Angry Planet - How the Pentagon became the world's weapon system superstore

Episode Date: August 31, 2016

The United States is the world's largest arms merchant. It's not even close. So, who decides what gets sold, and to whom? And how closely does anyone follow the rules? This week on War College we look at the upsides, and the downsides, of having such a big share of the arms market.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters News. Why would we sell cluster bonds to a country that's committing massive human rights abuses and killing civilians and so forth? Even that has taken a while to become an issue. The United States is the world's largest arms merchant.

It's not even close. So, who decides what gets sold and to whom? And how closely does anyone actually follow the rules? This week on War College, we look at the upsides and the downsides of having such a big share of the arms market. You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Jason Fields and Matthew Galt. Hello and welcome to War College.

I'm Jason Fields with Reuters. And I'm Matthew Galt with Wars Boring. The weapons industry is a multi-billion dollar business, and a lot of it happens in the shadows. Today on War College, we're talking with William Hartung. Hartung is an expert on the global arms trade, and his work has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. So, William, thank you,

so much for joining us. Yes, thanks for having me. We wanted to start off with something that I think a lot of people already know the answer to, but just give the conversation a little shape. Which country is the world's biggest arms manufacturer? Well, the United States, by far, between the fact that our military budget is as much as the next 10 or 11 countries combined, many of which are our allies, there's direct Pentagon procurement, but then also the United States leads in the global arms trade in some years as much as 70%. but certainly around half in almost every recent year. So there's no other country that even comes close to that.

You know, the most recent stats, Russia was at about 14%. United States was at 40% plus. So that creates a separate flow of money to contractors that supports manufacturing of weapons in the U.S. And who are the big contractors in the U.S.? Well, Lockheed Martin is the biggest. Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, you know, that big four gets, a huge proportion of the contracts. And then they've got thousands of subcontractors and there's

various niche markets like Sikorsky Helicopters, which has recently been purchased by Lockheed Martin. When we're talking about arms manufacturers and their scale, are we talking by dollar amount or what sort of measurement do we use to rate these guys? Generally, it's about dollars. That's the way the Pentagon reports in terms of contracting. That's the way many of the arms export figures are constructed, with the exception of Stockholm Peace Research Institute, which tries to actually look at arms deliveries, and they have these values where they try to assess the military capability of the systems being provided. And that's a very subjective business in some ways, but they sort of try to take a different take at it. But usually it's about dollars. So if you

want to get into the impacts, sometimes you have to look at what's actually being transferred, and some of the things that don't cost as much, like small arms and light weapons, can do much of the damage in, you know, current conflicts. I think that was actually kind of one of the things that I was thinking about, because when you think of Lockheed Martin, my first thought would be about jets or robots or other big-ticket items. Yes. I mean, those are the moneymakers. The F-35, which is both the biggest program possibly in the history of the pennies,

if you play it out through the decades of buying and operating it is the big item on Lockheed Martin's agenda. But they also make missile defense systems and make armable vehicles. So they've got a range of things. But often the small arms are another sector. There's companies like FN. Hurstahl, which is actually a Belgian company, which makes M16 rifles to the U.S. Army and a plant in the United States. There's been some buying up of some of the light weapons by the bigger companies.

but flight weapons are not the biggest moneymaker, but they're probably the most egregious in terms of their impacts, although that has changed a bit with things like the Saudi War in Yemen, where U.S. bombs and fighters have been used to, in the taxes that have killed thousands of civilians. Are they going to transitions into my next question, which is, along with Saudi Arabia, who else is America selling to? Well, the Middle East has been the biggest market recently. So you've got the Saudis, you've got the Saudis, you've got the UAE. Of course, we've got billions in aid to Israel, which helps not only fill out their arsenal, but for the moment at least helps build up their industry. Aid to Egypt of a billion or more a year is back on track after some laps. There's some big sales now to South Korea and Japan, both the F-35 and a missile defense system for Korea. And then in Europe, the UK has been

the biggest buyer recently, partly because of the F-35 connection, but they're looking for growth in central Europe where there's been big upticks in spending linked to Russia's aggression in Ukraine and fears of what they might do. So companies from the U.S. are looking for more sales, particularly in places like Poland and Hungary. The only places where the money is significantly less are probably African, Latin America, where there's more competition because it's often small and light weapons, which have more producers. And there's not, you know, the big deals don't come along that often. There was a South African deal for fighter planes some years back that ended up in a huge corruption scandal because of bribery by European firms. Brazil has been seeking a fighter plane.

