These sales, often buoyed by U.S. subsidies known as foreign military financing, have continued despite many of the recipients’ dark records of serious human-rights abuses—such as the torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings carried out by the Egyptian military in its campaign against the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula, or the many possible war crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition in its ongoing bombing of Houthi-Saleh forces in Yemen.
Supporters of these sales argue that while these governments may be ugly, if they don’t buy from us, they will buy from the Russians or the Chinese (or the French), and selling them our weapons gives us greater say in how those weapons are used, and greater insight into how their militaries operate. If war breaks out, we’ll be able to work closely with our clients because they’ll be using our technology. [...]
But arms sales don’t bring home the jobs that supposedly make these deals worth the angst. The Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs has found that “clean energy and health care spending create 50 percent more jobs than the equivalent amount of spending on the military,” while education spending creates more than twice as many jobs. Boeing’s deal to sell 30 passenger jets to Iran will reportedly support 18,000 U.S. jobs, the same number Lockheed Martin touted for the air and missile defense systems, combat ships, and tactical aircraft it may sell to Saudi Arabia. But passenger jets won’t be bombing civilians in Yemen. Nor were Boeing, Raytheon, or Lockheed Martin even willing to hazard a guess as to the number of jobs Trump’s Riyadh proposals might actually create, when asked by The Washington Post.
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