US dominates arms sales to Third World countries

By Kaleem Omar

America accounted for close to 50 per cent of all new arms transfer agreements concluded worldwide during the year 2002, as well as half of all actual arms deliveries, according to a report prepared by the US Congressional Research Service.

Altogether, arms sales from all sources to developing countries made up about two-thirds of arms sales worldwide during 2002, according to the report, which is based on the most comprehensive data compiled by the US government.

US sales to Middle Eastern countries accounted for 76 per cent of its total arms sales since 1999 and about the same percentage of all sales to the region from all sources in that period. This shows just how heavily dependent the US arms industry has become in recent years on exports to the Middle East.

An Inter Press Service report says that new arms agreements with developing nations totalled 17.7 billion dollars in 2002, a 10 per cent increase over new deals in 2001. Of that total, US sales came to 8.6 billion dollars, or almost 48 per cent of all arms transfers to Third World countries, up from 41 per cent the previous year.

The US was followed by Russia, which sold 5.7 billion dollars worth of arms; Ukraine (1.6 billion dollars); Italy (1.5 billion dollars); and Germany and France (1.1 billion dollars each).

China was the leading recipient of conventional arms transfers in 2002, accounting for 3.6 billion dollars in purchases; followed by South Korea (1.9 billion dollars); India (1.4 billion dollars); and Oman (1.3 billion dollars).

Of the top 10 recipients, five were in the Middle East -- Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman -- and four in Asia, with Malaysia ranking 8th behind China, Korea and India.

Israel is the world's biggest recipient of US economic and military aid. US aid to Israel averages about 4 billion dollars a year -- most of it in the form of outright grants. In the last 20 years, US aid to Israel has amounted to well over 100 billion dollars. And that's not counting US loan guarantees given to Israel.

In early September 2003, the Bush administration approved another 10 billion dollars in loan guarantees to Israel.

By contrast, the Palestinians -- who have seen their economy's GDP fall by more than 50 per cent since 1999 due to a host of punitive economic measures introduced by Israel, including cutting off access to ports for Palestinian exports -- have not received a penny in aid from the United States. This has resulted in the Palestinians' economic plight becoming even worse and has further emboldened Israel to carry on with its repressive policies against the Palestinian people.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, Chile, which ranked 10th in the list of arms recipients in 2002 on the strength of a major purchase of advanced fighter jets from the United States, was the only country outside the other two regions -- the Middle East and Asia -- which have been the developing world's biggest customers for conventional arms for the past decade.

While the Middle East proved the bonanza market of the 1980s -- particularly when warring Iran and Iraq, as well as Saudi Arabia, were making huge purchases, Asia -- particularly China and India, was the big buyer of the last seven years, according to the CRS report: 'Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1995-2002'.

In that period, says the CRS report, China ranked number one, with 17.6 billion dollars worth of purchases; the United Arab Emirates ranked second at 16.3 billion dollars, and India ranked third at 14.1 billion dollars, suggesting the emergence of a new arms race between the world's two most populous nations that could dominate the market for some time, particularly if purchases to the Middle East continue to decline in relative terms.

With a nod from the United States, India recently concluded a 2 billion dollars deal with Israel for the purchase of three aircraft equipped with US-developed Phalcon radar system, which has look-down capability and will give the Indian air force a big advantage over the Pakistan air force in controlling the skies. India is also negotiating with Israel for the purchase of the advanced Arrow missile system and several other weapons systems.

These growing military ties between India and Israel are a source of worry to Pakistan, which says that this acquisition of sophisticated weapons systems by India would alter the conventional weapons balance between India and Pakistan and destabilise the South Asian region.

In his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 26, 2003, then-Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee rejected President Musharraf's charge that India was forcing Pakistan to engage in an arms race by building up its conventional and non-conventional military hardware.

"I would like to point out to the president of Pakistan that he should not confuse the legitimate aspirations for the equality of nations with outmoded concepts of military parity," said Vajpayee.

It's easy for India to talk of military parity as an 'outmoded concept' because it has much bigger military forces than Pakistan. But if military parity is indeed an outmoded concept, would Vajpayee care to explain why India's new-found ally Israel, by its own admission, has the 'third or fourth' most powerful military in the world despite being such a small country?

Not only is the conventional arms balance in the Middle East heavily tilted in Israel's favour, Israel is also the only country in the Middle East that possesses weapons of mass destruction, with more than 200 nuclear bombs, including hydrogen bombs, and sophisticated delivery systems in its arsenal.

Yet so strong is the influence of the Israeli lobby in the United States that there has never been any criticism of Israel by Washington for possessing nuclear weapons.

Washington has also blocked discussion in the UN Security Council of a draft resolution tabled by Syria in June 2003 calling for the banning of all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Washington knows only too well that the only country in the Middle East that would be affected by the Syrian resolution is Israel.

As the Inter Press Service report notes, the United States, which has sharply upgraded its military relationship with India in the last several years, particularly since the beginning of the Bush administration's 'war on terrorism', has made little secret of its hopes of integrating Delhi into a containment strategy against Beijing.

"The 84-page CRS report, whose graphs and tables are ritually pored over by intelligence analysts around the world to glean key trends and possible future military threats to their governments, tracks both actual deliveries of arms, as well as new agreements that will result in eventual deliveries," says the Inter Press Service report.

In addition to covering the value of sales and deliveries each year and over periods as long as seven years, the CRS report also tracks the transfer by various countries of specific weapons systems.

The CRS report found, for example, that a total of 80 surface-to-surface missile systems were transferred in 2002, none of which were supplied by the United States, Russia, China, the four major West European countries (France, Britain, Germany and Italy) or "all other European countries".

Suppliers of the missiles were found in a category called 'all others', which includes North Korea, South Africa and Israel.

Washington never misses an opportunity to berate North Korea for selling missiles to other countries, but it has never criticised Israel for doing the same thing.

Following the 1990-91 Gulf War, Washington bulldozed Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Middle Eastern countries into buying billions of dollars worth of arms from the United States in a move clearly aimed at boosting the sales of the American arms industry.

In one such deal, concluded in 2000, the UAE bought 80 latest model F-16s from Lockheed Martin of Fort Worth, Texas, and related weapons systems for 8.6 billion dollars. In another deal, Saudi Arabia was pressured by Washington into buying 6 billion dollars worth of fighter aircraft.