the presence of sufficient

If war and militarization create so many obstacles to development, it is logical that peace and

demilitarization can help to remove them. Even negative peace avoids the destruction and

disruption of war, making it possible for people to engage in the ordinary activities that support

production and consumption without constant fear of getting caught in the cross-fire or seeing

all that they worked long and hard to create reduced to rubble in a matter of minutes. Positive

peace implies a more equitable distribution of political power and economic power, both of

which are important in encouraging real political and economic development.

When there is peace and demilitarization, there is less compulsion to divert enormous amounts

of productive economic resources to support the buildup and use of military force as a means of

exerting power and influence in the world. Resources freed from this economically noncontributive

use become available for the kinds of contributive production and investment that

are crucial to economic development. The demilitarization of a society supports political

freedom by reducing the availability of repressive force to those who might be tempted to use it

to concentrate political power in their own hands, as well as by de-legitimizing the use of force

for such purposes.

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