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War: A transparent
threat
By Thalif Deen
NEW
YORK - Breaking long-held traditions of confidentiality,
an increasingly large number of developing nations have
decided to voluntarily declare their military budgets to
the United Nations.
The world body has "recorded
an unprecedented increase in the number of governments
reporting their defense spending", UN spokesman Fred
Eckhard said this week. "It opens a new chapter in the
progress of the transparency instrument."
In the
1980s and 1990s, fewer than 30 governments reported
military expenditure data to the UN standardized
instrument for reporting of military expenditures,
established by the General Assembly in 1980. But since
2000, the level of participation has increased by over
50 percent, according to the UN's department of
disarmament affairs.
Of 191 UN member states,
more than 100 have reported their military spending at
least once, while 77 states have submitted their annual
reports this year, up from 61 in 2001 and 35 in 2000.
"These achievements reflect an overall trend
towards greater transparency in military matters among
member states," the department said.
The regular
declarations have come mostly from Western nations,
including the United States, France, Britain, Germany,
Italy and Canada. But this year's annual report also
includes declarations from Malaysia, Romania, Belarus,
Mongolia, Albania and Mauritius. Other developing
nations who have gone public with their military budgets
are Jordan, Lebanon, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone,
Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nepal,
Peru, the Philippines and Thailand.
The budgets
detail money spent on aircraft, artillery, armored
vehicles, the costs of building air and naval bases, of
operating and maintaining military equipment and the
costs for military personnel and reservists. The world's
biggest military spender continues to be the United
States, whose defense budget for 2001 was US$327.5
billion, according to its declaration.
The
London-based International Institute for Strategic
Studies says the US budget has risen to an estimated
$343 billion in 2002, up from $300 billion dollars in
2000.
Other big spenders in 2001 include Germany
($24.3 billion), Russia ($9.2 billion), France ($28.4
billion), and Britain ($36.8 billion). While
transparency has grown, total world military spending
has risen to about $850 billion dollars per year, "an
amount approaching average Cold War spending levels",
warned UN Under-Secretary-General Jayantha Dhanapala.
The spending is "not only diverting precious
financial, material and human resources from productive
to non-productive pursuits, but was also jeopardizing
humanity's common natural environment and the prospects
for social and economic development of all nations", he
said.
Disarmament itself has gone out of
fashion, Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Shamsher Mobin
Chowdhury told the UN's committee on disarmament and
international security last week. "There was a
complacency over past achievements, as well as
frustration with the major military powers, who were not
willing or ready to move seriously towards general and
complete disarmament," he said.
Enny Onobu, a
delegate from Nigeria, told the committee that the
amount of military spending was "simply unconscionable
in a world where hundreds of millions of people earned
less than a dollar a day".
The UN department of
disarmament affairs says there has also been "a
significant increase" in the number of participants in
the annual UN register of conventional arms. The
register, which was established in 1992, records the
major weapons purchases by member states that
voluntarily submit their declarations to the world body.
These weapons - some of them purchased on a
confidential basis under non-disclosure arms agreements
- include fighter planes, combat aircraft, missiles,
warships, artillery and military vehicles.
A
total of 162 states have reported at least once since
the creation of the register.
For 2001, 120
governments have so far submitted their declarations,
which is the highest level recorded so far, representing
an increaser of more than 20 percent over the last two
years. Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean have
recorded their highest participation level this year.
Notable absentees are most of the Middle Eastern
nations, who are some of the world's biggest arms
buyers. But they have shied away from the register since
its inception, said the department.
The increase
in participation (in both the arms register and the
military expenditure report) is not an accident, says
Natalie J Goldring, executive director of the program on
global security and disarmament at the University of
Maryland. "It's the product of years of work to
strengthen these mechanisms. The UN's department of
disarmament affairs has worked intensively with key
governments and regional and sub-regional groups to make
this happen."
Unfortunately, said Goldring,
there is plenty of bad news as well. "Small arms and
light weapons - many of the weapons of greatest concern
- are not covered by the UN register. As in the past,
the lack of response from so many countries from the
Middle East is disappointing. In addition, while the
reports present a great deal of information, the United
Nations lacks mechanisms for analyzing the information
or acting on it."
(Inter Press Service)
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