Paul Singer

USA TODAY

President Obama issued a policy Wednesday that for the first time expressly states that the United States should not sell military equipment to countries so unstable that they might ultimately turn the weapons against us or our allies.

Obama's "presidential directive" is an update of a 1995 policy directive aimed at setting written guidelines for sales of U.S. military hardware overseas. The Clinton White House unveiled the policy with an announcement noting the United States had sold about $12 billion worth of military hardware to foreign governments in 1994, "close to our historical average."

In 2012, the Pentagon reported foreign arms sales of $69 billion. Tuesday, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced two arms sales — a $2.43 billion dollar upgrade of Singapore's fleet of F-16 fighter jets and a $1.13 billion Israeli purchase of six tilt-rotor V-22 aircraft. Last year, the Pentagon sold billions of dollars worth of equipment to emerging regimes in Iraq and Libya.

Obama's "Conventional Arms Transfer Policy" repeats many of the goals and criteria of Clinton's arms sales guidance — advancing U.S. security; considering the impact on the U.S. defense industry; promoting "interoperability" of military equipment with allies — but the new guidance adds a more specific concern about exactly who the United States sells weapons to.

Obama's policy requires officials to consider "the risk that significant change in the political or security situation of the recipient country could lead to inappropriate end-use or transfer of defense articles."

A second new criterion mandates consideration of "the likelihood that the recipient would use the arms to commit human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law, retransfer the arms to those who would commit human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law, or identify the United States with human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law."

For example, the United States suspended delivery of four F-16s to Egypt last year after the Egyptian military overthrew the democratically elected government of President Mohammed Morsi.

Obama's guidance makes more explicit the focus on counterterrorism efforts. A fact sheet accompanying the policy directive explains that the update "highlights the importance the United States places on key factors such as respect for human rights, international stability, homeland security, counterterrorism, combating transnational organized crime and supporting non-proliferation."

Anthony Cordesman, a former senior Pentagon official and longtime military policy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the new guidance, like much of U.S. defense policy, "is all concepts and no specifics." Cordesman notes that the directive covers such a wide range of goals, including boosting human rights and combating "transnational organized crime," that it is impossible to know exactly how the criteria might be applied in any specific case. The guidance is another example, he said, of how "the United States is constantly confusing concepts with strategies."

Vanessa Allen Murray, a spokeswoman at the DSCA - which manages foreign military sales under the direction of the State Department - said in an email, "the new announcement is not a change of direction, but rather an update to ensure that doctrine reflects current practice,"