At What Price Security? Posted by Patrick Barry

News that U.S. arms exports have risen dramatically over the past few years - especially as America ramps up its effort to prop up foreign governments in two parts of the world not known for stability - should not come as a surprise.  But as we go about "building a more secure world," (to borrow from Air Force Deputy under secretary Bruce S. Lemkin) it's worth wondering how much security this policy is likely to bring.  More from the article:

From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005.

This is, quite obviously, a huge increase, and one that is definitely brought on by commitments to the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, commitments we hope will result in those governments "standing up," so that we can reduce our presence there.  When you consider the scope of internal threats faced by these countries - threats which in some cases come from irredeemable violent elements - it helps, on the face of it, to let at least some aspects of policy be guided by Weberian principles of building state capacity  An Afghan army that can't tackle the Taliban should probably be strengthened, and I'm not arguing against that.

But, and this is where the caution should come in, the history of U.S. military assistance is dotted with many 'short-term success', 'long-term not-so-clear' stories.  Travis Sharp, from the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation raises this concern:

"...if alliances shifted, the United States might eventually be in combat against an enemy equipped with American-made weapons. Arms sales have had unintended consequences before, as when the United States armed militants fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, only to eventually confront hostile Taliban fighters armed with the same weapons there."

What looks like an imperative, or even wisdom in the short-term can very easily fall under the law of unintended consequences years later. As arms sales rise, and as the the U.S. sends increasingly sophisticated killing weapons abroad, the potential consequences for U.S. interests grow apace.  Twenty years have passed since American-made stinger missiles turned scores of soviet planes and helicopters into piles of scrap that lit up the Afghan Mountains, yet as recently as 2005 the U.S. was still attempting to recover missiles that many fear could be turned into equally lethal instruments of terrorism.  Today's news shows that we've seen this before, and we'll likely see it again. 

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