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Defence industries in international relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Trevor Taylor
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Extract

While the threat and use of force remain elements or even possibilities in world affairs, the political importance of the defence industries will be substantial. Defence industries must be viewed as significant because of the contribution that they make to allowing states to deter attack and to use force. But they also have an economic and technological significance. In the UK, France and the US, defence equipment represents about 10 per cent of total manufacturing output. Equipment orders from home and abroad provide employment for around 500,000 people in the UK, at least 300,000 in France, and over two million in the US. The US Department of Defence, the Pentagon, employs 134,000 people just to procure equipment worth about $130 billion involving 15 million contracts a year. Defence equipment is big business and is particularly important today in the aerospace, electronics and shipbuilding sectors. Between a quarter and a third of professional technologists and scientists in Britain, France and the US work in the defence sector.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 59 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1990

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References

1 The West German Government, which had originally encouraged a Daimler takeover of MBB, decided i n September 1989 to overrule the Federal Cartel Office recommandation against the merger. It overruled the Federal Cartel Office since MBB alone faced major problems, in particular in connection with Airbus losses, and it also was seen as being too small to carry great weight in international collaborative negotiations.

2 The Financial Times, 20 December 1988.

3 Britain obtained a 130 per cent offset commitment from Boeing on the UK purchase of seven AWAC aircraft in 1987.

4 Sunday Times, 27 March 1988.

5 Jane's Defence Weekly, 7 January 1989.

6 Jane's Defence Weekly, 17 December 1988.

7 The Financial Times, 19 November 1988.

8 Jane's Defence Weekly, 21 January 1989.

9 The Financial Times, 6 May 1988, Jane's Defence Weekly, 14 May 1988.

10 Jane's Defence Weekly, 14 January 1989.

11 Times, 2 March 1988.

12 The Financial Times, 1 December 1988.

13 Jane's Defence Weekly, 24 December 1988.

14 This is reflected by the discussions held within the Independent European Programme Group and by the reported planned directives to UK ministries (see The Guardian, 5 December 1988, and also The Times, 18 January 1988).

15 France argues that 80 per cent of a product's value should be generated in the EC for it to qualify as European. Britain will accept 60 per cent. This has contributed to the dispute over whether Nissan cars from the Sunderland plant can be imported into the rest of the EC as ‘European’ cars.

16 Sperry sold its UK operations to British Aerospace in the 1980s because it felt it could not hope for equal treatment from the British Government.

17 Air et Cosmos, 21 January 1989.

18 See for instance, G. Dicken, Global Shift, and M. E. Porter (ed), Competition in Global Industries (Boston, Mass., 1986).

19 See Baker, Noel, The Private Manufacture of Armaments (London, 1938)Google Scholar; Lewinsohn, R., The Profits of War (London, 1936);Google ScholarEngelbrecht, H. C. and Hanighen, F. C., The Merchants of Death (New York, 1934).Google Scholar

20 Kolodziej, Edward A., Making and Marketing Arms (Princeton, 1987CrossRefGoogle Scholar), especially ch. 4.

21 Asian Defence Journal (October 1988), p. 141.

22 Report for the Political Committee on ‘Arms Procurement within a Common Industrial Policy and Arms Sales’, European Parliament Working Documents, Doc. 1–445/83, 27 June 1983.

23 International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York, 1959).Google Scholar

24 Weinstock, Sir Arnold, Financial Times, 30 12 1988.Google Scholar