Détente as well as economic cooperation between East and West have been fundamentally challenged. But economic relations became a source of tension between East and West and among NATO-allies long before the Polish government imposed martial law in 1981. It is argued that trade can still...

Privatization of violence and international interventions to stop wars are two recent trends in wars. Both affect how the traditional state monopoly of force is exercised and on how armed forces operate. The concept of state monopoly of force is now questioned since the execution of force is...

Conversion in Russia, after several attempts between 1988 and 1995, is often compared to restructuring of the defense industry in the West and then described as a failure. However, the methods applied for downsizing defense production capacities and industry restructuring (rather than converting...

The `long decade of disarmament' between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s provides ample evidence of the effects of a substantial defense downturn. The chapter starts out with a brief discussion of various concepts of conversion, focusing on a resource-reuse perspective. This is followed by...

Military expenditure is difficult to define. Major issues are functional versus institutional approaches to defense, indirect and intangible costs and benefits and current versus comprehensive accounting. Authoritative institutions have adopted standard definitions but national governments are...