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You are here: Frontpage > News > Noble Laureate categorizes return of military spending to Cold War levels a "grotesque irony" for developing countries.

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21-Jun-2004

Noble Laureate categorizes return of military spending to Cold War levels a "grotesque irony" for developing countries.

by: Sally Gainsbury

United Kingdom: During the Cold War, military spending rose to immensely high levels cutting off funding for other needs, such as health and education, and more recently HIV/AIDS. African, Central and South American and Middle Eastern countries were caught in the middle of the two superpowers and felt or were pushed into spending what little capital they had on the military, therefore cutting off capital for more important needs, such as primary education and clean water.

In 1989, world military spending was US$ 712 billion (in today's prices). After the end of the Cold War, spending declined until 2001, when the US spent US$ 312 billion, EU US$ 110 billion, and Sub-Saharan Africa US$ 6 billion. To put this in perspective, total OECD bilateral development aid was US$ 63 billion and Sub-Saharan Africa GDP was US$ 316 billion in 2001. Then, in 2002, it reached just under US$ 800 billion. The study calculated that over US$ 1 trillion (one thousand billion) was spent in 2003 with the US accounting for almost half. The US Administration has requested US$ 423 billion for the military in 2005. This amount however does not include the costs of on-going operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One must be aware of the difference between dollar figures and proportion of GDP, because rich countries can afford to spend a lot on military equipment and armed forces, while poorer countries cannot, for instance Israel (8%), Burundi (8%) and Ethiopia (6.2%), because it reduces the amount that they can spend elsewhere. Indeed, children in Burundi and Ethiopia are between four and nineteen times more likely to die before the age of one than children in the UK.

Writing in his editorial, Sir Richard Jolly, Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, argues that money spent on tanks, guns and armies is misplaced, for instance in South Africa where some US$ 7.7 billion was spent on the military instead of the more threatening HIV/AIDS crisis. In his view there are more "predominant problems…such as those of urban crime, HIV/AIDS, violence against women, terrorism and poverty - issues of human, rather than territorial security. “

Shifts in priorities need to be made sensitively and through global coordination. Security experts Dylan Hendrickson and Nicole Ball discuss the relationship between developing countries and donor agencies. In their view, developing countries have hidden military spending as social welfare spending following donor threats to withdraw aid. Attempts must be made to address the underlying cause of such spending which is often the undemocratic influence of powerful military establishments. Donors should instead work with developing countries to make their true levels of military spending transparent to parliament and citizens.

Contributing to the briefing, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias comments that "such budgetary priorities underlie a grotesque irony: many of the poorest states hoard supplies of tanks and weapons to 'defend' citizens who are far more threatened by malnutrition and preventable diseases."

The outlook is not entirely depressing however. Many individual countries - rich and poor - have begun to reduce their military spending, but there is a great challenge ahead in the current ‘War on Terror’ atmosphere according to Sir Richard Jolly whereby countries must explore how to balance their expenditures so as to prevent or control the true threats to the security of their citizens; and not forgetting the countries exporting arms who need to assess their own economics needs against their commitments to support sustainable development. Abolishing the army like Costa Rica did in 1949 could be the best solution.

Source: Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex