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.

There will be a brief period of opportunity, perhaps a decade, in which the post-Cold War world can make use of the present 'new concert of powers'. "If this new system is not firmly established... the world may again lapse into a balance of power or an unworkable multipolar deterrence by the year 2000".

Non-alignment is an obsolete posture, and India has much work to do in mending regional relations, especially with China and Pakistan, as well as with the West.