Sorenson, 9 - Professor of International Security Studies at the United States Air Force War
College (David, The Process and Politics of Defense Acquisition: A Reference Handbook, p.
133-134
In official Defense Department lexicon, foreign military sales is known as "security cooperation," which the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) defines as "those activities conducted with allies and friendly nations to
•
•
•
Build relationships that promote specified U.S. interests
Build allied and friendly nation capabilities for self-defense and coalition operations
Provide U.S. forces with peacetime and contingency access"16
Security assistance is a subset of security cooperation but can also be thought of as a critical pillar of security cooperation, as it provides what most recipient countries do not have:
•
•
• funding for expensive weapons programs. There are a number of programs under security assistance, including the following:
Foreign military sales (FMS)
Direct commercial sales (DCS)
Foreign military sales credit (FMSCR), a direct loan program to recipient countries that cannot afford cash payments
•
•
•
Long-term leases for military equipment
Drawdown, the transfer of U.S. military equipment or services, usually for emergency purposes
• Foreign military financing (FMF) grants or loans
International military education and training (IMET)
IM No Date – Index Mundi -- data portal that gathers facts and statistics from multiple sources and turns them into easy to use visuals. (“Arms exports (SIPRI trend indicator values)” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-global-arms-sales/ ) mba-alb
Definition:
Arms transfers cover the supply of military weapons through sales, aid, gifts
, and those made through manufacturing licenses. Data cover major conventional weapons such as aircraft, armored vehicles, artillery, radar systems, missiles, and ships designed for military use.
Excluded are transfers of other military equipment such as small arms and light weapons, trucks, small artillery, ammunition, support equipment, technology transfers, and other services. Figures are SIPRI Trend Indicator Values (TIVs) expressed in US$ m. at constant (1990) prices. A '0' indicates that the value of deliveries is less than US$0.5m
WEF 10-04-17 -- Geneva-based international organization that discusses issues concerning the global political economy. (“The rise and fall of global arms sales” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-global-arms-sales/) mba-alb
Separately, in a report detailing Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2016,
SIPRI data shows that transfers of major weapons between countries between 2012–2016 reached their greatest volume for any five-year period

since the end of the Cold War. Transfers, which include arms sales, gifts and production licences, have grown continually since 2004,
and were up by 8.4% between 2007–11 and 2012–16.

Lora Lumpe is a consultant working for the Open Society Foundations on issues relating to the intersection of military aid and human rights. Her books include Unmatched Power, Unmet
Principles: The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces
(New York: Amnesty International USA, 2002), Running Guns: The Global Black Market in Small
Arms (London: Zed Books, 2000), Small Arms Control (London: Ashgate, 1999), and The Arms
Trade Revealed: A Guide for Investigators and Activists (Washington, D.C.: Federation of
American Scientists, 1998). “U.S. Military Aid to Central Asia, 1999–2009: Security Priorities
Trump Human Rights and Diplomacy” October 2010 Central Eurasia Project https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/f405dbbf-18c6-470e-a4fa-
505313014346/OPS-No-1-20101015_0.pdf//dmr
Gordon Adams, former associate director for international affairs and national security programs at the Office of Management and
Budget, estimated that 15 different Pentagon programs would provide $8.6 billion in military aid worldwide during 2009— outstripping the similar programs that operate under State Department authority.36 It turns out he was undercounting.
A 2009
DOD handbook on “security cooperation” identifies at least 49 programs and authorities
(read: pots of money) that the DOD can now utilize to arm and train foreign forces
.37
The military committees of Congress, acting at the behest of the Pentagon, include in their annual
DOD funding bills provisions that grant the Pentagon the right to use certain amounts of DOD
Operations and Maintenance funds for foreign military aid programs
.38 Many of the new DOD-funded programs that Congress has authorized in the past decade directly parallel State Department–funded programs. But with these, the
Pentagon is “the decider” (in President Bush’s words) about who gets aid, as well as the implementer. While U.S. law caps these authorities at certain amounts,
there are no public reports on most of these programs, so determining actual expenditure levels and programming is difficult.
39
As a result, piecing together the entire picture of U.S. military aid
to, and involvement with, Central Asia is very complex and perhaps not even possible. This opacity also means that such funds could be used when Congress directs a
cessation of other military aid accounts for a particular country. In addition to the specific and constantly growing budgetary discretion that regional combatant commanders have obtained in the past two decades, there are numerous nonspecific funds that they can use to reward friends and allies and/or buy or maintain access to local ports, bases, and logistics depots. Because there is no public reporting required on the expenditures of most of these funds, meaningful public oversight is not possible, and even Congressional oversight is questionable
.40
Congress has applied some human rights provisions to the new military aid programs funded by the DOD laws and budget
. Namely, since 1999, Congress has included a version of the “Leahy Law” in each of the annual DOD appropriations acts. This provision requires that the Pentagon have a process for background vetting that is intended to ensure that
U.S. forces are not training any units of a foreign security force that have been credibly alleged to have committed a gross violation of human rights.
The DOD, however, does not consider many of the programs whereby it conveys skills, equipment, or resources to foreign militaries to be “assistance” and, therefore, does not vet participants in those programs
.41 Given the large number of DOD-funded programs and the paucity of information about them, only brief descriptions of each military assistance channel and highlights of the relevance of the program for Central
Asia are possible. This listing includes only those DOD funding programs and initiatives that are known to have been, or are likely to be, used in one or more Central Asian country.

- historian and researcher. His previous books include Who Rules South Africa?
(2012), The Devil in the Detail: How the Arms Deal Changed Everything (2011) and The Arms
Deal in Your Pocket (2008). He was also lead researcher on Andrew Feinsteins book The Shadow
World (2012) and on the documentary feature of the same name released in 2016. He currently works as Director of Investigations at Corruption Watch UK (Paul, “Indefensible: Seven Myths
That Sustain The Global Arms Trade,” p. 78-81)//dmr
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ARMS TRADE TREATY? The fact that we have reached this point in the chapter without mentioning the much-discussed Arms Trade Treaty is something of a give-away in itself: the ability of the treaty to seriously impact on the trade in weapons is minimal. The treaty had auspicious and well-intentioned roots. It emerged out of a discussion between numerous NGOs: including Amnesty international and Oxfam, which had campaigned for a full recognition of how the arms trade was fueling human rights abuses around the world. Flowing from a list of initial principles, the treaty that emerged out of this group sought to put in serious controls over the arms trade, so as to stop the very things that we have described so far in this chapter happening: arms being sold to repressive regimes, diverted to human rights abusers, and generally fueling some of the world’s most intransigent conflicts. 85 As with many international agreements, the treaty became sucked into a seemingly endless round of negotiations, as different states around the world attempted to modify its content to suit their ends. The treaty, as it was passed in 2013 reflects this: it is riddled with bullet holes that will limit its ability to properly limit the trade. The noted campaign group, Ceasefire, has pointed to five major problems:86 1. The treaty sets a threshold for stopping arms exports way too high. The treaty requires that arms should not be exported to a state if there is an overriding risk" they are to be used in violating human rights. The use of the word ‘overriding’ is not only open to interpretation, but implies that the trade in weapons should only be stopped in exceptional circumstances. Indeed, in the original drafts of the treaty, it stated that weapons should not be exported only if it was ‘likely’ that they would be used in ways the treaty forbids. 2. The treaty doesn't have any major requirements regarding record keeping and reporting. One of the big selling points of the early drafts of the treaty was that it would make the trade in weapons transparent by forcing states to properly report on their imports and exports. However, the final version of the treaty only requires states to submit a horribly under-detailed list with minimal information to the UN Secretariat, which the Secretariat doesn’t even publish. States are also allowed to leave out any information that is ‘commercially sensitive’ or constitutes ‘national security information’. 3. The treaty does not include a whole raft of weapons. The treaty is applicable to eight categories of conventional arms (such as battle tanks and attack helicopters). But the list is so circumscribed, and so out of date, that it is entirely unlikely to be applicable to new and emerging categories of weapons (such as drones). Most importantly, while mentioning ammunition, the treaty excludes the trade in ammunition from a whole host of its central provisions. 4. The treaty only covers sales
. This is distinct from covering
other forms of arms transfer
we’ve discussed above, such as weapons that are loaned, leased, bartered or given as part of an aid package
. The treaty also excludes arms transferred as part of a "defense cooperation agreement’
, that is, an arrangement where the militaries of two countries work together
.
It would be easy for most states to simply claim that controversial weapons sales fall under the rubric of these sorts of agreements and bypass the treaty
altogether
. 5. There is simply no international enforcement or assessment. Determining whether there is an ‘overriding risk’ that arms will be used to violate human rights remains the responsibility of the exporting state. Is it realistic to expect that exporting states, which want to transfer weapons in their own economic interests, will apply this rigorously? More to the point, are states likely to really apply these provisions when there is no international review and there are no legal sanctions for violating the treaty. In a legal sense, the treaty is a set of polite suggestions rather than iron-clad requirements. A lot of people who supported the Arms Trade Treaty in civil society may baulk at such a blunt description of the Treaty; almost as if we’re saying that the treaty was a waste of effort and a failure on their part. This is not true.
The act of getting this issue on the agenda was brave in and of itself, and bringing the public’s attention to the issue for the first time in decades was immensely necessary and powerfully done. Securing the attention of i million people who signed petitions in support of regulating the trade has to be lauded and shows what can be achieved with effective campaigning. The weakness of the Arms
Trade Treaty is not a reflection on them; it is a further commentary on how states around the world, in particular those that are the biggest arms producers, so effectively manipulate the international regulatory environment in the interests of arms manufacturers rather than global citizens. Perhaps it is the beginning of a bigger debate, and the treaty can be radically revised over time. But as it stands, it will do little to limit the worst parts of the arms trade.

Helena Whall et al 3-12-13 -- Helena Whall - currently working as a freelance research consultant. She worked in Oxfam's Campaigns and Policy division from 2010 - 2013 as project coordinator of the website armstreaty.org and then advocacy officer on the Arms Trade Treaty team. Deepayan BasuRay - Director of Arms Control for the Centre for Armed Violence
Reduction, where he helps governments to adopt and implement arms control instruments around the world, providing capacity building, analysis of current legislation and the support of civil society to reduce and prevent armed violence.. Previously, he was ATT Monitor Coordinator for the Control Arms Secretariat, managing all aspects of the project, including editing and preparing research, managing outreach and communications, and building and maintaining research and advisory networks. Elizabeth Kirkham - Saferworld's Small Arms and Transfer
Controls Adviser, having joined the organisation in 1993. (“Getting It Right The pieces that matter for the Arms Trade Treaty” https://controlarms.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/03/bp169-getting-it-right-arms-trade-treaty-120313-en1.pdf) mba-alb
4. Circumventing the ATT: gifts, loans, and leases of arms
The scope of the draft treaty
is such that it could be viewed as excluding non-commercial transfers, within which category could fall loans, gifts, and military aid
.
This means that States could donate or lend weapons to other countries irrespective of whether the recipient would be likely to use them for serious violations of human rights, international humanitarian law, or in supporting terrorist acts
. While data relating to gifting, lending, and donating weapons by governments is not widely available, it is clear that these kinds of transfers are a fact of life in the international arms trade
. As the case study below illustrates, governments across the world are routinely engaging in these types of transfers, with potentially serious implications for the effectiveness of a future ATT.
Sangeet Jain 2018 -- incoming research student at the University of Cambridge and earned her masters in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. She has worked at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies and the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi previously. Her current research focuses on India's booming development partnerships, with an emphasis on the Asian region. (“Why India’s Position on the Arms Trade Treaty Endures” https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/why-indias-position-arms-trade-treaty-endures) mba-alb
The treaty also contains some gaping loopholes which leaves options open for arms transfers such as “gifts, loans, leases and aid “. Under any of these labels, exporting states could arm
political allies which would otherwise be barred under the treaty
.
This loophole
, in this author’s opinion, nullifies the whole rationale for the treaty itself
.
The treaty is also clearly not in tune with the times as it fails to cover technology transfer – an increasingly crucial component of arms deals today.
According to Max Mutschler of the Bonn International Center for Conversion (Dorrie Peter, 2015), arms deals come with intellectual property which allows recipients to produce arms locally as well. Mutschler also argues that the reporting requirements have fundamental lacunae such as the exclusion of ammunition and weapons parts and components.

Gilman, 14 - Derek Gilman, General Counsel Defense Security Cooperation Agency
(“FOREIGN MILITARY SALES” 9/30, https://www.dsca.mil/sites/default/files/final-fmsdcs_30_sep.pdf LOR = Letter of Request
In contrast to
FMF and the
FMS program are the various “Building Partner Capacity”
(“BPC”) programs. These programs authorized under a number of different authorities and are funded with U.S.
Government appropriations.48 They are executed through the FMS process, but they are not true FMS cases
.49 To enable BPC program execution through the FMS infrastructure, the DoD Implementing Agency (“IA”) develops a “pseudo LOA,” which is not signed by the foreign country, but serves to document the transfer of articles and services to the U.S. Government organization that will ultimately provide the defense articles and services to the foreign country (often this will be the Security Cooperation Office (“SCO”) in the
U.S. Embassy in the foreign country). Further, rather than relying on an LOR
, the BPC process is initiated from the requesting agency, which is often the Geographic Combatant Command or the U.S. Embassy in the foreign country
. The requesting agency will provide a Memorandum of Request (“MOR”).50 The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (“OUSD(P)”) is responsible for oversight of DoD-funded BPC programs, although certain authorities (for example section
1206 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, as amended) require concurrence by the U.S. Department of State.51 The
SCO, if it is the recipient of the defense articles, will, after inventory—and provided there are no sanctions prohibiting provision of assistance— transfer custody and responsibility of the defense articles and services to the benefitting foreign country, and will begin end use monitoring
(“EUM,” further discussed below), as applicable.
BPC programs may provide defense articles and/or services for the purpose of building the capacity of partner nation security forces
and enhancing their capability to conduct counterterrorism, counter drug, and counterinsurgency operations, or to support U.S. military and stability operations, multilateral peace operations, and other programs.

McInnis, Kathleen J, and Nathan J Lucas. “What Is ‘Building Partner
Capacity?’ Issues for Congress.” Congressional Research Service, 18 Dec. 2015, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44313.pdf Kathleen J. McInnis is International Security Analyst for the Congressional Research Service and Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brent Scowcroft
Center on International Security, USA. Nathan J Lucas is a section research manager for the
Congressional Research Service, A former Country Director for the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, a former Division Manager for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a former Action
Officer for Joint Staff on NATO Policy // ank
How DOD Executes BPC Strategies Programmatically speaking, within the DOD context, BPC is most frequently associated with security cooperation and security assistance programs administered by the
Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DCSA).
13 According to DOD Directive 5105.65, DSCA: Under the authority, direction and control of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD(P)) directs, administers and provides DOD-wide guidance to the DOD components and DOD representatives to U.S. missions abroad for the execution of DOD security assistance and security cooperation programs over which DSCA has responsibility.14
According to DSCA, security cooperation refers to those activities undertaken by the Department of Defense to encourage and enable international partners to work with the United States to achieve strategic objectives. It includes all DOD interactions with foreign defense and security establishments, including all DODadministered security assistance programs that (1) build defense and security relationships that promote specific U.S. security interests, including all international armaments cooperation activities and security assistance activities; (2) develop allied and friendly military capabilities for self-defense and multinational operations; and (3) provide U.S. forces with peacetime and contingency access to host nations.
15
Security cooperation is a core aspect of DOD’s key planning processes,
to include the Guidance for the Employment of the Force and Guidance for the Development of the
Force.16
Security assistance, by contrast, is defined as a group of programs authorized by Title 22 of the U.S. Code
, as amended, or other related statutes by which the United States provides defense articles, military training, and other defense-related services by grant, loan, credit, cash sales, or lease, in furtherance of national policies and objectives.
17
Security assistance is a subset of security cooperation, 18 and BPC, in its current formulation, appears to be associated with those security cooperation and assistance activities
designed to enable weakened or fragile states to manage their own security challenges.
Although all DOD aspects of security assistance programs are administered by
DSCA, the agency is not responsible for the department’s broader strategy and nonprogrammatic elements of security cooperation or building partner capacity
.19 As with all federal agencies, DSCA allocates its resources according only to the authorities Congress has provided. The authorities associated with security cooperation and security assistance are often described as a “patchwork” of authorities and programs, only some of which are exclusively within DOD’s purview. Others are either (1) managed by the State Department, (2) managed by the State Department and executed by DOD (such as Foreign Military Sales programs), or (3) jointly managed by the State Department and DOD, requiring both departments’ concurrence to authorize specific activities
. Table 2 depicts some of the key programs and authorities in the security assistance toolkit
, including from where each program derives its legal authority
Examining Table 2, one could make two observations. First, after the 9/11 attacks, the number of security assistance programs proliferated
. Of the 31 programs listed above 17 were created after 9/11, suggesting that the United States government believed that its traditional, pre-9/11 security assistance portfolio was necessary but insufficient to meet the challenges of an increasingly interdependent and complex world.
Second, the majority of these programs

established after 9/11 were additional authorities given to the Department of Defense, suggesting that DOD plays a greater role in security cooperation today than the one it historically played
.
The latter observation is borne out by the current manifestations of BPC across the DOD’s activities
.
Although the programs and authorities listed above are the focus of most analysis and discussion with respect to BPC, they do not capture the full extent of DOD’s activities and expenditures in this area. This is because DOD has integrated BPC—in its various guises and manifestations (security cooperation, assistance, foreign internal defense, security force assistance, and so on)—across a wide range of its operations and activities
(see “DOD Activities
That Build Partner Capacity”).
In order to do so, different DOD components utilize a variety of funding sources
. For example, according to a 2013 RAND study, rather than using DSCA earmarked funds for specific activities with partners, Most [BPC] programs are funded by other, less narrow [funding] sources
, such as operations and maintenance funds. Examples include exercises overseen by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and military-to-military contacts, which are often (but not always) funded by Traditional COCOM Activity Authority
. In each of these cases, DoD uses a specific authority to use its operations and maintenance funds for a given security cooperation activity. In some cases, these funds are then reimbursed, but more often than not, the security cooperation activity comes at the expense of another defense priority
.20
DSCA, with its relatively narrow mandate, oversees only a smaller subset of DOD’s overall BPC activities
.
This has financial oversight implications, as it is difficult to determine what, specifically, DOD spends on non-DSCA BPC programs.
BPC is also beginning to manifest in force structure. One example is the U.S. Army’s initiative to build “Regionally Aligned” forces (i.e., augment its force structure to ensure that divisions and brigades both plan and prepare for operations to support a designated geographic combatant commander). To prepare U.S. forces to support a Combatant Commander’s area of responsibility, units are required to train and exercise with counterparts in the region and help build a partner’s capacity in the process.21 The Regionally Aligned Force concept is to be paid for by using a variety of different “pots” of money, to include Title 22 funds, Combatant Commander Funds, joint exercise funds, and special authorities such as the Global Security Contingency Fund.22 Looking forward, the Department of the Army is planning for a
25% increase in its security cooperation budget, which, according to Army planners, will have to be offset from elsewhere within the
Army budget.23 The U.S. Army is also contemplating building new “Train, Advise and Assist” units within its force structure, ostensibly to better prepare itself to accomplish BPC tasks. 24 DOD and Congressional Interpretations of BPC Comparing DOD and legislative perspectives on partnership strategy, important conceptual distinctions seem to exist between how the two approach
BPC.
In DOD
, especially in the QDRs,
BPC appears to be a strategic concept allowing the Department and the military services to rationalize and make sense of a wide range of potential missions and tactics, including fixing the security institutions of failed states, creating like-minded security partners, facilitating interagency cooperation, and, recently, shoring up deficiencies in allies’ defense capabilities for deterrence and defense purposes.
DOD’s 2006 BPC execution roadmap, for example, places the “Strengthen Interagency Planning and Operations” task above the “Enhance the Capabilities of, and Cooperation with,
International Partners” task, stating that the QDR recognized that the Department of Defense cannot meet many of today’s complex challenges alone. Success requires unified statecraft: the ability of the US government to bring to bear all elements of national power at home and to work in close cooperation with allies and partners abroad.25
In contrast, Congress, in legislation, has presented BPC as a narrower concept.
The
FY2006 National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA),
P.L. 109-163,
§1206
, gave the President limited authority to direct DOD to “conduct or support a program to build the capacity of a foreign country’s national military forces in order for that country to (1) conduct counterterrorist operations; or (2) participate in or support military and stability operations in which the United States Armed Forces are a participant.”
26 Figure 2 illustrates the difference of definitions between Congress and DOD when it comes to BPC. Congress tends to view BPC as a narrow set of programs
(global train and equip and so on, as outlined in Table 2), managed by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. This definition is depicted by the orange circle in the middle. The white circle depicts DOD’s overall security cooperation activities that are led by
DSCA - which include DSCA’s security, security sector, and BPC activities; the white circle depicts how Congress tends to view DOD’s role in security cooperation and assistance. However, as the Regionally Aligned Forces example demonstrates, in DOD’s view security cooperation, and by extension
BPC, is much broader than those programs DSCA manages
. The green

circle depicts the wide array of programs, activities, and even force structure decisions designed to support the overarching rationale of building partner capacity.
Essentially, DOD has infused BPC across its activities and operations, not just in DSCA-managed programs and activities. DOD does not presently capture the level of granularity necessary to identify the full scope of expenditure on BPC programs,
particularly those represented in the green circle.
Thus, identifying how much money DOD actually spends on BPC activities is nearly impossible at present.
The final component of the diagram is the grey shaded circle in the background. This represents the use of building partner capacity as a strategic rationale in its own right, and is used as a justification for many of the activities captured in the other circles of the diagram. As the diagram suggests, the term BPC is used to represent a variety of different programs activities, as well as the intellectual rationale for undertaking those activities. These varying definitions
—alternately using “BPC” to describe ends, ways and means— add to the ambiguity surrounding BPC and therefore compounding the oversight challenge associated with these programs.
Views are mixed regarding the efficacy of the “patchwork” system of security cooperation authorities. Some analysts argue that the ad-hoc manner in which these programs were formulated and executed created overlaps in some areas and gaps in others, leading program managers to find multiple sources of funding for a single activity.27 Others, by contrast, maintain that these overlaps create flexibility, allowing program managers to organize activities that are more tailored to their individual requirements.28 Regardless, successive administrations have sought to bring greater coherence to security cooperation and BPC efforts. Most recently, in 2013, the Obama Administration tried to make these programs and activities more coherent through Presidential Policy Directive 23 (PPD
23), which instructs national security agencies to improve, streamline, and better organize all U.S. security assistance and cooperation efforts.29

United States Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability
Office is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States. “Building Partner Capacity: Inventory of Department of Defense Security Cooperation and Department of State Security Assistance Efforts.” GAO.gov,
U.S. Government Accountability Office, 24 Mar. 2017, www.gao.gov/assets/690/683682.pdf. // ank
29. Intelligence Sharing: Exchange of mapping, charting, and geodetic data Engage in information exchanges with partner nations to improve their intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capability, interoperability, and defense-institutionbuilding capacity. 10 U.S.C. § 454, Exchange of mapping, charting, and geodetic data with foreign countries, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and academic institutions 30. Intelligence Sharing: Funds for Foreign Cryptologic Support Engage in information exchanges with partner nations to improve their ISR capabilities and defense-institutionbuilding capacity. 10 U.S.C. §
421, Funds for foreign cryptologic support
31. Intelligence Sharing: Imagery Intelligence and Geospatial Information Engage in information exchanges with partner nations to improve their ISR capabilities, interoperability with U.S. forces, and defenseinstitution-building capacity. 10 U.S.C. § 443, Imagery intelligence and geospatial information: support for foreign countries, regional organizations, and security alliances 32. Inter-American Air Forces Academy Provide professional and technical training to students from partner nations eligible to receive security assistance, primarily students from the air forces of Latin America and the
Caribbean. 10 U.S.C. § 9415, Inter-American Air Forces Academy 33. International Counterproliferation Program Provide equipment and training to partner nations to improve border security and counter weapons of mass destruction capabilities. 50 U.S.C. § 2334,
Training program 50 U.S.C. § 2333, International border security
34. Israeli Cooperative Missile Defense Program:
Provide funds to the government of Israel to procure weapons systems, including the coproduction of parts and components in the United States by U.S. industry.
Pub. L. No. 114-92 (2015),
§ 1679, Israeli Cooperative Missile Defense Program Codevelopment and Coproduction
35. Israeli Short-Range Rocket
Defense System: Provide the government of Israel assistance specifically for the production and procurement of the Iron Dome defense system for purposes of intercepting short-range missiles, rockets, and projectiles launched against Israel
. Pub. L. No. 114-92 (2015), § 1678, Availability of Funds for Iron Dome Short-Range Rocket Defense
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES. The U.S. House Committee on Armed Services, commonly known as the
House Armed Services Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of
Representatives “FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING PARTNERSHIP CAPACITY PROGRAMS AND
AUTHORITIES TO MEET 21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES .” GPO, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES , 14 Feb. 2013, www.hsdl.org/?view&did=750858. // ank
As we look to the future security environment, we recognize that
BPC will need to address a broad range of security challenges.
In the wake of the Benghazi attack and increasing syndication of terrorist threats
, we must make capacity building for internal security forces and counterterrorism operations a clear priority.
We must be able to work with partners in the Persian Gulf to strengthen their ability to counter Iran's destabilizing activities, and advance collaborative efforts with Israel to deploy systems like Iron Dome, which protects Israeli citizens against the threat of rockets.
We must invest in new capabilities with allies in Northeast Asia, such as missile defense, to counter North Korea. We will also work to strengthen the maritime security and humanitarian assistance capabilities of key partners in the Indian Ocean and in Southeast Asia. Currently, throughout the year, SOF conducts engagements in more than
100 countrics worldwide. In close coordination with the State Department and in alignment with our broader foreign policy goals, our special operations forces draw from their experiences in places like Colombia, Yemen, and East Africa to build the capacity of

partner forces through training, equipping, advising and assisting, and integrating civil affairs teams, military information support teams, and even cultural support teams to ensure effective support capabilities. And we will strengthen NATO's capabilities in missile defense, meet our Article 5 commitments, and ensure that we can conduct expeditionary operations with our European allies. And we must ensure that they can assume a greater burden of the responsibility when we do engage.
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES. The U.S. House Committee on Armed Services, commonly known as the
House Armed Services Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of
Representatives “FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING PARTNERSHIP CAPACITY PROGRAMS AND
AUTHORITIES TO MEET 21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES .” GPO, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES , 14 Feb. 2013, www.hsdl.org/?view&did=750858. // ank
While the State Department has led for the Nation in matters of foreign affairs, the Department of Defense has provided a substantial contribution to this effort. For instance, the Arizona Air National Guard’s 162nd Fighter Wing trains 25 of our allies on various aircraft. Through this mission, they build relationships and understanding with our allies, service member to service member.
As we continue to build partner capacity and rely more heavily on partners and allies, the U.S. military by default plays a larger role in our Nation’s foreign relations. More to the point, the U.S. military has the ability to foster positive international relations separate from the Department of State. However, the Department of Defense relies on legislative authorities granted by this body to build partnership capacity. Ms. St. Laurent, what authorities need to be amended or granted to allow the Department of Defense to better facilitate foreign relations? Ms. ST. LAURENT. The Department of Defense (DOD) conducts its efforts to build the capacity of foreign partner nations under a variety of authorities, and GAO’s prior work has found that additional congressional guidance for some programs could be provided to help clarify the scope of programs and DOD’s roles and responsibilities in performing partner capacity building activities. For example, GAO’s 2012 report 1 on DOD’s humanitarian assistance efforts found that the legislation guiding DOD’s humanitarian assistance efforts does not provide detailed guidance on the Department’s role in performing these activities. Our report suggested that given the fiscally constrained environment and potential overlap in the types of peacetime, humanitarian, and development assistance activities being performed by DOD, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for
International Development, DOD and other agencies involved in assistance efforts could benefit from additional direction from
Congress. Specifically, our report recommended that Congress consider amending the legislation that supports the Overseas
Humanitarian, Disaster, and Civic Aid (OHDACA) program to more specifically define DOD’s role in humanitarian assistance, taking into account the roles and similar types of efforts performed by the civilian agencies. In another example, our 2010 report 2 on DOD and the Department of State’s Section 1206 security assistance program—used to build the capacity of foreign military forces in order to conduct counterterrorism operations or support U.S. operations—found that there were uncertainties regarding what funds could be used to support sustainment of projects, which can affect the long-term impact and effectiveness of projects. We therefore recommended that DOD, in consultation with Department of State, seek additional guidance from Congress on what funding authorities could be used to sustain Section 1206 projects that DOD determines are effective at addressing specific terrorist or stabilization threats in high priority countries when partner nation funds are unavailable. As of December 2012, DOD had not obtained such guidance from Congress, according to officials from the Section 1206 program office. Mr. BARBER. Ms. St. Laurent, in your testimony you cited the need in building partner capacity to equip, advise, and assist host countries’ security forces in becoming more proficient at providing security to their populations and protecting their resources and territories.
You also state that building the security capacity of partner nations is a key mission area for the Defense Department and a worldwide priority for the United States.
A great example of this is the success of the Iron Dome missile program in Israel. Developed with the Israelis and funded by the United States
, just a few months ago in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, this system showed its great promise and performed superbly
. I believe it is a critical investment that needs to be fully funded and opportunities for co-production explored, so that we may continue our commitment and deliver a weapon system that will ensure the security, safety, and prosperity of Israel.
As the Defense
Department continues to emphasize building partner capacity, do you agree that the need for efficient and effective coordination with foreign partners, such as has been achieved thus far with Iron Dome, has become increasingly important to our defense strategy? And do you believe that the United States should continue investing in mutually beneficial relationships with our allies even in the face of our country’s fiscal challenges because of the long-term benefit to our global security?