Venezuela spends money, but it's not a U.S. ally. So those areas, a lot of the U.S. involvement has to do with some light arms, some training, kind of special forces, but it's not a big moneymaker for harms companies. So you were talking about essentially allies of the United States and other countries where there's a more adversarial relationship. In that case, who sets the rules about who can sell what to whom? Is that the U.S. government or do the companies take some of that on themselves? Well, there's a kind of a multi-part system for the big deals like a fighter plane or a tank. The Pentagon serves as the broker. And they also often do an assessment of what they see as the defense needs of the ally.

Then they come to agreement on sales of certain kinds of systems and support that goes with that. That is announced to Congress, which in theory can block it but rarely does because they need a veto-proof majority of both houses. But the companies can be out front of that. You know, they'll be making connections at air shows. They'll be letting the countries do test runs on different weapon systems. They'll be pushing their agenda. So, formerly, they're not supposed to be out ahead, but they almost always are. But ultimately, the Pentagon's got to be involved for those big sales, and Congress is at least

notified, which didn't used to be the case a couple decades ago. Then there's smaller items that are licensed by the State Department, small arms, light weapons, certain kinds of helicopters and spare parts and things. And that's been shifting because there's been a arms export reform initiative under Obama administration that's taken a lot of items that used to be regulated by state on what's called the U.S. munitions list, and they've pushed those to the Commerce Department. And Commerce does less vetting, and, you know, as their name suggests, they're more about promoting trade than they are about vetting for things like human rights.

So that may become an issue going forward, because there's going to be license-free sales to a whole long list of U.S. allies from Argentina to Bulgaria to the whole NATO ally structure. And so, for example, if you set up a front company in one of those areas and you can get a license-free access to an important component that China needs or Iran needs or that you might somehow send to a group on the terror list, it'll ease that process of sort of front companies, third-party transfers. It's just there's one last check in the system without the State Department licensing.

And then I mentioned commerce, which has jurisdiction over some things, more so now, things like shotguns and even some kinds of light helicopters and spare parts for F-18s. And so in all these cases, the government is supposed to be on top of it. Congress is supposed to be notified. But the companies are heavily involved. They try to lobby Congress about the nature of the regulations and oversight. And they work hand in hand with the administration in many cases in promoting Congress. sales. It sounds like there are a lot of different places where there's room for not just subverting the system, but also corruption. And I'm curious as to, I mean, have there been a lot of cases

that have been brought? I mean, the Pentagon, it seems like that's a very interesting role to be the matchmaker between arms companies, which are private and governments, which are obviously not. So, I mean, is this something people are concerned about? Yes. Yes. people who follow this closely, which is a small cohort, but the Justice Department regularly brings dozens of cases on arms trafficking. They often involve small operations who are trying to smuggle very specific items to places like Iran or China or elsewhere that the U.S. would prefer to not have them end up. And then for the big companies, it's not like, you know, in the 70s there were huge bribery scandals, Lockheed Martin, bribing officials in Japan,

and the Netherlands and Indonesia and elsewhere to buy U.S. systems. And there was pushback on that in the post-Watergate era, and there was a reform that created the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws overseas bribery in connection with arms sales, which remarkably was not illegal before that. In fact, companies were taken off the bribes under taxes in some cases. So now that there's a new system, that is, I think, curbed, at least for the major U.S. firms,

you know, straight out bribery of, you know, bags of cash and specific payments to specific officials. But there's other ways to exert comparable influence. There's things called offsets where if you sell, for example, a fighter plane to South Korea, you push some business their way in exchange. So they'll get to build part of the plane. There'll be investments in building a hotel complex in Korea that's funded by U.S. contractors or they'll help Korea market some of its products globally or in some cases.

help them build up certain capabilities like the ability to launch satellites. So those offsets are almost like the new bribery in a way. I mean, they're not illegal, but they're used very much as a quid pro quo to get deals to happen. And Europeans are quite active in this sphere as well because since the U.S. dominates the trade and in some cases systems because they've had so much more R&D put into them, they're technically superior. Some of the European countries have very much pushed that offset tool. in some cases they offer 100% offset, which means in theory the country would get as much business back in various forms as they're spending on the weapon system itself.

