Author: Fred Kaplan
Publication: Slate Magazine
Date: March 30, 2005
URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2115965/
Why is Bush selling F-16s to Pakistan?
With his decision last week to sell
F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan, President Bush returns to a dangerous
game of self-deception that hasn't been seen at this level of risk since
Richard Nixon was in the White House.
The deal involves a mere couple
of dozen F-16s, but it opens up three avenues of great hazard.
First, right after President Bush
told the Pakistanis that the sale was on, he called the Indians to assure
them he would take a well-disposed look at their weapons wish lists to
redress the resulting imbalance. The unfolding dynamic is thus predictable:
Pakistan orders still more weapons to compensate for India's new purchase;
India buys more to match the ante; and on the ratcheting goes, the tinderbox
swelling.
Second, Bush (pending near-certain
congressional approval) is lifting a ban on arms transfers to Pakistan
that has been in effect since 1989. The restriction was imposed after intelligence
clearly revealed that Pakistan was turning its stockpile of enriched uranium
into nuclear bombs. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act forbade the supply
of any weapons to countries that crossed this line. So, President George
H.W. Bush issued a stop order, halting production of 43 F-16s earmarked
for Pakistan (in addition to 40 already delivered), 17 of them paid for
in advance. It is this transaction that Bush's son now seeks to resume-even
though Pakistan has not only pushed ahead with nuclear weapons but sold
the resulting technology to several tinhorn dictators.
Worse still, the latest version
of the plane, the F-16C/D-which is the model Pakistan will receive-can
carry atomic bombs under its wings. The plane's wiring would have to be
modified in order for the bombs to be fused and dropped, but German intelligence
agencies reported long ago that the Pakistanis have figured out how to
do this. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have said
Pakistan needs the F-16s to combat terrorists in the mountains on the Afghan
border. But really it wants them to drop bombs on India in case of another
India-Pakistan war. (Pakistan already has two types of missiles that can
do this; India has nuclear-capable planes and missiles, as well.)
On a broader level, Rice has justified
the sale as a token of U.S. friendship and commitment to Pakistan's security,
a reward for its cooperation in the war on terrorism, and an inducement
to further progress toward democratic rule. If we ignore Pakistan's request
for the planes, Rice has said in interviews, these trends could collapse.
There may be something to this argument,
but the Pakistanis are more likely lassoing us than vice versa. President
Musharraf is promising elections in 2007, but by that time all the weapons
he could want will have been delivered-and whatever leverage we once had
will have expired. We will then be trapped in a web of our own weaving.
Musharraf will put in an order for resupply or perhaps for more sophisticated
weapons, and he'll warn Bush that a refusal will be taken as a betrayal
of trust, a blow to our fledgling alliance, a prompt to resume nasty ways
(if they were ever repudiated to begin with).
What's really happening is that
the question, "Why should we sell arms to a particular country?" has been
replaced by, "Why not?" In the case of Pakistan, there's the further consideration
that India is determined to buy 125 new fighter jets to replace its fleet
of antiquated Soviet-built MiGs; it's looking at the F-16, but also at
French-built Mirages. That being the case, selling F-16s to Pakistan can
be rationalized as a step to preserve the balance of power. Besides, if
Musharraf doesn't buy the planes from us, he can look to the French or
the Chinese.
In other words, for all the talking
about rewarding friends and maintaining influence, what this really comes
down to-what it's always come down to-is money and market share. During
the Cold War, the market share was political (if we don't sell planes to
Peru, the Russians will); now it's economic (if we don't sell planes to
Pakistan, the Chinese will).
U.S. arms sales took off as a potent
political and economic force in the early 1970s, when three things happened.
First, President Nixon, bruised from Vietnam, declared that America would
no longer send troops to every ally in crisis but would instead send arms
and teams of military advisers.
Second, oil prices soared, pumping
floods of cash into the coffers of OPEC countries, whose leaders decided
to lavish some of it on a gigantic military buildup. In May 1973, to accommodate
this new market, Nixon used his executive powers to waive a congressional
prohibition against the sale of sophisticated weapons to underdeveloped
countries.
The third event-underlying the other
two-was that America's trade balance showed a net deficit for the first
time since 1893. State Department and Pentagon officials started to justify
every arms transaction as an act "to strengthen U.S. balance of payments"
and create jobs.
As a result of these converging
factors, annual U.S. arms sales abroad soared from about $1 billion before
Nixon signed the waiver to $11 billion by the time he left office amid
the Watergate scandal in 1974. Sales figures have fluttered only slightly,
up or down a few billion, ever since.
The current arms deal with Pakistan
is fueled, in good part, by the fact that executives at Lockheed Martin
have said they'll have to shut down their Fort Worth, Texas, factory unless
more F-16 orders come in by October.
Pakistan was one of the few prospective
customers that drew serious political resistance. In 1976, the Senate passed
an amendment, sponsored by John Glenn and Stuart Symington, barring U.S.
economic and military assistance to countries that were importing or exporting
nuclear-weapons materials. In 1979, Carter invoked the Glenn-Symington
amendment to cut off such assistance to Pakistan, which had been caught
smuggling nuclear designs.
Then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan,
and Pakistan-with its close ties to the anti-Soviet mujahideen-re-emerged
as a potential strategic partner. President Ronald Reagan, who stepped
up support of the mujahideen, pushed through an amendment allowing him
to resume aid and sales to Pakistan for six years, despite the fact that
Pakistan was beginning to enrich uranium. Among the items he let Pakistan
buy were F-16 fighter jets. The first planes arrived in January 1983.
In 1985, the Senate passed another
amendment, sponsored by Larry Pressler, requiring the president to certify
annually that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons before he continued
to supply them with weapons or aid. In 1989, as the intelligence became
clear that Pakistan had turned the enriched uranium into actual weapons,
the first President Bush stopped all orders.
In 1995, President Clinton tried
to restore some ties to Pakistan, as part of the nascent war on terrorism.
He sold the long-undelivered F-16s to other countries and refunded the
money-nearly $700 million-to Pakistan. New weapons, though, were still
out of the question. Until now.
The decision will raise new doubts
about President Bush's declared desire to halt the spread of nuclear weapons-and
his still more prominent declaration to judge regimes on the basis of their
dedication to freedom. Selling Pakistan nuclear-capable fighter jets is
an act at odds with both. By potentially setting in motion a new arms race
in southern Asia, it also seems at odds with more traditional notions involving
the balance of power.
Related in Slate
Last October, Joshua Kucera went
to Pakistan's biggest arms show and concluded that, despite the rhetoric,
the weapons we're sending to Islamabad are targeted against India, not
the Taliban. In December 1999, Matt Alsdorf explained why India and Pakistan
are fighting; four years later, Brendan I. Koerner got to the roots of
the Kashmir dispute.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories"
column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.
