United States of America and sale of weapons Essay

United States of America and sale of weapons - Essay Example Many world leaders like the then Russia President Vladimir Puttin expressed their concerns that the US ideas of creating a uni-polar world was the main cause for increased arms race that seems to have reawakened since the era of the cold war.There have been other sentiments that the idea of US to arms its allies while it works hard to curtail their rights to develop defensive weapons is a world catastrophe that may explode to war at any time.In most of the time, the arms transfer by the US has ended up in fuelling conflicts in the region where the arms are exported. There have also been a lot of abuses of human rights by the regime which acquires the arms. The high level of tension that is caused by these transfer have always escalated to conflicts. For example the recent decision by the US to provide F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan which has been upheld with an aim of providing compatible military hardware to threat of rivals like Indian have lead to a lot of tension between the two n ations which is feared that it might soon escalate to conflicts. Rather than bring forces of stability in these regimes, US weapons sales has shown to serve as the source of power of conflicts, unstable and undemocratic regime which is detrimental to the US security in the world and the global security at large. There is already a big conflict between the two nations and India has expressed that the sell of F-16 jet to Pakistan is not meant to fight the Al-Qaeda as the US proposes but it is rather meant to fight India. It has been shown that the two countries have fought each other for more that 3 times and once one of the country acquired high tech weapons, the other will not feel safe and it is likely to acquire the same weapons in order to protect itself. Therefore the US may be creating a lucrative market for the jet since India is also likely to buy the same or other at a higher level (Deconde 2002, p. 534). The ABC of arms sales in the US There are two ways that have been used by the arms manufacturers in the US to sell their weapons to other nations. One of such way is the Foreign Military Sales which are government-to-government sales that are based on an agreement that has been negotiated by the two nations ostensibly involving the pentagon and the purchasing nation. The other one is the direct commercial sales which involves an agreement that it agreed between the manufacturing company and the country that wants to purchase the arms. This is then licensed the state department which gives the approval for the sale of the arms. (Gary 2003, p. 4) The US government in most cases can transfer from the stock of weapons that it is holding which can be for free or at a reduced price. This is usually implemented through the Excess Defense Articles (EDA). Allied government is also allowed to receive fast track grants of weapons in order to address crisis situation in their countries through the Emergency Drawdown Program. The above two departments are managed by the department of the Defense (Ohlson, 2006 p. 3). US is the top provide of weapons The US has consistently used the technologies that it has developed in its industries as the currency of friendly is not with the foreign nations where it has an interest to protect. It has been increasing its exports of deadly technology which helps to fuel conflicts in this nations rather than helping to bring peace and stability. With time, the US has been increasing its military export to regimes which are considered unstable like the Middle East and some parts of Africa. This has been against the pledge of President Bush of ending tyrannical in the world by fighting for the protection of democratic institutions and helping the world to come to peace with one another (Kriegers 2001, p. 121). The experience that US has had with Iran and Iraq has demonstrated that selling of arms to the strategic allies can sometimes backfire and work