The Guardian view on the Gulf arms trade: not a good deal after all

For many years Britain sold arms to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states in the confident expectation that they would never be used. It seemed a perfect scheme. Britain sold the weapons, making large profits and sustaining its arms industries at a time when the orders that the UK’s own forces were able to place had become too small to keep those industries viable. The Americans and the French did the same. The beauty was that there was virtually no political cost, because the customers essentially treated this expensive kit as toys for their largely decorative armies. They didn’t go to war, except on a couple of occasions when they were brought into western-led coalitions against Iraq. Israel sometimes got hot under the collar when it thought the Saudis were getting items that were too cutting-edge. There were some rows when western equipment was used for internal security, but these were deemed minor problems.