Originally posted by: Common Courtesy
There are probably many more AK47, AK74 and knockoffs than there are the AR15, M16, etc out in the hands of countries and warlords. Munitions are made in higher quantities and sold cheaper from those countries the were linked to the Soviet/Communist expansions
Which itself was linked to the cold war the US was the main force behind, while the US and the USSR competed for power in proxy wars in third-world nations globally.
The US as the most powerful nation in the world has a long history of tending to support the brutal governments with arms, with which they can keep repressive governments in power in exchange for the leaders selling out their countries' interests to the US; while the USSR, as the much weaker competitor, has the longer history of arming the rebels against those regimes.
But sometimes the roles are reversed; the US has sponsored terrorist forces in communist and left-leaning regimes around the world; the US has long had a 'school of terrorism' used to create the brutal forces for the regimes around the world it backs. It did both the government the terrorist side in Vietnam, first arming the occupier France; then creating a regime for half the country, creating 'South' Vietnam, by making and breaking a promise to let the country re-unify under elections; and the 'rebel' side, training and sending terrorists into North Vietnam, until the full war started. It's sponsored terrorism by the state in El Salvador when it was allied with the government; and it sponsored terrorism by the 'rebels' in Nicaragua, when it was against the government. The Soviet Union, too, sometimes backed repressive regimes and terrorism by 'rebels'. Both the US and the USSR who did wrong would like to excuse their own wrongs by pointing to the other, while the third world countries can blame both.
The USSR was a very bad government - but it was mostly on the defensive in the 'cold war', wanting a buffer of protection after the west, Germany, had invaded it and caused 65% of all allied military casualties in their nation, while the US, UK, and France each suffered 2% or less; their primary crime against the world was to subject their border states to becoming a 'buffer' area to protect them against another invasion. They were never about 'conquering the planet for world domination', though there was obviously a global conflict the US was more often the instigator in, with the USSR providing a great excuse for any policy the US wanted to justify. We *had* to put another right-wing dictatorship into place that sells out its people, it's part of the war on communism. The cold war is filled with countries having nothing to do with the USSR being attacked when they wanted fair treatment econmically by US corporations.
Russia, China will be happy to pickup the slack for weapons that we refuse to sell - and to any side with the $$.
Again, I think they'd be inclined to not do so, if we'd stop sellling far more military aid. What you're missing is the US side, when the US props up some regime who sells out their country and represses the people, by giving them jets and tanks, and then our 'competitors' sell the rebels AK-47's and ammo. If we weren't arming entire governments to repress in exchange for favors for us, they'd likely be happy to give up selling the AK-47's, since they are selling a lot less than we are.
If not, it affects what we should do. I'm not suggesting we allow a vacuum to be filled by the other major powers in arms sales.
The NATO allies also sell weapons - what pressure will you be able to exert on other countries to stop - you just are opening up the market for them.
I suspect they'd follow our lead. You are also forgetting that the other nations in NATO, in modern times, are a lot less militaristic than we are. They aren't chomping at the bit anymore to rush out and create dctatorships and to colonize other nations. A lot of the problem wouldn't continue if we weren't doing it, other parts, they'd need to agree to the same restrictions, and given the political views there, and the advantages of not having to deal with US-controlled regimes, they'd be likely to.
The main argument for continuing the current situation is the argument of the thug - because we get more rich off of doing things the way they are.
In the US it is difficult for a manufacturer to sell abroad without oversight.
In other nations, underground sales are expected to avoid political backlass.
Yes, but you're missing the reason - it's because of the political elements in our arms sales. If we're propping up some dictatorship for the political benefits, we don't want an arms company undermining the regime selling to their enemies. It's not 'difficult' to sell, though, when you look at the huge number of sales that are approved. Other nations' 'black markets' pale ini comparison and could be largely shut down if the governments wanted as part of an arms agreement.
But they'd be idiots while the US is doing what it does to not do the small bit of the arms sales they do. It needs the US to lead the effort to reduce arms sales.
The bottom line is that it's easy for us to grab the benefits of aarms sales, that provide us with both global power by being able to get 'puppet regimes', and profits for our industry; it helps us in the 'global economic competition' for us to do that while our competitors do not. But what we should be doing is leading the world towars other powers having better governments, and there being less violence in the world with fewer arms sales.
But some won't see any hypocrisy when our selfish policy kills far more people with our arms sales than all terorism in the world combined, by orders of magnitude.
The government is happy to keep the citizens chattering only about terrorism, which keeps people from objecting to the arms sales. It's up to the citizens to demand improvement.
Does 'absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely' affect the US as well, as people rationalize our leading the world in some bad areas like arms sales?
