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The easy answer, that the dilemma is too complex to resolve in light of East-West tensions, will not do. Says Democratic Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin: "Using such justifications as 'The business is good for our balance of payments' or 'If we do not sell weapons, someone else will,' the arms merchants and their government spokesmen are turning the world into a vast armed camp." The long line of weapons that helped seal Sadat's friendship with the U.S. were paraded past his grandstand through the dusty streets of an impoverished country where the per capita income is $460, and 42% of the budget is spent on the military.
Can weapons buy security? For many Third World nations, arms may well deter external aggression, but even the best-equipped troops of an unpopular regime are unlikely to hold off forever a domestic revolution. Witness Iran or Nicaragua. Thomas Barger, a former president of Aramco Oil and a director of Northrop, points out the evident danger: "When you get a lot of playthings, how long is it before you want to try them out?"
Since 1945 there have been at least 130 conflicts that would qualify as wars, nearly all of them fought on the soil of poor nations with weapons purchased from rich ones. And a cascading supply of sophisticated weapons is an ever growing temptation to terrorist fanatics unbeholden to any rational standard of conduct. When the latest models of shoulder-held, heat-seeking missiles can be bought at any village bazaar, where will it be safe for any plane to fly?
Prospects for negotiated solutions are poor. President Carter started conventional arms transfer talks with the Soviets in 1977. They were abandoned the follow ing year after the Soviets demanded, and the U.S. refused, to discuss weapons sales to the Persian Gulf region. The Reagan Administration has expressed a willingness to talk with the Soviets about new strategic arms limits and theater nuclear force reduction of missiles in Europe. But there is currently little expressed desire for conventional arms-sale restraint—either by the Reagan Administration, the Soviets, the other major producers or even Third World nations. The first step toward a solution has to be a realization, by each country involved in the trade, that pursuing what it sees as its own best interest creates a monster that is in no country's best interest.
If there could develop the will to control the trade of conventional arms, just as there is now a general desire to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it would in theory be possible to make a beginning toward restraint. Suggests David Aaron, former assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski on Carter's National Security Council:
"We can coerce international cooperation from some of our allies by using the carrot and stick: either they cooperate, or we'll beat them in every market."
Perhaps the best path is to pursue areas where there is already some evidence of restraint. The U.S. has been cautious about the sale of advanced technologies, like