by James Mpinga
No amount of arms spending can buy any country, no matter how powerful, any peace. As countries, across the globe spend billions on arms to defend borders, personal or “human” security within borders is getting worse, and the United States is no exception, says a report published for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The Human Development Report 1994, published by Oxford University on behalf of UNDP, urges countries to put human ahead of national security around the world. Its central message is forceful and foreboding, yet devoid of rhetoric.
In 1992, for example, the United States spent US$290 billion on territorial security, while crime within its borders cost that country $425 billion — and many lives.
”That same year, more than two million workers were physically attacked, and 20 children a day died from gunshot wounds,” the report says.
In developing countries, vast amounts of social funds are also diverted to arms — although chances of dying from malnutrition and preventable disease are 33 times greater than those of dying in a war of external aggression.
Human Development Report 1994, argues that human insecurity has been “globalized” by now. “The poor nations are concerned about hunger and disease, the rich countries with drugs and crime.”
These two parallel concerns are more graphic in South Africa and the United States than anywhere else.
What is bad for white America is worse for black America: one-third of whites live in areas polluted by carbon monoxide, when the figure for blacks is nearly 50 percent. Unemployment among US blacks is twice that for whites.
In South Africa, the post-apartheid administration must cope with a black-white gap in human development as wide as that between Spain and Congo, the UNDP report says. Racial disparities in South Africa are not just between two peoples. “These are almost two different continents,” the report argues.
South Africa ranks 93 on the Human Development Index (HDI), a yardstick UNDP uses in ranking 173 countries by combining life expectancy, educational levels and basic purchasing power. If taken as separate countries, white South Africa would rank 24 in the world, just after Spain, while black South Africa would rank 123, just above Congo.
James Gustave Speth, Administrator of UNDP, argues that more resources should be spent on fighting the growing threat of global poverty, not the receding threat of the Cold War. “We need resources to ensure human security and not merely territorial security,” he adds.
With the end of the Cold War, global military spending declined by 3.6 percent between the peak spending years 1987 and 1991, creating a “peace dividend” of US$935 billion. “But the resulting peace dividend has not been used to finance the world’s social agenda or provide human security,” the report points out.
Another US$460 billion could be saved over the next five years if global military spending continues to decline by three percent a year. The record to date has been dismal: several poor nations are spending more on arms than on education and health.
Together, poor and rich countries share the responsibility for human security. On average, poor nations have 19 soldiers for every doctor. “If anything, the soldiers are more likely to reduce, than increase, personal security.” Regrettably, the rich countries encouraging the arms trade are the very nations entrusted with global security policy — the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
To date, over 86 percent of the global exports in conventional weapons to developing countries comes from, in descending order, Russia, the United States, France, China and the United Kingdom.
The biggest military spender in the third world is India — which has immense unmet human promises. Some 20 MiG jet fighters were once bought at the expense of basic education for 15 million Indian girls now out of school.
In Africa, Nigeria bought 80 battle tanks from Britain at a cost that could have helped immunize two million children now at risk — and provide family planning to 17 million couples.
This year’s report calls for bold steps, including a phase-out in all military assistance programmes over the next three years. “If a country were spending more on its army than its people, this should certainly give donors pause for thought,” the report urges.
At worst, human insecurity can lead to bloodshed and a “Somalia-like” national breakdown – with potential to escalate into an international hotspot. Early warning signals include deteriorating food consumption, high unemployment and declining wages, human rights violations, ethnic violence, widening regional disparities and overemphasis on military spending.
“If several of these indicators point in the same direction, the country is probably heading for collapse,” the report warns.
The report already classifies eight developing nations as “countries in crisis” — Afghanistan, Angola, Haiti, Iraq, Mozambique, Myanmar, Sudan and Zaire. When the report was being prepared, ethnic rivalry in Rwanda was still brewing. It graduated too soon from “other countries that could follow the same path” to the full-scale theatre of bloodletting now underway. (SARDC)
