Military Sales Research Articles

U.S. Technology Transfer Policies and the Modernization of China's Armed Forces

United States export control policies governing the transfer of weapons, technologies, manufacturing processes, and strategic commodities have often been criticized as unrealistic barriers to free trade that damage the economy. In reality, the United States uses strategic exports and arms sales as levers to advance the national interest by coupling export decisions to security assistance and foreign military sales programs to developing and cementing relations with other countries. This paper explains and analyzes these policies as applied to the People's Republic of China (PRC). Decisions to sell or otherwise transfer weapons or technologies are most often based on mutual security interests, and may also be designed to affect the world or regional geopolitical balance, tipping it in favor of the United States. Carried a step further, the transfer of weapons or technologies may be viewed as a penetration mechanism that advances American foreign policy interests by tying the recipient state to the United States for spare parts, training programs, and even long term loans. In addition, strategic exports and arms sales strengthen the national economy by increasing domestic production, earning foreign exchange, and reducing the unit cost of weapon systems to the United States and its security assistance recipients through economies of scale. Indeed, the Congress has charged the federal

The U.S. and Ethiopia: The Politics of Military Assistance

This article concerns the military assistance relationship between the United States and Ethiopia, especially during the early years of the Ethiopian revolution, from 1974 to 1977. The interaction between the outbreak of the uprising and American military assistance and the impact of one upon the other are our main concerns. Besides the objective needs of the revolution to reorient Ethiopia's domestic and external politics, other important forces contributed to the abrogation of the U.S.-Ethiopia Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement that had tied the two countries together for nearly three decades. Both the process and substance of the assistance relationship are analyzed-from the moment the Ethiopian armed forces intervened in the unfolding revolution to the time Menghistu Haile Mariam captured the political leadership. Such forces as the radicalization of Ethiopia's domestic politics, the American shift of its assistance policy from grant aid to foreign military cash and credit sales, the Soviet decision to embrace Menghistu, and American perceptions and reactions to the revolution were all important contributary factors to the MDAA's demise. In the face of new political realities in Ethiopia, the assumptions upon which the U.S.-Ethiopia relationship was built could no longer hold.

The Ethics and Economics of Foreign Sales of US‐Made Military Weapons

Foreign military sales agreements amounted to over 19.5 billion dollars in fiscal year 1982, while the US actually delivered $9 billion in weapons. The US and the Soviet Union are the largest arms suppliers in the world, with about 75 per cent of the global export market. France, and then Great Britain, follow with 12 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively. Italy and Israel also export significant dollar amounts of weapons. There is considerable public debate over the wisdom of US participation in this market. Of particular concern is the increased availability of highly sophisticated weapons systems in third world nations.

Dilemmas in the United States–Pakistan Security Relationship

For fiscal year 1984, the Reagan administration requested congressional approval of security assistance programs amounting to almost $5.8 billion for twenty-two of the forty littoral states of the Indian Ocean. The administration proposal for Pakistan, consisting of $300 million in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) financing, $225 million in Economic Support Fund (ESF) assistance, and $800,000 in International Military Education and Training (IMET) support, came to $525.8 million, or about 9 percent of the total. It placed Pakistan fourth in the world after Israel, Egypt, and Turkey among ninety-one recipients of U.S. security assistance. Washington was supplying all three of Pakistan's military services with some of the world's most sophisticated air, ground, and naval weapons and weapons systems; and the possibility existed that the scope of security assistance and the dimensions of the security relationship itself might expand significantly in coming years. For thrice-embargoed Pakistan, with whom even economic assistance had been terminated by Washington in 1979 on grounds that it was pursuing unsafeguarded nuclear technology applicable to the development of nuclear weapons, this third installment of a six-year $3.2 billion military and economic assistance package represented a considerable jump in status.

The United States and Pakistan

B Y the beginning of 1982, the United States and Pakistan were ready to renew a defence relationship that had been in suspension since 1965. Congressional waiver of the anti-proliferation Symington Amendment lifted the aid ban imposed on Pakistan in April 1979 and cleared the way for President Ronald Reagan's Republican administration to move ahead with the first instalments of a six-year $3 2 billion programme of economic and military assistance. By failing to adopt a concurrent resolution to block the administration, Congress also approved a foreign military sales transaction of $1 1 billion (to be paid for, in part, by Saudi Arabia) for forty highperformance F16 tactical aircraft, six of which were to be delivered within one year. The programme dwarfs the Carter administration's $400 million aid offer, made in February 1980, an offer which Pakistan's President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq disdainfully dismissed as 'peanuts'. Divided roughly in half between economic aid and military 'assistance programme credits, the Reagan administration package gives Pakistan access to an array of sophisticated military hardware, including attack helicopters, self-propelled howitzers, armoured personnel carriers, medium tanks, guided missiles and radar equipment.' The decision thus to revive America's erstwhile partnership with Pakistan runs parallel to security agreements which the Reagan administration has been attempting to fashion with other friendly regional powers. No less than in these other cases, Washington's courtship of Islamabad has given rise to debate among United States foreign policy observers. There were several motives for Washington's action-alarm over the chaos in Iran, the shock of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and the belief

