Eager to fully use its excessive arms manufacturing capacities and thus earn as much hard currency as possible, communist Czechoslovakia became one of the principal arms suppliers to the Middle East during the Cold War. After the end of the Second World War, Czechoslovakia became an integral part of the Soviet Bloc which was heralded by the communist coup d'etat in February 1948. Before that date, however, the communist-led government in Prague had already decided, with backing from Moscow, to provide the newly established State of Israel with armament, which subsequently led to violating the UN arms embargo. These arms - infantry weapons and fighter aircraft - played a crucial role in the subsequent 1948 Arab Israeli War. As well as armament, the Czechoslovak Army also trained the initial cadre of personnel for the Israeli Air Force and Israeli paratrooper forces. When it became clear that Israel would not become a communist country, solid relations between the two states were disrupted by the Czechoslovak government. From then onwards, the leadership in Prague concentrated on deliveries of military hardware to Israel's Arab opponents. Thus in 1955, thanks to Prague, Syria became the first Arab state which obtained weapons from any communist country. Damascus remained the most loyal client of Czechoslovak arms in the Middle East until the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989. During more than 30 years, Syrians ordered large quantities of Czechoslovak-designed jet trainer aircraft and impressive numbers of armoured vehicles manufactured in Czechoslovakia under Soviet license. Moreover, Czechoslovak experts designed several Syrian facilities for the repairs of military hardware as well as a number of installations and structures on Syrian military airfields. Jordan also obtained Czechoslovak infantry weapons in 1956 and Amman expressed interest in arms supplies and military assistance from Czechoslovakia in the subsequent years. The publication also contains information related to deliveries of Czechoslovak weapons to other states in the Middle East such as Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and to different Palestinian factions. The first volume of this mini-series provides general information on the development of the Czechoslovak arms industry post-1945 as well as detailing the principles, organization and history of arms export from communist Czechoslovakia. At the same time, the training of foreign military personnel in Czechoslovakia is outlined. Using the declassified original documentation, this is the most comprehensive account of Cold War Czechoslovak military involvement in the Middle East ever published.

International Arms Trade has always been a powerful and multi-functional constituent of world politics and international diplomacy. Sending military advisors abroad and promoting arms sales, each legitimizing and supporting the other, became indispensable tools of alliance-making starting from the eve of the First World War until today. To the German Empire, as a relative latecomer to imperialistic rivalry in the struggle for colonies around the word in the late 19th century, arms exports performed a decisive service in stimulating and strengthening the German military-based expansionist economic foreign policy and provided effective tools to create new alliances around the globe. Therefore, from the outset, the German armament firms' marketing and sales operations to the global arms market but especially to the Ottoman Empire, under the rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II, were openly and strongly supported by Kaiser Wilhelm II, Bismarck and the other decision-makers in German Foreign Policy. Based on extensive multinational archival research in Germany, Turkey, Britain and the United States, Arming the Sultan explores the decisive impact of arms exports on the formation and stimulation of Germany's expansionist foreign economic policy towards the Ottoman Empire. Making an important contribution to current scholarship on the political economy of the international arms trade, Yorulmaz's innovative book Arming the Sultan reveals that arms exports, specifically under the shadow of personal diplomacy, proved to be an indispensable and integral part of Germany's foreign economic policy during the period leading up to WW1.

In its last decades, the apartheid regime was confronted with an existential threat. While internal resistance to the last whites-only government grew, mandatory international sanctions prohibited sales of strategic goods and arms to South Africa. To counter this, a global covert network of nearly fifty countries was built. In complete secrecy, allies in corporations, banks, governments and intelligence agencies across the world helped illegally supply guns and move cash in one of history's biggest money laundering schemes. Whistleblowers were assassinated and ordinary people suffered. Weaving together archival material, interviews and newly declassified documents, Apartheid Guns and Money exposes some of the darkest secrets of apartheid's economic crimes, their murderous consequences, and those who profited: heads of state, arms dealers, aristocrats, bankers, spies, journalists and secret lobbyists. These revelations, and the difficult questions they pose, will force the new South Africa-and all who were complicit-to confront the past and be held to account.

