April dit jaar heeft het Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) haar jaarlijkse rapport gepubliceerd over de wereldwijde wapenhandel en weer (zoals altijd) is de VS de grote winnaar……. Tussen 2016 en 2020 heeft de VS 37% van de totale wapenleveringen over de wereld voor haar rekening genomen, bijna 2 keer zoveel dan Rusland, haar concurrent op dit gebied en meer dan 6 keer zoveel dan China, de door de VS gebombardeerde vijand ‘van de dag’.
Voor de 28ste keer in de laatste 30 jaar is de VS dus de winnaar in de verkoop van dood en verderf, dit onder elke administratie of die nu Republikeins dan wel Democratisch* was, er is dan ook geen analist van de wapenhandel die opkijkt van de conclusie die het SIPRI heeft getrokken…..
Met de grootschalige verkoop van wapens houdt de VS ook conflicten elders in stand en bevordert zelfs conflicten (als de VS daar al niet zelf mee bezig was…..) Neem Israël, de VS heeft sinds de illegale oprichting van die staat maar liefst 236 miljard dollar (in 2018 herberekend met medeneming van inflatie) aan economische en wapenhulp geboden…… Ook het laatste platgooien van de Gazastrook is mede te danken aan wapenleveranties van de VS aan dat gestolen land…….
Wapenleveranties aan dictaturen als die van Saoedi-Arabië (S-A), Egypte, de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten (VAE) en de Filipijnen dragen bij aan enorme ellende die met VS wapens worden aangericht, zoals de genocide op de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen….. De Saoedische terreurcoalitie, bestaande uit o.a. S-A, de VAE zijn zeker wat betreft deze 2 verantwoordelijk voor het bewapenen van terreurgroepen als Al Qaida en ISIS, die overigens ook meermaals direct zijn bevoorraad door de VS zelf…….
De genoemde landen zijn nog maar een paar voorbeelden, zo houdt de VS ook foute regeringen in Latijns-Amerika in het zadel met grote wapenleveranties, zoals die in Honduras, dat een waar terreurbewind voert tegen de arme oorspronkelijke bewoners en andere armen in dat land…….. Deze mensen vluchten dan ook in grote getale naar de VS, terwijl de VS hen niet wenst op te nemen, waar deze grootste terreurentiteit ter wereld zelf de voorwaarden heeft geschapen waarom men daar op de vlucht slaat…… De VS geeft zelfs technische en wapenhulp hulp aan landen als Mexico om de zuidgrenzen te controleren en dicht te houden voor vluchtelingen (om nog maar te zwijgen over de schandelijke behandeling van vluchtelingen in de VS, zoals het scheiden van ouders en kinderen, wat overigens ook al gebeurde onder Obama en het opsluiten van mensen en kinderen in gevangenissen die alles weg hebben van concentratiekampen……)
Biden beloofde voor en kort na zijn aantreden de VS wapenexport aan banden te leggen, echter van die beloften is niets terechtgekomen, niet vreemd overigens als je bedenkt dat Biden al mede verantwoordelijk was voor VS wapenexport toen hij fungeerde als vicepresident onder Obama……. Nee, onder Biden zal er ook op dit gebied niets veranderen…….
William Hartung heeft op TomDispatch.com geschreven (door mij overgenomen van Information Clearing House >> ICH) waarin hij dieper ingaat op de wapenhandel van de VS, wat dit veroorzaakt aan ellende en wie er van profiteert, zoals je begrijpt vooral wapenfabrikanten van de VS en de spuugrijke figuren met aandelenpakketten in die doodsindustrie.
Selling Death: America Dominant Again (in Arms
Sales)
And Again… and Again… and Again
By William Hartung
May 28, 2021 “Information
Clearing House” – 56562.htm
In April of this year,
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
(SIPRI) published its annual analysis of
trends in global arms sales and the winner — as
always — was the U.S. of A. Between 2016 and 2020,
this country accounted for 37 percent of total
international weapons deliveries, nearly twice the
level of its closest rival, Russia, and more than
six times that of Washington’s threat du jour,
China.
Sadly, this was no
surprise to arms-trade analysts. The U.S. has held
that top
spot for 28
of the past 30 years, posting massive sales numbers
regardless of which party held power in the White
House or Congress.
