Arms transactions
Among arms exporters, America leads by a hefty margin. In the last year, it sold US$17 billion worth, 42 percent of the total sold. A lot of buyers prize the combination of high technology and political patronage that usually comes with American arms. Among importers, last year was the first in which purchases by Asians, being either anxious or rich, surpassed those by Europeans, who live in the part of the world whose security benefited most from the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Mythology to the contrary notwithstanding, arms sales are not inherently dangerous. But they are dangerous when they go to predator or revolutionary regimes like Iraq's or Iran's. They can also be seriously destabilizing when they affect the balance of power between contending countries or the balance of political elements within a given country. Moreover, it rankles to see arms flow to governments that are not freely elected, that abuse their citizens' rights or that neglect economic and social development.
In these considerations lies the impulse behind efforts to tie public policy strings to arms sales. In America, presidents have been doing some of this work by diplomacy, practically forever. Congress has been trying to do it with legislation for at least the last 20 years. The effort is inherently adversarial. Typically, it pits a Congress demanding more influence in making foreign policy against a president arguing for executive flexibility.
In the current case, Bill Clinton does not seem to us a president insensitive to the reasonable policy inclinations of would-be congressional arms-transfer-controllers. But he is obliged to deal, as Congress usually is not, with the gritty problem of inducing the foreign competitors of American arms producers to accept American-type policy limitations on the lucrative arms commerce.
Demonstrably, diplomacy has a hard time doing the job. Still, disclosure of arms transactions, especially those that their makers seek to hide, can do a useful part of it.
-- The Washington Post