[thechat] Solve This Political Triangle

[Ben Dyer]

On 03:54 AM 6/20/2002, Syed Zeeshan Haider said to me:
>Hi Ben,
>No Offence,

None taken.

>but Pakistan has been a long-time buyer of USA weapons
>specially F-16's but USA has never given Pakistan that support of which
>Pakistan had a right. USA received money for 16 F-16's and refused to
>deliver the fighter planes.

I had never heard of this, so I did a little research on this and found this:

<http://www.f-16.net/reference/users/f16_pk.html>

It states that the reason the U.S. originally balked at giving the F-16s to
Pakistan is because this is "in accordance to the Pressler amendment to the
Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids military aid to any nation possessing
a nuclear explosive device."  It seems completely political with the
purpose of singling out Pakistan, though.  (Remember, Israel is an
undeclared nuclear power.)

>After a lengthy and painstaking negotiation,
>USA gave back the money in the form of wheat.

*Partly* in wheat.  According to that same site, $326.9 million was to be
repaid in cash.

>A big part of money had
>already been deducted as Service Charges by USA officials. In addition,
>I guess, Pakistani market is bigger than that of Israel.
>There are some hidden interests of USA in Israel, about which even
>Americans don't know. Only a handful of F-16 fighter planes cannot
>matter.

First of all, let me reiterate that I don't understand American foreign
policy and that most of the time it fails to make the slightest shred of
sense.  That being said, the U.S. wanted an ally in the region after the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, which is why the government sold all
sorts of equipment to Pakistan.  However, after the U.S. government
realized that Pakistan was working on a nuclear weapons program and that
the existing F-16s were already being modified to carry nuclear bombs, the
U.S. backtracked.

Is this hypocritical?  Of course it is, we still sell weaponry to
Israel.  The only difference is that Israel can't get into a two-sided
nuclear war.  (On a side tangent, I can't imagine a scenario where Israel
uses nuclear weapons, the fallout would almost always blow right back into
Israel.)

>Quality fighter planes like F-16 can easily be sold to any
>country in the world, if Israel doesn't purchase them.

Indeed:

<http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/aircraft/f-16.htm>

Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Israel, Netherlands,
Norway, Pakistan, South Korea, Portugal, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand,
Turkey, USA, Venezuela.

--Ben

Ben Dyer, Senior Internet Developer, Imaginuity Interactive
http://www.imaginuity.com/

   Whatever it is, I'm sure that I was just about to get to it.
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