What impact has the international arms race had on Third World development?
Melman: Third World development is today being massively hampered by their own military economies and investments. The countries of the Third World are spending on their own military budgets rather more than the entire capital fund that would be required to accelerate their own economic development. This is a disaster. Monitor: How long before the military industrial complex takes economic conversion seriously? Melman: On the day it is clear that a 50 percent cut in intercontinental ballistic missiles is in the offering, an ice age chill will descend on the enterprises, the laboratories and the bases in the missile industry. There will be a panic of what to do. Monitor: Even with SDI still in the offering? Melman: Of course. SDI is a research enterprise for at least another decade. There is nothing producible now. Therefore, in the main centers of military industry work, around Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas-Ft. Worth, parts of Florida and Denver, there is going to
