought French Mirages instead. Reagan lifted the export restrictions, and Ecuador may buy them yet.
With help from their governments, manufacturers compete vigorously to win contracts. Payoffs have been largely controlled since the bribery scandals involving Northrop and Lockheed in the mid-1970s, but large commissions still abound. One of Saudi Arabia's sales agents, Adnan Khashoggi, has become a multimillionaire, jetting between capitals to consummate major deals. Khashoggi has sued Lockheed for $300 million in commissions that he claims is still owed him for arranging the sale of TriStar jets and Hercules transports to Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, he won a $20 million judgment on disputed commissions from Northrop.
The annual Paris Air Show in June this year, which was followed immediately by a display of tanks and military hardware at nearby Satory, provided an international showcase of major weapons for sale. Potential buyers could inspect a prototype of the Mirage 4000, view Northrop's export model 5F-5G fighter under a massive tent, and watch an Israeli display of a remote-piloted unmanned reconnaissance plane. The Soviets never show off their fighters, but this year brought their new, giant Mi-26 helicopter, the world's largest, which can lift 65,000 pounds.
Weapons today are hawked like any other product. The French and British produce imposing catalogues, while U.S. manufacturers tout their products in Aviation Week & Space Technology and Armed Forces Journal. Says a McDonnell-Douglas ad for the F-15:
"Strong enough to win, awesome enough to deter. By its very presence it is an expression of national will." A Grumman ad for Phoenix air-to-air missiles boasts of "an unprecedented 84% kill rate" under the catchy headlines: "The F-14/Phoenix team. Because you have to get the enemy before he gets you."
Sales frequently involve quid pro quos, such as allowing the purchasing country to manufacture some of a weapon's parts or to assemble it with local labor. In order to capture a $400 million contract with Switzerland for F-5 fighters, Northrop agreed to market $135 million worth of Swiss goods throughout the world. The American aeronautics company proceeded to sell Swiss power-generating equipment and shelving material to Saudi Arabia, drilling machines to Spain, water filtration systems to Morocco and transport boats to Bolivia. Northrop easily exceeded its quota. The reward: another contract for 38 additional jets, and the responsibility for selling $150 million more of Swiss goods. Says one Northrop agent: "Trying to sell planes has given us as much depth in the Swiss economy as the Swiss themselves."
What accounts for the world's "open sesame" approach to arsenals? Primarily, it is because selling weapons has proved an effective way for developing nations as well as superpowers to gain influence. Arms sales can make friendly countries stronger and strong countries friendlier. It has a greater immediate impact than building dams or sending economic aid and is certainly more lucrative. "U.S. security interests can best be safeguarded by helping front-line countries become a positive deterrent to aggression," insists Buckley. That rationale makes some sense when applied to U.S. arms for the Persian Gulf region. But the Administration also uses it to justify fighter jet sales to a country like Venezuela, not in imminent danger of being attacked by anyone.
Offering arms can be a way of weaning a country from dependence on another superpower. America has done this to the Soviets in Indonesia, Somalia and Egypt; the Soviets have done it to the U.S. in northern Yemen and Ethiopia. France claims, without much evidence, that its military sales to Libya have decreased Soviet influence there. With marginally better justification, the French use the same argument about sales to Iraq. Says one government official: "In Iraq's case it's been useful to replace the Soviet Union as a supplier. Ten years ago, Iraq was practically a Soviet satellite."
Weapons sales are increasingly seen by purchasers as a symbol or test of friendship, an argument that the Reagan Administration has stressed to justify the selling of AW ACS to Saudi Arabia. Other benefits for the exporter: sales can be bartered for base rights (as the U.S. has done in Turkey, Spain and the Philippines); they can help make a country's military equipment compatible with that of its allies; and they can occasionally provide for some control on how weapons are used, through judicious control of the umbilical cord of spare parts and servicing of complex equipment.
