The Increasing Global Appetite for Weapons

How much does America love weapons? Oh, to count the ways. There's the military budget, which will see record numbers in the next two years. There's the fact that January marked the biggest use of drone weapons in the history of the U.S. military.

Or, as Frida Berrigan points out, there's the fact that when it comes to the global arms trade, the U.S. accounts for close to 70 percent of all weapons sales. No wonder it's the bee's knees to be investing in defense companies right about now.

According to numbers put out by the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. rings up a cash register each year to the tune of $37.8 billion for weapons sales. Out of context that might not seem like so much. Until you look further down the list and see that the second biggest weapons dealer in the world is Italy, which only brings in $3.5 billion.

As Jimmy Carter once said, "We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war." It's just that peace, as it turns out, isn't as profitable.

Even more disturbing might be where the U.S. is making some high-level weapons deals. In 2008 alone, we sold weapons to Saudi Arabia (to the tune of $6 billion), Iraq (to the score of $2.5 billion), and Egypt (to the beat of a $2.3 billion drum).

That has Berrigan saying that the U.S. could adopt a new motto: "We Arm the World."

"Global arms trade?  Send that one back to the Department of Euphemisms.  Pimps and pushers with a lucrative global monopoly on a killing drug -- maybe that's the language we need," Berrigan writes. "And maybe, just maybe, it's time to launch a war on weapons."

Photo credit: controlarms