The Pusher

The numbers are astonishing. In President Obama’s first five years in office, new agreements under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program—the largest channel for U.S. arms exports—totaled over $169 billion. After adjusting for inflation, the volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion.

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[O]ver 60 percent–have gone to the Middle East and Persian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia topping the list at $46 billion in new agreements.

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The Saudis have used U.S.-supplied weaponry to help put down the democracy movement in Bahrain, and now to expand the conflict in Yemen to the point that it may spark a region-wide war. In addition, over $500 million in U.S weaponry destined for Yemeni security forces has gone missing, and may have found its way to Houthi forces or even to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The faction of the Yemeni army that has joined hands with the Houthi rebellion has ample U.S.-supplied armaments as well. It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of the negative consequences of aggressive arms dealing than the current situation in Yemen.

  LobeLog

I’d suggest it might be intentional, but I suspect it is simply a matter of money.

Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft program—the largest weapons initiative ever undertaken by the Pentagon—depends in part on billions in sales to a dozen foreign partner nations, ranging from NATO members like the United Kingdom, Italy, and Turkey to non-NATO allies like Australia, South Korea, and Israel.

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The United States has made nearly $5 billion in arms sales to India in the past five years, most notably for Boeing C-17 transport planes but also including torpedoes, anti-ship missiles, and howitzers. And a new U.S.-India defense cooperation agreement that Obama announced during his January 2015 visit to India includes promises to help India develop aircraft carriers and a new generation of jet engines.

Who says the United States is not an exporter? We export death.

[T]he Obama administration supported the [Arms Trade Treaty], albeit not in as strong a version as some arms control advocates would have liked. Although the treaty has no hope of being ratified by the current, Republican-controlled Senate, the Obama administration has signed it and publicly pledged to live up to the standards on human rights, anti-corruption, and other key criteria set out in the ATT. The key question now is what this commitment will mean in practice.

Seriously. Signing an arms trade treaty while exporting billions of dollars worth of arms is either naïve in the extreme or militantly cynical.  And if it has "no hope of being ratified," WTF?

[Obama's program] calls for the approval of drone exports “on a case-by-case basis.” It also requires recipients to pledge not to use U.S.-supplied systems to illegally attack neighboring states or engage in “unlawful surveillance” or “unlawful force” against their own populations.

Awwww…a pledge. How sweet. Like fraternities.

The most important element of the administration’s multifaceted arms-export reform initiative was the decision to remove thousands of items from the State Department-monitored U.S. Munitions List (USML) and place them on the Commerce Control List administered by the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department has historically been more closely associated with arms-export promotion than arms-export control, and its regulations are considerably looser than the State Department’s.

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The Obama administration has defended its new arms export control policy as an effort to put “higher fences around fewer items” so that scarce enforcement resources can be concentrated on high-end weapons and weapons components whose transfer could undermine U.S. military superiority. [...] On balance, the Obama administration’s arms export licensing reforms are a step backwards.

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The absence of a strict licensing requirement will make it harder to keep track of the ultimate destination of military and military-related items exported by U.S. companies.

So….intentional?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.