Sometimes those deals don't quite work out as well for the purchasing country as promised, but it's kind of a payback for buying a U.S. or European system. The Brits have an ongoing scandal with a major bribery activity in Saudi Arabia going back several decades, which is still being pushed for. for investigation, in which Tony Blair actually put a stop to because he said the Saudi relationship was too important to be bothered with little things like looking into bribery. So there's kind of different levels of it, but the big companies have sort of more sophisticated means of exerting influence for the most part than just the straight bribery that used to be quite common. You just mentioned Blair and Saudi Arabia, and I'm wondering.

what are their kind of foreign policy consequences there are of these major arms deals? Well, I think they reinforce connections with regimes that are not really acting in our interests. And also, they're overstated in terms of their foreign policy benefits. So, for example, the Mubarak regime received tens of billions of dollars of U.S. weaponry over decades time. And the argument was part of the value was going to be to build this relationship with the Egyptian military so we could communicate with them in a crunch and help shape their policies and so forth. But when push came to shove, aside from standing back in the short term from cracking down on demonstrators, they ended up sponsoring a coup. And the U.S. had very little

influence over that and sort of just accepted it. In fact, they were reluctant to call it a coup because it would have made it harder under U.S. law to continue to send weapons there. In Saudi Arabia, is fighting this war in Yemen, which is by no stretch of the imagination in the U.S. interests. I mean, they're killing civilians, they're bombing hospitals, they're bombing schools, they're bombing marketplaces. While that fight is going on, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS have had a free hand to get more influence within the country. It's bad for the U.S. reputation.

It's bad for the war on terror. But I think the main links are, first of all, that economic connection of just the huge benefits of sales to Saudi Arabia for U.S. companies and U.S. trade. But I think more importantly in the short term, there were things like promising them that the U.S. would not abandon them in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal. This wasn't going to be a tilt towards Iran. And one way of showing and reassuring the Saudis that this was the case was ramping up arms sales.

So I think it eliminates a certain kind of bigger picture, flexibility to pursue diplomatic initiatives and it cements relationships with unsavory and undemocratic regimes, which I think in the long term, those relationships don't serve U.S. interests. How do you tell who exactly is driving the bus in a case like this? I mean, is it U.S. manufacturing interests or is it government policy? Or are they so inextricably linked that it's one, it's hard to tell one from the other. I think there is a bit of a symbiotic relationship. I think government policy still is probably slightly in the lead,

but there's so many vested interests and special interests from the corporations and the jobs that are created in key congressional districts and the fact that in many cases the Pentagon and the companies are kind of hand-in-glove doing the marketing, that it's a little bit hard to separate. But I think if you had a president who was willing to stand up and say, this is not under interest, we're going to stop this particular sale to the Saudis, for example, like this recent tank deal that's been offered because we want you to pull back from your campaign in Yemen. The president could do that. But he would get a great deal of pushback from members of Congress who have these things built in their district. Arguments would be made about, well, if we don't sell it, somebody else will.

And, you know, as bad as this is, the Saudis would do even worse without it. us because they have less sophisticated targeting. But all those arguments really often are just hiding that kind of special interest that's behind it. But I think the government and the Congress could overcome those economic interests if they really made a concerted effort to do so. But there's not a lot of incentive to do that. And so it's a rare thing.

I mean, there is some push now by people like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, at Rand Paul, Representative Ted Lou from California and others, on this tank deal to, first of all, delay consideration because they announced it to Congress on August 8th, and there's only a month for consideration. So they basically use the recess to try to push this thing through without congressional debate. So one of the arguments is let's at least roll back that date so we can have a good congressional discussion of this before the deal is approved. And then on the Senate side, to actually delay or stop the deal until the Saudis stop there, human rights abuses, some of which groups have suggested might even be war crimes that they're committing in Yemen.

So there's a little bit of a congressional interest in this, which was slow to build, but I think now is significant. There was almost a successful at the block cluster by themselves to Saudi Arabia, which should be kind of a no-brainer, but because of the Saudi's influence and the traditional. U.S. connection to the Saudis and all the various reasons, Obama administration wants to keep their relationship going. Even something like that, if you think would, you know, why would we sell cluster bonds to a country that's committing massive human rights abuses and killing civilians and so forth? Even that has taken a while to become an issue.

But they almost want to vote in the House, which is unusual for there to be such a vote, and it came within about six votes of passing. So, you know, there are periods where these things get more attention and where perhaps the government could do the right thing, but they're rare, unfortunately. William, why don't you think this kind of stuff is a bigger story? You know, when you lay it out, it almost sounds like a conspiracy theory. Well, I think it's more of a convergence of interest. You know, I don't think it's a conspiracy.

