No Easy Choice: NATO Collaboration and the U.S. Arms Export Control Issue

The United States has a conflict between its desire for increased NATO collaboration to standardize weapons and the need to maintain control over weapons systems made from U.S. technology. The administration has been willing to compromise to some extent on third country sales to achieve cooperation. These compromises may allow foreign producers using U.S. technology to sell to countries the United States opposes for political and foreign policy reasons or may prohibit the United States from selling to its usual customers. GAO analyzed the trading patterns of the major producers and did case studies of ongoing collaborative weapons projects at both the production and development stages. GAO assessed the competitiveness of European producers who get a license to produce U.S. systems to determine if they would be willing to accept restrictive U.S. export controls. GAO also reviewed the handling of third country sales in new codevelopment programs.