When military resources are freed, they may be used for other, civilian purposes. For instance, defense expenditures can become civilian government expenditures, production capacities for tanks can be turned to production capacities for trucks, soldiers to farmers, and so on. In theory, all resources can be reused in the civilian sector. It may make more sense to discard the machinery from an arms-producing plant because its running costs are higher than those of a new machine devoted to civilian production. The goal of resource conversion is to maximize not the amount of resources converted, but rather the overall benefits for the well-being of citizens or society.
Conversion requires investment .
Costs are a necessary by-product of managing the legacy of the arms race and reusing resources for civilian purposes. Arms-producing companies must invest in new machinery and marketing, soldiers must be retrained, military bases must be cleaned up, and so on. Conversion viewed as an investment process suggests a predominance of costs in the short run but benefits in the long run. As a result, total net benefits over the long run are often underestimated and necessary investments are not financed. Conversion is not limited to immediate resource release .