Confirming rumors that had been circulating for weeks, the Trump administration announced that the United States will withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council. That body consists of 47 member states with rotating, staggered 3‑year terms. It is tasked with protecting human rights as well as highlighting and condemning regimes that violate those rights. The Council has been controversial since its inception, especially among American conservatives. George W. Bush’s administration declined to make the United States a member when the UN General Assembly established the Council in 2006. President Obama reversed that decision in 2009. 

In announcing the U.S. withdrawal, Ambassador Nikki Haley blasted the organization as a “cesspool of political bias.” Vice President Mike Pence was equally caustic, stating that the United States was taking a stand “against some of the world’s worst human rights violators by withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council. By elevating and protecting human rights violators and engaging in smear campaigns against democratic nations, the UNHRC makes a mockery of itself, its members, and the mission it was founded on. For years, the UNHRC has engaged in ever more virulent anti-American and anti-Israel invective and the days of U.S. participation are over.”

The decision has far more symbolic than substantive importance. For all of the publicity surrounding the UNHRC’s periodic condemnations of specific regimes, the body has no enforcement powers. Critics of Washington’s decision, though, see repudiating the UNHRC as another in a series of Trump administration moves to relinquish America’s “global leadership role” and retreat into an “America alone” foreign policy. They cite earlier examples such as Washington’s rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the withdrawal from the Paris agreement on climate change, and efforts to undermine the Iran nuclear agreement.

There are understandable reasons for the latest U.S. action, however. Haley correctly noted the offensive absurdity of having nations with horrific human-rights records as members of the UNHRC. But even her citation of such regimes opened the U.S. up to charges of hypocrisy. Her list of inappropriate members was heavily weighted with left-wing regimes hostile to Washington, including China, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Venezuela. Notably missing from her indictment were such autocratic U.S. allies and notorious rights abusers as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Philippines, and Pakistan.

Such selectivity contributes to global cynicism about Washington’s ethics. So does the extreme emphasis on the UNHRC’s unfair treatment of Israel. The organization certainly is biased against that country, issuing numerous condemnations of its conduct in recent years and in 2017 describing Israel as the world’s worst human-rights violator. Given the records of such countries as North Korea, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia, that allegation is an groteque exaggeration.

However, the United States has shown a disturbing unwillingness to criticize any aspect of Israel’s policy, even its ongoing harsh treatment of Palestinians. Washington has refused to support, and often vetoes, UN resolutions criticizing Israeli conduct, even when most of America’s democratic allies are on board. That is an unhealthy, hypocritical stance, and using the UNHRC’s treatment of Israel as the primary reason for the decision to quit that body adds to a growing U.S. reputation for hypocrisy.

It also didn’t help matters that the announcement of Washington’s decision came just days after the Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the Trump administration’s policy of separating the families of immigrants accused of illegal entry. The timing appeared to reflect a petty reaction to criticism.

Thus, while U.S. officials made a defensible policy change regarding a toothless, pretentious, and hypocritical UN agency, they could scarcely have done a worse job of managing the optics. The incident is yet another example of the Trump administration’s unduly clumsy handling of foreign affairs.

Now that some of the dust has settled from President Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, it’s worth taking stock of the politics surrounding it. As The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart points out, many Democrats and progressives have oddly decided to be staunch critics of the summit, harping on its limited achievements, the vague aspirations of denuclearization without concrete steps to get there, Trump’s bizarre obsequiousness in courting Kim, and this administration’s clear lack of preparation for such high-stakes diplomatic negotiations. These are all legitimate criticisms, by the way, but given how dangerously close the Trump administration came to potentially catastropic escalation only a few months ago (admittedly, a crisis of Trump’s own making), diplomacy, no matter how maladroit, is clearly preferable and should not be dismissed out of hand by those on the left.

