8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
definitely worth reading, September 20, 2002
This review is from: Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade (Hardcover)
I read this when it was first published a while back. Tirman outlines how the U.S. defense industry, helicopters and small arms in particular, was kept alive by conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia during President Reagan's administration, by the numbers. I'm not surprised the Turkish reviewer didn't like his take. Mr. Tirman accuses Turkey of persecuting Kurds much more than Saddam Hussein (the anti-Kurd in American mainstream media), with American hardware. But you don't have to listen to any academic discourse; he lets the numbers speak for themselves. Turkey was the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid until recently, and the only Middle Eastern country to be involved in F-16 fighter production.
Mr. Tirman also outlines American involvement in Iran while supporting the Shah (King), in Afghanistan while supporting the Mujahideen, and gives a very simple, believable explanation of why Israel has become the recipient of so much American military aid.
To my knowledge there has been no serious criticism of Mr. Tirman's book and certainly nobody has refuted his numbers, which are a matter of public record but startling to read as he puts them together.
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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
solid review of u.s. foreign arms sales policy failures, April 28, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade (Hardcover)
Spoils of War
by Spiros Rizopoulos,
Senior Associate, The Western Policy Center
Spoils of War, John Tirman's analytical work on U.S. arms sales to allies, challenges the political and moral rationale behind U.S. foreign policy choices, particularly during the period from 1968 to the present, and criticizes the standards by which the United States has selected its "favorite" allies during this period. Tirman provides insight into the relationship between U.S. interests abroad and the aid Washington has given its allies, particularly Turkey. He also explores the role of pork barrel money in strengthening U.S. domestic industrial interests concerning the sale of arms to these allies.
Tirman begins the book by describing the historical rivalry between the civilizations of the West and the East, which began in 2,000 B.C. and led to the Crusades and the occupation of Christian Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, marking the beginning of the Ottoman Empire. According to Tirman, cooperation between Christian countries of the West and Muslim countries of the East, such as the alliance between the United States and Turkey, is not viable today because of historical antagonisms stemming from the Crusaders' efforts to contain the spread of Islam.
To illustrate this conclusion, Tirman describes Washington's relationship with Iran in the 1970s. Under the Nixon administration, the only way the U.S. was able to avoid being hurt by the Shah of Iran's proposal that OPEC members limit their oil exports to the West was to sell arms to Iran in exchange for oil. Additional factors justifying this policy, according to this administration, were the end of Britain's presence as a colonial power in the region, the decline of Russian intervention in the Middle East, and the hostilities between Egypt and Israel. However, as the United States was providing military aid to the Shah, he was engaging in acts of oppression against his people, creating negative public opinion! domestically and causing a strong anti-American sentiment within the country. This sentiment has dominated Iranian policies toward the U.S. since Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded the Shah in early 1979. A country that was once an important U.S. ally became a dangerous enemy. Khomeini lost no time showing how he could endanger U.S. interests in the region. In November 1979, he began holding diplomats from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran hostage for 444 days, indicating that he was ready to engage in hostile actions against the U.S. The irony in this situation was that this aggression was backed up by weapons supplied to his predecessor by the United States.
With the loss of Iran as an ally, Washington strengthened its relationship with fellow NATO member Turkey because of its ideal geographical location, bordering the Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and its history of military coups led by pro-Western generals who could serve U.S. interests without major political opposition. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a year after the Shah's demise also influenced the U.S. decision to enhance relations with Turkey.
Tirman clarifies the danger underlying this new strategic cooperation between the United States and Turkey. The United States, in an attempt to show its commitment to Turkey, turned a blind eye toward the Turkish military coup led by General Kenan Evren in 1980 and toward human rights abuses in the country. Washington's excuse for doing so was Turkey's willingness to side with the U.S. as circumstances that threatened American interests arose in the region and the dedication of the Turkish leadership to containing Islamic fundamentalism. Meanwhile, as the U.S. was strengthening its support for Ankara, Turkey was building up its military to serve primarily its own domestic and regional interests.
Global change came unexpectedly with the fall of Communism in 1989. Tirman outlines the changes that occurred in the 1990s as a result. The primary enemy, the East bloc, collapsed, and the! Bush and Clinton administrations had to redefine American foreign policy in the New World Order. Military assistance to Turkey had been a way to confront the Communist threat. The U.S.-Turkish alliance was to remain solid, however, because of continuing threats to U.S. interests in the region by Iran, Iraq, and Syria. With the U.S. military cutbacks that have accompanied the end of the Cold War, the export of military goods has become the ultimate means for ensuring the survival of the weapons industry in the U.S.
In this regard, Tirman stresses the importance of the emergence of the Black Hawk helicopter in the 1970s. As the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations were reconsidering U.S. foreign policy goals in the region stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, the weapons industry was attempting to adjust to the need that arose during the Vietnam War for an upgraded military utility helicopter that could combine transport and advanced attack capabilities, even in difficult terrain. This led a Connecticut-based firm, Sikorsky Aircraft, to develop the versatile Black Hawk.
