And Weapons for All

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. (Apr.)