The sales representatives

When it comes to large contracts with countries which have a clear international role, the arms dealers’ sales rep is none other than the President himself, who, during the course of his official visits, strongly advises “France’s great allies” to buy a couple of Mirage fighters or AMX tanks. The Ministers and the cohort of senior civil servants from the Arms Council (Direction générale de l’armement) help to settle the details of the deals which are struck at such a level. For those countries whose strategic role is less obvious, or even when it comes to countries or networks whose activities are totally contrary to France’s official policy, the reps are more low-profile men who use their networks of influence and middle-men, their personal relationships, etc. during much more discreet trips. These men who work in the shadows, whether they be members of parliament, senators, senior civil servants, technical advisors in the ministries, ministers’ personal advisors, representatives of certain NGOs, specialized middle-men, armaments engineers, bankers, international lawyers, etc and make up real parallel networks to the military-industrial circle. It sometimes even happens that these same networks are influenced or diverted from their main objectives (money) in order to serve far more complicated ideologies and that the commissions paid finance other objectives than those mentioned.

As such, the members of parliament of the ruling party are particularly well-placed to become official representatives of the arms trade. They can carry out several official assignments in all countries away from the eye of the press and the cameras and without anyone asking them for a detailed report. They are in direct contact with the governing power and can easily pride themselves on their practically official authority; they are corruptible either on a personal level, or because recent years have shown us that political parties have balked at no base acts in order to finance their activities.

All the specialists on parliamentary habits can confirm that deputies or senators are used to defending certain individual interests. That’s what’s known as a lobby. Some politicians have practically become representatives of certain corporations or industries and it’s obvious that the military-industrial circle is no exception to this rule and practice. It is common knowledge that the main representative of this lobby was , for a long time and up until his recent death, Senator Etienne Dailly. In a future article we will further develop this individual and his activities in this field. We can already affirm that the famous senator set up a sort of network composed of people who wanted to succeed him or to increase the penetration of both the right-wing and left-wing parties by the merchants of death. However, one of the problems was that several of these parties had themselves already been infiltrated by movements whose ideologies were different to those officially announced.