Military Conversion: The Balance Sheet

Abstract

Concepts, like fashions, come and go. Conversion had its heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and now it seems to have been all but forgotten, or even attained a negative tone. Actors as well as analysts are hesitant to put their work within the framework of conversion. The situation was different when largescale disarmament began in the late 1980s. There was an expectation of large, more or less automatic, economic benefits from shrinking military sectors. Certainly in states with central planning, such as the Soviet Union, reorientation of resources was expected to be a simple matter (Cooper, 1995). A substantial fiscal 'peace dividend' was also anticipated in the West. However, such expectations were simplistic and over-optimistic and could only be frustrated. They took little or no account of the wider political and economic environment shaping the shift of resources from the military to the civilian sector, underestimated the cost and speed of adjustment and assumed shifts in political decisionmaking parallel to large-scale disarmament which would have to occur.