The roles of arms sales and trade deals in strengthening Europe's leverage over Middle Eastern governments are multifaceted and often contradictory.

While these instruments are designed to secure economic, strategic, and political influence, the actual leverage they grant is frequently eroded by fierce global competition and the Middle Eastern states' own strategies for diversification.

The relationship functions as a transactional dynamic where European countries seek commercial profit and strategic alignment, while Middle Eastern nations seek advanced technology, security guarantees, and legitimation.

1. The Role of Arms Sales: The Security-Dependence Nexus

European states—particularly France, the UK, Germany, and Italy—are major global arms exporters, with the Middle East representing their largest customer region. Arms sales act as a critical tool for leverage through a security-dependence nexus.

A. Creating and Maintaining Military and Technological Dependence

The most direct form of leverage stems from the recipient country's dependence on the supplier's ecosystem for its military capability:

• Logistical Dependence: Major European weapon systems (like French Rafale fighter jets or British Typhoon aircraft) require a continuous supply of spare parts, maintenance, and complex upgrades from the original manufacturer. Disrupting this supply chain would cripple the recipient's air force or navy, giving the supplier significant power during a political disagreement.

• Training and Interoperability: Arms sales involve extensive military-to-military training and advisory missions. This strengthens personal ties between defense establishments, fosters interoperability (the ability to conduct joint operations), and embeds European military doctrine within the client state's command structure, making a sudden switch to a different supplier (like China or Russia) difficult, costly, and time-consuming.

• Signalling Political Support: For authoritarian or security-focused regimes, an arms deal with a major European power signals political endorsement and a commitment to the regime's security. The threat of a sales moratorium or embargo—often invoked in response to human rights abuses (e.g., German-Saudi arms restrictions over the Yemen conflict or the Khashoggi murder)—is a powerful diplomatic sanction.

B. Strategic Alignment and Access

Arms sales are rarely just commercial transactions; they are fundamentally strategic instruments used to gain access and shape regional security policy:

• Securing Political Support: European states use arms deals to build alliances and ensure the political cooperation of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. This alignment can lead to the Middle Eastern client taking actions favorable to European interests, such as supporting a preferred faction in a regional conflict (e.g., in Libya) or providing intelligence cooperation on counter-terrorism.

• Softening Criticism: The lucrative nature of arms sales can create a "profit over people" dynamic, leading European countries to mute criticism of human rights violations or aggressive regional policies by key customers. This diplomatic silence is a form of political leverage granted to the client, but it also demonstrates the power of the commercial relationship to dictate European foreign policy priorities.

2. The Role of Trade Deals: Economic and Normative Conditioning

The European Union's influence, distinct from that of individual member states' arms deals, is primarily wielded through comprehensive trade and association agreements.

A. Economic Leverage through Market Access

The EU is the world's largest single market and a crucial trading partner for the Middle East, particularly North African countries. This market access is the ultimate source of economic leverage:

• Conditional Access: EU Association Agreements (e.g., with Mediterranean partners like Tunisia and Morocco) offer preferential trade terms but are often conditional on the implementation of economic and political reforms, such as trade liberalization, intellectual property rights protection, and harmonization with EU technical standards. These conditions act as a long-term lever to nudge partner economies toward the EU's institutional and regulatory model.

• Energy Dependence (Oil & Gas): For a long time, Europe's reliance on Middle Eastern fossil fuels (e.g., from Algeria or the GCC) gave those producers leverage. However, the new focus on green hydrogen (GH2​) imports and renewable energy projects creates a new potential dependency: while the Arab states have the resources, Europe has the market demand, technology, and financing. This shifts the power balance back to the buyer (Europe) as part of the green transition.

• Migration Management: Trade, financial assistance, and development aid are often linked to cooperation on migration control. Countries like Libya and Turkey receive substantial EU funding and preferential agreements in exchange for policing their borders and preventing the flow of migrants toward Europe, using economic incentives to achieve a core EU security objective.

B. Promoting Political and Normative Reform

EU trade policy is explicitly designed to advance democratic values and human rights—its "normative power"—even if this aim is often compromised in practice:

• Dialogue and Conditionality: EU trade and cooperation frameworks establish permanent, high-level political dialogues on issues like the rule of law, human rights, and good governance. While the direct threat of suspending a trade agreement is rarely deployed, the constant political pressure and the incentive of closer integration provide an ongoing, if subtle, lever.

• Civil Society Engagement: Trade and development funds often include provisions to support civil society, academic exchanges, and institutional capacity-building in the partner country, working to promote political liberalization and institutional modernization from the ground up, though progress is often slow and easily reversed by local regimes.

3. Limits to European Leverage: Diversification and Competition

Despite the structural advantages afforded by arms sales and trade, European leverage is not absolute and has been steadily eroding:

• Alternative Suppliers: Middle Eastern states, particularly the wealthy GCC countries, actively diversify their arms suppliers (buying from the US, Russia, and China) to avoid excessive dependence on any single European nation. This competition among suppliers drastically reduces Europe's leverage in bilateral negotiations. If France threatens an embargo, the client can simply pivot to a willing competitor.

• Lack of EU Unity: European member states frequently undercut one another in the pursuit of lucrative arms contracts. Germany's unilateral arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, for instance, was criticized by France and the UK, who continued their own sales. This lack of a unified EU position allows Middle Eastern governments to play individual European capitals against each other, nullifying the collective leverage the EU could otherwise wield.

• Client Autonomy: Wealthy Middle Eastern nations increasingly use their immense wealth and control over key global resources to assert their own foreign policy priorities and influence European actions, sometimes reversing the leverage dynamic. They demand technology transfer, local production, and political compromises in exchange for their business.

In summary, arms sales and trade deals are the bedrock of Europe's influence in the Middle East, creating a complex web of interdependence. While this structure grants significant potential leverage—rooted in the military need for spare parts and the economic need for market access—the actual exercise of this leverage is constrained by intense geopolitical competition and the Middle Eastern governments' sophisticated strategies for diversification.