Following the collapse of Communism, U.S. legislators from arms-producing districts needed to promote an increase in American arms exports to prevent financial disasters in their states. This was especially true in Connecticut, where the production and export of the Black Hawk helicopter was fundamental to the local economy and crucial to preventing a rise in the rate of unemployment in the state. As a result, Connecticut legislators played an important role in a long lobbying process to help Turkey finance its purchase of Black hawk helicopters, which were used to wage its military campaign against the Kurds in the southeastern part of the country. The legislators' constituencies and the helicopter industry expected lawmakers to make sure that the purchase was made to boost the state's troubled economy. Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd spearheaded the effort to conclude the deal, despite hi!s record of opposition to arms transfers as foreign aid.
The Black Hawk helicopter was Turkey's most effective weapon in its war against the Kurds. Nevertheless, the U.S. continued to avoid recognizing that its transfers of military weapons to Turkey, intended to serve U.S. interests in the eastern Mediterranean, were actually being used by Turkey for this war. The indifference of Washington policymakers to the human rights ramifications of Turkey's repressive acts against the Kurds provided the approval Ankara needed to continue these acts.
In this book, the depth of history, the policy analysis, and the revelations concerning behind-the-scenes developments in U.S. foreign policy are excellent. Tirman calls for an end to U.S. arms sales to governments that use these arms to commit repressive acts instead of to serve U.S. interests. But his argument is weakened by his failure to offer the reader a solution to the adverse economic impact on the U.S. economy that would result from the termination of such arms transfers. Tirman believes that the United States can choose to end arms transfers to Turkey and can keep the U.S. arms industry strong by redefining its means of production and turning "swords into plowshares." He believes that, if the U.S. reconsidered its arms transfer policies on the basis of moral considerations, other countries that manufacture arms would be motivated to follow the U.S. example. How can this occur, however, when countries such as France and Russia have never considered Turkey's human rights violations to be a hindrance to arms sales negotiations with Ankara? If such concerns have not been raised up to now, why would they be raised if the United States voluntarily withdrew from the arms selling race?
Tirman's call for challenging the conceptual framework of U.S. foreign policymaking by focusing on its lack of moral constraints is not the correct way to resolve the Kurdish problem. The answer to the problem might be redefining the U.!S. foreign policy framework in the eastern Mediterranean by expanding the dialogue on seeking alternative ways to serve U.S. interests in the region without ignoring Turkey's human rights violations. If this framework were to be reexamined, many other problems could be solved in the region, such as the differences between Greece and Turkey and the illegal occupation of 37 percent of Cyprus by Turkish forces.
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2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent contemporary summary which lacks depth, July 18, 2004
In Spoils of War, John Tirman makes an invaluable contribution to understanding the plight of the Kurds in Turkey. He does an excellent job of revealing the role of the US in contributing to their annihilation (there can be no other word.) However, Tirman falls down when it comes to conveying the broader context into which Turkey, and the Kurds, fit.
Like most journalists Tirman is most comfortable with contemporary facts and figures, but, when it comes to history, he tends to be credulous to the point of superficiality. His knowledge of the oil industry, for example, is surprisingly weak, given the importance of petroleum to his story. As a case in point, in the very first chapter of the book, Tirman sets the stage for his later argument by claiming that at the time of the oil embargo of 1973-74 half of US imports came from the Gulf. Had this in fact been true, then Tirman's later claims that the embargo panicked the US into fostering policies that established the Middle East as an area of national security would have had some basis. However, as a brief glance at Department of Energy data will show, (and it really only takes a minute), oil imports from the Gulf amounted to less than five percent in 1973. The misnamed "embargo" - actually a very small reduction in output -was largely a symbolic flexing of muscle by Saudi Arabia to prove to the rest of the Arab world that it was not a toady to the US. In terms of US oil consumption, the embargo was a mosquito bite. In terms of politics, however, it was a godsend. Carter used the "embargo" to justify a doctrine of military intervention in the Mid-East, and the convenient bogeyman of OPEC (now hopelessly conflated with "Islamic fundamentalists") was firmly established in the minds of the media - never again to be questioned.
Later in the book, Tirman compounds his error, referring to the "disastrous" price hikes of 1974 and 1979. Again, a little bit of oil industry knowledge would have gone a long way. Tirman fails to realize that crude oil prices are set by oil refineries - not oil producers. The "price hikes" (quotes are necessary, here) which OPEC demanded were actually an attempt to bring Gulf oil prices in line with the prices charged by American oil companies. (Historically, the so-called "posted price", the price of US oil plus phantom shipping charges from the Caribbean to Great Britain, has set the price of crude.)
In short, US oil companies hiked international prices, not OPEC.
In sum, Tirman misses a very important point. The reason oil-producing nations of the Mid-East have been deemed vital to our "national security" is not because our economy is dependent on Mid-Eastern oil (it isn't), but because our principle satellite, "our man in Asia", Japan, with its hundreds of US military bases, is dependent on Mid-Eastern oil. Europe, now a major competitor, also imports heavily from the Middle-East. China, with its burgeoning economy, and, incidentally, its control of most of our international debt, is also well on the way to becoming a heavy importer. The name of the game is not "national security," or "arms trade," or even "US economy," it's "eliminate the competition" (including pesky separatists like the Kurds, irritating nationalizers like Saddam, and uncooperative socialists like Chavez).
Placing Turkey within the world-wide picture of US oil interests would have made Mr. Tirman's argument much stronger. However, it also would have forced him to re-evaluate the importance of the arms trade. One can only hope that Mr. Tirman will make a stronger effort to delve into some of the underlying factors influencing Mid-Eastern politics in his future writings. A broader perspective is badly needed.
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