This is, of course, the
definition of good news for weapons contractors like
Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, even if it’s
bad news for so many of the rest of us, especially
those who suffer from the use of those arms by
militaries in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Israel, the Philippines and the United Arab
Emirates. The recent bombing and leveling of Gaza
by the U.S.-financed
and supplied Israeli
military is just the latest example of the
devastating toll exacted by American weapons
transfers in these years.
While it is well known
that the United States provides substantial aid to
Israel, the degree to which the Israeli military
relies on U.S. planes, bombs, and missiles is not
fully appreciated. According to statistics compiled by
the Center for International Policy’s Security
Assistance Monitor, the United States has provided
Israel with $63 billion in security assistance over
the past two decades, more than 90 percent of it
through the State Department’s Foreign Military
Financing, which provides funds to buy U.S.
weaponry. But Washington’s support for the Israeli
state goes back much further. Total U.S. military
and economic aid to Israel exceeds $236
billion (in
inflation-adjusted 2018 dollars) since its founding
— nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars.
King of the
Arms Dealers
Donald Trump,
sometimes referred
to by
President Joe Biden as “the other guy,” warmly
embraced the role of arms-dealer-in-chief and not
just by sustaining massive U.S. arms aid for Israel,
but throughout the Middle East and beyond. In a May
2017 visit to
Saudi Arabia — his first foreign trip — Trump would
tout a mammoth (if, as it turned out, highly
exaggerated) $110-billion arms
deal with that kingdom.
On one level, the
Saudi deal was a publicity stunt meant to show that
President Trump could, in his own words, negotiate
agreements that would benefit the U.S. economy. His
son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a pal of Prince Mohammed
Bin Salman (MBS), the architect of
Saudi Arabia’s devastating intervention in Yemen,
even put in a call to
then-Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson. His
desire: to get a better deal for the Saudi regime on
a multibillion-dollar missile defense system that
Lockheed was planning to sell it. The point of the
call was to put together the biggest arms package
imaginable in advance of his father-in-law’s trip to
Riyadh.
When Trump arrived in
Saudi Arabia to immense local
fanfare, he
milked the deal for all it was worth. Calling the
future Saudi sales “tremendous,” he assured the
world that they would create “jobs,
jobs, jobs” in the United States.
That arms package,
however, did far more than burnish Trump’s
reputation as a deal maker and jobs creator. It
represented an endorsement of the Saudi-led
coalition’s brutal war in Yemen, which has now
resulted in the deaths of
nearly a quarter of a million people and put millions of
others on the brink of famine.
And don’t for a second
think that Trump was alone in enabling that
intervention. The kingdom had received a record $115
billion in
arms offers — notifications to Congress that don’t
always result in final sales — over the eight years
of the Obama administration, including for combat
aircraft, bombs, missiles, tanks, and attack
helicopters, many of which have since been used in
Yemen.
After repeated Saudi air
strikes on
civilian targets, the Obama foreign-policy team
finally decided to slow Washington’s support for
that war effort, moving in December 2016 to stop a
multibillion-dollar bomb sale. Upon taking office,
however, Trump reversed
course and pushed
that deal forward, despite Saudi actions that
Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) said “look
like war crimes to me.”
Trump made it
abundantly clear, in fact, that his reasons for
arming Saudi Arabia were anything but strategic. In
an infamous March 2018 White House meeting with
Mohammed bin Salman, he even brandished a
map of the United States to show which places were
likely to benefit most from those Saudi arms deals,
including election swing states Pennsylvania,
Michigan and Wisconsin.
He doubled down on that
economic argument after the October 2018 murder and
dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Washington
Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at that
country’s consulate in Istanbul, even as calls to
cut off sales to the regime mounted in Congress.
The president made
it clear then
that jobs and profits, not human rights, were
paramount to him, stating:
“$110 billion will
be spent on the purchase of military equipment
from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and many
other great U.S. defense contractors. If we
foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and
China would be the enormous beneficiaries — and
very happy to acquire all of this newfound
business. It would be a wonderful gift to them
directly from the United States!”
