WASHINGTON – The United States is the world’s leading arms trafficking nation, with $60 billion in arms transfer agreements last year alone. In 2011, U.S. companies and the U.S. government controlled over three-quarters of the international weapons trade.
The Obama administration regularly touts the role of U.S. officials in promoting U.S. arms sales. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Tom Kelly underscored this point in April 2013 testimony to Congress.
Whether arming the Shah of Iran in the 1970s or transferring of weaponry to Afghan extremist groups fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has paid too little attention to where U.S. arms end up.
“It is an issue that has the attention of every top-level official who’s working on foreign policy throughout the government, including the top officials at the State Department …in advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through . . . we take it very, very seriously and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.”
But according to administration officials, promotion is only one side of its approach to arms transfers. On Jan. 15, the Obama administration issued the first official policy directive on conventional arms sales since the mid-1990s. The document, Presidential Policy Directive 27, carries on the administration’s explicit commitment to promoting arms sales, but it also includes a pledge to show restraint.
The most encouraging element of the new policy is its pledge to forego sales where there is a likelihood that the weapons transferred will be used to conduct genocide or other atrocities, violate international humanitarian law, or contribute to violations of human rights.
One would think that any reasonable policy on arms transfers would include these strictures, but that is not the case. Human rights concerns have too often taken a back seat to other considerations, from access to military bases and the cultivation of allies in key strategic locations to a desire to cement relations with major oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia.
The explicit human rights language in the new Obama policy directive mirrors that contained in the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, and it holds out hope that basic principles of human rights may now be given higher priority in arms export decision-making.
As the State Department’s Tom Kelly put it in an interview with Reuters, “we wanted to make sure that it’s very clear that human rights considerations really are at the core of our arms transfer decisions.”
Another promising element of the administration’s new policy is its pledge to pay closer attention to where U.S. arms end up. Whether arming the Shah of Iran in the 1970s or transferring of weaponry to Afghan extremist groups fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has paid too little attention to where U.S. arms end up.
Iran still has U.S. weaponry dating back to the Shah’s era, and Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-like groups around the world have benefited from the U.S. weapons that were poured into South Asia during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The new Obama policy seems to take account of the risk of U.S. weapons ending up with hostile regimes or organisations when it states that it will take into account “the risk that significant change in the political or security situation of the recipient country could lead to inappropriate end use transfer of defense articles.”
The real question is how these new arms transfer criteria will be applied in practice.
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