\n<\/p>\n
On paper, the<\/span> guardrails are clear. When the U.S. ships weapons overseas, partner governments promise three things: That they\u2019ll use them only for authorized purposes, keep them secure, and not hand them off to third parties.<\/p>\n If those conditions are violated or serious suspicions arise that they are, the State Department is obligated to investigate and, in many cases, alert Congress.<\/p>\n In practice, however, a new Government Accountability Office report shows the system is ad hoc, with little guidance<\/a> or follow through.<\/p>\n The State Department largely relies on overseas Defense Department officials for tips about potential end-use violations.<\/p>\n Since 2019, the Pentagon has flagged more than 150 incidents that could be violations. But the State Department has reported just three end-use violations to Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n The report added that the State Department hasn\u2019t informed Congress what merits reporting and that it investigates violations inconsistently.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Experts in the arms trafficking and conflict monitoring are dismayed, calling the reported gaps an affront to both national and global security.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really shocking to see how far the U.S had fallen behind,\u201d said Kathi Lynn Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project, who added the number of potential incidents flagged was \u201cextraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are violating our law and not protecting our own security \u2014 at a time when there is so much volatility in the world,\u201d Austin said. \u201cWe need to understand this is urgent, and Congress needs to push to maintain transparency and public trust in our arms dealings.\u201d<\/p>\n The 39-page GAO report, published to little notice in September, lays out a simple mismatch: Defense personnel stationed abroad are often the first to see or hear about possible violations, but diplomats with the State Department haven\u2019t told military officials clearly what to flag. (GAO, Pentagon, and State Department officials said the government shutdown left them unavailable to comment.)<\/p>\n In other instances of being tipped to potential violations, the GAO says, the State Department could not produce records showing whether anyone ever decided if the law\u2019s reporting thresholds were met.<\/p>\n The Arms Export Control Act requires notifying Congress when there\u2019s information that a substantial violation may have occurred regarding purpose, transfer, or security; it also requires reporting when an unauthorized transfer actually happens. Those are low thresholds for alerting the legislature, by design. Yet the GAO found no formal procedures inside the State Department for making, recording, and sharing their decision-making process.<\/p>\n In the report, the State Department agreed with GAO\u2019s six recommendations, including providing concrete guidance to the Pentagon, standardizing investigations with timelines, and creating procedures for deciding and documenting what gets reported to Congress.<\/p>\n The GAO cannot force a federal agency to bend to its report and relies on voluntary compliance.<\/p>\n If the changes aren\u2019t actually implemented, however, Congress will continue flying blind when it comes to U.S. arms sales negatively impacting national \u2014\u00a0and international \u2014 security.<\/p>\n The mechanics of \u201cend-use\u201d sound bureaucratic, but the stakes aren\u2019t. Around the world, U.S.-made weapons moves from legal sale to illicit use on the battlefield, stolen from depots, through corrupt commanders, transfers to proxies, or simple loss.<\/p>\n The results are everywhere. In Afghanistan, for instance, vast quantities of U.S.-supplied small arms and vehicles seeded regional black markets<\/a>. Conflict Armament Research, a U.K. group that tracks conventional weapons, traced the Islamic State group\u2019s ammunition stocks to dozens of countries \u2014 including U.S.-linked supply lines<\/a> \u2014 often thanks to the chaos of collapsing units and unsecured stockpiles<\/a>.<\/p>\n A recent Intercept investigation<\/a> linked U.S manufactured rifle rounds to cartel slaughter in the heart of Mexico.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest concern for the average American citizen is the potential for these arms to be used against us,\u201d said Brandon Philips, a public affairs professor at California State University, East Bay. \u201cWe are in a position right now where we aren\u2019t everyone\u2019s favorite country.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest concern for the average American citizen is the potential for these arms to be used against us.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n When the government puts tracking systems in place, however, more of the leaks get plugged. In Ukraine \u2014 a challenging venue for containing arms flows because of the sheer quantity of material being introduced \u2014 early Pentagon watchdog reviews<\/a> faulted shortfalls in tracking designated sensitive items amid an active war. Follow-ups found marked improvement as the U.S. expanded \u201cenhanced end-use monitoring,\u201d boosted staffing, and raised compliance rates.<\/p>\n Even with a partner government that has strong incentives to cooperate, effective control requires sustained, well-resourced checks. But the U.S doesn\u2019t even have a system for how those checks should happen. In its report, the GAO zeroed in on this vagueness. Overseas Defense Department staffers told the watchdog they\u2019re using \u201cprofessional judgment\u201d to decide what should rise to the State Department\u2019s attention because the State Department hasn\u2019t defined the incident types, thresholds, or timelines.<\/p>\n The ambiguity increases the odds that important cases fall into a bureaucratic void, never formally investigated or reported. The GAO even found examples where one incident drew a full document review and coordination, while a similar one drew no action at all.<\/p>\n \u201cA number of us for years have talked about insufficiencies around end-of-use monitoring, and this report continues to show the problems of how this is done,\u201d said Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. \u201cThe American people are attuned that a lot of harm is caused in the world by our weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n The infrastructure exists<\/a> to track weapons \u2014 the State Department has systems to vet its direct buyers, and the Pentagon has a program<\/a> for enhanced end-use monitoring<\/a>. But the GAO found that the connective tissue of such programs doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that this report is mostly about things that happened during the Biden administration, and the second part of Trump, shows it\u2019s a systemic problem. It shows that we are going sell things and not bother,\u201d said John Lindsay-Poland<\/a>, coordinator of the nonprofit Stop U.S. Arms to Mexico. Poland noted that the report only covers a small portion of government-to-government sales, while the bulk of U.S. arms exports are commercial sales <\/a>and small arms.<\/p>\n \u201cIf your priority is selling stuff,\u201d he said, \u201ctaking into account whether the stuff you\u2019re selling is massacring people, destroying communities, strengthening terrorists and drug trafficking, or driving immigration is secondary.\u201d<\/p>\n The GAO\u2019s accounting of the oversight vacuum comes at an incendiary moment.<\/p>\n In 2024, the Biden administration put a policy in place<\/a> that required assessments of whether partners receiving U.S. arms in active conflicts were using them consistent with international humanitarian law.<\/p>\nThe Misuse Pipeline<\/h2>\n
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Gaza and Double Standards<\/h2>\n