McInnis, Kathleen J, and Nathan J Lucas. “What Is ‘Building Partner
Capacity?’ Issues for Congress.” Congressional Research Service, 18 Dec. 2015, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44313.pdf Kathleen J. McInnis is International Security Analyst for the Congressional Research Service and Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brent Scowcroft
Center on International Security, USA. Nathan J Lucas is a section research manager for the
Congressional Research Service, A former Country Director for the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, a former Division Manager for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a former Action
Officer for Joint Staff on NATO Policy // ank
What Is “Building Partner Capacity”? The breadth and scope of the different activities and programs that fall under DOD’s catchall term “Building Partner Capacity” (BPC) has made analyzing these programs—and their overall efficacy—difficult. This difficulty arises in part because the term “building partner capacity,” based on recent DOD usage, has been used to capture DOD’s wide variety of engagements with an extensive range of non-DOD actors.
As a recent report from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) notes
, “the term building partner capacity (BPC) has become a catchall for a wide array of programs, only some of which actually pertain to enhancing the capabilities and capacity of a partner’s military and civilian institutions.”4
Indeed, as a RAND study noted
, BPC is more a “term of art” than a specific program or capability
. Moreover, like many other terms of art, BPC means different things to different people.5 Regardless of how the term
BPC
is used, it is primarily associated with a fundamental assumption: that enhancing the security capabilities of partners in less capable, weak, and/or failing states will ultimately advance U.S. national security interests.
DOD Activities That Build Partner Capacity Illustratively, in no particular order,
BPC includes the following activities: -level personal relationships between the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff or Combatant Commanders and the Chiefs of Defense of other states. bilateral military exercises like the annual African Lion exercise conducted by the United States
Marine Corps and the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces. onducting multilateral exercises such as NATO’s annual Combined Endeavor communications interoperability exercises involving
NATO Allies and Partnership for Peace countries. discussion of capabilities development, for example as practiced by NATO allies and
“Partnership for Peace” countries. military schools, as well as the participation of U.S. military officers as students at foreign military schools such as the National Defense University of Pakistan. Training and equipping of foreign military and security forces. of the world, such as the maritime capability-focused Africa Partnership station. foreign security forces to participate in multilateral military operations, such as training
Burundian battalions to support their deployment to Somalia as part of the African Union
Mission in Somalia. military and security ministries, such as in
Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan (plans exist to send advisors to Yemen, Indonesia, Botswana, and Ukraine).
BPC in National Strategy6 The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (9/11 attacks) and the subsequent global war on terror provided the impetus for expanding DOD’s security cooperation and assistance tools under the rubric of BPC. 7 The term
“Building Partner Capacity” first came into use in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which argued, Long-duration, complex operations involving the U.S. military, other government agencies and international partners will be waged simultaneously in multiple countries around the world... Maintaining a long-term, low-visibility presence in many areas of the world where U.S. forces do not traditionally operate will be required. Building and leveraging partner capacity will also be an absolutely essential part

of this approach, and the employment of surrogates will be a necessary method for achieving many goals.8 According to the 2006
QDR, BPC was, in essence, a maximalist interpretation and employment of a concept normally executed by Special Operations
Forces when working with partner forces on the ground—“by, with and through.”9
Over time, BPC became a preferred, if not primary, means by which the United States could secure its interests—as well as a national security objective in its own right.
As the argument goes, much like Afghanistan before 9/11, the collapse of fragile states into conflict zones could ultimately create areas in which terrorist groups could plan and execute attacks against the United States and its allies. As then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued, Building the governance and security capacity of other countries was a critical element of our strategy in the Cold War. But it is even more urgent in a global security environment where, unlike the Cold War, the most likely and lethal threats – an American city poisoned or reduced to rubble – will likely emanate from fractured or failing states, rather than aggressor states.10 Gates went on to note that, “in these situations, the effectiveness and credibility of the United States will only be as good as the effectiveness, credibility, and sustainability of our local partners… [BPC] is in many ways the ideological and security challenge of our time.”
Over time, BPC became primarily associated with DOD’s activities to enhance the capabilities of, and cooperation with, international partners characterized by weakness, instability, or fragility
. In the QDR reports between
2006 and the current 2014 version, DOD seemed to emphasize BPC as a concept distinct from traditional security assistance and security cooperation, with the latter more geared toward building linkages with U.S. allies. Together, the QDR reports could be
BPC should help the United States maintain a long-term, low-visibility presence in parts of the world where U.S. forces do not traditionally operate (2006 QDR);
(2006 QDR);
focus on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations strength (2010 QDR); defense, diplomacy, and development (2010 QDR); are an increasingly critical element of BPC (2010 QDR); and peacekeeping and counterterrorism capabilities and applies especially in fragile states (2014
QDR).
The 2010 QDR draws out the idea that the U.S. government widened its aperture when discussing when, whether, and how to build partner capacity. Rather than using “traditional” security cooperation programs exclusively to help its allies, the United
States would help weaker states, thereby preventing conflicts stemming from non-state actors from becoming serious or even beginning in the first place. This approach could be seen as using BPC as a state-building tool for partner countries. In the context of
U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, though, perhaps the key phrase is using BPC to “reduce risk to U.S. forces and extend security to areas we cannot reach alone.”
Using this approach, this broadly conceptualized notion of BPC may be seen as a means of achieving U.S. strategic objectives at a lower cost without necessarily using U.S. military forces to achieve the same ends.
Perhaps in response to events in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere, recent DOD strategy documents appear to be re-expanding BPC’s aperture. The 2015
National Military Strategy appears to link building partner capacity efforts both to counterterrorism
(generally conducted in fragile states) and alliance/coalition building
(a task normally applied to more durable states and U.S. allies): As we look to the future, the U.S. military and its allies and partners will continue to protect and promote shared interests.
We will preserve our alliances, expand partnerships, maintain a global stabilizing presence, and conduct training, exercises, security cooperation activities, and military to military engagement. Such activities increase the capabilities and capacity of partners, thereby enhancing our collective ability to deter aggression and defeat extremists
.11 Altogether,
BPC appears to have moved from a post-9/11 counterterrorism strategy applied to fragile states to a key means through which the United States seeks to accomplish “traditional” and
“non-traditional” national security objectives. Recently, some scholars have argued that this
emphasis on BPC constitutes a grand strategy in its own right—one of “sponsorship”—that counsels strategic patience and working with partners to achieve mutual objectives. As their logic goes, “proponents of sponsorship strategies recognized that they are likely to achieve acceptable results at a lower cost and with greater long-term legitimacy to the policy being implemented.”
12

McInnis, Kathleen J, and Nathan J Lucas. “What Is ‘Building Partner
Capacity?’ Issues for Congress.” Congressional Research Service, 18 Dec. 2015, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44313.pdf Kathleen J. McInnis is International Security Analyst for the Congressional Research Service and Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brent Scowcroft
Center on International Security, USA. Nathan J Lucas is a section research manager for the
Congressional Research Service, A former Country Director for the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, a former Division Manager for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a former Action
Officer for Joint Staff on NATO Policy // ank
A number of reasons underlie a growing Congressional interest in the complex national security policy area that has come to be labeled “Building Partnership Capacity,” or “BPC.” First, since 2006 BPC has increased in prominence within
U.S. strategy
, arguably becoming a central pillar of U.S. national security
and foreign policy in recent years.
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, successive U.S. and Department of Defense leaders concluded that the traditional set of security assistance and security cooperation tools did not meet the needs of the changed strategic landscape. The term “Building Partnership Capacity” was coined in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review. Since then,
BPC has become a catchall phrase for a wide array of programs
, 1 all underpinned by the assumption that strengthening foreign security institutions in weak and fragile states will have tangible positive benefits for U.S. national security
. Activities in which DOD engages toward those
ends include
(but are not limited to): training,
mentoring, advising, equipping
, exercising, educating and planning with foreign security forces
, primarily in fragile and weak states. BPC is also used to describe a core element of recent U.S. military campaigns—namely, training and equipping foreign security forces—in Iraq (2003-2011), Afghanistan (2001-present) and Iraq/Syria (2014-present).
GAO, 17 United States Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability
Office is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States. “FOREIGN MILITARY SALES: DOD Needs to Improve Its
Use of Performance Information to Manage the Program.” GAO, United States Government
Accountability Office, Aug. 2017, www.gao.gov/assets/690/686720.pdf
. // ank
The United States provides military equipment and training to partner countries through a variety of programs. Foreign partners may pay the U.S. government to administer the acquisition of materiel and services on their behalf through the FMS program. The
United States also provides grants to some foreign partners through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program to fund the partner’s purchase of materiel and services through the process used for FMS. In recent years,
Congress has expanded the number of security cooperation programs to include several new programs with funds appropriated to the Department of Defense (DOD), as well as administered and implemented by
DOD, that focus on building partner capacity. In this report, we refer to these programs as
“pseudo-FMS” cases
. FMS and pseudo-FMS transactions follow the same process, but the roles, responsibilities, and actors involved can differ. One important difference highlighted by DOD and Department of State (State) officials is that with FMS, there is a much greater level of involvement on the part of the partner country in defining requirements and developing the Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOA). As a result
, the amount of time it takes to develop FMS cases on average will tend to exceed the time it takes for pseudo-FMS cases
. According to DOD and State officials, there may also be differences in the types of equipment that tend to be provided via FMS as opposed to pseudo-FMS cases. For example, pseudo-FMS is not typically used to provide complex weapons systems with long production cycles such as advanced fighter aircraft.

According to DOD and State officials, pseudo-FMS cases are often prioritized
because the funds used for these programs generally are only available for obligation for 1 or 2 years, depending on the program. These officials note that funds for traditional FMF programs do not have such time constraints. As a result
, pseudo-FMS cases are, on average,
processed faster than FMS cases
. Army and Air Force officials noted that pseudo-FMS cases tend to be more labor intensive than FMS cases for several reasons. For example, according to Air Force officials, pseudoFMS cases often involve items that frequently require a new contract because the item is not part of the Air Force inventory. For that reason, Air Force officials noted that they cannot modify an existing contract to add additional items. Army officials said that pseudo-FMS cases require more work because of the nature of expiring funds. This requires an acceleration of

United States Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability
Office is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States. United States Government Accountability Office. The
Government Accountability Office is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States. “Building Partner Capacity:
Inventory of Department of Defense Security Cooperation and Department of State Security
Assistance Efforts.” GAO.gov, United States Government Accountability Office, 24 Mar. 2017, www.gao.gov/assets/690/683682.pdf. // ank
22. Counternarcotics Law Enforcement Support ("1004") Provide support for the counternarcotics activities of any other department or agency of the federal government or of any state, local, or foreign law enforcement agency. This program allows DOD to work directly with the relevant law enforcement agency of the partner government without going through the Ministry of Defense. The types of support may include maintenance, repair, and upgrade of equipment; transportation of U.S. and foreign personnel, supplies and equipment
; counternarcoticsrelated training; and minor military construction. 10 U.S.C. § 374 note, Additional support for counter-drug activities and activities to counter transnational organized crime 23. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA):
Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Reduce the risks from WMD through initiatives that dismantle strategic weapons delivery systems and infrastructure and enhance security and safety of WMD and fissile material during transportation and storage. This program also seeks to reduce bioterror attacks by consolidating and securing dangerous pathogens, enhancing partner states' capacity to detect and report bioterror attacks, and facilitating biological research partnerships. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program Authorities 24. DTRA/CTR: Chemical Weapons Destruction (CWD) Assist in the establishment of safe and secure chemical weapons destruction facilities in Russia to destroy nerveagent-filled artillery munitions. This program also provides equipment, supplies, construction, and information sharing. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq,
Program Authorities 25. DTRA/CTR: Cooperative Biological Engagement (CBE) Enable the securing of especially dangerous pathogens at partner nations' laboratories or facilities to prevent these pathogens from reaching actors (both state and nonstate) that may use them against the United States and its allies, and to fund research in the partner nations to improve their capacities to secure the pathogens. 50 U.S.C. §
3711 et seq, Program Authorities 26. DTRA/CTR: Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA): Global Nuclear Security (GNS) Enable the securing of vulnerable nuclear material and transitioning of sustainment responsibilities for physical security upgrades to respective countries by providing training, equipment, supplies, and construction. This program augments security enhancements identified for Russia and expands nuclear security cooperation to countries and regions consistent with legislation. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program Authorities 27. DTRA Small Arms/Light Weapons (SALW) Program Reduce proliferation of conventional weapons by assisting partner nations with the security, safety, and management of state-controlled stockpiles of arms, ammunition, and explosives. Teams of SALW experts provide foreign governments with onsite assessments, technical advice, and orientation to international best practices for physical security and stockpile management. By securing and managing these assets, the DTRA SALW branch helps diminish the availability of weapons and ammunition to terrorists and insurgents, reduce regional exposure to destabilizing cross-border weapons transfers, and minimize the risk of catastrophic ammunition accidents. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program Authorities 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 28. DTRA/CTR:
Strategic Offensive Arms Elimination (SOAE) Support the destruction of strategic weapons delivery systems and associated infrastructure in Russia and Ukraine, including deployed warheads, deployed and nondeployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program Authorities 29. Defense Institution Legal Capacity Building (conducted through the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) Provide professional legal education, training and democratic rule-of-law programs for international military and related civilians globally. 10
U.S.C. § 168 note, Defense institution capacity building program 30. Defense Institution Reform Initiative Provide subject-matter experts to work with partner nations to assess organizational weaknesses and share best practices for addressing shortfalls in support of defense institution building. 10 U.S.C. § 168 note, Defense institution capacity building program Pub. L. No. 114-113 (2015), Department of Defense
Appropriations Act, 2016, Title IX, Operation and Maintenance, Operation & Maintenance Defense-Wide 31. Defense Personnel Exchange Program Overall authority for the exchange of military and civilian DOD personnel with allied and friendly countries and international organizations. 10 U.S.C. § 168 note, Agreements for exchange of defense personnel between United States and foreign countries 10 U.S.C. § 168 note,
Authority for nonreciprocal exchanges of defense personnel between the United States and foreign countries 32. Defense Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) Information Exchange Program
Engage in information exchanges with partner nations to improve their RDT&E capabilities. 10 U.S.C. § 2358, Research and development projects 10 U.S.C. § 2350a, Cooperative research & development agreements: NATO organizations; allied and friendly foreign countries 33. Demining: Humanitarian Assistance Provide equipment, supplies, construction, and air and sealifts to partner nations to improve their demining and humanitarian assistancerelated capabilities. 10 U.S.C. § 2561, Humanitarian assistance 10 U.S.C. § 401, Humanitarian and civic assistance provided in conjunction with military operations 10 U.S.C. §
404, Foreign disaster assistance 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 10 U.S.C. § 2557, Excess nonlethal supplies: availability for humanitarian relief, domestic emergency assistance, and homeless veterans assistance 34. Demining: Humanitarian Demining Assistance and Stockpiled Conventional Munitions Assistance Provide education, training, and technical assistance with respect to explosive safety; the detection and clearance of landmines and other explosive remnants of war; and the disposal, demilitarization, physical security, and management of potentially dangerous stockpiles of explosive ordnance. 35. Demining: Humanitarian Demining Research and Development Program Engage in research, procurement, and other measures needed to eliminate the requirement for non-self-destructing antipersonnel landmines for training personnel engaged in demining and countermining operations and to defend the United States and its allies from armed aggression across the Korean demilitarized zone. 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 22 U.S.C. § 2796d, Loan of materials, supplies, and equipment for research and development purposes 36. Demining: Humanitarian Mine Action Program Provide training, equipment, and supplies to partner nations to improve their demining and humanitarian assistance capabilities. 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 10 U.S.C. § 2561, Humanitarian assistance 37.
Demining: Overseas Humanitarian Assistance and Civic Aid Provide, among other things, training to host-nation personnel in demining techniques and awareness and provide training and access benefits to U.S.
Special Operations Forces. 10 U.S.C. § 401, Humanitarian and civic assistance provided in conjunction with military operations 10 U.S.C. § 402, Transportation of humanitarian relief supplies to foreign countries 10
U.S.C. § 404, Foreign disaster assistance 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 10 U.S.C. § 2557, Excess nonlethal supplies: availability for humanitarian relief, domestic emergency assistance, and homeless veterans assistance 10 U.S.C. § 2561, Humanitarian assistance 38. Department of Defense Counternarcotics Assistance to Certain
Countries ("1033") Provide nonlethal defense articles and services for counternarcotics purposes to foreign governments specified in law. This is the only counternarcotics program that can provide equipment to a partner nation. This program also allows DOD to work directly with relevant law enforcement agencies of partner nations without going through the Ministry of Defense. Pub. L. No. 105-85 (1997), § 1033, as amended, Authority to Provide Additional Support for Counter-Drug Activities of Cert
39. Department of Defense Participation in European
Program on Multilateral Exchange of Air Transportation and Air Refueling Services
(ATARES Program)
Authorize participation in the Movement Coordination Centre Europe's ATARES Program with the purpose of providing mutual airlift and in-flight refueling services to partner nations' air forces.
10 U.S.C. § 2350c note
, Department of Defense participation in European program on multilateral exchange of air transportation and air refueling services
22. Counternarcotics Law Enforcement Support ("1004")
Provide support for the counternarcotics activities of any other department or agency of the federal government or of any state, local, or foreign law enforcement agency. This program allows DOD to work directly with the relevant law enforcement agency of the partner government without going through the Ministry of Defense. The types of support may include maintenance, repair, and upgrade of equipment; transportation of U.S. and foreign personnel, supplies and equipment; counternarcoticsrelated training; and minor military construction. 10 U.S.C. § 374 note, Additional support for counter-drug activities and

activities to counter transnational organized crime 23. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA): Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Reduce the risks from WMD through initiatives that dismantle strategic weapons delivery systems and infrastructure and enhance security and safety of WMD and fissile material during transportation and storage. This program also seeks to reduce bioterror attacks by consolidating and securing dangerous pathogens, enhancing partner states' capacity to detect and report bioterror attacks, and facilitating biological research partnerships. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program Authorities 24.
DTRA/CTR: Chemical Weapons Destruction (CWD) Assist in the establishment of safe and secure chemical weapons destruction facilities in Russia to destroy nerveagent-filled artillery munitions. This program also provides equipment, supplies, construction, and information sharing. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program Authorities 25. DTRA/CTR: Cooperative Biological Engagement (CBE) Enable the securing of especially dangerous pathogens at partner nations' laboratories or facilities to prevent these pathogens from reaching actors (both state and nonstate) that may use them against the United States and its allies, and to fund research in the partner nations to improve their capacities to secure the pathogens. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program Authorities 26. DTRA/CTR: Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA): Global Nuclear Security
(GNS) Enable the securing of vulnerable nuclear material and transitioning of sustainment responsibilities for physical security upgrades to respective countries by providing training, equipment, supplies, and construction. This program augments security enhancements identified for Russia and expands nuclear security cooperation to countries and regions consistent with legislation. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program
Authorities 27. DTRA Small Arms/Light Weapons (SALW) Program Reduce proliferation of conventional weapons by assisting partner nations with the security, safety, and management of state-controlled stockpiles of arms, ammunition, and explosives. Teams of SALW experts provide foreign governments with onsite assessments, technical advice, and orientation to international best practices for physical security and stockpile management. By securing and managing these assets, the DTRA SALW branch helps diminish the availability of weapons and ammunition to terrorists and insurgents, reduce regional exposure to destabilizing cross-border weapons transfers, and minimize the risk of catastrophic ammunition accidents. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq, Program Authorities 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 28. DTRA/CTR: Strategic Offensive Arms Elimination (SOAE) Support the destruction of strategic weapons delivery systems and associated infrastructure in Russia and Ukraine, including deployed warheads, deployed and nondeployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. 50 U.S.C. § 3711 et seq,
Program Authorities 29. Defense Institution Legal Capacity Building (conducted through the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) Provide professional legal education, training and democratic rule-of-law programs for international military and related civilians globally. 10 U.S.C. § 168 note, Defense institution capacity building program 30. Defense Institution Reform Initiative Provide subject-matter experts to work with partner nations to assess organizational weaknesses and share best practices for addressing shortfalls in support of defense institution building. 10 U.S.C. § 168 note, Defense institution capacity building program Pub. L. No. 114-113 (2015), Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2016, Title IX, Operation and Maintenance, Operation & Maintenance Defense-Wide 31. Defense Personnel
Exchange Program Overall authority for the exchange of military and civilian DOD personnel with allied and friendly countries and international organizations. 10 U.S.C. § 168 note, Agreements for exchange of defense personnel between United States and foreign countries 10 U.S.C. § 168 note, Authority for nonreciprocal exchanges of defense personnel between the United States and foreign countries 32. Defense
Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) Information Exchange Program Engage in information exchanges with partner nations to improve their RDT&E capabilities. 10 U.S.C. § 2358, Research and development projects 10 U.S.C. § 2350a, Cooperative research & development agreements: NATO organizations; allied and friendly foreign countries 33. Demining: Humanitarian Assistance Provide equipment, supplies, construction, and air and sealifts to partner nations to improve their demining and humanitarian assistancerelated capabilities. 10 U.S.C. § 2561, Humanitarian assistance 10 U.S.C. § 401, Humanitarian and civic assistance provided in conjunction with military operations 10 U.S.C. § 404, Foreign disaster assistance 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 10 U.S.C. § 2557, Excess nonlethal supplies: availability for humanitarian relief, domestic emergency assistance, and homeless veterans assistance 34. Demining: Humanitarian
Demining Assistance and Stockpiled Conventional Munitions Assistance Provide education, training, and technical assistance with respect to explosive safety; the detection and clearance of landmines and other explosive remnants of war; and the disposal, demilitarization, physical security, and management of potentially dangerous stockpiles of explosive ordnance. 35. Demining: Humanitarian Demining Research and
Development Program Engage in research, procurement, and other measures needed to eliminate the requirement for non-self-destructing antipersonnel landmines for training personnel engaged in demining and countermining operations and to defend the United States and its allies from armed aggression across the Korean demilitarized zone. 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 22 U.S.C. § 2796d, Loan of materials, supplies, and equipment for research and development purposes 36. Demining: Humanitarian Mine Action Program
Provide training, equipment, and supplies to partner nations to improve their demining and humanitarian assistance capabilities. 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 10 U.S.C. § 2561, Humanitarian assistance 37. Demining: Overseas Humanitarian Assistance and Civic Aid Provide, among other things, training to host-nation personnel in demining techniques and awareness and provide training and access benefits to U.S. Special Operations Forces. 10 U.S.C. § 401, Humanitarian and civic assistance provided in conjunction with military operations 10 U.S.C. § 402, Transportation of humanitarian relief supplies to foreign countries 10 U.S.C. § 404, Foreign disaster assistance 10 U.S.C. § 407, Humanitarian demining assistance and stockpiled conventional munitions assistance: authority; limitations 10 U.S.C. § 2557, Excess nonlethal supplies: availability for humanitarian relief, domestic emergency assistance, and homeless veterans assistance 10 U.S.C.
§ 2561, Humanitarian assistance 38. Department of Defense Counternarcotics Assistance to Certain Countries ("1033") Provide nonlethal defense articles and services for counternarcotics purposes to foreign governments specified in law. This is the only counternarcotics program that can provide equipment to a partner nation. This program also allows DOD to work directly with relevant law enforcement agencies of partner nations without going through the Ministry of Defense. Pub. L. No. 105-85 (1997), § 1033, as amended, Authority to Provide Additional Support for Counter-Drug Activities of Cert 39. Department of
Defense Participation in European Program on Multilateral Exchange of Air Transportation and Air Refueling Services (ATARES Program)
Authorize participation in the
Movement Coordination Centre Europe's ATARES Program with the purpose of providing mutual airlift and in-flight refueling services to partner nations' air forces
. 10 U.S.C. § 2350c note, Department of Defense participation in European program on multilateral exchange of air transportation and air refueling services

Abramson, 19 - Jeff Abramson is a non-resident senior fellow for arms control and conventional arms transfers at the Arms Control Association. He also manages the Landmine and Cluster
Munition Monitor, the de facto monitoring regime for the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on
Cluster Munitions, and organizes the Forum on the Arms Trade. Prior to joining the Monitor, he served as a policy advisor and director to the secretariat of Control Arms, the global civil society alliance that championed the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty that for the first time established global regulations for the trade in a wide array of conventional weapons. He is also the former deputy director of the Arms Control Association and former managing editor of their publication Arms Control Today. (“High School Policy Debate Resources - 2019-2020” https://www.forumarmstrade.org/hspolicydebate.html
What are Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales?
The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program manages government-to-government purchases of
U.S. defense articles and defense services that are on the U.S. Munitions List (USML) for export to foreign countries. The Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) program regulates U.S. companies' international sales of U.S. defense articles and defense services that are on the USML. The
Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 provide the primary legal basis for the FMS and DCS programs, which require Congressional notification and other reporting steps.
At times, Foreign Military Financing (FMF) is used in FMS and DCS transactions. Items transferred as Excess Defense Articles (EDAs) typically are not counted as FMS and DCS, but may be included in some data sources. Many other forms of security assistance, which often involve weapons transfers and/or training/services, also exist outside of FMS and DCS.
Traditionally, items sold from the Commerce Control List (CCL), be they items with both commercial and military applications (so-called "dual-use" goods), or military items now listed in the CCL 600 series, are not considered DCS, although some sources create confusion on this issue.

Jeff Abramson 2-20-19 -- nonresident senior fellow for arms control and conventional arms transfers at the Arms Control Association. (“Congress should block rule changes for firearm exports” https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2019-03-26/abramson-testimony-proposed-smallarms-transfers) mba-alb
As the nation is reminded of the tragic consequences of gun violence with the one-year anniversary of the Parkland school shooting, the
Trump administration is pushing forward with plans to expedite the export abroad of the same kind of military-style weapons used
in many of the mass shootings
that have taken place in recent years.
These are not the commodities that the United States should make easier to export.
Congress can and should stop the changes, which would put the Department of Commerce in charge of regulating these exports, removing them from the State Department-led U.S. Munitions List
(USML
). At the core of these proposed changes is the mistaken belief that firearms do not merit tighter scrutiny under the State Department-led munitions control list because they are neither high-tech nor do they provide unique military advantages. Of course
, the changes would also make it easier for gun manufacturers to sell and profit from these weapons transfers.
In reality, these are some of the weapons that fuel criminal violence, civil conflict and facilitate human right abuses by authoritarian governments around the world. In response, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced the "Stopping the Traffic in Overseas Proliferation of Ghost Guns Act" that would prohibit the removal of firearms from the State Department-led list. Menendez argues: "Every terrorist and criminal that wants to hijack an airplane with Americans on board will more easily be able to smuggle 3D-printed, virtually undetectable guns aboard. Every school, every government facility, every hospital, here and abroad, will become even more vulnerable to gun violence through this change. This is madness.” Over in the House, Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) have introduced a similar measure, the "Prevent Crime and Terrorism Act." They say:
“
We need proper congressional oversight
, so we can step in and make sure these weapons aren’t sent to bad actors
, including terrorists, drug cartels, human rights abusers or violent criminals."
They are right
. Under current State Department implementation, online plans for 3-D printed guns are traditionally deemed an export and therefore regulated. The administration's attempt last year to allow Defense Distributed to post 3-D printing plans led to public outrage and lawsuits that have thus far blocked this from changing.
Putting the Commerce Department in charge would be an end-around approach that effectively leads
to deregulation, in part because Commerce would not have incentive to protect copyrights when 3-D print advocates are instead pushing to make their weapons designs freely available.
Transfer of export control to Commerce would also remove Congress from their current oversight role. Today, Congress is notified of potential commercial sales of firearms under
USML category I when they were valued at just $1 million, but no such notifications exist for items on the Commerce Control List.
A 30-day review period has started on the rules, started when the administration sent them to Congress on Feb. 4. Senator Menendez is expected to put a "hold" on the rule changes, but more permanent legislation, such as those acts now introduced in both chambers, is a better long-term approach.
If not halted or significantly changed, the new rules would risk the safety of people both at home and abroad and continue the cynical approach of the Trump administration to treat weapons as any other trade commodity,
upsetting decades of more-responsible U.S. arms transfer policy.

William D. Hartung 8-21-13 -- director of the Common Defense Campaign: Arms & Security
Project at the Center for International Policy. (“Risks of Loosening Arms Export Controls Far
Outweigh Benefits” https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/risks-loosening-armsexport-controls-far-outweigh-benefits)mba-alb
An Obama administration plan to loosen U.S. arms export controls could make it easier for weapons to find their way into the wrong hands—a risk that far outweighs the measure’s paltry economic benefits. In August 2009, the administration launched
the Export Control Reform Initiative (
ECRI
), designed to streamline U.S. arms export controls,
enhance national security, and grow the economy.
The administration said it wanted to eliminate or reduce controls on items of limited national security concern while increasing controls on more dangerous exports.
The policy is being implemented in stages and the first round of changes will take effect in October. But the administration’s proposed reforms are unlikely to accomplish either goal, according to a report issued by the Center for International Policy, with support from the Open Society
Foundations.
The loosening of arms export controls is being justified on the grounds that selling U.S.made weapons and parts to America’s potential military adversaries does not pose a significant security threat as long as the exports are nearly obsolete or readily available.
This narrow focus on controlling the flow of modern equipment ignores the danger of giving countries of concern access to less sophisticated weapons and components. Iran, for example, wants spare parts to keep its aged American-made fighter jets and attack helicopters flying. China wants older technology that it can copy and manufacture. Other regimes want the means of daily repression, like low-tech guns and communications and surveillance equipment. Under the envisioned Obama reforms, none of these items would be kept behind the fence of U.S. exp ort controls.
A central element of the administration’s new policy has been to move thousands of items from the United States Munitions List (USML)—a compendium of arms and arms-related technologies monitored by the State Department—to the Commerce Control List (CCL), which
subjects equipment destined for export to less rigorous scrutiny. In fact, the White House has asserted that it eventually intends to permit a significant percentage of the items that are now being transferred off of the USML to be exported without a license. This means that oversight would be lifted from these items. To promote the reform package, the administration is touting its economic benefits. A former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs,
Andrew Shapiro, has argued that the administration’s export control reform would “have a real impact on our economy at a time when competition is even more fierce and at a time when our manufacturing base could really use a boost.”
But neither the administration nor the arms and aerospace industries, the major supporters of the export reform effort, have provided credible evidence that loosening controls will have substantial economic benefits. In fact, there is strong evidence to suggest that export reform is unlikely to significantly increase U.S. sales of military technology. The United States already accounts for nearly 80 percent of the global arms market. Even a radical reform of arms export controls is unlikely to push that figure much higher. As one business analyst has noted, the economic benefits of arms export reform, if they exist at all, are likely to be “infinitesimal.” It is even possible that loosening restrictions on arms exports could reduce U.S. employment. Thomas Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists, the union which represents the bulk of the workers in the arms and aerospace industries, has warned that “the less stringent controls provided under the CCL could lead to further transfers of technology or production from the U.S. to another country,” with potentially devastating consequences for U.S.-based production and employment. A number of steps should be taken to ensure that the administration’s export control reform initiative does not undermine critical policy goals. First, there should be a moratorium on moving additional items from the USML to the CCL until strict safeguards have been developed to prevent the transfer or retransfer of U.S. arms and arms technology to terrorists, human rights abusers, or countries seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Second, Congress and the administration should review the Export Control
Reform Initiative’s impact on stopping arms transfers to dictatorships and human rights abusers. They should strengthen those restrictions to ensure that items moved from the USML to the CCL receive the same level of human rights screening they currently undergo. These changes should be embedded in law, not just left to the discretion of a given administration. Finally, the Department of Commerce should und ertake a detailed analysis of the employment impacts that may result from transferring items from the
USML to the CCL or from decontrolling them altogether. These economic effects should then be used to help determine whether to ease controls on a given item.
Colby Goodman 3-5-17 -- director of the Security Assistance Monitor where he leads research and analysis on U.S. foreign security assistance around the world. (“Commerce Department
Boosts U.S. Arms Sales Deliveries to Record High” http://securityassistance.org/blog/commercedepartment-boosts-us-arms-sales-deliveries-record-high)mba-alb
U.S. arms sales
deliveries jumped
to more than $25 billion in
FY
2015
, increasing the total value of U.S. arms deliveries by at least $5 billion over recent years, according to latest data from several U.S. government reports.
The major increase in U.S. arms sales deliveries comes from a relatively new
Commerce Department program established in part to help U.S. companies export certain types of military equipment more easily
.
Some arms industry associations are already urging the
Trump administration to further reduce controls on defense companies exporting arms,
but it’s too early to tell what specific controls the administration would seek to reduce.
The new program was created as part of the Obama administration’s hardly noticed overhaul of U.S. arms export control regulations called the
Export Control Reform Initiative.
Based on a White House determination that the U.S. export system was undermining the competitiveness of defense industries key to U.S.

