What It's All About

As bombs somehow continue to kill and maim ordinary Lebanese and Israeli civilians, an extraordinary article from Reuters has revealed the bottom line about what forces are really at work behind America's laissez-faire attitude toward the Israeli war on Lebanon:

"The Bush administration spelled out plans yesterday to sell $4.6bn of arms to moderate Arab states, including battle tanks worth as much as $2.9bn to protect critical Saudi infrastructure.

"The announcement came two weeks after the administration said it would sell Israel its latest supply of JP-8 aviation fuel valued at up to $210m to help Israeli warplanes 'keep peace and security in the region.'"

Indeed, there's nothing like "peace and security." After all, that's what the whole ideological ferment now brewing among neoconservatives is all about, right? To create nothing other than a new and "democratic" Middle East through sustained warfare by proxy – a plan now adopted by President Bush and Tony Blair, his evil little helper elf from across the pond.

Fueling the Fire: Aid to Israel and the Arabs

Behind the democratic façade, of course, is sheer and simple greed: the desire to maximize profit for the American weapons industry, by fueling a regional arms race. America is now using the specter of Israeli might to scare the hell out of its neighbors. Racketeering on an epic scale, disguised by the occasional recourse to diplomacy, is the ugly reality behind America's Middle East policy.

The full facts recounted in the above article point to a specific cause-and-effect relationship. Coming after its decision to rush bunker-busting precision-guided bombs to Israel, the U.S. announcement came as some mixture of a gesture of friendship, a consolation prize, and a threat.

The upcoming sales are heavy on air power. According to Reuters, $808 million of UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter gunships would go to the United Arab Emirates. Another $400 million of AH-64 Apache helicopters are promised to the Saudis, while Bahrain would get a $252 million consignment of Black Hawks.

Don't worry that Arab ground forces might feel left out. They will also have something to cheer about, thanks to the U.S. beneficence. Steadfast ally Jordan, for example, is in line for up to $156 million in upgrades for 1,000 of its M113A1 APCs. Saudi Arabia is to get 58 "older-generation" M1A1 Abrams tanks, which would then be modernized; plus, the 315 Abrams tanks the kingdom already possesses "would be improved with such things as air-conditioning and infrared sights for the commanders as well as the gunners." Finally, little Oman is set to pick up $48 million of Javelin anti-tank missiles.

The tactic used with all these Arab lackey administrations is something like this: go ahead, keep (some of) your oil billions, just keep buying your security from us. Because we have Israel on a long, long leash indeed…

And don't the Arabs know it! A recent article from Foreign Policy in Focus provides some statistics on U.S. military contributions to Israel. In the decade between 1996-2005, Israel received $10.19 billion in U.S. weaponry and military equipment, "including more than $8.58 billion through the Foreign Military Sales program, and another $1.61 billion in Direct Commercial Sales." Some $10.5 billion was received between 2001-2005 in Foreign Military Financing, "the Pentagon's biggest military aid program." FMF could also stand for "Fun Military Freebies," because it describes a program devised to give outright grants of very expensive military hardware.

The article goes on to note that "the aid figure is larger than the arms transfer figure because it includes financing for major arms agreements for which the equipment has yet to be fully delivered. The most prominent of these deals is a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel." Now, taking the new crisis into consideration, U.S. military aid for Israel from 2001-2007 is set to amount to over $19.5 billion. Yet there are concerns that by using its American-made weaponry offensively, Israel is in violation of the law governing military aid.

Confronted with such staggering figures, Arab regimes can do nothing but try to rectify their security deficit by placating Uncle Sam through suppliant foreign and domestic policies and hard-cash purchases. As a recent IPS report put it, "armed mostly with state-of-the-art U.S.-supplied fighter planes and combat helicopters, the Israeli military is capable of matching a combination of all or most of the armies in most Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia."

"Growth Markets"

It goes without saying, therefore, that the interests of politically connected American arms dealers would definitely not be met by any resolution of the Middle East armed conflicts. Thus the marked lack of enthusiasm of American leaders for the proposal of UN chief Kofi Annan and much of the rest of the world – an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

According to Reuters, the Arab aid deals are being masterminded by the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, "which administers U.S. government-to-government arms sales." And the project's prime contractor would be the Land Systems business unit of Sterling Heights, Mich.-based General Dynamics, a mammoth defense contractor that in 2005 spent almost $5 million on lobbying alone.