And so it went. In the
summer of 2019 Trump vetoed an
effort by Congress to block an $8.1-billion arms
package that included bombs and support for the
Royal Saudi Air Force and he continued to back the
kingdom even in his final weeks in office. In
December 2020, he offered more
than $500 million worth of bombs to that regime on
the heels of a $23-billion
package to the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), its partner-in-crime in
the Yemen war.
Saudi Arabia and the
UAE weren’t the only beneficiaries of Trump’s
penchant for selling weapons. According to a report by
the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for
International Policy, his administration made arms
sales offers of more than $110 billion to customers
all over the world in 2020, a 75 percent increase
over the yearly averages reached during the Obama
administration, as well as in the first three years
of his tenure.
Will Biden Be
Different?
Advocates of reining in
U.S. weapons trafficking took note of Joe Biden’s
campaign-trail pledge that,
if elected, he would not “check our values at the
door” in deciding whether to continue arming the
Saudi regime. Hopes were further raised when, in
his first foreign policy speech as president, he announced that
his administration would end “support for offensive
operations in Yemen” along with “relevant arms
sales.”
That statement, of
course, left a potentially giant loophole on the
question of which weapons would be considered in
support of “offensive operations,” but it did at
least appear to mark a sharp departure from the
Trump era. In the wake of Biden’s statement, arms
sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE were indeed put on
hold,
pending a review of their potential consequences.
Three months into
Biden’s term, however, the president’s early pledge
to rein in damaging arms deals are already eroding.
The first blow was the news that the administration
would indeed move
forward with
a $23-billion arms package to the UAE, including
F-35 combat aircraft, armed drones and a staggering
$10 billion worth of bombs and missiles.
The decision was
ill-advised on several fronts, most notably because
of that country’s role in Yemen’s brutal civil war.
There, despite scaling back its troops on the
ground, it continues to
arm, train and finance 90,000 militia members,
including extremist groups with links to the
Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The UAE has also backed armed
opposition forces in Libya in violation of a United
Nations embargo, launched drone
strikes there that killed scores of civilians and cracked
down on dissidents
at home and abroad. It regularly makes arbitrary
arrests and uses torture. If arming the UAE isn’t a
case of “checking our values at the door,” it’s not
clear what is.
To its credit, the
Biden administration committed to
suspending two Trump bomb deals with Saudi Arabia.
Otherwise, it’s not clear what (if any) other
pending Saudi sales will be deemed “offensive” and
blocked. Certainly, the new administration has allowed U.S.
government personnel and contractors to help
maintain the effectiveness of the Saudi Air Force
and so has continued to enable ongoing air strikes
in Yemen that are notorious for killing civilians.
The Biden team has also
failed to forcefully pressure the Saudis to end their
blockade of that country, which United Nations
agencies have determined could
put 400,000 Yemeni children at risk of death by
starvation in the next year.
In addition, the Biden
administration has cleared a sale of
anti-ship missiles to the Egyptian regime of Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi, the most repressive government in
that nation’s history, helmed by the man Donald
Trump referred
to as “my favorite
dictator.” The missiles themselves are in no way
useful for either internal repression or that
country’s scorched-earth anti-terror
campaign against
rebels in its part of the Sinai peninsula — where
civilians have been tortured and killed, and tens of
thousands displaced from their homes — but the sale
does represent a tacit endorsement of the regime’s
repressive activities.
Guns, Anyone?
While Biden’s early
actions have undermined promises to take a different
approach to arms sales, the story isn’t over. Key
members of Congress are planning to closely monitor the
UAE sale and perhaps intervene to prevent the
delivery of the weapons. Questions have been raised about
what arms should go to Saudi Arabia and reforms
that would strengthen Congress’s role in blocking
objectionable arms transfers are being pressed by at
least some members of the House and the Senate.
One area where Biden
could readily begin to fulfill his campaign pledge
to reduce the harm to civilians from U.S. arms sales
would be firearms exports. The Trump administration
significantly loosened restrictions
and regulations on the export of a wide range of
guns, including semi-automatic firearms and sniper
rifles. As a result, such exports surged in
2020, with record sales of more than 175,000
military rifles and shotguns.
In a distinctly deregulatory
mood,
Trump’s team moved sales of deadly firearms from the
jurisdiction of the State Department, which had a
mandate to vet any such deals for possible
human-rights abuses, to the Commerce Department,
whose main mission was simply to promote the export
of just about anything. Trump’s “reforms” also eliminated the
need to pre-notify Congress on any major firearms
sales, making it far harder to stop deals with
repressive regimes.
