The Biden admin's new policy for selling weapons to foreign countries puts more emphasis on protecting human rights. The State Dept now has more leeway to deny weapons transfers if there's a suspicion they would be used against civilians.
that puts more weight on protecting human rights, in theory setting a lower bar for denying sales.
At issue is whether the U.S. thinks the customer nation will use the weapons on its own population. Under the old standard, the U.S. had to have actual knowledge that a government would use the weapons to harm civilians. Now, if the U.S. determines a country would “more likely than not” harm its population, a sale could be denied, a senior State Department official told reporters.
“It’s not that we will only decide against arms transfers if they meet that new lower bar of ‘more likely than not,’” said the official, who asked not to be named in order to discuss the policy ahead of its release. “We are going to be looking at and making risk assessments on every arms transfer on a case-by-case basis.”
The Biden administration had already tweaked its arms sales policy by refusing to sell Saudi Arabia offensive missiles and bombs after the regime used U.S. weapons to strike civilian targets in its war in Yemen.The new strategy also lays out several areas including competitive financing, exportability, technology security and working with the defense industry to sell equipment not used by the U.S. military.
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