WASTEFUL AND DANGEROUS MILITARY EXPENDITURES

ARMS VERSUS SOCIA;L BENEFIT

The seventies saw a new aspect added to the phenomenon of nation-states expanding their respective collections of arms.  This next phase consisted of sales of arms, by some of the major producing nations to countless countries that possessed capital and/or resources to expend in exchange therefor.  The states of North Africa have been said to account for approximately ten percent of the world's arms imports.  Furthermore, beginning in 1972, and continuing for the next ten years, France's sales of weaponry to oil-rich Middle Eastern countries increased at the rate of twenty two percent per year.  Other weapon-producing nations participate, and continue to play their parts in this same deadly game--selling to various states (including some that can least afford to buy arms--but having the fastest growing appectites).

The folly of these wasteful expenditures is especially clear when we realize how much specific good could be accomplished by the cost of a single specific weapon or program.  For example, a Swedish statesman named Olof Palme once calculated that the price of a single nuclear weapon could provide a thousand years of nursing care (or a year's nursing care for a thousand people). 

As a further note, it has been sadly reckoned that, between 1946 and 1993, the United States and the Soviet Republic had spent at least Five Trillion Dollars upon their arsenals, in piecemeal efforts to instill fear in the hearts of their respective potential enemies.  And this has not been the end of it.  Today, a number of nations are still said to be involved in arms acquisition, involving nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction, as deterrents to attack by each other, and upon one another. 

Again, I must repeat the question.  How much more benefit could have been accomplished by mankind, had these foolich expenditures, the needless extravagance that accompanies them, as well as the unfortunate conflicts that have sometimes sprung from them, never taken place?

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A standard of measurement that serves to illustrate the vastness of a nation-state's mi.itary spending is that country's Gross National Product.  It indicates the value of said country's total final production in the course of a year. 

Today, five to six percent of the world's gross production is directed toward arms and the military.  But there have been, and still are, periods during which particular countries expend much greater proportions of their gross national product upn things military.  For example, by the end of World War II, the United States was devoting thirty seven percent of its gross national product to its participation in that conflict.  Afterward, our expenditures remained above ten percent during the 1950s.  During this same postwar period, Portugal needed to utilize forty five percent of its gross national product to maintain military forces within its failing colonial possessions in Africa.  Istrael's per capita defense spending has long been among the highest in the world.  And, during the 1980s, the Soviet Union was applying one quarter of its gross national product to armaments.

The "bottom line" to all of this is the obvious concept that if nations could reduce or eliminate their need to be ever ready to fight one another (such as by ceasing to be nations any longer, but parts of an overall entity comprising man on earth), these vast assets could be utilized toward the reduction of worldwide poverty, as well as resolution of some of our most pressing social and environmental problems. 

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Of course, it stands to reason that social and environbmental programs and progress are slowed, stopped, and even reversed, when resources are diverted to weapons and warfare.  This has been a fact throughout human history.  During centuries before the birth of Christ, social progress has been said to have been frequently "retarded by endemic wars between neighboring cities or tribes."  Later, during the Roman era, expanded military activities eventually came to require a doubling of the size of the Roman army; and a consequent imposition of a heavier burden of taxation upon a populsation that had likely grown smaller.  This resulted in a diminution of some of the benefits that had been available in prior days to the average Roman citizen.

Even in India during the seventeenth century, military campaigns, and support of a class of military elites, resulted in a parasitic drain upon the economy, and a burden of taxation upon the peasantry consisting of as much as one half of their income.

A century later, revolution in France was precipitated by financial collapseof the "overloaded" reigning government.  The cause was that which typically overloads all governments:  war costs, upkeep of armies and navies, and public debt attributable to prior wars.  By 1788, both the French and British governments were devoting about twenty five percent of their respective annual public expenditures in support of their military organizations, and another fifty percent to payment of interest upon the debt which resulted therefrom.  This left little remainder for the welfare of the citizens--who were the actual bearers of this huge bill to begin with.

By 1900 we are told that taxation had risen in many places to "unthinkable" levels.  Again, the causes were generally always similar:  expanded armies, naval races, increasing military technology, etc., etc.; and the results, likewise, the same:  less attention to social needs than could otherwise have been rendered.

In 1913, Germany officially "scolded" the United States for selling arms to our Balkan allies--which arms were said to have been purchased with funds better utilized by these governments to help feed their starving citizens.  It is reasonable to conclude that such a reproach constituted incredible hypocrisy on the part of Germany, who was simultaneously in the process of arming herself "to the teeth."

 Beginning in the 1930s, Russia concentrated a giant portion of its expenditures, and the skills of many of its people, upon heavy industry and armaments.  Its penchant for planning is said to have virtually ignored consumer needs, and to prevent any real advancement in the living standards of its citizens.  Each year, the Soviet Union's arms burden grew larger; and its economic difficulties grew accordingly.  By the sixties, the burdens and deprivations had become quite regular but nonetheless quite difficult for its people; however the government was stubbornly unrelenting.  Perhaps this is why David Halberstam, author of The Next Century, described his impression while standing in Red Square in 1990, as observing a "sluggish society with a great many missiles and not much else." 

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