Rising military expenditure spiking world poverty

Not surprisingly, world military spending is not only on the upswing but is being led by the US. According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) findings, such spending has spiked by 37 percent over the past 10 years. Today global military expenditure stands at an unsettling 1.2 trillion dollars, making the world seem a very dangerous place to live in.

The continuing 'war on terror' has, no doubt, enabled the US to remain at the top of this spending league, accounting for 46 percent of military spending last year and for 62 per cent of the total increase. The US was followed by Britain, France, China and Japan, each accounting for four to five percent of the expenditure. What is particularly revelatory is that the top 15 countries account for 83 percent of the expenditure. The close bearing military expenditure has on national power is thus established.

The most thought-provoking SIPRI finding, however, is that rising military spending of states has gone hand-in-hand with growing national affluence and wealth. China is a case in point. While Chinese military spending outstripped that of Japan for the first time last year, it "is the prime example of a country where a booming economy, amongst other factors, has allowed a steep rise in military expenditure," the SIPRI report said.

The case of China is of particular salience because it has always identified itself with the Third World and has espoused the most vital causes of the latter.

China's budgetary outlay for social spending is not known to this writer but the chances are that the more a state is committed to expanding its military budget, the less financial resources there would be for social welfare. This is certainly true of many Third World countries which are intent on bolstering their military spending. Poverty has increased in direct proportion to war expenditure, for instance.

Even the US could be guilty of this distorted sense of priorities. The world is now told that New Orleans is still to recover substantially from the ravages left behind by Hurricane Catrina a couple of years ago. Apparently, social spending is not reaching the desired levels in all parts of even the US, but its military expenditure is continuing to soar.

The finding that emerges is that social concerns would take second place to national power and security considerations, which are the sole preoccupation of states whether they be powerful or powerless. In South Asia, amid burgeoning military budgets one finds vast populations sunk in poverty. It must be remembered that both, India and Pakistan are nuclear-powered.

The disquieting point is that this frenzy for military power would only grow relentlessly. It would grow in tandem with new threat perceptions emerging mainly among the world's rich and powerful. Take, for instance, the alarm triggered at the recent international conference in the US on a perceived "global terrorist nuke threat." At the conference held under the aegis of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT), there was a near consensus on US FBI director Robert Mueller's pronouncement that "nuclear terrorism is a global threat that requires a global response."

It was widely believed that the power of the West would be at stake if terror outfits, such as the Alqaeda, availed of the "international nuclear technology black market" and went in for "weapons of mass destruction."

What all this means is that the military spending of particularly the West would only spiral in the days ahead in response to these threat perceptions, increasingly imperilling the future of the world and plunging more and more humans into the poverty trap.

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