Hartung, William D. And Weapons For All. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
341 pages.
According to William Hartung, a professional researcher, the problem
can be traced back to a little-noticed Nixon speech in 1969. A new policy
was inaugurated that cranked up the volume of U.S. arms transfers to foreign
regimes from less than $2 billion per year in the late 1960s to $17 billion
per year by the mid-1970s. During the 1970s, U.S. companies sold to the
Chilean junta and to the Shah of Iran. In the 1980s it was Stinger missiles
for the mujahaddin in Afghanistan (the CIA budgeted $55 million to try
and buy them back in 1993), and arms for drug-running contras and secret
missiles for Iran. Prior to the Gulf War, we armed Iraq. Flushed with our
Gulf success, the Pentagon sent experts to the 1991 air show in Paris to
plug U.S. weapons. There they rubbed shoulders with State Department
officials, arms industry executives, and corporate lobbyists.
On occasion Congress has tried to impose some control with arms export
laws, but nothing has worked. By 1993, the U.S. had entered into agreements
to supply over $31 billion in arms and training to 140 nations. The author,
writing after Clinton's first year, is already skeptical of White House
rhetoric about curtailing the defense industry. (By now it's clear that
this skepticism was justified. One question now, in late 2001, is whether
the war against terrorism will affect the situation one way or the other.)
ISBN 0-06-019014-0
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