by Jason Ditz
Administration: Officials Should Be ‘Salesmen for This Stuff’
With the worldwide arms market already booming, and the US holding the overwhelming majority of that market, it’s getting harder and harder to see how the export market could be grown any further.
President Trump, however, is as committed to getting jiucy arms contracts for these well-connected arms makers as anyone, and is pushing a new “whole government” approach for increasing arms sales.
What this means is greatly reducing restrictions based on arms trafficking regulations, in an effort to make top Pentagon and State Department figures, to quote one top administration official “salesmen for this stuff.”
State Department officials confirmed the plan, saying that it would allow them to “share the burden” of making sales with the privately-owned arms-makers, and “provide more good jobs for American workers.”
While the US government has long openly made increasing arms sales a priority, it’s also gotten a reckless amount of US arms into the hands of warring parties worldwide. Making officials de facto salesmen is likely to make it even harder for such officials to be expected to restrict the use of those arms in the commission of war crimes
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