U.S. top weapons seller with 45% of '02 market

[ullu]

:cop Uncle Sam is the "peace" maker.

Washington -- The United States maintained its dominance in the international arms market last year, especially in sales to developing nations, according to a new congressional report.

The United States was the leader in total worldwide arms sales in 2002, with about $13.3 billion, or 45.5 percent of global conventional weapons deals,

a rise from $12.1 billion in 2001. Of that, $8.6 billion was to developing nations, or about 48.6 percent of conventional arms deals concluded with developing nations last year, according to the report.

Russia was second in sales to the developing world last year, with $5 billion, followed by France with $1 billion.

While the report focuses on sales and deliveries of conventional weapons from the industrialized world to poorer nations, it also offers a glimpse into issues like missile proliferation by North Korea and foreign weapons transfers to Iraq.

The new report, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1995- 2002," was sent to the House and Senate this week by the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the Library of Congress. The annual study, written by Richard Grimmett, a specialist in national defense at the research service, is considered the most authoritative resource available to the public on worldwide weapons sales.

From 1999 to 2002, there were no deliveries of surface-to-surface missiles to the Middle East from the United States, Russia, China or Europe, the report said.

But the study says 60 surface-to-surface missiles were delivered to the Middle East by nations in the category "all others," which includes suppliers like Israel, South Africa and North Korea.

U.S. officials, both military and civilian, said Wednesday that North Korea was the source of the surface-to-surface missile deliveries listed in the report, and of 10 anti-ship missiles delivered to the Middle East in that period.

President Bush has increased public pressure on North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs, and the administration is organizing a number of joint military exercises to train for the interdiction of possible shipments. The goal of these exercises is to make it harder to transmit components of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons -- and the missiles to deliver them.

.5 The study says that none of the major arms makers delivered weapons to Iraq from 1999 to 2002 -- or at least not in amounts exceeding $50 million, the lowest sales amount included in the study.

But a category of nations labeled "all other European," which includes formerly communist states in Central and Eastern Europe, delivered about $100 million worth of weapons to Iraq from 1999 to 2002, although the report does not specify the source of the deliveries.

U.S. officials believe Ukraine sold an advanced Kolchuga radar system to Iraq, Pentagon officials said.

Arms deals with developing nations in 2002 totaled $17.7 billion, more than the $16.2 billion for 2001 but the second-lowest total for the years 1995 to 2002.

The report measures sales and deliveries in dollar totals adjusted for inflation, called "constant 2002 dollars."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/25/MN201127.DTL

 

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US dominates arms sales to Third World

WASHINGTON: The United States retained its dominance of the Third World arms market for the eighth year in a row in 2002, according to the latest in an annual series of reports produced by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Washington accounted for close to one-half of all new arms transfer agreements concluded during the year, as well as actual arms deliveries.

Altogether, arms sales from all sources to developing countries made up about two-thirds of arms sales worldwide during 2002, according to the report, which is based on the most comprehensive data compiled by the US government.

New arms agreements with developing nations totalled 17.7 billion dollars, a 10 per cent increase over new deals in 2001. Of that total, US sales came to 8.6 billion dollars, or almost 48 per cent of all arms transfers to Third World countries, up from 41 per cent the previous year.

Washington was followed by Russia, which sold 5.7 billion dollars worth of arms; Ukraine (1.6 billion dollars); Italy (1.5 billion dollars); and Germany and France (1.1 billion dollars each).

China was the leading recipient of conventional arms transfers in 2002, accounting for 3.6 billion dollars in purchases; followed by South Korea (1.9 billion dollars); India (1.4 billion dollars); and Oman (1.3 billion dollars).

Of the 10 top recipients, five were in the Middle East - Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, in addition to Oman - and four in Asia, with Malaysia ranking eighth behind China, Korea and India.

Chile, which ranked tenth on the strength of a major purchase of advanced fighter jets from the United States, was the only country outside the other two regions, which have been the developing world's biggest customers for conventional arms for the past decade.

While the Middle East proved the bonanza market of the 1980s - particularly when warring Iran and Iraq, as well as Saudi Arabia, were making huge purchases - Asia, particularly China and India, was the big buyer of the last seven years, according to the report, 'Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1995-2002'.

