ABSTRACT
The United States and the Soviet Union dominated the international arms market as they delivered significant quantities of equipment and services to their respective client states. For example, in the 1960s the US and the Soviet Union accounted for 80 percent of the value of all deliveries of military equipment and services to other countries. Their combined share has declined to 55 percent. Lewis Snider has demonstrated that there is a substantial savings in defense procurement for Great Britain, France and Germany through their arms exports programs. The growing demand for offsets as a condition for purchasing equipment from industrial suppliers is very much related to the burgeoning Third World debt. Offsets are at a minimum a means of financing defense procurement. Deliveries of military equipment to Latin America over the past 35 years have been relatively small compared to the other regions.
