From Publishers Weekly
Hartung, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in Manhattan, grapples with a vital question: how did the world's leading democracy become the world's leading arms merchant? He contends that President Nixon's arms-sales policy, President Reagan's support of anti-communist "freedom fighters" and President Bush's military assistance to Saddam Hussein all contributed to a grotesque "boomerang effect" in which recent U.S. battlefield opponents--Panama, Iraq, Somalia--have been armed with U.S. military technology. Hartung examines what he calls the permanent arms-supply network (defense contractors, former military and intelligence operatives, foreign brokers and middlemen and influential government officials) and suggests that their collective influence over U.S. foreign policy may exceed that of Congress. There is an urgent need, he warns, to break America's economic dependence on weapons exports, to cease arming potential adversaries and to control arms trafficking that spreads violence and disorder around the globe. A coherent, convincing exposition of a complex and timely subject.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this critical and well-argued analysis, Hartung, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York, traces the roots of current U.S. arms trade policies to the Nixon Doctrine, of which an important component was arming pro-American regional powers such as Iran under the Shah so that they could act as surrogates for U.S. interests in key regions of the world. Hartung demonstrates how this course of action went awry , contributing to corruption, greed, and misguided policies through the 1980s. He examines in detail the arm sales agendas of presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush. He also discusses why the reckless exercise of "pork barrel" weapons sales and proliferation has not changed under the Clinton administration. This sober, hard-hitting, and well-researched book should be read by all students and practitioners of U.S. foreign and defense policy and is also highly recommended for informed general readers.
- Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, Ala.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Left of the Democratic Party comes this fulmination against U.S. arms sales. With staunch liberal affiliations (analyst at the New School for Social Research; speechwriter for New York Democrats), Hartung scans the record since 1970 and is suitably horrified by sales to the shah, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Israel, Taiwan, and anti-Communist rebels anywhere. The proponents of reining in arms transfers, presidents Carter and Clinton and some members of Congress earn Hartung's commiserating praise. His fashioning of the facts, culled predominantly from newspapers, periodicals and Hartung's own articles, hardly results in an original synthesis, which, nevertheless, ought not to impede its appeal to those who are wary of the defense industry's influence. A partisan supplement to objective titles on the global-weapons trade, such as William Burrows' Critical Mass. Gilbert Taylor
