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The paper seeks to address the European Union's emerging role in the management of international security challenges and its implications for collaboration in armaments procurement. While the former is about integrating member governments at policy level, the latter concerns organising states' defence industries into a cohesive and competitive supply base.

Theoretical frameworks include historic‐comparative analysis and the bureaucratic politics model. Independent variable comprises state actors and interest groups, while the dependent variable comprises the outcomes in terms of defence policy and armaments collaboration decisions. European armaments integration is considered, contrasting liberal inter‐governmentalism and neo‐functionalism theory. Case study data are derived from official EU document sources.

In general, national governments tend to protect important industrial actors irrespective of ownership. Bringing market and defence issues closer challenges the traditional separation between “low” and “high” politics. The collaboration in armaments acquisition is ad hoc and somewhat piecemeal in nature. Structures have evolved in an attempt to integrate the armaments process with spill‐over effect at policy level fostering armaments integration, helped by a more favourably structured and organised defence industry symptomatic of neo‐functionalism. Co‐ordination of European defence policy and armaments procurement through EDA should, in theory, lead to longer‐term co‐ordination, co‐operation and integration between the member states. The latter may see it in their interests to integrate as they come to recognize that EU institutions lack the capabilities to make policies realistic.

European armaments procurement and integration is not well researched; nor are the theoretical issues well understood. An explanation (model) of European armaments procurement integration is developed, along with an identification of key facilitators.

This article aims to explore the impact of the Great War on the Sheffield armaments industry through the use of four company case studies in Thomas Firth, John Brown, Cammell Laird and Hadfields. It charts the evolving situation the armaments companies found themselves in after the end of the conflict and the uncertain external environment they had to engage with. The article also examines the stagnant nature of armaments companies’ boards of directors in the 1920s and the ultimate rationalisation of the industry at the close of the decade.

The research design is based around a close examination of the surviving manuscript records of each of the companies included, the records of the speeches recorded by chairpersons at annual meetings and some governmental records.

The article concludes by outlining how the end of the Great War continued to affect the industry for the following decade and the complex evolving situation with a changing external environment and continuity of management internally ultimately leading to mergers in the industry.

This article uses a number of underused manuscript records to examine the Sheffield armaments industry and explores the effect of a global mega event in the Great War on one of the most technologically advanced industries of the period.

The chapter presents an analysis of the decision-making process of leaders on issues of nuclear armament and nuclear disarmament, through four case studies. The first, pertaining armament, is South Africa, with a focus on Pieter Willem Botha, former prime minister and president of South Africa. The second deals with former Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi’s nuclear armament decision. The third case study investigates the decision of former president of South Africa, F. W. De Klerk, on nuclear disarmament. The fourth and final case study uncovers Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s nuclear disarmament decision.

Using the Applied Decision Analysis (ADA) method historical decisions have been analyzed in this chapter for the purpose of identifying each leader’s ‘decision code’. Specifically, were these decisions based on rational calculations or were they influenced more by cognitive decision processes?

By revealing a ‘decision code’ using a reverse engineering of the decision processes, I conclude that the three leaders placed high importance on security and geopolitics. By analyzing different dimensions and processes that impacted their decision processes, it is evident that while armament decision utilizes the poliheuristic decision rule, disarmament decisions abide by rational calculations.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the tendency of escalation of a regular bilateral arms race, or the arms race spiral.

Inspired by the Richardson‐type models, a system of two differential equations is used for describing a bilateral arms race. But the variation of one adversary's armaments and/or military expenditures is not associated with the amount of the other's armaments and/or military expenditures as it is usually done in this type of model. It is linked instead with their variation, as it practically happens in governments' decision‐making processes.

The association of the two variations suggests that when one adversary tends to match the increase of the other's armaments and/or military expenditures, these tend to increase to infinity for a given fixed point in time.

The mathematical result indicates that the tendency of completely matching the increase of adversary's armaments or military expenditures acts as an accelerator that causes the continuous escalation of the arms race. Therefore, as long as a substantial change in the relationship between the two adversaries – implying a complete change of the model's coefficients – does not happen, the arms race escalates, and the so‐called spiral is observed.