However, the abject hypocrisy of the right is even more appalling. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised the summit as “an historic first step in negotiations.” House Speaker Paul Ryan articulated his “hope that the president has put us on a path to lasting peace in the Korean Peninsula.” Fox News host Laura Ingraham hailed  the summit as “like Gorbachev and Reagan,” to which Senator Lindsey Graham, who has argued for war and against diplomacy more often than most of his colleagues, approvingly replied, “Trump has done something no other president has done, he’s doing everything he knows how to avoid a war.” Graham went on to applaud Trump’s pledge to discontinue U.S.-South Korean military exercises: “this may be the last best chance in our lifetime for peace, and this is a bold move by the president.”

Those who follow politics in Washington, DC can see right off the bat how radical a departure all of this is from typical GOP talking points. It’s not hard to imagine the hysteria that would erupt if President Obama shook the hand of Kim Jong Un, praised the dictator’s leadership qualities, and sympathized with Pyongyang’s unease over U.S. military activities in Northeast Asia.

But to really get a flavor for it, behold this mashup of Fox News personality Sean Hannity, whose power to shape conservative views across the country should not be underestimated, railing against Obama’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran in 2013 while praising Trump’s summit with North Korea. Trump, Hannity says, “deserves a lot of credit for being willing to talk to somebody that everybody thought would be a bad idea,” adding that he sees “a lot of parallels between President Trump and Ronald Reagan.” But in 2013, he pilloried Obama’s diplomacy with Iran as “showing a lot of weakness” by “catering to the world’s dictators,” labeling Obama “literally, the Neville Chamberlain of our time.” 

Republicans and conservatives opposed diplomacy with Iran because, they said, America shouldn’t negotiate with enemies, we should batter them into submission. Now, they have apparently abandoned that principle. They also opposed the Iran nuclear deal on grounds that it was too narrow and failed to include non-nuclear issues, such as Iran’s regional behavior and its human rights violations. Now, with North Korea, they are singing a different tune. 

So far, North Korea has done little more than offer token concessions while keeping their nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities intact. By contrast, Iran forfeited 98 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium, gave up thousands of operating centrifuges, acquiesced to severe technical restrictions on various aspects of their program for 10–25 years, and submitted to the most intrusive inspections regime in the world. And that was before they enjoyed a single day of sanctions relief.

It’s not just the GOP and conservative media that is shamelessly flip-flopping like a fish out of water. The Trump administration itself has had to engage in these contortions. Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal on the basis that it was a weak giveaway to Tehran, though the likelihood of getting a more stringent agreement on North Korea is extremely remote. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton each have a long pedigree of opposing negotiations with rogue states in favor of an uncompromising hardline approach. Now, apparently, not so much. Last year, the Trump administration obstinately rejected perfectly reasonable Chinese proposals for a “freeze-for-freeze” option with North Korea, in which, as a first-step to build confidence for negotiations, Washington would agree to suspend provocative military exercises with South Korea in exchange for Pyongyang halting its nuclear and missile tests. Now, that is roughly administration policy. 

Duplicity has always been a part of American politics. And, these days, we seem to be experiencing a truly unprecedented level of it under a president that tells outright lies as a matter of routine. The intensity of this particular moment in U.S. history can make the partisanship presented above seem mild and downright ordinary by comparison. But this kind of base dishonesty regarding core questions of war and peace makes it close to impossible to carry out foreign policy in a strategic way. I appreciate Republicans’ newfound support for diplomacy, but it is rather obviously a feature of their servile kowtowing to President Trump, not a considered position that can reliably outlast this brief moment.

The United States is remarkably insulated from foreign threats and has enormous leverage to engage in any negotiations with adversaries. Wherever and whenever diplomacy can reduce the risk of conflict, it should be pursued with confidence and vigor. Both parties must recognize the successes that peaceful engagement has yielded over the past half century of U.S. foreign policy, and the comparatively ruinous failures wrought by hardline militarism.

On Wednesday June 13 the Saudi-led military coalition launched an assault to seize Hodeidah, the site of Yemen’s main port. The port, currently held by Houthi fighters, is the primary channel through which humanitarian aid reaches millions of at-risk Yemenis, who have suffered from four long years of civil war.

The war has already taken a huge toll on Yemen. If the vital humanitarian aid delivered through Hodeidah is disrupted by a coalition assault, many more civilians could die.

The coalition had sought direct military assistance from the United States, which has provided weapons, intelligence, and logistical support throughout the war. The Trump administration declined, however, and encouraged the coalition to give the United Nations time for diplomacy. This remains the right approach. As tragic as the situation in Yemen is today, continued American support for military intervention is the wrong answer. Not only does the United States lack a compelling national security interest in Yemen, but by supporting the Saudi-led coalition the United States has contributed materially to the one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 21^st century. Further military support won’t improve American security, but it risks making things worse for Yemen.

American support of the Saudi-led war in Yemen has been spurred by two ultimately misguided arguments. First, Yemen is home to an Al Qaeda affiliate—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—most famous for sponsoring the attacks on the office of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo and two failed attempts on U.S. soil by lone attackers in 2009 and 2010. But although the group certainly maintains an anti-Western ideology, like most terrorist groups its overwhelming focus is fighting for control of its own neighborhood. In addition, like most terrorist groups it is relatively small and has little ability to project power across long distances. It does not represent a big enough threat to justify a full-scale invasion of Yemen.

The second argument for supporting the war in Yemen is that both the Saudis and the United States view the Houthi rebels as Iranian proxies. Helping Saudi Arabia “manage” Yemen is thus seen as part of the broader campaign to limit Iranian influence. Yet it is Saudi Arabia, not Iran, that dominates the Middle East when it comes to defense spending. According to Jane’s Defense Budgets Report Saudi Arabia will spend roughly $50 billion in 2018 on defense compared to Iran’s $16 billion. Simply put, as a major player in the Middle East Iran may enjoy the ability to frustrate Saudi and American interests in Yemen and elsewhere, but it is no threat to become a regional hegemon anytime soon.

The reality is that neither the threat of terrorism nor the threat from Iran are significant enough to warrant the Saudi coalition’s intervention in the first place, much less the United States continuing to support the coalition.

Nor is there any assurance that a coalition military “victory” would put an end to conflict in Yemen. Conventional military campaigns are good for killing people, destroying infrastructure, and taking territory, but the United States has learned through painful experience in Iraq and Afghanistan that even America’s awesome firepower cannot create peace. Even worse, the destruction and chaos caused by military conflicts are often the crucible of new terrorist groups, as the emergence of the Islamic State after the invasion of Iraq showed. In short, neither the underlying causes of the civil war nor the sources of terrorism would be eradicated if the Saudis were to take control of Yemen tomorrow.

Last, but most fundamentally, American support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen puts the United States on the wrong side of international law and moral duty. Saudi airstrikes, carried out with American targeting and refueling support, have killed as many as 5,000 civilians, displaced millions, put millions more at risk of starvation, and led to history’s worst cholera outbreak, which itself has already caused thousands of deaths. The coalition air campaign’s lack of targeting discrimination led the United Nations to send war crimes investigators to Yemen. As long as the United States continues to support Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the United States must bear some responsibility for any war crimes being committed by the coalition and it must share in the blame for the tragic consequences. 

It is past time for the United States to stop supporting the war in Yemen. The Trump administration should tell the Saudi-led coalition not to launch an assault on Hodaideh. Further, the United States should make it clear to the Saudis that the coalition needs a plan to wind down the war. The U.S. and coalition emphasis moving forward should be on supporting the United Nations-led negotiations to convince the Houthis to cede control of the port to the United Nations and from there to brokering an end to the conflict. Given the tragic consequences of the war to date, diplomacy is the best next step.

In justifying President Trump’s travel ban to the Supreme Court last month, his attorneys repeatedly referenced a confidential report. They told the Court that this “extensive” analysis of “every country in the world” resulted from a “worldwide multi-agency review” and proves that the president did not act with religious animus. In a court filing, they said it was “thorough.” Yet they refuse to release it, and the information that they have released about it refutes their claim that it was extensive. In fact, it was far from rigorous.