I mean, there's some weird ideas out there, like there's been this argument that, you know, Hillary Clinton at the State Department was pushing through arms deals to specific countries because they gave to the Clinton Foundation. I think that kind of thing is nonsense because there's a whole process within the government. State Department's only one aspect of it. There's various other reasons. These things are sold.

So sometimes in some sectors, people can give it out of hand in talking about what the factors are behind it. But I think it's more kind of institutional and longstanding political interests which are converging in a way that makes it very difficult to push them back. So I'm wondering about the types of weapons that are being sold.

You specifically mentioned cluster bombs, which I have to say, actually, I didn't know were being sold by the United States. I mean, there are a weapon that, I guess, if I'm describing it right, basically drops a lot of little bombs inside of a larger bomb, and it's meant to kill people, right? I mean, it doesn't, not damaging structures, it's a weapon of killing as many human beings as possible around the bomb. So not only does the U.S. make them, but we're also selling them to foreign countries. And so that being the case, what else are we selling? Are there other things that are sort of frowned upon by the world community that we are, you know, that our own manufacturers

are selling? Well, I think the cluster bomb stands out because there's an international treaty banning it, which the United States has not signed up to nor of the Saudis. And human rights groups have dug in on the ground and actually found remnants of U.S. Supplied cluster bombs in Yemen in areas where attacks have made. So that stands out a little bit as kind of one of my colleagues used to call one of the weapons of ill-reput, one of the most devastating and indiscriminate weapons that exist. I think the other issues are more about the recipient. If you're selling small arms, you're selling fighter planes to a country that's using it to put down its own population, to engage in human rights abuses, fueling conflicts, there's various laws and international norms that are supposed to govern this, which often don't.

I mean, under the Foreign Assistance Act of the United States, systematic patterns of human rights abuses are supposed to be off limits for U.S. sales. But there's a waiver to that, which is often invoked or just human rights abuses are ignored or the argument as well. They're doing better than they did last year, even though they're quite harsh in their crackdowns and their population and so forth. So there's that kind of violation of the spirit and sometimes the letter of U.S. law. And there's also a provision in the Arms of Control Act that says we shouldn't be fueling conflicts or sending excess amounts of weaponry to various regions. And that is kind of very rarely invoked. And then there's things like the Global Arms Trade Treaty, which the Bowen Administration has signed, but which is not likely to get gratified in Congress, partly because the NRA has signed up about 50 members in the Senate against it.

You need two-thirds to ratify a treaty. NRA has said, you know, they sort of see the Global Arms Trade Treaty as a first step towards taking away guns in the United States, which is absurd, but it's kind of, in like, with their paranoid style to do with anything related to guns. But the ITT is that you're supposed to have various standards that you put in place, including calculating whether you think the country that you're supplying to will engage in human rights abuses. So in a case like Saudi Arabia, there's no question that they're doing it. You don't have to do a careful investigation to know that this is the case.

But there's been a bit of a cover-up in terms of keeping independent investigations from happening. there was a move at the UN to do so, and the Saudis beat it back with kind of the implicit support of the United States. And Ban Ki-moon, actually, Ban Ki-moon, who is the Secretary General of the UN, he actually commented on that. And I was supposed to be fairly remarkable because, I mean, that's not the kind of thing that a Secretary General of the United Nations will say. He openly said that Saudi Arabia had applied pressure on him or on the U.S. organization, right? Yes. He was particularly concerned about there was a report about

countries that provide weapons that are used to abuse or kill children. And that's been happening in Yemen. And so Saudi Arabia was supposed to be on that list. And they basically threatened Ban Ki-moon that they would pull their support for various humanitarian

programs in the Middle East that they help put money into if they were put on that list. And so the UN said, well, we'll take a look at it. will reconsider. And Ban Ki-moon felt very much inappropriately pressured by this, which is why he spoke out. But he did bend to that pressure. But he wanted people at least to know that it had happened, which I think redounded to the discredit of the Saudi regime. The other thing, it's sort of linked to the cluster bombs, but what kind of restrictions, if any, or thought

goes into protecting the United States or any other country that sells weapons from later being attacked by those same weapons. One of the most obvious examples or the one that's often cited is in Afghanistan, where the United States sold Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen and then had to deal with those Stinger missiles in various action against Afghanistan, and that those weapons were also sold along. Is that a consideration? Is that a serious consideration when things are being sold? Well, it's supposed to be. I mean, there's programs that are supposed to, for example, inventory U.S. weapons supplied to say a government to see that they're not being diverted to another country or another non-state actor. But some of the reviews of that by the government accountability office has shown that, for example, in Egypt, the Egyptian government has blocked the United States from doing the kind of investigations that would allow them to know whether those weapons were being diverted. just a report that the New York Times did a piece on CJ Chivers where a British NGO found $40 billion of U.S. purchases of small arms, assault rifles and pistols and other related ammunition,