The chapter provides a theory of war and conflict issues, and applies the theory to the arms race and the possibility of war in the South Asian subcontinent. We try to give a new perspective on an old question: wars are not rational since they destroy the contestable resource over which disputes arise; yet, states that are rational frequently undertake them rather than going for the less costly option of settlement. In the chapter, a war game is played in which two states first build armaments and then, if they cannot achieve a settlement, fight a war, the outcome of which depends on strength of armaments, where at stake is a contestable resource. The anticipated outcome determines the bargaining threat point. “Technology” is a factor in any war, and so too is the cost of building armaments. States typically differ in technology and may also miscalculate their own relative technical position and war-fighting capability. Alternative models of settlement and war are presented in which states either believe the opposing state has the same perception of technical advantage, or else know the opposing state’s differing perception. Dynamic models, which include the effects of decay in information over time and strategic concerns, are examined. Finally, the results of the models are applied to the stylized facts of India-Pakistan rivalry and conflict, paying particular attention to institutional issues. It is demonstrated that the stylized facts of the Indo-Pakistani conflict and wars fit well with the theoretical conjectures of the analytical models. External conflicts and wars in South Asia are often related to internal causes, which allow the possibility of incomplete information; the two contending states miscalculate their own power in terms of war-fighting capability, so that war occurs.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s creation of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in 1999 inspired great hopes. As we explain, however, the noble initiatives of the UNGC are undermined by the arms industry. Arms are expensive. The expenditure on arms diverts a nation’s “resources from ‘productive’ to ‘unproductive’ ends.” The arms industry is a major employer in most arms manufacturing nations. It generates much needed revenue for those countries. Therefore, attempts at thwarting the supply of arms are doomed to failure. Instead of halting the supply of arms, we argue as to the advantages of restraining the demand for arms. Michael Walzer is the only moral philosopher who has considered the ethics of appeasement. We explore Walzer’s arguments for appeasement and consider how a United Nations Secretary-General could appease those nations demanding arms. In doing so, the UN Secretary-General would make it possible for the UNGC to achieve what was initially envisaged for the UNGC.

Purpose – To argue for the use of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) proves far more useful in assessing arms makers’ limits of responsibility in a different way altogether. By focusing on the negative ‘externalities’ – that is impact on society – we are able to examine the practice in the context of constitutive and regulatory norms (i.e. the accepted rules), as opposed to norms that are merely evaluative (i.e. moral) or practical (i.e. what's possible).

Methodology/approach – This chapter examines the investment policies, practices and procedures of a handful of Australian pension and sovereign wealth funds in relation to investment in the development and production of cluster munitions – a class of weapon banned under international law since August 2010.

Findings – The chapter finds that the negative externalities inherent in armaments manufacturing demand that institutional investors view such firms through a ‘CSI lens’, especially when tasked with identifying and developing strategies to account for emerging social norms such as the prohibition of cluster munitions.

Practical implications – The investor is advantaged by having at its disposal a roadmap for managing – though not necessarily predicting – emerging social norms. This is so for ethical, responsible and mainstream investment approaches, although is most readily compatible with investors who have pre-established exclusionary policies as well as effective implementation procedures.

Social implications – A CSI approach to investment in cluster munitions as outlined in this chapter benefits society by inducing economic actors, such as pension and sovereign wealth funds, to direct their capital in such a way as to minimize humanitarian and environmental harm.

Originality/value of chapter – Proponents of the social responsibility of business and investment have seldom assessed the makers of conventional armaments such as machine guns, attack helicopters and battle tanks. Fewer still have attempted to devise and implement such programs within firms. Simply put, the prevailing argument is that arms makers and their financers are not capable of being socially responsible.

The quest for national security through the expansion of military force has been a dominant feature of international relations for the past three decades. Since the Second World War this quest has given rise to an arms race which has seen the development, production and deployment of weapons of mass destruction in numbers great enough to threaten the termination of human society. It is thus only reasonable to try to understand the forces which have propelled this process forward and to ask whether the process has, in fact, resulted in the achievement of its alleged primary objective — the improvement, or at least the maintenance of the military security of the participants.

The increase in the military expenditure of the United States was committed since 2000, after several years of reduction. As well as the tax cuts, the military expenditure contributes largely to the current rise of the American public deficit. Considerable appropriations were granted to armament industries, such as for example the launching of the programme of fighters F-35, for an amount of 220 billion dollars (for 3,000 apparatuses). The American rearmament since 2000 again reversed the tendency, digging the technological “gap” between the American industry and rest of the world. With the Afghanistan and Iraq wars included, the USA military expenditures represent 50% of the world expenditures.