{"id":14342,"date":"2015-11-12T08:05:19","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T13:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14342"},"modified":"2015-11-12T08:05:19","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T13:05:19","slug":"arming-dictators-an-american-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14342","title":{"rendered":"Arming Dictators: An American Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/11\/12\/arming-dictators-an-american-tradition\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Arming Dictators: An American Tradition<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"post_meta\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-76651 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2015\/11\/shutterstock_244391005.jpg\" alt=\"shutterstock_244391005\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>Recently the Obama administration announced another military aid\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/10\/22\/world\/asia\/white-house-set-to-sell-new-fighter-jets-to-pakistan-in-bid-to-bolster-partnership.html\" target=\"_blank\">package for Pakistan<\/a>: eight F-16 fighter jets.\u00a0 Once again considerations of human rights and democratic values have been sacrificed to strategic calculations.\u00a0 Recall, the robust figures for US military assistance to Pakistan: more than $20 billion in weapons, training, and other activities between FY2002 and FY2015, making Pakistan the 16<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0ranking recipient of US arms.\u00a0 And that amount does not include drone strikes.<\/p>\n<p>The contrast between Obama the engager and Obama the warrior is striking.\u00a0 US arms exports to authoritarian regimes such as Pakistan\u2019s, just one element of military aid, continue to rise even as we celebrate the President\u2019s initiatives with Iran and Cuba.\u00a0 From 2009 to 2014, I count $12.5 billion in arms exports to eight other authoritarian regimes: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.\u00a0 That figure is nearly a quarter of all\u00a0<a>US military exports<\/a>\u00a0in those years, which total $50.7 billion.<\/p>\n<p>There is no evidence that those weapons, or military assistance as a whole, have moved authoritarian governments toward greater respect for human rights, social justice, accountable government, or environmental protection. Even their support of US policy on terrorism has been tentative, and in Pakistan\u2019s case, two-faced, since its government accepts US drone strikes while its intelligence apparatus coddles al-Qaeda and the Taliban. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that military aid has abetted repression, official corruption, and strong-arm rule.\u00a0 Pakistan has thumbed its nose at US aid even more, expanding its nuclear-weapon arsenal to more than 100\u2014an arsenal that heightens tension with India and, because it now consists of tactical nukes, is especially vulnerable to theft by terrorist groups. On top of that, we now have word that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2015-09-10\/pakistan-joins-exclusive-drone-warfare-club-with-nod-to-china\" target=\"_blank\">Pakistan has its own drones<\/a>, probably built with Chinese help, adding to South Asia\u2019s instability.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arming Dictators: An American Tradition Recently the Obama administration announced another military aid\u00a0package for Pakistan: eight F-16 fighter jets.\u00a0 Once again considerations of human rights and democratic values have been sacrificed to strategic calculations.\u00a0 Recall, the robust figures for US military assistance to Pakistan: more than $20 billion in weapons, training, and other activities between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[1319,204,10584,1007,1795,528,584,1745,701,818,827],"class_list":["post-14342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-armaments","tag-democracy","tag-dictators","tag-drones","tag-human-rights","tag-military-industrial-complex","tag-obama","tag-pakistan","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-turkey","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14343,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342\/revisions\/14343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}