New America Policy Papers: 2008

As a result of the current financial crisis, consumers are more concerned about their personal finances than ever before.  Household confidence in job security and future employment prospects, income stability, and the ability to preserve and build assets is plummeting; meanwhile, high fuel and food prices and tightening credit conditions are placing more pressure on households to maximize their financial decisions.

U.S. arms transfers and security assistance to Georgia and Turkey have raised particularly vexing questions for U.S. policymakers.In the case of Georgia, the question is how far to go in cementing a security alliance with the government in Tbilisi while carefully gauging the impacts on U.S.-Russian relations.With respect to Turkey, one key issue is whether the billions in U.S.

The United States, which entered into over $23 billion in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements in fiscal year (FY) 2007 and $32 billion in FY 2008 (see table 1), is the world's largest arms supplier. U.S. exports range from combat aircraft to Pakistan, Morocco, Greece, Romania, and Chile to small arms and light weapons to the Philippines, Egypt, and Georgia. In 2006 and 2007, the United States sold weapons to over 174 states and territories, a significant increase from the beginning of the Bush administration when the number of U.S. arms clients stood at 123.[1] While many of these sales were relatively small deals licensed commercially by the State Department, a number of important new states were added or restored to the U.S. client list, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, East Timor, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan.

This table is part of the larger "U.S. Weapons at War 2008" report. For the full document, please click here.