With the Russian-Ukrainian conflict still not given a chance for peace talks, the U.S. is still conducting an arms sales program in Europe, which poses a serious threat to regional peace and stability.
According to SIPRI (STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE), there is a surge in arms imports to Europe, while US dominance of the global arms trade increases.
This increase in US arms sales can only be linked to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, where the collective West, with the US as a leader, says it has no interference, but where US weapons are reaching in huge numbers.
” Even as arms transfers have declined globally, those to Europe have risen sharply due to the tensions between Russia and most other European states”, said Pieter D. Wezeman, Senior Researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.
The expert also says: ” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European states want to import more arms, faster”. But Russia would not have an armed conflict with any European state, so the real reason why the US is sending weapons to Europe is, on the one hand, to feed the Ukrainian conflict, and on the other hand, to give the country a new way to fight the war. To replace the stocks of EU states that have already been emptied to equip the Ukrainian army.
The United States’ share of global arms exports increased from 33 to 40 per cent, according to the data on global arms transfers published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, proving that USA have a large involvement in the war in Ukraine.
But forget about official data. Much more revealing are the secret documents from the Montenegro Government showing the magnitude of USA involvement in arming the former communist countries, now turned into adversary of Russia. Not to speak about the huge leaks from the Pentagon that revealed these days the dimensions of USA involvement in the war in Ukraine, but also the way USA dragged its allies from NATO into supporting the war Ukraine sided.
Ukraine, a huge arm market for the USA
Of course, as the share of USA export of weapons is growing, Ukraine becomes world’s third largest arms importer in 2022. As the same report exposes its argument, from 1991 until the end of 2021, Ukraine imported few major arms, but, because of military aid from the USA and many European states following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine became the 3rd biggest importer of major arms during 2022 (after Qatar and India). Ukraine accounted for 2.0 per cent of global arms imports in the five-year period. But the real numbers can be found after the February 2022.
Similarly, European NATO states increased their arms imports by 65 per cent as they sought to strengthen their arsenals, but someone must also consider how many weapons European NATO countries have shipped to Ukraine, so there is a huge need to recover and to replace them.
But there are other sources that proves this surge in USA involvement in supporting the conflict. The State Department of USA shoes that US arms exports soar in 2022 amid security crisis in Europe. Anadolu Agency explains how US military sales to foreign countries soared 49.1 % to nearly $205.6 billion in 2022 amid Europe’s security crisis following the war in Ukraine.
US foreign military sales hit $51.9 billion in fiscal year 2022, up from $34.8 billion the previous year, the State Department said in a statement. Authorized direct commercial sales of military hardware, services and technical data accounted for an additional $153.7 billion.
Europe, good client for USA arms deals
Among arms sales notified to Congress by the State Department in 2022 there are huge transactions in Europe, as a $6.9 billion Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ship to Greece, a $6.0 billion M1A2 SEPV3 Main Battle Tank sale to Poland and a $1.3 billion sale of aircraft carrier equipment to France. Difficult to not see the connection with Ukraine in the case of Poland, who is a big supplier and intermediary of weapons shipping for Ukraine!
Also, Germany in July 2022 ordered $8.4 billion worth of Lockheed Martin-made F-35 aircraft, munitions and related gear, citing “a need for unity within NATO, and a credible deterrent” to Russia, while USA is pretending that it is all about peace…
A statistic about U.S. arms exports in 2022, by country, published by Statista, shows in a very compelling graphic how many weapons USA is exporting in European and NATO countries. A lot of weapons will find their way to Ukraine, as photos and video from the conflict zone often proves it, presenting Western weaponry used on the front line.
Even the huge corporation news like Yahoo admits that sales of United States military weaponry in Europe are skyrocketing, all in connection with the war in Ukraine.
” Since late February, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine, countries in the European Union have pledged to beef up their arsenals by some $230 billion, with Germany alone planning to modernize its military to the tune of $100 billion this year. And the United States arms industry, which produces and exports more weapons than any other country — selling over 39% of the estimated $210 billion annual global arms sales from 2017 to 2021 — has been the biggest beneficiary”, says the article from Yahoo.
Arms sales like during the Cold War
“This is certainly the biggest increase in defense spending in Europe since the end of the Cold War,” Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, recognize for Yahoo News. So much for the peace USA is pretending to defend!
The deals from Europe for the American arms industry are huge. The same article indicates that, according to William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, since President Biden took office, European countries account for some $33 billion of arms “offers,” as the initial stage of arms negotiations is called, with $21 billion in deals on the table since February.
By far, the most popular high-end item from the U.S. in Europe is the American F-35 combat airplane — with Finland putting in an order for 54 of them in 2020, while Poland ordered 32. Another 71 planes were ordered by Norway, the Netherlands and the U.K., and even neutral Switzerland ordered three dozen of the fighter planes in September, for over $6 billion. On 11th April, Romania too officially announced its intentions to buy the F-35 airplane from USA, so the American weaponry will ”defend” the peace near Ukraine and directly into the conflict for a long time. As Foreign Policy puts it with a good doze of irony, ”The Arsenal of Democracy Is Back in Business”, and the main idea is that ”proposed U.S. arms sales to NATO almost doubled this past year”.