As he pledged to
do during his presidential campaign, Biden could
reverse Trump’s approach without even seeking
congressional approval. The time to do so is now,
given the damage such gun exports cause in places
like the Philippines and Mexico,
where U.S.-supplied firearms have been used to kill
thousands of civilians, while repressing democratic
movements and human-rights defenders.
Who
Benefits?
Beyond the slightest
doubt, a major — or perhaps even the major
— obstacle to reforming arms sales policies and
practices is the weapons industry itself. That
includes major contractors like Boeing, Lockheed
Martin, Raytheon Technologies and General Dynamics
that produce fighter
planes, bombs, armored vehicles, and other major
weapons systems, as well as firearms makers like Sig
Sauer.
Raytheon stands out in
this crowd because of its determined efforts to push
through bomb sales to Saudi Arabia and the deep
involvement of its former (or future) employees with
the U.S. government. A former Raytheon lobbyist,
Charles Faulkner, worked in the Trump State
Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and was involved
in deciding that Saudi Arabia was not — it was! —
intentionally bombing civilians in Yemen. He then
supported declaring a bogus “emergency” to ram
through the sale of bombs and of aircraft support to
Saudi Arabia.
Raytheon has indeed
insinuated itself in the halls of government in a
fashion that should be deeply troubling even by the
minimalist standards of the twenty-first-century
military-industrial complex. Former Trump Defense
Secretary Mark Esper was Raytheon’s chief in-house lobbyist before
joining the administration, while current Biden
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin served on
Raytheon’s board of directors. While Austin has
pledged to recuse himself
from decisions involving the company, it’s a pledge
that will prove difficult to verify.
Arms sales are Big
Business — the caps are a must! — for the top
weapons makers. Lockheed Martin gets roughly one-quarter of
its sales from foreign governments and Raytheon five
percent of its
revenue from Saudi sales. American jobs allegedly
tied to weapons exports are always the selling point
for such dealings, but in reality, they’ve been
greatly exaggerated.
At most, arms sales account for
just more than one-tenth of one percent of U.S.
employment. Many such sales, in fact, involve outsourcing production,
in whole or in part, to recipient nations, reducing
the jobs impact here significantly. Though it’s
seldom noted, virtually any other form of spending
creates more
jobs than weapons
production. In addition, exporting green-technology
products would create far
largerglobal
markets for U.S. goods, should the government ever
decide to support them in anything like the way it
supports the arms industry.
Given what’s at stake
for them economically, Raytheon and its cohorts
spend vast sums attempting to influence both parties
in Congress and any administration. In the past two
decades, defense companies, led by the major arms
exporting firms, spent
$285 million in campaign contributions alone and
$2.5 billion on lobbying, according to statistics
gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics. Any
changes in arms export policy will mean forcefully
taking on the arms lobby and generating enough
citizen pressure to overcome its considerable
influence in Washington.
Given the political
will to do so, there are many
steps the
Biden administration and Congress could take to rein
in runaway arms exports, especially since such deals
are uniquely unpopular with the public. A September
2019 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs,
for example, found that 70
percent of
Americans think arms sales make the country less
safe.
The question is: Can
such public sentiment be mobilized in favor of
actions to stop at least the most egregious cases of
U.S. weapons trafficking, even as the global arms
trade rolls on? Selling death should be no joy for
any country, so halting it is a goal well worth
fighting for. Still, it remains to be seen whether
the Biden administration will ever limit weapons
sales or if it will simply continue to promote this
country as the world’s top arms exporter of all
time.
William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular,
is the director of the Arms and Security Program at
the Center for International Policy and the author,
with Elias Yousif, of
U.S. Arms Sales Trends 2020 and Beyond: From Trump
to Biden.
This article is
from
TomDispatch.com.
======================================
*
Ook onder Nobelprijs voor de Vrede winnaar Obama was de VS de
grootste leverancier van dood en verderf, niet dat dit een verrassing
is, immers Obama (en zijn vicepresident Biden) is minstens 2 illegale
oorlogen begonnen en verantwoordelijk voor de oorlog die de door de
VS geïnstalleerde Porosjenko junta in Oekraïne begon tegen haar
burgers in Oost-Oekraïne en dat weer naast het organiseren en
regisseren van staatsgrepen tegen andere democratisch gekozen
regeringen/presidenten, zoals die in Honduras (2009)…….