America always has a choice to make whether to be great and powerful, or only powerful. But by making the wrong choice, our power is increasingly threatened, too.
As our choices leave us more and more dependant on our military power, the world could shift to where only Americans are left singing "America the Beutiful' and talking about our great moral leadership, while the US views the world more and more as a thug. What a tragedy that would be, instead of our leading the world towards more democracy and freedom.
Europe had a political transformation against war, that the US hasn't. The more we profit from war the more political support war has; and the less we profit from it, the less.
This is why we need to make policy choices that shift away from reliance on military force for power, to 'allow peace to be politically viable'.
Most American's don't have much of a global appreciation of the history. Before WWII, European nations were often brutally colonizing other nations - India, most of Africa, for example - and the US supported them. After the war, a weakened Europe was less able to resist the rebels in colonies; the cold war provided Soviet backing for some of the rebels, and a moral cause for the Soviets to say they were championing 'wars of liberation', and finally Kennedy made a change for the US to not support European colonization.
But the American people are not often told the history of the US finding its own form of 'economic colonization' inn various nations - often with a brutal result. Because they don't understand that, they're thinking the US only supports freedom. But the world doesn't look at it that way. However, things have gotten better since the end of the cold war. The US isn't assassinating leaders the way it has, isn't running terrorist regimes nearly as bad as ones like it has in El Salvador or Chile,
But IMO the US strategy may have shifted more to backing puppet regimes - which makes the 'war on terror' line very useful for opposing any opposition to its puppets.
When the US backed a brutal regime in El Salvador,people, well many people, sympathized with the rebels; now, the rebels would be 'terrorists'.
Now that the US isn't much having to back terrorist rebels and defend them as 'freedom fighters', the 'war on terror' is great for undermining support for rebels.
The thing is, when a repressive regime is put and kept in power by US sold arms (paid for of course by the people being repressed), what are they to do about it, when politics doesn't let them throw out the regime? This is the modern day corruption of the global political system. The corrupt state kept in power to repress people to serve the powerful interests' needs. There won't be all that much organizing to fight for 'fair labor' practices in a third world country with a repressive regime.
This is really just a new, modern form of economic slavery being allowed, of nations like it's always been with a few elites running rhings and a lot of poor, politically powerless workers serving the needs of the wealthy. Think about slavery - it was never about the most objectionable things, the idea of 'owning a human being', the harm to the slaves, it was always only diven by the desire of the powerful to get the benefits of the cheap labor of the slaves. And modern 'slavery' has the same effect - it doesn't include the irrelevent nastiness of 'owning' people, or transporting them to a foreign land as property, but it still gets their cheap labor with their having no choice, really. It's the same system, but different in the details.
And the massive arms sales led by the US are how this is implemented - even while I certainly have left out big parts of the system, to focus on this one aspect that's so little understood. We're not at the point where there's just one big power exploiting people, we're not at the point where there isn't a lot of the economy still for a middle class, but the issues I describe are still a big issue. There's still far too much unnecessary, economically motivated violence, and too much oppression for labor.
And the solutions aren't simple. If there was no foreign domination of a third world country, it might well develop its own internal tyranny of elites and oppressed, as has been the case in all of human history. The tendancis I describe are pretty universal problems. But what we need is a continued commitment by AMericans to traditional American values of wanting to see more people prosper and less tyranny.
That's really what America is about - telling the oppressed masses who are only given the choice to serve the economic needs of the powers in England, that that's wrong and that from now on they get a 'vote' to choose their own leadership - a massive transfer of power from the powerful few to the masses, who promptly said 'no more royalty setting up the system for their own benefit'.
But that is all too often denied to other oppressed masses around the world - especially now that Americans are often the beneficiaries of the oppression. Just as Americans who fought for their own liberation from England were often blind to the oppression of the slaves who benefitted them, now on a global scale Americans are not too concerned with the oppression of third world workers whose oppression provdes them prosperity, just as the English werne't too concerned with the colonists who provided them wealth.
Do we have a world vision of more and more countries and people where the masses are not oppressed as much, even though it lessens the prosperity of the wealthy, just as England lost wealth from the independance of the US or the US lost prosperity (short term, anyway) from the ending of slave labor? If so, we have to fight not support the systems of economic oppression in poorer nations. And that means doing it in conjunction with other powerful nations. Some, like modern Europe, seem ready; others like China need a push.
But the easy answer is just keep using arms sales to prop up regimes who will sell out the people for our economic interests.
Just as the easy answer for Europe was to maintain their colonies for their economic benefit for a very long time.
We don't need the policies of the thugs who will only measure a policy by how it benefits our economy - we need principled citizens who will further the moral aims of democracy.
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