ABSTRACT
The Six Day War in June 1967 riveted world attention on the huge quantities of sophisticated weapons that the Arab East states and Israel had amassed in their arsenals. Among the rich assortment were supersonic planes, tanks of all standard sizes, armored personnel carriers, Soviet assault guns, and American self-propelled howitzers and guided missiles of many types. The twenty states of Latin America though larger in over-all area, were smaller in over-all population. The safeguard lies in an assessment of the political systems of the individual countries of the Middle East to ascertain the character of civil-military relations in all states, whether under military rule or not. The study of military politics in nonindustrial states is a good deal more complicated than scholars, policy-makers, and journalists, to say nothing of laymen, seem ready to admit. The study of military politics thus necessitates a consideration of regional influences.