(uiteraard ook een paar mislukte coups zoals die in Venezuela)
Zie ook: ‘Biden administratie heeft verkoop van $ 735 miljard aan wapens voor Israël goedgekeurd, net na de zoveelste massamoord op Palestijnen‘
‘VS gezant voor Jemen liegt over de blokkades die al aan aan paar honderdduizend Jemenieten het leven hebben gekost….‘
‘Joe
Bidens bescherming van de moorddadige Saoedische despoten legt
andermaal de werkelijke VS buitenlandpolitiek bloot en die is niet
gericht op vrede of democratie‘
‘Elbit Systems (wapenfabrikant) voorziet landen van drones waarmee mensenrechten en rechten van vluchtelingen op grote schaal worden geschonden‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)
‘Joe Biden (VS president) zegt oorlog in Jemen te willen stoppen, echter ‘de oorlog tegen terreur’ in Jemen gaat gewoon door‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)
‘EU staat niet voor mensenrechtenbevordering en het behouden dan wel brengen van vrede‘
‘Met Joe Biden is er niets veranderd op de wereld, anders dan dat ‘het Trump fascisme is weggestemd’‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht!!)
‘Biden komt verkiezingsbeloften niet na: zo blijft de VS oorlog voeren en de genocide in Jemen steunen‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)
‘De
laatste beslissing van Trump t.a.v. Jemen gaat wat betreft schunnig
handelen mijlen verder dan de Capitol Hill rel en zal niet worden
teruggedraaid door Biden‘ (hier ging ik ‘iets te snel door de bocht, Biden heeft die beslissing terugggedraaid)
‘Jemen: zijn wij niet met z’n allen de terroristen die zovelen al een afschuwelijke dood bezorgden?‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)
‘Groot-Brittannië heeft 145 militaire bases in 42 landen‘ (de VS heeft er meer dan 800 over een groot deel van de wereld….)
‘Oorlogshelden bestaan niet, alleen oorlogsslachtoffers: met de loep o.a. gericht op Jemen‘
‘Jemen: Biden zal als president de genocide niet stoppen‘
‘Biden
zal de VS hegemonie over de wereld ‘redden’, ofwel nog gewelddadiger
optreden dan Obama en Trump samen….. ‘business as usual: US terror’‘
‘Vredesakkoord Israël, VAE en Bahrein gericht op oorlogsvoering en doodshandel‘
“A
new era of peace”, aldus Netanyahu over de aangeknoopte
politieke banden met de VAE, even vergetend dat Israël bijna
dagelijks illegaal oorlog voert‘
‘BBC: Houthi rebellen veroorzakers honger in Jemen……..‘
(een beproefd middel waarmee de al lang niet meer onafhankelijke BBC de
zaken op een schunnige manier volkomen omdraait en fake news brengt….) (dit bericht komt
uit 2017 zie de wat oudere links in dat bericht naar artikelen over de
smerige oorlog in Jemen, die al vanaf 2015 is veranderd in een genocide
op de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen……)
‘USAID weer betrapt op wapensmokkel tussen ‘humanitaire hulp’, dit keer voor Jemen‘ (eerder o.a. voor Venezuela)
‘Houthi
aanval op Saoedische raffinaderijen: een grote blunder van de VS‘
‘Genocidepleger
Saoedi-Arabië klaagt Houthi’s en Iran aan bij VN Veiligheidsraad
vanwege terreur‘
‘Frankrijk
dreigt journalisten met gevangenisstraf voor openbaarmaking
documenten Jemen‘ (!!!!
‘CBS nieuwsanalist betaald door wapenfabrikant dringt aan op oorlog tegen Iran‘ (!!!!) (en zie de links in dat bericht!)
‘VS wapenexport in één jaar tijd met 13% gegroeid‘ (een bericht van november 2018)
‘Oost-Europa wil geen vluchtelingen, maar veroorzaakt wel de terreur waarvoor mensen vluchten……………‘
‘Rosenthal en waar een klein land groot in kan zijn‘