national security with an overcomplicated structure that tries to control too much, the administration started to reduce controls on arms of
“lesser military significance” to the United State s in January 2014. By the end of FY 2015, the administration had moved oversight of tens of thousands of arms from the State Department’s more strictly controlled Direct Commercial Sales program to the Commerce Department’s more loosely controlled 600 Series program
.
The changes already appear to have ushered in significant
increases in U.S. commercial arms deliveries. The total value for all commercial arms sales deliveries in FY 2015 was $9.3 billion, with the 600 Series program accounting for $4.5 billion and Direct Commercial Sales program accounting for $4.8 billion
. The total value of commercial arms sales deliveries was $5.2 billion in
FY 2013 and $3.8 billion in FY 2012 when the State Department’s program was operating as the only commercial arms sales program. The U.S. government also delivered $16.7 billion worth of arms abroad in FY
2015 through the government-to-government arms sales program called Foreign Military Sales. The major jump in U.S. commercial arms sales deliveries from FY 2014 to FY 2015 comes in part from noticeable increases to the Asian countries of Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. In FY 2014, for instance, U.S. companies delivered $8.8 million worth of arms to Taiwan through the Direct Commercial
Sales program. In calendar year 2015, U.S. companies delivered a total of $127 million in arms to the country through the 600 Series program, according to data released by the Commerce Department. U.S. companies also delivered relatively high-dollar amounts of arms through the 600 Series program to Germany, Israel, Iraq, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates in 2015.
Among the 125 countries that received military equipment through the 600 Series program, the most popular military categories were military aircraft, military gas turbine engines, military electronics, and ground vehicles. Although the bulk of the arms delivered under the military aircraft category are likely parts and components for a range of military aircraft such as the F-16, U.S. companies can export fully assembled unarmed military cargo and observation aircraft as well as military helicopters that the State Department once considered “significant military equipment.” The Obama administration has kept closely guarded U.S. military technology and firearms, artillery, and ammunition under the State Department’s control
. One reason that U.S. companies may be increasingly using the 600 Series program is that they can export their products more quickly and with fewer controls
. Companies are able to export most of the arms under Commerce Department control to 36 countries closely allied to the United States, including Turkey, without U.S. pre-approval through the Strategic Trade Authorization (STA) license exemption. They may also use eight other license exemptions or several license-free options to export without U.S. pre-approval.
Based on Commerce Department data, U.S. companies exported about $1.5 billion worth of arms in calendar year 2015 using one of these license exemptions available to them under the 600 Series program.
Some U.S. companies are also pleased that they no longer have to be concerned about controls related defense services, broker licenses, registration, and registration fees
.
Companies can also more easily export certain types of military equipment
to countries such as China and Venezuela that the State Department’s Direct Commercial
Sales program often excluded from receiving arms. In 2015, for instance, U.S. companies exported $267,053 worth of military aircraft, military electronics, and ground vehicles to China. Since FY 2010, U.S. companies only exported $17,700 worth of commercial arms sales to China using a presidential waiver. U.S. companies also exported $458,654 worth of military electronics to Venezuela in 2015, but the country hasn’t received U.S. arms deliveries since FY 2009 through the other well-established U.S. arms sales programs. Given the extensive loosening of U.S. arms export controls under the Obama administration, it’s somewhat surprising that defense industry associations are already asking for more reductions in U.S. arms export controls. Representatives of the
Aerospace Industries
Association told
Defense News that they hope that the Trump administration continues to ease exports of military aircraft items, including potentially creating license exemptions for companies exporting and importing items associated with F-35 fighter jets under State Department control
. Defense industry representatives have also raised concerns about U.S. government delays in approving certain arms exports. In a prominent firearms industry magazine, industry experts also indicated that moving U.S. government oversight of firearms exports from the State Department to the Commerce Department is “ very doable” under the Trump administration. In support of reducing regulations, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the elimination of two U.S. regulations for every one regulation created. In early February, the Trump administration also reportedly sought to remove Obama administration holds on U.S. exports precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia and F-16s to Bahrain over human rights concerns. U.S. arms export compliance attorneys have also noted that Trump will likely honor Obama administration’s reduced sanctions on Iran and Sudan. Although the above actions make it possible that his administration will push for further arms export control reductions, it’s hard to know what kinds of reduced controls the administration would support without key leadership positions filled within State and Commerce. Within the Commerce Department, it will be important to see who fills the post of assistant secretary for export administration.
Given the amount of commercial arms exports going through the Commerce Department with less oversight, it will also be critical to monitor arms sales and enforcement actions through this new program to ensure that they match U.S. foreign policy interests.
Jeff Abramson 6-7-18 -- nonresident senior fellow for arms control and conventional arms transfers at the Arms Control Association (“Trump Favors Arms Industry in Effort to Loosen
Export Controls” https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2018-06/trump-favors-armsindustry-effort-loosen-export-controls) mba-alb
The Trump administration is pushing to make sweeping changes
in U.S. conventional arms export policies in order to sell more weapons, more quickly, and typically with less transparency and oversight
.
One reason given for these changes—advancing economic security
—is simply faulty. Worse still, the policies are dangerous, creating new risks that these weapons end up in the hands of terrorists and international criminals and further undermining the promotion of human rights norms that should be central to U.S. actions.
In mid-April, the president issued a new conventional arms transfer policy, giving the State Department 60 days to submit an implementation plan. In May, the administration also started a 45-day public comment period on regulatory changes
that would transfer
the control of assault rifles
and other weapons of choice in armed violence
to the Commerce

Department
. If the administration is serious about claims that these changes make for responsible policy, it should add much greater transparency into the arms transfer and monitoring process.
Congress, if it does not act to stop these new approaches, should make sure, at a minimum, that it maintains meaningful oversight to prevent abuses that undermine longstanding U.S. foreign policy objectives designed to avoid fueling conflicts around the world and propping up regimes that do not respect the basic human rights of their people
. Background On April 19, Donald Trump issued a national security presidential memorandum replacing a January 2014 presidential policy directive that, like the 1995 iteration from the Clinton administration, included an unweighted list of criteria to guide decisions on U.S. conventional arms transfers. Common to these policies are goals to improve the security of the United States and its allies, prevent proliferation, and support relevant multilateral agreements. With the backing of major arms producers, the
Trump
approach explicitly adds “economic security” as a factor in considering whether to approve arms exports
.
It promises that “the executive branch will advocate strongly” on behalf of U.S. companies and “maximize the ability” of U.S. industry “to grow and support allies and partners
.” The memorandum retains many of the same provisions regarding human rights as the Obama-era conventional arms transfer policy, although consolidating their reference to a single section rather than reiterating them throughout.
The new policy
, however, does not explicitly say that past records on human rights will be a factor in decisions
.
It does contain a new commitment to
“facilitate” ally and partner efforts “to reduce the risk of national or coalition operations causing civilian harm.
” Whether the implementation plan due soon from the Secretary of State explains how this will be done remains to be seen, but it is expected that training of forces will be touted as a critical component. Such training was written into arms sales last year to Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Proposed changes to the regulation of exports were announced May 14 and published in the Federal Register May 24, beginning a public comment period that ends in July. Specifically, the rules relate to the first three categories of the United States Munitions List (USML) maintained under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), whose lead administrator is the Department of State.
Under the proposal, many items would move from the USML to the Commerce Control List (CCL) to become part of the
Export Administration Regulations (EAR
), whose lead administrator is the Commerce Department.
Most notably, non-automatic and semi-automatic firearms and their ammunition currently controlled under USML category I would move to new EAR 500-series classifications in the CCL.
The primary rationale given for the change is that these weapons no longer merit tight control
. According to the State Department:
The Department of State is engaged in an effort to revise the U.S. Munitions List so that its scope is limited to those defense articles that provide the United States with a critical military or intelligence advantage or, in the case of weapons, are inherently for military end use.
The articles now controlled by USML Categories I, II, and III that would be removed from the USML under this proposed rule do not meet this standard, including many items which are widely available in retail outlets in the United States and abroa d. The revisions were drafted during the previous administration’s export reform control initiative, which sought to build higher fences on fewer items. During Obama’s presidency, action was taken on 18 of the USML’s 21 categories, but frequent mass shootings and an administration more supportive of gun control efforts contributed to the firearms categories going unpublished. Critics of President Trump, such as Senator Ben
Cardin
(D-Md.), have pointed to the domestic U.S. gun lobby as the real driver behind these changes and called the decision to move forward
“ politically tone deaf as our nation reckons with a gun violence epidemic.” Adding in Transparency and Enabling Assessment As the Trump administration works to implement these changes, it should build in transparency and process changes that make it possible to assess whether U.S. arms exports are meeting the stated goals of the new policies. This would not only be good public policy, but such an approach has the potential to address rising congressional and international distress about an administration
that has shown less restraint, including by moving ahead with arms sales to Bahrain, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia that the previous administration had held back on due to serious human rights concerns
. As a start, a public accounting and evaluation of training that might go along with arms sales is desperately needed, especially if it will be a cornerstone of an effort to protect civilians. With another round of controversial precision-guided munition sales expected soon to Saudi Arabia (as well as the UAE), it is imperative that much more is shared about how training is done, who receives it, and whether it works. As the Saudi-led coalition continues to hit civilian areas and an invasion of the port of Hodeida looms that threatens to further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, it is not enough to simply say training is important. It must make a difference. Similarly, much greater transparency into the arms sales process at a public level is critical. Under current procedure Congress is notified of potential major arms sales whether through the foreign military sales (FMS) process or via direct commercial sales (DCS), starting a review period by which it could block agreement to the sale. Unlike FMS notifications, DCS notifications are not posted on a publicly accessible website, giving the American people less time to infor m their representatives of any concerns. If the administration wants to make it easier for companies to negotiate their arms sales, it should also improve transparency into them. While Congress can block or amend an arms sale up until a weapon is delivered, those deliveries often occur years after notification. There is typically much less public attention on arms sales during this period. If the administration wants to speed the time between agreement and delivery, it should agree to also make clear when a delivery is imminent, so as to create predictable moments for oversight. In 2014, Congress created a mechanism for receiving notification at least 30 days before delivery when requested on select sales, but has only used the authority once. The administration s hould instead make this standard on all sales and make it public. Public reporting afterward, via the State Department’s so-called 655 report, also now has less detail than in the past. These reports, as well as others on end-use monitoring, should provide information on the number of specific weapons involved and other data, rather than broad categorical details. Importantly, reports from the Commerce Department should also improve in detail, especially if the changes on firearm exports are put into place that transfer oversight away from the State Department. Without these specifics, it becomes more difficult not only to assess these policy changes, but to further goals such as combating illicit trafficking and weapons flows to terrorists and other unintended users. A recent report from the
Center for Civilians in Conflict and Stimson Center offers an array of good suggestions that run the life of a weapon—from pre-transfer to end-use monitoring—with “trigger” mechanisms along the way that allow for reassessment as situations change. Those recommendations, primarily focused on protecting civilians but also relevant to promoting human rights and international law, deserve strong consideration. The Value of Congressional Oversight In 2002 Congress amended its notification threshold so that it would be informed of potential commercial sales of firearms under USML category I when they were valued at just $1 million, as opposed to $14 million for other major weapons sales. During a Sept. 26 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, then-ranking member
Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) pointed to forestalling small arms sales to Turkey and the Philippines as recent examples of Congress’ needed role. In 2017, the administration notified Congress of more than $660 million of proposed firearms sales regulated under the
USML, according to the Security Assistance Monitor.
No similar statutory requirement of congressional notification exists for most arms sales under the CCL
, meaning Congress would lose its oversight role on these weapons
. It could take steps to require that notification continues. In response to the new measures, Cardin said May 15 For years, I advised both the Obama and Trump Administrations against this type of transfer
. Weakened
Congressional oversight of international small arms and munitions sales is extremely hazardous to global security.
Small arms and light weapons are among the most lethal weapons that we and other countries export because these are the weapons that are most likely to be used to commit atrocities and suppress human rights, either by individuals, non-state groups, or governmental security and para-military forces. While Congress does not have control over the president’s conventional arms transfer policy, it can mandate the types of transparency recommended above, including an expansion on pre-delivery notifications. It could also pass legislation that retains the classification of firearms as military weapons and placement on the USML. The Administration’s Faulty “Economic Security” Excuse According to the latest report from the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States remains the leading and expanding provider of major conventional weapons into a growing international arms market. Russia, long the number two arms exporter, is in decline as Washington accounts for more than one-third of all major weapons deliveries. It begs credulity to argue that the United States needs a special push in order to compete in the international arms market. Linkages of U.S. jobs to international arms sales are also overblown as arms deals frequently come with co-production agreements or other incentives that support jobs abroad rather than at home. At a more fundamental level, U.S. arms are not like any other commodity and should not be treated as such. These are first and foremost killing machines. The over-emphasis on economic security threatens to jeopardize higher priorities, including peace and security concerns.
If more weapons flow to countries with poor human rights records, norms around responsible weapons use and transfer will be harder to build and uphold
. Regarding firearms, these weapons are controlled because a significant amount of violence that occurs, including against U.S. military and law enforcement personnel, is inflicted by small arms. Research indicates that the types of weapons being transferred to Commerce control—AR-15s and AK-47 style assault rifles and their ammunition—are “weapons of choice” of drug trafficking organizations in Mexico and other Latin American countries. Many can also be easily converted to fully automatic weapons, which will remain under USML control. U.S. military members often operate their fully-automatic-capable weapons in a semi-automatic or less-than-automatic mode.
The transfer of firearms

export control to the Department of Commerce will also likely remove a number of brokering registration requirements, may open up license exemptions that facilitate weapons ending up in the wrong hands, and limit legal or investigative actions to stop such results
.
Claiming that these weapons do not have military utility because they may be commercially available, are somehow less dangerous,or do not merit stronger international control, is wrong. In the end, these policies continue the wrong-minded approach of the Trump administration to treat weapons as any other trade commodity, threatening to undermine long-term global security and true U.S. national security interests.
ABA 1-14-13 -- voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students (“Proposals to Relax Export
Controls for Significant Military Equipment” https://bit.ly/2X2o4J6) mba-alb
VI. Implications for Reporting and Notification Requirements
By removing items from the USML, the Administration would also reduce the transparency of U.S. participation in the international arms market
. First, equipment
no longer considered defense articles for the purposes of commercial export licensing would not be tracked
by the State and Defense Department’s Section 655 Annual Military Assistance Reports, mandated by section 655 of the
Foreign Assistance Act, 22 U.S.C. § 2415 (“Section 655 Report”). Section 655 of the FAA requires annual reporting of the “aggregate dollar value and quantity of defense articles . . . authorized by the United States and of such articles . . . provided by the United States
. . . to each foreign country and international organization.” 22 U.S.C. § 2415(b). The Section 655 Report must specify whether the defense article was licensed for export under section 38 of AECA or furnished as part of the Foreign Military Sales (“FMS”) program, 22
U.S.C. § 2311 et seq., including those defense articles furnished with the financial assistance of the United States government, such as through the Foreign Military Financing (“FMF”) program. The State Department Section 655 Reports are limited to those defense articles and defense services licensed for export under AECA as direct commercial sales and do not cover defense articles provided via the FMS program.26 For defense articles licensed for export under 22 U.S.C. § 2778, the State Department must specify “those defense articles that were exported during the fiscal year covered by the report . . . .” 22 U.S.C. § 2415(b)(3). Section 2415(c) requires the unclassified portion of the Section 655 Report to be made available to the public via the Internet. Currently, only the State
Department makes its reports available online.27 As noted above, the State Department’s Section 655 Reports are limited to those items licensed for export under section 38 of AECA; that is, exports of defense articles on the USML
. If items are removed from the USML—and thus are no longer “defense articles” for purposes of section 38 of AECA—then the State Department would no longer be required by the FAA to include information on their export in its Section 655 Report
.
Second, any items removed from the
USML would no longer be included in notifications to Congress required from the President under section 36(c) of AECA, 22 U.S.C. § 2776(c), for transfers of defense articles exceeding certain dollar threshold amounts.
Indeed, with respect to commercially licensed arms sales involving Category I firearms valued at $1 million or more, the President currently must formally notify Congress thirty (30) calendar days prior to the approval of the license
. 22 U.S.C. § 2776(c)(1).
The purpose of the notifications is to provide Congress with an opportunity to review the transaction and, if it disagrees with it, to enact a joint resolution to block or modify
it.28
If firearms are removed from the USML, then they would no longer be covered by section 36(c) of AECA.
By de-listing items from the USML, the State Department would no longer be required to report on the export of these items as part of its Section 655 Reports, which are linked to exports under
AECA, not to exports under the EAA
. To fully understand the degree of military assistance being provided by the Executive Branch,
Congress must have such information at its disposal. In addition, by transferring items to the CCL, Congress will no longer receive notifications regarding items exported under license under section 36(c) of
AECA and thus will not be given an opportunity to weigh in on transactions with potentially far-reaching implications for U.S. foreign policy and national security
.
The Administration’s plan to transfer items from the USML,
therefore, would greatly reduce Congress’s visibility into a substantial portion of the international market for arms and thereby undermine one of AECA’s central purposes.

DOC – BIS ND – Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (“Control of
Firearms, Guns, Ammunition and Related Articles the President Determines No Longer Warrant
Control under the United States Munitions List (USML)” https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/pdfs/2207-05-4-18-signed-commerce-firearmsproposed-rule-delivered-to-ofr-for-publication/file) mba-alb
The EAR also includes well-established and well understood criteria for excluding certain information from the scope of what is “subject to the EAR.” (See part 734 of the EAR.)
Items that would move to the CCL would be subject to existing EAR concepts of jurisdiction and controls related to “development” and “production,” as well operation
, installation, and
maintenance “technology.”
While controlling such “technology,” as well as other “technology” is important, the EAR includes criteria in part 734 that would exclude certain information and software from control. For example, if a gun manufacturer posts a firearm’s operation and maintenance manual on the Internet, making it publicly available to anyone interested in accessing it and without restrictions on further dissemination (i.e., unlimited distribution), the operation and maintenance information included in that published operation and maintenance manual would no longer be “subject to the EAR.” (See §§ 734.3(b) and 734.7(a).) Nonproprietary system descriptions, including for firearms and related items, are another example of information that would not be subject to the EAR. (See § 734.3(b)(3)(v).)
DOD and DOS 2010 (“Section 1248 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year
2010 (Public Law 111 - 84)” https://archive.defense.gov/home/features/2011/0111_nsss/docs/1248_Report_Space_Export
_Control.pdf) mba-alb
§120.9
Defense service (a) A defense service means: (1) The furnishing of assistance (including training) using other than public domain data to foreign persons (see §120.16 of this subchapter), whether in the United States or abroad
, in the design, development, engineering, manufacture, production, assembly, testing, intermediate or depot level repair or maintenance
(see §120.38 of this subchapter), modification, demilitarization, destruction, or processing of defense articles
(see §120.6 of this subchapter); (2
) The furnishing of assistance to foreign persons, whether in the United States or abroad, for the integration of any item controlled on the U.S. Munitions List (USML
) (see §121.1 of this subchapter) or the
Commerce Control List
(see 15 CFR part 774) into an end item (see §121.8(a) of this subchapter) or component (see §121.8(b) of this subchapter) that is controlled as a defense article on the USML, regardless of the origin;

Rowe, 13 - Judge Advocate, United States Air Force; Major (Derek, “FOREIGN MILITARY
SALES (FMS), PSEUDO-FMS, AND A RESPONSE TO THE GAO--IS PSEUDO-FMS THE WAY
FORWARD?” 69 A.F. L. Rev. 199, lexis)
Pseudo-FMS is the name of the process that uses the FMS procedural framework, but instead of selling defense articles and services to a customer country, the U nited
S tates funds the purchase and transfer using appropriated funds . n79 Pseudo-FMS cases , in their present form, began after September 11, 2001. n80 In 2007, Senator Carl Levin , then-Chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, visited Iraq and found that FMS cases averaged 250 days in length from LOR to delivery
. n81 Senator Levin wrote that half that time (125 days) is "still too long," which may have prompted processing of Pseudo-FMS cases in Iraq. n82 However, regardless of when Pseudo-FMS began, it is designed to arm U.S. allies and friendly countries
[*210] that may lack financial resources, and to do so more rapidly than through traditional
FMS procedures . n83
The funds used for Pseudo-FMS are generally found in the National Defense Authorization
Act (NDAA) and the Department of Defense Appropriations Act (DoDAA). n84 However, supplemental appropriations that are currently being used to fund Pseudo-FMS cases include the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF), the Iraq Security Forces Fund (ISFF), the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund (PCF), and the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability
Fund (PCCF). n85
A. Pseudo-FMS Framework and Pseudo-FMS Players
Pseudo-FMS does not fit under the same AECA provisions that FMS does because it is not a sale to a foreign country or authorized customer, n86 which may be why it is referred to as
"Pseudo." n87 In implementing the AECA, the ITAR addresses the FMS program at section
126.6(c), but even the most current version dated April 1, 2011, fails to mention Pseudo-FMS . n88
Although Pseudo-FMS procedures
largely mirror FMS procedures
, as prescribed by the
SAMM, the statutory authority for Pseudo-FMS falls under either the FAA, section 632(b), or a different AECA provision , section 38(b)(2). n89 This can be a source of confusion for export licensing [*211] purposes because the ITAR, 126.6(c), exempts all FMS cases from licensing requirements, while Pseudo-FMS cases are not exempt. n90
Although the administrative procedures are similar for Pseudo-FMS and FMS, the personnel typically performing Pseudo-FMS procedures are more frequently active duty military. n91
The majority of funds spent on Pseudo-FMS cases during the last fiscal year went through
Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) and the Iraq Security
Assistance Mission (ISAM). n92 Both CSTC-A and ISAM are under the control of United
States Central Command (CENTCOM). n93 Additionally,
[t]he organizations in Afghanistan and Iraq can loosely be termed "pseudo-SCOs" for a variety of reasons. First, their mission, including operational advice and training, exceeds that of a normal SCO under U.S. law. Second, these organizations are part of operational commands, rather than U.S. embassy country teams. As such, they do not report to the U.S.
Ambassador, but to the GCC [Geographic Combatant Commander] through [military] channels. n94

Thus, at CSTC-A and ISAM, where high volumes of Pseudo-FMS cases are processed, judge advocates play an essential role. n95 As the number and value of Pseudo-FMS cases continues to rise
, more judge advocates who understand FMS and Pseudo-FMS will be necessary.
(footnotes) n86 22 U.S.C. § 2751, 38(b)(2). The introductory language of the AECA specifically refers to approving "sales," and items which are "sold" and "exported.
" Id. Credit for this observation, and for the remainder of this subsection belongs to Lt Col John "Ricau" Heaton, DSCA
Deputy Gen. Counsel, via e-mail (Nov. 1, 2011, 1608 EST) (on file with author). n87 A pseudo-FMS transaction has the appearance of a FMS transaction, but is not actually one because it is not a sale to a foreign customer. The author suggests that a more transparent name could be helpful to those not generally familiar with FMS, such as Mlitary Assistance
Program via FMS Procedures.

Rowe, 13 - Judge Advocate, United States Air Force; Major (Derek, “FOREIGN MILITARY
SALES (FMS), PSEUDO-FMS, AND A RESPONSE TO THE GAO--IS PSEUDO-FMS THE WAY
FORWARD?” 69 A.F. L. Rev. 199, lexis)
As these examples demonstrate, foreign military assistance is an important part of U.S. foreign policy. n11 This fact is underlined by upward trends in U.S. arms export value. n12
The United States has been the world's largest exporter of arms since 1992. n13 Since 2000, the United States sold defense articles and services to over 100 countries. n14 The primary method, by dollar value, of arming U.S. allies and friendly countries is Foreign Military Sales
(FMS).
FMS reached $ 28 billion in sales in 1993, largely due to the Gulf War. n15 2008 FMS figures exceeded $ 28 billion, and in 2009, FMS agreements reached $ 30.6 billion. n16 Pseudo-FMS is also a type of foreign security cooperation in which the U nited S tates, instead of selling arms or services
to a foreign country, procures them from defense contractors using U.S.appropriated funds and transfers the arms to allies or friendly countries.
n17 Pseudo-FMS agreements totaled an additional $ 6.5 billion in 2009. n18 Thus, FMS and Pseudo-FMS transfers are big business in terms of dollars, and they can have even greater foreign policy effects by shaping the outcome when armed conflicts erupt. n19
GAO, 17 United States Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability
Office is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States. “FOREIGN MILITARY SALES: DOD Needs to Improve Its
Use of Performance Information to Manage the Program.” GAO, United States Government
Accountability Office, Aug. 2017, www.gao.gov/assets/690/686720.pdf
. // ank
The United States provides military equipment and training to partner countries through a variety of programs. Foreign partners may pay the U.S. government to administer the acquisition of materiel and services on their behalf through the FMS program. The
United States also provides grants to some foreign partners through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program to fund the partner’s purchase of materiel and services through the process used for FMS. In recent years,
Congress has expanded the number of security cooperation programs to include several new programs with funds appropriated to the Department of Defense (DOD), as well as administered and implemented by
DOD, that focus on building partner capacity. In this report, we refer to these programs as
“pseudo-FMS” cases
. FMS and pseudo-FMS transactions follow the same process, but the roles, responsibilities, and actors involved can differ. One important difference highlighted by DOD and Department of State (State) officials is that with FMS, there is a much greater level of involvement on the part of the partner country in defining requirements and developing the Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOA). As a result
, the amount of time it takes to develop FMS cases on average will tend to exceed the time it takes for pseudo-FMS cases
. According to DOD and State officials, there may also be differences in the types of equipment that tend to be provided via FMS as opposed to pseudo-FMS cases. For example, pseudo-FMS is not typically used to provide complex weapons systems with long production cycles such as advanced fighter aircraft.
According to DOD and State officials, pseudo-FMS cases are often prioritized
because the funds used for these programs generally are only available for obligation for 1 or 2 years, depending on the program. These officials note that funds for traditional FMF programs do not have such time constraints. As a result
, pseudo-FMS cases are, on average,
processed faster than FMS cases
. Army and Air Force officials noted that pseudo-FMS cases tend to be more labor

intensive than FMS cases for several reasons. For example, according to Air Force officials, pseudoFMS cases often involve items that frequently require a new contract because the item is not part of the Air Force inventory. For that reason, Air Force officials noted that they cannot modify an existing contract to add additional items. Army officials said that pseudo-FMS cases require more work because of the nature of expiring funds. This requires an acceleration of almost all their processes.

Inspector General for the Department of Defense, “Evaluation of Department of Defense Efforts to Build Counterterrorism and Stability Operations Capacity of Foreign Military Forces with
Section 1206/2282 Funding” July 21, 2017 https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/19/2001858653/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2017-099.PDF//dmr https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/19/2001858653/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2017-099.PDF
Pseudo Foreign Military Sales Case Processes
DoD Instruction 5111.19 directed the DSCA to use “the foreign military sales (FMS) pseudo-case process” to execute approved Section 1206 projects. The process is useful when the U.S.
Government uses its own funds, instead of a partner nation’s using its government funds, to purchase equipment, services, or training. FMS processes, as well as FMS pseudo-case processes, help to ensure compliance with important DoD national security safeguards, such as
U.S. export restrictions and visibility at key points in the procurement and transportation processes. Also, these procedures enhance the accountability and control of U.S.-supplied equipment after delivery. However, in certain Section 1206 cases that we reviewed, the procurement and delivery processes used did not enable the DoD to fully meet the needs of partner-nation security forces.
Findings
The FMS pseudo case procurement and delivery processes used for
Section 1206/2282 led to:
• the substitution of less compatible or inappropriate equipment for the requested or required equipment; and
• delayed or unsynchronized delivery of some equipment, training, and services.

[Nina Serafino is a specialist in International Security Affairs, “Security Assistance
Reform: “Section 1206” Background and Issues for Congress”, Congressional Research Service,
12/8/14, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22855.pdf]//a.bhaiji
Although the primary rationale for
Section
1206 funding was that it would enable the U.S.
government to respond more quickly to emerging needs than possible under the FMF process
, the delivery of Section
1206 equipment has not always proved as expeditious as originally expected. DOD stated in a FY2009 budget request document that
Section 1206 authority “allows a response to urgent and emergent threats or opportunities in six months or less.”24 Especially in
Section 1206’s first several years, the actual delivery time for much equipment was considerably longer.25
By continuously improving the delivery process, DOD has reduced the timelines for delivery
. A revised timeline calls for delivery within 18 months, and preferably 12 months, for routine deliveries, and 6 months when needed to meet surge requirements. DOD is now striving to deliver many articles in less than six months from the end of the 15-day congressional notification period. Nevertheless, in comparison to other equipping programs, an April 2010 GAO report cast Section 1206 response timeframes, overall, as an improvement. That report stated that
Section 1206 funds enabled DOD and State “to respond to urgent and emergent needs more quickly than they have been able to do with FMF and other security assistance programs
.” GAO found that these agencies “have often formulated and begun implementing projects within 1 fiscal year, while FMF projects have usually required up to 3 years of planning.”26 More recently, some analysts find that
the winding down of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan has also had a
positive effect on the timeliness and cost of deliveries. With demand down for their services, commercial shippers are now competing for business, facilitating rapid delivery and reducing
costs
. Delays have multiple causes, not all of which can be remedied. Delivering defense articles and services to U.S. representatives in multiple partner nations, with national customs and import processes, presents unique challenges. According to
DSCA, in FY2014 there were some 156 deliveries (with an estimated value of more than $300 million) to 29 Section 1206 programs in more than 25 countries. These deliveries included aircraft, armored vehicles, communications equipment, weapons, ammunition, and individual equipment. Over the years, programs have been held up because of events in a recipient country. In other cases, however, the causes have been systemic processing problems at DSCA and at the military services contracting offices that affect
Section 1206 timelines. DOD and the State Department have worked arduously to overcome numerous obstacles to timely delivery.
Together, they developed processes to expedite proposal development and selection.
The
Defense Security Cooperation Agency
(
DSCA
), which administers the program, increased the amount of staff time and created new procedures and mechanisms to expedite deliveries
. In particular, DSCA has provided a dedicated staff to oversee the delivery process,27 developed a computer-based delivery tracking tool, established a working partnership with the U.S. Transportation
Command, and instituted a centralized delivery system to expedite Section 1206 orders.28 These steps have provided greater accountability and predictability, according to those interviewed on this topic. DSCA also created an online Security Cooperation
Management Suite (SCMS) to track funds, including Section 1206 funds, as well as a web portal to share Section 1206 data.
Nevertheless, quick delivery of items in high demand with a limited number of suppliers, such as night-vision goggles, remains difficult.

