No Fear of Peace

Delegates from 17 nations are meeting in Geneva this week to find a formula that would end the arms race, but their prospects for success are dim. Nevertheless, a hopeful handful of economists are already exploring ways to ease the impact of disarmament on economies long geared to high levels of military spending (about half the national budget in the U.S. and the Soviet Union). A report submitted last month to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency by a panel of specialists concluded that while certain industries (e.g., aerospace, shipbuilding, communications) would be hard hit, the total national resources liberated by disarmament would more than compensate for specific dislocations without causing a major depression.

This week a blue-ribbon jury of noted economists from ten nations,* completing a 14-month study for the United Nations, reached a similar conclusion. Considering the burden of the arms race, said the report, disarmament "w'ould be a blessing to all mankind." Among the findings: > The world's military spending now is roughly $120 billion annually, about 8-9% of all goods and services. About 85% of the total is spent by seven countries: the U.S.. Britain, the Soviet Union, West Germany, France, Canada and Red China. Armies number about 20 million. Probably 30 million people work in defense-related industries.

> Military expenditures by all nations equal at least two-thirds of the total national income of all the underdeveloped nations. If only "a fraction" of the international defense budget was diverted to economic aid to needy nations, it would result in "a marked increase in the rate of growth of real income in the poorer parts of the world." In the U.S.. the U.N. consultants reported, disarmament would require about 7% of the labor force to change jobs.

These workers would switch mostly to Government service such as space exploration, retail and wholesale trade, professional pursuits such as teaching and medicine. Biggest surprise in the report: Communist economists agreed with their non-Marxist colleagues that capitalist countries could make the switch to peacetime production without serious disruption. In the past, Communist theoreticians and propagandists have insisted vehemently that capitalist countries are sabotaging disarmament because their economies could not stand it.

Although that line is now largely abandoned, the Communists obviously have another propaganda aim in mind. By emphasizing the rosy results of ending the arms race, they are hoping to persuade the nonaligned nations and the West itself to accept Soviet plans for unsupervised disarmament.

* The U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, the Sudan, Venezuela, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

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