US/Saudi AWACS Sale - Reaction in The United States

Reaction in The United States

Only months old, the Reagan Administration announced its plans to sell five of the U.S.-made AWACS to Saudi Arabia. The proposal, part of the largest foreign arms sale ever was not received warmly on Capitol Hill where Congressional consent was required. The AWACS proposal was also harshly rejected by Israel and disapproved of by a majority of Americans. Upon formal introduction of the AWACS proposal to Congress in the fall of 1981, many Senators reacted coldly. “This is one of the worst and most dangerous arms sales ever,” proclaimed Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy. Senator Donald Riegle said, “We are being asked to submit to a kind of blackmail; the price gouging of oil.” These Senators feared that the AWACS sale was not designed to promote stability, as would be claimed by the Administration, but to secure U.S. oil resources. Such a deal would mean technology for oil access, and as Kennedy said, a potentially dangerous deal at that. Senator Bob Packwood, who as a Republican was a member of Reagan’s party, was also a leader of opposition to the AWACS deal in the Senate. Packwood spelled out the danger he saw in arming Saudi Arabia: “They have displayed a hostility that must be interpreted as their deliberate intentions to promote continued instability in the Middle East.” Packwood questioned the choice of Saudi Arabia as an arbiter of peace saying, “Let’s think about which nations have been seriously committed to negotiating peace in the Middle East and which have not shared that commitment.” With the recently ended American hostage crisis in Iran fresh in mind, Americans were reluctant to sell military equipment to anyone. In fact, a May 1981 poll showed that 52% of those surveyed opposed arms sales to any country, and only 19% wanted the U.S. to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia.