Anthony Sampson

About the Author: Anthony Sampson is the author of several books on international affairs, including The Arms Bazaar, a book on the international arms trade.

It didn't take long. At the Singapore arms fair in March 1991 European arms manufacturers were boasting that their systems had been "combat- tested" in the gulf war. But this was a war that provided a caricature of the danger of the international arms trade: it was the Soviets and the West who sold Saddam Hussein the weapons which enabled him to build up the world's fourth biggest fighting force. Will the West ever stop selling weapons to potential foreign enemies"

Arms-control experts insist that we now have a unique chance—perhaps a last chance—to stop the...