Wendela de Vries 4-23-13 -- co-ordinator of the Dutch campaign organization Stop
Wapenhandel/Stop Arms Trade (www.stoparmstrade.org) and an activist in the European
Network Against Arms Trade. (We have an Arms Trade Treaty - What difference does it make?” https://www.wri-irg.org/en/story/2013/we-have-arms-trade-treaty-what-difference-does-itmake “) mba-alb
According to the Control Arms Coalition
, which lobbied for a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), we have reached “the dawn of a new era”
now that the UN General Assembly has adopted the treaty. With this treaty, “history has been made” and we “finally can end arms exports to human rights violators.” Critical voices are put aside as “the tiny minority of sceptics who were intent on wrecking the process” and the blame for the initial failure to adopt the treaty is put on Iran, Syria and North Korea. UN Secretary-General called the treaty “a victory for the people of the world”. With such oversimplified communication one cannot escape the impression that some people try to clamour down their own doubt. There is quite some gap between what the international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) really is and what these press statements suggest it to be, and it is worthwhile to listen to the – often non-western – voices to understand this. That the treaty has been adopted in the General Assembly with “overwhelming majority” can not conceal the fact that it was not just three pariah states that voted against the treaty. Twenty-three countries (representing half the world's population) abstained from voting , including Russia, China and India. Critique also came from national campaigners against arms trade, who, from experience, did not expect much new from a UN treaty and even feared it might backlash on their campaigns. The critique can be summarized in three points: 1) An international treaty is not the right instrument to stop arms trade 2) The treaty is reinforcing the power of western arms exporters and legitimizing their debatable policies 3) The treaty is not questioning arms production but on the contrary facilitates the arms industry No big expectations The big achievement of the ATT is that “each State Party shall establish and maintain a national control system
to regulate the export.” Under this control system, countries shall assess whether the arms could be used for human rights violations, diverted to the illegal market, undermine peace and security or seriously undermine socio-economic development of the importing country. The interesting thing is that such a control system
already exists in
most of the dominant arms exporting countries: the United States
, the European Union, and several countries following EU regulations on arms trade. What can we learn from these existing systems? That arms continue to be exported to Pakistan, Saudi-Arabia, Libya, Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, Colombia and Sri
Lanka, to name just a few questionable destinations. Because not only are there no sanctions on ignoring the rules, the rules are deliberately formulated in a way that leaves plenty of room for interpretation
. It all depends on the foreign policy of the exporting state. Under the ATT, countries have to assess whether there is an “overriding risk”
that arms will end up in wrong hands or at wrong places. Fifteen years of experience with
European Union arms export regulation has taught , that, notably in cases of big commercial or strategical interest, the outcome of such an assessment tends to be that risks are just not 'overriding'
.
Yes, the importing country
might be a human rights violator, but this specific weapon will probably not be used to violate human rights
.
Or yes the country is involved in armed conflict, but at present there is pause in the fighting so no problem in exporting
.
Yes, the country is extremely poor, but it really needs an expensive weapon system because of its “legitimate security needs
”.
Assessment done, obligations met, export is legitimised
. In this way
, arms exporting regulations are more effective in
'green washing' arms exports than in seriously limiting the risk of exports to nasty destinations.
That the ATT is unlikely to change this has been exposed by the British Campaign Against Arms Trade, which published some illustrative examples. Libya has announced to allocate
$4.7 billion, about 10% of its national budget, to acquire advanced weapons systems. Libya thinks it has to 'catch up' after having been under embargo for many years. At the very moment the ATT was agreed on in New York British ministers were in Libya – aboard a warship – to promote British arms. The British are in a hurry because Libya is also looking at Chinese and Russian arms offers. To the previous ATT negotiations in New York, last summer, the British government – a leading advocate of the ATT – only sent a junior minister. The Prime Minister at that time led a delegation of 15 of his ministers, most of them with an arms sales brief, at the 2012 Farnborough Airshow. How effective is a piece of paper?
Defence cooperation agreements by States Parties are excluded from the ATT, so it will have no effect on the extensive military transfers
from the US under the Foreign Military Sales program.
The US is giving an annual $1.3 billion military aid to Egypt despite the increasing intolerance of the Morsi regime
.
Another $3.1 billion is going to Israel every year
. Other countries receiving US arms include Pakistan and Iraq. But who really ever expected the US to give up strategically important and profitable arms exports over a
UN treaty
? The Iranian delegate had a point when he said the
ATT made arms trade subject to the “extremely subjective assessment of the exporting states.”
That Russia and China (together with the US and the EU responsible for most of the world's arms export) do not support the treaty, makes it easy to frame them as the bad guys and put the blame of human rights violations and conflicts on them. This is convenient to please the western public opinion. But the real difference is not in their different arms export policies – all based on national self-interest
– but in the fact that public opinion in western countries does matter. Therefore western countries need pieces of paper like an ATT, to express their good intentions against the critical public opinion on arms trade. Russia and China have other, more brutal methods to deal with dissent.
Then what will the ATT be, if not just another piece of paper full of good intentions
? Probably the ATT will make a difference for the arms trade between smaller countries. The ATT might help some countries to set up a control system. It might help create international funds for such a control system. This is one of the reasons many African countries voted in favour of the treaty. The hope is that this may also help the fight against the illicit arms trade. This is a good thing, although one should remember that a lot of illicit arms trade started with legitimate arms trade from the big arms exporting countries, something the ATT will not change. And would it not have been more effective to just set up a program to help African and other states protect their borders against arms smugglers? One does not need an ATT for that.
Arms trade is essential for military superiority
The whole campaign for an ATT starts from the presumption that an international treaty is an effective instrument to regulate the international arms trade, and that

without an ATT we do not have an instrument to limit the arms trade. Both presumptions are wrong. Ever since we have had the Declaration of Human Rights (and please remember that human rights include the right to food, clothing, housing and medical care), we have an instrument to question arms trade to human rights abusers, conflict zones and poor countries. A new international treaty only makes this more specific, but as long as this treaty is as unenforceable as the Declaration of Human Rights, we are not creating a substantially new instrument. Although the ATT is a juridical binding document states cannot be brought to court when arms are exported to a human rights violator. Even if all member states of the United Nations would ratify the ATT (50 ratifications are needed for the treaty to enter into force), it will be the decision of individual states if they live up to the treaty or not. They will have a moral obligation, but there are no legal sanctions when states ignore the ATT. Actually, arms exporting states would never have agreed to an ATT if there had been sanctions included. Ar ms trade is an important element to create military partnerships and dependencies
. It is an essential instrument of foreign policy and military dominance.
The arms exporting military powers will never hand over their autonomy on arms trade
to any international treaty or body.
They want to arm their allies as they like, whatever the poverty, war or human rights records of these allies.
No limitations, just rules
The ATT is a treaty to regulate, not to restrict the arms trade.
It is definitely not a disarmament treaty. When the Control Arms Coalition claims that there are too many arms floating freely over the world one can only agree, but it is the free flow, not the amount that is the object of the ATT. As it says in Article 1 of the ATT: “The object of this Treaty is to establish the highest possible common international standards for regulating or improving the regulation of the international trade in conventional arms; and to prevent and eradicate the illicit trade in conventional arms and prevent their diversion to the illicit market, or unauthorized end use, including to individuals or groups who would commit terrorist acts.” Indian journalist Seema Sengupta notes that the treaty “pays no attention whatsoever to restricting and stream lining arms manufacturing” and for this blames
“the powerful lobby of manufacturers and exporting nations.”
She definitely has a point. Many western arms companies
were added as advisors to government delegations to the ATT negotiations. They made sure their interests were secured in the treaty
. As a consequence the ATT “recognizes the legitimate political, security, economic and commercial interests of States in the international trade in conventional arms”. With this text the treaty goes much further in legitimizing arms trade than does Article 51 of the UN charter which attributes to states the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defence” . It recognises the right to make profit from war.
A Bolivian diplomat called the treaty “the product of a death industry”. Interestingly, arms deliveries to non-state actors do not fall under the treaty. But what is a terrorist and what is a non-state actor? This is up to the exporting country to decide.
The 'non-state actors' were left out because the UK wanted to send arms to the Free Syrian Army, which, at present at least, are considered freedom fighters. Arming Hamas in Palestine of course will not count as support for freedom fighting but as support for terrorism.
The ATT leaves the decision open to point of view, not to objective standards.
Ted Bromund 7-27-12 -- senior research fellow in The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, at the Washington-based think tank, The Heritage Foundation (“The meme of the ‘weak’ Arms
Trade Treaty” http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1458/the_meme_of_the_weak_arms_trade_treaty) mba-alb
Let’s get this clear:
This conference
, like the U.N., is based on sovereign states
.
And when those states submitted their views on the ATT, they wanted one thing out of it
.
Not higher standards on arms exports, and not respect for human rights
.
They wanted the ATT to recognize their national right to buy, sell, and transfer arms
.
That is
not my interpretation. It is what the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research found in 2007 when it analyzed all the views
that had been submitted.
So when Control Arms complains that one flaw in the current draft is that it allows states to “make their own judgements irrespective of the criteria” in the treaty, what they are really complaining about is something that has been inherent in the treaty from Day One: far from stopping the worst aspects of the arms trade, the treaty will tend to legitimize them. You can include as many human rights standards as you wish, but in a world of sovereign states, a national right to buy, sell, and transfer means the bad actors will not be restrained, because they will pocket the right you have conceded them and ignore the standards you are trying to impose.
Elizabeth Powers 2008 -- law clerk for the Honorable Kristine DeMay. She received a B.A. in political science and international relations from the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 2004 and a J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law in 2007. (“Greed, Guns And Grist: U.S. Military
Assistance And Arms Transfers To Developing Countries” https://law.und.edu/_files/docs/ndlr/pdf/issues/84/2/84ndlr383.pdf) mba-alb

II.
THE U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE AND ARMS TRANSFER SCHEMA
The Congo Conflict is not a machete massacre.17 Millions of SA/LW units and conventional weaponry continue to wreak havoc within DR Congo’s borders.18 The United States provided several forms of military assistance to the DR Congo before the Congo Conflict.19 Military assistance, given to DR Congo and other developing countries is governed by the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA).20 Forms of military assistance include International Military Education and Training (IMET)21 and the provision of Excess Defense Articles (EDA).22 Congress has codified parameters for the provision of IMET.23 The
President may provide IMET to military and related civilian personnel of friendly foreign countries.24 IMET training and education is largely provided via foreign military members’ attendance at U.S. operated military facilities.25 Congress’ ostensible purpose in providing IMET is to encourage beneficial relations and understanding between the United States and foreign countries, to further international peace and security,26 to improve the ability of foreign countries to utilize their resources and become selfreliant,27 and to increase recipient countries’ awareness of human rights.28 In 2002, Congress imposed a requirement that the Secretary of State track IMET participants’ human rights records.29 Congress has also placed restrictions on presidential discretion in the provision of
EDA.30 The President may transfer EDA if such transfers are proposed to Congress in one of three ways.31 First, the President may justify the transfer in his or her annual congressional presentation documents for military assistance programs (Presidential
Justifications).32 Second, he or she may show that the transfer falls under another permissible provision of the FAA.33 Third, if the President did not justify the transfer in his or her annual Justifications, he or she may separately authorize it within the same calendar year of the desired transfer.34 The President’s Justifications must explain the purposes of the transfer, its value, and whether the transfer was on a grant or sale basis.35 The President is limited to EDA transfers which are drawn from existing Department of Defense stocks,36 and which do not require Department of Defense funds for shipping.37 The President’s Justifications must show that the transfer will not affect U.S. military preparedness,38 that the foreign policy benefits of a sale as opposed to a grant have been weighed,39 and that the sale will not adversely affect U.S. business interests.40 The President is required to notify Congress thirty days in advance of a transfer in excess of $7 million or of a designated defense article.41 Cumulative transfers may not exceed $425 million annually.42 EDA transfers or an IMET allotment made on grant basis for over $3 million requires the President to find that the recipient country complies with the United Nations Charter and that the recipient will only use the defense articles for selfdefense.43 In addition to the Presidential Justifications, each year the Department of State submits Budget Justifications for the next fiscal year to fund EDA and IMET programs on a country-bycountry, program-by-program basis.44
Military assistance, however, is merely one piece in the large mosaic of arms transfers. In the private sphere, U.S. weapons manufacturers considerably outsell their competitors
.
Private sales to the
DR Congo during the Cold War and afterwards were commonplace.
45 Private sales are governed by the Arms Export Control Act (AECA).46 By
Executive Order No. 11958,47 the President delegated authority to enforce private arms sales regulations under the AECA to the Secretary of State.48 The State Department issued the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to implement this authority.49
Pursuant to the AECA, the President must provide Congress with a classified report of all sales eligible for approval during the calendar year greater than $7 million.50 Similar to FAA requirements, the President must provide additional information to Congress if so requested.51 Under the AECA, the President is required to notify Congress of any offer to sell more than $25 million in defense goods or services to a foreign client.52 Congress may block the proposed sale by a joint resolution disapproving the sale, which is subject to a presidential veto.53 The AECA further provides that defense articles and services on the President’s United States Munitions List (Munitions List)54 are subject to registration and licensing requirements.55 The Munitions List has twentyone categories, which range from items solely for military use to items that have civil application.56 The AECA targets private individuals engaged in the man ufacture, export, import, or the brokering of items on the Munitions List.57 Individuals who willfully violate the AECA may b e subject to criminal penalties.58 The AECA and ITAR do not apply extraterritorially.59
Despite substantial regulation, criticism has been levied at the
State Department’s export licensing procedures, which often involve lost applications, inconsistent licensing decisions, and processing delays
.60 The U.S. system of dual jurisdiction between the State Department and the Commerce Department has likewise been ridiculed.61
Although arms assistance and SA/LW sales and transfers are highly regulated, loopholes exist.
The Department of Defense engages in largely unmonitored Joint Combined Exchange
Training (JCET
).62 The JCET programs are similar to IMET in that military personnel from other countries participate in military training.63
The JCET programs do not
, however, have the same level of congressional oversight as IMET programs
, nor do they require similar Presidential Justifications.64
JCET programs have recently come under considerable scrutiny
.65 In 1999, a
G eneral
A ccounting
O ffice
Report
to Congress found that the
D epartment o f
D efense had not accurately accounted for the
number of JCET programs or their costs
.66 To correct the problem the International Military Training Transparency and
Accountability Act (Transparency and Accountability Act) was introduced the same year.67 The Transparency and Accountability Act would essentially close the JCET loophole and prohibit all forms of military training and services to countries that are ineligible for
IMET.68 The Transparency and Accountability Act was referred to the House International Relations Committee where it has languished for almost eight years.69
Where Congress took action, for example, on sales to sub-Saharan African countries
, oversight has been lax.70
Sales
to countries who participated in the
Congo Conflict may be viewed in light of
22 U.S.C. §
2773
.71
Section 2773 states Congress’ preference against selling military articles
and defense services to Sub-Saharan Africa.72
Section 2773 does not bind the President; rather it puts him or her on notice that Congress may bind him or her at a later date if he or she does not act consistently with Congress’ preferences
.73
Despite Congress’ preference against arms transfers to Sub-Saharan Africa, U.S. manufactured arms continued to pour across borders throughout the Congo Conflict
, as well as the civil wars in Liberia, Angola, and Sierra Leone.74
The abundance of U.S. manufactured and supplied arms in conflict zones was largely the result of applicants indicating the arms were for enduser sales, which would pass muster under ITAR
.75 These applicants later sold the articles to countries or groups under embargos.76
In 1996,
Congress recognized the difficulties presented by end-user sales to parties under an embargo by amending Section 2785
of the AECA.77
The amendment requires the D epartment o f
D efense to monitor end-user sales with the objective of providing “reasonable assurances that . . . the recipient is complying with the requirements imposed . . . with respect to the use, transfers, and security of defense articles and defense services.”78 The end-use monitoring program has been deemed critical for maintaining physical accountability and security for weapons.79
The program,
however, has had only limited success
, as sales are still permitted to end-users in developing countries that abut conflict zones
.80
.
In 1999, the
McKinney-Rohrabacher Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers (
Code of Conduct) was introduced
.81 Essentially, the Code of Conduct requires presidential certification to Congress that the recipient country of U.S. military assistance and arms transfers is democratic, respects human rights, is not engaged in acts of armed aggression, and fully participates in the UN register of conventional arms.82
Like the Transparency and Accountability Act, the Code of Conduct died quietly and has awaited an Executive Comment since 1999
.83
An example of the present inconsistencies in U.S. policy regarding military assistance and arms transfers are the Cameroon provisions
. In 2006, the United States provided $236,000 in foreign military assistance to Cameroon.84 In the 2007 Budget Justifications,85 the State Department acknowledged that Cameroon’s “democratic institutions are weak, corruption remains a real problem, and human rights abuses by Cameroon’s police and gendarmes forces are a concern.”86 According to the 2007 Budget Justifications, IMET funds were to be used “for professional military development courses stressing resource management, [and] civilian-military relations.”87 The 2007 Budget Justifications also highlight Cameroon’s eligibility to receive EDA on a grant basis pursuant Section 516 of the FAA.88 The 2007 Budget Justifications state that the material would be used by the government of Cameroon for internal security, counter-narcotic activities, peacekeeping deployments, and military modernization efforts.89
The Human Rights Country Report for
Cameroon
, also published by the State
Department, highlights several human rights violations.90 Violations by Cameroon’s security forces include “numerous unlawful killings by security forces[,] regular torture, beatings, and other abuses of persons . . . by security forces[,] impunity among the security forces[,] severe limits on citizens’ ability to change their government[,] restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association.”91
Yet

the 2007 Budget Justifications noted that “Cameroon is a stable country in which the government has been effective in managing ethnic and linguistic diversity
.”92
A possible explanation for the inconsistencies between the Country Report and the Budget Justifications is a possible bureaucratic wall within the State Department
.93
The present loopholes and proscribed nature of the FAA and AECA and implementing procedures promulgated by the State
Department reflect the need to correct problems arising from the provision of military assistance and unregulated arms sales to developing countries
. Examining the disastrous effect that the combination of weapons sales, military assistance, cold war tensions, and corrupt politics had in DR Congo, evidences a compelling need for further revision of the FAA and AECA.
Neil Cooper 1-24-07 -- Director of the School of Peace and Conflict Studies at Kent State.
(“What's the point of arms transfer controls?” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13523260600603188) mba-alb
NBC and Conventional Arms Control: Explaining Relative Success and Failure I should first note the exceptions to the proposition that current arms transfer controls are mostly acts of tokenism
. In particular, despite the current concern about NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical weapons) proliferation to states such as Iran or North Korea, the existing non-proliferation instruments for NBC technology have been relatively successful.
This is particularly the case with respect to the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT). As Cirincione has noted, for instance, ‘the number of prospective nuclear nations has shrunk dramatically over the past twenty years, not increased; there are thousands fewer ballistic missiles in the world today than fifteen years ago; and there are far fewer countries possessing any weapons of mass destruction than there were twenty, thirty, or forty years ago’.1 However, three factors have made nuclear non-proliferation in particular reasonably effective. First, there is the existence of relatively high technological barriers to entry and the scarce availability of key materials. Second, the disciplinary mechanisms developed to constrain proliferation are both severe and, crucially, enforced with a relative degree of rigour. These mechanisms now range from pre-emptive (pre-crime?) invasion, through to sanctions, relatively rigorous implementation of existing control regimes and diplomatic isolation. Third, formal control initiatives have been underpinned by a powerful (and almost universal) norm against NBC proliferation and use. Of course, what is particularly notable about conventional arms transfer control compared with restraints on NBC technology is the marked lack of political will to develop meaningful controls and to enforce those that have been developed
. There is thus a profound asymmetry that exists between the disciplinary mechanisms deployed to prevent NBC proliferation and those deployed to prevent the spread of conventional weapons. This is in spite of the fact that it has been conventional arms that have been the principal tools of war, internal conflict and genocide in the post-Cold War era. For example
, the imposition of UN embargoes on the trade in arms and, more recently, the trade in conflict goods
(civil goods that are traded from a conflict zone to generate funds for the prosecution of war – e.g. conflict diamonds) are now an established element in the armoury of the international community
when faced with a conflict or an odious regime.
Despite this, however, many conflicts do not become the subject of such restrictions
– whether as a function of neglect or of the political interests of the major powers on the
Security Council.
Thus, whilst there were 19 major armed conflicts in 2004 there were just nine UN arms embargoes in force in the same year (one of which was non-mandatory).2
Where embargoes are imposed
, however, the record of
sanctions in cutting off arms supplies and changing odious behaviour on the ground is, in reality, poor to non-existent.
3 UN embargoes may increase the cost and difficulty of arms acquisition by forcing actors onto the black market, but the reality is that most actors in conflicts experience little difficulty in sourcing arms from the international market-place. A telling, and typical, indictment of the effectiveness of sanctions was provided by the UN Experts Panel on Liberia when it noted: Despite nine years of an embargo on arms and military equipment to Liberia, a steady supply of weapons has reached the country. Indeed, in their conversations with the panel, the Liberian authorities appeared not bothered about the embargo and never complained about it.4 Partly, this reflects the sophistication of globalized illicit supply networks (see below), but it also reflects the international community’s ultimate disinterest in developing the means to make sanctions more effective. Consequently, even where sanctions are enacted by the UN, actual implementation remains ineffective. In the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for instance, there was an eight month delay between the imposition of an arms embargo on armed groups operating in North and South Kivu and the creation of a Committee to actually monitor compliance with the embargo.5 Similarly, funds for the provision of sanctions monitors on the ground, or to provide capacity building support for neighbouring states to better implement sanctions, are usually notable by their absence. Nor is the provision of compensation f or the economic impact of arms or commodity embargoes imposed by the UN an automatic feature of such embargoes. Thus, the economic incentive for neighbours to breach embargoes is often strong, whilst the risk of detection remains small. This is the international equivalent of passing a law against murder and then failing to provide funds for the creation of a homicide unit. Moreover, even where
sanctions violators are revealed, the consequences
for them are often negligible
. Violating states rarely receive more than a diplomatic fingerwagging. There is no direct and automatic financial penalty on a scale that might make serial recidivists pause for thought. As will be noted below, this contrasts sharply with many other areas of international regulation. Similarly, national
defence-industrial champions often benefit from the benevolence of their governments
, whose greater concern is to keep the national champion ticking over rather than to address wrongdoing on the part of what is constructed as the legitimate side of the arms market ( see David Mutimer in this volume). Even some of the most well known operators in the illicit market have, however, managed to function with relative impunity. For instance, since the early 1990s the notorious arms dealer Victor Bout has been implicated in sanctions busting arms supplies to a variety of conflicts using a network of over 50 aircraft and several airline companies operating in different parts of the world. However, although Interpol ultimately issued an international arrest warrant for Bout, he still felt confident enough to give a live interview to CNN at its Moscow bureau.6 A similar picture is evident when one examines the network of national or regional arms export criteria. Thus, despite the British Labour government’s apparent commitment to an ethical arms sales policy, the export criteria it developed on coming to power looked little different from the permissive policy of its predecessor, and implementation has been even more disappointing.7 The same applies to the EU’s much-vaunted Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (CoC). Consequently, whilst the Code has brought some increase in transparency and has served as a vehicle for EU co-operation on the regulation of arms exports, it is still best described as a form of weak regulatory tokenism – part of a broader process by which all but the most dubious of arms transfers (and sometimes not even those) are provided with a formal veneer of legitimacy. As one report by EU NGOs noted in 2004, ‘it remains a moot point as to whether the CoC has actually led to increased restraint in EU arms exporting’.8 Thus, neither British nor EU policy has prevented a s uccession of export scandals from turning Labour’s ethical arms sales policy into an international embarrassment. These include: the decision to continue the sale of Hawk jets to Indonesia, and successive scandals over ‘arms to Africa’ (Sierra Leone); over the supply of Hawk spares to Zimbabwe; over Tony Blair’s drum-beating for British arms exports to India at a time of heightened tension with Pakistan over Kashmir; over the revelation of alleged sweeteners paid by British Aerospace (BAe) to Qatar and corresponding accusations of government pressure to abandon the investigation into these issues; over the use of British equipment by both Israel and Indonesia in offensive operations that breached end-user assurances; over the sale of unnecessary and uneconomic defence equipment to both South Africa and Tanzania; and over the continued primacy of the Al
Yamamah contract with Saudi Arabia and its corrupting influence on British domestic and foreign policy.9 Similarly, the EU code has not prevented Italian small arms sales to a variety of countries experiencing conflict or engaged in human rights abuse, including
Colombia, Eritrea, Indonesia, India, Israel, Kazakhstan and Nigeria, or reports that France has exported defence equipment to Sudan.10
The record is of fine-sounding words, which are then undermined by loopholeridden lowest common denominator regulations. Indeed, this is the record in the better performing states
. In the case of the worst offenders, the very leadership of the state systematically profits from the trade in arms or conflict goods
– either through the receipt of bribes from arms sellers or by profiting from sales. For instance, successive reports from the UN and from the NGO Global Witness have highlighted the personal pecuniary interest of the former Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, in the trade in arms and conflict diamonds to and from Sierra Leone,11 and the way in which top-level officials from the former Zaire, Burkina Faso and Togo facilitated arms transfers to UNITA in exchange for diamonds or a proportion of the arms.12 It is also the case that both UN arms embargoes and national/regional export criteria remain highly selective in their application. Thus, either in construction or in implementation, global

arms transfer controls tend to be deployed as selective instruments of punishment against those
(currently) deemed strategic enemies or political pariahs, rather than as a universal and impartial control mechanism
. For example, in the wake of 9/11 the EU reinterpreted its arms embargo on Afghanistan so that it only applied to Taliban controlled areas, thus exempting the Northern Alliance – an initiative which brought the EU into line with the existing UN embargo imposed in December 2000.13 Liberia has been subject to embargoes on diamonds, timber and arms for supporting the predatory activities of the RUF in Sierra Leone, yet the governments of
Uganda and Rwanda have remained free of international sanctions despite similar involvement in conflict in a neighbouring state. Indeed, in 2003 the US actually lifted a national embargo on Rwanda despite continuing evidence of arms trafficking to rebel groups in the DRC.14 Similarly, the Wassenaar Arrangement for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies is essentially directed against a limited number of ‘rogue’ states and has been much more active on the issue of NBC transfers than on conventional weapons.15 One of the few exceptions to this rule has been action under the rubric of Wassenaar (and also the G8) to control the supply of Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS).16 However, attempts to control this specific trade reflect the priorities of the war on terror rather than any principled concern about the trade in such weapons per se.
Indicative of this is the way in which the US now finds itself in the rather contradictory position of supporting restrictions on the supply of MANPADS to non-state actors whilst simultaneously resisting attempts to impose such restrictions on small arms and light weapons more generally.17
At least the same accusations of hypocrisy could not be directed at the UN Arms Register, which is not even supported by a grand ambition to directly limit the arms trade
. The commitment to shedding transparency on the arms trade might well be useful in the context of a broader system of control that was meaningful and effective. In the absence of such a system, the UN’s development of a voluntary register of arms exports and imports only contributes yet another form of tokenism to the global architecture of arms transfer regulation.18
In part at least, the weakness of global controls on the conventional arms trade stems from the fact that the most influential states in the international system – those with the power to effect real change in the global governance of armaments, are the self-same states that have the largest defence sectors and benefit the most from global arms sales
. Thus, the
US now accounts for virtually half
(47 per cent) of global military expenditure
, NATO countries for 70 per cent and OECD states 78 per cent.19 In the period 2000 – 2004 the US accounted for 31 per cent of global supplies of major conventional weapons, NATO countries for 57 per cent and the permanent five of the UN Security Council for 77 per cent.20 This is not to say that these states are necessarily the worst offenders when it comes to observing arms export regulations. Rather, it is that there is a clear conflict between their commercial interest in maximizing arms sales profits and their strategic/ethical interest in developing a control architecture that minimizes proliferation.
Thus, the rogues and the terror groups, as well as the mafia dons and the drug cartels that participate in the more egregious examples of conventional arms proliferation, merely exploit the collateral benefit they receive from a regulatory system designed to retain freedom of operation for the major players. Current and Emerging Challenges to Supply-Side Controls Of course, it might be argued that my critique of the record of current arms transfer controls is unduly pessimistic. Even if this is the case, however, a further, and perhaps more pertinent question is whether traditional control strategies will remain relevant in the light of contemporary trends in the arms market. Is it the case instead that current trends will require a new architecture of arms transfer control? l would argue for the latter position. Indeed, there are a number of trends that, when combined together, present significant challenges to the effectiveness of current mechanisms for arms transfer control. None of these are novel developments, rather it is that individually and collectively they are beginning to reach a scale and intensity that will require a response beyond the parameters of traditional control mechanisms. The first challenge is that presented by the simultaneous concentration and globalized integration of the major weapons industry in a largely Western dominated hub and spoke model.21 Thus, in 1990 the five largest defence companies accounted for 22 per cent of arms production by the top 100 defence companies, by 2002 this figure had risen to 40 per cent.22 In some respects increased concentration might well facilitate better oversight of the arms industry. However, this process is also characterized by the erosion of defence industrial national identities
(the British defence firm BAE Systems now sells more to the US Department of Defense than to the UK Ministry of Defence) and increased intra-firm movement of technology, knowledge and personnel
. For instance, multinational corporations in the civil sector regularly increase productivity by transferring design problems over the internet to teams working in another time-zone. Globalized defence companies have, and will have, strong incentives to exploit similar efficiencies Consequently
, the ability of states to encourage strict adherence to national export controls by appealing to national loyalty or to national strategic interest is likely to be eroded as they increasingly face essentially stateless defence companies. At the same time, the ability of states to sanction offenders by refusing to source from monopoly suppliers still presenting themselves as national/regional champions will be commensurately reduced
. And the proliferation of licensed production and more generalized technology transfer to subsidiaries or market partners will permit evasion of national export control whether by design or by default. Heckler and Koch, for example, license small arms production in 14 countries including Burma, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.23

/19 [Joel is a foreign affairs reporter for the Washington Examiner. He previously was on the congressional beat at National Review Online and prior to that was a commentary writer for the Examiner, “Pompeo authorizes emergency arms sale to Mideast allies in challenge to Congress”, The Washington Examiner, 5/24/19, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/pompeo-authorizesemergency-arms-sale-to-mideast-allies-in-challenge-to-congress]//a.bhaiji
President Trump authorized arms sales to Middle Eastern allies Friday despite congressional
attempts to block recent weapons deals with Saudi Arabia.
The administration announced the authorization on an emergency basis Friday.
“Today’s action will quickly augment our partners’ capacity to provide for their own self-defense and reinforce recent changes to U.S. posture in the region to deter Iran,”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
T hat announcement put him on a collision course with lawmakers in both parties, who are motivated to block the deals due to a litany of controversies.
Pompeo sidestepped their opposition by invoking a provision of federal law that allows him to
complete the sales without congressional approval.
Pompeo warned that delaying the shipment could lead to maintenance issues for U.S. partners in the region that could lead to degraded systems and equipment that isn't airworthy. “
These national security concerns have been exacerbated by many months of congressional delay in addressing these critical requirements, and have called into doubt our reliability as a provider of defense capabilities, opening opportunities for U.S. adversaries to exploit,”
he said. The weapons are intended for three countries — Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The deals cover aircraft support maintenance, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, munitions, and other supplies, Pompeo’s statement noted. Those armaments are especially important to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the leaders of an Arab coalition that has intervened in Yemen’s civil war to fight Houthi rebels who are backed by Iran. U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition is controversial even among lawmakers worried about Iranian aggression, because the Arab states have shown little regard for civilian casualties in the conflict.
And
congressional frustration with Saudi Arabia in particular skyrocketed after the October murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in a Saudi diplomatic facility in Istanbul. “President Trump is only using this loophole because he knows Congress would disapprove of this sale,”
said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees the State Department. “
There is no new ‘emergency’ reason to sell bombs to the Saudis to drop in Yemen
, and doing so only perpetuates the humanitarian crisis there.” […]

