Arms for the Rich

The Arms Bazaar: From Lebanon to Lockheed by Anthony Sampson The Viking Press,$12.95,340 pages.

ALFRED NOBEL was a brilliant but psychotic inventor, tortured by the fact that the dynamite he invented blew up his own brother. He was an unscrupulous and successful capitalist whose companies became one of the earliest multinational organizations selling the invention which, they claimed, would end war through its deterrent effect. Driven by intense feelings of guilt. Nobel left most of his fortune to endow the prizes that bear his name, with special attention paid to the award for peace.

Starting with Nobel and such other "merchants of death" as Alfred Krupp, Andrew Carnegie and the duPont family,Arms Bazaar by Anthony Sampson, a British journalist, traces the rise of the international arms market. As any good front-page journalist does, Sampson pays sharp attention to detail and leaves the analysis to more sophisticated writers. He merely tries to trace the industry point-by-point, producing an account valuable for researchers and pleasure readers.

Nobel lived during the latter half of the 19th century, when industrialized Europe saw its steel industry sag because of overdevelopment and a lack of new markets. In search of new, lucrative fields, the steel and iron companies, the dominant industries in this era of unusually heavy industry, turned to armaments: large bore cannons, machine guns, steel-plated ships and a wide assortment of modernized rifles.

During this infancy period, the arms manufacturers established certain industrial forms and business practices that continue to this day. The manufacturers sold on an international scale; whether the customer was an ally or a likely enemy, one or both combatants in a conflict, the firms sold to all who paid "an honest price." The companies usually sold more weaponry as exports than they did to their home governments.

To maintain these far-flung business operations without any sophisticated communications network, the companies employed "agents." bagmen who, for exorbitant fees, greased palms and took advantage of contacts. Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy's grandson who engineerred a coup for the benefit of the present Shah of Iran, was merely following the example set 65 years ago by Sir Basil Zaharoff. The arms market flourished in this past era, when the industrialized nations traded amongst each other as well as exploiting the undeveloped countries. By "gingering up" a few Chilean generals or instigating a local war between Arab chieftains, Zaharoff claimed to have sold "more arms than anyone else in the world."

World War I showed there was no deterrent effect in dynamite or mustard gas, and when the war ended, the industry entered a new dimension. Isolationism followed by depression dampened sales somewhat, but the rise of fascism in Europe led to an industry oriented toward production for national use. All through these years, Sampson ignores conventional history and economics, merely tracing the nefarious activities of a handful of peddlers. Sampson does not say what a Messerschmidt can do to an Ethiopian tribesman, nor does he fully examine the Krupp family's role in the Nazi war machine. He is more concerned with the individuals and the extent of their business activities.

After World War II the present arms market emerged. Light, high-technology industry replaced the heavy steel-oriented production of earlier years, and manufacturers concentrated on aircraft, computers and sophisticated defense systems. Because of its scale as well as its efficiency, this sophistication raised the stakes of the arms game to unexpected heights of bribery, diplomacy and, of course, destruction.

In the business of arms sales there is a new intensity to which Sampson devotes most of his book. The threat of nuclear war and the polarizing effect of U.S. Soviet relations disrupts the old "every man for himself" ethic. The most revolutionizing effect, however, has been the oil crisis and the growing militance of third world nations. Not only do the Arab sheiks have the foreign exchange which the West desperately needs, they also have the economic power to demand choice weaponry, like F-14 fighter jets and computer-guided missiles. Of course, they often burden themselves with equipment they cannot operate, repair or even find a use for. But Colonel Gaddafi of Libya still buys tanks by the thousands.

Clearly opposed to even the slightest justifications used by the "defense contractors," Sampson only cites their rhetoric in order to ridicule it. There is little room to argue over the economics of expanding sales to reduce the development costs for the home country, and exports do keep the production lines continually operating. But Sampson only cites the age-old argument about the "deterrent" effect of weapons to toy with its absurdity. The weapons companies' claim of merely selling to those in need or able to afford an "honest price" becomes even more painfully comic when Sampson shows how former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his successors turned a cold war military aid program into a high pressure export industry.

Sampson's somewhat over-detailed accounts of bribery and cynical diplomacy take up space which could be devoted to developing a broader perspective. He cites Japan as one industrialized, oil-starved nation which has avoized any complicity in the arms market, but he does not study this anomaly in order to offer any morals to the rest of the world. In a similar vein, he outlines former President Richard M. Nixon's mistake in granting the Shah's colossal arms requests, but he fails to explore the deeper diplomatic ramifications of the arms trade. Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Wash.) often cites the importance of the arms industries in providing jobs, but Sampson never uses the simple federal budget analyses which show the significantly higher cost of defense-related jobs compared to non-military jobs.

The prime intent of Arms Bazaar is to document the tangled path of the companies and entrepreneurs who have developed the arms trade. Sampson, author of books on ITT and the oil companies, has had considerable experience in writing exposes. The Sears and Roebuck-like brochures produced by the British foreign service, the $106 million Lockheed paid to a single Arab business agent over five years, and numerous other interesting details are recounted. Sampson concentrates on the activities of the Western nations partly because they are more involved and less policy-oriented than the Soviets, but also because the information is more available. However, Sampson is quick to say that the Soviet Union has also shown little respect for pacifists.

AT TIMES Arms Bazaar may seem to be a conspiracy book. Business and political figures from Herbert Kalmbach to Prince Bernhard of Holland are involved in one way or another. But Sampson is not paranoid, merely thorough. The arms trade, with its manufacturers so dependent on large-sale, precarious government contracts, is one of the most lucrative and integral to the western world.