[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 143 (Wednesday, October 5, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 5, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           ARMS SALES ARTICLE

  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, recently, I introduced a piece of 
legislation with Congresswoman McKinney which creates requirements 
foreign nations must meet in order to be eligible to purchase weapons 
from the United States. It is time Congress did something to eliminate 
the great danger created by weapons sales, to ensure the security of 
this Nation, and to save innocent lives. Recently Father Robert Drinan, 
a noted professor of law at Georgetown University and former Member of 
Congress, published an article in the Catholic weekly, ``America'', 
which supports this idea of restriction. Father Drinan's piece provides 
a realistic look at the behavior of countries purchasing weapons from 
the United States. Action must be taken to stop the reckless sale of 
arms to nations which continue to endanger human lives. I commend him 
for producing an article capable of drawing attention to this issue; I 
hope his message does not go unheard.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   [From the America, Sept. 24, 1994]

        Why Is the United States The World's Merchant of Death?

                         (By Robert F. Drinan)

       The Holy See, Amnesty International and observers 
     everywhere on the globe are denouncing the vast amount of 
     weapons being transferred from rich nations to poor nations. 
     On June 21, 1994, the Pontifical Council for Justice and 
     Peace, in an unprecedented 36-page statement, deplored the 
     worldwide increase in weapons sales and told the nations that 
     it is ``difficult to find any moral justification for 
     supplying arms to authoritarian states.''
       The Vatican noted that in some developing states the 
     military budget had become a matter of prestige and that 
     spending on arms and armaments often exceeded expenditures 
     for education, health or housing. On June 22, 1994, Amnesty 
     International, in its third annual 77-page edition of ``Human 
     Rights and U.S. Security Assistance,'' reviewed the sad state 
     of human rights in 19 countries that received significant 
     amounts of U.S. military aid. Amnesty deplored America's 
     sales of military equipment to Turkey, Colombia, Saudi Arabia 
     and other nations where internationally recognized human 
     rights are violated in egregious ways. The London-based human 
     rights group lamented the fact that the Clinton 
     Administration plans to sell nearly $30 billion in 
     conventional weapons to U.S. allies that engage in the 
     systematic violation of human rights.
       The reports of the Holy See and of Amnesty call for a 
     rethinking of a problem that, since the end of the cold war, 
     has apparently run out of control in the United States. In 
     the last four years the United States has emerged as never 
     before as the principal merchant of death to the human race. 
     In the first year of the Clinton Administration, the United 
     States sold or gave $31 billion in arms for training to some 
     140 nations. In 1993, the ale of $35 billion in arms sales 
     was arranged in Washington--a sum unprecedented in history. 
     In the same year the Russian figure dropped to $2.3 billion--
     down from $23 billion in the period from 1988 to 1992.


                      sales to developing nations.

       The United States now controls 67 percent of the sales of 
     arms to underdeveloped nations. The United States, moreover, 
     provides indirect subsidies with $7 billion each year to 
     promote arms exports. The companies pushing exports are the 
     defense contractors whose orders in the United States have 
     fallen off sharply. One of the hottest markets is Asia and 
     Southeast Asia, where India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia 
     and Thailand are buying fighter jets and similar 
     sophisticated military equipment. China and Russia are vying 
     with the United States for sales in that part of the world, 
     although Russia's total sales have dropped to only 11 percent 
     of the world market.
       In the 1970's, Congress developed a system by which it 
     could checkmate the granting of permission by the White House 
     to U.S. corporations seeking permission to sell arms abroad: 
     It is given notice of proposed significant transfers of arms 
     with the right to block them within a set period of time. But 
     it has hardly ever been successful in stopping the sale of 
     arms to foreign nations. The pressure on Congress by the 
     corporations in this business, always intense, has increased.
       A recently published book by William D. Hartung, And 
     Weapons for All, is a graphic expose of how American 
     corporations, with the silent acquiescence of the U.S. 
     Government, have victimized the nations of the world by the 
     sale of arms that these nations do not need and cannot 
     afford.
       In the United States, the home of 9 of the world's 10 
     largest arms-making companies, there is very little visible 
     sentiment to curb the sale of arms to other nations, however 
     dangerous such transfers could be in the near or long future. 
     President Bush set out to curb the proliferation of arms in 
     the Mideast as the Gulf war ended in 1991. But since that 
     time the United States, according to the Arms Control 
     Association, a watchdog group in Washington, has sold $43.9 
     billion worth of arms in that area of the world.
       On Jan. 28, 1994, The Wall Street Journal ran a 12,000-word 
     story on the new escalation of arms sales. It is the first 
     substantial account in a national journal of America's new 
     role as the superpower merchant of death around the world. 
     From 1989-92, the United States sold 917 fighter jets, 4,948 
     military tanks, 848 helicopters, 33 warships and 484 long 
     range missiles. These figures have sharply increased since 
     1992.
       In December 1991 the massive increase in the sale of arms 
     prompted the United Nations to establish the U.N. Register of 
     Conventional Arms. Its first report in October 1993 offered 
     some hope that stabilizing trends might be developing. The 
     next report of the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms, due in 
     October 1994, will be more complete. But it will be acutely 
     inadequate because nations are not required to report on the 
     number or quality of weapons they manufacture for themselves, 
     rather than purchase from other nations.