Gary Leupp 5-27-19 -- Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on
Japanese history. (“An “Emergency” to Send Billions in Weapons to the Saudis” https://www.globalresearch.ca/send-billions-weapons-saudis/5678677) mba-alb
So
Trump has declared an “emergency” to circumvent Congressional oversight of arms
shipments to other countries. By law Congress by law is given 30 days advance before before such sales are completed, and it can obstruct them
.
But a loophole
in the Arms Control Act allows the president to authorize sales in an emergency
. One must ask what emergency causes the president to allow sale of $ 8 billion in arms manufactured by Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, and GE to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan. (Britain’s BAE and Europe’s Airbus will also profit handsomely from this decision.)
What emergency confronts any of these recipient countries
? The murderous regime of Jared Kushner pal Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman, savagely murders journalists who criticize it, crushes dissent in neighboring Bahrain, kidnaps the Lebanese prime minister, applies the strictest interpretations of Sharia law within the kingdom and wages war on Y emen, killing tens of thousands of civilians with U.S. support. Where’s the problem? Is the criminal Saudi effort in Yemen failing so badly the Saudis need more arms to kill more Yemenis to stave off defeat? What is the emergency in the UAE? They are allied with the Saudis in the effort to crush the Houthis of Yemen, who because of their Shiite Islam in a generally Sunni region are both despised for religious reasons by Gulf monarchs, and consequently smeared with Iranian associations, not because substanti al political and military ties exist between Iran and the Houthis (as they do between Lebanon’s Hizbollah and Iran) but because they hate Shiites in general. Perhaps in this emergency situation they need more U.S. bombs to drop the Arab world’s poorest, mo st miserable country? What emergency does the Kingdom of Jordan face?
Presumably the State Department and Pentagon will suggest that “recent Iranian threats” to U.S. forces in the Middle East–which were justified as the Pentagon indicated that
120,000 troops would be sent
, adjusted down to 10,000, then 1,200-1,500 for some reason (I suspect because the Pentagon balked at the larger figures, noting that there was in fact no new real Iranian threat to
U.S. forces in the region)– constitute an “emergency” justifying the sales
. (The British and Germans perceive no elevated threat from Iran and have pooh-poohed U.S. saber-rattling.)
Fake news is being deployed to rationalize sending more forces
to the region, thus ratcheting up tensions with an Iran that has in fact been cautiously defensive.
Trump himself may rationalize it as he always has: arms sales to Saudi Arabia create jobs!
(
Trump has repeatedly said that the $ 110 billion in arms deals he’s signed with Saudi Arabia means “500,000 jobs.”
This is more Fake News
; the number is a tiny fraction of that. But clearly Trump is a prime example of
Marx’s dictum that “The soul of the capitalist is capital.”
It’s not so much about creating jobs anyway but creating obscene profits from arms sales for the captains of the military-industrial complex
.) We can’t allow the hack-saw murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Istanbul consulate to affect our strong ties to the Saudi arms market! U.S. national security is at stake! Kushner reportedly told MbS that this crisis about the Khashoggi murder in Oct. 2018 would “blow over.” (The prince has told intimates that he has Jared “in my pocket.” It appears that Jared supplied him with the names of Saudi dissidents, subsequently detained, in return for something.) Indeed, the cordial U.S.-Saudi relationship seems unaffected by the murder. Meanwhile UNCHR, the UN Refugee Agency, has proclaimed a “Yemen
Emergency”—which is to say, a real emergency in the real world. This is due principally to the U.S./U.K.-backed Saudi-led campaign to subdue Yemen and turn it into a Saudi satrapy. The civilian casualties, the refugee figures, the deaths from war-related famine alone are horrific. And the Saudis block aid.
We have an emergency in this country
, this imperialist country–an urgent need to stop Trump, Pompeo and Bolton from starting another war-based-on-lies
egged on by the beastly SbM and the murderous Binyamin Netanyahu, family friend of the Kushners. (Surely you know he once borrowed Jared’s bed in a sleepover at the Kusher home? They’re that close. Google search it. And then realize that the 38-year-old Kushner is Trump’s “senior advisor” on the Israel-Palestinian problem, facilitator of the corrupt Israeli-Saudi anti-Iranian alignment.) Final thought: One real offense that should be truly impeachable is authorizing the sale of fighter jets and bombs used to kill children to a regime led by a prince U.S. intelligence services hold responsible for a journalist’s murder, sidelining Congress in doing so.
Jennifer Spindel 5-30-19 -- assistant professor of international security at the University of
Oklahoma and the associate director of the Cyber Governance and Policy Center. (“Yes, Trump can override Congress and sell weapons to Saudi Arabia -- even over Republican objections” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/30/yes-trump-can-override-congress-sellweapons-saudi-arabia-even-over-republican-objections/) mba-alb
The
Trump
administration announced
last week that it will declare an emergency to allow U.S. companies to sell arms to Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates.
That emergency circumvents Congress and the usual bureaucratic process for approving U.S. arms sales
. By selling about $8 billion worth of precision-guided munitions and combat aircraft, President
Trump advances his view of Saudi Arabia as a "great ally" of the United States.
Trump's move is legal
.
Under the 1976
Ar ms
E xport
C ontrol
A ct, the
State Department authorizes arms sales
(or doesn't). As I explain below, Congress usually allows decisions to be implemented without objection. But this time, the administration has invoked the act's provision that allows presidents to sidestep congressional review
if they believe a national security emergency requires the arms to be sold. In doing so, it is ignoring the bipartisan resolution
Congress passed
in April to halt U.S. military support for the Saudi war in Yemen. While no one is surprised that Democratic senators are voicing outrage, what is unusual is that Republicans are forcefully objecting, too. Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Fla.) called circumventing Congress a "big mistake," and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said, "I don't support arms sales," and criticized Trump for "doing business as usual" with Saudi Arabia. Why is the administration working so hard to avoid Congress? Here's what you need to know about the administration's controversial move to authorize the new arms sales
. 1. It's not easy for Congress to block arms sales. The

State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs oversees most of the arms-sale process
, evaluating whether a given sale to a particular government is in the U.S. interest.
The State Department has wide latitude to negotiate the types of weapons and the terms of sale.
The 1976 Arms Export Control Act requires the president to notify Congress of any arms sale greater than $14 million, and it empowers Congress to block or modify an arms sale at any point before delivery by adopting a "resolution of disapproval." Because the law prevents senators from filibustering the disapproval resolution, the Senate can adopt it by a simple majority vote. But the law also allows the president to veto the resolution. To block an arms sale, congressional opponents need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override a president's veto.
Members of Congress have tried in the past to pass objections to proposed arms sales. That succeeded only once
, in 1986, when a Republican Senate and a Democratic House voted to block the proposed sale of
Sidewinder, Harpoon and Stinger missiles to Saudi Arabia. Although President Ronald Reagan vetoed the resolution, congressional opposition led the administration to alter the deal. Saudi Arabia ultimately received only Sidewinder and Harpoon missiles.
Other congressional attempts to block arms sales proposed by the president have failed
. Congress also has informal tools to influence administration decisions. In April 2018, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) slowed down this particular sale to Saudi Arabia by refusing to consent to the congressional notification process until the Trump administration provided more information about the deal. Menendez feared the arms would be used in Yemen. His continued refusal to consent is what has led Trump to invoke the emergency provision. Members of Congress are best able to block arms transfers when they and t he executive branch agree about U.S. foreign policy. In 2013, for example, President Barack Obama and the State Department decided to review military sales to Egypt after its elected government was overthrown. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), expressing the views of Congress, agreed that military aid needed to end. With the support of Congress, the Obama administration suspended arms sales to Egypt in October 2013
. 2. There's a loophole for emergencies.
This time,
House and Senate majorities clearly oppose additional arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
But the president can bypass congressional approval if he concludes "an emergency exists which requires the proposed sale in the national security interest of the United States."
According to the law, such a declaration requires the president to detail his justification, describing the emergency circumstances and explaining the national security interests involved. While the administration has not submitted this document, Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo says the emergency declaration will be based on a
"heightened threat against American interests in the region from Iran."
Presidents do not often invoke the 1976 act's emergency provision, but they do often override Congress's concerns about U.S. arms sales. Previous presidents have vetoed congressional resolutions of disapproval or otherwise ignored congressional advice. Since 1986, presidents have approved at least $145 billion worth of weapons sales without congressional approval.
3. This isn't the first battle over U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia
.
When Congress and the president disagree about arms sales, it's almost always about selling to Saudi Arabia
.
That's been true for decades, as lawmakers have raised concerns about human rights and the regional balance of power. U.S. ar ms sales to Saudi Arabia worry Israel and arouse American anti-Arab sentiments. For instance, in 1981, the House voted not to approve the sale of Airborne Warning and Control System planes (AWACS) to Saudi Arabia, but the Senate failed to pass the resolution, and Saudi Arabia received the first AWACS in 1986. In October 1990, Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution to block $7.3 billion worth of tanks, helicopters and missiles, but the resolution never made it to the floor. In April, Congress invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution for the first time, with the goal of stopping the administration from supporting the Saudi war in Yemen. Behind the congressional resolution lay the worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the CIA's conclusion that Saudi Arabia's crown prince ordered the assassination of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump vetoed the resolution on April 17.
Assuming Trump follows through and uses the emergency provision in the 1976 act, he will authorize the sale of precision-guided munitions and fighter jets to Saudi Arabia over congressional objections, driving a bigger wedge between himself and congressional
Republicans on U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia. But unless Congress can include a clause blocking the arms sale in a must-pass spending bill -- or use informal influence -- the arms sale is likely to go forward, in line with existing U.S. law and practices.
Mashal Hashem and James Allen 5-16-19 Mashal Hashem is a research associate with the
Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy. James Allen is a research associate with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for
International Policy. (“How to Lobby Washington to Death” https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/16/how-lobby-washington-death) mba-alb
A springtime wedding in Northern Yemen’s Al-Raqah village took place in April 2018, a moment of reprieve from the turmoil and devastation of that war-torn country, a moment to celebrate life, love, and the birth of a new family. From the tents constructed for the event, music flooded into the village and, as at any good wedding, exuberant dancing was a central part of the festivities. Unbeknownst to the guests, the music masked the buzzing of a warplane overhead. Suddenly, in a horrific turn of events, Saudi-led forces launched a deadly airstrike and 20-year-old groom Yahya Ja’afar’s wedding was transformed into a scene of carnage. Deafened by the explosion, guests fearfully search ed for loved ones in a sea of confusion and body parts. In a telling photo, the flowery wreaths worn by celebrants lie atop a landscape of rubble. At least 20 wedding-goers lost their lives to the Saudi-led coalition’s now four-year-old brutal campaign in that country. Shortly thereafter, media reports identified the bomb as American-made -- a GBU-12 Paveway
II linked to Raytheon, one of the Pentagon’s largest defense contractors. Tragedies like this, however, didn’t stop President Trump from exercising his veto power on April 16th to reject a resolution passed by Congress to end American involvement in the Yemeni conflict. Nor did they sway most Republicans in Congress to use their override power to kill the veto on May 2nd. After all, for many of Washington’s actors, such tragedies, while devastating, are part of a remarkably lucrative business model
. Obviously, this is the case for the
American defense companies that have been supplying weapons and equipment of all sorts to
Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in their ongoing war. But it’s no less so for the little-publicized lobbying groups that represent them. In 2018, more than a dozen such firms were working on behalf of the Saudis or the Emiratis, while also providing their services to defense contractors whose weapons are being used in the conflict. Two prominent examples of lobbying firms with significant stakes in the Yemen War are the McKeon Group and American Defense International (ADI).
Both firms have cleverly managed to represent both the most powerful U.S. arms manufacturers and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
This lobbying model, which allows them to satisfy multiple clients at the same time
-- contractors eager to secure arms deals and foreign powers that depend on American political and military support -- has played a significant role in keeping the United States rooted in the Yemen conflict
. A Lobbying Model for Profiting from Yemen Yahya
Ja’afar’s wedding illustrates a disturbing pattern. Reports indicate that, at the sites of many Saudi-UAE coalition airstrikes in Yemen, evidence of munitions produced by the big four American defense contractors -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and
Raytheon -- can be found. These four companies represent the largest suppliers of weapons to the Saudi and UAE coalition and have spent millions of dollars on lobbying efforts to retain political support in Washington.
Their arsenal of lobbyists works tenaciously on the Hill, securing meetings with top officials on key congressional committees to advocate and push for increased arms sales
. In 2018, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act website, which provides information on such firms and their domestic clients, Boeing spent $15 million on lobbyists, Lockheed Martin $13.2 million, General Dynamics $11.9 million, and Raytheon $4.4 million. While this may seem like an exorbitant amount of money, such expenses have yielded an extraordinary return on investment via arms sales to the Saudis and Emiratis. A report published by the Center for International Policy last year documented that such companies and others like them sold $4.5 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and $1.2 billion to the United
Arab Emirates in 2018 alone. And at the heart of this web of money are firms like ADI and the McKeon Group that make their profits off both the weapon-makers and the war makers. Led by former Republican congressman and chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee Howard “Buck” McKeon, the McKeon Group has double-dipped in this “forgotten war” for three years now.
After all, the firm represents many of the top sellers of arms and munitions, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK,
MBDA, and L3 Technologies, as well as Saudi Arabia. In other words, the McKeon Group lobbies
Washington’s political machine for both the sellers and the buyer
. From his earliest days in the House, Buck McKeon has had ties to the U.S. defense industry. His trajectory into and out of Congress offers, in fact, a perfect example of what Washington’s military-industrial “revolving door” looks like. From 1991 to 2014, years when he held California’s 25th Congressional district seat, McKeon received campaign

contributions totaling $192,900 from Lockheed Martin and $190,200 from Northrop Grumman. Those two companies were then his top campaign contributors and are now his current clients. In return, he advanced their interests inside Congress, especially as the powerful chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and now does the same from the outside as a major lobbyist. His firm receives an annual retainer of $190,000 from Lockheed Martin and $110,000 from Northrop Grumman for its efforts on the Hill. In 2018 alone, in fact, the firm took in a whopping $1,697,000 from 10 of the largest defense contractors to, among other objectives, continue the flow of arms to Saudi Arabia. At the same time, McKeon and his firm also work directly for Saudi Arabia, which just happens to be one of the biggest foreign buyers of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman weaponry. The records of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) reveal that, last year, the McKeon Group was paid $920,148.21 by the Kingdom and engaged in aggressive political lobbying in Congress against bills that would have adversely affected the U.S. arms trade with the Saudis. Above all, there was S.J. 54, the Yemen Resolution jointly sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), meant to end American involvement in that war. FARA filings indicate that the firm made numerous phone calls and sent multiple emails to members of the Senate and House as key votes approached. Most notably, on November 14, 2018, exactly two weeks before a vote on the resolution was to take place, the McKeon Group contacted Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, the current chairman of the Armed Services Committee, on behalf of the Saudis. Inhofe’s congressional office was called in “regards to the KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia]” and again on November 29th, the day after the vote, “regarding S.J. Res. 54.” On the 14th, the firm also gave a $1,000 donation t o the Senator. Ultimately, Inhofe voted in favor of continuing military support for the Saudis, undeterred by the thousands of civilian deaths the war has caused. When the McKeon Group succeeds in advancing the agenda of the Saudis and the giant weapons makers in Washington, it proves its value and receives significant compensation. And nothing, including the murder of Washington Post columnist
Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul or continued reports on the country’s brutal war and blockade in Yemen, which has left significant numbers of Yemenis dead of, or at the edge of, starvation, has stopped Buck McKeon and his firm from continuing to ramp up their lobbying activities. As for American Defense International, it has similarly double-dipped in the Yemen war. It, too, represents an impressive list of defense contractors, including Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, L3 Technologies, and General Atomics -- and also the United Arab Emirates, the Saudi-war coalition member that often slides under the media radar. At a moment filled with harrowing reports of death, starvation, and devastation in Yemen, ADI’s lobbyists spent their days aggressively advancing the interests of their Emirati and defense contractor clients. For instance, FARA reports reveal that, in September 2018, ADI called the office of New Mexico Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich, a member of the Armed Services Committee, on behalf of the UAE embassy in Washington. The discussion, according to FARA, focused on the “situation in Yemen” and the “Paveway sale to the UAE” -- in other words, on the sale of the very kind of Raytheon bomb that turned Yahya Ja’afar’s wedding into the scene of a deadly airstrike. FARA filings also indicate, for example, that during the same month, ADI met with the policy adviser for Louisiana Republican Congressman Steve Scalise to lobby against the congressional resolution on Yemen. For these and similar efforts, the
UAE continued to pump $45,000 a month into ADI. At the same time, such lobbying efforts clearly benefited another client of the firm: Raytheon. The manufacturer of Paveway bombs paid ADI $120,000 in 2018. For firms like American Defense International and the
McKeon Group, war is a matter of profits and clients and little else. The Uncertain Future of Yemen
President Trump’s veto of the resolution to end American support for the Saudi-UAE coalition in Yemen and Congress’s inability to override
it (against the wishes of much of the
American public) have
, for the moment, left lobbying outfits like the McKeon Group and ADI in the driver’s seat
.
That veto, after all, made it clear that, for Donald Trump and many congressional Republicans
, the well-being of the Saudi royals and of defense contractors matters more than a bus carrying school children destroyed by a laser-guided MK-82 bomb made by Lockheed Martin
; that the wellbeing of Raytheon is of far greater importance than a family traveling in their car hit by a
GBU-12 laser-guided bomb made by that very company; that the profits of such defense contractors are so much more important than the lives of the men, women, and children who were in a marketplace in Yemen on a quiet afternoon in March 2016, when another MK-82 bomb took the lives of at least 80 of them
. In addition to being used repeatedly in air strikes that have killed civilians, American munitions have also evidently made it into the hands of terrorist organizations in Yemen. Reports indicate that the very weapons that companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are selling t o the Saudis and Emiratis have, in some instances, been stolen or even sold to organizations linked to al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, arms that could someday even be used against U.S. military personnel. Today, with the President’s veto and Congress’s failure to override it, the Saudi-UAE coalition, U.S. defense contractors, and their American lobbyists have, in essence, been given a green light to proceed with a business model that counts innocent Yemenis' deaths as the cost of doing business. Still, though yet another battle has been lost in that war at home, opposition to it may not yet be relegated to the dustbin of history. Certain members of Congress are still looking for new ways of tackling the issue, including the possibility of defunding American involvement in the war and the human rights violations that go with it. Clearly, there are still opportunities to send a message that Saudi Arabia and th e United Arab
Emirates can no longer simply write checks to lobbying firms like the McKeon Group and ADI to purchase influence and ensure that American politicians look the other way. Someday perhaps the United States will no longer allow itself to be implicated in tragedies like Yahya Ja’afar’s wedding that end with a landscape of rubble and the remnants of an American bomb.

Anna Badillo 4-9-19 -- research analyst at Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East based in Montreal, Quebec. She holds an M.Phil from Trinity College Dublin, in International
Peace Studies.(“The US-Israel ‘special relationship’ subsidizes American military industry and
Israeli colonialism” https://thedefensepost.com/2019/04/09/us-israel-arms-sales-opinion/) mba-alb
But to fully conceptualize the U.S.-Israel special relationship we need to unpack the the preferential arms trade agreements
that allows for this relationship to continue at the expense of the indigenous population in the occupied territories. Max Ajl, a PhD candidate in development sociology at Cornell University, writes: “
U.S. ‘military assistance,’ more accurately understood as a circular flow through which U.S. weapons firms profit off the colonization of Palestinian land and
Israeli destabilization of the surrounding states, is a long-term structuring element of the U.S.-Israel ‘special relationship
.’” U.S. military loans started arriving in Israel in
November 1971, when the Nixon administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel to build up its domestic industrial-arms sector through technical and manufacturing assistance. Grants started to replace loans in 1974. The U.S. government shortly afterwards started to permit Israel to spend 26% of the annual military grant on purchases in Israel – a unique arrangement, since by U.S. law recipient countries must spend all of their foreign military financing in the U.S. According to Ajl, “the Israeli military industry often relies on U.S. technological inputs, and the U.S. forbids Israel from manufacturing crucial heavy weaponry, such as fighter jets, in order to maintain control over Israel.”
U.S. military grants to Israel were often quid pro quo, as Israel increasingly took on the work for which the U.S. could not publicly take responsibility, given popular unease in the States over aid to fascist dictatorships
. As the International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network noted in their report, Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression, in the 1970s, Israel armed the brutal military regime of the Argentinian junta that imposed seven years of state terrorism on the population.
Israel also provided most of the arms that Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio “Tachito” Somoza used in the last year of his dictatorship to oppose the revolution, a conflict that killed tens of thousands of
Nicaraguans in the 1970s
. By the 2000s, the Israeli military-industrial complex had produced an industry capable of competing in small-arms and high-end security technology on a worldwide scale. Israel started to export arms that have been refined through high-technology colonial policing of the Palestinian population, especially in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In recent years, Israel has risen to one of the top 10 arms exporters in the world. Last May Haaretz reported, “Israel’s defense-related exports in 2017 totalled $9.2 billion, an all-time record and whooping 40% increase over 2016 – when defense-related transactions totaled $6.5 billion.” The Obama administration adjustments to Israel’s military aid package came amidst a shifting geopolitical environment, both within the U.S. and Israel. There was a shift in original MOU that would slowly phase out the provisions through which Israel could spend up to 26% of its funding package within Israel, to Israel spending more of this funding on the advanced military capabilities that only the United States can provide – as much as $1.2 billion per year, according to Ajl. In addition, this MOU locked in $500 million annually for missile defense.The MOU mandates Israel update its fighter aircraft fleet, which is a direct investment into the U.S. military-industrial complex, given that fighter-jet factories are exclusively based in the United States. Not only does U.S. foreign policy and Israeli-settler colonialism shape what happens across historic Palestine, it also shapes what happens across the Middle East region.
The firm establishment of Israel’s military defense industry also provides an excuse to sell ever-more-sophisticated weapons to other regional U.S. allies, especially Saudi
Arabia
.
As long as Israel has the latest U.S. technology, other countries can buy older models, again to the great profit of the U.S. defense industry.
Israel thus is the spark plug for an entire region-wide weapons bazaar
, while also providing such countries the means to destroy and dismantle even poorer countries like Yemen. This keeps the entire region aflame, oppressed and desperate, and thus unlikely to upset hierarchical regional and international social structures. Ajl suggests that one of reasons the United States pushed through this MOU before Obama left office is the rising discontent within the U.S. population over ongoing support for Israeli colonization of historic Palestine and the surrounding region. Frida Berrigan, author of Made in the U.S.A.: American Military Aid to Israel, writes that a major barrier to any shift in
American policy towards Palestine-Israel is “financial pressures from a U.S military industrial complex accustomed to billions of dollars in sales to Israel and other Middle Eastern nations locked in a seemingly perpetual arms race with each other by all buying American and using
Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to pay the bills
.” The United States is the primary source of Israel’s far superior arsenal. Israel’s dependence on the U.S. for aid and arms means that the Israeli military relies on spare parts and technical assistance from the U.S. to maintain optimum performance in battle. During the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2005, Israel had actually received more in U.S. military aid than it has in U.S. arms deliveries. Over this time period, Israel received $10.5 billion in FMF – the Pentagon’s biggest military aid program – and $6.3 billion in U.S. arms deliveries. According to Berrigan, the most prominent of those deals was a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel. Unlike other countries, Israel receives its Economic Support Funds in one lump sum early in the fiscal year rather than in four quarterly installments. While other countries primarily deal with the Department of Defense when arranging to purchase military hardware from U.S. companies, Israel deals directly with U.S. companies for the vast majority of its military purchases in the United States.
Other countries have a $100,000 minimum purchase amount per contract, but Israel is allowed to purchase military items for far less,
according to
Berrigan. Today, Israel has been the beneficiary of approximately $125 billion in U.S. aid. An unimaginable sum, more than any other country since World War II. U.S. aid is projected to further increase to $165 billion by the end of the new 10-year package, in 2029, according to Charles D. Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser. U.S. aid constitutes some 3% of Israel’s total state budget and about 1% of its GDP, a highly significant sum. Moreover, U.S. aid constitutes some 20% of the total defense budget, 40% of the budget of the Israel Defense Forces, and almost the entire procurement budget, according to Freilich. Israel’s dependence on the U.S. is not limited to financial aid and weapons sales. According to Freilich, the U.S. provides technologies for the development of unique weapons systems that Israel needs, such as the Iron Dome and the Arrow rocket and missile defense systems. It mans the radar deployed in Israel, which is linked to the global American satellite system. Fredilich writes, “There is simply no alternative to
American weapons, and our dependence on the United States is almost complete; the bitter truth is that without the United States, the IDF would be an empty shell.” The United States is Israel’s largest trading partner, at least partially due to their bilateral free trade agreement, the first the United States signed with any country.
The U.S.-Israel special relationship is rooted in preferential arms trade agreements as a way to subsidize the U.S. military industry
and reinforce support for Israeli colonialism.
This special relationship is locked into an arms trade cycle where both the Israeli and American elite class benefits
, at the expense of the indigenous population. The U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over occupied territories provides a boost for Israeli colonialism. We must ask ourselves, “If Trump has consented to Israeli illegal seizure of the Golan
Heights and Jerusalem, why not also the West Bank?” Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank if he is re-elected, which will likely be considered as the final blow to the so called possibility of a two-state solution. The Trump administration is expected to announce his “ultimate deal” following the Israeli elections and after a new government is formed. It is only a matter of time till the Trump administration decides to follow suit and recognize Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, which will drive the final nail into the coffin of the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations and solidify Israeli apartheid.

Lora Lumpe is a consultant working for the Open Society Foundations on issues relating to the intersection of military aid and human rights. Her books include Unmatched Power, Unmet
Principles: The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces
(New York: Amnesty International USA, 2002), Running Guns: The Global Black Market in Small
Arms (London: Zed Books, 2000), Small Arms Control (London: Ashgate, 1999), and The Arms
Trade Revealed: A Guide for Investigators and Activists (Washington, D.C.: Federation of
American Scientists, 1998). “U.S. Military Aid to Central Asia, 1999–2009: Security Priorities
Trump Human Rights and Diplomacy” October 2010 Central Eurasia Project https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/f405dbbf-18c6-470e-a4fa-
505313014346/OPS-No-1-20101015_0.pdf//dmr
Historically, Congress has funded military assistance in the annual State Department/ Foreign
Operations Appropriations Act. The State Department presents an annual detailed budget request to Congress, and in response Congress’ foreign aid subcommittees draft a law to appropriate this aid for the coming fiscal year, setting parameters in some cases on which countries may receive how much and which types of weapons aid and training. The State
Department allocates the appropriated funding, and the DOD implements the actual military aid or training programs. (The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security implement some of the police and border control programs.) As Table 7 (p. 34) demonstrates, State Department– funded programs no longer constitute the bulk of military assistance to Central Asian countries—by a long shot. However, much more information is available about these programs than is available about DOD funded programs, including projected and actual expenditures
(disaggregated by country), rationales, and plans. The four State Department funding accounts that underwrite military or police aid to countries in the region are:
• Foreign Military Financing (FMF)
• International Military Education and Training (IMET)
• Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining, and Related Programs (NADR)
• Freedom Support Act (FSA, renamed by the Obama Administration to Assistance for
Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia)
These programs are authorized in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
(as amended annually by Congress). Among other relevant provisions, this permanent law includes
generic restrictions on weapons aid and training to any government that commits gross human rights abuses
(section 502B), a requirement for background vetting of particular foreign military units receiving U.S. military aid to ensure that such aid is not going to units credibly alleged to have committed serious human rights violations with impunity (the “Leahy Law,” section 620J), and various reporting requirements to provide some transparency around these programs. In addition, through annual laws (State Department/Foreign Operations
Appropriations Acts), Congress imposes conditions and restrictions on military aid to particular countries.
In 2002, Congress first legislated conditions on Uzbekistan’s FMF, requiring a certification of progress in human rights and democratization before military assistance could go forward.
The language was sufficiently vague that the secretary of state felt able to make the certification.
In the years that followed, subsequent State/Foreign Operations Appropriations Acts tightened and extended the language to Kazakhstan and to all programs funded by that act (i.e., FMF, IMET, NADR, and FSA). Congress included a waiver for Kazakhstan, which the Bush
Administration used, but did not include one for military aid to Uzbekistan. As a result of the administration’s inability since mid-

2004 to certify adequate progress by Uzbekistan in human rights and democracy, military and police aid for Uzbekistan has largely been cut off since 2005.
Lora Lumpe is a consultant working for the Open Society Foundations on issues relating to the intersection of military aid and human rights. Her books include Unmatched Power, Unmet
Principles: The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces
(New York: Amnesty International USA, 2002), Running Guns: The Global Black Market in Small
Arms (London: Zed Books, 2000), Small Arms Control (London: Ashgate, 1999), and The Arms
Trade Revealed: A Guide for Investigators and Activists (Washington, D.C.: Federation of
American Scientists, 1998). “U.S. Military Aid to Central Asia, 1999–2009: Security Priorities
Trump Human Rights and Diplomacy” October 2010 Central Eurasia Project https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/f405dbbf-18c6-470e-a4fa-
505313014346/OPS-No-1-20101015_0.pdf//dmr
This briefing paper tracks the evolution of, and trends in, U.S. military and police aid to Central Asian countries pre- and post-9/11.*
In particular, it seeks to identify assistance associated with agreements with countries in the region to provide base and transit access to United States and allied militaries for the war in Afghanistan. While the United States does not pay “rent” for military bases, this report includes a primer on the relevant U.S. military aid programs (both traditional and new) that are used as compensation for basing and other access rights, including for Central Asian participation in the recently launched Northern
Distribution Network (NDN), a land-based supply route for U.S. and allied forces that runs through Central Asia to Afghanistan.
The
U.S. government has no comprehensive budget for the assistance it provides to the police, militaries, and other Central Asian security forces
; however, in the fullest accounting available to date, this report documents that the United States provided at least $145 million in military aid through 19 different budgets and programs in one year (fiscal year 2007). This amount is nearly half of the total of $329 million that the U.S. government gave to Central Asian governments in 2007, and it is six times the amount the U.S. government spent to promote rule of law, democratic governance, and respect for fundamental human rights in that same year.
The report references efforts by Congress to legislate restrictions on aid
over the past decade
, due to
the level of political repression
practiced by Central Asian governments, and it notes executive branch policies and responses that work around the legislated restrictions
. Namely, it shows that the
U.S. Department of Defense (
DOD) has established many new military and police assistance programs
and that it now provides more military aid to Central Asia than the
Department of State (DOS), the traditional budgetary source of U.S. military assistance. Moreover, the DOD enjoys unusual
autonomy in distributing this aid: U.S. military commanders are able to dispense training and equipment almost at their discretion, and the U.S. military is not required to make budgets for several of its aid programs public
. The paper extrapolates from these realities to suggest that the U.S. military has acquired an oversized impact on U.S. foreign policy in Central Asia.