In response to a lawsuit by the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, the government disclosed that its final secret report filed in September was just 16 pages with a one-page attachment. Yet the president claims it reviewed “more than 200 countries,” meaning it covered each country in less than a tenth of a page. On a typical 600-word page, that’s fewer than 60 words—significantly shorter than this paragraph—to review the identity systems, information practices, and security situation in every country in the world.

We now know that this 60-word average is actually too generous for most countries because the government has said that the report included the information on the eight targeted countries and the explanation for the ban contained in the president’s 12-page travel ban order. If it dedicated the other five pages solely to the non-travel ban countries, this would leave just 16 words for each. “The Democratic Republic of the Congo” would use a third of its word allotment on its name alone.

Such a bizarre result raises the distinct possibility that the entire review of the non-travel ban countries may have been included in the one-page attachment to the report intriguingly entitled “assessment of countries’ information-sharing capabilities and vetting procedures.”

In any case, to fully appreciate how absurd it is to claim that this 17-page report was exhaustive, consider that the State Department issues an annual report on terrorism including details of the policies and situation in most countries in the world. Last year’s report was 447 pages. The travel ban has nine such factors that the government claims to have extensively studied, yet its entire 17-page report is 4 percent as long.

Beyond its length, contradictions in the known contents of the report further raises the suspicion that the government might be misstating its conclusions. The president’s order tells us that the report laid out nine criteria against which it assessed every country, and it then summarizes the report’s findings for each of the banned countries. Yet in several cases, its findings show that countries on the list were assessed against stricter criteria.

For instance, the being-a-terrorist-safe-haven criterion was increased to having any terrorists active in the area for Chad, or being a source of terrorist threats for Iran—neither of which are terrorist safe havens, according to the State Department. Not having an electronic passport was increased to not having one that is recognized internationally for Somalia, while regularly refusing deportees—little cooperation—was increased to anything less than full cooperation with deportees for Libya.

These subtle raisings of the bar occurred even while nine actual terrorist safe havens got a pass, along with a dozen countries that regularly refuse deportees and dozens more that have no electronic passport at all. It appears that the government’s secret report arbitrarily raised the bar for travel ban countries.

The point is not whether these criteria are legitimate. What matters is whether the Supreme Court can believe the government’s claims about its report.

During oral arguments, Solicitor General Noel Francisco told Justice Sonya Sotomayor that the president’s animus against Muslims couldn’t have affected the process because the agencies were able “to construct and apply this neutral standard to every country in the world.” Sotomayor challenged him, asking why the report was not available for them to review. Francisco only responded that the justices “owe” the president “a very strong presumption that what is being set out there is the truth.”

Yet the length of the report by itself gives the justices a very good reason to conclude that the government’s report did not actually assess every country in the world in 16 words or less. At the same time, the inconsistency between the stated criteria and the criteria actually applied to the travel ban countries casts doubt on the claim that the report’s standard was, in fact, neutral.

Maybe the president could rebut this impression, but any presumption that he had in his favor at the outset should be forfeited based on what we know now. The best evidence indicates that his “extensive” review simply never happened.

Last Tuesday, North Korea canceled a high-level diplomatic meeting with South Korea and threatened to call off next month’s summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. North Korea’s statements came just one week after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned from Pyongyang with three American citizens held prisoner by the Kim regime and the date for the Trump-Kim summit in hand.

The current episode of tension reflects a wide and dangerous expectation gap between the United States and North Korea, but it should not dissuade the Trump administration from going through with the summit.

