More than a year into Clinton's term, the rhetoric of restraint has given way to an unprecedented arms-selling spree. In fiscal year 1993, the United States sold over $31 billion worth of weaponry to more than 140 nations, the first time any nation had topped the $30-billion barrier.
This is not a case of private enterprise run amok--the federal government is directly involved in the vast majority of these sales, and changes in government policies and practices can have a tremendous impact on the scope of the weapons trade. The primary channel for U.S. arms sales is the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, under which the Pentagon serves as a middleman by negotiating the deal with the foreign purchaser, collecting the funds, and disbursing the money to weapons manufacturing firms. A few billion dollars in sales of smaller weapons systems are made through direct commercial channels, but even these deals must be blessed with a license from the State Department. In theory, Congress can block a major sale if both houses pass resolutions of disapproval that can withstand a presidential veto, but in practice Congress has never voted down a sale.
Has the Clinton administration used its leverage over the arms business to fulfill the promises of restraint that were made in 1992? The short answer is no, and the reason for this inaction can be summed up in a familiar phrase--pork barrel politics. Even during the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton demonstrated his willingness to put aside his commitment to arms transfer controls if he thought it might cost him political support in key states. When a Saint Louis television reporter asked him in August 1992 whether he would back the sale of seventy-two McDonnell Douglas F-15 combat aircraft to Saudi Arabia, Clinton not only said yes, his Missouri campaign office immediately put out a press release broadcasting his support for the deal. The F-15 is built in Saint Louis, and it was clear that Clinton's decision had more to do with the political realities of Missouri than it did with the strategic realities of the Middle East. Amazingly, Clinton's endorsement of the sale came two-and-one-half weeks before President George Bush formally announced his decision to go ahead with it.
This tendency to sacrifice the long-term security benefits of arms-sales restraint for the short-term political and economic benefits of arms-sales promotion has carried over into the Clinton administration's first fifteen months in office. At the June 1993 Paris Air Show, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown assured a gathering of U.S. aerospace executives that "we will work with you to help you find buyers for your products in the world marketplace, and then we will work with you to help close the deal." True to his word, Brown held meetings at the air show with defense officials from France and Malaysia at which he urged each of those nations to purchase U.S. military aircraft. At the February 1994 Asian aerospace arms exhibition in Singapore, the Clinton administration went a step further, sending seventy-five U.S. military personnel and twenty military aircraft to the show to help convince Asian military officials to buy American weaponry. This move toward an open partnership between the Pentagon and industry in pushing U.S. weapons overseas was all done at taxpayer expense, to the tune of more than half a million dollars.
Close on the heels of the Clinton administration's decision to have a strong U.S. military presence at the exhibition in Singapore, Air Force Vice-Chief of Staff David Carns floated an even more aggressive marketing scheme. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he advocated a plan to sell as many as 400 upgraded F-16 fighter planes out of Air Force stocks to countries such as Egypt, Malaysia, Morocco, Singapore, Thailand, and several Eastern European countries. Proceeds from the sales would then be used by the Air Force to buy new, top-of-the-line F-16s from Lockheed's production line in Fort Worth, Texas. While the plan would clearly offer a boost to the defense industry--both on the front end through contracts to upgrade the planes and on the back end when the revenues from exports are plowed back into new Pentagon procurement--it raises serious questions on both security and constitutional grounds. At a time when regional conflicts in the Middle East and Asia are cited by the Pentagon as the most likely threats to U.S. interests, does it make sense to be doling out sophisticated fighter planes to these areas at bargain prices? Furthermore, doesn't the plan to give the Air Force direct control over the proceeds of U.S. arms exports violate the principle of Congress's "power of the purse" in defense and foreign policy issues, the same principle that was violated by the Iran-contra initiatives?
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