[afro-nets] Military spending and development

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Military spending and development
---------------------------------

 From Richard Jolly, IDS, UK. (Insights 50)

The increase in military spending has been squeezing the re-
sources available for development. Globally, total military
spending has returned to Cold War levels and underlies gross
misallocation of resources....with under-spending on the broader
challenges of human security and human development.

Since 1998, global military spending has increased by 6% in real
terms to almost 800 billion USD in 2002 (1 trillion USD in 2003).

The dominance of the military in political decision-making is on
the rise both in the North and in the South.

The US spent around 6% of its GDP on the military in 2003. Since
September 11, 2001, the US Congress has allocated some 50 bil-
lion USD from the national budget for military operations in Af-
ghanistan and 100 billion USD for operations in Iraq. (All of
Sub-Saharan Africa countries together have an annual GDP of
around 310 billion USD!!).

In poorer countries, increases in military spending as a % of
GDP are associated with slowdowns in economic growth. The 1999
South Africa military purchases (7 billion USD) could have pur-
chased combination therapy for all 5 million AIDS sufferers for
2 yrs; the 2004 India purchase of an aircraft carrier from Rus-
sia (1.5 billion USD) could have provided basic survival income
for one year for over 1 million families.

Human security should shift attention to the security of commu-
nities and individuals, away from the security of territory or
nations -- thus broadening the concept of security to 'social
security'. For this, we have to define a core of threats to hu-
man security in order to make priorities operational and balance
expenditures to a sane level.