If the Trump administration wants to take away the right lessons from North Korea’s display of anger it needs to first understand the root cause of North Korea’s ire. When Pyongyang announced that it was calling off a high-level diplomatic meeting with South Korea it cited the U.S.-South Korea military exercise known as “Max Thunder,” a large-scale air force exercise that has occurred every year since 2009, as the culprit. A statement released by state broadcaster KCNA said, “The maneuver [Max Thunder] is the largest-ever and a reflection of the invariable stand of the U.S. and south (sic) Korea to persist in the ‘maximum pressure and sanctions’ against the DPRK.” In particular, North Korea objected to U.S. F‑22 fighters and B‑52 bombers participating in the exercise, as the former can easily penetrate North Korean airspace with little chance of detection and the latter is nuclear-capable. After the KCNA denunciation of Max Thunder, the Pentagon released a statement clarifying that B‑52s were not slated to participate but North Korea did not drop its opposition to the exercise.

Max Thunder itself is probably not the real reason why North Korea is threatening to call off the Trump-Kim summit. If Kim viewed the exercise as unacceptable he had ample opportunity to raise the issue with the United States and South Korea. The exercise began on May 11 and there was no indication given before or during the exercise that North Korea viewed it as a potential deal breaker. Moreover, if Kim had voiced concerns Washington and Seoul probably would have adjusted some elements of Max Thunder to preserve diplomacy considering they agreed to postpone the annual Foal Eagle exercise so it would take place after the Winter Olympics and adjusted the length of and forces that participated in Foal Eagle to ensure a smooth inter-Korean summit.

Rather than military exercises, North Korean anger stems from two issues. First, Pyongyang seems frustrated about the relative lack of concessions made by the United States in the lead-up to the Trump-Kim summit. In the past month, North Korea freed American detainees and began dismantling its nuclear testing site, but from the North’s perspective, the United States has not taken many similar steps in return.

Second, Kim and his regime are listening to what U.S. officials have said about the upcoming summit and they don’t like what they are hearing, especially from National Security Advisor John Bolton. Indeed, Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea’s vice minister of foreign affairs, called out Bolton by name, saying, “We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance toward him.”

Beyond the personal insults, the North Koreans criticize Bolton for promoting a “Libya model” for North Korean denuclearization. Based on recent statements, Bolton’s use of the term likely refers to an invasive inspections regime. In a recent interview with CBS, Bolton said, “One thing that Libya did that led us to overcome our skepticism was that they allowed American and British observers into all their nuclear related sites. So it wasn’t a question of relying on international mechanisms. We saw them in ways we had never seen before.” However, to the North Koreans, Libya is a cautionary tale because less than ten years after Moammar Gaddafi surrendered his nuclear weapons program he was deposed and brutally killed with the help of American air power.

North Korea’s recent behavior is a sobering reminder about the danger of mismatched expectations. On the one hand, Kim Kye Gwan’s statement indicates that North Korea is approaching the Trump-Kim summit with the expectation that the goal of the summit is to improve the relationship with the United States. Denuclearization is not off the table for the North, but it expects the United States to end the so-called “hostile policy” as a precondition for denuclearization. On the other hand, the Trump administration seems to think that its maximum pressure campaign is an unmitigated success and all-but-predicting that the summit will produce significant progress on denuclearization in exchange for sanctions relief. Critics rightly point out that such claims are premature, at best.

North Korea is likely using the Max Thunder exercise as a tool for reaffirming its expectations in advance of the Trump-Kim summit. The summit is not in mortal danger right now as both Kim and Trump have invested political capital in making the meeting happen and some in the Trump administration has started distancing itself from Bolton’s comments about the “Libya model.” However, both sides need to narrow the current gulf in expectations. If current irreconcilable differences persist, there is a good chance that the summit will end in a dismal failure.

During his presidential campaign Donald Trump proposed the “extreme vetting” of immigrants. Civil libertarians criticized the proposal, not least because the Extreme Vetting Initiative mandated by one of President Trump’s first executive orders sought technology that would use machine learning to determine whether visa applicants would be likely to contribute to society and the national interest. Fortunately, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – is no longer pursuing this vetting technology.

