ARMS SALES MONITOR

Highlighting U.S. government policies on arms exports and conventional weapons proliferation.

Arms Sales to Indonesia by the Clinton Administration: U.S. Complicity in East Timor

At the time of Indonesia's 1975 illegal invasion and annexation of East Timor, 90% of the Indonesian military's arms were made in America, providing - along with President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger's nod of approval - U.S. support for the takeover. Since then, the U.S. government has sold or given an additional $1.25 billion worth of arms to Jakarta, even as the massacre of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese and Indonesians was reported. According to the General Accounting Office, U.S.-supplied M-16 assault rifles were used in the November 1991 massacre of civilians in Dili, when the Indonesian army opened fire on peaceful Timorese demonstrators.

Under pressure from Congress, the Clinton Administration did stop small arms sales to Indonesia in 1994, but it still approved about $140 million of other arms shipments, including equipment and raw materials for manufacturing ammunition, explosives, missiles, military communications equipment, and spare parts for the Indonesian military's aircraft.

The U.S. government has been a longtime supporter of the Indonesian military, providing some form of security assistance virtually every year since 1950, including $388 million in grants and loans to pay for U.S. arms. Over $226 million worth of new and used military equipment was also transferred to Indonesia through the Military Assistance Program and the Excess Defense Articles Program.

The U.S. government also provided training under the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program from 1950 to 1992, when Congress prohibited this aid in reaction to severe human rights abuses in East Timor. In that 42-year period, over 7,300 Indonesian military personnel received IMET training, demonstrating the close ties between the U.S. and Indonesian militaries. Indonesia was later reauthorized to receive "E-IMET," which provides classroom courses in human rights and civil-military relations.

Arms Sales to Indonesia by the Clinton Administration

*State Department estimate. Actual figures may be higher.

After regular IMET training was suspended, Indonesian troops continued to receive combat training from U.S. soldiers under the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program (see chart below). The units trained included the infamous Kopassus special operations forces, known by the U.S. to engage in torture, "disappearances," and other atrocities in East Timor and elsewhere. Training courses included sniper techniques, air operations, and close quarters combat. Whether the U.S.-trained units were present in East Timor during the pre- and post-referendum violence is unclear, but the tactics and techniques used by security forces were strikingly similar to techniques taught in JCET and other U.S. military training courses.

President Clinton finally decided to cut off all arms sales and other military ties to Indonesia two weeks after the August 30, 1999 referendum in East Timor; this and other international pressure on Jakarta led to acceptance of international peacekeepers. The action was a welcome, but long overdue, response to the violence in Indonesia. As recently noted by East Timorese activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta at a congressional briefing, the tragedy in East Timor may have been averted altogether had the U.S. used this influence earlier.

Joint Combined Exchange Training in Indonesia in 1998

SFG = Special Forces Group; SOG=Special Operations Group; SOC=; POG=Psychologcial Operations Group

Arms Sales: The Rotten Core of U.S.-Taiwan Relations

"The United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability."—1979 Taiwan Relations Act

The United States government has agreed that it "does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, [and] that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final resolution."—1982 Sino-American communiqué

In the brouhaha over Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui's reference to "special state-to-state relations" with China, very little attention has been paid to one of the main areas of Taiwan-related tension between China and the United States: arms sales.

Theoretically, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are governed by the two agreements quoted above. In practice, the demands of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and the 1982 communiqué are contradictory, and the U.S. has relied upon the TRA's greater legal weight to increase arms sales. Arms transfers to Taiwan have risen dramatically during the 1990s in terms of quality and quantity, from just $209 million in 1980 to a record high of $5.7 billion in 1997 (see chart). Taiwan has bought advanced fighter jets, attack helicopters, and numerous missiles; future plans include a major tank procurement program and possible participation in a U.S. theater missile defense system.

The U.S. policy of arming Taiwan has been a source of serious and sustained friction with China over the years. The Chinese believe arms sales have given President Lee the confidence to make his recent policy change despite official American disapproval; according to the People's Daily, "US arms have caused Li Teng-hui's arrogance to swell as if he had drunk wolf's milk."

Congressional intent may support this view. As Sen. Jesse Helms boasted when introducing S. 693, the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, which would mandate even greater arms sales to Taiwan : "Some are going to say this is provocative. They will claim that doing these things will upset the United States' relationship with China. This is true. The Red Chinese won't like this bill." While many like Helms support arms sales to Taiwan to inflame the PRC, others in Congress seem to feel that arms sales are their only way to express support for Taiwan.

