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Modern weapon systems like everything else hi-tech in the world depends on free minds and free markets.\

Not at all. Germany under Hitler was certainly not a free country, yet had the most advanced weapons industry in the world. The Soviets ran with us for years with neither a free market or a free society. And while it many want to ignore them as copycat technology I will point out that they had the first ICBM and the Early MiGs were every bit as good, and in some cases better, than the contemporary Western fighters. And the Chinese have a booming armaments industry. Perhaps not the best in the world, but they compete well on cost. Especially for things like small arms where ultra technology isn't required. An AK-47 will kill you just as dead as an XM-8. And costs a heck of a lot less.

No the lack of a weapons industry in the Middle East is due to short term thinking. And unfortunately dictators are just a capable of long term thinking as are free men. The Japanese militarists built up the entire Japanese economy from an agrarian feudal society in order to ensure that they would be independent from foreign suppliers. They may have bought the first round of ships and guns. But the second generation was made at home.

The US military always tried to buy US made weapons, even at the turn of the century when our stuff wasn't as good or as cheap as what we could have bought from the Brits or the Germans. The Chinese built their own weapons industry rather than just buy from the Russians. This kind of thinking accepts short term disadvantage, in exchange for building an industrial base that can provide a long term foundation for an independent military. In the Middle East they only build their own when they have no other choice. Otherwise they treat their military equipment like just another expensive bauble. As one Egyptian general said after the 1967 war they practiced how to march in the victory parade instead of practicing how to win the victory.