Kenneth L. Adelman
Essay
Spring
1992
Russia is being called upon to accomplish the 'conversion' of its military production capacity to civilian production, yet history shows that conversion policy, even in the USA, has never worked, because "defense work has little in common with civilian work". Defence conversion should not even be regarded 'conversion' at all: "Rather it is the result of two independent and parallel actions: shedding many elements of the defense sector; and absorbing those assets into a new entrepreneurial consumer sector. The way to increase the production of sausage-making machines is to expand the sausage factory... not to annoint the rocket makers as sausage makers... The bad news here is for the managers, most of whom become unsalvageable". It is the old corporate culture that has to be bulldozed out of the way.
Essay
Winter
1984
Of all the emotions arising from strategic arms control today, the most profound is disappointment. In this, as in little else in the vast realm of arms control, conservatives and liberals concur--conservatives for the failure of arms control to diminish the ever more ominous Soviet strategic buildup, liberals for its failure to diminish the ever more wasteful strategic "arms race."
Essay
Spring
1981
Despite virtual invisibility outside the diplomatic community and antipathy on the part of many within, public diplomacy--the dissemination of America's message abroad--may become Washington's major growth industry over the coming four years. A neat congruence of personality, technology and history makes this a reasonable prospect.
Essay
Apr
1975
The first European power to arrive in black Africa is now the last to depart. The April 1974 coup in Lisbon, one of those rare instances in history when a change in government reverses a vital national policy, has led to the end of centuries of Portuguese colonization. Such a rapid shift in policy, resulting in the promise of independence for Mozambique on June 25 and Angola on November II of this year, was bound to fundamentally change the character of African politics. This decolonization in the south, together with the Ethiopian revolution, the new power of the oil-producing states, and the tragedy of the Sahel drought in the north, have made 1974-75 a historic time for Africa.
