World Beyond War & Roots Action & Congressional Research Service – 2015-12-23 21:07:47
http://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/resume-reporting-on-weapons-sales
ACTION ALERT: Tell Congress: Resume Reporting on Weapons Sales
World Beyond War & Roots Action
(December 16, 2015) — To: Congress
Instruct the Congressional Research Service
to resume its reporting on the arms trade.
Why Is this Important?
Since 2011, the United States has sold a great deal of weapons. But the US government has stopped reporting on its own and other nations’ arms sales. CRS has its own internal government sources of information. The report it used to produce is not duplicated by any other publication.
The United States is no longer documenting one of its biggest and most deadly businesses. In 2012, Richard Grimmett retired from the Congressional Research Service. He had been the chief author of its reports on international weapons sales and transfers.
It is thanks to those reports that we know, with some reliability, that as of 2011 the United States accounted for 79% of the value of transfer agreements to ship weapons to governments in the Middle East, 79% also to poor nations around the world, and 77% of the value of total agreements to ship weapons to other countries.
We can compare these numbers with earlier years, but not with later ones.
Even if Congress doesn’t want to know, it should not get away with denying us that right.
How it will be delivered
To Congress Members in districts and in Washington, D.C.
ACTION: Click here to sign.
Background
CRS Report for Congress, Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2004-2011
Richard F. Grimmett (Specialist in International Security) and Paul K. Kerr (Analyst in Nonproliferation) / Congressional Research Service
Summary
(August 24, 2012) — This report is prepared annually to provide Congress with official, unclassified, quantitative data on conventional arms transfers to developing nations by the United States and foreign countries for the preceding eight calendar years for use in its policy oversight functions.
All agreement and delivery data in this report for the United States are government-to-government Foreign Military Sales (FMS) transactions. Similar data are provided on worldwide conventional arms transfers by all suppliers, but the principal focus is the level of arms transfers by major weapons suppliers to nations in the developing world.
Developing nations continue to be the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by weapons suppliers. During the years 2004-2011, the value of arms transfer agreements with developing nations comprised 68.6% of all such agreements worldwide.
More recently, arms transfer agreements with developing nations constituted 79.2% of all such agreements globally from 2008-2011, and 83.9% of these agreements in 2011.
The value of all arms transfer agreements with developing nations in 2011 was over $71.5 billion.
This was a substantial increase from $32.7 billion in 2010. In 2011, the value of all arms Deliveries to developing nations was $28 billion, the highest total in these deliveries values since 2004.
Recently, from 2008 to 2011, the United States and Russia have dominated the arms market in the developing world, with both nations either ranking first or second for each of these four years in the value of arms transfer agreements. From 2008 to 2011, the United States made nearly $113 billion in such agreements, 54.5% of all these agreements (expressed in current dollars).
Russia made $31.1 billion, 15% of these agreements. During this same period, collectively, the United States and Russia made 69.5% of all arms transfer agreements with developing nations, ($207.3 billion in current dollars) during this four-year period.
In 2011, the United States ranked first in arms transfer agreements with developing nations with over $56.3 billion or 78.7% of these agreements, an extraordinary increase in market share from 2010, when the United States held a 43.6% market share. In second place was Russia with $4.1 billion or 5.7% of such agreements.
In 2011, the United States ranked first in the value of arms deliveries to developing nations at $10.5 billion, or 37.6% of all such deliveries. Russia ranked second in these deliveries at $7.5 billion or 26.8%.
In worldwide arms transfer agreements in 2011 — to both developed and developing nations — the United States dominated, ranking first with $66.3 billion in such agreements or 77.7% of all such agreements. This is the highest single year agreements total in the history of the US arms export program.
Russia ranked second in worldwide arms transfer agreements in 2011with $4.8 billion in such global agreements or 5.6%. The value of all arms transfer agreements worldwide in 2011 was $85.3 billion, a substantial increase over the 2010 total of $44.5 billion, and the highest worldwide arms agreements total since 2004.
In 2011, Saudi Arabia ranked first in the value of arms transfer Agreements among all developing nations weapons purchasers, concluding $33.7 billion in such agreements. The Saudis concluded $33.4 billion of these agreements with the United States (99%). India ranked second with $6.9 billion in such agreements. The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E) ranked third with $4.5 billion.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
