The policeman of the world. The principal promoter of democracy and peace. The cardinal watchdog of free trade. The keeper of the new world order. The custodian of moral authority. The chief pretender of virtue. The guardian of human rights. The warden of justice and the committed adversary of cross-border terrorism. That is what the US claims to be.

Fact meets fiction. The Grimmett Report (named after Richard F Grimmett, the author) titled "Conventional Arms transfers to Developing Nations, 1993-2000" is out, and the United States has, once again, been named as the biggest supplier of conventional weapons on the face of the planet. According to another report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) titled "The suppliers of major conventional weapons", aggregates for the years 1996-2000 show that the US exported some $50 billion worth of conventional weaponry to everyone and anyone who was willing to pay for it. Russia, the second largest supplier, was at a distant $15.69 billion. Russia was followed by France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Ukraine (320 T-UD tanks for $650 million to Pakistan), Italy, China (major buyer was Pakistan) and Belarus (the ranking for 1995-1999 wasn't much different).

This moral dilemma was once brought into focus by Jimmy Carter who, in 1976, said, "We can't be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of arms." As a matter of record, the US continues to be both. In 2000, $37 billion worth of arms were sold internationally. US sales amounted to $18 billion - 50% of the world total - while 70% of all the US arms exports went to developing nations. Most recipients of the US weaponry continue to be either non-democratic states or countries engaged in gross human rights violations. In effect, the US is arming most of the globe's human rights abusers.

What is particularly alarming is that the US continues to sell to regions of severe conflicts in Africa, South America and Asia. According to the Arms Trade Resource Centre, "The United States had supplied arms or military technology to parties to 39 of the 42 of the active conflicts worldwide." Unfortunately, or fortunately for arms sellers, Africa has been the most war-torn continent. Over the past 10 years, some three dozen African countries have gone through either a violent conflict, a civil war or both. In Africa, America's major client states have been Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) Liberia and Somalia.

In Zaire, Marshal Mobutu was armed and re-armed by Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush. Mobutu, all through his 32 years of awfully brutal regime, used American-manufactured weaponry to repress his own people and then left the country bankrupt. In 1997-98, the US provided military training to the armies of Angola, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Chad, Congo, Uganda, Eriteria, Namibia, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe (Source: World Policy Institute). Coincidentally, all these countries were engaged in devastating conflicts of one kind or another. More often than not, the US ends up supplying to both sides in an African conflict.

Angola has been in turmoil since independence from Portugal in 1975. Twenty-five years of warfare where the US supplied arms to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) while the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was armed by Cuba and the former-Soviet Union. To be certain, most conflicts in Africa are all inter-related. The civil war in Angola, for instance, has a lot to do with the upheavals in Congo, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Moving over to South America, Bolivia, Colombia and Peru receive $1.8 billion of the $2 billion that the US military spends under the guise of "international drug control" every year. South America has long been housing the ill-famed 'School of the Americas' where Americans have long been training Latin American military officers in "counter-insurgency and repression." Graduates - that included Pinochet, Videla and Banzer - went on "to lead military coups and unleash waves of assassination and torture" in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. Then there is the Navy Small Craft and Technical Training Institute, the Inter-American Air Forces Academy and the Centre for Hemispheric Defence Studies.

Columbia is the third largest recipient of American arms (after Israel and Egypt). At least half of all American military aid going to Latin American armies goes to the Colombians. There has been a 40-year old insurgency in which the US sent in Black hawk helicopters, M-60 machine guns and other sophisticated military arsenal, which is used against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Colombian Armed Forces, "There are more deaths here in one month than in the Gulf War and more battles than in Vietnam." Some 500,000 have perished since the beginning of the insurgency. The

Pentagon has more than 200 US military personnel manning "radar facilities

while Green Berets train Colombian troops." To be sure, the solution to Columbia's chaos is political and not military, but peace is not profitable for arms sellers.

Bolivia is a country that has gone through some 200 coups and counter-coups. The US has often been a player. The police and military get equipment and training worth more than $100 million a year. In addition to that there also is a provision of Emergency Drawdowns (presidential authority to grant defence equipment from US arsenal). Then there are Special Operations Forces (some 46,000 active-duty and reserve personnel; Army Green Berets, Rangers, Special Operations Aviation, psychological operations and civil affairs units; Navy Sea-Air-Land forces (SEALs) and special boat units; and Air Force special operations squadrons). Other avenues include the Excess Defence Articles Grant, Foreign Military Financing, Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales. All of this finances the Bolivian government's "war on Bolivian peasants."

Moving over to Asia, Indonesia is one country that has paid over $1 billion buying up US military equipment. According to a recent published report, "When anti-independence militias organized and assisted by the Indonesian armed forces went on a violent killing spree in East Timor ... they were equipped with US-origin M-16 rifles and other US-origin equipment."

Turkey is another example. Since 1984, Turkey has paid a wholesome $11 billion for US military equipment. According to statistics from the Pentagon's Defence Security Cooperation Agency, "US arms flows to Turkey continued at a rapid clip in 1999, with over $1.5 billion in weapons delivered." According to Human Rights Watch, US weaponry was used extensively "to bomb and burn Kurdish villages in southeastern Turkey, as well as the use of US-supplied light weaponry in specific human rights violations (March 7, 2000:Testimony by William Hartung, Director, Arms Trade Resource Centre)."

The good news is that ordinary Americans (as oppose to the American government) continue to form and support peace-research institutes. The list is long but includes Amnesty International, the Arms Project at Human Rights Watch, the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists, the Council for a Livable World, the Friends Committee on National Legislation and the Centre for Defence Information. Closer to home, America pumped in a wholesome $5 billion into the Afghan war effort. As soon as the Red Army withdrew the American aid pipeline also dried up.

Conclusion: The American government readily finances war but refuses to finance peace.