As noted by many historians since then, this speech shaped U.S. security doctrine for the next several decades. Henceforth it would be the unquestionable obligation of the United States to provide economic, political, and especially military assistance to any nation threatened by Soviet (or Soviet-backed) forces. As the first expression of this principle, Congress voted $400 million in military assistance for Greece and Turkey on 15 May 1947; this was soon followed by the appropriation of even larger amounts for these two countries and for many others in Europe and Asia.
In time the transfer of arms to anticommunist governments abroad came to be seen in Washington as a critical component of "containment," the strategy that governed American foreign and military policy throughout the Cold War. As articulated by its original architects, containment held that the totalitarian Soviet system was forced by its very nature to seek domination over the rest of the world, and thus, in response, the United States had no choice but to join with other nations in resisting Soviet aggression. And because many of the nations on the periphery of the Soviet empire were too poor to provide for their own defense, it was up to Washington to supply the necessary arms and equipment.
This principle was given formal expression in the Mutual Defense Assistance Act (MDAA) of 1949. Signed into law by President Truman on 6 October of that year, the MDAA (later incorporated into the Mutual Security Act of 1950) gave the president broad authority to conclude mutual defense assistance agreements with friendly powers and to provide these countries with a wide range of military goods and services. In its initial authorization Congress awarded $1 billion to members of the newly formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); $211 million to Greece and Turkey; $28 million to Iran, the Philippines, and South Korea; and $75 million for the "general area" of China. These appropriations were increased in subsequent years, reaching a peak of $5.2 billion after the outbreak of the Korean War.
At first U.S. arms aid was given primarily to the NATO countries and to other friendly powers on the periphery of the Soviet Union and China, including Iran, South Korea, Turkey, and the Nationalist government on Taiwan. In later years such assistance was also supplied to friendly nations in Africa and Latin America. Between 1950 and 1967 the United States provided its allies with a total of $33.4 billion in arms and services under the Military Assistance Program (MAP), plus another $3.3 billion worth of surplus weaponry under the Excess Defense Articles program. The United States also sold weapons to those of its allies that were sufficiently recovered from World War II to finance their own arms acquisitions; between 1950 and 1967 Washington exported $11.3 billion worth of arms and equipment through its Foreign Military Sales program.
Since the end of WWII the US has been the largest arms exporter in the world consistently selling nearly half of all arms in any given year. By the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US took on an even greater role in world wide arms sales. While keeping most appropriations away from the glitz of the US media, its military has nevertheless accounted for a large portion of government spending as well as government selling of its weapons capacity, commonly referred to as the Military-Industrial Complex.
The website Foreign Policy in Focus states, "According to a recent report by the Council on Foreign Relations, "[T]he average American believes we spend 18% of the federal budget on foreign affairs, while thinking we should spend only 6%. In reality, foreign affairs spending, the bully pulpit of America's strength overseas, is now only 1% of the federal budget--a little more than one penny of every federal tax dollar."1
FPIF, also states, "When you think of big government, this is it. The military establishment issues over half of all government paychecks. It makes about two-thirds of government purchases of goods and services. It sponsors 53% of all government research and development.5 It is the nation's second largest health care insurer and provider and the largest day care provider. It runs the world's largest educational enterprise. It manages over 5,000 properties on lands with a total land area about the size of the State of Ohio.6 Outside of China, it is without rival as the world's largest bureaucracy.
"It is also without question the largest source of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. It employs over 40,000 accountants and budget analysts to manage over 250 accounting systems. In 1998, the General Accounting Office reported that the Pentagon was unable to account for $250 billion of more than $1.2 trillion worth of property, equipment, inventory and supplies.7 Yet, it continues to disperse billions of dollars without records of what it is purchasing. As conservative Republican Senator Charles Grassley has said: "We have financial chaos in the Pentagon. We have meaningless accounting numbers . . . We have meaningless cost estimates."8 The Pentagon also provides the pork, or pet projects, that both conservatives and liberals can love. Senator John McCain estimates that $5 billion in pork-barrel special interest projects--primarily weapons or construction projects that the Pentagon did not ask for--were larded into the FY1999 defense budget.
"Each year, the General Accounting Office (GAO) publishes reports on what it calls "at risk" agencies, where mismanagement raises the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse. In 1999, the GAO reports that after "decades of neglect," the Pentagon has a financial management system that: is unable to properly account for billions of dollars in assets ... is unable to make sound resource decisions ... consistently pays more and takes longer to develop [weapons] systems that do not perform as anticipated ... continues to make erroneous, fraudulent and improper payments to contractors ... [and whose] inventory management system is ineffective and inefficient.
