Military spending and development

War in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflict between Israel and Palestine and terrorist attacks in a score of major cities have dominated the international headlines in the last three years. Few doubt their interconnections – although the sequence of cause and effect are matters of passionate debate. Meanwhile, instability grows and development, the Millennium Development Goals and poverty reduction are sidelined. Little attention is given to how the increase in military spending has been squeezing the resources available for development.

This issue of insights pulls together some of the preliminary facts and figures on military spending. It shows how globally, total military spending has returned to Cold War levels and underlines the gross misallocation of resources which these expenditures represent. In short, 2004 is marked by vast and rising global spending on weapons and the military with under-spending on the broader challenges of human security and human development.

Once the Cold War had ended, global military spending fell rapidly for nearly a decade, from 1988 to 1998. This must be seen as a brief interlude. Total military spending has now been increasing for six years, with further increases likely. Since 1998 global military spending has increased by 6% in real terms to almost US$800 billion in 2002. It has been estimated that total military spending in 2003 was over $US1 trillion.

War in Iraq in 2003 has added greatly to this trend and the recent increases have been dominated by the rises in US military spending, which SIPRI estimates accounted for almost three quarters of the global increase between 1996 and 2002. Whereas the top 15 military spenders are mainly developed countries such as the US, Japan, the UK, France and Germany, in 2002 China and India increased their military spending in real terms by 18% and 9% respectively.

In terms of national resources, many developing countries spend a higher share of their national resources than many of the top 15. Including the costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it now looks like the US spent in the region of 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on the military in 2003. Yet in 2001, five Middle Eastern countries spent proportionately more. Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman all spent between 8% and 13% of their GDP on the military. Burundi and Ethiopia also spent more – 8% and 6.2% respectively. The fact that many of these countries are in the midst, or are just emerging from, conflict situations does not distract from the concern the development community should have about such high levels of military spending: military spending is a development issue on both economic and humanitarian grounds. On humanitarian grounds, military spending detracts from spending on schools, hospitals and social development. Amongst the economic grounds it is important to note that, in poorer countries, increases in military spending as a percentage of GDP are associated with slow downs in economic growth.

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But the outlook is not altogether depressing. Out of the 90 countries for which there are comparable data, military spending in three quarters of them was less as a percentage of GDP in 2001 than it was in 1988. Of the countries included which are classified by the UN Human Development Index as ‘low human development’, two thirds had reduced their military spending. The numbers of ‘high’ and ‘medium’ human development countries that reduced their spending were even higher – 86% and 72% respectively. The challenge is to continue and extend this trend over the coming months and years.

The Peace Dividend

In common with many other countries, the US marked the end of the Cold War with a rapid reduction in its military spending over the 1990s. At the same time however it cut government spending, leading many to argue that the promised ‘Peace Dividend’ had not materialised. A more considered analysis revealed, however, that the reduction in US military spending resulted in major reductions in the US government deficit and in interest rates over the 1990s. These reductions were major forces behind the growth of the US economy in the 1990s, helping to make it the longest lasting period of growth in US history. This growth in turn had a positive impact on the global economy – making the US the locomotive of the world economy, with actual and potential benefits to the poorest and lowest income countries. Had it not been for the ‘stop-go’ policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions and the disruptive effects of local conflicts encouraged by the arms trade, the positive effects of reductions in US military expenditure would have been felt wider still across the developing world.

As Kosiak explains, recent military spending for the current US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan have sent the US budget into a record level of deficit: the prospect for the US, and therefore the world, economy for the next few years does not look good – emphasising how military expenditure in one area of the world affects the welfare and livelihoods of all – not simply those on the direct receipt of military attack.

