War on Terror: Bonanza for U.S. Arms Sellers
“THE WAR on Terror and windfalls from rising oil prices have helped to push American military sales to foreign governments to their highest level since the first Gulf War,” says David Robertson in The Times of London.
Pakistan is among the largest spenders on U.S. arms, The Times adds.
“An investigation by The Times has found that the US Congress was notified of sales worth $12.9 billion (£6.8 billion) in July — the largest monthly total since the beginning of the Bush Administration.
“Defence analysts believe that the US could be heading for the biggest full-year total since 1993, when the end of the first Gulf War triggered a $42 billion bonanza for defence contractors.
“The largest spenders in the past five years include Saudi Arabia, which has placed orders worth $14 billion, South Korea, with orders of $8.8 billion, and Pakistan, with orders of $7.6 billion. Among the biggest winners of contracts this year are Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Britain’s BAE Systems.
“Other factors behind the leap in arms sales include the rising price of oil, which has given oil-producing nations more money to spend. An unusually high number of contract negotiations have also reached completion this year.
“A lucrative result of the leap in arms sales is the $600 million that the Pentagon has earned in commission. It places a 2.8 per cent charge on all arms sales that it arranges for foreign governments and in the past five years this has been worth about $2.5 billion.”
10 Responses to “War on Terror: Bonanza for U.S. Arms Sellers”
There have been cooments and posts about the Chinese being the arms dealers to the AOE. Well, the US is the largest arms dealer and some of our customers are not nice democracies. I guess spreading democracy from the barrel of a gun is also very profitable.
An excerpt from Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address. We were warned…and now look what’s happening:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5407.htm
My God, it’s not al qaeda, Iran, Syria, China, Hizbolla, Hammas, Taliban, North Korea, Iraqi insurgents or the countless others named every day in the media that are the leading terrorist, it is us. How much money do you need? How much power do you need? How many deaths do you need to be happy. Ask the the Bushco Neocons and I guess the answer would be “all we can get”
someone explain to me why there aren’t more comments about this.
Wow! We’re at war, and munitions makers are making more money now than at any time since… well, since the last time we were at war. Amazing!
More shocking still, we’re even supplying our allies in this war with weapons. Now, when have we ever done something like that before?
Seriously, though, how can anyone at the Times treat this as big news? Yeah, the numbers are somewhat interesting. However, the Americans and British have some of the best weaponry on the planet, so it’s no surprise our allies would want to buy it to defend themselves in this war. This story merits a big “Duh!”
BrianOfAtlanta,
One thing that would give me pause as far as selling “some of the best weaponry on the planet” (and alot of it) to allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would be who do they turn around and sell that weaponry to? The Saudis tend to be more supportive of radical Islamic militants…what would stop them from selling American-made weapons to potential terrorists for the right price? I don’t recall where I read it, but I recall seeing that some of Saddam’s chemical weapons that he used on the Iraqis were from the US when he was our ally against Iran. True that in this case, we sold them to him and he didn’t turn around to resell them but how quickly can some of these countries move from the “ally” column to the “enemy” column?
Anna, you have a good point. There’s always a risk, but what do you do when you want/need allies and the most credible ones have less than sterling records? I still think, for example, we did the right thing in arming the Russians against the Germans, given what we knew at the time. It’s a tough call, but one we’ve made in the past.
BrianOfAtlanta,
At the same time our allies our selling American derived military techology (Israel) to “our enemy”‘s main supplier (invariably, China). Also this country has been selling massive amounts of arms to foreign countries even in peace time (also supported right-wing dictatorships like Batista in Cuba, Pinochet in Chile, the Shah in Iran during peace time). you act like we’re making MORE weapons. we’ve been making TONS of weapons for decades.
Wasn’t the point of the article that we’re making more weapons now?
The comments supporting the arms sale sound like something from “1984″ doublespeak.