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An
abject attitude to arms sales in the
U.S.
presidential election
By JONATHAN
POWER
Nov. 1, 2000
LONDON - When a Mexican man was executed in Texas
in 1997 there was a bit of a row because not only had he
signed his "confession" in English, a language he didn't
understand, he was denied access to the Mexican consul.
After his execution Governor George W. Bush issued a
statement that since Texas had not signed the Vienna
Convention on Consular Relations it was not bound by
it.
But the United States of America had and it was
legally binding on all states. Is this a forewarning of
how a President Bush would treat the rest of the world-
with, putting it at its mildest, nothing less than
arrogant contempt? As for a President Al Gore he shows
every sign of walking in Bill Clinton's footsteps, with
perhaps an even heavier tread. He seems, too often, to
regard the Pentagon as the arm of government that calls
the major shots on foreign policy and as being the last
in line to have their toes trodden on.
In sum when it comes to such questions as arms sales,
the issue which presidential candidate Jimmy Carter
described as a "cancer", it is no nearer forward being
operated on than was Carter's own aborted attempt.
In Clinton's first term Amnesty International
questioned the U.S. government about the use of American
military helicopters and armoured vehicles allegedly
involved in human rights violations in Turkey. Under
pressure from Congress the State Department compiled a
report on human rights violations by the Turkish armed
forces. It concluded there was "highly credible" evidence
that U.S.- supplied arms and jet fighters had been used
to violently subdue Kurdish villages in a totally
excessive way.
Later, in 1966, the U.S. temporarily suspended the
sale of advanced attack helicopters. But two years later
there were fresh reports that hundreds more armoured
vehicles had been sold. The U.S. Defence Secretary
visited Turkey and reportedly lobbied on behalf of
American companies wishing to co-produce advanced
helicopters there. In that same year an American company
sold 10,000 electric shock weapons to the Turkish
police.
In Afghanistan where American weapons were supplied en
masse with no questions asked to help repulse the
invading army of the Soviet Union, twenty years later the
country is so overrun with arms there is no recognized
stable government only armed factions, and the country
has lapsed into becoming little more than heroin
producing businesses which make a living by satisfying
the appetites of the international drug mafia. Ironically
the State Department recently pinpointed this corner of
South Asia (including Pakistan) as a new terrorist
"hub".
In Angola, American arms supplied over years to UNITA,
the guerrilla movement hostile to the pro-Soviet central
government, helped stoke a war that is now so out of
control that the country is without any central services
to speak of and has become the country in Africa, despite
its incredible mineral wealth, that is the most ill-fed
and disease prone of all. In Nicaragua, arms supplied by
the Reagan Administration in secret defiance of
Congressional writ kept alive a civil war that could have
been ended much earlier than it eventually was, by
compromise and elections.
After the great Indonesian army massacre in East Timor
in 1991, the U.S. formally cut its so-called
International Military and Education Training Programme
for the Indonesian army. But in March 1988, leaked
documents revealed that the U.S. government had secretly
used another little known aid effort- the Joint Combined
Exchange and Training Programme- to train the Indonesian
army, including its notorious special forces command, in
close quarters combat, sniper techniques and
psychological operations. U.S. combat troops participated
in at least 41 exercises between 1992 and 1997, despite
the build up of human rights abuses which led in 1998 to
the overthrow of the country's ruthless dictator,
Suharto.
Today the U.S. government, with Clinton brushing aside
Congressional human rights restrictions, is starting to
supply large amounts of weapons to Colombia for its army
to engage in anti-narcotics operations and hunting down
leftist guerrillas although this will put the U.S. and
its military advisors in cahoots with an army not only
known for its massive human rights violations but its
ties to ruthless rightist paramilitary groups that are
also up to their eyes in the drug business.
Under Section 502 B of the Foreign Assistance Act, the
U.S. is required to cut off all security assistance to
any government which "engages in a consistent pattern of
gross violations of internationally recognised human
rights" unless the president deems there are
"extraordinary circumstances". In practice Section 502 B
has never been used. Likewise, Congress has never
formally blocked a sale proposed by the executive,
although a few sales have been delayed, modified or
withdrawn.
In 1994 President Clinton was the first world leader
to call for the elimination of anti-personnel mines,
which have inherently indiscriminate effects resulting in
innumerable civilian deaths and injuries. Yet when 122
states signed the Ottawa convention in 1997 prohibiting
the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of
anti-personnel mines the U.S. signature was conspicuously
absent. The governments of China, Egypt, India, Israel,
North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and South Korea also
refused to sign.
The UN has scheduled for next year a Conference on the
Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, a timely
move in the light of the evidence that these, in the
words of an Amnesty International report, were "the
principal weapons used to commit human rights abuses in
the world's many internal conflicts during the 1990s,
where more than 80% of the casualties have been women and
children." Will the new U.S. Administration whose
predecessors have given almost zero scrutiny of U.S.
foreign sales of small arms, show any interest? Or will
it be once again George W. Bush assuming that
international statutes or resolutions are water off a
duck's back or Al Gore maintaining that the Pentagon must
go at its own pace? So it seems.
I can be reached by phone +44
385 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By
JONATHAN POWER
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