Over the last decade, the Middle East has become a focal point of the world arms buildup. Each year, the regional arsenal grows, as the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Britain and others ship billions of dollars worth of weapons to the countries there. During the 1970s, while the world arms trade doubled, Middle East arms imports rose fourfold (in constant dollars). [1] Today, the region receives over half of all arms deliveries to the Third World, and more than a quarter of all world arms shipments.
Among the differences between various estimates of arms sales and militarization indices is the geographical definition of the Middle East. Where possible, we include Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, along with North Africa, Israel, Iran and the Arab East. Many calculations treat Turkey as part of NATO (Europe), Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of South Asia, and Ethiopia and Somalia as part of Africa. Undefined references to the Middle East are thus not always strictly comparable. By our measurement, they tend to understate the amount, value and proportion of weaponry in the region. The general trends, however, are unmistakable by any calculation.
Parallel to the growth of Middle East arms imports is a rapid increase in military expenditures. In less than 20 years, these have grown tenfold in value — from $4.7 billion in 1962 to $46.7 billion in 1980, nearly nine times the world average. When the states of the world are ranked by military spending per capita, six of the top seven are in the Middle East. The top ten countries in terms of military spending per capita are: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Brunei, Kuwait, United States, Soviet Union and France. By the end of the 1970s, the region was spending between 13 and 15 percent of its gross national product for the military, compared with 8.3 percent for the Warsaw Pact countries, the next highest. [2]
The best indicators of the militarization of the region are the time-series estimates of expenditures, equipment and manpower. These are necessarily selective: Medium tanks, for instance, are only the most easily identifiable of many different types or armor/artillery. The aggregate figures do not measure the increase in sophistication of weapons sent to certain countries. Nor do these figures take account of vast differences in qualify of training or the general skill and education level of the society in question. Military expenditures show trends, but are only approximate. Real costs of equipment and personnel vary greatly, in ways that cannot be expressed in exchange rates, and categories for comparison are often difficult to establish. Expenditures also do not include aid from other countries: The spending total for Israel, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and others is actually much higher.
The pattern and trends presented are nevertheless unmistakable and alarming. Military manpower grew by 64 percent from 1972 to 1982, rising from 2.1 million to 3.5 million. If Israel’s battle-ready reserves of some 300,000 are included, the Middle East now has almost twice the total military manpower of the US, and is approaching the 4.7 million total for the US and all NATO countries except Turkey. During the same period, operational combat aircraft in the region grew by more than 50 percent, from 2,900 to 4,400, surpassing the size of the combined European NATO air forces. As for medium tanks, the main battle armor unit, the regional arsenal grew by 140 percent, from 11,250 to 27,000, considerably more than all US and NATO medium tanks combined.
Arms Race Factors
Conflicts between states in the region have been the major element in the regional arms race. The state of war between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries is only the most visible of these. Iran under the Shah embarked on the largest military buildup in the region. Iran’s grab for the role of regional gendarme, and the messianism of the Islamic Republic after 1979, have been one key factor in the arms race in the Gulf. Here US policy has played the paramount role: The provision of F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers to Iran, for instance, required the dispatch of AWACs and F-15s to Saudi Arabia several years later. Within the Arab world, Syria has faced both Iraq and Jordan as potential military antagonists. Libya, arming rapidly after 1970, contributed heavily to the arms race in North Africa. Algeria and Morocco, Ethiopia and Somalia, and North and South Yemen have been belligerents arming against one another. In virtually every case, these locally rooted conflicts became part of global superpower competition. This process has been intensified by the region’s oil resources and critical geopolitical location.
Local military establishments have also grown in response to internal political conflicts. Armed movements of national minorities have had the largest impact, especially the Kurdish movement in Iraq and Iran, the Eritrean movement in Ethiopia and the Western Sahara war of independence against Morocco. These often involve other states. The United States, Iran and Israel supported the Kurdish movement in Iraq in order to harass the regime in Baghdad. Libya and Algeria support the POLISARIO in Western Sahara. Several Arab states supported the Eritrean movement against Ethiopia. The political influence of the military within the states of the region has also fostered militarization. Some regimes are directly based in the military, including Syria, Libya, Egypt and Sudan. In the case of Iraq, the civilian-led party rests on the support of its officer members to control the state apparatus. Among the monarchies like Jordan, Morocco and Pahlavi Iran, the close identity between the throne and the top officers makes the armed forces the major institutional pillar of the regime. The monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are still another case. Here the military establishments are quite new, and heavily dependent on mercenary forces at all levels. These countries, along with Libya, have accounted for some of the largest military expenditures in this effort to build up their military forces from a very low level.
