Arms Dealer to the World

A new report finds that once again the United States is the worlds leading arms dealer. Obviously this helps the balance of trade. The bad side, of course, is that we're fomenting arms races. We're selling to the Arabs and the Israelis, the Pakistanis and the Indians. I'm not softheaded enough to think that we should be out of the arms business and to not appreciate the importance of these sales to our own security. But at a time when we're seen around the world, fairly or not, as warmongers does it really help the be the biggest arms merchants?