Time to Rethink U.S. Arms Sales Across the Globe
With the Trump administration poised to sell $110 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia — the largest such deal ever agreed to by the U.S. — and more than $84 billion to 42 other nations, it’s high time to reevaluate U.S. arms deals.
The research is clear: the geopolitical benefits of U.S. arms sales are overrated, while the benefits of discontinuing such sales are significant finding that arms sales do little to strengthen the U.S. economy or protect national security interests, even undermining the latter in some cases.
The U.S. does not discriminate between nations which may or may not pose future threats. There are a large number of risky customers in the world, and the United States sells weapons to most of them. Between 2002 and 2006, the U.S. clocked $197 billion in arms sales — and, the 28 countries currently involved in high-level conflicts bought an average of $2.94 billion worth of U.S. arms.
The U.S. has increasingly relied on arms sales since WWII, with the Nixon-era American Export Controls Act formalizing the executive branch’s ability to conduct such sales, requiring risk analyses (which are often nothing more than rubber stamps), and giving Congress the ability to block such sales within a 30-day window — a power Congress rarely exercises.
Although arms sales are an “extremely flexible” tool of statecraft allowing the U.S. to cheaply exert influence and gain favor, the benefits are illusory. Arms sales have shown little ability to prevent terrorism or conflict from taking root in a country, and arms sale-recipient countries have been significantly more likely to be attacked by their geopolitical rivals.
Most concerning is arms sales’ tendency to culminate in “blowback,” when a U.S. ally turns into an adversary. American troops and their allies have faced American-made weapons in almost every military engagement since the end of the Cold War. Moreover, weapons sales tend to have an entangling effect, leading the U.S. to take gradually more involvement in the areas it conducts such sales, most notably of late in the Syrian Civil War.
Despite this, there is limited manpower devoted to making sure weapons are not misused or end up in the wrong hands: the limited staff at the the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which oversees U.S. arms licensing agreements, and the Blue Lantern program, which conducts end-use monitoring of weapons. The latter has a staff of twelve, responsible for tracking billions of dollars in weapons sales every year.
The United States does not need the limited economic benefits arms sales provide—and it certainly does not need the strategic headaches that come with them.
President Trump should enact a strict, conditional approach towards arms deals, with a default policy of “no sale,” and should be sure to embargo nations that are likely to misuse or lose weapons they buy from the U.S. End-use monitoring programs should be strengthened, while Congress should also legislate for itself a more active role in approving arms deals.