While Saudi Arabia and the city-states of the Gulf were importing their armed forces almost entirely from outside their borders, other states of the region were developing their own military industries. Israel and Egypt are the most important cases, with Israel already a leading arms exporter. Iran under the shah made major agreements with Northrop, Bell and Vickers to assemble warplanes, helicopter gunships and tanks, but these and more ambitious plans crumbled with the Pahlavi dynasty. Turkey, with the largest industrial base in the region and the second-largest standing army in NATO, has long produced light arms and munitions. A 1979 agreement with West Germany expanded factories for rifles, machine guns and missiles, and naval shipyards. Agreements for licensed assembly of submarines and patrol boats were signed in 1980. Current negotiations for the purchase of 160 F-16 or F-18A advanced fighters include second-phase co-production arrangements to assemble the warplanes in Turkey and eventually to produce many of the parts there. In order to provide Turkey with badly needed foreign exchange for this deal, both Northrop (F-5G) and General Dynamics (F-16) have competing proposals to market around $2 billion worth of Turkish agricultural and manufactured products in third countries where they have interests.
Oil and Arms
The explosion of oil revenues in the region accelerated the Middle East military buildup. Many states had vast financial resources at their disposal and few plans for investing or spending them. Military expenditures bought prestige and apparent power, with much less social disruption on local societies than economic development programs.
Military expenditures were also promoted by the Nixon Doctrine, which called for the US to supply “tools” and “experts” while client states would furnish the troops to defend Western economic interests. Strategists in Washington have argued that arms exports are a “cost-effective” way of projecting power abroad. Richard Betts, an analyst with the Brookings Institute, mentions the “cheaper indigenous manpower”of Third World states as a factor, citing estimates that Turkey can maintain 12 troops for the amount it costs the US to maintain one soldier. [3]
This was not the only economic rationale for arms sales. Western governments saw them as one way to reduce the petrodollars surpluses “sloshing around the short-term capital markets of the world.” [4] More concretely, Jacques Gansler, then deputy assistant secretary of defense for materiel acquisition, told Congress in late 1976 that arms sales “helped us to maintain the viability of the declining [military industrial] base, reduced procurement costs and improved our international balance of payments.” [5] Payments for arms delivered (not including construction, training and services) have run between 4.5 and seven percent of total US export earnings since the late 1960s. [6]
For particular companies, the importance of exports was much greater. The rapid increase of arms sales abroad began during a period when the Pentagon’s procurement declined — from $42 billion in 1968 to $18.7 billion in 1976. [7] In 1976, the ratio of foreign sales to total revenues was 59 percent for Northrop, 42 percent for Bell Helicopter and 26 percent for Grumman. [8] In the same year, 70 percent of US Army Missile Command purchases were for export, and “US military aircraft production was greater for foreign sales than for domestic military needs.” [9] The rising cost of developing and producing the AWACs command and warning planes prompted the Carter administration to look for foreign customers in order to extend the production run and spread out costs. Of the $128 million that the Saudis are paying for each plane, about $60 million goes to the US Treasury as partial repayment for government research and development expenditures. “This is becoming true of all high-technology military equipment,” says James Grafton of Boeing Aerospace, builder of the AWACs. [10]
The economic stakes for individual companies are likewise a factor in the corruption accompanying weapons sales. Whereas the US and allied governments tend to use arms sales as diplomatic bribes, the warplane manufacturers resorted to cash “commissions” to promote the flow of orders for big-ticket items like advanced fighter-bombers. This is not a phenomenon unique to the Middle East, as the cases of Holland’s Prince Bernhard and Japan’s Prime Minister Tanaka demonstrate. In the Middle East, though, the high prices of modern weapons systems, the large quantities sold and the extensive service contracts appended to most sales have led to a scale of bribery that may amount to more than a billion dollars a year. This enrichment of princes, commercial middlemen, politicians and military officers has fostered a powerful “arms bourgeoisie” that is committed to the unchecked import of Western arms. [11]
Political Motives
