Resource Type: Report
U.S. Arms Sales Trends: 2020 and Beyond, from Trump to Biden
The latest annual report on U.S. arms sales trends for calendar year 2020, documenting a sharp surge to $110.9 billion in offers under the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
Exception(s) to the Rule(s): Civilian Harm, Oversight, and Accountability in the Shadow Wars
Nearly twenty years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and a decade after the death of Osama Bin Laden, the President of the United States continues to draw from a quiver of legal, policy, and technological instruments to use lethal force in secret, directly or through proxies, in countries around the world. Many of the authorities claimed as available to the President to use lethal force today were justified as necessary based on the perception of an urgent threat two decades ago. To enable flexibility and speed, several secret programs and activities were exempted from traditional legal controls, expectations of transparency, and congressional oversight. Meanwhile, covert lethal strikes by armed drones and paramilitary operations with surrogate forces continue to be associated with a lack of accountability for civilian casualties, human rights violations, and U.S. involvement in wars not specifically authorized by Congress.
Recognizing the risks involved with insufficiently unbounded authority to use force, some members of Congress and civil society have sought to curtail the President’s war powers in a “global war on terror” by focusing attention on repealing or constraining the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Of equal importance but less commonly examined or scrutinized are the expansive legal arguments, policies, and instruments by which successive administrations have used force with little to no oversight or accountability. Even if calls to end endless war are successful and the AUMF is repealed, these tools, and the power to wield them without oversight, will remain intact. Reestablishing responsible and accountable U.S. foreign policy — especially as the U.S. turns its focus towards great power competition — demands an urgent reevaluation of the sufficiency of legal and policy controls on the use of force and paramilitary operations.
This report, produced by Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) in partnership with the Stimson Center and Security Assistance Monitor, examines the tradeoffs and consequences involved with the continued use and availability of certain counterterrorism authorities and practices as the “endless war” enters its twentieth year. In examining these tradeoffs, it focuses on the proliferation and normalization of authorities and tools for employing lethal force, including modes of security cooperation where the use of lethal force and civilian harm are reasonably foreseeable outcomes. It focuses on three specific programs that are subject to fewer rules and much narrower forms of congressional oversight than other “conventional” military and intelligence programs, especially those forms of oversight that govern national decisions to go to war; the prevention and accountability for civilian casualties; and the protection of internationally recognized human rights.
The programs and activities covered by this report are 1) the covert use of lethal force by the Central Intelligence Agency (including CIA drone strikes conducted under the authority of U.S.C. Title 10); 2) the provision in secret (covert or clandestine) of support to irregular forces or government security forces by the CIA; and 3) the provision of support to regular and irregular partner forces by U.S. military special operations forces under a specific fiscal authority created after 9/11, namely U.S.C. Title 10, §127e. The report’s main assertion is that the continued availability and, in fact, increased use of a range of “parallel” authorities risks fatally undermining rules that govern and control the use of force.
Beyond Performance: Lessons Learned from U.S. Security Assistance to Tunisia
A holistic analysis of the impact and efficacy of U.S. security assistance to Tunisia, looking both at the improvments in capabilites and in the political developments of the rising democracy.
The Trump Effect: Trends in Major Arms Sales in 2019
An analysis of trends, changes, and policy developments in U.S. arms sales in 2019.
Trends in Major U.S. Arms Sales in 2018: The Trump Record – Rhetoric Versus Reality
A new report from the Security Assistance Monitor project of the Center for International Policy found that the Trump administration made $78.8 billion in arms deals in 2018, one-quarter of which involved the production of U.S. weapons overseas.
Corruption in the Defense Sector: Identifying Key Risks to U.S. Counterterrorism Aid
An analysis of how U.S. counterterrorism aid exacerbates risks associated with international public and private corruption.
Proposed Firearms Export Changes: Key Challenges for U.S. Oversight
A letter to the Office of Nonproliferation Controls and Treaty Compliance expressing key concerns on proposed firearms export rule
Trends in Major U.S. Arms Sales in 2017: A Comparison of the Obama and Trump Administrations
A report released today by the Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) program of the Center for International Policy documents over $80 billion in U.S. arms sales notifications to Congress during the Trump Administration’s first year in office. The Trump Administration total of $82.2 billion for 2017 slightly exceeded the Obama Administration’s total of $76.5 billion for 2016, and was more than $20 billion less than the peak year of the Obama Administration’s major arms sales offers in 2010.