Despite the Clinton administration's unequivocal rejection of any changes to the "one-China policy" - which assumes eventual reunion of Taiwan with the mainland - support for arms sales to Taiwan remains very strong. Faced with criticism over a decision to postpone a joint military meeting in Taiwan and to delay notification of two arms sales this July, the administration hastened to assert that it never considered cutting off the weapons supply. After all, as a DOD official once tellingly put it, arms sales form "the fundamental basis of [the] relationship between the United States and Taiwan."

Arms exports may be the easiest foundation for a relationship with Taiwan, but they certainly aren't the best. Taiwanese arms buildups perpetuate the illusion that weapons can somehow bring Taiwan "sufficient self-defense" against its nuclear neighbor with a population of one and a quarter billion. A Chinese attempt to retake the island by force would inevitably involve the United States and would undoubtedly be disastrous for all.

Complicating matters for the United States, Taiwan is now a democracy, its president was freely elected, and its people will ultimately decide whether a "one-China" policy best serves their interests. Unwavering American commitment to "one-China" does not reflect this fact.

The administration is essentially locked into its current policy. An alternative worth considering, however, would be to declare increasingly strong support for Taiwan's democracy (and implied self-determination with respect to reunification) while incrementally reducing our commitment to sell Taiwan large amounts of weapons. The aim in this two-pronged policy change would be to offend and please China and Taiwan in more or less equal measure, while affirming American commitment to a peaceful, non-military solution _ and showing China and Taiwan that we care more about democracy than arms deals.

US Arms Exports: Fact Versus Fiction

One of the best sources of information about recent U.S. arms exports is the "655 report," a country-by-country listing of arms sales, including type of weapon and cost. The requirement to produce this report was reinstated in 1996, and here we take a look at recent recipients of either foreign military sales (FMS) deliveries or licenses for Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) during fiscal years 1996-1998. For a complete list of countries to which the United States has delivered FMS or issued DCS licenses over the past three years, the exact value of those sales, as well as explanations of the acronyms, please go to http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/worldfms.html.

First, a word from our sponsors...

President Clinton's 1995 Presidential Decision Directive on conventional arms transfers affirms that arms sales "continue to be a legitimate instrument of U.S. foreign policy." And according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (the Pentagon's arms sales bureau), those foreign policy objectives are promoting sustainable development, building democracy, promoting peace, providing humanitarian assistance, and promoting U.S. prosperity. - "Planning for Security Assistance: a Review," DSCA educational materials

Let's compare these goals with recent arms sales...

Promoting Sustainable Development?

The U.S. government has directly or indirectly encouraged reduced military spending (e.g., by urging an end to costly conflicts, in messages to regional organizations, or through bilateral meetings) by at least twelve countries to which it also sold arms: El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Zimbabwe. The message: demilitarize, unless you are using U.S. weaponry. See Annual Report on Military Expenditures, U.S. State Dept., www.state.gov/www/global/arms/98_amiextoc.html.

Building Democracy?

A country with solid civilian control of the military - a key element of democracy - makes its military budget transparent to its own citizens and the international community. Yet the U.S. government has sold weapons to at least thirteen countries which, according to the State Department, either have not provided accurate military spending data to relevant international organizations or did not submit arms transfer data to the UN Register of Conventional Arms in 1998: Colombia, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Kuwait, Morocco, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe. The following five countries did participate in the 1998 Register but still have egregiously untransparent military budgets for nominal democracies: Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, Peru, and Turkey. Also see State Department's Annual Report on Military Expenditures. 

Promoting Peace?

The following twenty-one countries to which the U.S. delivered or licensed arms sales during FY 96-98 were also involved in a major armed conflict at some point during that time: Angola, Algeria, Bangladesh, Burundi, Cambodia, Colombia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, India, Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Uganda, and the United Kingdom.

The United States always claims to arm friends and allies, and only to meet their "legitimate self-defense purposes." This rationale is tougher to digest in cases where the U.S. was selling arms to opposing sides of conflicts: Ethiopia and Eritrea; India and Pakistan. In some cases where tensions fall short of a major armed conflict, the U.S. is still supplying both sides of a hostile arms race (see the ASM 39 articles on Greece and Turkey). Definition and lists of major armed conflicts from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Providing Humanitarian Assistance?

