2023 NDAA Amendments on Arms Sales
On July 5, 2022, members of the House introduced amendments to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which are now viewable online. Out of the 1,172 amendments, 25 deal with restricting U.S. weapons sales abroad. These amendments can be broken down in three ways: creation and enforcement of new reporting requirements; protection and implementation of human rights measures in the U.S. arms sales process; and reducing dispersion of weapons away from the intended recipient.
Reporting requirements are an easy way for Congress to start reform without needing to debate politically charged issues. For example, the 2022 NDAA introduced legislation to require audits of foreign security forces receiving U.S. assistance, force human rights reporting for security aid to Colombia, demand oversight reports on private security contractors receiving U.S. aid, and force reporting on U.S.-funding of United Nations peacekeepers. In essence, this type of legislation is easy to pass in the NDAA, generally enjoys bipartisan support, does not upset the leaders of political parties, and adds bureaucracy to institutions that do not normally affect Americans.
In the 2023 NDAA amendments, there is legislation that would force more reporting on the impact of U.S. arms exports and foreign operations on global human rights, review the Department of Defense’s strategy for deterring misuse of U.S. security assistance, require additional notifications for weapons transfers to Central America’s Northern Triangle and direct commercial sales to all nations, and oversee budget authorizations that the U.S. government uses to fight covert wars.
Overall, the reporting requirements related to arms transfers in the 2023 NDAA will certainly add work for the Departments of State, Defense, and Commerce, but in doing so, they could improve human rights practices in those countries.
In addition to improvements to reporting requirements, the 2023 NDAA includes amendments that restricts arms sales by evaluating the impact of U.S. weapons on global human rights and how to prevent continued abuses. Such amendments are historically difficult to pass because members of Congress receive money from U.S. weapons manufacturers, do not want to restrict President Joe Biden’s authority, or both. The amendments to the 2023 NDAA would restrict specific countries from receiving U.S. weapons, especially Saudi Arabia. Beyond that, other amendments restrict transfer of weapons to unsupervised recipients, require greater vetting on human rights violators and units that will receive U.S. weapons, improve training on proper use of security assistance, and force the U.S. government to assess the potential for war crimes and other human rights violations in the arms transfer process – from notification of sale to delivery of the weapons.
By placing the issue as an amendment in the NDAA, individual congresspersons are at least forcing a discussion on human rights issues in the weapons sales process. However, much of this legislation may not pass.
Finally, the 2023 NDAA proposed amendments would restrict weapons sales by helping the U.S government avoid dispersion of its transferred weapons to unwanted recipients in two ways. First, by authorizing additional funds of up to $20 million for fiscal year 2023 and each year after to improve end‐use monitoring of weapons transfers. This means the U.S. government will continue to track weapons after they are delivered and make sure they are in the hands of the intended recipient. The second way is by removing the Trump‐era rule that placed the Commerce Department in charge of some firearms sales assessments instead of the State Department. This rule led to weapons in Categories I‑III in the U.S. Munitions List being regulated by the Commerce Department instead of the State Department, including the sale of semi‐automatic firearms, small‐arms ammunition, shotguns, non‐lethal grenades and projectiles, optical‐sighting devices, firearm production equipment, and other small arms and light weapons. This leads these weapons to being subject to a less strict review process and increasing potential gun violence in Latin America, less rigorous end‐use monitoring of U.S. weapons in Afghanistan, and rewarding governments that have dispersed weapons to U.S. adversaries. Thus, this amendment would move risk assessment of these firearms back into the State Department’s purview and reduce these negative consequences.
Below is a list of all of the restrictive arms sales legislation proposed by House members in the 2023 NDAA. While there are eleven less amendments restricting sales than last year, if passed, most of these amendments would have a small, but not insignificant impact on assessing risk in weapons sales.