re: #209 Obdicut

It’s a little more complicated than that. We use arms deals, sales of military technology, as part of the way that we coerce/convince/whatever other countries to do what we want. A large part of the reason that Saudi Arabia, an incredibly repressive regime, are our ‘allies’ is so that they can have access to our military technology. In addition, we often package the deals together, so that to buy the military technology they really want, they have to buy some other military tech that they don’t even necessarily want, but that we want to sell.

In the end, yes, the alternative to the US being the world’s arms dealer is the US not being the world’s arms dealer, and people who want weapons and technology buying them from other sources. I don’t think that would be a bad thing. Arms and weapons aren’t a, I don’t know how to put it, a real good; they don’t do anything. There is no constructive use of a gun, it is only for the situation where you need to fight a war. The only people who profit from the sales of arms are the manufacturers of arms. I really do wish that we focused more on making constructive goods rather than arms to sell abroad.

And there is another complication, that is - the arms sales are what the other governments want. How to deal with them constructively without giving them what they want? In other words, it isn’t just the US gov’t saying - play ball with us and we’ll sell you weapons. It’s other countries coming and saying - we want your weapons, and in return, we’ll do a, b or c. There’s a two-way thing going on. And not taking the wants another nation has expressed into consideration would be - arrogant?