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By Sharon Weinberger
July 30, 2008 | 11:46:00 AM

If there one thing that’s truly disturbing about the sale of Russian weapons to Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s that it demonstrates how parts of the U.S. government have been forced to find ways to evade American law. Specifically, we now have the Pentagon, which is under pressure to rapidly equip Iraq and Afghanistan, forced to turn to Russian suppliers that might be sanctioned under U.S. law.

Over the past week, I’ve written about how the U.S. Army, as an example of this effort, handed out a no-bid contract to a well-connected U.S. defense company. The firm planned to route a Russian helicopter sale through a UAE-based firm in an attempt to avoid dealing with Russia’s blacklisted weapons export control agency. That deal, for Mi-17 helicopters, could eventually reach half a billion dollars, if it includes Afghanistan.

This is by no means an anomaly. Earlier this month, I wrote an article and a series of blog posts about how Defense Solutions, a company linked to former Congressman Curt Weldon, has tested the legal bounds of this new arms bazaar in Iraq, Russia and Libya.

These deals are all colors of shady. But at the end of the day, who’s to blame? The Defense Department and its novel interpretation of U.S. laws? The State Department and its inability to manage U.S. foreign assistance and export control laws? The defense companies willing to wheel and deal in this gray market? Or, a conspiracy of well-connected former officials out to make a quick buck?

There’s some truth in all of those statements, but I’m going with the tried and true “never assume conspiracy when incompetence will do.” At the end of the day, the U.S. government has created an unwinnable situation: in its rush to equip Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s been forced by expediency to turn to a post-Soviet arms market that it neither fully understands nor trusts. In the meantime, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on Russia’s export agency, even though it needs Moscow’s cooperation for these arms sales. Few in the U.S. government really understand the ownership structure of Rosoboronexport, Russia’s powerful weapons export agency, much less can pronounce its name.

U.S. military officials note that Afghanistan and Iraq have been pressing for Russian weapons because they are more familiar with maintaining and operating this equipment. It’s also, in many cases, cheaper. But no one argues this is an ideal choice in the longterm interests of the United States. The Russian helicopter issue, for example even comes up in a recent New York Times Magazine article, where the author, a former State Department counter-narcotics official, notes there were “unending difficulties getting Mi-17 helicopters and other equipment that the Pentagon promised for the training of the counternarcotics police of Afghanistan.”

The Russian and East European-origin equipment also comes with its own, unique set of problems: underhanded brokers selling weapons of questionable quality and dealing with countries that the United States might rather not deal with at all. In the end, the United States’ inadvertent promotion of this shadow market for arms merchants selling post-Soviet wares is an unintended consequence of an ad hoc foreign policy, where the threat of the day trumps long term planning.

Don’t expect it to go away any time soon.