Ulrich Albrecht

Spin-Off: A Fundamentalist Approach

It remains such a strong positive notion: that the military use of R&D not only safeguards security in the technological arms race, it also enhances the economic well-being of the nation by virtue of spin-off. Yet this pleasant combination becomes more and more disputed. R&D, or creativity, after all remains humankind’s most important resource for survival . There are growing suspicions that this scarce resource should be geared to ends other than means of destruction , and that the flow of inventions from the military sector to general or (what a strange distinction) “civilian” technology does not represent a stream, but a mere trickle. The high level of uncertainty about the real magnitudes of commonly used technology stemming from military activities and the bitter dispute among protagonists about the validity/invalidity of the whole argument provoke this contribution . Such a “fundamentalist” approach, which tries to delineate what can be known and what not , is not a frivolous attempt. With a view to clarifying a highly ideologized argument (the next section depicts the dimensions) , the question to be asked in a meticulous, maybe pedantic , manner is : What can science reasonably say to the spin-off debate?

The Study of International Relations in the Federal Republic of Germany

The circumstances that the study of International Relations and other fields of academia must contend with have changed greatly in the atomic age, if compared to conventional wisdom in this and other fields of academia. As Ernst Bloch, the grand old man of Marxist philosophy noted: It is known that learning is not to serve school or science, not solely for this purpose, but for so-called life. In our time, the bitter addendum is required, for survival.1

The Costs of Armamentism

The political economy of armamentism dates back into past centuries. Often foregone in current de bates, the old hypotheses prove to contain valuable contributions to the understanding of military expenditures in modern capitalist societies. The politico-economic approach is demonstrated as superior if compared with established normative concepts about how large the military budget should be designed. Using empirical data covering four decades, the tremendous rise in the costs of armaments is demonstrated. Each new weapon tends to cost at least twice as much as the pre ceding equipment of the same category. An inter action model between private capital, the military, and the administration is used to explore the causes for overspending under military headings. Applying theoretical evidence about the role of the state, military expenditures turn out as fulfilling vital functions in the reproduction of capitalist societies.

The Development of the First Atomic Bomb in the USSR

The story of the generation of the first atomic weapon in the USSR can be reconstructed today (1). Only four years after the success of the Manhattan Project, a major American achievement in technology and in the organization of a wealth of resoures, the Soviets detonated their counterpart to the U.S. design. By comparison, the Soviet effort may be even more impressive than its U.S. predecessor — if one looks at the poor shape of the war-stricken Soviet technology base, and the deficiencies of the Soviet central planning system, which appears badly prepared to deal successfully with a challenge of the order of magnitude that the bomb represented.

The Current Warfare/Welfare Alternative and the Evidence from Technology

This chapter consists of four parts. The first deals in a principal manner with the past limitations of the dialogue between economic science and peace research. The reasons for this are seen, both in the Smithian and Marxist tradition, in the continued dominance over social science of traditions of social thought which have their origin in the past when military activities were less significant for economic life than they are today. Second, the old ‘bread vs guns’ dichotomy is examined in relation to military spending and economic growth and productivity in countries with different systems and levels of development. This point is substantiated by scrutinising in part III the evidence on the economic dividend of military R&D funding, and by deriving conclusions about demands on future economic analysis of the matter. Fourth, and most importantly, with a view to the unsatisfactory results of economic research into the priority which military programmes enjoy, an argument is submitted about the intertwining of forces of industrialism and militarism, and the oscillation between private enterprises and government establishments in running R&D projects.

European security through political conciliation

The security Interests of European nations may be better served through disengagement rather than confrontation. The author argues that the two alliances should shift from strategic deterrence to political reconciliation.