In a time of great need for Britain, a small coterie of influential businessmen gained access to secret information on industrial mobilisation as advisers to the Principal Supply Officers Committee. They provided the state with priceless advice, but, as "insiders" utilised their access to information to build a business empire at a fraction of the normal costs. Outsiders, in contrast, lacked influence and were forced together into a defensive "ring" - or cartel - which effectively fixed prices for British warships. By the 1930s, the cartel grew into one of the most sophisticated profiteering groups of its day. This book examines the relationship between the private naval armaments industry, businessmen, and the British government defence planners between the wars. It reassesses the concept of the military-industrial complex through the impact of disarmament upon private industry, the role of leading industrialists in supply and procurement policy, and the successes and failings of government organisation. It blends together political, naval, and business history in new ways, and, by situating the business activities of industrialists alongside their work as government advisors, sheds new light on the operation of the British state. This is the story of how these men profited while effectively saving the National Government from itself.

Although there is often opposition to individual wars, most people continue to believe that the arms industry is necessary in some form: to safeguard our security, provide jobs and stimulate the economy. Not only conservatives, but many progressives and liberals, support it for these reasons. Indefensible puts forward a devastating challenge to this conventional wisdom, which has normalised the existence of the most savage weapons of mass destruction ever known. It is the essential handbook for those who want to debunk the arguments of the industry and its supporters: deploying case studies, statistics and irrefutable evidence to demonstrate they are fundamentally flawed, both factually and logically. Far from protecting us, the book shows how the arms trade undermines our security by fanning the flames of war, terrorism and global instability. In countering these myths, the book points to ways in which we can combat the arms trade's malignant influence, reclaim our democracies and reshape our economies.

This book provides nineteen cases focusing on defence acquisition and logistics issues that will give excellent learning opportunities to a range of readers. These include defence manufacturing, procurement, inventory and change management, as well as operational logistic scenarios.

When the British Labour party announced the withdrawal of British forces from the Persian Gulf in January 1968, the United States faced a potential power vacuum in the area. The incoming Nixon administration, preoccupied with the Soviet Union and China, and the war in Vietnam, had no intention of replacing the British in the Gulf. To avoid further military commitments, the US encouraged Iran and Saudi Arabia to maintain area security. A critical policy decision, overlooked by most scholars, saw Nixon and Kissinger engineer the rise in oil prices between 1969 and 1972 to enable Saudi Arabia and Iran to purchase the necessary military hardware to serve as guardians of the Gulf. For all their bluster about reversing Labours withdrawal decision, after their surprise victory in the election of June 1970 the Conservatives adhered to Labours policy. But in contrast to Labours wish to cut the umbilical cord of empire, the Tories wanted to retain influence in the Persian Gulf, pursuing policies largely independent of the US by the creation of the United Arab Emirates, deposing the sultan of Oman, and trying to solve the dispute over the Buraimi oasis with Saudi Arabia. By trying to maintain its empire on the cheap, Britain turned into an arms supplier supreme. But offering and selling arms does not a foreign policy make, leaving Britain in the long run with less influence in regional affairs. This was true also for the US, whose arms sales were to prove no realistic an alternative to foreign policy. The US hid under the Iranian security blanket for almost a decade. Given the weakness of the regime and the Shahs nonsensical dreams of turning Iran into one of the top five industrial and military powers in the world, the policy was cavalierly irresponsible. Similarly, leaving Saudi Arabia wallowing in oil money and medieval stupor a seedbed for Islamic fundamentalists created major future problems for the United States, as evinced by 9/11.

This book dispels two common myths about the American-Israeli patron-client relationship -- that arms transfers to Israel have been motivated by American domestic politics rather than national interests and that these arms transfers have come without any political strings attached to them. The first part of the book describes and analyses the institutionalisation of the American-Israeli arms pipeline during the Johnson administration, demonstrating conclusively in the process that arms transfers to the Jewish state were based primarily on American national interests. The second part of the book consists of four case studies that clearly reveal that American arms transfers to Israel, whether in wartime or in peacetime, have always come with a diplomatic price tag attached to them. The book is based largely on American government documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, from the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library, and from the United States National Archives.

