And Weapons for All.

This compelling book summarizes the blunders, the greed, and the failed policies that have made the United States the number-one arms merchant to underdeveloped nations. The author, an academic and an activist, has labored for over seven years to produce a detailed examination of the arms trade that should horrify every American and inspire every policy maker to vote for reform.

The current role of the United States as the world's leading arms merchant was created, according to Hartung, by President Richard Nixon on July 25, 1969. The Nixon doctrine contemplated the sale of arms to recruit key regional powers to serve in a U.S.-dominated anti-Communist coalition. U.S. arms sales exploded from less than $2 billion a year in the late 1960s to $17 billion per year by the mid 1970s. The U.S. transferred vast quantities of weapons to oppressive regimes like those in Iran, Indonesia, Morocco, and Chile.

In the mid 1970s the Congress sought to curb the dangerous effects of the Nixon doctrine. The Congress obtained the right to learn of significant arm sales and the power to veto them within a certain period. However, that power has hardly ever been successfully employed.

There are plenty of villains in the bizarre tale of how the United States became the force that peddles arms to impoverished nations. Retired generals, aggressive lobbyists for corporations that manufacture weapons, and millions of persons whose jobs depend upon the sale of arms constitute only three of the major players. Add venal politicians, devious foreign agents, and militant anti-Communists in and out of government and you have some idea of the chaos and the follies described in this important work.

The figures are startling. From 1988 to 1992 the U.S. exported $55 billion in arms while the Soviet Union and Russia sold $45.2 billion. In 1992, Russia sold only $2.3 billion in arms. The Pentagon estimates that U.S. foreign military sales for fiscal 1993 will total $31 billion.

On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton promised to control the sale of arms abroad. But in his talk to the UN on September 27, 1993, the president made no mention of the transfer of conventional armaments. A promised review by the Clinton administration of policies regulating arms sales has not been forthcoming.

Harthung's book is factually exhaustive. It demonstrates the complex international political and industrial factors which are interwoven with the sheer greed of corporations engaged in the very lucrative arms business. Hartung is not naive in his recommendations but he is direct. He embraces the proposed code of conduct for U.S. arms transfers authored by Republican Senator Mark Hatfield (R-Oreg.) and endorses the recommendations of the Arms Transfer Working Group, a coalition of over fifty religious and arms-control organizations, that proposals to limit the arms trade be made a top legislative priority.

Last year humankind spent some $900 billion on arms and armies. One is reminded of the saying that the world is a "theater of the absurd." That level of madness cannot be promptly de-escalated by cutting back on the proliferation of conventional weapons. But if the United States led a coalition of nations to stop the transfer of arms we might see the beginning of the end in this generation. Hartung has written the scenario. All that is needed is a group of actors on the world scene determined to make war on war.