$40 billion worth, much of which flowed into the greater Middle East, particularly Afghanistan and Iraq. And there's no real way of knowing how much of that has been siphoned off, either through in Afghanistan, members of the armed forces would show up. They would accept the rifle or whatever equipment they were given. They would then desert and sell those things. In Iraq, of course, in addition to leakage during the Bush administration, when ISIS came down, they captured vast quantities of U.S. weaponry.

So there's these systems that are supposed to be in place, but U.S. officials have acknowledged that in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, they felt that the immediate press of the United press of the United States, war was more important than keeping track of these things, which is a very short-sighted approach, given that these weapons last for decades. So they can come back to be used against U.S. troops or in ways that contrary to U.S. interests. So there needs to be a much stronger approach to that. But in some cases, it's just if you give it to an unreliable supplier, a recipient, rather, it's very hard then to control where they end up, even if you have some kind of monitoring system in place.

Do we have any idea what the size of the black market is compared to the legitimate market? People have attempted to determine that, and it's very difficult to do, but some people argue it might be in the $5 billion to $10 billion range compared to about $70 billion a year and above board sales. And a lot of this, there's kind of a gray market where things start out as legit sales and then they're diverted to various groups or unsavering governments and so forth. So there's a little bit of a relationship between the illicit and the legal arms trade, which campaigners who push for the arms trade treaty made a very important issue in their lobbying for the treaty, but it hasn't really been fully dealt with in the terms of that agreement. So speaking of the gray market and, I guess, the black market,

one character who really stands out in the black market world, Victor Boot, who they made a movie called Lord of War about, which I'm sure exaggerated some of what he did. But he started off selling Russian arms and came out of the fall of the Soviet Union. Are there actually big, splashy figures who are making millions or even billions of dollars as non-state actors in the arms market? Well, Boots stands out. There were a number of others who had similar. activities that they're carrying on.

There certainly are established networks, certain shipping companies, certain air carriers, certain middlemen who, you know, facilitate illicit deals. And Boots stood out because of the scale of his activities and the fact that they were ending up in places like Sierra Leone during some of the worst,

most vicious fighting there. In Gola, he actually got contracts from the United States to ship weapons into Iraq. So there was a U.S. nexus to some degree. So over the years, there have been people like that. There was Sam Cummings and British arms dealer who set up shop in the United States, kind of named Sarkis Saginailian, who was involved in the illegal arms trade to Iraq.

So there are, you know, specific figures, their heads will pop up periodically, but Boot was probably the most notorious. But there is a system in place, so he wasn't unique. but a lot of the work that's done doesn't result in names coming to the surface that people would hear about. Well, how does it work? Are these people have access to, I mean, the buyer, that sort of, I can picture that. But how did they get access to the weapons? Do you have any idea about that?

Well, in some cases, they'll buy used weapons that are left over from the Cold War in places like, certainly Russia and Central Europe. but also in East Asia and Southern Africa. And so usually there's some kind of corrupt government official who allows the traffickers to get hold of the weapons in exchange for a bribe of some sort. Then they will arrange fake documents that will show that it's, oh, you know, this is going to this particular African country

when the fact they've got people in that country on the payroll to look like they're accepting it to be the front country. and then allow it to be sent to a rebel group or other, you know, a country that would otherwise not be allowed to get such weapons. So that's sort of the general outline of how it seems to happen. And there's kind of a patchwork of laws internationally, which makes it hard to stop this or to convict particular individuals, especially if they operate in multiple countries. Boot was ultimately brought to justice, although it was a sting operation that partly was carried out by the DEA. So they had to find a, you know, they sort of searched around for a hook under which they could bring him to justice.

And they had to get agreement from Thailand that he could be extradited. So his conviction on the one hand was a sign that perhaps you can crack down more heavily on this activity. But it was also to some degree the exception that proves the rule, given that he was allowed to do this for so long before he was stopped, indicates that there's a lot of holes in the enforcement system. Where do you think all this stockpiling leads us, William? Do you think the theory that more weapons leads to more war is valid? I know that's kind of a big picture question, but...

