Qatar: Arab tyranny, brought to you by the West

The U.S. is, of course, by far the biggest arms dealer, selling or giving more than $1 billion worth to Egypt alone in the past five years, said Gregg Carlstrom and Evan Hill at AlJazeera.net.

Gregg Carlstrom and Evan Hill

AlJazeera.net

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But the U.S. wasn’t the only one. Sanctions largely prevented it from arming Libya and Syria, and that’s where Italy, France, and the U.K. picked up the slack. Once images of bloody protesters holding up weapons stamped “Made in the USA” or “Made in Italy” began circulating on the Internet, those governments suspended “certain arms sales.”

But already, some countries are “ready to return to business as usual.” The U.S. is currently considering selling Bahrain more than $50 million worth of Humvees and missiles, even as the monarchy there kills its own people. “As long as billions of dollars in profit remain available, many countries seem eager to put memories of the Arab Spring behind them.”