Canada and the World

        Current Events with a Canadian Perspective

 

Last update

19 November 2010

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Alternatives to Arms Spending

 

Global spending on weapons and

military continues to rise

 

Herman Goering was second-in-command of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. In a radio broadcast in 1936 he said: “Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.”

 

This may be the origin of the phrase “Guns or Butter,” but it has become one that economists often use to describe the choices governments make.

 

Our planet does not have unlimited resources. So, decisions have to be made about how many resources to allocate for the defence of the state (guns) and how many for the needs of the people (butter).

 

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, governments around the world are increasingly choosing guns. Global military spending reached $1.204 trillion in 2006, an all-time high, and 37 percent greater than it was ten years earlier. That amounts to $182 for every single person on the planet.

 

Meanwhile, butter got about $104 billion in 2006; that’s the total amount of international development assistance spent by all countries. That amounts to the equivalent of $15 for every person on the planet. Development spending has increased over the last decade but it still represents a tiny fraction of military spending.

 

By far the biggest gun enthusiast is the United States. Under President George W. Bush its military spending has doubled. In 2010, the U.S. military budget was $636 billion. That’s more than six times bigger than its nearest rivals – China and Russia – which spend less than $100 billion each.

 

Kobus

The United States military has 21 B2 bombers, each of which is worth about $1.4 billion

 

The fourth President of the United States, James Madison (in office 1809-17), warned about the dangers of such heavy military spending. “Of all the enemies to public liberty,” he wrote in 1785, “war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes…known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

 

When spending on guns hugely outbalances spending on butter ordinary folks get uppity. Conflict often follows.

 

© Canada and the World, September 2008

Updated June 2010

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SOCIAL AND MILITARY SPENDING CONTRASTED

 

All of the Third World’s debt could be paid off in one go by diverting three quarters of U.S. annual military spending for one year and America would still have the world’s biggest defence budget.

 

Half of one percent of global arms spending would provide basic education for all.

 

Water and sanitation could be provided for every person by rerouting less than one percent of the world’s military spending.

 

Providing basic health and nutrition for everyone on Earth would cost about $13 billion, a little more than one percent of the global military budget.

 

The Millennium Development Goals - eliminating poverty, providing health care and education, access to clean water and food – could all be met by the 2015 deadline by redirecting just ten percent of the world’s military spending.

 

According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation: “For less than two-thirds of the cost of a ballistic missile defence system, the U.S. could fully fund the entire Millennium Development program.”

 

 

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