Research

Security in Context is issuing a call for papers on the theme of “Financialization and the Global Arms Industry.” Please submit 400-word abstracts/proposals or completed papers by March 30th, 2023 to: submissions@securityincontext.org Please use the email subject heading "Financialization & Global Arms Industry Paper Proposal." The results for accepted proposals will be announced by April 15, 2023.

Security in Context, in collaboration with the Northwestern University Qatar Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South and the Center for Peace and Development at the University of Oklahoma, is issuing a call for papers on the theme of “The Global South in an Era of Great Power Competition.”

Since the launch of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, development financing has returned to the fore of global geopolitics. Despite its critics, the latest surge of great-power competition could be a good thing for developing countries.

Financialization is a product of power and can only be sustained so long as there are significant economic imbalances between major countries and peripheral countries (Arrighi 1994). Militarization is not just a major source of profits but also an indispensable tool to reproduce finance capital by protecting and expanding markets. Also, finance capital has increased its power over the military sector by buying stock in arms corporations to become a major component of the military industrial complex. Therefore, financialization and militarization reinforce each other in the US.

Clear financial sector policies on arms producers that export weapons to human rights-violating states or countries in conflict remain the exception rather than the norm.