Mark Thomas is one of the UK's most effective and best-known political activists, as well as being a highly successful stand-up comedian. His show "The Mark Thomas Comedy Product" ran for six highly acclaimed series on Channel Four. Amazingly, this is his first book. "As Worn by the Famous Nelson Mandela" is a deeply funny, deeply disturbing account of Mark's rampage through the arms trade. Under a fairly flimsy disguise and with the use of some worryingly poor accents, Mark managed to set himself up and begin trading as an arms exporter. His account of his encounters, adventures and discoveries provide a shockingly entertaining read. His aim throughout was to change the law. Embedded within the sharpness of his humour is the truth of an industry that causes conflict and poverty in developing countries. He talks to arms dealers, torture victims, manufacturers, interrogators and politicians, and moves through South Africa, Ireland, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia to the Serious Fraud Office. Mark Thomas exposes the laws and loopholes, complacency and greed that are used to make money through persecution, at the expense of the poorest people in the world.;This is a major new book in a bestselling genre, from a highly popular figure.

Eight prominent Russian experts contribute to this unique Russian-American analysis of the state of Russia's arms industry and national export controls, as well as the strategic implications of Russian arms sales to China and clients in the Middle East. Since the early 1990s, Russia's once colossal defense-industrial complex has been in upheaval. Parts of the arms industry have collapsed, and hopes for conversion from military to civilian production have proven largely illusory. An aggressive arms-sales policy--seen as a panacea--has also met with mixed results. At the same time, turmoil in domestic politics and in the reform process has limited and slowed much-needed changes in the industry's organization, operations, decisionmaking, and controls over the export of arms and sensitive technologies. The authors examine these and other issues posed by Russia's participation in the world arms trade, weigh the chances of Russian-American discord over arms exports to " rogue states" as well as the possibilities for arms cooperation; discuss the prospects for Russia's expanded participation in multilateral arms restraint and international norm-setting, and offer policy proposals. The book evolved from discussions of the Russian-American working group on conventional arms proliferation convened by the co-editors at the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Center.

Focusing on conventional weapons, rather than nuclear, biological and chemical ones, this book draws attention to important differences, within the EU, between the trade in finished weapons and the technology used to make them. It examines West European efforts since 1945 to manage both sides of conventional defence-related trade, and the political, industrial, technological and conceptual obstacles to effective mulitlateral co-ordination and regulation. The book argues that, in current European and international circumstances, recent EU initiatives have limited prospects and may prove to be counterproductive.>

This book examines the nature of the international arms trade and the adjustment of the defense industries in the United States and Russia to the post-cold war world. O'Prey highlights the substantial reduction in demand for armaments both on the world market and by the two countries. Although this decrease in demand results partly from the decline of the superpower rivalry, it also represents the culmination of technological and industrial trends that have been under way for over a decade. O'Prey argues that many observers have not recognized the long-term nature of these changes. As a consequence, industry representatives and some government officials in both countries often unwisely emphasize arms exports as a means to preserve their cold war defense industries. Given the high expectations of export success and low levels of demand, competition among arms suppliers has become intense. In the process, proliferation of armaments, technologies, and production processes to outlaw states has become more likely. In addition, false expectations of arms export success may lead officials to forgo necessary restructuring and conversion of their defense industries. This problem is especially pronounced in Russia. O'Prey offers a number of suggestions for resolving the problems posed by arms export competition and defense industry adjustment. He argues that in virtually all cases, cooperation or partnership between the U.S. and Russia will be essential. Potential measures range from mutual restraint in arms exports to private industry partnerships for defense conversion and ultimately to multilateral initiatives for defense industry and export cooperation.

U.S. arms sales to Third World countries rapidly escalated from $250 million per year in the 1950s and 1960s to $10 billion and above in the 1970s and 1980s. But were these military sales, so critical in their impact on Third World nations and on America's perception of its global role, achieving the ends and benefits attributed to them by U.S. policymakers? In American Arms Supermarket, Michael T. Klare responds to this troubling, still-timely question with a resounding no, showing how a steady growth in arms sales places global security and stability in jeopardy.

Tracing U.S. policies, practices, and experiences in military sales to the Third World from the 1950s to the 1980s, Klare explains how the formation of U.S. foreign policy did not keep pace with its escalating arms sales--how, instead, U.S. arms exports proved to be an unreliable instrument of policy, often producing results that diminished rather than enhanced fundamental American interests. Klare carefully considers the whole spectrum of contemporary American arms policy, focusing on the political economy of military sales, the evolution of U.S. arms export policy from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, and the institutional framework for arms export decision making. Actual case studies of U.S. arms sales to Latin America, Iran, and the Middle East provide useful data in assessing the effectiveness of arms transfer programs in meeting U.S. foreign policy objectives.