Yeah, I do. I think it facilitates war. It makes it easier for war to be the solution of first resort. Obviously, there's other dynamics pushing countries to buy the weapons in the first place. So it's not, you know, buying a weapon alone isn't, it doesn't guarantee you're going to then start a war. But if there's tensions that already exist and there's ready access to weapons, you know,

for everybody from a militia member up to a general in a specific government, I think it makes more likely that war will be pursued as a, you know, potential solution to a conflict or tension that would perhaps be better addressed through diplomacy. So, yeah, I think it stacks the deck in favor of war, but it's not, I don't think it's the kind of merchants of death argument that was made in the beginning of the last century that, you know, the arms makers themselves are cooking up conflicts in order to sell weapons. I think that would be pushing it too far. Although you do see things like the company's funding think tanks that make arguments for aggressive policies, which then in turn make it easier to market weapons. So there's kind of an indirect effect that it's not the same as them conspiring to create wars, but it does.

affect the climate of debate over whether or not to go to war. That seems incredibly cynical. What is the thought, like what's the public face to that? What are they, I mean, when a weapons company arms manufacturer supports a position like that or has a paper written up by a think tank, I mean, that just sounds awful. I mean, do they have a public justification for it? Well, usually they say we have an interest in foreign policy, which is certainly true, and that, of course, we're not dictating the results.

We just think it's important to have a debate and expertise on these issues. And so that's usually the argument that they push. And in some cases, there are, I mean, many, many things. tanks in Washington get money from contractors. And there's a range of how they come out of it. I mean, none of them are out there saying, stop this arm sale, but some of them are much more cheerleaders for the industry than others would be. They can do some quite good analysis that has implications for industry that are not positive.

But I think industry having a finger in all of this is seriously problematic, both in terms of the actual conflicts of interest and the perceptions thereof. But they don't have to announce this to the world. It takes a little digging to, there's no formal reporting that, you know, Lockheed Martin gave money to Heritage to lobby for the F-35, but a journalist managed to get hold of the documents that showed that. You know, but it's not easy to come up with. The Times did a good couple articles on the general idea of corporations influencing think tanks,

but the arms issue was not front and center in their analysis. They did mention, I think one specific case. So I think if people had a better sense of that this is part of the mix, they'd be a lot more skeptical of some of these arguments. On the other hand, there's so much general political cynicism. Some people might just say, well, what else is new? It's just part of this larger corrupt system.

Nothing I can do about it. So, you know, it's very, it makes me angry, but I'm not going to try to change that. So I think that's one of the whole problems with the analysis. of sort of the influence of the arms industry is the need to present some sorts of alternatives, both for foreign policy, for economic impacts and so forth. Because otherwise, I think it's just another example for people that there's these powerful interests that are distorting our policies just as they do in other areas of foreign and domestic policy.

And I think that's the biggest challenge. I know when I, sometimes when I give talks on this, I lean heavily on the sort of analysis of the great power of the military industrial complex. And it doesn't have the desired effect of people saying, well, this is something we should do something about. It has the effect of, well, gosh, Bill, you know, it sounds like that's really a powerful set of interests on the other side. I'm going to just give up and go to the beach, you know.

So I think that's the challenge, is finding examples where you can change things. So I think even small things like trying to block some of these deals to Saudi Arabia that are specifically being used in Yemen, and are examples of positive things that can be done that would change people's lives, even if you can't sort of change the whole system of how arms are purchased, which is a much bigger, I think, longer term undertaking. Bill Harding, thank you so much for joining us today to talk to us through this.

It's a very complex issue, and thank you so much for your time. Yes, thank you so much. I promise I won't be going to the beach anytime soon. Thanks for putting some attention on this. It's not often the chance to talk about it. in detail, so I really appreciate that. Days after we recorded this podcast, the last U.S. manufacturer of cluster bombs decided it would stop making them.

Textron's decision was a response to both international outcry about the weapons and the Obama administration's decision to pause delivery to Saudi Arabia. Thanks for listening to this week's episode. If you enjoyed it, tell someone. If you didn't enjoy it, you've broken our hearts, but we'll try to do better next week. In fact, you can tell us what we're doing wrong on Twitter. We're available at at war underscore college. We also accept compliments.

War College was created by myself and Craig Heedek. Matthew Galt co-hosts the show, and so much more. Our producer this week is Bethel Hoptech. She also approved this message.