Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may soon gain access to USXports, a database of US-made defense items for export, a potentially massive conflict of interest, Ari Tolany tells Zeteo News’ Spencer Ackerman:
“USX often contains sensitive business information, including technical data, contracts information, and blueprints, including [on] SpaceX and its competitors,” says Ari Tolany, who directs the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy.
“Corporate interests too often dictate US government policy through the revolving door between government and industry. One corporation having privileged access above others is yet another example of the bald-faced corruption characterizing the intrusions of an unelected billionaire into government decision-making.”
Any pressure for Israel to accept the terms is good, but likely to be accompanied by full-throttle support for West Bank annexation, Security Assistance Technology & Arms Trade Director Ari Tolany tells Voice of America Indonesia:
“I think it is likely that Biden still wants to get some degree of credit for this ceasefire still happening on his watch, even though it does seem from speaking to a range from sources both in Israel, Arab states and Palestinian groups that pressure from the incoming Trump administration was really what moved the needle with the Netanyahu administration.”
“They [the first Trump administration] moved the United States embassy to Jerusalem. They did a lot of inflammatory actions including backing Israel’s annexation of territory in the West Bank. And so, while I think the ceasefire is a good thing and I think Trump’s willingness to use the leverage that he does have with Netanyahu is a good thing, I remain pessimistic for what the Trump administration is going to look like vis-a-vis Palestinian affairs.”
Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) is the first and only public resource to comprehensively collect, organize, and house all available federal data on U.S. weapons sales and transfers in one place, making it easily searchable by year or country on its website.
ProPublica’s Brett Murphy reports on the Biden administration’s violation of arms transfer law:
In late May, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its assault on the city, citing the Geneva Conventions. Behind the scenes, State Department lawyers scrambled to come up with a legal basis on which Israel could continue smaller attacks in Rafah. “There is room to argue that more scaled back/targeted operations, combined with better humanitarian efforts, would not meet that threshold,” the lawyers said in a May 24 email. While it’s not unreasonable for government lawyers to defend a close ally, critics say the cable illustrates the extreme deference the U.S. affords Israel.
“The State Department has a whole raft of highly paid, very good lawyers to explain, ‘Actually this is not illegal,’ when in fact it is,” said Ari Tolany, an arms trade authority and director at the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based think tank. “Rules for thee and not for me.”
Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) is the first and only public resource to comprehensively collect, organize, and house all available federal data on U.S. weapons sales and transfers in one place, making it easily searchable by year or country on its website.
In response to the Biden administration’s decision last week to send anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine, Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) director Ari Tolany issued the following statement:
“The Biden administration’s decision to violate its own landmine policy by exporting anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine —a state party to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, popularly called the Ottawa Convention— is the latest action by the United States to undermine international law and global norms to protect non-combatants. The decision to send first cluster munitions and now anti-personnel landmines will have devastating impacts on civilians for decades to come, raising the risk of blast injury in large swaths of Ukraine, contaminating arable land, and eroding the efficacy of the Convention.
The United States proudly advertises itself as the “world’s single largest financial supporter of steps to mitigate the harmful consequences of landmines.” Yet the United States cannot effectively engage in land clearance of explosive remnants of war and support mine victims while continuing to refuse to accede to the Ottawa Convention and the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The continued stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions shows the Biden administration’s uneven and selective enforcement of both its own policies and the law.
Rather than using its last months in office to further undermine international norms, the Biden administration should take immediate steps to accede to the Ottawa Convention and join the Convention on Cluster Munitions. In accordance with those treaties, it should cease the transfer of anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions to all states, including both Ukraine and the Republic of Korea. It should also begin to destroy its own stockpiles of anti-personnel landmines and stop the manufacture of new cluster munitions. Arms control can be effective only when the world’s largest manufacturer of weapons upholds international law and applies its standards consistently to all parties, including allies, partners and itself.”
What kind of relationships does the United States build when it gives or sells arms to countries abroad is a big question, one that sits at the heart of day-to-day foreign policy. Ari Tolany, Director of CIP’s Security Assistance Technology, and the Arms Trade (SAM) program, recently went on the Security Dilemma podcast to talk about arms transfers, transparency, and what it means to attempt to build friendships through the promise of weapons.
Said Tolany:
“Basically we’re losing a lot of transparency and granularity in our reporting, and I know it seems wonky, and it seems technically, but fundamentally, the way that so many people engage with the United States is not with our soft power or the various aspects of American culture we like to think of as promoting a US brand around the world, it’s at the barrel of a gun. When we have less information about that, we are less able to conduct effective oversight or check-in on concerning issues around defense companies like graft and corruption.”
