Pentagon is OK with Buying Helos from Putin's Favorite Arms Dealer

Russian MI-17 helicopters assemble on the flightline of Patuxent Naval Air Station, Md., awaiting deliver to Afghanistan. Photo: U.S. Navy

A top Pentagon official is trying to stop congressional opposition to a deal that provides Russian helicopters to the Afghan military ' even as the same official Russian arms exporter also supplies Syrian dictator Bashar Assad with weapons used to massacre dissidents.

James Miller, the Pentagon's new policy chief, wrote a letter to legislators defending the lucrative deal with Rosoboronexport, a firm that until 2010 was barred from doing business with the government because of its tendency to sell arms to rogue states Syria and Iran. 'The [helicopter] acquisition effort is critical to building the capacity of Afghanistan security forces and supports the president's continuing efforts to build improved relations with Russia,' Miller wrote on March 30, reports Bloomberg's Tony Capaccio.

Miller didn't deny that Rosoboronexport is also deeply engaged in the ongoing Syrian slaughter. In fact, he conceded it in his letter to Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who's trying to stop the deal: 'I share your concern that Rosoboronexport continues to supply weapons and ammunition to the Assad regime and acknowledge there is evidence that some of these arms are being used by Syrian forces against Syria's civilian population.'

Rosoboronexport is not a marginal company. It's Russia's official arms exporter, and as such is a de facto instrument of Russian foreign policy. Its no-bid deal with the Pentagon to send 22 MI-17 helicopters to the Afghans ' with an option for another 12 ' could be worth $1 billion.

The Afghanistan contract is just the most recent in a series of questionable Pentagon deals with the Russian firm. In 2008, the U.S. Army gave Rosoboronexport a contract worth $325 million for MI-17s destined for the Iraqi army ' while the firm was forbidden from doing business with the U.S. government under the Iran-Syria Nonproliferation Act. The defense contractor ARINC got around the sanctions by routing the deal through the Russian helicopter manufacturing firm Kazan, Danger Room's Sharon Weinberger reported at the time. Only the Russians delivered the helicopters years late.

Even so, after the U.S. government lifted the ban in 2010, it took less than a year to line up an even more lucrative deal with Rosoboronexport to outfit the Afghan army with Russian MI-17s. The rationale: the Russian-made troop transport helicopters are more familiar to the Afghans than American-made ones.

But it wasn't long before the original rationale for blacklisting Rosoboronexport reasserted itself.

'This in no way excuses Rosoboronexport of its activities with Syria,' Miller wrote to Cornyn, 'but our acquisition of these helicopters is a key part of our ongoing strategy to hand over security of Afghanistan to the Afghan people.'

Miller's argument is straightforward. Unless Congress is willing to jeopardize the U.S.' exit strategy from Afghanistan, which depends on mentoring the Afghan military, then the Rosoboronexport deal must go through. He pleaded that the U.S. will continue to 'register our objections with Russia at all levels and every opportunity' for arming Assad, whose massacres have killed at least 9,000 Syrian civilians, according to United Nations estimates.

The continued Rosoboronexport deal is the latest example of the Obama administration's incoherent approach to Syria. Top military officers have alternatively enthused about taking direct action to oust Assad and seemed to rule it out. President Obama's diplomatic team attempts to assemble an international coalition to peacefully end the slaughter while his Defense Department puts money in the pockets of the Russian firm that helps equip it.