The governments of the following seventy-nine countries, all recipients of U.S. weaponry or training or authorized to receive U.S. arms during FY 96-98, have been guilty of committing or allowing human rights abuses during 1998: Afghanistan, Angola, Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Congo (Republic of), Côte D'Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Macedonia, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Militaries, security forces, or police in these countries have been responsible for abuses such as "disappearances," torture, detention without trial, brutalization of civilians, extrajudicial executions, and massacres of civilians. See Human Rights Watch World Report 1999 and Amnesty International Report 1999.

Promoting U.S. Prosperity?

In addition to arms, the following eighteen countries received economic incentives, known as "offsets," to convince them to buy American-made weapons: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. To win contracts with these states, U.S. companies were required to transfer arms production capacity, advanced technology, or unrelated economic assistance to the importing state - deals sometimes worth more than the arms sale itself. See "Offsets in Defense Trade," U.S. Department of Commerce, August 1998.

Surplus Defense Articles Missing in Action

The General Accounting Office (GAO) recently released a report stating that the Department of Defense (DoD) cannot account for $2.7 billion in excess military property intended for disposal or sale. While the DoD asserts that the numbers are indicative of clerical errors rather than theft, the GAO maintains that the since the channels for monitoring surplus weapons disposal are not functioning effectively, theft cannot be ruled out as a cause for the missing supplies.

Particularly disturbing repercussions for national security arise from the problem. The GAO report notes that "the United States routinely disposes of weapons and equipment that [are] very desirable to other nations and transnational groups." The report also states that over half of the material that remains unaccounted for "require[s] special handling, such as communications equipment, aircraft components, and gun parts." Proper tracking and disposal of this materiel is thus necessary to avoid the uncontrolled transfer of capability or technology to parties inside and out of the U.S., but the GAO report concludes only with a suggestion to enforce current procedures rather than implement new controls. See "Defense Inventory: Property Being Shipped is Not Properly Controlled," GAO/NSIAD-99-84, July 1999.

FMS Fee Falls

In what may be an attempt to regain favor with the U.S. military industry - which has been complaining of the high fees and excessive bureaucracy of the Pentagon's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Program - the Pentagon decided this June to lower the standard administrative fee on Foreign Military Sales from 3% to 2.5%, effective immediately. As a recent DoD internal memo stated with unusual straightforwardness, "The DoD is committed to greater cooperation with U.S. industry to facilitate sales of U.S. defense articles..."

The decision to lower FMS fees may be good for the program's image, but not for its budget; it may actually end the program's ability to finance its own operations. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency claims that rising FMS sales (based on an expected post-Kosovo sales boom) and lower operating costs from planned streamlining reforms will keep the program in the black. But the General Accounting Office disagrees. In a report issued before the DoD made its decision, the GAO argued that the cut "may jeopardize the FMS program's fiscal soundness." See "Defense Trade: Decision to Lower FMS Administrative Fee is Premature," GAO/NSIAD-99-161R, May 13, 1999.

Food for Thought: Tracking Small Arms with Radio Tags

U.S. government efforts to track previously exported small arms - which are particularly susceptible to illegal resale, diversion, and theft - may be aided by developing technologies. The U.S. Special Forces recently tasked the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to develop miniature radio-frequency (RF) tags to be inserted in small arms. Though intended for inventory control and to track special forces in field operations, the next logical step is to locate U.S.-exported guns that may end up facing those soldiers in combat. The PNNL has already developed low-cost, battery-free chips that transmit encrypted location, time, and date information up to 700 feet. The next stage of development are chips that can be tracked by satellite, allowing the U.S. to pinpoint U.S. arms long after they leave U.S. shores. Then the question becomes how to convince U.S. customers that trackable small arms are also in their interest to buy.

Deals in the Works (March 1998 - September 1999)

  Since the last ASM table was published (April 1998), the Clinton Administration has notified Congress of the following proposed government-negotiated Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements, export licenses for industry-negotiated Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), leases of equipment, and transfers of U.S. stockpiles through the "emergency drawdown" program. The Arms Export Control Act requires only that the administration notify Congress of FMS and DCS valued at over $14 million for major defense articles and over $50 million for other weapons. Sales below that threshold are generally not recorded here. The date is the time of notification to Congress, when available. 

Congress has also been notified of a variety of Excess Defense Articles (EDA) transfers during this period; however, descriptions of these weapons giveaways have not been consistently posted on the Pentagon’s electronic bulletin board and are therefore not listed below. 

 Note: These are deals in the works only. Notification to Congress does not guarantee that the sale will go through exactly as described or at all.  Sales marked with asterisks (**) have been reported in the press, but final notification has not yet been sent to Congress.