The rivalry of the United States and France in the arms market in the Arab countries of the Middle East in the 1970s

Abstract

We consider the US-French interaction in the arms markets of the Arab countries of the Middle East during the period of the Arab-Israeli war of the Doomsday (1973) on the Camp David agreements between Egypt and Israel (1978) and the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war (1980). The relevance of the work lies in the fact that the region since the rise in oil prices from the late 1960s to present day remains a key competition place for the largest military-industrial complexes of Western countries, which primarily include the US and French. It is at this time lays the foundations of their competition. The purpose of the study is to explore the extent to which the activity of Paris, which, as an ally of Washington in NATO, openly collaborated in the supply of weapons systems with Soviet partners in the region, was willingly or unwillingly subordinated to actions or signals from the United States. We came to the conclusion that the lack of fierce competition, as well as countering the close cooperation of France with Libya, Iraq and Egypt, where the French managed to take a strong position compared to the Americans, is due to the fact that Washington tried to tear off the consumers of the Soviet military industrial complex from the USSR or even would weaken their dependence on Moscow in arms procurement.