The Dollar Auction Continues

It should come as no surprise that the US is selling arms to Pakistan.

“2,769 Radio Frequency TOW 2A missiles, 415 RF bunker buster missiles, fly-to-buy missiles in both these categories, 121 TOW launchers for wire-guided and wireless missiles, E-2C HAWKEYE 2000 Airborne Early Warning Systems, simulators and support equipment. Their total worth could be up to $1.04 Billion.”

According Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, “The latest geo-strategic rationale for many US (arms) sales is the so-called war on terror…. US officials claim that the recent sale to Pakistan of F-16 jets with air-to-air missiles will help in the fight against Al Qaeda. In reality, they are for fighting India and they create a market for selling similar US fighters to India.” [Emphasis mine.]

Of the many causes of third world poverty (and India accounts for a pretty large share of the third world), the buying of arms from the so-called first world must be a major cause. Yes, the US is the largest seller of weapons of mass destruction — it not only develops the weapons of mass destruction, but it also sells them around the world. The US has to keep selling these WMD so as to keeps its WMD factories humming.

But the US could not sell these weapons unless the leaders of the third world impoverished countries did not want to buy these for self aggrandizement. You need drug dealers and drug addicts. If there were no addicts, there wouldn’t be any profit in dealing. Or to put it another way, if there were no bidders, the auctioneer would be jobless. The dollar auction continues.

India’s development and the trade in WMD is clearly related, and I have pondered the issue on this blog before. From “Benefits of Weapons Trade“:

Take, for instance, trade in weapons of mass destruction. Is it welfare enhancing? The seller of these weapons clearly profits from the trade. What about the buyer? Does it really promote the security of the buyer? These questions bear investigation. While the answers may all be very trivially obvious for some, it is not at all clear to me. Though the perception may be widely shared that buying weapons is good use of scarce resources, it could also be wildly incorrect.

The reluctance of the US when it comes to selling arms to developing countries is like Sam’s reluctance to let his gullible friends paint the fence for him. When he finally relents, the friends are happy and suitably grateful to him for his magnanimity. Only in few trades are all the gains one-sided but trade such as these are exemplars of that set.

From the “Care and Feeding of the Permanent Arms Industry“:

The care and feeding of the monstrous permanent arms industry requires perpetual armed conflict. Like sheep to the slaughter, the third world countries eagerly line up for the treat of killing their neighbors while impoverishing themselves even further. A dispassionate observer could easily conclude that these poor over-populated third-rate countries deserve their demolition and wash his hands of the whole sorry mess.

And from “Part 2 of the Care and Feeding“:

Before I am taken to task by someone for stating the above, let me hasten to add that there is no law in the universe which prohibits a country from profiting from the stupidity of other countries. That India and Pakistan are abjectly poor overpopulated underdeveloped nations constantly at each others’ throat willing to further impoverish themselves by buying impossibly expensive weapons from abroad is not the US’s fault. The US merely supplies the arms, it does not directly go and starve millions of people of third world countries. The actual starving of untold millions of abjectly poor people in third rate world countries is because of the warmongering ignorant policy makers that populate these countries.

To round it all off, here are my views on the True Weapons of Mass Destruction:

The rich sell arms to the poor and the poor pay for it through the blood, sweat, and tears of its starving millions. To be sure, it is not the starving millions who are interested in fighting the poor of the neighboring countries. These millions of poor unfortunates are merely the slave labor that supply through their toil goods that the rich buy in exchange for the arms they ship to the armies of the poor nations.

It is interesting to ask who exactly wants war. Speaking personally, I am against aggression and don’t wish to be the victim nor the perpetrator of aggression. I also believe that the vast majority of people would happily live and let live. So how does it happen that nations arm themselves to their teeth and more often than not beggar their neighbors and themselves in doing so.

I believe it is so because nations are not monolithic entities. People have different stations in a country. The generals who wage wars and the politicians who direct the ship of state do not have to pay for the wars themselves. The poor have to die on the battle fields and those who are not paid to die, starve on the streets so that their meagre production can be shipped out to pay for the weapons of mass destruction that the leaders of the nation buy for their own amusement.

It is all karma, neh?