The Foreign Arms Sales Policy of the Carter Administration

This paper makes the point that the Carter Administration is continuing the US policy of spreading militarization round the world, particularly in the Third World. During the Nixon and Ford Administrations, arms sales and transfers came to be used routinely as the quid pro quo in diplomacy. As a Presidential candidate, Carter pledged to reduce US involvement in the conventional arms trade. Nonetheless, within a year of his enunciating his ‘arms sales restraint’ policy in May 1977, the Administration proposed an end to the arms ban on Turkey, approved the sale of AWACs to Iran and 200 warplanes to the Mid-East, as well as a myriad of less controversial weapons deals. The dollar ceiling on arms sales, has been frequently circumvented. Despite the legislation requiring the cessation of military sales, loans and grants to countries in which there is a ‘consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights’, the Carter Administration continues to supply arms to many of the worst human rights offenders. And despite the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, the Administration has failed to act. It is extremely unlikely that any significant change will occur in the world arms trade despite President Carter's pronouncements against the ‘spiralling arms traffic’.

Carter's Arms Sales Policies: Business as Usual

IN June 1976, in one of his first major foreign policy statements Jimmy Carter raised what was to become a principal theme of his campaign for the presidency: the uncontrolled growth in US arms sales abroad. am particularly concerned, he told the Foreign Policy Association in New York, our nation's role as the world's leading arms salesman. Noting that US weapons exports often fuel local arms races in troubled Third World areas, Carter denounced those US leaders who try to justify this unsavoury business on the cynical ground that by rationing out the means of violence we can somehow control the world's violence. Such fallacies must be rejected, he declared, for it is obvious that the United States cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war. On these grounds, he vowed that If I become President, I will work...to increase the emphasis on peace and to reduce the commerce in weapons.' Sensing that the public was becoming increasingly uneasy about massive US arms transfers to wealthy potentates abroad, Carter reiterated his pledge to reduce military sales throughout the campaign. Subsequently, upon entering the White House, he promised to make such reductions a major priority of the new Administration. In his first Washington interview, on 24 January 1977, he reported that the National

FOOD AS A COMPONENT OF NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY

Abstract : Economic warfare statutes in the United States date to 1917. Since World War II, these statutes have increasingly given the President broad authority to restrict U.S. exports to prevent economic shortages, to protect national security, and to support U.S. foreign policy objectives. The apparent success of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo in producing changes in U.S. policy in the Middle East and the potential of further embargoes or extravagant price hikes by producers of oil and other nonreplenishable raw resources, such as bauxite or chromium, have renewed public interest in the possible use of food as an instrument of foreign policy. Such use might take the form of establishment of strategic food reserves and a selective export policy which would use agricultural exports as both a carrot and a stick in the achievement of U.S. national interests. The logical conclusion which follows at this juncture is that any decision to employ economic warfare as a strategic weapon must be based on our export capabilities in agricultural commodities, which until recently have combined with foreign military sales to produce a trade surplus in the U.S. balance of payments. Given the apparent success of economic warfare by other nations, the question that then remains is whether food and agricultural exports can in fact become a useful addition to the range of strategic alternatives available to U.S. policy makers for the achievement of diplomatic and political objectives. Careful analysis will, I contend, lead us to ultimately reject the concept of food as a strategic weapon. Let us first, however, examine the major arguments which have been propounded in favor of using food in this way. This will be followed by an examination of the major arguments against using agricultural exports as a lever to achieve foreign policy objectives.

U.S. Military Sales, 1950–74

U.S. Military Sales, 1950–74

The Arms Merchants: The Top Ten U.S. Weapons Exporters Under the Foreign Military Sales Program, 1970–1974

"The Arms Merchants: The Top Ten U.S. Weapons Exporters Under the Foreign Military Sales Program, 1970–1974." NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report, 9(2), p. 24

Amendments to U.S. Law on Foreign Military Sales

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U.S.: Law on Foreign Military Sales

U.S.: Law on Foreign Military Sales