During the 2000s, navies in the Asia-Pacific region have experienced a significant, if not unprecedented, bout of naval expansion. This buildup has been quantitative, but more importantly, qualitative as well, and in many cases goes beyond mere modernization. It has been driven by both rising...

During the 2000s, navies in the Asia-Pacific region have experienced a significant, if not unprecedented, bout of naval expansion. This buildup has been quantitative, but more importantly, qualitative as well, and in many cases goes beyond mere modernization. It has been driven by both rising...

That military expenditure and conflict have adverse consequences for development is unsurprising but important. The policy challenge is to reduce them. I have suggested that substantial components of military expenditure could be reduced without jeopardizing security interests. Military...

The greatest contribution that economics can make to banishing war lies in creating conditions that help keep the peace, especially in the long run. The problem is to identify the set of conditions that will generate positive incentives for nations to keep the peace and work out a set of...

An assessment of the employment of mercenaries in Afghanistan gives mixed results. U.S. armed forces appear to have been happy with the Afghan Security Forces and ad hoc militias and only replaced them because of political reasons or because they felt that they were no longer needed. By...

Following a brief account of the history and structure of Turkey's armed forces, the article reports on an effort to profile current conscripts using survey data. The samples suggest that over 50 percent of the conscripts believe that they would like to enlist beyond the conscription period, and...

Lack of government intervention in South Africa’s mining industry has worsened conflicts associated with limited water resources. With the advent of democracy, new legislation demands that all South African citizens have the right to a clean, safe environment, including access to potable...

The article reports results of an empirical investigation into trade, openness, and domestic conflict for several Latin American countries. It addresses two main issues: (1) whether variations in trade openness affect the likelihood of the onset of domestic conflict and (2) once initiated, how...

This piece provides a Foreword to the new journal by the chair of Economics for Peace and Security.

This article begins by emphasizing that the number and intensity of armed conflict has fallen substantially but that military expenditure levels in sub-Saharan Africa have nonetheless increased, largely as a result of South African expenditure. The article attempts to answer two questions....