Lora Lumpe is a consultant working for the Open Society Foundations on issues relating to the intersection of military aid and human rights. Her books include Unmatched Power, Unmet
Principles: The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces
(New York: Amnesty International USA, 2002), Running Guns: The Global Black Market in Small
Arms (London: Zed Books, 2000), Small Arms Control (London: Ashgate, 1999), and The Arms
Trade Revealed: A Guide for Investigators and Activists (Washington, D.C.: Federation of
American Scientists, 1998). “U.S. Military Aid to Central Asia, 1999–2009: Security Priorities
Trump Human Rights and Diplomacy” October 2010 Central Eurasia Project https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/f405dbbf-18c6-470e-a4fa-
505313014346/OPS-No-1-20101015_0.pdf//dmr
This briefing paper tracks the evolution of, and trends in, U.S. military and police aid to Central Asian countries pre- and post-9/11.*
In particular, it seeks to identify assistance associated with agreements with countries in the region to provide base and transit access to United States and allied militaries for the war in Afghanistan. While the United States does not pay “rent” for military bases, this report includes a primer on the relevant U.S. military aid programs (both traditional and new) that are used as compensation for basing and other access rights, including for Central Asian participation in the recently launched Northern
Distribution Network (NDN), a land-based supply route for U.S. and allied forces that runs through Central Asia to Afghanistan.
The
U.S. government has no comprehensive budget for the assistance it provides to the police, militaries, and other Central Asian security forces
; however, in the fullest accounting available to date, this report documents that the United States provided at least $145 million in military aid through 19 different budgets and programs in one year (fiscal year 2007). This amount is nearly half of the total of $329 million that the U.S. government gave to Central Asian governments in 2007, and it is six times the amount the U.S. government spent to promote rule of law, democratic governance, and respect for fundamental human rights in that same year.
The report references efforts by Congress to legislate restrictions on aid
over the past decade
, due to
the level of political repression
practiced by Central Asian governments, and it notes executive branch policies and responses that work around the legislated restrictions
. Namely, it shows that the
U.S. Department of Defense (
DOD) has established many new military and police assistance programs
and that it now provides more military aid to Central Asia than the
Department of State (DOS), the traditional budgetary source of U.S. military assistance. Moreover, the DOD enjoys unusual
autonomy in distributing this aid: U.S. military commanders are able to dispense training and equipment almost at their discretion, and the U.S. military is not required to make budgets for several of its aid programs public
. The paper extrapolates from these realities to suggest that the U.S. military has acquired an oversized impact on U.S. foreign policy in Central Asia.

– * director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for
International Policy, ** expert in security assistance and Middle East affairs at Strategic
Research & Analysis. (*William Hartung & **Seth Binder, 03/28/18, “Time To Rethink U.S.
Military Aid To Egypt,” https://lobelog.com/time-to-rethink-u-s-military-aid-to-egypt/) np
Conditioning Aid The U.S. government once considered military aid to Egypt as sacrosanct, but the funding has received more scrutiny recently. The Trump administration continues to request the traditional $1.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) per year, but so far it has upheld the Obama administration’s restructuring of the aid. This includes maintaining the elimination of cashflow financing, a credit-card approach where Egypt could use expected future aid to acquire military equipment. The
Trump administration also reprogrammed $65.7 million in FMF and withheld an additional $195 million following the State Department’s inability to certify the required congressional condition that
Egypt was making progress on democracy and human rights
.
Instead of reprogramming the $195 million, the administration took the odd step of using its national-security waiver to allow the release of the funds to Egypt at a later date. Congress has continued to condition U.S. military aid on a variety of concerns including democracy and human rights, but the national-security waiver has often allowed aid to flow with minimal repercussions for Egypt.
In the most dramatic move in recent memory, the Senate appropriations committee sought to cut the FMF aid by $300 million
, but that effort
has stalled in continuing resolutions.
Walsh 18 (Declan Walsh, Declan Walsh is the Cairo bureau chief, covering Egypt and the Middle
East. He was previously based in Pakistan. He spent five months in the United States during the
2016 presidential campaign to write a column https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/world/middleeast/egypt-human-rights-us-aid.html)
Peter
CAIRO — Egypt’s jail population has swelled. New prisoners include a Lebanese tourist who complained about Egypt on Facebook; a democracy activist who spoke out about sexual harassment; and a visiting grad student from an American university who was arrested as he researched the judiciary. In Sinai, human rights activists say the army has demolished the houses of 3,000 families as part of operations against the Islamic State. The State Department’s take on Egypt’s human rights progress? A thumbs up. This week,
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lifted restrictions on $195 million in military aid that was frozen last year to protest Egypt’s dire human rights record and its relationship with North Korea, a State Department official said.
The aid had been reinstated in response to steps taken by Egypt on specific U.S. concerns, the official said, without specifying what they were. Human rights groups slammed Mr. Pompeo’s decision, saying he had squandered valuable leverage over President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at a time when his human rights record seems to be only getting worse
. “Repression is breeding resentment, and in some cases radicalization,” said Brian Dooley of Human Rights First, an American advocacy group. “
That will ultimately further destabilize Egypt and undermine American interests.”
American officials say they withheld the $195 million in aid to press Egypt over a narrow set of issues.
The Trump administration wants Mr. Sisi to overturn the 2013 conviction of 43 employees of international groups that promote democracy, including 17

American citizens.
And it wants Mr. Sisi to rescind a draconian law regulating aid agencies that he signed last year, which could make it virtually impossible for many international aid groups to work in Egypt. But those demands were made in private, and experts said it was unclear how much the Egyptians had conceded.
It seems probable that Mr. Sisi will seize on the resumption of aid as a validation of his actions so far, and perhaps will feel emboldened to step up his repression. “It’s highly debatable whether Egypt has fully met any one of those conditions
,” said Andrew Miller of the Project on Middle East Democracy. “But the Egyptians will present this decision as an
American blessing of their policies.” The aid decision reflects the new tenor of American foreign policy under Mr. Pompeo and the national security adviser, John R. Bolton, who have shown a willingness to trade American leadership on human rights for an embrace of friendly autocrats like Mr. Sisi who share their hostility toward political Islam. Mr. Sisi has long enjoyed a warm relationship with President Trump, who hailed the Egyptian leader as a “fantastic guy” and even publicly complimented his taste in shoes. But the Egyptian leader had a tougher time from the previous secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, who last August denied
Egypt $96 million in aid and suspended $195 million.
Egyptian officials were shocked at the rebuke from the
United States, which over the past 40 years has given Egypt $47 billion in military aid and $24 billion in economic assistance.
Mr. Tillerson was said to be angry that Mr. Sisi had broken a private promise, made in
Washington, that he would not sign the harsh law on aid agency regulations. In May 2017, Mr. Sisi went ahead and enacted the law anyway. Mr. Tillerson also sought to press Egypt over its relationship with North Korea, which operates a large embassy in Cairo that it uses to carry out illicit arms sales across the Middle East, according to United Nations inspectors. Mr. Sisi’s government has partly addressed some American concerns. A retrial of the case involving the 43 foreign aid workers, many of whom were convicted in absentia, is scheduled to start this year. Egyptian media reports say that Mr. Sisi has forced North Korea to cut the number of diplomats stationed at its embassy in Cairo. But such restrictions can be easily circumvented through the use of accounting measures, like counting diplomats as spouses, said Mr. Miller, the analyst, who worked on Egypt at the State Department until last year. “If past is prologue, we will see that as soon as the U.S. looks the other way, the Egyptians will start up their relationship with
North Korea again,” he said. On most other fronts, things have gotten markedly worse in Egypt. Since Mr. Sisi’s re-election in May, after a carefully managed vote, the president has redoubled his efforts to lock up even relatively mild critics.

9/7/
[“France To Cut US-Made Components From Its Military Products”]
[DS]
[https://www.defenseworld.net/news/23310/France_to_Cut_US_made_Components_from_its
_Military_Products]
France is working to reduce US-made components from its defense products so as not to run afoul of the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) which allow Washington to veto sale to countries it does not approve of
.
French Defence Minister Florence Parly said
Yesterday that reducing dependence on US-made components was necessary so as not to hinder the export of French military products
. France has had to time and again seek US permission to export products even if a very small component by value or importance was included in the French system. Florence Parly said, "We need to gradually de-sensitize ourselves in relation to a certain number of American components, which does not necessarily mean being able to de-sensitize completely," she explained during a meeting with the Association of Professional Journalists (Aeronautics and
Space) in comments widely quoted in the French media. She said that France has launched a plan to reduce dependence on certain
American components; "We have encountered difficulties related to export prospects, and we know that these difficulties are apparently linked to strategic questions and in reality often due to problems of commercial competition," she explained. Under US
ITAR regulations, if a foreign-made arms system contains even one US component, the United States has the power to prohibit its export to a third country. Recently the US blocked the sale of the French-made Scalp cruise missile which was to arm the Rafale fighter jet, meant for export to Egypt and Qatar. In 2013, Washington had refused a request for re-export from France to the United
Arab Emirates of "Made in USA" components needed to manufacture two French spy satellites by Airbus and Thales.
François
Hollande's visit to the United States in February 2014 had positively resolved this issue
. During her hearing last July in the National Assembly, Florence Parly had acknowledged that "we are at the mercy of the Americans when our materials are concerned. Do we have the means to be completely independent of the American components, I do not think so
, are we trying to improve the situation, the answer is yes.”
Florence Parly argued that this lower dependence (on the US) would be crucial for the viability of the future combat aircraft program.
It goes for Paris and Berlin to have the capacity to export this future weapon system. It considered that manufacturers should take this issue into account by launching investments in research and technology to be able to manufacture a similar component that would escape the
ITAR scrutiny. "Some manufacturers have understoo d," she said. Meanwhile,
European missile manufacturer MBDA has already started the process of making its products ITAR-free
.
Its future air-to-air missile MICA-NG which will be operational in 2025, will be free of ITARrestricted components,
La Tribune reported.
8/2/
[“France to Remove US Components From SCALP”] [DS]
[http://en.c4defence.com/Agenda/france-to-remove-us-components-from-scalp/6827/1]
France is seeking to reduce its reliance on U.S. approval for French arms exports
.
France has therefore decided to remove an American component from the SCALP cruise missile so that it can proceed with a new sale of Rafale fighters to Egypt.
Answering questions on weapons exports in the country’s National Assembly, French Defence Minister Florence Parly said that the decision by the United States to use the International Trade in Arms Regulation (ITAR) agreement to block the sale of the airlaunched land-attack cruise missile to Egypt could be circumvented if domestically-built parts are used instead
, but that this would take time. Parly said, “It is true that we depend on this (U.S. International Traffic in Arms
Regulations) mechanism: We are at the mercy of the Americans when our equipment is concerned”. “What is the solution? That the

manufacturer of these missiles, namely
MBDA, make the investment in research and technology to be able to make a similar component, which would avoid ITAR
," she added."
Egypt could still receive MBDA
SCALP cruise missiles from France, if it is willing to accept a delay while US-manufactured components are replaced with French ones
. As noted by Parly in her response, the issue of the ITAR regulation is not just affecting the sale of the SCALP missile to Egypt, but also of the Dassault Rafale that will carry it. Cairo is looking to add to the 24 aircraft it has already procured from Paris with 12 more, with these additional platforms being equipped with the SCALP missile.
According to reports, the Egyptian government will not sign for the new aircraft unless the missiles are included
.
– journalist specializing in defense and security. (Akram, 07.03.18, “How France ignored European promises and armed Sisi's Egypt,” https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-france-ignored-european-promises-and-armedsisis-egypt) np
In his five years in office,
Egyptian President
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been able to count on France as a trustworthy arms supplier during one of the most troubled periods in his country’s history. A report published by several NGOs
- including the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the League of Human Rights and the Observatory of Weaponry (OBSARM) – on Monday claimed that
“the French state
and several French companies have participated in the bloody Egyptian repression of the last five years”. The relationship between French
arms manufacturers and the Egyptian state under Sisi began soon after the former defence minister took power on 3 July, 2013. On 12 August that year
- two days before the Egyptian army’s crackdown on protesters i n Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, during which more than 800 people were killed -
French company Manurhin
, a leading manufacturer of ammunitionproducing machinery, was due to deliver a machine
to manufacture 20mm and 40mm cartridges, which can be used for
both rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters
, to the Egyptian government. However, just before the state-of-the-art equipment was due to be delivered, French customs blocked the transfer, following the escalation of demonstrations sparked by the coup against President Mohamed Morsi.
French and European arms exports to Egypt were suspended for a few months, only to start anew after Sisi took office, with considerable attention paid to a large-scale project meant to modernise the Egyptian army
- with the support of substantial Saudi funding.
The Egyptian army purchased
German
U214 submarines
,
Russian
Mig-29 fighter jets and
S-350 anti-aircraft missiles, but French weapons manufacturers’ sales also boomed at the time, with the orders of Rafale fighter jets, a FREMM frigate, three Gowind corvettes, and hundreds of armoured vehicles. Sisi’s Egypt even helped France after French company DCNS - now known as Naval Group - found itself mired in a crisis with Moscow due to sanctions that led to France’s refusal to deliver two Mistral helicopter carriers to the Russian navy. Egypt swooped in to claim the two huge ships, worth more than a billion euros, effectively saving DCNS. Moreover,
French companies have also proven to be a great support in providing systems to monitor Egyptians’ daily lives.
In their report, the
NGOs said by “equipping the Egyptian security and repression services with powerful digital tools, [France and its weapons manufacturers] have thereby participated in setting up an
Orwellian surveillance and control architecture, aimed at cracking down all attempts at dissent and mobilisation”.
France's fourth largest customer
On 21 August, 2013, the
European Union called on its member states, including France, to suspend their arms transfers to Egyp t in order to prevent them from being used for domestic repression purposes. But paradoxically,
France has never

sold and delivered so many weapons to Egypt in such a short time period as since 2011. The country became France’s fourth-largest customer between 2007 and 2016. Under the cover of the war on terror, and in spite the EU’s call to member states and the 2008 EU Common Position defining rules regarding the control of military technology and equipment exports, France has continued to provide weapons
and devices that can be used for domestic security and law-and-order purposes.
According to the FIDH, at least eight French companies, encouraged by
successive government s, took advantage of the situation in Egypt to reap record profits. Between 2010 and 2016, French arms deliveries to Egypt rose from $46m to $1.5bn. Between 2010 and 2016, French arms deliveries to Egypt rose from $46m to $1.5bn
“
While the European Council announced the termination of military and surveillance equipment exports in order to sanction the dictatorial drift in Egypt,
France took the opportunity to gain market share
and achieve record exports,” said FIDH's president, Dimitris
Christopoulos.

(Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán, Philosopher and MsC in
Political Science. Founder and CEO at Vortex Foundation. Eduardo has researched in the areas of organized crime, kidnapping, corruption, drug-trafficking and State Capture. As partner, advisor or consultant, he currently researches on the structure and impact of Transnational Criminal
Networks with scholars, institutes and Universities in North, Central and South America, Europe and Africa, Diana Santos, Sociologist from the Universidad del Rosario (Bogotá, Colombia).
Currently assisting projects at Vortex Foundation and The Global Observatory of Transnational
Criminal Networks, especially modeling transnational criminal networks, and writing research papers, “Firearms Trafficking: Central America,” November 2017, Accessed 6.25.19, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eduardo_Salcedo-
Albaran/publication/322341037_Firearms_Trafficking_Central_America/links/5a54ed77aca272b b69622273/Firearms-Trafficking-Central-America.pdf ) //ZoL
In the past decade
(2005-2015)
Central American countries have added new regulations to the existing arm control laws
, in order to confront the traffic on arms and ammunitions within the region, and therefore the insecurity and violence that this traffic is fueling
.
However, some of the countries are still more permissive than others, representing an obstacle to the international effort to defy arms trafficking in the region
. For example, in the Northern Triangle region of Honduras,
El Salvador and Guatemala, known, divergences in gun control laws could affect the propagation of firearms trafficking within the region
. While Guatemala and El Salvador gun control laws are considered restrictive,
Honduran gun control law is considered permissive, therefore guns are more likely to be acquired in the latter, and then smuggled to the former countries with more restrictive regulations.
According to the Gun Policy portal, the distinction of a permissive and a restrictive gun control law is related to the possibilities of a civilian acquiring one or more firearms. In this case, “possibilities” are specifically linked to the licensing requirements. So, for example, in Honduras the license to acquire a firearm also covers the potential possession, selling and transferring of the firearm
, while in Guatemala and El Salvador different licenses are required for each activity
. In fact, in Salvador there are six types of licenses: (i) to acquire, own and use a weapon, (ii) to repair a weapon, (iii) to load ammunition, (iv) to use explosives with industrial purposes and civil works, (v) to manufacture pyrotechnical products and (iv) to commercialize weapons and pyrotechnical products. Also, there are three types of registration: (i) to own and transport, (ii) to carry and (iii) to collect.
Another aspect related to the permissiveness or restrictiveness of a control law gun is the specific requirement to acquire the basic license to own and carry a firearm
.
In Honduras
, for instance, the requirements include solely having an adult age (18) and a background check
(usually criminal).
The license is active for four years and an authorized civilian can acquire until five weapons
.
The punishment for carrying a firearm without license, or with an invalid license, does not include a criminal conviction, just the seizure of the gun or guns, and a fine.
In El Salvador and Guatemala, on the other hand, requirements are stricter
. The background check to acquire the license in both countries includes not only the criminal record screening, but also a certificate on the mental and health records of the civilian. Also, a theoretical and training course in the use of firearms in a certificated institution is demanded. The legal age to apply for the license is 21 to own a firearm, and 25 to carry one. In Guatemala it is also required to apply for the license, which is a letter explaining the reasons to need a weapon. In the case of personal security reasons, the approval of the government is also required. The punishment for carrying a firearm without authorization in El Salvador is the suspension of the license and a fine, while in Guatemala a punishment includes a criminal conviction of even 8 to 10 years in prison.

(Jeff Abramson, non-resident senior fellow for arms control and conventional arms transfers at the Arms Control Association, 2-8-2019, "Congress Has Opportunity to Halt
Dangerous Firearms Export Changes," Arms Control Association, https://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2019-02/congress-opportunity-halt-dangerousfirearms-export-changes)//ICH-EC
The
Trump administration will soon publish final rules that would likely expedite how certain firearms and military-style weapons are sold internationally. Congress can and should seek to block these changes
, which exacerbate the export of U.S. gun violence problems abroad. On Monday, mildly revised versions of rules first released for comment in May were presented to Congress, starting a 30-day review period. Specifically, the proposed rules relate to the first three categories of the United States Munitions List
(USML) maintained under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations
(ITAR), whose lead administrator is the
Department of State.
Under the new rules, nonautomatic and semi-automatic firearms and their ammunition currently controlled under the USML would move to the Commerce Control List
(CCL) to become part of the Export Administration Regulations
(EAR), whose lead administrator is the Commerce Department.
Under the new rules,
Congress would lose its ability to provide oversight on many firearms sales. In 2002, Congress amended notifications requirements so it would be informed of potential commercial sales of firearms under USML category I when they were valued at just $1 million, but no
such notifications exist for items on the CCL.
In recent years, Congressional involvement has helped forestall firearms transfers to repressive forces in Turkey and the Philippines. At the core of these proposed changes is the mistaken belief that firearms
do not merit tighter control because they are neither high-tech nor provide unique military advantages. In reality, they are some of the weapons most often used to commit abuses and extend conflict
around the world. These weapons, used in the mass shootings at Sandy
Hook, the Pulse nightclub, Las Vegas, and Parkland, are not the commodities that the United States should make easier to export.
Exported and trafficked into Mexico and Central America, for example, U.S.origin
small arms are already
falling into the hands of human rights abusers and criminal organizations.
In 2017, the administration notified Congress of more than $660 million of proposed firearms sales regulated under the USML, according to the
Security Assistance Monitor. The value of transfers that would be subject to the new rule is not yet clear as that data cannot be fully disaggregated. A bill introduced Friday by Representative Norma Torres (D-Calif.) and co-sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Chair
Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and others would simply prohibit the changes.
If not halted or significantly changed, the new rules would continue the cynical approach of the Trump administration to treat weapons as any other trade commodity, threatening to undermine long-term global security and upsetting decades of more responsible U.S. arms transfer policy.

Department of Defense 15 – (“Contracts for Dec. 18, 2015,” Department of Defense, Dec. 18,
2015 https://dod.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/637451/)
Raytheon Missile Systems
Co., Tucson, Arizona, is being awarded a $2,351,177,872 sole-source fixed-price-incentive, firm-fixed-price, and cost-plus-fixed-fee
modification inclusive of all options.
Under this contract, the contractor will procure the material, fabricate, test, and deliver 52
SM-3 Block IB missiles
; provide related All-Up-Round support, and execute recertification efforts. This modification definitizes the previously awarded undefinitized contract action (effective April 30, 2015; valued at $540,938,144) for a quantity of 44 Standard Missile (SM)-3 Block IB missiles, and procures an additional eight missiles for a total quantity of 52
SM-3 Block IB missiles, and related support for fiscal 2015; with three one-year options (fiscal 2016 through fiscal 2018) with a quantity of up to 52 per option year and related support. Additionally, this modification includes support for recertification efforts for the base year and three one-year options
. This modification increases the total contract value from $604,020,878 to $636,481,749.
The work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona; and Huntsville, Alabama,
with an expected completion date of Sept. 30, 2021. Fiscal 2015 defense-wide procurement funding in the amount of $173,344,432; and fiscal 2016 operations and maintenance funding in the amount of $1,339,475, is being obligated at the time of award.
The Missile Defense Agency, Dahlgren, Virginia, is the contracting activity
(HQ0276-15-C-0005).
– Ronald O'Rourke Specialist in Naval Affairs (“Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile
Defense (BMD) Program: Background and Issues for Congress” Congressional Research
Service June 19, 2019 https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL33745.pdf)
The Aegis ballistic missile defense (BMD) program, which is carried out by the Missile
Defense Agency (MDA
) and the Navy
, gives Navy Aegis cruisers and destroyers a capability for conducting BMD operations
. Under the FY2020 budget submission, the number of BMD-capable Navy Aegis ships is projected to increase from 38 at the end of FY2018 to 59 at the end of FY2024. BMD-capable Aegis ships operate in European waters to defend Europe from potential ballistic missile attacks from countries such as Iran, and in in the Western Pacific and the Persian Gulf to provide regional defense against potential ballistic missile attacks from countries such as North Korea and
Iran.
The Aegis BMD program is funded mostly through MDA’s budget
. The Navy’s budget provides additional funding for BMD-related efforts.
MDA’s proposed FY2020 budget requests a total of
$1,784.2 million
(i.e., about $1.8 billion) in procurement and research and development funding for Aegis BMD efforts, including funding for two Aegis Ashore sites in Poland and
Romania.
MDA’s budget also includes operations and maintenance (O&M) and military construction (MilCon) funding for the Aegis BMD program.
- (“BUDGET INFORMATION Funding Missile Defense
Missile Defense Agency Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Budget Proposal” Missile Defense Agency
March 7, 2019 https://www.mda.mil/news/budget_information.html)
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) mission is “to develop and deploy a layered Ballistic
Missile Defense System to defend the United States, its deployed forces, allies
, and friends

from missile attacks
of all ranges and in all phases of flight.”
MDA’s budget request is $9.431 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2020
, a decrease of $1.06 billion from the FY 2019 enacted budget of $10.491 billion.
In FY
2020, MDA will aim to strengthen and expand the deployment of defenses for our Nation, deployed forces, allies, and international partners against increasingly capable missile threats. The missile defense program will support the Warfighter and the needs of the Combatant Commanders by developing, integrating, testing, and deploying interceptors, sensors, and the command and control, battle management and communications (C2BMC) system for the
Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS).
MDA’s priorities for missile defense development and fielding are as follows
: 1) continue to focus on increasing system reliability
to build warfighter confidence; 2) increase engagement capability and capacity
; and 3) address the advanced threat. This budget request maintains operational missile defense capabilities for existing homeland and regional defense forces and will continue to increase interceptor inventory capacity and use existing technologies to improve sensors, battle management, fire control, and kill vehicle capabilities to address evolving threats. MDA is cognizant of the growing cyber threat and is working to ensure the
Nation's missile defenses are resilient and able to operate in a highly contested cyber environment. MDA remains focused on supporting the DoD Cybersecurity Campaign through implementation of the DoD Cybersecurity Discipline Implementation
Plan - Four Lines of Effort. The four lines of effort are Strong Authentication, Hardening of Systems, Reducing the DoD Attack
Surface, and Alignment to Cybersecurity / Computer Network Defense Service Providers across all networks; all are critical to the reliability of the MDA networks.
- (“SM-3 BMD, in from the Sea: EPAA & Aegis Ashore”
Defense Industry Daily Jun 07, 2019 https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/sm-3-bmd-
04986/)
The USA is building 3 Aegis Ashore sites: one test site in Barking Sands, Hawaii, USA, and sites in Deveselu Air Base, Romania and Redzikowo, Poland
. The GAO estimates that building these sites and bringing them to operational status will cost the USA about $2.3 billion
. Our own tracking includes R&D into land-based SM-3 options, and tracks obviously related categories in MDA’s shifting budget lines.

Gould, 18 – Joe, Defense News, “Report: US bomb sales factored in decision to aid Saudis in
Yemen” 9/20, https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2018/09/20/reportus-bomb-sales-factored-in-us-aid-to-saudis-in-yemen/
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo backed continued U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen over the objections of staff
members after being warned a cutoff could jeopardize
$2 billion in weapons sales to America’s Gulf allies, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Citing a a classified memo and people familiar with the decision, the newspaper reported
Thursday that Pompeo — in certifying Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were doing all they could to avert civilian casualties in the war — sided with a legislative affairs team that argued suspending support could undercut plans to sell
more than 120,000 precision-guided missiles
to Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Most of the U.S. State Department specialists involved in the debate urged Pompeo to reject certification “due to a lack of progress on mitigating civilian casualties,” according to portions of the memo shared with WSJ. The certification would “provide no incentive for
Saudi leadership to take our diplomatic messaging seriously” and “damage the
Department’s credibility with Congress.”
Despite U.S. intelligence support and training for the Saudi-led coalition meant to minimize civilian casualties, a recent United Nations report said the coalition was responsible for most of the 16,700 civilians killed or injured in Yemen over the last three years.
Pompeo last week certified the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are "undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.” The move — which came a month after a Saudi-led airstrike in Yemen hit a bus filled with children — has inflamed lawmakers opposed to U.S. involvement in the conflict.
The certification, which allows the U.S. military to continue its assistance to the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen, also received backing from Defense Secretary Jim
Mattis. That aid includes arms sales and aerial refueling of coalition fighter jets, which carry out airstrikes in Yemen.
A senior State Department official declined to comment “on the deliberative process or allegedly leaked documents,” but said the department is continuing to pressure its coalition allies to do better in their fight against Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
“While our Saudi and Emirati partners are making progress on these fronts, we are continuing discussions with them on additional steps they can take to address the humanitarian situation, advance the political track in cooperation with the UN Special
Envoy’s efforts, and ensure that their military campaign complies with the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law,” the official said in a statement.

State Department experts reportedly urged Pompeo to tell Congress he couldn’t certify that the Gulf nations were doing enough to minimize civilian casualties , but that the U.S. would continue to provide military support to the coalition because it is in America’s national security interest.
But the department’s Bureau of Legislative Affairs argued in the memo that “lack of certification will negatively impact pending arms transfers” and that “ failure to certify may also negatively impact future foreign military sales and direct commercial sales to the region.”
Nissenbaum, 18 (Dion, “Top U.S. Diplomat Backed Continuing Support for Saudi War in Yemen
Over Objections of Staff” Wall Street Journal, 9/20, https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-u-sdiplomat-backed-continuing-support-for-saudi-war-in-yemen-over-objections-of-staff-
1537441200?mod=e2tw
Earlier this month, Mr.
Pompeo asked his
regional experts for advice on a new requirement imposed by Congress that compels the U.S. to cut off refueling operations unless the State
Department officially certifies every six months that Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. are doing enough to minimize civilian casualties in Yemen. The law includes a provision that allows the
U.S. to keep providing the support on national security grounds if the State Department determines that it helps protect America.
Most of the State Department’s military and area specialists urged Mr. Pompeo in the memo to reject certification “due to a lack of progress on mitigating civilian casualties.”
That included the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, the Bureau of
Political-Military Affairs, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and the
Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Their recommendation was also backed by the legal advisers who took part in the policy review.
The experts argued that certification would “provide no incentive for Saudi leadership to take our diplomatic messaging seriously,” and “damage the Department’s credibility with
Congress,” according to portions of the memo shared with The Wall Street Journal.
They urged Mr. Pompeo to instead tell Congress that he couldn’t certify that the Gulf nations were doing enough to minimize civilian casualties, but that the U.S. would continue to provide military support to the coalition because it is in America’s national security interest.
The U.S. Agency for International Development went even further and argued that the U.S. should halt military aid because “USAID does not believe that continued refueling support will improve either country’s approach to civilian casualties or human protections.”
The only group that urged him to fully support the Saudi-led coalition was the Bureau of
Legislative Affairs , which argued in the memo that “lack of certification will negatively impact pending arms transfers.”

The State Department’s legislative team said “failure to certify may also negatively impact future foreign military sales and direct commercial sales to the region.”
Use of American weapons in Yemen has become a polarizing issue in Congress, where Sen.
Bob Menendez, (D., N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has already used his powers to delay efforts by Raytheon Co. to sell more than $2 billion in precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.
State officials pushing for the U.S. to keep backing Saudi Arabia argued that the coalition had taken important steps to address American concerns. And Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also urged Mr. Pompeo to support the Saudi-led coalition by certifying that the Gulf nations were doing enough to merit continued U.S. military backing.
Last week, Mr.
Pompeo officially gave America’s Gulf allies his endorsement
. But the memo informing Congress of his decision reflected U.S. concerns.
“Recent civilian casualty incidents indicate insufficient implementation of reforms and targeting practices,” the memo said. “Investigations have not yielded accountability measures.”
U.S. officials say that a contrite and robust Saudi response to its bombing of the school bus on Aug. 9 may have helped tip the scales in Riyadh’s favor. After the bombing, American military officers privately warned Saudi Arabia that the U.S. might curtail its support unless the coalition took steps to address their concerns, according to U.S. officials.
Saudi Arabia admitted that it mistakenly targeted the school bus and vowed to create more safeguards. But that has failed to address all of the Trump administration’s concerns and there is still an active discussion in the administration about cutting off refueling operations for the coalition.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.), co-author of the law that required the certification, said
Thursday that “ it is
abundantly clear
that this certification was bogus
when it was announced, and the reporting on this internal memo further confirms that the administration has clearly violated the law.”

, 2-27-20
---senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations in Washington, D.C. (Elliot, "How Obama Caved on Bahrain", Foreign Policy, 2-27-2015, https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/27/how-obama-caved-on-bahrain-manama-human-rights/)-
--RKM
Instead, the United States has not only remained largely silent on human rights abuses, but has acted in ways that can only convince the Bahraini government to ignore any quiet protests that are actually made. In 2012, when Congress objected to arms sales to Bahrain because of the repression there, the Obama administration used a loophole to continue the sales. As Foreign
Policy reported, the State Department is required to formally notify Congress of any arms sales over $1 million. According to a congressional source, rather than going through the notification process, the administration divided up an arms sales package into multiple sales, each of which was less than $1 million — thereby dodging congressional oversight.

