US IS STILL WORLD’S TOP MERCHANT OF DEATH: NATION MAGAZINE

Regardless of who is elected president this November, American arms businesses will continue to export arsenals to the Middle East and around the world, William D. Hartung reported for Nation magazine of the US. Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy (CIP), also wrote the about the same issue at TomDispatch.com. 

He said that based on the data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States accounted for 48 percent of major weapons deliveries to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA.) Those figures leave deliveries from the next largest suppliers in the dust. They represent nearly three times the arms Russia supplied to MENA, five times what France contributed, 10 times what the United Kingdom exported, and 16 times China’s contribution. 

“In other words, we have met the prime weapons proliferator in the Middle East and North Africa and it is us. The influence of US arms in this conflict-ridden region is further illustrated by a striking fact: Washington is the top supplier to 13 of the 19 countries there, including Morocco (91 percent of its arms imports), Israel (78 percent), Saudi Arabia (74 percent), Jordan (73 percent), Lebanon (73 percent), Kuwait (70 percent), the UAE (68 percent), and Qatar (50 percent). If the Trump administration goes ahead with its controversial plan to sell F-35s and armed drones to the UAE and brokers that related $8 billion arms deal with Israel, its share of arms imports to those two countries will be even higher in the years to come,” Hartung wrote. 

Just four companies—Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics—were involved in the overwhelming majority of US arms deals with Saudi Arabia between 2009 and 2019. In fact, at least one or more of those companies played key roles in 27 offers worth more than $125 billion (out of a total of 51 offers worth $138 billion). In other words, in financial terms, more than 90 percent of the US arms offered to Saudi Arabia involved at least one of those top four weapons makers.