Some of the biggest differences in major arms sales offers in 2017 compared to previous years are the types of weapons. The bulk of major arms offers during President Obama’s final year focused on sales of military aircraft. In contrast, the largest category of arms sales offers under the Trump Administration has been bombs and missiles, driven by major missile defense deals with Saudi Arabia, Poland, Romania, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates. Overall, the Trump Administration proposed 40 notifications in this category, which is a 30 percent increase over 2016.
There were notable differences between the Trump and Obama Administration on human rights. In 2017, the Trump Administration lifted Obama-era suspensions on specific arms deals to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Nigeria. “Signing off on missile and bomb sales to Saudi Arabia when the country was using these weapons to attack the civilian population in Yemen sent an alarming signal about the U.S. support for human rights,” said Colby Goodman, the Director of the Security Assistance Monitor and editor of the report.
A key reason President Trump touted arms sales in 2017 was to create “jobs, jobs, jobs,” as the President put it during a visit to Saudi Arabia in May of 2017. However, the Trump Administration approved 16 deals in 2017 and eight in January 2018 to help foreign countries create arms manufacturing jobs in their countries. “This is not the ‘America First’ economic policy that has been touted by the Trump Administration,” notes William D. Hartung, the author of the new report, entitled Trends in U.S. Arms Sales 2017: Comparing the Obama and Trump Administrations. “These deals may also cut U.S. manufacturing jobs in the future with increased competition from overseas.”
This report is made possible because of improvements in the transparency of U.S. arms sales notifications in recent years. But while some types of arms sales transparency is up, export controls may be going down as the Trump Administration seeks to reduce restrictions on firearms exports, including removing notifications to Congress on firearms sales. There are also reports about expediting the approval process for the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system.
In 2017, the Trump Administration sent firearms sales notifications to Congress for 25 different countries, including to countries such as Bahrain, El Salvador, Honduras, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates where there are heightened human rights risks. “Congress has played a key role in halting questionable firearms sales abroad in the past few years,” said Colby Goodman. “Eliminating this critical authority undermines Congress’s intent to provide more oversight on a category of weapons that often claims more lives in a year than any other type of arm.”
Other major findings of the report include:
- The Trump Administration’s top ten recipients of U.S. arms sales notifications in 2017 were in order: Saudi Arabia, Poland, Japan, Canada, Romania, Bahrain, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Greece, and Singapore. This is strikingly different than the top ten countries in 2016: Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Iraq, Australia, Norway, and Germany.
- The reported suspension of the Boeing F-18 fighter jet sale with Canada will result in Canada dropping out of the top 10 in 2017. Last year, the Canadian government publically excluded Boeing from its fighter jet competition after Boeing initiated a tariff action against a Canadian aviation competitor that was strongly backed by the Trump Administration.
- Other notable arms sales offers under the missiles and bombs category are for Bahrain, Kuwait, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. The Trump Administration proposed nearly $952 million in missile and torpedo deals for Taiwan in 2017 to help counter threats from China.
For a complete list of all U.S. arms sales notifications in 2016 and 2017, please see SAM’s fact sheet accompanying this report. All of the U.S. arms sales notification data has also been uploaded to SAM’s one-of-a-kind U.S. arms sales database, which allows users to sort the data by region and program (chose notifications and the year in the filter section).
The Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) is a program of the Center for International Policy focused on enhancing transparency and oversight of U.S. foreign security aid and arms sales. By providing comprehensive U.S. security assistance data and by conducting independent, data-driven research, we seek to inform and elevate the debate among civil society, journalists, scholars, and policy makers in the United States and abroad about the risks and best uses of U.S. security assistance to improve human security.
La Violencia en El Salvador: No Hay Una Solución Sencilla
A Spanish translation of a report on the state of security and human rights in El Salvador