Disarmament Economy — A New Industrial Activity?

Abstract

The debate on disarmament, conversion and peace dividends has begun to cause irritation, a development dating roughly from the first attempts to apply these concepts in practice. Once a magic word, “conversion” is rapidly becoming a threatening notion to those affected by it. At least this is the case in those countries that have so far significantly reduced military expenditure -- above all the East European states, including the republics of the former USSR. The causes are manifold; they are, of course, strongly influenced by the specific situation of these countries, which find themselves in a fundamental process of systematic transformation. Despite the specifics of this situation, however, the lack of expected and fundamental consequences of conversion, in the form of the civil use of resources freed by disarmament -- financial and human capital and industrial capacity -- call for a reappraisal of current thinking on conversion.