Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Why sell weapons to just one side
I suspect that the U.S. is no worse than any other arms dealling country (proportional to arms sales). Still the cynical bastardness of the arms trade gets my goat.
Jax
NEW DELHI - By offering nuclear-capable F-16 Falcon fighters to Pakistan and the even more advanced F-18 Hornets to India, Washington has shown a cynical readiness to profit from the long-standing rivalry between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors, say analysts.
"This is a bit like the Aesop's fable in which two cats fighting over a loaf take their dispute to a monkey for settlement," said P R Chari, research professor at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, a prestigious think-tank devoted to security in South Asia.
In an interview with Inter Press Service (IPS), Chari said what was happening was all too obvious: "The Americans must be laughing all the way to the bank."
Chari pointed to reports in the Washington Post on March 16 that claim the sale of F-16s to Pakistan may have saved 5,000 jobs in US President George W Bush's home state of Texas, where the planes' manufacturer, Lockheed Martin Corporation, is located.
Lockheed and other global defense manufacturers depend on sales of sophisticated military hardware to boost their profits. The F-16 deal was "likely to be as warmly greeted in Fort Worth as it is in Karachi", the Post said.
According to Chari, there is little doubt that US arms contractors are now eyeing India's much larger market that had been closed to them since 1974 when New Delhi first tested a nuclear device. Washington at the time reacted by imposing an arms and dual-use technology embargo on India.
India, which signed a military pact with the former Soviet Union in 1971, has traditionally sourced its defense needs from Moscow, although it also maintains squadrons of French Mirage fighters as well as British Jaguars.
But rapidly expanding ties in recent years between India and the US, the world's two largest democracies, have seen a progressive lifting of sanctions and moves toward defense cooperation.
A visit to New Delhi on March 15-16 by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice produced a welter of new concessions covering not only the sale of F-16 and F-18 combat aircraft but also possibilities for co-production.
Lockheed has so far sold F-16s, currently costing US$25 million a piece, to 24 countries and the aviation giant also makes the fighters in Europe, South Korea and Turkey.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, Washington would actually be resuming deliveries of F-16s that were halted in 1990 after a US law barred military exports to Islamabad on suspicions that it was clandestinely developing nuclear weapons.
For India, the real icing on the cake was an offer by Rice of cooperation in India's civilian nuclear energy program, which has since 1974 cut its own path with support from Russia and France as a result of the US-led embargoes. Some analysts, however, caution that India would be wise not to get its hopes up, given the many hoops the Bush administration would have to jump through in Congress and within the numerous non-proliferation agencies to sell American nuclear power plants to India.
As for the fighter deal, analysts like Chari see little use for either India or Pakistan to be buying expensive nuclear-capable aircraft when they are not likely to be put to actual use.
Chari said neither country needed aircraft to deliver nuclear bombs against each other since both possessed missiles with more than adequate range.
"After 1994, when both countries declared themselves as nuclear powers they came close to an all-out war twice - during the 1999 Kargil War and the 2002 border standoff - but on both occasions they desisted from resorting to the nuclear option," he said.
India and Pakistan have been at pains to improve relations, soured by a long-standing dispute over the territory of Kashmir, and are currently engaged in "cricket diplomacy", with a Pakistani team currently touring India as part of a series of confidence-building measures.
Rice had words of praise for this peace initiative, but ironically her actions were matched with the US decision to sell neighbors with a history of more than half-a-century of hostilities sophisticated military hardware.
"The logic of escalating military preparations contrasts with the logic of dialogue and reconciliation," said Professor Achin Vanaik, a well-known anti-nuclear activist who teaches at Delhi University.
What was interesting to note, Chari said, was that from a position of imposing sanctions against both India and Pakistan for carrying out the 1998 tests, Washington has come round to supplying both countries with platforms capable of delivering nuclear bombs.