– Research Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Institute for
International Science & Technology Policy(Sharon, ““THE IMPLICATIONS OF NUCLEAR
COOPERATION WITH SAUDI ARABIA”, Statement before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign
Affairs, Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa, 3/21/2019, https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA13/20180321/108057/HHRG-115-FA13-Wstate-
SquassoniS-20180321.pdf)//RCU
In a scenario where Saudi Arabia decides it must develop nuclear weapons to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons, it will not matter whether the United States has successfully negotiated a
“gold standard agreement” (wherein the Saudis have renounced enrichment and reprocessing), a standard agreement (with no consent rights) or a permissive agreement (with advance consent rights). Any nuclear cooperation that the United States had provided up to that point
could feasibly be diverted for a military program. The only difference would be how much help the U.S. provided.

Alex Gorka, 12-18-2017, "Canada Becomes Party to Ukraine’s Conflict. Sells Lethal Weapons to
Kiev Regime," Global Research, https://www.globalresearch.ca/canada-becomes-party-toukraines-conflict-sells-lethal-weapons-to-kiev-regime/5623197 #CCCool
The
Canadian government has given the green light for national defence contractors to sell weapons to Ukraine
. This makes Canada a party to the conflict with all ensuing consequences. The decision sets no preconditions for selling the armaments to Ukraine. It has been taken despite the fact that Project Ploughshare and Amnesty
International Canada opposed the plan, saying Kiev has so far failed to improve the human rights situation. Canada’s Standing
Committee on National Defense has published a report entitled “Canada’s Support to Ukraine in Crisis and Armed Conflict,” which recommends that the government provide lethal weapons to Ukraine if it demonstrates active work on fighting corruption in the country.
The recommendations include providing lethal weapons
, intelligence exchange, cooperation in defense industry, support in countering cyberattacks, and in resisting to the dissemination of foreign propaganda and disinformation through the media. Granting visa-free travel to Canada for Ukrainians and promotion of Ukrainian interests at the G7 is also on the recommendations’ list.
The Canadian Cabinet hopes its decision will influence the US Administration to follow suit. The move puts Canada out ahead of the United States, which is considering its own arms sales
. Kurt Volker, the
US Special Representative to Ukraine, believes there’s no reason to continue the prohibition on delivering lethal weapons.
Ukraine is particularly interested in antitank weapons, counter-battery artillery radar, and armoured patrol vehicles like the US-made
Humvees.
On December 12, US President Donald Trump signed a defense budget for 2018 providing for the possibility of offering Ukraine lethal weapons of a “defensive nature”. Congress has approved $500 million in “defensive lethal assistance” to
Ukraine. Congress authorized $350 million more than the $150 million originally proposed by the administration. Now, the president can start arms supplies any time he chooses. Former President Barack Obama was unconvinced that granting Ukraine lethal defensive weapons would be the right decision in view of corruption widespread in Ukraine.
The two events – Canada’s decision and signing the US defense budget bill into law – come in the context of the failed US-
Russia talks on the recently proposed UN peacekeeping mission in Donbass. Now the US weapons could be exported to Ukraine through Canada, including the much-desired Javelin antitank systems. “After this government decree, Canada can sell or transfer Javelin to Ukraine,”
said
James Bezan, Canadian MP from the Conservative Party. The US has been sending to Ukraine a variety of non-lethal military help, including equipment like Humvees, medical supplies, bulletproof vests, and radars to track the hundreds of artillery shells. North
America’s assistance to Ukraine is not limited to weapons only; it encompasses other domains as well. The Ukraine Cybersecurity
Cooperation Act [H.R. 1997], the bipartisan legislation introduced by Congressmen Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-8) and Brendan F. Boyle (PA-
13), unanimously passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 14. The bill encourages cooperation between the United
States and Ukraine on matters of cybersecurity and requires State Department reporting to Congress on best practices to protect against future cyber-attacks. “Helping Ukraine buttress its cyber defenses will also help the United States in developing new and more effective technologies and strategies in dealing with cyber security on the modern battlefield,” said Boyle, explaining the goal to be achieved, if the legislation becomes law. It will make Ukraine a part of NATO cyber warfare effort being implemented according to its Cyber Defense Pledge. The bloc is implementing the Capability Package 120 which aims by 2024 to fund everything from encryption for tactical radios to cloud-integrated storage for the millions of cyber events. Eventually, NATO will move to the public cloud for virtually everything that it does as an alliance. The “centralized patch management” will control all the cyber activities. For more than two years, the US military’s contingent of roughly 300 military instructors have been quietly training
Ukrainian military in the western part of the country to prepare them for fighting in the east. Every 55 days a new Ukrainian battalion comes in to go through a training course at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine. Since 2014, the US and partner militaries have helped grow Ukraine’s forces from just over 100,000 troops to nearly 250,000 today. The US-run maritime operations center at Ochakov Naval Base, Ukraine, became operational in July to serve as a major planning and operational hub during future military exercises hosted by Ukraine. A US military facility near Russia’s borders is a very serious threat to regional security. Its presence turns the Black Sea into a hot spot. US warships visit the sea regularly to provide NATO with long-range first strike capability. The Romania-based Aegis Ashore BMD system uses the Mk-41 launcher capable of firing Tomahawk long-range

precision-guided missiles against land targets. Also in July, two US Navy warships, a P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft, and a Navy SEALs team took part in the 12-day Sea Breeze 2017 joint NATO naval exercise off Ukraine. The multinational war games took place in the northwestern part of the Black Sea, near the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. 17 nations took part in the training event. The preparations are on the way to hold another Sea Breeze exercise in 2018. Step by step, Ukraine is becoming an element of NATO’s military infrastructure, which could be used as a springboard for a cross-border attack against Russia
David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen, 8-7-2018, "Canadian sniper rifles expected to be in the hands of
Ukrainian military by fall, MP says," National Post, https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-sniper-rifles-expected-to-be-in-the-hands-ofukrainian-military-by-fall-mp-says #CCCool
A deal that will put Canadian-made sniper rifles in the hands of Ukraine’s military will likely see the weapons delivered in time for any new outbreak of fighting with Russian-backed forces this fall
, according to the Conservative Party’s defence critic. Few details are available about the proposed sale of weapons, as the
Canadian government says such information is commercially sensitive. It has declined to name the company selling the guns or indicate how many rifles would be sent to Ukraine. However Conservative MP James Bezan, who has been in contact with the
Canadian company that has the agreement to supply the rifles to Ukraine, confirmed the deal’s likely timeline. He declined to name the firm since the sale still has to be finalized.
Ukrainians have been fighting each other since 2014, with government troops battling separatist rebels in the Donbass region of the country. Russia also annexed the Crimea and has provided support to the separatist forces. Nicolas Moquin, a spokesman for the Canadian Joint
Operations Command Headquarters, said the Canadian military has been providing sniper and countersniper training to Ukraine’s security forces since September 2015. He said Canada is not looking at this time of providing additional sniper training to coincide with the delivery of new weapons.
The current training Canada is providing is “mainly on application of doctrine and tactics” and is not dependent on the specific type of weapons used by Ukrainian security forces, he added. Canada has been one of the nations most vocal in its condemnation of
Russia’s actions in the Donbass. Besides military training, it has provided Ukraine with non-lethal military equipment and has committed more than $700 million in financial, development, humanitarian and other assistance to Ukraine.
While foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland has yet to sign off on the export permit for the rifles, Bezan said he anticipates she will do so as she is a strong supporter of Ukraine. “If everything goes according to plan I would expect Freeland to sign off sometime this month,” he said. “I think the goal is to have (rifles) in their hands by the time of any fall-winter offensive in Donbass.”
Global
Affairs Canada official John Babcock would not say whether Canadian taxpayers are financing the sale, and would not provide any other details about the arms deal. “The government has an obligation to protect confidential commercial information,” he stated in an email. “Further details related to export transactions (for example, names of exporting companies, financial values of individual contracts and transactions, and details of the specific technologies being exported) are protected due to the commercially confidential nature of such information.”
In December, the House of Commons defence committee recommended the Canadian government provide lethal weapons to Ukraine
provided it demonstrates it is actively working to eliminate corruption at all levels of government
. Senior officials from Ukraine’s ministry of defence had told members of the House of Commons defence committee last year they would welcome arms from Canada, including anti-tank weapons. They also told the committee that the
Ukrainian military’s sniper equipment is obsolete and needs to be replaced. “In part to alter the situation in eastern Ukraine in a significant manner, the country would be interested in acquiring Canadian sniper equipment — rifles, telescopes and related items — and receiving sniper training from Canadians
,” said the committee’s December report. But Peggy Mason, a former disarmament ambassador to the United Nations and a security advisor to the Mulroney government, told the committee that providing lethal weaponry to Ukraine could prompt “escalatory actions” by pro-Russian separatist groups “because each side feels it must respond to a show of force by the other.” Sending arms into the ongoing conflict is the wrong direction for Canada to take, she argued.
Canada’s past decisions to ship arms into conflict zones have met with mixed results. The government approved the export of

Canadian-made rifles to Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but those weapons have since been turning up on the black market. Earlier this year, Turkish commandos battled terrorists in that country’s mountainous regime, recovering one of the Canadian rifles. In 2016 the Canadian government came up with a plan to arm Kurdish troops with anti-tank weapons, sniper rifles, mortars and other equipment to battle Islamic terrorists. That scheme was scuttled after Kurdish and Iraqi government forces started fighting each other in the wake of Kurdish plans to separate from Iraq. The $10 million worth of weapons earmarked for the Kurds and paid for by Canadian taxpayers is still sitting in a Canadian Forces warehouse in Montreal.
, 12-21-
, "Military Investors Await Profits," Global Research, https://www.globalresearch.ca/military-investors-await-profits-canada-pushing-ukrainetowardwar/5623473?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articl es E.G.
Ottawa has included Ukraine in the list of countries where from December 13, the supply of
Canadian lethal weapons has become legal.In fact, Canada creates a dangerous precedent, denies the essence of the Minsk accords and becoming one of the sides of the intra-Ukrainian conflict. The implementation of these plans may cause an escalation of the conflict in the
Donbass.By strange coincidence, the United States on the same day accused Russia of shelling civilians in eastern Ukraine, although State Department spokesman Heather Nauert did not show any evidence of these events.Earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that
Canada will continue to help Ukraine “defend its sovereignty” – 200 Canadian military instructors will continue training the soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces in the Yavoriv area in the Lviv region until March 2019. Canadian Defense Minister Kharjit Sadzhan spoke about plans to build a factory in Ukraine for the production of ammunition. Investors need war, and member of the North Atlantic alliance

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen 3-22-18 -- Non-resident Senior Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC
(ACW), and a Baker Institute Fellow for the Middle East at Rice University. (“Trump’s
Transactional Relationship with Saudi Arabia” http://arabcenterdc.org/viewpoint/trumpstransactional-relationship-with-saudi-arabia/) mba-alb
The March 21, 2018 press conference between
US President Donald
Trump an d Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (
MBS
) must rank among the most surreal encounters between two world leaders, and it did little to dispel the notion that Trump is a transactional president
with little regard for diplomatic niceties. This was evident in July 2017, when he bragged
to the Christian Broadcasting Network that he had made his
May 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia conditional on the announcement of billions in commercial agreements and arms sales
, claiming
,
“I said, you have to do that, otherwise I’m not going
.” In his meeting with MBS this week, ten months after that visit, Trump produced a cardboard cutout of planned Saudi arms purchases and started reeling off the figures in front of the crown prince, who seemed both embarrassed and amused at the spectacle. At one point, however, MBS shook his head vigorously when the president turned to one sale and said, “…But if you look, in terms of dollars, $3 billion, $533 million, $525 million––that’s peanuts for you. You should have increased it.” Saudi officials have celebrated the “renaissance” of a bilateral relationship that soured badly during the Obama
Administration, with Arab News headlining their coverage of the White House visit with the phrase “United States” (just as the crown prince’s visit to London earlier in March was tagged “United Kingdoms”). In the same spirit, Arab News editor Faisal Abbas referred to “The Art of the Deal” and suggested that
Saudi investment and support were pivotal to the president’s “America First” strategy and the creation of new skilled jobs for American workers
. While there is much merit to these arguments, President Trump’s demeanor and tone during the public portion of his meeting with MBS appeared as if he treated his Saudi visitors as merely a source of money and opportunity
. For a president who, three years before he took office in 2017, tweeted, “Tell Saudi Arabia and others that we want (demand) free oil for the next ten years or we will not protect their private Boeing 747s. Pay up!,” this ought to be neither new nor a surprise. For decades, the bedrock of the United States’ relations with its political and security partners in the Gulf evolved far beyond a simple “oil-for-security” equation, to which the media sometimes reduces it. The basis for bilateral ties with all six Gulf states has become institutionalized since the 1980s and—ironically, in view of Gulf rulers’ poor personal chemistry with President Obama—the Obama Administration did more than its predecessors to complement bilateral US links with individual Gulf states with stronger US ties to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as a bloc. In March 2012, the Obama Administration created a GCC-US Strategic Cooperation Forum and at its 2013 ministerial meeting launched a joint US-GCC Security Committee to address issues of common interest such as counterterrorism. A further breakthrough came in December 2013 when President Obama issued a presidential determination that made it possible, for the first time, for the United States to sell arms to the GCC as a bloc. Ironically, then, for all their denunciations of the Obama Administration—to which Trump himself alluded in his Oval Office comments—Obama did at least make efforts to work collectively with the GCC rather than just bilaterally with each individual state. The GCC has, of course, been weakened considerably by the ten-month standoff between three Gulf States—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—and Qatar, which erupted two days after Trump’s visit to Riyadh in May last year. Rumors that the United States is set to establish a trilateral security committee with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to work on countering Iran add weight to perceptions that the policy-making focus of Trump’s White House aligns more closely with Saudi and Emirati interests in the region, especially after the nomination of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. At present, US hopes for a sequential effort to mediate in the Gulf crisis, in advance of a planned Camp David summit that would seal a reconciliation deal, are now on hold.
Policy-making under the Trump Administration is clearly going to be highly transactional at the best of times
. Although a bilateral relationship stripped of “values,” such as concerns for good governance or human rights, undoubtedly removes points of friction, the corollary is that President Trump is so unpredictable that he could one day turn against the Saudis or Emiratis just as he turned against the Qataris last summer. The weakening of the institutional bases of the US relationship leaves it more vulnerable to the whims of personality, and rational heads watching Trump’s behavior during the public portion of his meeting with MBS may not find it at all reassuring. Nor will Saudis necessarily be comfortable with the notion that large sums of state money—dismissed casually as “peanuts” by the president—will go to projects that provide jobs for
American workers rather than in Saudi Arabia, where job creation is sorely needed to take the strain off the public sector and enable MBS to deliver on his Vision 2030 promises.
Akbar, foreign affairs reporter based in the D.C. bureau of HuffPost, “Democrats Are Planning To
Target The Arms Sales Trump Loves,” Huffington Post, November 18, 2018 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-democrats-arms-sales_n_5bf08cade4b0b84243e2d0da
WASHINGTON ―
Top Democrats are discussing how to use their
upcoming control of the House
of
Representatives to more tightly regulate U.S. weapons sales abroad
― a move that would shore up the party’s antiwar credentials and make it harder for
President Donald
Trump to continue his high-
profile arms deals with countries accused of human rights violations like Saudi Arabia.
A final plan has not yet been crafted, but conversations are underway
, a Democratic aide and an activist in regular contact with lawmakers told HuffPost. The final decision rests with leadership: the speaker, likely Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and a handful of figures like Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who will chair the powerful House Rules Committee
and who publicly supports greater debate over the arms trade. Trump’s executive branch is already required to inform key congressional committees of any major weapons sale 30 days before U.S. and foreign officials finalize terms. Capitol Hill can use legislation to block the deal within that period. Such a bill, even if successful, would likely be vetoed
by the president and then might not win over a veto-proof majority of lawmakers ― but the general consensus is that simply initiating such a spectacle makes it harder

for a sale to continue and creates pressure for it to be abandoned instead.
If there’s no bill, the process automatically moves forward. What some House members and outside groups skeptical of the defense industry want to fix is a discrepancy between the two chambers. In the Senate, any member can force the full body to vote on legislation disapproving of a sale 10 days after a notification comes to Congress
if the foreign relations committee has not acted on it.
Democrats have used that power repeatedly in dramatic votes over U.S. weapons shipments for a controversial Saudi military campaign in Yemen
, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has deployed it to force debates that draw attention to his libertarian views on foreign policy. But in the House, members who introduce similar bills could see them get referred to the foreign affairs committee and then simply never make it to a full floor vote. Critics of the arms trade say this lets lawmakers avoid accountability for deals that can allow weapons buyers to commit war crimes, and that allow the defense industry to reap huge profits off research largely funded by the U.S. taxpayer. “
I’m for any more oversight we can add
to this process to make sure that the American people’s interests are being represented,” said Dan
Grazier
of the Project on Government Oversight, which endorsed a September proposal from McGovern and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-
Calif.) that would recreate the Senate procedure in the House. Such a bill has almost no chance of becoming law under Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate, but it signaled a desire among Democrats that party leaders can act on by enshrining, in their rules for the new House session, the right of any member to demand a floor debate on an arms deal.
Opposition to arms sales is generally seen as a human rights issue
, but Grazier pointed to another concern he wants to see raised
if there are more debates over such deals: the waivers often involved that effectively mean the trade is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.
Eugene Gholz 2019 -- associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.
He was awarded the US Department of Defense Exceptional Public Service Medal for his service as senior advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial
Base Policy (2010–2012). He earned a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(“Conventional Arms Transfers and US Economic Security” https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-13_Issue-1/Gholz.pdf) mba-alb
CATs have a clearer, direct effect on economic security via their effect on US defense manufacturing. Because
weapon systems tend to stay in the US military inventory for so long, they
often require spare parts for maintenance years after the initial production run is complete.
DOD needs to pay the overhead cost of maintaining the production capacity for those spare parts, even when the production rate for spares is much slower than the initial production rate during original manufacture of the defense system
. That slower rate tends to drive the unit cost of spare parts dramatically upward.
In some cases, demand for spare parts drops below the minimum technical sustaining rate, meaning that the workers lose the ability to maintain quality standards even when the buyer is willing to pay very high unit costs. In other cases, the government does not realize how much the cost of production has risen over time and does not invest enough to keep the supplier interested or able to produce the part profitably, so production drops below the minimum economic sustaining rate.
These situations create potentially very costly Diminishing Manufacturing Sources or Material Shortage (DMSMS) problems.20
Arms exports
and the expanded demand for future spare parts business that they create can help reduce the unit cost of spares production by keep ing up production rates
, maintaining workers’ skills, and ameliorating the risk of DMSMS by bolstering revenue for critical and fragile niches in the supply chain
. These effects have been observed in recent years in export sales of M-1 Abrams tanks and M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, among others. Assessing these manufacturing effects of arms sales requires detailed knowledge of the defense supply chain, including the technical characteristics of the components that suppliers make, the financial status of each of those suppliers, and the business strategy of the executives at each supplier—knowledge that is not often available to the government or defense industry prime contractors.

Jonathan D. Caverley is Associate Professor of Strategy, United States Naval War College and
Research Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Naval War College, the Department of the
Navy, the Department of Defense, or any other branch or agency of the U.S. Government.
“AMERICA’S ARMS SALES POLICY: SECURITY ABROAD, NOT JOBS AT HOME” APRIL 6, 2018 https://warontherocks.com/2018/04/americas-arms-sales-policy-security-abroad-not-jobs-athome///dmr
Partner Capacity Building Should Build Capacity Finally,
overemphasis on weapons sales of threatens to undermine America’s most important security initiatives. Since
the
9/11
attacks, the U nited
S tates has continued to increase its “partner capacity building” efforts to improve the ability of other states, particularly less developed ones, to provide security for themselves and to contribute to joint operations
. Newly arrived Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made this one of his top three priorities with his first policy statement, and he has since pushed the Pentagon towards “Threat-Based Security Cooperation.”
Asking embassies and
even the military to play a role in selling weapons
is not new, but pursuing this single-mindedly would undermine these Security Cooperation Offices’ central mission
. Improving foreign security forces is a complicated task that includes, according to the Congressional Research Service, “training, mentoring, advising, equipping, exercising, educating and planning with foreign security forces, primarily in fragile and weak states.”
Shifting focus from the countries facing the most important mutual threats to ones most likely to buy lots of weapons will worsen these effects
.
One of the key lessons of security cooperation is that trying to build American-style militaries within developing states is often a terrible idea. The U nited
S tates does not produce many weapons smaller states need.
South Korea’s quite successful T-50 Golden Eagle multi-role jet — bought by Iraq,
Thailand, and the Philippines — is a more appropriate counterinsurgency weapon than anything currently in the U.S. arsenal. A
Brazilian Embraer Super Tucano — which an American firm builds under license for transfer to Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Nigeria — is better still.
Any effort to increase U.S. arms sales should acknowledge this limitation. Turning
Security Cooperation Officers in U.S. embassies and on regional combatant command staffs into “salesmen” will undermine these professionals’ status as valuable advisors working towards mutual security interests.
The result will be less capable allies and, if this causes growing mistrust in American intentions
, long-term damage to America’s ability to supply weapons.

Major Kathryn M. Navin Judge Advocate, U.S. Marine Corps Herding Cats II: Disposal of DoD Personal Property . APRIL
2010 • THE ARMY LAWYER • DA PAM 27-50-443, https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/04-2010.pdf
Foreign countries must agree to certain restrictions prior to physical transfer of defense articles.
In accordance with the FAA and AECA, purchasers must agree to use defense articles only for their furnished purpose.122 The DSCA includes this restriction in all LOAs. In addition to the LOA, all grant EDA recipients must sign a blanket end-use, security, and retransfer assurances document.123 Once the EDA is transferred, the U.S. Government will scrutinize the recipient’s use of the defense articles through an end-use monitoring program
.124
Additionally, unlike FMS purchases
, where new defense articles are sold under a total package approach,125
EDA are
transferred at reduced or no cost to the recipient and are offered to the foreign country on an “as is, where is” basis.126 Once foreign countries accept EDA, the United States is no longer responsible for any maintenance, training, or service associated with the defense article.127 If a recipient wants to purchase training or other sustainment packages associated with a defense article, they must submit a separate LOR, which is processed as an FMS case
.128 Furthermore,
Congress prohibited the use of DoD funds for the logistics—crating, packing, handling and transportation—of all EDA transfers
.129 The President, however, may grant an exception in accordance with section 516(e)(2).130 Additionally, recipients can pay the United States to arrange the logistics of a transfer.131 As a result, expenses incurred transporting defense articles can be a limiting factor affecting a country’s ability—and decision— to purchase a defense article. In Iraq, the logistics burden is less of a concern because most eligible defense articles are already physically located in Iraq and the majority of EDA transfers are in-place transfers.132

Andrea Stricker and David Albright May 2017 -- Andrea Stricker is a security policy analyst specialized in nuclear non-proliferation. David Albright is the president and founder of the
Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). (U.S. Export Control Reform: Impacts And
Implications For Controlling The Export Of Proliferation-Sensitive Goods And Technologies https://isis-online.org/uploads/isisreports/documents/Export_Control_Reform_Initiative_Review_and_Recommendations_May_2
017_Final.docx) alb
Highlights of the ECR Initiative and Recommendations Transfers of Goods from the United States Munitions List to the Commerce Control List
The ECR Initiative involved the transfer of thousands of items from the
United States Munitions List (
USML
) under the Arms Export Control Act’s (AECA) International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and administered by the State Department’s
Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), to the
Commerce Control List (
CCL
) under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), which is administered by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). The EAR is maintained by the president’s annual renewal of the state of emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) following the expiration in 2001 of the Export Administration Act (EAA). The CCL allows for the more flexible export of former
USML items that the government deemed to be not worthy of the strictest control. The EAR also allows for the unlicensed export of certain categories of goods to country groups, whereas the ITAR does not specify this ability. The ITAR as administered by the State
Department usefully allows the Secretary of State to weigh in on transfers of the most sensitive military items as to their impact on foreign policy and national security objectives.
A substantial part of the ECR
Initiative involved an elaborate bureaucratic and time intensive process of reviewing and moving individual goods from the USML to the CCL. This process was thorough, technically rigorous, and involved what is often pointed to as unprecedented interagency collaboration.
The effort required the entirety of six years of the reforms, or from 2010 to 2016.

Jim McShane 3-5-19 - Sr. Consultant, Trade Compliance for Export Solutions -- a full-service consulting firm specializing in ITAR and EAR regulations. (“Will firearms (finally) change under
Export Control Reform?” https://www.exportsolutionsinc.com/resources/blog/firearms-exportcontrol-reform/) alb
On May 24, 2018, the Departments of State and Commerce published proposed revisions to
U.S. Munitions List (
USML
) Categories
I, II, and III in the Federal Register.
These three categories would be the last USML categories to be revised under the
Export Control Reform Initiative – a process that began more than nine years ago
and that we first blogged about here.
Public Comments to the proposed revisions were solicited and required to be submitted within 45 days. From that point forward, once the final language of the revisions were accepted and approved, the President would notify Congress and the Final Rule outlining the changes would be published. So what has happened since then? Rumors have abounded. Some in the trade community believed the end of 2018 was a target date for publication. Others thought the announcement would be made in January 2019. Some even believed the administration might implement the changes to coincide with the Shot Show – one of the firearm industry’s largest trade shows (which occurred this year from January 22-25). None of these things occurred. In the meantime, Congress is not waiting to be notified by the President on the Final Rule.
There have been two legislative initiatives to stop the transition of items from the USML to the CCL: “Stopping the Traffic in Overseas Proliferation of Ghost Guns Act” ( no H.R. number assigned yet) Specifically, this legislation would: Prohibit the transfer of small arms/light weapons, and the technical manufacturing information related to them (including 3D printed guns), to the Department of Commerce; Maintain the statutory restriction on publishing 3D printed gun information, including over the internet; Prohibit the ability of the State Department to susp e nd the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) without 30-day prior notice to Congress. “
Prevent Crime and Terrorism Act of 2018
” (H.R.4765)
This bill would amend the Arms Export Control Act to prohibit the
President from removing any of the following items under USML Categories I, II, or III ( firearms, armament, ammunition
) in order to transfer them to the Commerce Control List:
Significant Military Equipment or their components, parts, or accessories; Flame throwers designed or modified for military application; or Devices for launching or delivering ordnance. More recently, a senior Senator has blocked the proposed Final Rule, citing that the transition of these designated items would deny Congress oversight on export transactions meeting certain levels and increase the risk of military-grade weapons falling into the hands of terrorists
. The proposal to block the proposed Final Rule is not legally binding, but it will establish another area of confrontation between the President and Congress if the President decides to proceed with the publication of the Final Rule and the notification to Congress
. At this point, the date for the transition of items currently classified as ITAR controlled is mere guesswork. That said, increased Congressional activities over the past few weeks would indicate action is either not far off, or will be delayed for some time.
ABA 1-14-13 -- voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students (“Proposals to Relax Export
Controls for Significant Military Equipment” https://bit.ly/2X2o4J6) mba-alb
While the Administration has authority to determine what constitutes a defense article, the
Congress clearly intended for “significant military equipment” that has “substantial military utility” to be subject to the special controls of the AECA
.12 Semi-automatic rifles
that can fire up to 60 rounds per minute clearly have substantial military utility. It is therefore inconsistent with the AECA to transfer such items from the USML where they will no longer be subject to the special controls of that
statute. Contrary to the
Administration’s assertion in these proposed rulemakings,
Congress has established constraints on the Executive Branch that go beyond AECA’s notice requirements
. Indeed
, Congress did not intend to give the President unfettered discretion in determining which items should be placed on the USML
, but rather made clear that certain defense articles considered to be “significant military equipment” must be more closely controlled
.
ITAR has long identified SME as those defense articles “for which special export controls are warranted because of their capacity for substantial military utility or capability,
” 22 C.F.R. § 120.19(a) (1984), 22 C.F.R. § 120.7(a) (1997), and has clearly distinguished those items on the USML
. Congress, in its 1996 revisions to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 U.S.C. § 2151 et seq., and AECA, amended AECA to include a definition for SME, which had previously only been defined in ITAR. See Pub. L. No. 104-164, § 144, 110 Stat. 1421, 1434 (1996) (codified at 22 U.S.C. §
2794(9)). Congress’s definition, however, merely copied the definition of SME from ITAR—SME are defense articles “for which special export controls are warranted because of the capacity of such articles for substantial military utility or capability” and “identified on the [USML].” 22 U.S.C. § 2794(9)(A)–(B) (see also H.R. REP. NO. 104-519, pt. 1, at 10 (1996)) (stating that “Section 144 amends the Arms Export Control Act to provide a definition of significant military equipment as defined in the International Traffic in Arms
Regulations (ITAR)”).

CRS 4-5-19 – Congressional Research Service (“The U.S. Export Control System and the Export
Control Reform Initiative” https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R41916.pdf) mba-alb
The Administration’s blueprint envisioned that these changes would be implemented in three phases
,
with the final phase requiring legislative action. Phase I would undertake preparatory work to harmonize the Commerce Control List (CCL) with the U.S. Munitions List (USML
). This phase would also develop standardized licensing processes among the control agencies; it would also create an “Enforcement Fusion Center” to synchronize enforcement, along with a single electronic gateway to access the licensing system.
Phase II would implement a harmonized licensing system with two identically-structured tiered control lists, potentially allowing for a reduction in the amount of licenses required by the system.
This phase would include moving certain items from the USML to the CCL, for which congressional notification would be required
;17 examining unilateral controls on certain items; and undertaking consultations with multilateral control regime partners to add or remove multilateral controls on certain items. Under the proposal, the new export control system would debut in Phase III, which would establish a single licensing agency; merge the two harmonized, tiered control lists, with mechanisms for review and updating; merge the two primary export control enforcement agencies, OEE and ICE; and operationalize a single IT system for licensing and enforcement. Changes in agency structure would require legislation.

GAO, 17 United States Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability
Office is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States. “FOREIGN MILITARY SALES: DOD Needs to Improve Its
Use of Performance Information to Manage the Program.” GAO, United States Government
Accountability Office, Aug. 2017, www.gao.gov/assets/690/686720.pdf
. // ank
The United States provides military equipment and training to partner countries through a variety of security cooperation and assistance programs authorized under Title 22 and Title 10 of the U.S. Code as well as various public laws.10 When foreign partners choose to use the FMS program, they pay the U.S. Government to administer the acquisition of materiel and services on their behalf.11 The United States also provides grants to some foreign partners through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program to fund the partner’s purchase of materiel and services through the process used for FMS. DOD administers a number of security cooperation programs that focus on building partner capacity with appropriated funds. The Afghanistan Security Forces Fund and the authority to build the capacity of foreign security forces are examples of such security cooperation programs.12 The security assistance services provided through these programs use the same workforce to manage and acquire military equipment and services as the FMS program and are referred to as pseudo-FMS.
Both FMS and pseudo-FMS program administrative costs are funded through FMS case surcharges that are administered through the FMS Trust Fund
. Figure 1 shows an F-15 Eagle fighter, which is an example of an item that has been procured under FMS.

[Nina Serafino is a specialist in International Security Affairs, “Security Assistance
Reform: “Section 1206” Background and Issues for Congress”, Congressional Research Service,
12/8/14, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22855.pdf]//a.bhaiji
Section 1206 of the FY2006 NDAA requires that programs conducted under its authority observe and respect human rights, fundamental freedoms, and the “legitimate civilian authority within that country.”
The authority may not be used to provide any type of assistance that is otherwise prohibited by any provision of law
. It also may not be used to provide assistance to any country that is otherwise prohibited from receiving such assistance under any other provision of law
.
The legislation also requires a 15-day advance notification to the
congressional defense, foreign affairs, and appropriations committees before initiating each program
. This notification must specify, among other things, the program country, budget, and completion date, as well as the source and planned expenditure of funds.