For the arms-exporting countries, the imperative to push sophisticated weapons abroad is primarily political. Military aid and sales are seen as a major policy instrument. In view of the weakness of civilian political forces in the region, arms sales represent a point of leverage over the national politics of the recipient states. In the United States, the “nation-building” potential of the military is a persistent theme in the literature of “modernization” theory. Pentagon officials have argued that “modernizing the equipment of the Egyptian forces and establishing close relations between the US and Egyptian military” are essential to “the profound shift in Egypt’s orientation.” Arms sales bring advisers and technicians, often by the thousands. A Congressional study in 1977 found more than 2,000 American military personnel in the Persian Gulf region. [12] In Saudi Arabia alone in 1978 there were some 10,000 Americans working for civilian defense contractors. Since then, thousands of Americans have been withdrawn from Iran, while others have gone into Egypt. A similar pattern obtains for Soviet weapons deliveries. The CIA estimated that in 1979 the Soviet Union had 2,480 military advisers in Syria, 1,820 in Libya, 1,065 in Iraq and 1,250 in Ethiopia. [13] Gen. F. Michael Rogers, then head of Air Force Logistics Command, wrote in 1977 that ties developed by military sales “provide a subtle leverage when one considers the long-term logistical support required for modern weapons.” [14]
Neither the leverage nor the motives are always subtle. In the heated political fight over the Saudi AWACs sale, National Security Adviser Richard Allen argued that the sale “assures the presence of the United States in Saudi Arabia’s security future.” [15] On the basis of extensive interviews and a review of internal Pentagon documents, Scott Armstrong concluded that the deal was conceived as the linchpin of “an ambitious plan to build surrogate bases in Saudi Arabia, equipped and waiting for American forces to use.” [16] Oman, Turkey, Morocco and Somalia are other cases where US base access is a primary factor motivating arms sales.
Arms sales are also related to a state’s capacity to perform mercenary functions for the supplying power. In spite of all the talk in Washington about “Soviet proxies,” the US has developed this aspect of military relations with particular success. The shah intervened in Oman to crush the revolutionary movement in Dhofar in 1975, using US equipment and training and Iranian troops, exemplifying the Nixon Doctrine in action. On a less visible but more sustained level, Pakistan supplies officers and troops to most of the Arabian Peninsula states: Three out of five Omani infantry battalions in Dhofar province are Pakistani Baluch, and there are credible reports that thousands of Pakistani troops are currently stationed in Saudi Arabia in exchange for Saudi financial aid amounting to more than $1 billion per year. Pakistani pilots provide critical support for the air forces of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Pakistan’s president-general, Zia ul Haq, acknowledged in early 1981 that Pakistan had military and training “missions” in 28 different countries. [17]
Jordan, as an Arab state, plays an even more critical role in the Gulf, supplying officers (even the chief of staff of the UAE armed forces), military intelligence personnel and infrastructure and training missions throughout the peninsula. Crown Prince Hasan complained recently that the Hashemite contribution to US interests in the Gulf was “poorly understood” in Congress:
The psychological and political acceptability of Egypt and Israel in securing the Gulf and the Red Sea areas is very limited if not nil…. We have a proven record of achievement in Oman, the Yemens and the other Gulf states…. We now play a major role as a military adviser to the Arab world and the Gulf. [18]
Jordan’s role is no doubt better appreciated in the Pentagon. Jack Anderson recently reported a “secret plan” to equip and train elite Jordanian military units which could be used as a “mini-RDF” in the event of insurrections in the Gulf. [19]
The countries of the Middle East have also served as arms conduits within the region. In most instances, these transfers seem to have occurred with the approval, tacit at least, of the supplier: In 1976, Iran shipped US warplanes to Jordan, which in turn transferred them to Morocco; Saudi Arabia supplied Somalia in 1977-1978; Egypt has provided US-financed arms to Afghan opposition forces since late 1979; Libya has shipped Soviet equipment to Syria. Israel’s supply of spare parts and equipment to Iran in its war with Iraq probably had US approval. The Reagan administration has very recently supported Egypt’s sale of 35 F-4 Phantoms to Turkey. [20] Jordan’s weapons shipments to South Africa almost certainly involved US equipment.* Less often, governments transfer weapons against the wishes of the supplier: Libya’s transfer of Mirages to Egypt during the October War of 1973, and US small arms to Saudi Arabia which turned up in PLO hands in Lebanon are cases in point.
