The arms transfer data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute(SIPRI) shows how many arms sales exporting from the United States to countries worldwide. SIPRI researches into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament.
I select the data in the past six years, 2011 to 2016, and visualized a world map pointing out countries that buys most U.S. weapons with red:
The top ten countries importing U.S. weapons from 2011 to 2016 are:
- Saudi Arabia
- UAE(United Arab Emirates)
- Australia
- South Korea
- Turkey
- Iran
- Taiwan
- India
- Singapore
- Egypt
Middle East countries account for 43.5 percent of U.S. arms sales. However, Cyprus, Iran, Palestine and Syria of the Middle East is not in the data. According to PRI’s “Where did Iran get its military arms over the last 70 years?”, Iran stopped importing U.S. arms after the 1978 Iranian Revolution. And, since U.S. supports and sells arms to Israel, selling weapons to Palestine should contradict their interest. As of Syria, U.S.— Syria relationship was suspended because of Syrian civil war.
Among the ten listed counties, South Korea, Taiwan are the two East Asian counties. These two regions are still in tension with its opponents. As the tension in Korean peninsula has been rising, Arms sales to South Korea grew from 2015 to 2016. U.S. government is planning to deploy THAAD missile systems in South Korea against North Korea’s threat.
Taiwan has a long tradition buying U.S. arms for defending against China’s unification. Trump even posted a tweet after he had a phone call with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wen, saying “Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.” Regarding this, people are surmising that there will be big arms sales to Taiwan under Trump’s presidency.
Interestingly, Asian country Vietnam is not on the list as well. According to SIPRI, Vietnam is the No. 2 country that imports weapons from Russia from 2011 to 2016, fewer than the No. 1 country India.
Big countries such as China and Russia are not on the list as well. According to SIPRI, China is ranked the third country importing arms from Russia in the past six years. Russia itself is a exporter country supplying weapons to other countries.