"It just shows that Washington has a flexible enough foreign policy to accommodate what it judges to be in its own best interest and this includes such issues as nuclear proliferation," Chari said. (Link)
Jax
NEW DELHI - By offering nuclear-capable F-16 Falcon fighters to Pakistan and the even more advanced F-18 Hornets to India, Washington has shown a cynical readiness to profit from the long-standing rivalry between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors, say analysts.
"This is a bit like the Aesop's fable in which two cats fighting over a loaf take their dispute to a monkey for settlement," said P R Chari, research professor at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, a prestigious think-tank devoted to security in South Asia.
In an interview with Inter Press Service (IPS), Chari said what was happening was all too obvious: "The Americans must be laughing all the way to the bank."
Chari pointed to reports in the Washington Post on March 16 that claim the sale of F-16s to Pakistan may have saved 5,000 jobs in US President George W Bush's home state of Texas, where the planes' manufacturer, Lockheed Martin Corporation, is located.
Lockheed and other global defense manufacturers depend on sales of sophisticated military hardware to boost their profits. The F-16 deal was "likely to be as warmly greeted in Fort Worth as it is in Karachi", the Post said.
According to Chari, there is little doubt that US arms contractors are now eyeing India's much larger market that had been closed to them since 1974 when New Delhi first tested a nuclear device. Washington at the time reacted by imposing an arms and dual-use technology embargo on India.
India, which signed a military pact with the former Soviet Union in 1971, has traditionally sourced its defense needs from Moscow, although it also maintains squadrons of French Mirage fighters as well as British Jaguars.
But rapidly expanding ties in recent years between India and the US, the world's two largest democracies, have seen a progressive lifting of sanctions and moves toward defense cooperation.
A visit to New Delhi on March 15-16 by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice produced a welter of new concessions covering not only the sale of F-16 and F-18 combat aircraft but also possibilities for co-production.
Lockheed has so far sold F-16s, currently costing US$25 million a piece, to 24 countries and the aviation giant also makes the fighters in Europe, South Korea and Turkey.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, Washington would actually be resuming deliveries of F-16s that were halted in 1990 after a US law barred military exports to Islamabad on suspicions that it was clandestinely developing nuclear weapons.
For India, the real icing on the cake was an offer by Rice of cooperation in India's civilian nuclear energy program, which has since 1974 cut its own path with support from Russia and France as a result of the US-led embargoes. Some analysts, however, caution that India would be wise not to get its hopes up, given the many hoops the Bush administration would have to jump through in Congress and within the numerous non-proliferation agencies to sell American nuclear power plants to India.
As for the fighter deal, analysts like Chari see little use for either India or Pakistan to be buying expensive nuclear-capable aircraft when they are not likely to be put to actual use.
Chari said neither country needed aircraft to deliver nuclear bombs against each other since both possessed missiles with more than adequate range.
"After 1994, when both countries declared themselves as nuclear powers they came close to an all-out war twice - during the 1999 Kargil War and the 2002 border standoff - but on both occasions they desisted from resorting to the nuclear option," he said.
India and Pakistan have been at pains to improve relations, soured by a long-standing dispute over the territory of Kashmir, and are currently engaged in "cricket diplomacy", with a Pakistani team currently touring India as part of a series of confidence-building measures.
Rice had words of praise for this peace initiative, but ironically her actions were matched with the US decision to sell neighbors with a history of more than half-a-century of hostilities sophisticated military hardware.
"The logic of escalating military preparations contrasts with the logic of dialogue and reconciliation," said Professor Achin Vanaik, a well-known anti-nuclear activist who teaches at Delhi University.
What was interesting to note, Chari said, was that from a position of imposing sanctions against both India and Pakistan for carrying out the 1998 tests, Washington has come round to supplying both countries with platforms capable of delivering nuclear bombs.
"It just shows that Washington has a flexible enough foreign policy to accommodate what it judges to be in its own best interest and this includes such issues as nuclear proliferation," Chari said. (Link)