The author also rigorously examines trouble spots in arms policy: the transfer of arms-making technology to Third World arms producers, the relationship between arms transfers and human rights, and the enforcement of arms embargoes on South Africa, Chile, and other "pariah" regimes. Klare also compares the U.S. record on arms transfers to the experiences of other major arms suppliers: the Soviet Union and the "big four" European nations--France, Britain, the former West Germany, and Italy. Concluding with a reasoned, carefully drawn proposal for an alternative arms export policy, Klare vividly demonstrates the need for cautious, restrained, and sensitive policy.

This business history analyzes the connections between private business, disarmament, and re-armament as they affected arms procurement and military technology transfers in Eastern Europe from 1919 to 1939. Rather than focusing on the negotiations or the political problems involved with the Disarmament Conferences, this study concerns itself with the business effects of the disarmament discussions. Accordingly, Schneider-Creusot, Skoda, Vickers, and their respective business activities in Eastern European markets serve as the chief subjects for this book, and the core primary sources relied upon include their unpublished corporate archival documents. Shifting the scope of analysis to consider the business dimension allows for a fresh appraisal of the linkages between the arms trade, disarmament, and re-armament. The business approach also explodes the myth of the 'merchants of death' from the inside. It concludes by tracing the armaments business between 1939 and 1941 as it transitioned from peacetime to war.

"Taking Aim at the Arms Trade" takes a critical look at the ways in which NGOs portray the arms trade as a problem of international politics and the strategies they use to effect change. While NGOs have been pivotal in bringing the suffering caused by the arms trade to public attention and documenting its negative impacts on human rights, conflict, security and development around the world, their overall activity has the perverse effect of justifying the status quo in the arms trade. They unintentionally contribute to the generation of consent for a hierarchical and asymmetrical world military order, facilitating intervention in the global South based on liberal understandings of the arms trade and associated issues of conflict, development and human rights. As a consequence, their actions contribute to the construction of the South as a site of Northern benevolence and intervention, a stark contrast to NGOs' self-image and widespread reputation as progressive actors. In exposing the contradictions inherent in NGOs engagement with the arms trade, Stavrianakis argues forcefully for a change of approach that can avoid such damaging outcomes.

A.Q. Khan was the world's leading black market dealer in nuclear technology, described by a former CIA Director as "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden." A hero in Pakistan and revered as the Father of the Bomb, Khan built a global clandestine network that sold the most closely guarded nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
Here for the first time is the riveting inside story of the rise and fall of A.Q. Khan and his role in the devastating spread of nuclear technology over the last thirty years. Drawing on exclusive interviews with key players in Islamabad, London, and Washington, as well as with members of Khan's own network, BBC journalist Gordon Corera paints a truly unsettling picture of the ultimate arms bazaar. Corera reveals how Khan operated within a world of shadowy deals among rogue states and how his privileged position in Pakistan provided him with the protection to build his unique and deadly business empire. It explains why and how he was able to operate so freely for so many years. Brimming with revelations, the book provides new insight into Iran's nuclear ambitions and how close Tehran may be to the bomb.
In addition, the book contains startling new information on how the CIA and MI6 penetrated Khan's network, how the U.S. and UK ultimately broke Khan's ring, and how they persuaded Pakistan's President Musharraf to arrest a national hero. The book also provides the first detailed account of the high-wire dealings with Muammar Gadaffi, which led to Libya's renunciation of nuclear weapons and which played a key role in Khan's downfall.
The spread of nuclear weapons technology around the globe presents the greatest security challenge of our time. Shopping for Bombs presents a unique window into the challenges of stopping a new nuclear arms race, a race that A.Q. Khan himself did more than any other individual to promote.

