Disarmament for Development

This article was written by Alyn Ware at the Peace Foundation in New Zealand – and challenges us to consider the links between military spending and poverty. For the original blog post go to: http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/blog/view/403

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

US President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Militarism is probably the world’s largest barrier to ending poverty. Whether it be armies and weapons of war, or small arms flowing into our neighbourhoods and local communities, militarism destroys communities, wastes resources and prevents sustainable development. Military and weapons spending consumes resources that could be applied instead to human needs. The flow of arms into a conflict region destroys democratic and traditional control structures for land-use, production and the economy and replaces this with warlords, gang leaders and militias.

Armed conflicts push people out of their houses, off their lands and into slavery, refugee camps or having to accept other subhuman conditions. The use of weapons kills or maims people, taking them out of the workforce and adding an additional economic burden of medical care for the wounded. Weapons testing and use also destroys the environment, whether it be the devastation from nuclear weapons testing, the farmlands no longer usable because of landmines or cluster munitions, the toxins released from explosions in war or other weaponry like depleted uranium weapons.

And the use of military vehicles – aircraft, ships, rockets, tanks, armoured vehicles – in exercises and military operations constitutes possibly the largest single global contributor to carbon emissions and climate change.

Addressing militarism is thus the best hope we have of achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals of ending poverty, achieving universal education, providing primary health care, adequately combating major diseases, addressing key environmental concerns such as climate change and providing sufficient renewable energy for basic needs.

“Nothing is more useless in developing a nation’s economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development than the financial burden of war.”

King Hussein of Jordan

“Human security is a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence, a dissident who was not silenced. Human security is not a concern with weapons - it is a concern with human life and dignity.”

Pax Christi International, 2009

Some Facts....

• US$1.6 trillion = annual global military spending
• US$320 billion = annual amount (additional to current spending) required to meet all of the UN Millennium Development Goals, i.e. 20% of the global military budget
• US$100 billion = annual amount spent on nuclear weapons globally
• US$100 billion = annual amount required to end extreme poverty and provide primary education for everyone in the world
• US$14 billion = cost of UK Trident nuclear submarine programme - 4 submarines (some estimates put the replacement cost at double this figure)
• US$14 billion = amount required to Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases
• 8 million – number of children worldwide who died before their 5th birthday in 2009 due to poverty
• US$8 million = the cost of 8 Exocet missiles
• 300,000 = number of lives lost annually to small arms and handguns
• US$15,000 – cost to build one school in rural Nicaragua or Pakistan and pay the teachers’ salaries for one year
• US$15,000 – cost of two cluster munitions