Guns and Barter

JUST THREE MONTHS after legislative approval of the M-X, the new mobile missile, there is another addition to the military hardware bin: the F-X, or "Fighter-X." Presumably when these weapons are used to show Moscow the way to reason, the spectacle will be called "War-X."

The "X" in M-X doesn't stand for anything at all, but the "X" in Fighter-X means "export." It is the first weapon made by the United States solely for this purpose, thereby announcing our formal entrance into the world arms sales business, and the escalation of a dangerous trend in American foreign policy.

Since the Nixon administration decided that the Shah was a good bet in the Persian Gulf region, America has handled out arms in increasingly large numbers, presumably to forestall the Soviet menace. Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, already have the requisite bucks and simply extend the payments over a long period. For smaller outposts of democracy, such as the Marcos government in the Phillippines and the Somoza exregime in Nicaragua, the U.S. government either grants military aid, which is used for arms purchases, or extends a line of credit for 10 per cent of the purchase, and allows the remainder to be repaid as a long-term loan. Recent U.S. beneficiaries of such arrangements include Turkey, which has occupied Cyprus illegally since 1974 (using American arms), and North Yemen. In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, many have suggested we provide arms to Pakistan, which is currently building an atomic bomb financed by Colonel Qadaffi of Libya.

Not only does this practice make the Carter Administration's concept of a "moral foreign policy" about as useful as old "Whip Inflation Now" buttons, but it tends to have serious backlash effects. When people in Tehran, Managua, and elsewhere see their neighbors gunned down by government troops using American tanks and M-16s, they often view the United States as an imperialist power supporting non-democratic regimes, not at all the image we try to portray to the nations of the Third World. While in some cases the U.S. may have to provide arms as a deterrent to Soviet expansion--to the NATO countries, for example--it is a dangerous expedient to send such goods wherever dictators desire.

Furthermore, selling multi-billion dollar hardware to other nations increases our own economic problems. Just as the Vietnam War boom led to sharp inflation in the early 1970's, the expenditure of huge sums of money by foreign governments on American arms often causes similar difficulties abroad. Revenue that could be spent on jobs and food instead goes out of the country in large quantities, precipitating a trade imbalance. One popular method of offsetting this problem for many Third World countries is to raise the prices of oil or raw material exports, so that the inflationary effects rebound to the industrial powers. One doesn't need an economic expert to point out the production of large steel hulks to sit on Mideast runways adds less to the Gross National Product than consumer goods that create a "ripple effect" of employment and income in the service and management fields.

WHY THEN does the U.S. government follow such a counterproductive policy? It is no coincidence that the announcement of the production of "Fighter X-port" comes on the heels of the grain embargo to the Soviet Union and the OPEC price increase. The arms trade has become an essential part of our export business, without which the U.S. would face a serious balance of trade deficit and a severe economic slump in 1980. While the OPEC price increase adds a few billion dollars to the import side of the ledger, the grain embargo reduces export revenue by another few billion dollars, adding to an already large ($30 billion) annual shortfall. Now the nations of the world may not want American steel, American television sets, or American cars, but they love our fighter planes.

The first problem with this "solution" is the continuation of the "Band-Aid" approach to our economic woes--a practice that becomes increasingly popular in election years. Recent studies have suggested that plants involved in arms manufacture can be converted to such necessary industries as mass transportation, solar energy, and solid waste disposal, using many of the present technologies. The federal government alone could create this change, first by reducing its own purchases of arms and restricting the sale of U.S. arms around the globe, then by offering loans to firms and communities planning conversion of munitions works. This would be similar to the Defense Production Act of 1950, which was used in just the opposite way--to convert civilian industries to armament production.

In order to establish such a program Americans must first realize that the greatest threat to our national security is not military, but rather our parasitical dependence on potentially hostile nations for energy. The solution to this problem, instead of selling fighter planes for a quick "fix" of cash that can buy a few more barrels, is a concentrated program of developing alternate energy sources (such as solar or synthetic fuels) and curbing our wasteful energy habits (by the increased use of mass transportation, for example). Only by viewing this as a crucial matter of "national security" can such a comprehensive change come about--after all, that's how we got the national highway system.

Just as distressing, the F-X decision fails once again to connect trade with foreign policy aims. As long as the U.S. continues to sell planes, tanks, and guns to any government that feels--or imagines that it feels--the hot breath of Soviet pursuit, it runs the risk of being seen as a warmongering imperialist. With the production of a fighter plane strictly for export, we step blatantly into the role of "agent of destruction," not "defender of the free world."