This book gives an overview of the defense industry's adaptation to lower demand for weapons, government policies to support diversification and regional initiatives to counter the negative effects of arms-industrial downsizing. In addition, the book provides an update on other conversion-relevant issues dealt with in previous Surveys, such as military expenditures, demobilization of armed forces and base closures for the year 1997.
This book tracks the progress of 12 countries on five continents in moving resources from defense to civilian activity in the 1990s. Based on intensive research, it addresses each country with an impressive standard of scholarship.
In its premier issue, this volume provides the first broad overview of major aspects of the problem of small arms and light weapons proliferation. Issues covered include: products and producers; global firearms stockpiles; brokers and transport agents; legal small arms transfers; illicit small arms transfers; the effects of small arms availability; and multilateral measures and initiatives. The Survey will serve as the principal source of public information on all aspects of small arms, and as a resource center for governments, policy makers, researchers, and activists. With international contributors from a variety of backgrounds, it will interest all those in security studies, political science, law, economics, development studies, and sociology.
Analyzes the key indicators of 1998 that will play a large part in determining the social, economical, and environmental health of the nation in the next decade; includes charts, tables, graphs, and statistics.
Contemporary world history has highlighted militarization in many ways, from the global Cold War and numerous regional conflicts to the general assumption that nationhood implies a significant and growing military. Yet the twentieth century also offers notable examples of large-scale demilitarization, both imposed and voluntary. Demilitarization in the Contemporary World fills a key gap in current historical understanding by examining demilitarization programs in Germany, Japan, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. In nine insightful chapters, this volume's contributors outline each nation's demilitarization choices and how they were made. They investigate factors such as military defeat, border security risks, economic pressures, and the development of strong peace cultures among citizenry. Also at center stage is the influence of the United States, which fills a paradoxical role as both an enabler of demilitarization and a leader in steadily accelerating militarization. Bookended by Peter N. Stearns' thought-provoking historical introduction and forward-looking conclusion, the chapters in this volume explore what true demilitarization means and how it impacts a society at all levels, military and civilian, political and private. The examples chosen reveal that successful demilitarization must go beyond mere troop demobilization or arms reduction to generate significant political and even psychological shifts in the culture at large. Exemplifying the political difficulties of demilitarization in both its failures and successes, Demilitarization in the Contemporary World provides a possible roadmap for future policies and practices.
