Lloyd J. Dumas - The Socio-Economics of Conversion From War to Peace

THE SOCIO-ECONOMICS OF CONVERSION FROM WAR TO PEACE

First published 1995 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
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Copyright 1995 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The socio-economics of conversion from war to peace / Lloyd J. Dumas, editor
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-56324-528-0. ISBN 1-56324-529-9 (pbk.)
1. Economic conversionUnited States.
2. Economic conversion.
I. Dumas, Lloyd J.
HC110.D4S53 1995
338.973dc20
94-48186
CIP

ISBN 13: 9781563245299 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9781563245282 (hbk)

by Amitai Etzioni

by Lloyd J. Dumas

The idea that people will, in times of peace, convert their swords into plowshares is indeed a very old one. It evokes hopes of large amounts of resources being released for peaceful use, enriching people rather than killing them. And neoclassical economists have little trouble with expecting resources to be reallocated as the demand for military goods declines and for consumer goods to reach new highs. The facts are much more complicated. The sector of the economy involved in arms production and sales draws largely on government funds and thus is driven significantly by political considerations, and is not governed by market considerations (although there is some competition among the arms dealers of various nations). Thus, for instance, Electric Boat keeps producing nuclear submarines despite the fact that the Pentagon declares that it does not need any more. It gets the $2 billion (take or leave a few hundred million, mainly take) because of political connections of the corporation and the labor unions involved, not any discernible military or peace-time need.

This case is unfortunately not an exception. Much arms production is driven not by the demands of the marketplace, but by the demands of political actors: politicians who fear unemployment in their jurisdictions; corporations that find that it is easier to lobby for continued arms productionwith PAC contributions and grassroots pressurethan it is to face competition in the civilian sectors; and international arms traders who bribe their way to fuel arms races by supplying both sides with ever deadlier and costlier weapons, up-grading the old ones as if they were passenger cars. And hired intellectuals produce rationales to justify continued high levels of military commitments in peace time: Who knows what the future will bring? they write, You can never be too careful, etc., ad nauseam.

All too quickly conversion gets redefined as not necessarily meaning conversion but as producing some goods in another place, for example Russians trying to make tractors in tank factories but continuing to operate those as part of the armys industrial base, or some other such rather limited adjustment.

The first task of socio-economics is to detail the varying major factorsmost of which are not purely economicthat slow down the conversion process. The second and more difficult task is to develop politics that will reduce these hurdles and allow us to overcome them. Many scores of billions that are now at best wasted, at worst used for war, are at stake. Even more important, many very talented and hardworking people could be redirected to pursuits that are socially useful if we could find the ways. The book before us addresses both of these crucial issues. Much work remains to be done.

Amitai Etzioni
November 1994

We are rapidly approaching the end of a century and of a millennium. Such times naturally call forth reevaluations of the past and visions of the future. It has been a millennium disgraced by innumerable wars and capped by a century that has few rivals in the sheer magnitude of human cruelty. The twentieth century has seen two world wars and hundreds of wars on less than global scale, repeated attempts at genocide that have resulted in the deaths of millions, and the development of weapons arsenals so fearsome as to threaten the end of human society, if not the extinction of the species. It has also been a time of unprecedented advance in democracy, of spectacular achievements in the technical capacity for extending and improving the material conditions of human life, of breaking the bonds that for all of human history had held us to the surface of the planet on which we were born. Now, in the last decade of that century, of that millennium, we turn toward the future and ask what lies ahead.

There are few issues in which the choices that lie before us and the power to shape our own future are highlighted more sharply than that of economic conversion. This issue presents us with a problem, but more than that, it presents us with an opportunity. Conversion inherently requires us to think about how to leave the past behind and how to find the future. It inevitably raises the question of what shape the future should take. And that is an extremely powerful question.