It is well known that in the 4th Middle East War, broken out in the fall of 1973 and lasted only 17 days of fighting, both the Arab states and Israel lost half of major weapons such as tanks and aircrafts they kept in an armament race based on imported arms. It was surely a hot war of attrition between regional military powers equipped with imported arms. Both the U. S. and the Soviet Union, also at that time, were apparently in favor of maintaining the status quo in that region, and thus tried (1) to preserve the military balance in peace time, (2) to keep the development of war under their control after it broke out, (3) to seek a settlemet under an international arrangement forged primarily by the U. S. and Soviet Union and, finally, after its settlement, (4) to export weapons to maintain a subsequent military balance in the affected region. It seemed that there was no change in both superpower's attitudes compared with those in the case of the 3rd Middle East War. At this time, however, there was essentially a new qualitative change which should not be overlooked in the light of the traditional framework of the arms trade. It was caused from the emergence of the oil strategy, resulting in the flow of a great deal of the “Oil Dollars” into the Middle East.
Although the main aim of this paper is to consider recent trends of the arms trade with the Third World, this paper (1) refers, as the preliminaly work, to the development of the international transfer of arms with special attention to the change “from the military aid to the arms trade, ” (2) reviews recent trends of the arms trade, and (3) in conclusion, analyzes the new phase of the arms trade with the Third World, the change from the seller's market to the buyer's market.
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