How the US arms the world with weapons and impels violence.
By Tom Engelhardt for Common Dreams
When it comes to the
art of the deal, at least where arms sales are concerned, American presidents,
their administrations, and the Pentagon have long been Trumpian in
nature.
Their role has been to
beat the drums (of war) for the major American weapons makers and it’s been a
highly profitable and successful activity.
In 2015, for instance,
the U.S. once again took the top spot in global weapons sales, $40
billion dollars of them, or a staggering 50.2% of the world market.
(Russia came in a distant third with $11.2 billion in sales.)
The U.S. also topped
sales of weaponry to developing nations. In these years,
Washington has, in fact, peddled the products of those arms makers to at least 100 countries, a staggering figure if
you stop a moment to think about the violence on this planet.
Internationally, in
other words, the U.S. has always been an open-carry nation.
Donald Trump has, however, changed this process in one obvious way. He’s shoved the president’s role as arms-purveyor-in-chief in everybody’s face.
He did so on his
initial trip abroad when, in Riyadh, he bragged ceaselessly about ringing up $110
billion dollars in arms sales to the Saudis. Some of those had, in fact,
already been brokered by the Obama administration and some weren’t actually
“sales” at all, just “letters of intent.”
Still, he took the
most fulsome of credit and, when it comes to his "achievements,"
exaggeration is, of course, the name of his game.
And he’s just done it
again on his blustery jaunt through Japan and South Korea.
There, using the North Korean threat, he plugged American weaponry mercilessly (so
to speak), while claiming potential deals and future American jobs
galore.
In the presence of
Shinzo Abe, for instance, he swore that the Japanese Prime Minister
would "shoot [North Korean missiles] out of the sky when he completes the
purchase of a lot of military equipment from the United States."
Both the Japanese and
the South Korean leaders, seeing a way into his well-armored heart, humored him
relentlessly on the subject and on his claims of bringing home jobs to the
U.S. (In fact, one of the weapons systems he was plugging, the F-35, would actually be assembled in
Japan!)
Strangely enough,
however, the president didn't bring up an issue he raises regularly when it
comes to weapons sales in the United States (at least, sales to white people,
not Muslims, with an urge to kill): mental health.
Isn’t it curious that,
as he peddles some of the more destructive weaponry imaginable across Asia and
the Middle East, he never brings that up?
Fortunately, expert on
American arms sales William Hartung raises the issue today in “Massive Overkill,” an adaptation of a piece he
wrote for Sleepwalking to Armageddon: The Threat of Nuclear
Annihilation, a book just published by the New Press.
You might say that he
considers the most mentally unnerving aspect of American arms sales: the way,
since the 1950s, the nuclear lobby has sold planet-destroying weaponry of every
sort to presidents, the Pentagon, and Congress.
And if that doesn't
represent a disturbing mental health record of the first order, what does?
Tom Engelhardt,
co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation
Institute's TomDispatch.com.
His latest book is, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a
Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World (with an
introduction by Glenn Greenwald). Previous books include Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare,
2001-2050 (co-authored with Nick Turse), The United States of Fear, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and
Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles
like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
