Armaments Dynamic and Military Research and Development

Abstract

The paper examines the present escalation of armaments, both conventional and nuclear, the mind-boggling stockpiles (with the capacity to destroy all life on earth many times over), the incredible speed of replacement of old and innovation and deployment of ever newer, ever more sophisticated and ever more lethal weapon system in their dynamic development. It identifies four factors of the armaments dynamic and, after examining each of them, comes to the conclusion that the most important and most dangerous is the military R&D. It has engulfed all scientific disciplines - natural, social and behavioural - and penetrated into industry, laboratories, universities, special research institutes and centres of learning. Military R&D not only absorbs the best scientific and technological talent, but also distorts priorities in scientific research itself. Having forged a symbiotic relationship with the structures of economy, politics and state bureaucracy, it has acquired an autonomous and self-propelling existence, making of the armaments race an exponential curve - rapid and steep and unending - and defying any kind of social control. Military R&D has also become an instrument of diplomacy; it blocks all attempts at arms limitation, even on a very modest scale, by vitiating the very negotiating process: efforts to achieve quantitative limitations are offset by qualitative compensations, and arms control negotiation is turned into a collaborative exercise in armaments escalation. Above all, military R&D gobbles up the resources that could well go to relieving mass poverty and providing the basic necessities of life to people around the world. The paper ends by suggesting a series of action to undermine, if not dismantle, the formidable structure so as to open the way to disarmament.