The Limits of the Virtuous Circle

The Limits of the Virtuous Circle

By removing the impediments to development that militarization and war produce,

demilitarization and peace help create the conditions that support and encourage economic

and political development. The first and perhaps most obvious is that demilitarization and peace may facilitate both economic and political development, but they do not guarantee them.

For economic development to be self-sustaining, or even viable, a sufficient quantity and quality of productive

resources must be channeled into a web of mutually reinforcing investments in human and

physical capital. Among these, the right mix of programs of education, health care,

infrastructure capital formation, and investment in production capital are the most important.

All of these programs are expensive. Militarization and war divert or destroy considerable

quantities of the required resources, making economic development exceedingly difficult to

achieve. But the fact that demilitarization and peace make the necessary resources more

available does not by itself assure that they will be effectively mobilized and properly used.

Corruption can also divert vast quantities of critical resources, undermining development. So

can utter incompetence, corruption’s first cousin.

Even the presence of sufficient foreign development aid to make up for any deficits in requisite

resources domestically available does not guarantee successful development. The effectiveness

of foreign development assistance can also be crippled by corruption and incompetence. More

than that, in the face of the best intentions of donor organizations and recipient governments,

poorly designed and implemented development assistance programs can undermine

development by actually encouraging corruption and failing to penalize incompetence. Ill-conceived

projects, backed by the authority of high status donor organizations and

governments, have also been known to direct the attention and resources of recipient

governments away from projects that might look less impressive but are actually far more

important to effective development.

Corruption has been a central issue in the international development community since the late

1990s, when the World Bank and other international organizations launched anti-corruption

missions worldwide. Most of the discussion to date has centered on how practices within

recipient governments of less developed (and transitional countries) have interfered with their

political and economic progress. But it is worth noting that problems with the ethics of

economic development advisers and/or development organizations, and corruption originating

in some of the practices of the developed world have also interfered with the progress of less

developed countries.

Conclusions

It is clear that in a number of very important ways, peace does facilitate development, and

development does facilitate peace. This mutually reinforcing relationship is a “virtuous” circle in

both senses of the word. But it is tentative, even fragile, and must be carefully nurtured. Care

must be taken to create the conditions that can help make the circle stronger and more robust.

This first of all requires a greater appreciation for the fact that the circle exists, that there

actually is a positive feedback loop between development and peace. If people can be

convinced that encouraging development is not just a good thing to do, but also a serious and

important part of national security strategy, it should be much easier to build political support

for policies that encourage real development, and thus mobilize the economic resources

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necessary. So much the better if they can also be convinced that by virtue of its effects in

promoting peace, improving the level of development in other parts of the world would also

raise their own economic status.

In the end, the fact that there is a virtuous circle between development and peace makes it

easier to achieve both. That is encouraging. But it does not relieve us of either the

responsibility or the hard work required to make this hopeful connection effective. The good

news is we do not need to cling so tightly to the threat or use of military force as a guarantor of

security, and continue to trade off our economic wellbeing and our civil liberties against our

deeply felt need to be safe. We can, at the same time, make this world more prosperous, freer

and more secure.

Lloyd J. Dumas is Professor of Economics, Political Economy and Public Policy at the University f Texas at Dallas.