Lawmakers try to stop Trump, preserve arms sales ban
WASHINGTON — A bill that Democratic and Republican senators plan to introduce Thursday would ban the sale of advanced armed drones to any nation that is not a close U.S. ally, according to lawmakers and congressional aides.
The measure is directed at halting an effort by the Trump administration to bypass an arms control pact that the United States helped establish in 1987. The agreement, known as the Missile Technology Control Regime, is not legally binding, but its 35 signatories have generally abided by it.
The Trump administration announced in 2018 that it was expanding drone sales, but officials then debated for two years on how to circumvent the arms control pact. U.S. officials failed to persuade counterparts from other member nations to agree to change the language in the pact that bans the sale of large armed drones.
But last month, President Trump and the State Department announced they would simply ignore the restrictions set by the agreement and begin distributing licenses.
The move set off a wave of criticism from many Democratic and some Republican lawmakers, who said the decision undermined the pact. By ignoring a part of the agreement it finds inconvenient, they say, the Trump administration is encouraging other nations to do the same. And the sale of advanced armed drones could lead to the proliferation of the technology across the globe.
The lawmakers are especially concerned about sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have used U.S.made weapons to carry out a devastating war in Yemen that has left thousands of civilians, many of them children, dead.
“If we allow Trump to start selling drones, we set a dangerous precedent that allows and encourages other countries to sell missile technology and advanced drones to our adversaries,” Sen. Chris Murphy,
DConn., a sponsor of the bill, said in a statement Wednesday. “In addition, the president’s action will only further enable the Saudis to continue killing more innocent civilians in Yemen by supplying them with advanced U.S.made drones.”
Another sponsor of the bill, Sen. Mike Lee, RUtah, generally advocates limiting the powers of the federal government and restraining U.S. involvement in wars.