[Nina Serafino is a specialist in International Security Affairs, “Security Assistance
Reform: “Section 1206” Background and Issues for Congress”, Congressional Research Service,
12/8/14, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22855.pdf]//a.bhaiji
Still, a 2013 RAND report indicates that some geographic Combatant Commands may regard timeliness as a continuing problem, but perhaps as much because the approval process is sometimes perceived as too long as because the delivery process is perceived as too slow. RAND found from information gathered from the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) that while
“processes had improved ... it still takes a long time to get [Section 1206] projects approved and resources allocated” and from the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) that “sometimes funding comes too late.... ”29 Some analysts point to the continuing temporary status of Section 1206 as one impediment to developing a more efficient and timely delivery system. If Section 1206 were codified, as proposed by SASC, making it a permanent program, these analysts argue that it would become a higher priority for DOD, leading to the allocation of more resources for planning and implementing Section 1206 programs.
Inspector General for the Department of Defense, “Evaluation of Department of Defense Efforts to Build Counterterrorism and Stability Operations Capacity of Foreign Military Forces with
Section 1206/2282 Funding” July 21, 2017 https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/19/2001858653/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2017-099.PDF//dmr

[Nina Serafino is a specialist in International Security Affairs, “Security Assistance
Reform: “Section 1206” Background and Issues for Congress”, Congressional Research Service,
12/8/14, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22855.pdf]//a.bhaiji
Total funding FY2006-FY2014 is some $2.2 billion. (For a breakdown by country of FY2012-
FY2014 funding, see below.) During this period, Section 1206 funding supported bilateral programs in over 40 countries, several multilateral programs, and an associated global human rights program
. Initially, virtually all 1206 funding was provided for counterterrorism purposes.
Since FY2010, Section
1206 has provided substantial assistance to train and equip Eastern and Central European forces to participate in NATO’s ISAF coalition operations
. The
largest recipient has been Yemen,11 with some $400 million
. Among the other largest recipients over time have been Lebanon, Pakistan, and the Philippines, but of these only Lebanon received funding in FY2013–FY2014.
Pakistan ceased to receive Section 1206 funding after special counterinsurgency funds dedicated to that country were created.
The Philippines received Section
1206 assistance every fiscal year from FY2007 through FY2012. In the past few years, programs in Africa have increased substantially. Kenya, Mauritania, Niger, Uganda, and Burundi have become large recipients, part of a trend that has seen Section
1206 assistance to Africa increase significantly to support counterterrorism operations against the Lord’s Resistance Army, al-
Shabaab, al-Qa’ida, and Al Qa’ida affiliates, as well as to prepare African troops to support the African Union peacekeeping missions in Somalia (AMISOM).12
Countries in the Asia-Pacific region, which received substantial assistance through FY2010, have received no funding in FY2013 and FY2014

--- director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International
Policy (William, “Trump’s “Emergency” Sale to Saudi Arabia Must Not Stand,” https://lobelog.com/trumps-emergency-sale-to-saudi-arabia-must-not-stand/, accessed on
5/28/19, JMP)
Congressional opposition to U.S. support for the brutal Saudi/UAE war in Yemen has been growing in the past few years. It has underpinned the work of a network of peace, human rights, and humanitarian aid groups who are moved to end what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The war has killed thousands of civilians through air strikes and put millions at risk of famine.
This spring, bipartisan majorities of both houses of Congress voted to end U.S. support for the
Saudi/UAE-led coalition, only to see their action vetoed by the Trump administration, which has warmly embraced the Saudi regime despite its severe human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war. And in 2018, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on a sale of precision guided bombs to Riyadh because of its indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in Yemen, including hospitals, weddings, funerals, a school bus, and water treatment plants.
Diplomats with knowledge of the issue have noted that these congressional actions have
helped push Saudi Arabia and its allies to the peace table, so far with uncertain results. But it is
an indication of the power of congressional involvement nonetheless.
This week, the Trump administration declared the moral equivalent of a war on Congress when it was revealed that it was planning to move forward on the sale of bombs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE under an emergency provision of the Arms Export Control Act that would prevent the opportunity for a congressional vote of disapproval on the deal. But as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-
CT), a longtime opponent of the U.S. sale of arms to Saudi Arabia for use in the Yemen war, has noted, “there is no new emergency reason to sell bombs to Saudi Arabia to drop in Yemen…The
Saudis have been dropping bombs on civilians, so if there is an emergency, it’s a humanitarian emergency caused by the bombs we sell the Saudis.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has asserted that the emergency declaration is a response to what the administration claims is a heightened threat from Iran. But members of Congress briefed on the alleged Iranian threat have accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to provoke a military confrontation, in an echo of what the Bush administration did in the run-up to its disastrous invasion of Iraq. On Friday, Pompeo officially announced his intention to invoke the AECA provision to cover “22 pending arms transfers to Jordan, the
United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia totaling approximately $8.1 billion to deter Iranian aggression and build partner self-defense capacity.”

Furthermore, while the Houthi rebels fighting the Saudi/UAE coalition in Yemen receive some support from Iran, they are not proxies of Tehran. They have been fighting on and off for decades based on their own political and economic grievances, and in a number of instances they have taken actions that Iran had counseled against. In short, selling weapons that will foster further slaughter in Yemen to counter Iran is both unjustified and immoral. And as Sen.
Murphy has pointed out, if Trump is allowed to use a false emergency over Iran to circumvent
Congress, “Congress will never be able to object to an arms sale again.”
The emergency declaration is of a piece with the Trump administration’s uncritical embrace of the Saudi regime and its reckless leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump’s first foreign visit as president was to Saudi Arabia, and he used the occasion to trumpet the “jobs, jobs, jobs” that he claimed would be generated by his alleged $110 billion arms deal with the kingdom. Never mind that U.S. sales to Saudi Arabia in Trump’s first year in office were only one-tenth that amount, or that the jobs created by Saudi sales are in the tens of thousands at most, not the hundreds of thousands claimed by the president. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story, particularly one that lets Trump posture as a master dealmaker committed to the needs of working Americans?
The problem with Trump’s arms sales policy towards Saudi Arabia isn’t how much he’s been selling, but the nature of the deals. Early in his term he reversed an Obama administration suspension of a deal for precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia, and now he is trying to push through another sale by undermining the right of Congress to scrutinize such sales.
Sen. Menendez has pledged to use “legislative and other means to nullify these and any planned ongoing sales.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has called the emergency maneuver “a big mistake,” and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said he would “not do business with Saudi Arabia until we have a better reckoning” of the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Congressional opponents are mulling the best way to block the deal, and time is of the essence.
One option would be to push legislation to block the transfer, sale, or authorization for license
of bombs and other offensive weapons to the Saudi regime. Crucially, such a measure would stop bomb sales already in the pipeline. The time to act is now.

--- non-resident senior fellow at the Arms Control Association and manages the
Forum on the Arms Trade (1/15/19, Jeff, “How Congress Can Exert Responsible Oversight on
Trump’s Dangerous Approach to Arms Sales,” https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2019-
01/congress-exert-responsible-oversight-trumps-dangerous-approach-arms-sales
In December, the Senate issued a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump’s support for
Saudi Arabia and its actions in the bloody war in Yemen, which are exacerbating a massive humanitarian crisis. A bipartisan group of 56 Senators took the extraordinary step of invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution to direct the president to cease direct U.S. military engagement in the war, including through any aerial refueling of Saudi coalition aircraft fighting there–a step that had garnered steam since nearly winning approval in March 2018.
In a separate measure, the Senate said by voice vote that it “believes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for the murder” of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi—a finding the president has not fully supported. Trump’s refusal to hold the prince accountable and to consider suspending arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the grisly murder further underscores his retreat from common-sense U.S. and international norms regarding
international arms sales.
Trump’s lack of concern about human rights and harm to civilians caused by U.S. arms trade partners is not, however, surprising. The conventional arms transfer policy his administration
issued in April 2018 dangerously elevated economic arguments as a driving motive for arms
transfer approvals. A November 2018 update on implementing that plan and a related factsheet on sales agreements again stress his administration’s desire to expedite the sale of increasingly more weapons, citing as success agreements to supply American arms to repressive regimes in not just Saudi Arabia, but also Bahrain and Nigeria.
Options to Encourage a More Responsible Approach
As the new Congress develops its agenda, both chambers can be expected to pass another resolution that seeks to restrict the role of U.S. military support for the war in Yemen. Members of Congress should also more fully utilize their oversight powers to ensure U.S. arms trade is more responsible. The first opportunity to do so typically comes when the administration delivers customary pre-notifications of potential arms sales to the Senate Foreign Relations
(SFRC) and the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC), where the chair and ranking members tend to lead any review.
In June 2018, Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking SFRC member, properly placed a hold on tens of thousands of precision-guided munitions kits to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates (UAE). Other members of these key committees should, as necessary, consider supporting and initiating such efforts during this pre-notification period in order to hold or amend dangerous potential sales.

Once officially notified, Congress typically has 30 days to pass a joint resolution of disapproval that bars the president from going forward with unwise sales. Over the past few years, the full
Senate has publicly debated controversial arms sales to places such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia during this notification period—positive examples of what a functioning Congress should do— but House procedures make it very difficult to get such measures to the full floor.
Legislation introduced late in the 115th Congress under the Arms Sales Oversight Act should be revisited as one possible avenue for better empowering Representatives to assert oversight, while properly keeping HFAC as the first committee of review. Other measures, such as an amendment offered on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in 2018 to strengthen oversight as relates to human rights deserve reconsideration. So too does a resolution proposing a comprehensive approach to the conflict in Yemen, especially if it were expanded to incorporate arms suspensions to all Saudi partners, including the critical UAE.
While the public can raise its voice against irresponsible Foreign Military Sales (FMS) because such government-to-government negotiated sales are quickly added to a public website, the increasingly important business-led Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) are not as transparent, in part because any public notification is obscure or functionally comes after the initial review period has passed. Earlier this month, news broke with this exact scenario on a missile defense sale to Saudi Arabia. Members of Congress could insist that, or possibly take it upon themselves to make, these potential DCS transactions more transparent. Proposed sales of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia via the more opaque DCS process came to light because concerned members of Congress took the initiative to reveal them.
While the notification period garners the most attention, Congress also can block a sale up until
weapons are delivered. Given how security, geopolitical, and humanitarian realities can change between the time of notifications and often years-later deliveries, members should follow the entire process. In 2014, Congress gave itself the authority (see Section 201) to receive from the
State Department notification of an arms shipment at least 30 days before its delivery. It is currently limited to joint requests by the chair and ranking members of the SFRC or HFAC and may have only been used once. Those leaders should exercise it much more diligently and
Congress should consider making it much easier to use by allowing all committee members to request pre-delivery notifications.
In general, transparency around arms deliveries remains too obscure as a New Hampshire NPR reporter recently discovered. When U.S. census export data showed weapons worth more than
$61 million had been sold from his state to Saudi Arabia in August 2018, he could not uncover what was in the sales nor which companies provided the weapons. Annual reports on U.S. arms transfers have grown increasingly opaque. Congress should mandate a change demanding much greater transparency on the specifics of what is in U.S. weapons deliveries.
Finally, sometime in the first quarter of 2019, the administration is expected to publish final rules transferring export authority on select firearms from the State Department to the
Commerce Department, despite a large number of negative public comments and a great deal of concern. Members of Congress have raised an alarm that they will lose notifications about these sales, which in the past two years has enabled them to forestall small arms sales to Turkey and the Philippines. Last year, legislation was introduced to stop these changes and should again

be considered. As with Trump’s broad approach to arms sales, these changes risk making it easier for weapons to end up in the hands of terrorists, international criminals, and abusive regimes.
Just before the December 2018 vote on direct U.S. military engagement in the war, Sen.
Menendez expressed concern that the Trump administration believed “selling weapons to the
Saudis was more important than America’s enduring commitment to human rights, democratic values, and international norms.” Congress has the tools and must now use its authority to
ensure U.S. arms sales strengthen, rather than undermine, those enduring values and norms.
—JEFF ABRAMSON, nonresident senior fellow

- Allen Cone (“Northrop Grumman awarded $713M for missile defense system for Poland” UPI MARCH 15, 2019 https://www.upi.com/Defense-
News/2019/03/15/Northrop-Grumman-awarded-713M-for-missile-defense-system-for-
Poland/5021552567222/)
March 15 (UPI) --
The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman a $713 million contract to provide a missile system for Poland
as the United States considers setting up a major military base in the former
Communist nation.
The contract is for the first phase o f Poland's Wisla
Integrated Air and Missile
Defense Battle Command System
, Northrop Gumman said in news releases Wednesday. Patriots are deployed in the system. Northrop Grumman will manufacture IBCS engagement operations centers and integrated fire control network relays and deliver IBCS net-enabled command and control for four firing units, which will then be transported by Polish Jelcz vehicles.
In a separate announcement by the Department of Defense,
Northrop Grumman was awarded a $394.4 million contract to build two complete battery sets. Fiscal 2019 foreign military sales funds in the full amount were obligated at the time of the award
. RELATED Lockheed awarded $680M for PAC-3 missiles for foreign militaries The missile system is produced at the company's plant in Huntsville,
Ala. Work on the battery sets has an estimated completion date of June 30, 2026. The IBCS's air command-and-control system helps air and missile defenders quickly make quick decisions and adapt to changing battlefield conditions. "
Poland is taking a leadership role in today's complex threat environment
by selecting IBCS over legacy stovepiped systems that were designed decades ago for a much different threat profile," said Dan Verwiel, vice president and general manager, missile defense and protective systems for Northrop Grumman. "IBCS is the future of multidomain operations and with it,
Poland will have a state-of-the-art system to modernize its integrated air and missile defense capabilities
."
- Maciej Kowalski is a research fellow at Polish think tank Casimir Pulaski
Foundation (“Restoring the balance on NATO’s eastern flank” Defense News May 17, 2017 https://www.defensenews.com/land/2017/05/17/restoring-the-balance-on-natoseastern-flank-commentary/)
One year ago, the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense site in
Deveselu,
Romania, achieved initial operational capability
.
While protection from a limited missile strike from outside the Euro-
Atlantic
area remains fundamental to the security of NATO
, new threats have emerged
and need to be addressed. Russian anti-access, area denial, or A2AD, bubbles in the Kaliningrad enclave and on the Crimean
Peninsula restrict NATO's self-defense capabilities. In particular, the presence of long-range surface-to-air systems (S-300, S-
400, S300V4) keeps NATO air forces over the Baltic and Black seas in check, restricting the freedom of movement of allied troops. This includes U.S. Army personnel forward deployed across NATO's eastern flank as part of the European Reassurance
Initiative.
Two NATO members, Poland and Romania, are particularly concerned and are taking action.
Both have ongoing Foreign Military Sales cases for the Patriot air-andmissile defense system
, and both agreed to host the U.S. Navy's Aegis Ashore system on their soil.
- Lidia Kelly is a journalist for Reuters (“Poland signs $4.75 billion deal for U.S.
Patriot missile system facing Russia” Reuters March 28, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-raytheon-poland-patriot/poland-signs-4-75-billiondeal-for-u-s-patriot-missile-system-facing-russia-idUSKBN1H417S)
WARSAW (Reuters) -
Poland signed the largest arms procurement deal in its history
on
Wednesday, agreeing with the United States to buy Raytheon Co’s
(RTN.N) Patriot missile defense system for $4.75 billion in a major step to modernize its forces against a bolder Russia.
“
It is an extraordinary, historic moment; it is Poland’s introduction into a whole new world of state-of-the-art technology
, modern weaponry, and defensive means,” President Andrzej Duda said during the signing ceremony. NATO member
Poland has accelerated efforts to overhaul its ageing weaponry following Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014. Two-thirds of Poland’s weaponry dates from the Cold
War era when it was in the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov told state-run Sputnik news website in November that Patriot deployments were part of a U.S. plot to surround Russia with missile defense systems
“under the pretext of mythical threats to security”. The Patriot deal follows Monday’s expulsion of more than 100 Russian diplomats by the United States and a score of other Western countries including Poland in response to a the poisoning of a
Russian former spy in Britain. This month, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled an array of new nuclear weapons, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield. The Patriot deal came as a relief for Poland amid tension with Washington over a law Warsaw introduced in January imposing jail terms for suggesting Poland was complicit in the Holocaust. The United States says the bill subverts freedom of speech and Israeli officials say it amounts to
Holocaust denial, an accusation that Poland’s nationalist government rejects. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the Patriot agreement showed “solidarity and cooperation” with the United States and other NATO countries. “STRONGER
THAN OTHERS”
Wednesday’s deal is for the delivery in 2022 of two Patriot batteries manufactured
by Raytheon, each with two fire units.
Warsaw is negotiating with Washington to buy more Patriots, a new 360-degree radar and a low-cost interceptor missile as part of a second phase of modernization
. “
We do expect that Poland will move pretty quickly with
Phase II. They have a stated desire to complete that by the end of the year
,” Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, told Reuters by telephone.
Air defenses are
particularly important for Poland and
neighboring
Baltic states
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. NATO planners say Russia is using its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad as well as Crimea to pursue the capability to block off NATO’s air access to the Baltic states, about a third of Poland and to the Black Sea.
Warsaw’s decision may raise pressure on Washington to meet Baltic requests for stronger air defenses
. While the Baltics are seeking their own missile defenses, the high cost for their small economies makes any quick purchases difficult. Raytheon’s Kremer said the current threat environment had increased demand for missile defense systems and the Donald
Trump administration was working to accelerate sales to allies.
“In general, they’re more open to expediting and getting these deals worked,” Kremer said. Fourteen other countries, including six NATO members, have the Patriot missile.
Romania agreed in November to buy Patriots
and the U.S. government has also approved sales to Sweden. Switzerland last week announced it was also looking at the Patriot among other systems in a competition expected to kick off later this year. Raytheon hopes the Polish purchase could provide fresh momentum for its bid to supply a more modern Patriot system to Germany, which has not yet signed a contract for the rival MEADS system built by Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) and European missile maker MBDA, three years after it picked MEADS over Patriot. Kremer said changing course and expanding its existing
Patriot systems would make it easier for Germany to work jointly with other Patriot users in NATO, although MEADS supporters say the system is intended to be able to integrate other components.
Poland’s deal, approved in
November by the U.S. State Department, envisaged a sale worth up to $10.5 billion
. But
Warsaw brought the price down by opting for a less ambitious command system and procuring some elements locally. “We are getting to the front row of countries which will be able not only to cooperate and jointly carry out tasks with the United States and NATO, but will be also perceived on (NATO’s) eastern flank as ... stronger than others,” General Leszek Surawski, the
Polish military’s chief of staff, said after the signing ceremony.

– (“Report to Congress Contributions of the Members of NATO to Missile Defense in
Europe” Department of Defense July 1 2013 https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Science_and_Technology/14-F-
0026_DOC_01_OCR_Report_to_Congress_Contributions_of_the_Members_of_NATO_to_Missile_Defense_in_Europe
.pdf)
This report is being provided
to the congressional defense committees pursuant to section 230 of the National
Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (Public Law 111-239). (a) IN GENERAL-Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the congressional defense committee
a report on contributions of member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to missile defense in Europe
. The format of the following report covers each matter specified in subsection 230{b): (b)
ELEMENTS.-
The report
required under subsection (a) shall include a discussion of the full range of contributions made by members of NATO
, individually and collectively, to missile defense in Europe, including the following: {I)
Financial contribution to
the development of the Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense command and control system or other NATO missile defense capabilities, including the European Phased
Adaptive Approach
. (2) National contribution of missile defense capabilities to NATO. (3) Agreement to host missile defense facilities in the territory of the member state. (4) Contributions in the form of providing support, including security, for missile defense facilities in the territory of the member state. (5) Any other contributions being planned by members of
NATO, including the modification of existing military system to contribute to the missile defense capability of NATO. (6) A discussion of whether there are other opportunities for future contributions, financial and otherwise, to missile defense by members of NATO. (7) Any other matters the Secretary determines appropriate. (c) FORM OF REPORT.-The report required by subsection (a) shall be submitted in unclassified form, but may include a classified annex. This is an unclassified report; there is no classified annex. (1) Financial contributions to the development of the Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense command and control system or other NATO missile defense capabilities, including the European Phased Adaptive Approach.
At the 2010 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, NATO Heads of State and Government unanimously decided to take the historic step of committing to pursue missile defense of NATO European populations, territory, and forces against the growing threat of ballistic missile proliferation based on voluntary national asset contributions. The
NATO Allies also committed to spend approximately $1.3 billion in
Common Funding for the expansion of NATO's missile defense command
and control program through 2020
( the U.S. share
of common funding is approximately 22 percent
). The Active Layered
Theater Ballistic Missile Defense (ALTBMD) program is a command and control network that will allow Allied missile defense assets to connect to each other and share high precision data.
At the 2012 NATO Summit
in Chicago, the assembled leaders announced that the Alliance had successfully achieved an interim BMD capability
. Although limited in its early phase, interim capability can provide real protection against ballistic missile attack.
ALTBMD's early capability is now in place at NATO's missile defense operations center in Ramstein, Germany. As the system develops, it will allow a more efficient defense and facilitate additional Allied asset contributions. (2) National contributions of missile defense capabilities to NATO. ;(5) Any other contributions being planned by members of NATO, including the modification of existing military systems to contribute to the missile defense capability of NATO
.
– (“MEMORANDUM FOR Revision of Security Assistance
Management Manual Chapter 4 Regarding Foreign Military Sales-Only Designations, DSCA
Policy 16-51 [SAMM E-Change 325]”, Department of Defense, 12/5/2016 https://www.samm.dsca.mil/policy-memoranda/dsca-16-51)
Update of
Security Assistance Management Manual (
SAMM
) Chapter 4
Regarding FMS-Only
Determinations
, E-Change 325 1. Replace current Section C4.3.5. with the following revised text: C4.3.5. FMS-Only
Determinations. The AECA gives the President discretion to designate which military end-items must be sold exclusively

through FMS channels. This discretion is delegated under statutory authority to the Secretary of State. Generally, as a matter of policy, this discretion is exercised upon the recommendation of DoD. C4.3.5.1. DoS approves or disapproves all arms sales and is responsible for the continuous supervision and general direction of all sales. Each MILDEP or DoD Component develops recommendations for FMS-Only designations on specific weapons systems and military technologies considering the criteria in Section C4.3.5.3. and Section C4.3.5.4. The MILDEP or DoD Component forwards related recommendations and rationales for adding or removing such FMS-Only systems designations to DSCA (Strategy Directorate, Weapons Division) and DTSA.
DSCA will provide such recommendations to DoS for its review and approval/disapproval. Through the export licensing process for Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), overseen by the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls at DoS, DTSA will review licensing requests to ensure license requests are consistent with FMS-only designations. Requests for further assistance with
FMS-Only designations should be directed to DSCA (Strategy Directorate, Weapons Division) for reconciliation or referral to the appropriate DoD element for resolution. C4.3.5.2
. FMS Only List
: The key purpose of this list and related USG processes is the codification and more consistent application of the USG requirement that certain military items be sold only on a government-to-government basis.
The following is a listing of military capabilities and systems by general category that the USG broadly considers to be available for export solely on an
FMS-Only basis.
Inclusion of items on the below list should not be construed as a change to policy as it exists as of
September 2016.
Select Radars: such as but not limited to AESA, Ballistic Missile Defense, and
High-Frequency Phased Array Microwave
Air-to-Air Missiles Attack Helicopters Autonomous Weapons
Systems
Ballistic Missile Defense Items: Effectors; Firing Units; Software
Special Purpose
Aircraft Items Counter Improvised Explosive Device Items Cross Domain Solutions (involving critical U.S. systems) Directed
Energy Weapons Fighter Aircraft Ground Based Air Defense Items Infrared Countermeasures Intelligence Libraries/Threat
Data LADAR/LIDAR Man-Portable Air Defense Items Military Aerosol Delivery Systems Missiles Mission Equipment/Systems
Mission Planning Systems Missile Technology Control Regime CAT I Items GPS/PPS (Allowances made for certain DCS transfers remain in effect) Nuclear Weapons/Nuclear Propulsion Select Electronic Warfare Items Select Sensor Fusion Man-
Portable Night Vision Devices Sensor Fused Weapons Stand Off Weapons Sonar COMSEC Select Torpedoes Torpedo
Countermeasures Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Countermeasures Unmanned Aerial Systems and related components

/19 (Levon, “Reforms and defence policy first, weapons later, Canada tells
Ukraine”, Radio Canada International, https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/07/12/reforms-anddefence-policy-first-weapons-later-canada-tells-ukraine/)//rkp
Ukraine needs to carry out deep structural reforms and develop a clear defence policy before it
goes on a shopping spree for sophisticated Western and Canadian military equipment, says
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.
The issue of Canadian Ukrainian military and defence industry cooperation was one the topics discussed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy when the two leaders met on the sidelines of the Ukraine Reform Conference in Toronto last week.
Speaking to reporters after their first meeting at Royal York Fairmount Hotel, Zelenskiy said
Ukraine is particularly interested in acquiring Canadian armoured vehicles.
Canada will continue “to stand with Ukraine against Russian interference and aggression,”
Trudeau said, adding that they discussed Canada’s mission in Ukraine to train the Ukrainian military as well as the sale of lethal weapons to Kyiv.
Trudeau said a Canadian company has already invested in an ammunition factory in Ukraine without providing additional details.
Structural defence reforms and clear policy goals first
But speaking to Radio Canada International, Sajjan said before Ukraine and Canada deepen their defence cooperation further, Ukraine needs to figure out what kind of a military it wants.
Instead of focusing on immediate equipment needs, the Ukrainian government needs to invest its efforts in building its defence institutions, he said.
“I’ve been there and seen other nations’ donated equipment but they’re sitting in sea containers,” Sajjan said.
“If you go and have chunks of this and that, it doesn’t really work very well. What we’re trying to do while we’re there is helping them to come up with the appropriate plan.”
Michael Carpenter, managing director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global
Engagement and a former high-ranking Pentagon official with responsibility for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said Sajjan’s approach is “absolutely right.”
Ukraine needs to get serious about deep structural reforms to its defence institutions,
Carpenter said.
The Obama administration had spent a lot of effort to help Ukraine develop a roadmap for defence reform. The result was a document called the Strategic Defence Bulletin, Carpenter said.

/19 (Aaron Mehta is Deputy Editor and Senior Pentagon Correspondent for
Defense News, covering policy, strategy and acquisition at the highest levels of the Department of Defense and its international partners. 3-12-2019, "European defense fund takes a 10 percent cut in new budget," Defense News, https://www.defensenews.com/smr/federalbudget/2019/03/12/european-defense-fund-takes-a-10-percent-cut-in-new-budget/)SEM
WASHINGTON — The European Deterrence Initiative, a Pentagon fund to support the defense of allies in Europe, is dropping by roughly 10 percent in the Trump administration’s fiscal 2020 budget request. The EDI’s budget request came in at $5.9 billion, down $600 million from the
$6.5 billion figure enacted in Congress. The cut was first reported Saturday by Defense News.
That money will go to “increased U.S. military presence in Europe, additional exercises and training with allies and partners, enhanced prepositioning of U.S. equipment in Europe, improved infrastructure for greater readiness, and building allied and partner capacity,” per a budget summary. The majority of that funding will go to the Army, although the Air Force is investing in military construction for Iceland ($57 million) and Poland ($232 million). An amount of $250 million of the EDI is tabbed specifically for assistance to Ukraine, which includes replacement of “any weapons or defensive articles provided” from the U.S.

---this also answers the circumvention argument that the US would just give after the aff
– staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers national security and the intelligence community (Natasha, “Ukraine’s Successful Courtship of Trump,” The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/ukraines-successful-courtship-oftrump/559526/)//BB
The United States completed its shipment of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine on Monday, finalizing a sale that was reluctantly approved by President Donald Trump in November. The deal was widely reported as a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014. “This decision … reflects our country’s longstanding commitment to Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression,” Republican Senator Bob
Corker said late last year. But the terms of the arrangement show it may be more bark than bite.
The weapons “have been delivered to a secure facility in Ukraine, not on the line of conflict,”
Kurt Volker, the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine, told me. He did not elaborate further, but The Wall Street Journal reported in January that the weapons would be stored in training centers in western Ukraine that will be monitored by American soldiers. But the terms of the arrangement show it may be more bark than bite. The weapons “have been delivered to a secure facility in Ukraine, not on the line of conflict,” Kurt Volker, the U.S. Special
Representative for Ukraine, told me. He did not elaborate further, but The Wall Street Journal reported in January that the weapons would be stored in training centers in western Ukraine that will be monitored by American soldiers. Trump has said repeatedly that “no one is tougher on Russia” than him. But his critics have accused him of challenging Putin only superficially.
Shortly after the Trump administration expelled 60 Russian diplomats in March—48 of whom were actually intelligence officers, according to a State Department spokesperson—the State
Department acknowledged that the Kremlin would be allowed to refill the vacated positions.
The Treasury Department recently sanctioned more than three dozen Russian oligarchs, officials, and entities who “profit” from Russia’s “malign activity” and “corrupt system.” But many of the sanctioned oligarchs had four months’ notice to move their money, thanks to a list of Russia’s wealthiest individuals released by the Treasury in January. That money might already be back in Russia. “As they say, ‘a barking dog cannot hinder a caravan’s journey,’” Putin told
Russia’s TASS news agency at the time. He mocked his own absence from the list. When UN
Ambassador Nikki Haley announced new sanctions against Russia over its support for embattled
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, she was contradicted by the White House hours later. “There is confusion about the Putin-Trump relationship,” Major General Volodymyr Havrylov, Ukraine’s defense attaché to the U.S., told me last month. “And an element of unpredictability. But we believe in checks and balances in the United States.” Former National-Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis pushed for Trump to approve the lethal weapons sale to Ukraine, according to Havyrlov and another U.S. official familiar with the deal who requested anonymity to discuss it freely. Trump was convinced, at least in part, by the fact that
President Barack Obama—to whom Trump frequently compares himself—had balked at the

sale. The official relayed a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko last year in which Trump asked why Obama had “done nothing when Russia invaded Crimea.” (Obama sanctioned Russia over the incursion in 2014.) Trump, ever transactional, also wanted to make sure he was not giving away something for nothing. The
U.S. official said it was emphasized to the president that this would be a sale, not a gift, and
Poroshenko won favor with Trump by facilitating an $80 million coal deal—the first between the
U.S. and Ukraine—that was politically expedient for both leaders. In February, Ukrainian
Railways signed a $1 billion locomotive deal with GE Transportation. Trump had promised during the campaign to revitalize the U.S. rail industry. “The Trump administration is very much focused on jobs creation,” said Daniel Vajdich, the president of the strategic advisory firm
Yorktown Solutions. “So, naturally, Ukraine has thought about its ability to help create jobs for
Americans in the context of creating leverage by feeding into Trump’s policy desires.” A
Ukrainian-American lobbyist who spoke to me on condition of anonymity put it more bluntly:
“Poroshenko has become a hostage of Trump,” he told me.