Fighting Capacity
Neither expenditures nor increases in manpower and equipment are reliable indicators of a country’s fighting capacity. The country which has spent the most — Saudi Arabia — is probably the least capable militarily, and certainly in terms of indigenous military personnel. Any military capability of the Gulf states is heavily dependent on the large corps of foreign advisers. This is true even though between ten and 30 percent of the male citizen labor force is engaged in military service (compared with three percent in the US). [21] The emphasis of these governments on the most sophisticated combat equipment only magnifies this discrepancy. Whereas an F-4 Phantom requires between 29 and 41 persons per plane, 80 percent highly skilled, the F-15 (Saudi Arabia has ordered 60 of these) requires about 80 persons per plane, 95 percent highly skilled. [22] The competition of the civilian sector in Saudi Arabia’s highly charged economy for competent skilled labor is already causing serious recruitment problems for the country’s military planners. [23] One Pentagon official familiar with the Saudi situation observed that “like the Iranians, they have gorgeous facilities, fully stocked. But let’s face it, they’ll be run by contractors forever.” [24]
On the main Middle East battle front, between Israel and Syria, a similar discrepancy obtains. This is due chiefly to Israel’s domestic technological and industrial base. As Anthony Cordesman puts it, “Israel only has to buy military technology and not advice and support,” which translates into “a more than 2:1 advantage in total defense expenditure over all its Arab neighbors, and something like a 4:1 advantage over Jordan and Syria.” [25] Israel spends approximately 60 percent of its defense monies on training — $27,000 to $36,000 per man per year since 1973. Comparable figures for Syria, by Cordesman’s estimate, are $4,000 to $7,000. Even if Israel’s reserve forces are counted, Israel’s figure is still more than double Syria’s. Syria has produced some effective fighting units, but these are a minority of its total force structure. No Arab state has approached Israel’s integration of logistics, tactical forces and command and control.
Measuring the Arms Trade
Data on the policies of the arms suppliers is partial and unsatisfactory. The United States government is probably the single most important source of information. What data it releases, and in what form, is determined by larger political objectives. For example, a recent report from the State Department lays major responsibility for Third World militarization to the Soviet Union. This is done by breaking out base construction, co-production financing and military training from the US totals as a “uniquely large element” of US programs in the Third World. Costs of US troops stationed in Third World countries — also a uniquely large element of US military posture — are excluded altogether from the totals.
The same report provides an interesting regional breakdown, based on deliveries of categories of weapons rather than dollar values. Keeping in mind that this region is defined to include states like India and Sri Lanka while excluding Turkey and the Horn of Africa countries, it shows the Middle East receiving a very high proportion of major categories of Third World arms shipments, with the USSR consistently supplying a greater number than the US. These figures do not indicate differences in sophistication within these categories, and certain categories which might show a different trend, such as air-to-ground missiles and “smart bombs,” are ignored entirely. A Congressional Research Service report based on the same data notes that the most sophisticated items in US inventory are generally restricted to NATO and major industrial allies. “Only seven Third World countries appear to be receiving US weapons of similar sophistication. These are, in rough order of total sophistication, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Korea, Pakistan, Venezuela and Morocco.” [26] A “second tier” of 13 countries, receiving items like Sidewinder air-to-air and Maverick air-to-ground missiles, F-5E fighters and M-60A tanks, includes eight Middle East countries: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Tunisia.
A calculation by the independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) of arms imports to the Middle East and North Africa by supplier, covering a slightly different time period and not including the South Asia countries, provides a different measure of relative responsibility for arming the region. The SIPRI data pinpoints Soviet shipments to Libya since 1975 as a major piece of its total supplies to the region. This, combined with the cancellation of more than $6 billion worth of US arms deals with Iran following the revolution there, helps to explain what the CRS report estimates to be the rough equivalence of US and Soviet arms sales to the Third World over the last five years. [27]
Information on other countries’ sales comes from what independent sources like SIPRI can cull from the public record, and from whatever classified intelligence data the US government decides to release. Even US government data on US military sales is often inconsistent from year to year. This information is generally released in terms of dollar value. A recent report by the General Accounting Office, US Security and Military Assistance: Programs and Related Activities, offers the best available picture of US priorities in the region as measured by the dollar value of military programs.
