$47b to just Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar.
From the report : That's a lot of money.France ranked second in worldwide arms transfer agreements in 2015 with $15.3 billion in such global agreements or 19.16%.
After the Greeks had purchased their submarine, Zaharoff turned to the Ottoman Turks alerting them to the new danger now emanating from Greece. To counter the perceived threat, the Turks subsequently acquired two submarines themselves from Zaharoff. In this way he managed to create a one-man arms race in the Eastern Mediterranean. http://origins.osu.edu/article/merchants-death-international-traffic-arms Nasty business. Nonetheless Farnborough is on my bucket list.His first important achievement was the sale of submarines to Greece and Turkey in the late 1880s. Calculating that if he could sell to one of these countries, then the rival country would feel compelled to keep pace, Zaharoff offered one submarine to the Greeks.
That's a horribly-smart move. I'm constantly surprised by the willingness of an entity/person to survive and thrive in their business against what would theorically be good for society at large.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. We didn't start the fire. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Dude managed to generate three submarine sales out of nothing which undoubtedly put food on the families of hundreds of hard-working gentlemen of Sheffield. And hey - they didn't go to war for another seven years and hey - dude was from Cyprus so it was his corner of the world he was fucking up. Best part? The subs were so shitty they were never used.