                       our militaristic mind-set.

       At the root of the expanding sales of arms by the United 
     States is the basic fact that America continues to live as a 
     nation thought to be threatened by a vast world enemy. The 
     United States existed for 40 years with that mentality and is 
     having great difficulty in even thinking of substantial 
     disarmament. The three legs of the triad remain: On the land, 
     in the sea and in the air the United States threatens 
     annihilation with thousands of nuclear weapons. The Navy has 
     85 submarines, designed to support a mission that has ended. 
     The Air Force has 1,160 planes scheduled to bring troops and 
     supplies to fight the nations of the Warsaw Pact--an 
     organization that has been dissolved. In 1991, the U.S. spent 
     $42 billion on weapons research--$37 billion of which was 
     spent on the creation of new weapons.
       The American corporations that have been an essential part 
     of this military-industrial complex now see new opportunities 
     fading away. As a result, they are moving rapidly into the 
     arms markets that were abandoned by the Soviets. These 
     corporations are marketing military hardware asserted to be 
     useful for police work, for anti-terrorists protection and 
     the interdiction of narcotics merchants. The Pentagon and the 
     White House, anxious to postpone or prevent the inevitable 
     massive restructuring of defense-related industries, are 
     assisting U.S. corporations to merchandise their deadly 
     weapons abroad.
       It is hard not to be alarmed at what the United States is 
     now doing to transfer an avalanche of weapons to poor and 
     unstable nations. The consequences almost inevitably will be 
     serious. More American soldiers will discover, as U.S. 
     military personnel discovered in Panama, Iraq and Somalia, 
     that they are facing adversaries armed with weapons exported 
     from the United States.
       A coalition of over 50 religious and arms control 
     organizations, including Amnesty International, is proposing 
     that limitations on the sale of arms be made a top 
     legislative priority of the Congress and the White House. The 
     coalition is supporting legislation filed by Senator mark 
     Hatfield (R., Ore.) and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D., 
     Ga.) that would require the President to certify, before any 
     significant transfer of arms, that the recipient nation is 
     not engaged in violations of internationally recognized human 
     rights.
       The recent statement on the transfer of arms by the Vatican 
     also urged, in the strongest terms, that all nations curb the 
     sale and use of guns within their own borders. The statement 
     endorsed basic gun control measures, saying that it is 
     ``indispensable'' for every nation to impose a ``strict 
     control on the sale of handguns and small arms.'' Could it be 
     that the reluctance of the United States to eliminate guns in 
     its own cities and schools makes it more difficult for it to 
     curb the reckless escalation of the sale of arms abroad?
       The vast exportation of arms in which the United States is 
     now engaged clearly conveys a message from America that 
     nations should prepare for war and that, with enough advanced 
     hardware, these nations will prevail. It is almost self-
     evident that such a position is ill advised, anachronistic 
     and even un-Christian. The United States should be assisting 
     the United Nations with its 17 peacekeeping missions and all 
     the other world entities that are working to eliminate the 
     causes of war.
       Over the last 30 years, the United States transferred $1.3 
     trillion worth of military equipment to foreign nations. Of 
     the 48 nations in which some kind of ethnic warfare was under 
     way in 1993, some 26 had received weapons from the United 
     States prior to the onset of the conflict.
       The Vatican, in its thoughtful and compelling plea for 
     restrictions on the sale of arms, noted that five members of 
     the Security Council, including the United States, have begun 
     to discuss the preparation of common guidelines for arms 
     transfers. The time has come for the United States and the 
     world to prepare for the farewell to arms.

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