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What accounts for the world's "open sesame" approach to arsenals? Primarily, it is because selling weapons has proved an effective way for developing nations as well as superpowers to gain influence. Arms sales can make friendly countries stronger and strong countries friendlier. It has a greater immediate impact than building dams or sending economic aid and is certainly more lucrative. "U.S. security interests can best be safeguarded by helping front-line countries become a positive deterrent to aggression," insists Buckley. That rationale makes some sense when applied to U.S. arms for the Persian Gulf region. But the Administration also uses it to justify fighter jet sales to a country like Venezuela, not in imminent danger of being attacked by anyone.
Offering arms can be a way of weaning a country from dependence on another superpower. America has done this to the Soviets in Indonesia, Somalia and Egypt; the Soviets have done it to the U.S. in northern Yemen and Ethiopia. France claims, without much evidence, that its military sales to Libya have decreased Soviet influence there. With marginally better justification, the French use the same argument about sales to Iraq. Says one government official: "In Iraq's case it's been useful to replace the Soviet Union as a supplier. Ten years ago, Iraq was practically a Soviet satellite."
Weapons sales are increasingly seen by purchasers as a symbol or test of friendship, an argument that the Reagan Administration has stressed to justify the selling of AW ACS to Saudi Arabia. Other benefits for the exporter: sales can be bartered for base rights (as the U.S. has done in Turkey, Spain and the Philippines); they can help make a country's military equipment compatible with that of its allies; and they can occasionally provide for some control on how weapons are used, through judicious control of the umbilical cord of spare parts and servicing of complex equipment.
More and more, however, the arms trade seems impelled by purely economic factors. Sealing an $8.5 billion AWACS package deal with the Saudis, or a $3.1 billion naval contract, can be a balance of payments bonanza. The Government estimates that a 40% cutback in U.S. weapons exports would result in a minimum 2% depreciation of the value of the dollar. Since many deals these days require an initial cash payment, exporters get a free financial float. Herbert Morris, comptroller of the Pentagon's Defense Security Assistance Agency, points out: "The Treasury has for years had temporary use of billions of dollars in foreign cash. There is now over $4.8 billion in the foreign military sales trust fund account."
Beyond that there are other, less readily apparent benefits to the whole U.S. economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every $1 billion in arms exports directly supports about 50,000 jobs. Weapons bought by the Saudis alone will provide 112,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next five years. When those workers are concentrated in specific regions, or belong to aggressive unions, they can form a powerful constituency, as they do in parts of the U.S., as well as in France and Britain. Arms sales also reduce the unit costs of defense items for a manufacturer by extending production runs and spreading development outlays. In the U.S., every $1 billion worth of