Abstract
World military expenditure is currently believed to exceed $500 billion annually. Tens of millions of people — according to some estimates 50-60 million — around the world are directly or indirectly dependent on the military sector.
What would, in this situation, the economic consequences of global disarmament be? And how could less developed countries become the main beneficiaries of possible savings? These are the key quesions in a research project under the auspices of the United Nations which this article seeks to illuminate.
A number of contributions to the project conclude that it is not economic conversion problems which block disarmament. How large an addition disarmament might contribute to international economic aid depends on how sizable the military expenditure reduction would be and what proportion of the savings were allocated to economic aid. In some of the reviewed alternatives, the addition would be highly marginal, while in other hypothetical scenarios it would grow to the projected size of present aid transfers by the year 2000, if not as early as 1990.
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