In January 2017 President Trump issued Executive Order 13769, which stated in part (emphasis mine):

Sec. 4. Implementing Uniform Screening Standards for All Immigration Programs. (a) The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shall implement a program, as part of the adjudication process for immigration benefits, to identify individuals seeking to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis with the intent to cause harm, or who are at risk of causing harm subsequent to their admission. This program will include the development of a uniform screening standard and procedure, such as […] a process to evaluate the applicant’s likelihood of becoming a positively contributing member of society and the applicant’s ability to make contributions to the national interest; and a mechanism to assess whether or not the applicant has the intent to commit criminal or terrorist acts after entering the United States.

The Extreme Vetting Initiative tasked with implementing (among things) this feature of Trump’s executive order, included the following in its statement of objectives:

ICE must develop processes that determine and evaluate an applicant’s probability of becoming a positively contributing member of society as well as their ability to contribute to national interests in order to meet the EOs outlined by the President.

A background document on the initiative outlined requirements, including the exploitation of publicly available information found on blogs, social media, academic websites, and other online sources. The same backgrounder went on to state that the goal was for the initiative to generate 10,000 investigatory leads each year.

Earlier this year dozens of computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers wrote a letter to then-Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, outlining the numerous issued associated with the Extreme Vetting Initiative. As I noted in November last year, the letter highlighted that ICE’s proposal would likely be discriminatory as well as unreliable. From the letter:

According to its Statement of Objectives, the Extreme Vetting Initiative seeks to make “determinations via automation” about whether an individual will become a “positively contributing member of society” and will “contribute to the national interests.” As far as we are aware, neither the federal government nor anyone else has defined, much less attempted to quantify, these characteristics. Algorithms designed to predict these undefined qualities could be used to arbitrarily flag groups of immigrants under a veneer of objectivity.

Inevitably, because these characteristics are difficult (if not impossible) to define and measure, any algorithm will depend on “proxies” that are more easily observed and may bear little or no relationship to the characteristics of interest. For example, developers could stipulate that a Facebook post criticizing U.S. foreign policy would identify a visa applicant as a threat to national interests. They could also treat income as a proxy for a person’s contributions to society, despite the fact that financial compensation fails to adequately capture people’s roles in their communities or the economy.

For more information on the Extreme Vetting Initiative, including original ICE documents, visit the Brennan Center for Justice’s resource page.

On April 19, 2018 the Trump administration released an updated version of the U.S. Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, the primary document outlining the strategy and guidelines for American arms sales abroad. Compared to the Obama- and Bush-era guidelines, the Trump administration’s policy emphasizes the economic benefits from arms sales. As a result, the new policy is focused on streamlining the arms sales process, loosening controls on what can be exported, and encouraging the U.S. government to be more active in brokering deals. At a news briefing announcing the new policy Peter Navarro, assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing policy, said that, “This will keep our defense industrial base in the vanguard of emerging defense technologies while creating thousands of additional jobs with good wages and generating substantial export revenues.”

Though the consequences of this policy change will take years to unfold, there are several things we can already predict about the limits and dangers of the new policy. Below we list the most important areas to watch and provide links to some of the best analysis available to date around the web.

It’s all about jobs, but it won’t create many.

If the administration’s primary goal is to enrich a few major defense contractors, it may succeed. If, on the other hand, the goal is to create American jobs and bolster the economy more generally, disappointment is inevitable.

Jonathan Caverley, writing at War on the Rocks, argues:

Even if the Trump administration boosts sales against such headwinds, this will not create many additional jobs. Arms exports are a surprisingly inefficient means of employing people at home. Using census data, the Commerce Department estimates that a billion dollars of defense exports would “create or sustain” 3,918 jobs, considerably fewer than the 5,700 jobs per billion created by increased US exports more broadly. Doubling the United States’ annual arms exports to $40 billion, a highly unrealistic goal, would thus create fewer than 80,000 new jobs. There are other industries the United States can promote that will have larger effects on jobs.

