The Trump administration recently issued a new executive order designed to accelerate the approval and delivery of US arms to foreign partners. This has long been a concern of executives in the defense industry and policy officials in the Pentagon, for somewhat different reasons.
Companies, responsible as they are to their shareholders, want to keep the money from foreign sales flowing at a steady pace rather than seeing the deals tied up in paperwork. Planning officials are concerned about situations like Ukraine, where once transfers from US stocks ran low, building systems from scratch for transfer to Kyiv could take months, if not years, to come to fruition.
The main thrust of the new order is to press for a reduction in the “rules and regulations involved in the development, execution, and monitoring of foreign defense sales” and weapons transfers.
While the exact regulations to be stripped have yet to be announced, if past “reform” efforts are any guide, the new policy will involve weakening guardrails on the export of deadly weapons technology, and limiting congressional oversight, which is already inadequate.
If deregulation includes reducing human rights and anti-terror vetting, lifting limits on the sale of items most likely to be used in repression, terror attacks, or criminal activity, the new order will undermine US interests and the interests of peace and stability in key regions. This would be a high price to pay for increasing the speed of arms transfers. There are no doubt steps that can be taken to reduce unnecessary bureaucratic procedures that slow the approval of foreign sales, but there are also basic regulations that are needed to attempt to keep US arms from aggressor nations or repressive regimes.
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The new policy also calls for integrating unnamed “priority partner” nations into the US defense industrial base by reducing restrictions on technology transfer to these countries and outsourcing weapons production to their territories.
To allow for critical weapons to be produced legally outside of the US, the order mandates a reevaluation of the export restrictions currently placed upon multiple forms of missiles, autonomous drones, rockets, and related software.
The new order could actually do some good if it included a thorough analysis of which nations should be regularly receiving weapons from the United States. Many of the nations currently accorded partner status are engaged in actions that are against long-term US interests.
Many of the nations currently accorded partner status are engaged in actions that are against long-term US interests.
For example, the United Arab Emirates, which was designated a “major defense partner” by the Biden administration, has had a uniquely destabilizing role in the Middle East and North Africa, supporting extremist militias or anti-government forces in Yemen, Libya, and Sudan. And in Yemen, the UAE illegally transferred US-supplied weapons to allied militias in violation of US law, but suffered no consequences
Israel’s ongoing mass slaughter in Gaza, enabled by billions of dollars worth of US-supplied weapons, is not only morally unconscionable, but it will damage America’s reputation for years to come and render appeals by US diplomats to the “rules-based international order” laughable.
Since the Trump administration has already approved additional billions in arms sales to Israel, it is safe to assume it will be treated as a priority partner under the new policy, despite its role in stoking tensions in the Middle East and increasing the risks of a full-scale regional war that would likely draw in US forces.
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There is another basic fact that challenges the idea that regulations on the arms trade should be cast aside. The US already dominates the global arms market, accounting for 43% of arms deliveries from 2020 to 2024. That’s more than four times more than its closest rival, France. In short, there is little evidence that current regulations are reducing the ability of US firms to sell their wares internationally.
The executive order also proposes to reduce transparency over arms sales by increasing the threshold at which deals need to be reported to Congress. This will mean more sales that are rushed through without Congressional scrutiny.
The arms export process is ripe for review, but the likely gutting of regulations and reductions in available information about arms sales contained in the administration’s executive order will only make a bad situation worse. In some cases — like the role of Congress in approving or rejecting key sales — regulations actually need to be strengthened. A simplistic policy that views all regulations as equally bad is a recipe for conflict and instability — the exact opposite of what the goals of US arms transfers should be.
