SECURITY AND SELF-RELIANCE: MILITARY DEPENDENCE AND CONVENTIONAL ARMS PRODUCTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This is a study of international political, military, and economic change and relations between the developing countries of the "South" and the advanced industrial countries of the "North." Theoretically, the study represents an attempt to expand upon and test or critique a body of literature that has become known as "dependency theory." Dependency theory, a prominent analytical framework employed by third world, neo-Marxist, and numerous other theorists in assessing North-South economic relations and the economic problems of developing countries, is here extended to North-South political-military relations. Military dependence, it is shown, is a component of economic dependence. On the empirical level, the study is an attempt to document and explain the emergence and growth of the developing world's defense industries in the context of third world military dependence. Both aggregate data analysis and the case study method are used to examine the conventional arms production programs of third world countries.;The account of the emergence and growth of defense industries in the third world and the consequent reduction of military dependency is presented as a crucial, or critical, test case for dependency theory. From a reading of dependency theory, one would expect that the defense sector, more than any other industrial sector, would remain within the exclusive purview of the Northern advanced industrial countries, and that military dependence, as a component of economic dependence, would remain firmly entrenched. Yet the one industry which, for both economic and military reasons, the core advanced industrial countries might be expected to retain control of, had emerged in twenty-six developing countries by 1980. The progress made by developing countries in reducing military dependence brings into question the static account of North-South relations offered by dependency theorists. The progress made in the defense sector, it is argued, is representative of progress made in other industrial sectors. Dependency theory, it can therefore be concluded, cannot account for the political, military, and economic changes taking place in the third world and in relations between the rich and poor countries of the world.