In that period, China ranked number one, with 17.8 billion dollars worth of purchases; the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ranked second at 16.3 billion dollars; and India third at 14.1 billion dollars, suggesting the emergence of a new arms race between the world's two most populous nations that could dominate the marketfor some time, particularly if purchases in the Middle East continue to decline in relative terms.

The United States, which has sharply upgraded its military relationship with India in the last several years, particularly since the beginning of Washington's "war on terrorism", has made little secret of its hopes of integrating Delhi into a containment strategy against Beijing.

The 84-page report, whose graphs and tables are ritually pored over by intelligence analysts around the world to glean key trends and possible future military threats to their governments, tracks both actual deliveries of arms, as well as new agreements that will result in eventual deliveries.

The time between the signing of an agreement and actual delivery can stretch beyond a decade, depending on many factors.

In addition to covering the value of sales and deliveries each year and over periods as long as seven years, the report also tracks the transfer by various countries and categories of countries of specific weapons systems.

It found, for example, that a total of 60 surface-to-surface missile systems were transferred last year, none of which was supplied by the United States, Russia, China, the four major West European countries (France, Britain, Germany, and Italy) or "all other European countries".

Suppliers of the missiles were found in a category called "all others", which includes North Korea, South Africa, and Israel.

The report does not identify the individual suppliers in a category because that information remains classified.

In the introduction, Richard Grimmett, who has authored the report since it was first published some two decades ago, stressed that the overall trend in arms purchases by the developing world has been downward since the early 1990s, when countries that could afford them bought large quantities of advanced US weapons systems that were displayed during the 1991 Gulf War.

While arms transfers were up in 2002 compared to the previous year, the 17.7 billion dollars in new agreements was still the second lowest in the last seven years.

Grimmett stressed that it was still too soon to assess the impact, if any, of the "war on terrorism", including the ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and this year's war in Iraq.

Economic conditions in specific countries as well as the state of the world economy continued to be a major factor constraining arms buying, according to Grimmett. "Economic as well as military considerations have factored heavily in (developing country) arms purchasing decisions, a circumstance likely to continue for some time," he wrote.

This has benefited both wealthier developing countries vis-a- vis their rivals, as well as those arms suppliers that can provide credit or are willing to provide offset arrangements or joint-production ventures with buyer states in what has become a more competitive market.

The report noted that Russia, which has encountered strong competition for the number two spot on the arms suppliers' list since 1995, intends to offer more flexible credit and payment arrangements than it has in the past in order to secure its ranking.

While China has been the fourth biggest supplier over the same period, "its role is more as a consumer than a buyer", Grimmett told IPS, noting that over the past seven years, the combined sales of the big four European suppliers rival Russia's sales.

Indeed, as a group, the four countries claimed 12 per cent of total sales in 2002, up from 5 per cent in 2001.

Two major buyers of the past decade - Saudi Arabia and Taiwan - are fading as consumers in more recent years, the report says. Riyadh has faced financial constraints and, in fact, is still absorbing weapons systems worth some 64.5 billion dollars that it purchased in the early 1990s.

Taiwan, which ranked second to Saudi Arabia with respect to deliveries since 1995 (20 billion dollars) has dropped out of the top 10 in purchasers, much to the frustration of anti-China hawks in the Bush administration.

Different suppliers also penetrated different regional markets over the same seven-year period. Asia - particularly China, India, and Malaysia - accounted for 82 per cent of Russia's arms sales, or about one-half of all arms sold to the region.

US sales to Middle Eastern clients accounted for 76 per cent of its total arms sales since 1999 and about the same percentage of all sales to the region in that period. It also became the dominant supplier to Latin America in the last three years, primarily on the strength of the warplanes for Chile.

Germany (due to a big sale to South Africa) and Russia were the biggest single arms sellers to Africa in the last three years, at 16 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. By contrast, Washington accounted for only one percent of sales to that continent.

On the other hand, "all other European" countries - mainly Central and Eastern Europe - accounted for a whopping 37 per cent of total weapons transfers to Africa, and a clue as to the source of small arms that are fuelling the region's many civil conflicts, according to Grimmett.-Dawn/The InterPress News Service.

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[ullu]

Maybe we can get some AMerican opinion on "American way of exporting peace and freedom"?