By far the greatest portion of US arms sales falls within the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Cash Program. These are agreements by foreign governments to purchase military goods and services from the Department of Defense, in which the purchaser is supposed to cover all costs associated with the sale. The Defense Department may fill orders directly from its own stocks. More often, the Pentagon contracts with an industry supplier for the item or service. Costs tend to be higher than if the purchaser went directly to the company. Congress had imposed a ceiling of $25 million dollars on sales that could be contracted commercially, which was removed in 1981. Many Middle Eastern governments prefer the FMS route in any case because it involves a contractual responsibility of the US government.
The FMS Financing Program is the major “security assistance” program. This mostly consists of credit guarantees: Loans guaranteed by the Pentagon are made by the Federal Financing Bank. The standard repayment period is 12 years. Egypt, Israel, Sudan, Greece, Turkey and Somalia have special 30-year schedules. A smaller amount of FMS Financing is covered through direct Pentagon credits, which in FY 1982 were available only to Israel and Egypt. Over the 1974-1983 period, Israel has had $5.9 billion of its direct credits “forgiven.” Egypt and Sudan have been “forgiven” $600 million and $50 million respectively. [28]
A third category of significant US military assistance in the Middle East is Economic Support Funds (ESF). This program of loans and grants is administered as economic aid by the Agency for International Development, but its purpose is “to promote economic or political stability in areas where the US has special security interests.” [29] Thus AID’s Congressional Presentation for FY 1982 rationalized Egypt’s ESF program as necessary to cope with “increasing discontent over the economy.” Israel’s ESF funding “encourages stability and modest economic growth in the face of the tremendous burdens caused by Israel’s need to devote a large percentage of its resources to defense.” [30] The Middle East accounts for 87 percent of the ESF program, and most of this is for Egypt and Israel.
Commercial sales cover purchases of military goods and services contracted directly by foreign governments from private manufacturers. Israel has accounted for more than 11 percent of total commercial military exports over more than three decades. The importance of this category of transfers will likely increase for Middle East countries, now that Congress has eliminated previous ceilings on such transactions.
There are two other programs of military assistance that are not large in dollar value but indicate a level of US priorities in the region. Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Morocco and Jordan have been the chief regional beneficiaries of the International Military Education and Training Program, geared to establish close ties between the military establishments of the US and the recipient countries. The Overseas Military Management Program provides Pentagon supervision of military programs abroad. Israel, despite its top rank as a military aid recipient, has virtually no US supervisory program. The largest programs in the Middle East are Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan and the Yemen Arab Republic.
Taking Stock
None of the official declassified sources of information on arms sales provide accurate data on weapons and munitions actually delivered or on order. In an effort to provide a more concrete sense of what weapons are going where in the region’s military buildup, we have constructed a preliminary register of US deliveries and orders for present major recipients of US arms in the region. Information is not available to provide a similar account of deliveries and agreements of the Soviet Union, France and Britain. This means, for instance, that the arms supplies which have fueled the Iraq-Iran war in the Gulf are completely absent from this register. Most of Iran’s weapons came from the US prior to 1979. Iraq’s main supplier has been the Soviet Union. Both US and Soviet arms, and particularly spare parts, continue to reach the combatants, often through third parties but at reduced levels. According to US intelligence, China is supplying both states with small arms. [31] Iraq is now a major customer for French aircraft, artillery, missiles and other equipment, taking 40 percent, or nearly $2 billion worth, of French military exports over the last two years. [32] One top Pentagon official asserted recently that North Korea had provided about 40 percent of Iran’s $2 billion worth of military imports in 1982. [33]
A complete and detailed picture of the arms race in the Middle East is impossible to construct, but its most significant and broad features are there for all to see. First, the huge buildup in the sheer quantity and sophistication of weapons comes as a result of forces and pressures internal to the region and of the economic and political needs of the major suppliers. Second, this buildup has contributed directly to hundreds of thousands of casualties among the peoples of the region, most of them civilians, and the destruction and waste of vast amounts of economic and social resources. Third, the unique local beneficiary of this competitive process, in purely military and strategic terms, has been Israel. There is nothing like a “military balance” in the region, where Israel continues to augment its unchallenged supremacy.
