The New America Foundation recently released a new report entitled US Weapons at War 2008 (executive summary). The report claims that the US is the world’s largest arms supplier with $32 billion in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements in FY 2008. In addition, 13 of the top 25 US arms recipients in the developing world during 2006-2007 went to regimes that were undemocratic or guiltily of ongoing human rights abuses.
The report recommends that the President-elect Obama create a new arms transfer policy and establish common standards of transparency and accountability for all security assistance programs. The report continues to look at country specific data in attempt to assess whether US security assistance has made a real impact. Ethiopia in particular is cause for concern as the US continually supports this country in its war against Somalia in an effort to stabilize the horn of Africa.
The report compiles a lot of interesting statistics that deserve a close look. The proliferation of weapons, legal or otherwise, is an important issue. Military armaments that US interjects into key geopolitical areas can have a profound effect on what those regions become.
