inside the glass house

Money for might but not for poverty!
NEW YORK – If Martians land in our planet one day and read the UN's millennium development goals (MDGs) and look at what we are really doing, they'd think we are crazy, says World Bank President James Wolfensohn.

We now spend an average of about $50 billion annually on development aid and poverty alleviation but squander a whopping $950 billion on our armed forces. If the world's rich nations spend the $950 billion to really fight poverty and disease, Wolfensohn argues, they wouldn't need to spend even $50 billion on their militaries. Sounds logical. But unfortunately, it is in the realm of political fantasy.

Undoubtedly, the root causes of some of the world's ethnic conflicts and civil wars are primarily economic and social deprivation. And one of the best contemporary examples is Malaysia: a country, which overcame its onetime devastating ethnic strife through sheer economic empowerment. But few countries have followed the Malaysian role model.

And according to World Bank figures, one sixth of the world's six billion people own about 80 percent of the world's wealth, while another sixth live below the poverty line of less than a dollar a day. That equation too may have to undergo a radical change soon since the US dollar keeps plummeting in world currency markets, particularly against the euro.

Except perhaps in countries like Sri Lanka, the US dollar is purchasing much less in goods and services in the outside world, as the American currency continues to take a beating."The world is not two worlds, of the rich and the poor. It's really one world, in which we are connected by trade, by finance, by environment, by drugs, by health and even by terror,'' says Wolfensohn.

So, in effect, the rich will have to ensure that the poorer folks of the world build a better future. Or the world will be beset with wars and terror spilling across borders and into some of the more "civilized" societies of the West.

Meanwhile most developing nations are far behind in meeting the eight millennium development goals– including reduction of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women– approved by the UN General Assembly in September 2000.

The deadline to meet these goals is 2015. But the highly ambitious UN agenda to significantly improve the human condition over the next 11 years is in trouble.

As a result, the UN is planning a major summit meeting in September 2005 to assess the progress made by developing nations, and what action it should take to make the targeted date of 2015 a reality.

The UN says that developing nations need an additional $100 billion– over and above the current $50 billion annually– to reduce poverty, illiteracy and disease by 50 percent by 2015. A substantial cut in military spending by the world's industrial nations would help resolve the problem. But with new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan– and with the spread of terrorism worldwide– military spending has been rising, not declining. A new UN study released last week says that global military spending may be heading for the $1 trillion mark– that's about $1,000 billion– by the end of this year reaching Cold War spending levels.

The conservative prediction is that it is expected to rise to nearly $950 billion dollars by the end of this year: up from $900 billion in 2003.But the 2004 estimates would be "substantially higher if the costs of the major armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were included", says the study.

The appropriation for Afghanistan and Iraq this year is about $25 billion, but this is expected to more than double by the end of 2004. US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate last May that war spending in Afghanistan and Iraq was approaching about $5.0 billion a month. He predicted that total costs for 2005 would be about $50 billion to $60 billion. At the height of the Cold War between the US and the then Soviet Union in the 1970s, global military spending rose to over $900 billion. But after the end of the Cold War, marking the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it kept declining, reaching about $780 billion in 1999. And the recent increases are due primarily to a significant rise in the US military budget.

"The US now accounts for about half of world military spending, meaning that it is spending nearly as much as the rest of the world combined," says Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, executive director of the Programme on Global Security and Disarmament at the University of Maryland. "This is difficult to justify on the basis of known or anticipated threats to US national security," she added.

The world's top five spenders-- the US, Japan, the United Kingdom, France and China-- account for about 62 percent of total world military expenditure. The U.S.-led war on terror-- following attacks on the United States in September 2001-- has also triggered a dramatic increase in US military spending thereby boosting overall global figures.

US spending alone has increased from $296 billion in 1997 to $336 billion in 2002 and $379 billion in 2003. The final tab for this year is likely to be about $500 billion dollars in US defence spending. As conflicts and terrorism continue to rise worldwide, there is little or no hope for a significant change in priorities: from military build-ups to economic regeneration. The world will have to learn to live with this political reality.

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