Disarming Military Industries


Book Description

The author notes in the preface that an opportunity for significant cuts in nuclear and conventional forces by major global powers has appeared. Presenting the evidence that the West can cope successfully with disarmament, he identifies policies which need to be adopted for that end.




The Future of the Defence Industries in Central and Eastern Europe


Book Description

This report examines the defence industries in Central and Eastern Europe as they attempt to restructure in the wake of changes brought about by the end of the cold war and downward trends in both military expenditure and arms exports. Issues addressed include the developing military doctrines in Central and Eastern Europe; the trend in military expenditure; the nature of defence industry restructuring; the international dimensions of industrial restructuring; and the role of arms exports.




Arms Industry Transformation and Integration


Book Description

SIPRI is an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. Established in 1966, SIPRI provides data, analysis and recommendations, based on open sources, to policymakers, researchers, media and the interested public. Book jacket.




Arms Production in the Third World


Book Description

Case studies of the defence industry in developing countries and newly industrializing countries - covers the political development context, military expenditures and military research, employment and production, types of weapons and military equipment, economic implications of weapons exports and relationships with foreign policy, etc.; considers the UN weapons embargo on South Africa R. Bibliography, diagrams, graphs, references, statistical tables.




Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War


Book Description

Winner of the 2019 William E. Colby Award "The book I had been waiting for. I can't recommend it highly enough." —Bill Gates The era of autonomous weapons has arrived. Today around the globe, at least thirty nations have weapons that can search for and destroy enemy targets all on their own. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in next-generation warfare, describes these and other high tech weapons systems—from Israel’s Harpy drone to the American submarine-hunting robot ship Sea Hunter—and examines the legal and ethical issues surrounding their use. “A smart primer to what’s to come in warfare” (Bruce Schneier), Army of None engages military history, global policy, and cutting-edge science to explore the implications of giving weapons the freedom to make life and death decisions. A former soldier himself, Scharre argues that we must embrace technology where it can make war more precise and humane, but when the choice is life or death, there is no replacement for the human heart.




A New Direction for China's Defense Industry


Book Description

Since the early 1980s, a prominent and consistent conclusion drawn from research on China's defense-industrial complex has been that China's defense-production capabilities are rife with weaknesses and limitations. This study argues for an alternative approach: From the vantage point of 2005, it is time to shift the focus of current research to the gradual improvements in and the future potential of China's defense-industrial complex. The study found that China's defense sectors are designing and producing a wide range of increasingly advanced weapons that, in the short term, are relevant to a possible conflict over Taiwan but also to China's long-term military presence in Asia. Part of a larger RAND Project AIR FORCE study on Chinese military modernization, this study examines the current and future capabilities of China's defense industry. The goals of this study are to 1.




Shadows on the Wall


Book Description

"Shadows on the Wall: Deterrence and Disarmament examines and contrasts the three alternative philosophical positions about the nature of the international system and patterns of human behavior that underlie three competing narratives seen in U.S. public debate regarding nuclear deterrence and disarmament. For over six decades, these three competing narratives, built on contrary philosophical traditions, have been the basis for contending positions regarding U.S. nuclear policy-ranging from advocacy for complete global nuclear disarmament to advocacy for the maintenance of robust U.S. nuclear capabilities for deterrence. Each of these three different narratives is based on different speculative expectations about developments in the international system and future patterns of human behavior. Given the inherent uncertainties about future developments in the international system and human behavior, none of these narratives can be deemed to objectively correct, or certainly wrong. They may, nevertheless, be judged to entail different levels of prudence for U.S. and allied security"--




The British left and the defence economy


Book Description

Forty years before COVID-19, socialists in Britain campaigned for workers to have the right to make ‘socially useful’ products, from hospital equipment to sustain the NHS to affordable heating systems for the impoverished elderly. This movement held one thing responsible above all else for the nation’s problems: the burden of defence spending. In the middle of the Cold War, the left put a direct challenge to the defence industry, the Labour government and trade unions. The response it received revealed much about a military-industrial state that prioritised the making and exporting of arms for political favour and profit. Looking at peace activism from the early 1970s to Labour’s landslide defeat in the 1983 general election, this book examines the conflict over the cost of Britain’s commitment to the Cold War and asserts that the wider left presented a comprehensive and implementable alternative to the stark choice between making weapons and joining the dole queue.




The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy


Book Description

The debate about appropriate purposes and policies for U.S. nuclear weapons has been under way since the beginning of the nuclear age. With the end of the Cold War, the debate has entered a new phase, propelled by the post-Cold War transformations of the international political landscape. This volume--based on an exhaustive reexamination of issues addressed in The Future of the U.S.-Soviet Nuclear Relationship (NRC, 1991)--describes the state to which U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and policies have evolved since the Cold War ended. The book evaluates a regime of progressive constraints for future U.S. nuclear weapons policy that includes further reductions in nuclear forces, changes in nuclear operations to preserve deterrence but enhance operational safety, and measures to help prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition, it examines the conditions and means by which comprehensive nuclear disarmament could become feasible and desirable.




From Defence to Development


Book Description

"Focuses on redefining the notion of security to take into account the threats to peace caused by poverty and social dislocation, converting the defence industry to civilian production, reallocation defence expenditure, redeploying troops and retraining ex-combatants in development projects and for environmental protection, redistributing land previously used as military bases." Partial contents : The 1996 Defence White Paper : an agenda for state demilitarisation ; Weapons testing : its impact on people and the environment ; Land-mines in Southern Africa ; Apartheid's nuclear arsenal : deviation from development.