Top competitors and Georgia's Influence

The United States and Russia are the two largest exporters of weapons and weapon technology in the world. We have been competing, probably since the cold war in sales. I believe, originally Russia was doing pretty well. They were selling to most of the FSU countries and even to some European ones that we actually wanted as our own clients. We were also competing for India, which I find interesting since we were selling weapons to Pakistan (Who's having issues with India at the moment, though I don't know the details, see General Info under BRICS)... I'd say we didn't have much of a chance of getting their business.

HOWEVER.....
Since the Georgia conflict began Russia has abeen demonized, anyone who did not demonize Russia remained neutral, very few countries (including Ukraine as far as I'm aware right nwo) saw that Georgia was the aggressor, and not Russia. Because of this there are a lot of attempts to alienate Russia coming from some European countries, but mostly the United States. People are demanding action against Russia. Because of this a lot of countries don't want to be connected with Russia.

So... A majority of countries originally buying weapons from Russia have stopped doing so. Who's their other option? The United States. Our weapons industry has boomed since the Georgia conflict because we have deemed them "aggressors" and many countries are afraid they will have to deal with us if they deal with Russia.

On top of that, a lot of other militaries are using this Georgia conflict as an excuse to increase spending on their militaries. We have -we built missle-, Poland has -they let us put them there-, and Sweden has -they feel unsafe-. Yes. Sweden fears the Georgia conflict and they have increased defense spending because they feel they cannot defend themselves.... against someone who is not actually attacking them.

Weapons have been an issue for a long time. If there is a weapons industry there will be war. If there is no war, there will be no weapons industry.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/17021/russias_arms_control_ripples.html
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/features/article_1430991.php/Swedish_think-tank_studies_Russian-Georgia_conflict__News_Feature__