Since the "war on terror" began almost five years ago, firms such as General Dynamics have enjoyed soaring profits and unprecedented opportunities that "growth markets" such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Lebanon have opened up for them. As the Arms Trade Resource Center recounted in October 2004:

"[C]ontracts to the Pentagon's top ten contractors jumped from $46 billion in 2001 to $80 billion in 2003, an increase of nearly 75%. Halliburton's contracts jumped more than nine times their 2001 levels by 2003, from $400 million to $3.9 billion. Northrop Grumman's contracts doubled, from $5.2 billion to $11.1 billion, over the same time frame; and the nation's largest weapons contractor, Lockheed Martin, saw a 50% increase, from $14.7 billion to $21.9 billion."

Falling Into the Wrong Hands?

Putting aside for a moment the major moral objections and economic ramifications of such "aid," there are two other concerns regarding this deadly profligacy. First, since terrorist attacks and other militant challenges have been witnessed in several of the countries on the U.S. recipient list, one marvels at the wisdom of loading up unstable Arab states with high-tech American weaponry – states which, at present, have no foreign power to fear except, potentially, Israel.

Really, is anyone going to attack Oman? The government there probably won't need anti-tank missiles. Yet these are just the kind of toys prized by insurgents and terrorists, of which the neighborhood has many. What if corrupt elements in the armed forces of these "moderate" Arab regimes decide to go freelance, selling to the highest bidder?

Further, an even more unsettling thought would be the complete collapse of any of these countries' governments under the weight of a popular revolt. "Moderate" Arab leaders have made themselves increasingly despised among the masses for allying with an America that is allowing Israel to kill fellow Muslims in Lebanon, even as it abets internecine warfare and kills Muslims in Iraq. As one young and generally pro-Western Arab put it, "so many of us are just waiting for a new leader in Egypt, who will stand up to Israel and the Americans – Egypt is the only country that can save us!" While Egypt has pledged to stay on the sidelines and not get involved, how would the U.S. react if such a large and vital country (which also receives plenty of U.S. military aid) were to undergo a coup d'etat that brought militant anti-Israeli factions to power?

Such a hypothetical concern does not even need to be realized for the American "military aid" to be dangerous enough already. As the British also know, American experts concede that it is basically impossible to guarantee the final destination of not only the military hardware but also, and perhaps more importantly, the knowledge needed to make it. The hemorrhaging of sensitive weapons-design information often is due to espionage, aided by corruption in high places and expedited by fraudulent end-user licenses. Yet this is just one of the ways that foreign regimes get their hands on cutting-edge American weapons technologies.

Outsourcing Everything

There are simpler, more direct methods too. The same corporate greed that necessitates endless wars in the first place has also willingly allowed these technologies to go "offshore." Industry giant General Dynamics, for example, in the late 1980s sold Turkey 160 F-16 fighter planes – and gladly accepted that government's contractual stipulation that the planes be mostly assembled in Turkey. Not only did the company save money by hiring cheap foreign labor, it also gave the buyer know-how for developing their own independent and competing arms industry in the future.

This pattern has been repeated in many countries since. A more recent example is of another deal between Turkey and a different company – AM General of Indiana, for decades lavished with untold millions to make the celebrated Humvee; this of course is the iconic APC that has all too often proven vulnerable to insurgent bombs in Iraq, with lethal results for American soldiers.

Now AM's longtime foreign collaborator, Otokar, "the leading brand" in Turkey's defense contracting industry and a subsidiary of the nation's biggest company (Koc Holdings), is making a fortune exporting their own homemade variety of the Humvee, the Cobra, to neighboring Arab countries. Although the company does not disclose exactly which ones, the visit last June of Bahrain's minister of internal affairs to the Otokar plant, a month before the company announced its largest-ever order from abroad ($88.4 million for 600 vehicles) seems wonderfully coincidental. (It is thus notable, perhaps, that Bahrain is going to be receiving air, not ground, equipment according to the Pentagon's latest military aid announcement.)

