The War System and the New International Economic Order: Directions for Disarmament *

Abstract

The production of arms is systemically based in the dynamic of international economic growth. Major arms exporters, primarily northern industrial states, are locked into a structure that retards economic development worldwide. Unable to remedy internal structural difficulties, these nations export, through arms trade, inequality and injustice to Third World nations. This arms trade, in turn, serves to preserve the political and economic predominance the northern industrial states now enjoy in the global hierarchy. In analyzing the potential for a New International Economic Order, greater emphasis should be placed on the role played by the war system-including arms trade-in inhibiting the realization of the NIEO's stated goals. To this end the complex interplay between the war system and the political economies of those states most actively engaged in arms trade is examined. Finally, alternative futures are explored, based on an emerging multipolar world, and which entail a substantial reduction in the level of global armaments.