Human security – the new challenge

But not only is too much money being spent on military equipment and personnel. If the aim is to improve human security and development, money is often being spent in the wrong places. Over recent decades the nature of insecurity has changed. No longer does most insecurity stem from ‘traditional threats’ across national borders created by an identifiable enemy state. The predominant threats today are increasingly those to human security – from urban crime, HIV/AIDS, population displacement and gender violence, which themselves arise from a variety of causes but have a common impact – making the lives of large numbers of people in many countries less secure and more vulnerable.

As the context has changed, so also must the response. Disarmament and development today needs a new approach, related to these new and changing threats to security, to their new causes and to the global context in which there is one super-power. These new concepts of human security have been set out in UN Development Programme Human Development Report of 1994, in various documents prepared by the governments of Canada, Japan and Norway, and in the report of the UN’s Commission on Human Security entitled ‘Human Security Now - protecting and empowering people’. There is now a need for governments to allocate resources in response to the human security concerns that most affect their citizens – as Cell argues in her report on recent legal challenges to the government of South Africa.

A human security approach would direct resources and action to the security of people’s lives, well-being and welfare. Human security would shift attention to the security of individuals and communities and away from the security of territory or nations. It would also emphasise the security of people everywhere – in their homes, in their jobs, in their streets, in their communities and in the environment. Above all, it would give priority to action to improve security through economic, social and institutional development, much less than through arms and military action.

Broadening the concept of security in this way raises basic questions about the level of military spending in relation to the diversity of threats faced by a country’s whole population. As Hiller urges, these questions need to be asked both by citizens of developing countries and by those of rich countries that sell expensive and deadly military equipment. Hendrickson and Ball further illustrate the irresponsibility of donor agencies who demand that poor countries minimise military spending, yet fail to recognise and adequately address the root causes of high military spending: poor governance, the dominance of the military in political decision-making and a lack of public accountability.

Conceiving security in terms of the threats to individuals stimulates questions about under-spending on actions outside the military which might be more effective than the military in tackling the causes of human insecurity. These would include spending on the police force, judges and courts, community action and health services, and a broad range of social and economic measures to tackle unemployment and environmental deterioration. It would also include, as Muggah explains, actions and programmes to undo the negative effects of earlier rounds of military spending and the resultant proliferation of small arms.

For most people in developing countries, the largest threats to human security come from urban crime, drug and mafia wars, land mines and small arms proliferation and violence stirred by racial, cultural or religious intolerance. Gender violence affects many women in both developing and developed countries. There are threats to human security from HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, environmental threats from floods and drought, earthquakes or typhoons as well as man-made causes of environmental deterioration. The list is long and one of the real challenges is to define a core of threats to human security in order to make the priorities operational.

The most important reason for setting human security as the frame is to present a full range of choices in deciding how to allocate resources. Each country needs to explore the balance of expenditures to prevent or control the leading threats to its security, across the core of causes of human insecurity. Countries exporting arms also need to assess their own economic needs against their commitments to support sustainable development in other countries. Such analysis is never easy – but neither are decisions on military budgets. At least in focusing on the core causes of human insecurity, a broader range of concerns and measures is brought into the analysis. For most countries, this will reveal gross imbalances – too much spending on the military, and too little on other measures for the prevention and control of threats to human security. Mediation and negotiation are also vital steps for the prevention and control of dissident and marginalised groups, and for building bridges of reconciliation and inclusion.

Though action may seem difficult, the experience of Costa Rica demonstrates the enormous benefits which can flow to countries which manage to abolish their armies and redirect resources to health, education and other areas of human development and security. As the former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Laureate Oscar Arias so powerfully puts it at the end of this issue ‘the global arms trade, and its accompanying glut of military spending, continues to represent the single most significant perversion of worldwide priorities today. Without massive and coordinated action, militarism will continue to be a scourge on our hopes for a more peaceful and just twenty-first century’.

Richard Jolly
Honorary Professorial Fellow
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton
BN1 9RE
UK
R.Jolly@ids.ac.uk

UN Commission on Human Security www.humansecurity-chs.org

Information from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) www.sipri.se, and World Bank World Development Indicators, 2003

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