The episode, hosted by AJ Manuzzi and John Allen Gay of the John Quincy Adams Society, walks through popular arguments and counter-arguments to arms transparency, the way arms sales make the US a participant in the wars of partners and allies, and what happens when the US tries to tie arms sales to respect for human rights, without ever threatening to withhold sales should weapons be used to violate human rights.
Tolany also discusses the shallow fear that the US not selling a country arms means irreparably harming that country’s relationship with the United States. Says Tolany:
“The notion that arms transfers are a solid foundation for international partnership building is flawed. If a partner can just as easily turn to China and Russia, I would argue that arms transfers are only papering over a relationship that is fundamentally misaligned.”
In response to the Biden administration’s decision on Wednesday to release the full tranche of Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to Egypt despite ongoing human rights violations, Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) director Ari Tolany issued the following statement:
“The Biden administration’s decision to grant Egypt a staggering $1.3 billion in military aid with no human rights restrictions undermines the administration’s own human rights reporting, which found there has been ‘no significant change in the human rights situation in Egypt,’ and defies concerns rightly expressed by Senators Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy and their colleagues.
“Consistent gross violations of human rights remain widespread, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, and torture. The government’s broad refusal to investigate or prosecute reported human rights abuses makes remediation for victims impossible.
“Secretary Blinken reports that he is waiving the human rights conditions in the ‘national security interest,’ but using unrestricted taxpayer dollars to subsidize the brutal, autocratic el-Sisi regime doesn’t make Americans—or the world—safer. U.S. appeals to international order will continue ring hollow so long as the United States refuses to hold its allies, not just its rivals, accountable for violations of international law.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In response to reports that the Biden Administration sought to bypass congressional review and accompanying public scrutiny of massive arms transfers to Israel by dividing them into more than 100 smaller deliveries that individually fell under the threshold for mandatory notification to Congress under U.S. law, Ari Tolany, the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) director, issued the following statement:
“This doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with U.S. arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue.
“These arms laws and notification requirements exist precisely so that American lawmakers and taxpayers can evaluate the appropriateness of transferring U.S. weapons systems to a context like the devastating conflict in Gaza. Providing assistance to an active conflict should raise our standards of transparency and accountability, not diminish them. The fact that this glut of deadly arms has enabled massive civilian suffering in a bombardment that President Biden has himself called ‘indiscriminate,’ and that these transfers have continued despite the administration’s acknowledgement that Israel is blocking U.S. humanitarian aid, makes this move all the more disturbing.”
“Congress needs to step in immediately and demand a suspension in arms transfers to Israel until it can be sure such transfers can be conducted in full compliance with all relevant U.S. law – as well as our related obligations under international humanitarian law.”
Center for International Policy President and CEO Nancy Okail released the following statement:
Sixty days after Hamas’ horrific attack against Israel and the beginning of Israel’s now two month-long assault on the Gaza Strip, it is clear that only a renewed and sustained ceasefire can avert a further humanitarian catastrophe. We welcome the United Nations Secretary-General’s extraordinary use of Article 99 of the UN Charter to convene a Security Council meeting toward urgently achieving that and related objectives like the delivery of desperately needed aid to the people of Gaza and the release of all hostages.
We reiterate our condemnation of Hamas’ war crimes against civilians. With more than 1,200 Israelis murdered, hundreds subjected to unspeakable atrocities, and dozens more still held hostage, Israel has the right and duty to protect its people.
It is also clear that Israel’s largely indiscriminate bombing of the long-blockaded Gaza Strip in response has violated the laws of war and resulted in the deaths of well over 15,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of which Israel itself estimates are non-combatants, most of them women and children. Israel’s siege of the territory– variably loosened and tightened but never allowing anywhere near an adequate amount of water, fuel, food and medicine into Gaza– risks the spread of further deprivation and disease which could take even more Palestinian lives.
Deadly attacks in the West Bank that have claimed the lives of Palestinian and Israeli civilians, multiple acts of forcible displacement of Palestinian communities in Area C, exchanges of fire on the Israel-Lebanon border, and attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and commercial shipping in the Red Sea all risk spreading the conflict even further.
The international community must make every effort to stop the bloodshed and prevent further escalation in the region. The United States should not only be at the fore of such diplomacy, but ensure that its Security Council veto, as well as its arms and aid to Israel, are not used to deepen and drag out this humanitarian disaster. If another ceasefire is reached, the United States must also not squander the opportunity to guarantee the lasting human security of Israelis and Palestinians alike through a serious effort to finally achieve a just, negotiated end to the underlying Israeli-Palestinian conflict.