According to Otokar, the Cobra was "a joint development with AM General of USA [which] utilizes many common parts with HMMWV [the Humvee]." In other words, American technology was shared with the foreign company, leading to domestic production in Turkey, and finally the establishment of a competitive Turkish defense industry. In May, the Otokar general manager was happy to announce that "in 2005, we increased our export by 230 percent and accomplished an 85 percent growth in defense industry vehicles."

As with the fighter plane deal and countless others, more jobs in America were lost. So much for that great argument of those who defend the weapons industry's culture of death by arguing that at least it helps save American industry.

Case Studies: the Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus

There are other aspects of the U.S. defense industry in general and the U.S.-Israeli relationship in particular, exacerbated by the present conflict, that have contributed to making the world a more dangerous place. U.S. oversight legislation (ignored, in Israel's case) has it that nations violating human rights and going on offensives should not receive American weapons; Israel, being entitled to everything, has thus become a conduit for interested third parties. As former CIA officer Philip Giraldi stated about the Israeli-Turkish alliance in a recent Balkanalysis.com interview, "the so-called 'friendly' relationship between the two countries is very narrowly focused. It is largely the Turkish Army's General Staff that keeps the relationship going, because it provides access to U.S. military assistance and weapons that would otherwise be embargoed."

Yet the Muslim Turkish population is naturally opposed to Israeli suppression of their fellow Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon. The outcry against the current war being felt in Turkey (among many other places) can only feed into the inherent tensions between a secular military and an Islamic-leaning government and population. Usually, whenever such challenges to the secular order arise, the result is vividly manifested in military crackdowns against the Kurds and military provocations against Greece. The former option has the possibility to directly affect U.S. interests in northern Iraq, while the latter could have fateful repercussions for Turkey's EU bid and the always dangerous discord over Cyprus (which, by the way, has suffered from the war already due to a very costly refugee influx).

Nevertheless, the U.S. will no doubt continue arming both sides in the Greek-Turkish conflict, as it always has, resulting in ever greater profits for the Washington lobbyists representing the two countries' interests and the defense contractors who stock their arsenals.

The same danger of a regional arms race is being witnessed in a nearby region, the Caucasus. Azerbaijan, itself a strong American and Turkish ally and pivotal export hub for Caspian Sea oil and gas, has also seen the light and publicly voiced its desire to deepen ties with Israel. Funny that Azerbaijan, boosted by oil riches but still not entirely immune to human rights violations itself, is at the same time involved in an unprecedented military buildup for possible offensive action against Armenia, to recover the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh that lies between the two Caucasus states.

Nearby, in Georgia, nationalist President Mikhail Saakashvili is again moving toward war to recover his own breakaway provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which have sought support from Russia. As an American client state receiving millions in military aid and advice, Georgia is regarded as the front line in containing Russia in the Caucasus, and also an energy corridor for the $3-billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that commences in Azerbaijan and concludes in Turkey. Like Saudi Arabia, whose new military aid from the U.S. is earmarked for protecting "critical infrastructure' (i.e., Western oil interests), U.S. military aid in the Caucasus will no doubt go toward protecting the pipeline.

Another Path

The same dynamic is in place all around the world, everywhere that money can be made on exporting the instruments of death. All things considered, it would seem obvious that journalists might ask government officials just why their stated devotion to peace and stability has to go hand in hand with ever greater arms buildups. Yet all too often, they don't.

President Bush and his officials talk about building a sustainable, lasting peace in a new and reshaped Middle East. They talk optimistically about a "final status" for Kosovo that will respect and guarantee the rights of embattled minorities. They talk about resolving the Caucasus frozen conflicts to everyone's benefit. They plead for peace and stability between the Greeks and Turks, between Indians and Pakistanis, even as they keep loading up their arsenals with increasingly deadly weapons. And so it goes, all around the world.

Despite the rhetoric, there is one thing every U.S. administration has never tried to do in any of these conflicts. It is something that leaders have never been able to do, for reasons of their own political survival: to make peace through peaceful means, without even a word being spoken about arms sales. Is this really too much to ask?

War profiteering around the imperium