This book provides the reader with unclassified quantitative data on conventional arms transfers to developing nations by the United States and foreign countries. Some general data are provided on world-wide conventional arms transfers, but the principal focus is the level of arms transfers by major weapons suppliers to nations in the developing world. Developing nations continue to be the primary purchasers in the sale of arms. During the years 1994-2001, the value of arms transfer agreements with developing nations compromised 68.3 per cent of all such agreements world-wide. More recently, arms transfer agreements with developing nations constituted 65.8 per cent of all such agreements globally from 1998-2001, and 60.5 per cent of these agreements in 2001. Contents: Introduction; Major Findings; Summary of Data Trends, 1994-2001; Selected Weapons Deliveries to Developing Nations, 1994-2001; World-wide Arms Transfer Agreements and Deliveries Values, 1994-2001; Description of Items Counted in Weapons Categories, 1994-2001; Regions Identified in Arms Transfer Tables and Charts; List of Tables; Index.

Whether the war zone be in Africa, Sri Lanka, Chechnya or Afghanistan, most people are not killed by hi-tech or heavy weaponry, but by the small arms, cheap and accessible, that have flooded into so many countries in recent years. Crime rates involving guns have also soared, as South Africa and Kenya have experienced. Yet much of this cross-border arms trade is illegal. Several governments, including the United States, Canada and Mexico, are now pressing for a new global treaty on illegal trafficking in small arms. This book is a fascinating, highly informative and policy-relevant investigation into an issue about which far too little is known, and which raises crucial questions about the black market.

Americans spend more than $100 billion a year to buy weapons, but no one likes the process that brings these weapons into existence. The problem, McNaugher shows, is that the technical needs of engineers and military planners clash sharply with the political demands of Congress. McNaugher examines weapons procurement since World War II and shows how repeated efforts to improve weapons acquisition have instead increased the harmful intrusion of political pressures into that technical development and procurement process. Today's weapons are more complicated than their predecessors. So are the nation's military forces. The design of new systems and their integration into the force structure demand more care, time, and flexibility. Yet time and flexibility are precisely what political pressures remove from the acquisitions process. In a series of case studies and conceptual discussions, McNaugher tackles concerns at the heart of the debate about acquisition--the slow and heavily bureaucratic approach to development, the preference for ultimate weapons over well-organized and trained forces, and the counterproductive incentives facing the nations defense firms. He calls for changes that run against the current fashion--less centralization or procurement, less haste in developing new weapons, and greater use of competition as a means of removing the development process from political oversight. Above all, McNaugher shows how the United States tries to buy research and development on the cheap, and how costly this has been. The nation can improve its acquisition process, he concludes, only when it recognizes the need to pay for the full exploration of new technology.

* Shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards 2016* Modern warfare has a new form. The days of international combat are fading. So how do major world powers maintain control over their people today? This book is a disturbing insight into the new ways world powers such as the US, Israel, Britain and China forge war today. It is a subliminal war of surveillance and whitewashed terror, conducted through new, high-tech military apparatuses, designed and first used in Israel against the Palestinian population. Including nano-technology, hidden camera systems, information databases on civilian activity, automated targeting systems and unmanned drones, it is used to control the very people the nation's leaders profess to serve. Jeff Halper reveals that this practice is much more insidious than was previously thought. As Western governments claw back individual liberties, War Against the People is a reminder that fundamental human rights are being compromised for vast sections of the world, and that this is a subject that should concern everyone.

Deception in High Places reveals the corruption endemic in Britain's biggest arms deals over the last fifty years. Based on painstaking research in government archives, collections of private and court papers and documents won by the author in a landmark Freedom of Information Tribunal against the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the book illuminates a shadow world of bribery and elite enrichment. Deception in High Places charts British government involvement in arms trade corruption and presents the fullest history yet of bribery in Britain's arms deals with Saudi Arabia. It includes the backstory of the controversial termination of a Serious Fraud Office corruption investigation following pressure by the Saudi Royal Family and the British establishment.

Lyndon B. Johnson and the Politics of Arms Sales to Israel seeks to reconstruct and elucidate the processes behind the decisions made by the Johnson Administration during the years 1965-68 to sell Israel M-48 tanks, A-4 Skyhawk planes and F-4 Phantom planes. This examination is based on a distinction between three factions which competed for influence within Washington's high-policy elite: the traditionalists (whose major representative was Secretary of State Dean Rusk); the pragmatists (whose most outspoken representative was Robert Komer of the National Security Council); and the domestically oriented policymakers (the central decision-maker who quintessentially exemplifies this category being President Johnson). This book is a sequel to John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Arms to Israel, which examined the first arms deal between the US and Israel.