| Samenvatting: | In this book, Anthony Sampson describes the development of the giant arms companies, beginning with Vickers, Armstrong and Krupp, and traces the recent origins of the boom in arms sales, culminating in the Middle East. He tells how the industrial arms trade proliferated in the late nineteenth century, with such inventors as Hiram Maxim and Alfred Nobel, who blew op his own brother with dynamite; who the debate about "Merchants of Death" raged through the nineteen-thirties... This is a book, not about the technicalities or strategy, but about the character and motivations of the companies and the men who run them, and the problems of those trying to control them. Anthony Sampson has gone through the mass of new evidence; he has talked to company officials in California, New York, London and Tokyo, to statesmen and diplomats in the Western capitals, and to Middle Eastern customers from the Shah of Iran to Adnan Khashoggi. He has pieced together the jigsaw of evidence to produce a narrative Which shows the interplay of companies and governments, of arms sellers and dealers, with the stakes and tension constantly increasing, and the issue of bribery always in the background. Throughout the narrative he tries to answer the recurring questions and problems of the arms trade, in the light of the contemporary crisis. |
| Trefwoorden: | wapenhandel, wapenwedloop, wapenindustrie, Armstrong, Europa, Midden-Oosten, Boeing Corporation, Verenigde Staten, C.I.A., Cummings Samuel, Dassault company, Donner commissie/raport, Prins Bernhard, Feisal koning, Frankrijk, Duitsland, Groot Brittannië, Sovjet Unie, Grumman, Haughton Daniel, Iran, Israël, Italië, Japan, Krupp, Lockheed, Nobel Alfred, Northrop, SIPRI, derde wereld, Tanaka Kakuei, Verenigde Naties, Pentagon, USSR, Vickers, Eerste-Wereldoorlog, |