According to World Policy.org, "From Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, it has been an article of faith for executive branch policy makers that U.S. weapons exports are only made to responsible allies who use these systems for legitimate defensive purposes. However, the World Policy.org has actually found that not to be the case in U.S. weapons deliveries to 50 current ethnic and territorial conflicts. Contrary to the conventional wisdom in Washington, official U.S. government data on arms transfers provides overwhelming circumstantial evidence that U.S.-supplied weaponry is at the center of many of today's most dangerous and intractable conflicts: - In the 1990s, parties to 45 current conflicts have taken delivery of over $42 billion worth of U.S. weaponry; - Of the significant ethnic and territorial conflicts going on during 1993-94, 90% (45 out of 50) of them involved one or more parties that had received some U.S. weaponry or military technology in the period leading up to the conflict; - In more than half of current conflicts (26 out of 50), the United States has been a significant arms supplier, accounting for at least 5% of the weapons delivered to one party to the dispute over a five year period; - In more than one-third of all current conflicts (18 out of 50), the United States has been a major supplier to one party to the dispute, accounting for over 25% of all weapons imported by that participant in the most recent five year period; - Despite the popular perception that it is U.S. policy to cease deliveries of weapons once a conflict is under way, as of the end of 1993 (the latest year for which full statistics are available) the United States was shipping military goods and services to more than half (26 out of 50) of the areas where there were wars being fought.
In a number of volatile areas the United States has been the primary supplier to governments that are involved in ongoing conflicts. In Turkey (76%), Spain (85%), Israel (99%), Morocco (26%), Egypt (61%), Chad (27%), Somalia (44%), Liberia (40%), Kenya (25%), Pakistan (44%), the Philippines (93%), Indonesia (38%), Guatemala (86%), Haiti (25%), Colombia (28%), Brazil (35%), and Mexico (77%), the United States has been the primary supplier of imported weaponry in the most recent five year period for which full data is available.
Looking at just one recent year, 2005, the US had armament sales of nearly $500 billion or 48% of all weapons systems sold around the world. The next largest seller was the United Kingdom which only sold about $48 billion, or one-tenth of the US. Of the US sales, 58% went to developing countries. Since 9/11 the US has increased its own military budget spending nearly $1 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq above and beyond the normal procurement of defense spending written into every fiscal budget. For the first time in US history, President Bush sent a proposed budget in 2005 that did not include the monies required to run both wars in fiscal year 2006.
He basically separated out the cost of these wars and submitted a partial budget to Congress for their approval. Thus, the wars that were supposed to pay for themselves through the sale of Iraqi oil, were now so expensive that the president decided to leave them entirely out of the budget proposal to Congress. In this way, Bush was able to demand appropriations for his wars on several different occasions throughout the year and tie the entire amount requested towards the safe keeping of the soldiers in the field, turning fiscal irresponsibility into a patriotic requirement that would paint any opposition as friends of the terrorists.
Bush’s wars that were supposed to see the US enter as liberators and saviors and to be bought and paid for by the natural resources found there, will ultimately cost the US taxpayer upwards of $2 trillion as well as a great proportion of this young generation forever traumatized and wounded, both physically and psychologically, for the rest of their lives.
Turkey's use of U.S.-supplied fighter aircraft, helicopters, tanks, and armored personnel carriers in its recent invasion of Northern Iraq highlights the dangers of a policy of uncritical assistance to allies engaged in ethnic or territorial disputes, as does the employment of U.S.-supplied equipment on both sides of the 1995 Peru-Ecuador border war. Since the end of the Cold War, the continuing U.S. policy of promoting weapons exports as a key element of U.S. security strategy and economic policy has accelerated the incidence of the "boomerang effect": the transfer of U.S. weaponry to forces that end up doing battle against U.S. troops. The last four times the United States sent troops into combat in significant numbers -- in Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti -- they faced adversaries that had received U.S.-origin arms, training, or military production technology in the period leading up to the conflict. Should the US go to war against Iran, they will be facing the US sold technologies of the late 70s as well as that which was sold to Iran under the Iran-Contra deal of the mid 1980s. This is a clear sign that something is awry in the U.S. arms transfer decision making processes.
In recent years, the US has found itself battling its own armament in countries it once counted on as friends. Iran was a friend who received massive amounts of US aid, including huge amounts of nuclear armament technology until 1979. Iraq received massive amounts of US biological, chemical and radioactive arms until the late 1980s. The mujahideen and Taliban forces in Afghanistan, as well as the terrorist group Al Qaeda, received hundreds of millions of dollars in high tech weaponry throughout the 80s and 90s. The US is currently sending India modern nuclear weaponry capabilities and is arming the Pakistani military regime in order to maintain it power amid growing distrust and disfavor among the people there.
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