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Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama Is Now Largest International Arms Dealer Since WWII
Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Barack Obama has become the largest international arms dealer since the end of WWII, according research done is a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). With more than $160 billion in arms sales during his first five years as President, Obama has outpaced the former leader in this category, President Richard M. Nixon.
While the left calls former President George W. Bush a war monger, Obama’s foreign weapons sales have outpaced Bush’s entire eight-year term by more than $30 billion, the report states. During the Obama Administration, the United States is the largest international arms dealer in the world, accounting for 31 percent of all military weapons sold internationally. The $160 billion in international arms sales under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program does not include tens of billions of dollars in orders that have been approved but not yet shipped.
The SIPRI report, detailed on the left-of-center website Americas Program in an article by William D. Hartung, shows the Nobel Peace Prize winning Obama to be anything but peaceful. The article states, “Perhaps the clearest example comes in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia is using U.S. supplied aircraft, missiles and bombs to attack neighboring Yemen, with the risk of sparking a regional war in the process. … The Saudis have also used U.S.-supplied arms to help put down the democracy movement in Bahrain.”
The article is also critical of the Obama Administration’s handling of arms deals. They cite $500 million in small arms and light weapons that have simply gone missing in Yemen. Those weapons are believed to have fallen into the hands of organizations like Houthis or Al Qaeda. “Last but not least, former Yemeni security forces fighting on both sides of the current conflict have long benefited from U.S. arms and training,” Hartung wrote. “So it is quite possible that every side in the complex war in Yemen has received arms from the United States. It’s hard to think of a clearer indictment of runaway arms dealing.”
The United States, with 31 percent of the world’s international arms sales, outpaces the rest of the world. Hartung reported that Russia comes in at a distant second place with 27 percent. Other exporters of weapons include China, Germany, and France with 5 percent each. The U.K. had 4 percent of the world’s arm sales.
Hartung wrote that the big winners in Obama’s massive FMS program are major defense contractors. He listed aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed Martin, but other arms and weapons systems manufacturers would also have gained benefit from the program.
The report is also critical of the Obama Administration’s record in dealing with arms sales to Mexico. This topic has been covered in a separate Breitbart Texas article by Ildefonso Ortiz.