More and more, however, the arms trade seems impelled by purely economic factors. Sealing an $8.5 billion AWACS package deal with the Saudis, or a $3.1 billion naval contract, can be a balance of payments bonanza. The Government estimates that a 40% cutback in U.S. weapons exports would result in a minimum 2% depreciation of the value of the dollar. Since many deals these days require an initial cash payment, exporters get a free financial float. Herbert Morris, comptroller of the Pentagon's Defense Security Assistance Agency, points out: "The Treasury has for years had temporary use of billions of dollars in foreign cash. There is now over $4.8 billion in the foreign military sales trust fund account."
Beyond that there are other, less readily apparent benefits to the whole U.S. economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every $1 billion in arms exports directly supports about 50,000 jobs. Weapons bought by the Saudis alone will provide 112,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next five years. When those workers are concentrated in specific regions, or belong to aggressive unions, they can form a powerful constituency, as they do in parts of the U.S., as well as in France and Britain. Arms sales also reduce the unit costs of defense items for a manufacturer by extending production runs and spreading development outlays. In the U.S., every $1 billion worth of exported weapons saves the Pentagon $70 million in unit costs.
Critics argue that the case against a generous arms sale policy is as compelling as the one for it. The most vivid example of the limitations of weaponry to win friends and influence countries is Iran: after $10 billion of arms deliveries, the Shah was deposed and replaced by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's violently anti-American regime. The occasional success that the Soviets and Americans have had in wooing each other's clients proves that the influence secured by sales can be less than lasting. As Andrew Pierre puts it: "Longterm weapons are sold to what may be short-term friends."
Notes Richard Betts, who teaches defense policy at Columbia and Johns Hopkins universities: "More often, the significant supplier influence precedes rather than follows the sale. Once a sale is final the supplier's leverage declines." The recent U.S. experience with Turkey shows how customers can exert leverage on their suppliers. When Congress voted to ban all military sales to Turkey after its 1974 invasion of Cyprus, the Ankara government promptly shut down some U.S. bases and listening posts, many of which provided valuable intelligence surveillance of the Soviet Union. Mindful of Turkey's importance to NATO's Eastern flank, the U.S. felt compelled to continue military sales, including Phantom fighter jets, even while the embargo was technically still in effect. The U.S. bases were reopened in 1978 in exchange for a repeal of the ban on military shipments.
Arms sales can saddle a supplier with embarrassing clients. The U.S. has reinforced a reputation in parts of the Third World as an ally of rightist repression by proffering weaponry to Guatemala and El Salvador. Moreover, all the advance guarantees in the world cannot ensure a seller's control over the way its weapons are used. When the Israelis bombed civilian areas of Beirut with American-made jets, in evident violation of an agreement that the planes were to be used for defensive purposes only, the U.S. had to share the blame but had none of the responsibility. Vigorous export policies can also lead to procurement problems at home. Overseas sales of the F-16 will slow deliveries to the U.S. Air Force and NATO, the Pentagon concedes. Soviet sales of the new T-72 battle tank to the Third World have delayed its deployment within the Warsaw Pact.
For arms importers, security concerns can lead to a new type of dependency as they become impoverished pawns in the superpower struggle. Weapons shipments tend to promote regional arms races (India and Pakistan, for example), with the ante raised every time a more advanced item of technology, such as the F-16 jet or the MiG-25, is introduced into a region. Says House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Clement Zablocki: "Reagan's new policy could result in destabilizing arms races in sensitive areas of the world." If only in financial terms, the Third World can ill afford it: the aggregate debt of developing nations has doubled in the past four years to $280 billion.
The competitive forces that dominate the global arms bazaar create a complex dilemma. If the U.S. turns down Venezuela's request for F-16s, what is to prevent the French from selling it Mirage fighters? If the Senate rejects the AW ACS sale, the Saudis have warned they will simply start negotiations to buy a similar surveillance plane from Britain, the Nimrod. When the Soviets refused to resupply Iraq after the outbreak of the gulf war, Dictator Saddam Hussein turned to Egypt, France and some East-bloc arms dealers. Where is the reward for restraint? And where are the limits to global arming?
