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| September 24, 1998 |
| September 24, 1998 |
US Proposes APC Sale to Turkey
Rachel Stohl, Senior Analyst, rstohl@cdi.org
Earlier this month several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) protested the proposed U.S. sale of 80 armored personnel carriers (APC) and 60 crowd-control vehicles to Turkey. The equipment, worth $38 million, is made by AV Technologies in Michigan. The approval of the license to sell the APCs was granted because the equipment is considered "non-lethal." However, the non-lethal designation seems somewhat misleading because guns can be mounted on both types of vehicles.
And this is the problem. The State Department, in its Annual Country Report of Human Rights Practices, and groups such as Amnesty International contend that Turkish anti-terror and anti-riot police demonstrate a pattern of human rights abuses against the Turkish population. Reports for September alone cite the detention of more than 300 peaceful demonstrators, including some protesting the disappearance of loved ones and others calling for a peaceful end to Turkey's 14-year civil war with the PKK, a militant Kurdish opposition group.
On the basis of Turkey's human rights record, the proposed sale challenges the "Leahy Law" (Section 570 of the 1997 Foreign Operations Appropriations Law). This law states "that no funds from the Foreign Operations Appropriations, including financing from the Export-Import Bank, can be used to provide equipment to foreign security units if credible evidence of gross human rights violations by specific units exits."
Fully aware of the Leahy provision when it approved the sale license, the State Department put end-use restrictions on the equipment that would preclude its in provinces where widespread rights violations have been documented (according to the Washington Kurdish Institute). However, if the Turkish government does not cooperate in documenting human rights violations, and the U.S. government does not press the Turks to do so, the restrictions on the equipment are moot.
The sale, currently awaiting review from Secretary of State Madeline Albright, will most likely be approved with these end-use restrictions. The sale will be financed by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, thus ensuring that U.S. taxpayers bear the real economic burden of this sale.
The sale of the APCs to Turkey has raised red flags in the arms control community because of another proposed sale to Turkey. Earlier this year, the State Department held meetings with human rights groups and weapons makers to discuss a proposed attack helicopter sale worth $3.5 billion. At this meeting, State Department officials said that the attack helicopter sale would be "conditioned on verifiable improvements in Turkey's human rights practices."
The controversy about U.S. weapons sales to Turkey is not new. Turkey has long been a major recipient of U.S. weapons. Jennifer Washburn of the World Policy Institute notes that Turkey received over $1 billion worth of American weapons last year. Furthermore, 80 percent of Turkey's arms imports came from the United States.
Advocates of restricting weapons sales to Turkey have often looked to the proposed U.S. Code of Conduct as the means to accomplish their goal. The Code would prohibit U.S. arms exports to governments that are undemocratic, abusive of citizens' human rights, are engaged in acts of armed aggression, and do not participate in the UN Register of Conventional Arms. However, the current political climate in Washington makes it unlikely that the Code will pass in the near future.
As a near-term alterative to the Code, the U.S. government should eliminate loan guarantees for foreign arms sales by U.S. contractors. Foreign governments and groups who purchase U.S. weapons should be required to pay cash. Eliminating the Pentagon's loan export guarantee program can keep weapons out of the hands of many potentially abusive customers who otherwise could not afford the more expensive weapons.
The loan guarantee step will not, however, be enough. The real solution, whether embodied in a "Code of Conduct" or not, is to simply ban all sale or grants of U.S. weapons to non-democratic governments and those with records of persistent human rights violations.
Clinton Requests More Money for Pentagon
Christopher Hellman, Senior Analyst, chellman@cdi.org
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), President Clinton has indicated his support for $1 billion in additional funds in Fiscal Year 1999 to cover shortages in spare parts inventories and "readiness" problems in the military. The President has also written to Defense Secretary William Cohen urging him to work with General Henry H. Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to revise future military spending requests. The Administration's actions come after last week's annual meeting between President Clinton and the nation's top military officials.
In his letter to the Majority Leader, President Clinton indicated that the Administration would put together a package which would include $1 billion in funding reductions in other areas of the budget -- known as "offsets" -- to balance out the additional spending for readiness. Such offsets are required by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which sets spending caps for federal programs unless Congress and the Administration determine that the additional funds can be declared an "emergency." For example, Congress is currently considering providing roughly $4 billion for Bosnia and other initiatives in a supplemental appropriations package which will likely be designated as emergency funding.
Over the longer term, the Administration now appears willing to support a substantial increase in military spending. According to Administration officials, last week's talks did not focus on a specific dollar amount for the proposed long-term increase. The Pentagon also has avoided discussing how much additional funding it might request. Privately, the Pentagon's initial estimates are that they will ask for an annual increase of at least $10 billion.
The final figure is likely to be considerably higher. According to the Pentagon's current multi-year spending plan, known as the Future Years' Defense Plan (FYDP), the military's procurement budget is to rise to $60 billion by FY 2001, an annual increase of $15 billion above current levels. To fund this increase the Pentagon was relying on a number of cost savings in other areas of its operations, including additional rounds of base closures, increased privatization of non-combat functions, further reductions in personnel end strengths, and streamlining the existing procurement process. It appears unlikely, however, that such initiatives will achieve the level of savings necessary to meet procurement spending targets. In fact, a recent report by the General Accounting Office indicates that the FYDP contains "substantial risk" that it cannot be executed as planned and may lead to significant budget shortfalls.
Effectively, the Pentagon has been issued an open invitation to "reach for the stars." There is no reason for it not to, particularly taking into account the growing -- albeit inaccurate -- public impression that the government is running a budget surplus. Yet the underlying causes of the current readiness problems -- massive expenditures on unnecessary weapons systems intended to fight World War III, the continued adherence to the "two major war" readiness requirement, and an accounting system which is unable to track spending -- are not being addressed.
In short, the Pentagon is about to be handsomely rewarded for failing to adapt to the strategic realities of the post-Cold War world. Allocating substantial additional resources may help temporarily solve the current shortfalls in modernization and readiness funding, but this action will merely forestall the Pentagon's ultimate day of reckoning. Meanwhile, additional valuable tax dollars will be wasted and the military will find itself only marginally better prepared than it currently is to meet the true challenges of the 21st century.
For more on the use of supplemental appropriations, see "Pressure Growing to Boost Pentagon Spending," the Weekly Defense Monitor, September 17, 1998 at http://www.cdi.org/weekly/issue37.html For background on the federal budget surplus, see "The Balanced Budget Myth" from "The Fiscal Year 1999 Budget," Volume 27, Issue #4 of CDI's "Defense Monitor" at: http://www.cdi.org/dm/1998/issue4.pdf