Lastly, at the level of competition between the US and the Soviet Union for friends and facilities in the region, the lack of balance is even more striking. Any conceivable roster of allies, clients and “friendly neutrals” would show the overwhelming superiority of the United States in terms of weapons, troops and bases at its disposal. [34]
Endnotes
[1] Andrew J. Pierre, “Arms Sales: The New Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs (Winter 1981-1982).
[2] See Max Holland, The Militarization of the Middle East (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 1983), Chart 6, and Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1982 (Leesburg, VA: World Priorities, 1982), Table II.
[3] Cited in Michael Gordon, “Competition with the Soviet Union Drives Reagan’s Arms Sales Policy,” National Journal, May 16, 1981.
[4] Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Policy and Research Stanley Katz, cited in Anthony Sampson, The Arms Bazaar (New York, 1977), p. 244.
[5] F. Michael Rogers, “The Impact of Foreign Military Sales on the National Industrial Base,” Strategic Review (Spring 1977), p. 18.
[6] Anne H. Cahn, “Arms Sales Economics: The Sellers’ Perspective,” Stanford Journal of International Studies 14 (Spring 1979), p. 127; and Gordon, p. 870.
[7] In constant 1978 dollars. Gordon, p. 870.
[8] Cahn, p. 136.
[9] Jacques Gansler, The Defense Industry (Cambridge, MA, 1980), cited in Gordon, p. 870.
[10] New York Times, February 14, 1982.
[11] Sampson (The Arms Bazaar) provides an extensive and detailed account of the corruption pervading the arms sales business. See also MERIP Reports 46 (April 1976), pp. 21-23, and A. Mansur (pseud.), “The Crisis in Iran,” Armed Forces Journal International (January 1979). A recent instance of such corruption among Egyptian officials, including relatives of both Sadat and Mubarak, involves state-granted monopolies for shipping arms from the US to Egypt. See the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, October 1, 1982, and Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, “Une autre revolution rectificative en Egypte?” Le Monde Diplomatique, December 1982.
[12] US Arms Policies in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea Areas: Past, Present and Future, Report of the Staff Survey Mission to Ethiopia, Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, House Committee on International Relations, December 1977, pp. 8-13.
[13] Pierre, p. 272.
[14] Rogers, p. 17.
[15] Interviewed on the McNeill-Lehrer show, October 28, 1981.
[16] This larger purpose was apparently never made explicit even in the classified briefings to Congress. Armstrong quotes one official involved in pushing the sale: “We are only obligated to tell them what is being sold. We are under no obligation to make them understand it.” Washington Post, November 1, 1981.
[17] Christian Science Monitor, March 5, 1981.
[18] Armed Forces Journal International, November 1982.
[19] Washington Post, January 13, 1982.
[20] Wall Street Journal, January 6, 1983.
[21] John Cummings, Hossein Askari and Michael Skinner, “Military Expenditures and Manpower Requirements in the Arabian Peninsula,” Arab Studies Quarterly 2/1 (Winter 1980), p. 43.
[22] Ibid., pp. 44-45.
[23] US Security Interests in the Persian Gulf, Report of a Staff Study Mission to the Persian Gulf, Middle East, and Horn of Africa, October 21-November 13, 1980, to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, March 16, 1981, pp. 9, 58-59.
[24] New York Times, January 27, 1982.
[25] Anthony Cordesman, “The Financial Side of the Mideast Arms Race,” Armed Forces Journal International, November 1982.
[26] Caleb Rossiter and Richard Grimmett, “US Arms Transfer Policy: The Implications of Recent Trends and Events,” Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, August 18, 1982, p. 8.
[27] Ibid., p. 2.
[28] General Accounting Office, US Security and Military Assistance: Programs and Related Activities (GAO/ID-82-40) June 1, 1982, p. 14-15.
[29] GAO, p. 18.
[30] Shirley Zebroski, “US Foreign Assistance to the Middle East and North Africa: Programs, Rationale and Amounts, FY78-FY82 (Proposed),” CRS, June 22, 1981, pp. 2-3.
[31] Washington Post, January 13, 1983.
[32] Washington Post, January 8, 1983.
[33] New York Times, December 19, 1982.
[34] For one such listing, see the table entitled “Allies, Threat Nations and Neutrals in Defending Southwest Asia,” Armed Forces Journal International (December 1981), p. 65.