The easy answer, that the dilemma is too complex to resolve in light of East-West tensions, will not do. Says Democratic Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin: "Using such justifications as 'The business is good for our balance of payments' or 'If we do not sell weapons, someone else will,' the arms merchants and their government spokesmen are turning the world into a vast armed camp." The long line of weapons that helped seal Sadat's friendship with the U.S. were paraded past his grandstand through the dusty streets of an impoverished country where the per capita income is $460, and 42% of the budget is spent on the military.
Can weapons buy security? For many Third World nations, arms may well deter external aggression, but even the best-equipped troops of an unpopular regime are unlikely to hold off forever a domestic revolution. Witness Iran or Nicaragua. Thomas Barger, a former president of Aramco Oil and a director of Northrop, points out the evident danger: "When you get a lot of playthings, how long is it before you want to try them out?"
Since 1945 there have been at least 130 conflicts that would qualify as wars, nearly all of them fought on the soil of poor nations with weapons purchased from rich ones. And a cascading supply of sophisticated weapons is an ever growing temptation to terrorist fanatics unbeholden to any rational standard of conduct. When the latest models of shoulder-held, heat-seeking missiles can be bought at any village bazaar, where will it be safe for any plane to fly?
Prospects for negotiated solutions are poor. President Carter started conventional arms transfer talks with the Soviets in 1977. They were abandoned the follow ing year after the Soviets demanded, and the U.S. refused, to discuss weapons sales to the Persian Gulf region. The Reagan Administration has expressed a willingness to talk with the Soviets about new strategic arms limits and theater nuclear force reduction of missiles in Europe. But there is currently little expressed desire for conventional arms-sale restraint--either by the Reagan Administration, the Soviets, the other major producers or even Third World nations. The first step toward a solution has to be a realization, by each country involved in the trade, that pursuing what it sees as its own best interest creates a monster that is in no country's best interest.
If there could develop the will to control the trade of conventional arms, just as there is now a general desire to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it would in theory be possible to make a beginning toward restraint. Suggests David Aaron, former assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski on Carter's National Security Council:
"We can coerce international cooperation from some of our allies by using the carrot and stick: either they cooperate, or we'll beat them in every market."
Perhaps the best path is to pursue areas where there is already some evidence of restraint. The U.S. has been cautious about the sale of advanced technologies, like portable guided missiles, which could place the world at the mercy of terrorists. The Germans have said that they will refuse to supply areas of tension. The Soviet Union has refused to rearm Iraq directly while it is at war with Iran. Moscow's reluctance to supply weapons to a region in conflict should be encouraged and nurtured.
A Carter discovered, a unilateral policy of weapons-sale restraint can be bootless. But a policy that exalts a lack of restraint can likewise reap a whirlwind of unwanted, unpredictable challenges. If Reagan abandons any serious attempt to seek controls for the flow of weaponry, he will have given in to a danger that threatens American interests, with only the poor excuse that others did it too.
In order to arrive at a solution, the world will first have to realize there is a problem. Only then will international opinion have the power to cause governments to have second thoughts before they buy weapons that are not needed, or sell what should be kept in store.
Such deeper calculations are sorely needed as the world arms bazaar grows ever larger. Without them, the prospects for global control look grim, as grim as the prospects for peace in a world flooded with weapons so ubiquitous that even a child can tote one, so powerful that even a handful of terrorists can hold a society hostage.
--By Walter Isaacson.
Reported by Johanna McGeary/ Washington and Bruce van Voorst/Brussels, with other bureaus
* Global figures are elusive because of governmental secrecy and the difficulty in determining dollar equivalents for various armaments and their related support systems. Most authoritative sources, such as U.S. Government reports and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) yearbook, include only officially sanctioned and publicly reported sales of major conventional weapons.
* Government-to-government sales, which account for 90% of U.S. arms transfers, must be initiated by the purchasing nation and approved by the State Department. Any sale involving $25 million or more must be reported to Congress for review and can be rejected by a majority of both houses. Private sales of less than that amount can be made by companies that get an export license from the State Department's Office of Munitions Control.
With reporting by Johanna McGeary, BRUCE VAN VOORST
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.