Unleash the drones

Until now the United States has kept a close hold on armed drones like the Predator and Reaper, allowing China to meet most of the global demand. Under the new policy the United States will begin to sell some drones through the direct commercial sales process.

In an oped for the the Washington Post Michael C. Horowitz and Joshua A. Shwartz write:

The new policy goes further than the Obama administration’s 2015 guidance in a few ways. This means U.S. manufacturers can export more directly to other countries and bypass the foreign military sales process, which entails more time-consuming involvement from the U.S. government. Second, the new rules reclassify drones with strike-enabling technology, like laser target designators, as unarmed, which will make it easier to export them.

Counterterrorism baked right in

A much less visible policy change with important ramifications is the move by the House Foreign Affairs Committee to amend the Arms Export Control Act to include counterterrorism as an explicit strategic justification for weapon sales.

As Caroline wrote for Ink Stick, this seemingly subtle change in language expands the legal and institutional footprint of the war on terror and does so despite the fact that most of the major conventional weapons for sale by the U.S. aren’t much use for fighting terrorism or insurgencies. 

Every fed is now a salesperson

With this increased sales push, the Trump administration has established a new “whole of government” approach. From the same Inkstick article, Caroline also notes,

The change will effectively turn civil servants who had been third-party brokers between foreign governments and American defense contractors into de facto salespeople. Officials talking up American defense products isn’t new, but giving them the directive to increase “economic security” gives profit a greater emphasis — with the commander-in-chief and his 2017 sales pitches to the Saudis, for example, offering model behavior in this regard.

Arms sales will now (likely) cost U.S. taxpayers more money

It’s still unclear how this strategy will be implemented at the guidance and framework level, but there are several logical changes that could flow from a new emphasis on profit. This could include a transition from deals that use offsets as incentives to increased use of Foreign Military Financing and other incentives that would shift the burden of incentives from industry to the federal government. Caroline explained the implications of this change, writing, 

Currently, the majority of incentives to foreign buyers of American weapons come in the form of offsets. These agreements are made once the US government has cleared a sale and the company can liaise with whichever foreign government is purchasing the product. Offsets are meant to make the deals more attractive, and can include anything from co-production to technology transfer to Foreign Direct Investments. This takes a major cut out of any profit for the defense contractors, who shoulder most of the cost. In 2014 alone, contractors reported $20.5 billion in defense-related merchandise exports, with $13 billion worth of those sales including some kind of offset. The total value of reported offset agreements for that year was $7.7 billion — over one-third the value of total defense exports for that year.

Obviously, this makes offsets an unattractive option for increasing economic security. The defense industry would prefer not to bear that burden—so then how will diplomats sweeten the deal for interested buyers while still protecting profit margins? …

Foreign Military Financing…to the rescue?

This type of financing comes directly out of the US federal budget—specifically out of the State Department’s portion. The final budget omnibus that was signed into law in March settled on $6.1 billion to give freely to other countries to purchase American weapons. That’s right—$6 billion of American taxpayer dollars this year alone will go towards subsidizing the arsenals of other nations so that they too can “Buy American.” Foreign Military Financing had, until now, been on the decline. From 1985 to 2015 the program decreased 50 percent in real terms. With this new economic security component to stated guidance on arms sales, there is a very real possibility that Foreign Military Financing could continue to rise.

Arms sales will continue to be a risky business

As we wrote in a Cato Policy Analysis published in March, the United States has a poor track record when it comes to assessing the potential risks from selling weapons abroad. Since 2002 the United States has sold over $300 billion worth of major conventional weapons to 167 countries including places with repressive governments, histories of human rights abuses, and which are engaged in active conflicts.

Unfortunately, despite the many negative unintended consequences that arms sales can spawn, nothing in the Trump administration’s new policy suggests it will pay any more attention to these risks than previous administrations. Given the administration’s zeal to sell more weapons abroad, the most likely outcome is even less sensitivity to downstream risks. Stay tuned.