ABSTRACT
The arms trade has become a buyers’ market and potential suppliers have to work much harder and offer much more attractive deals to secure contracts than they tended to do in the 1970s. The United States (US) is the main arms supplier with nearly 40 per cent of the world trade. The Soviet Union, with 32 per cent of the trade, supplies about 40 countries. Arms exports, which in 1983 amounted to just over half of all Soviet exports to non-socialist countries in Third World, earns valuable hard currency for the Soviet Union. In 1984 the Soviet Union’s major customers—India, Iraq and Syria—bought a range of aircraft, tanks and missiles. During 1984 US arms producers concluded that China might become a massive market. The liberalization of trade between the US and China was reflected in an increase in the value of the trade between them in high-technology items from $350 million in 1982 to over $2 billion in 1984.
