DISARMAMENT: U.N. Members Refuse to Reveal Military Budgets

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 1996 (IPS) - An overwhelming majority of U.N. member-states — about 165 of the 185 — are fighting shy of baring their military budgets in public.

As a result, a U.N. exercise in military transparency, approved by the General Assembly in December 1980, is in danger of dying, warns the 15-member European Union (EU).

“Such a low participation is cause for concern and indicates that the request to report military expenditures does not have sufficient acceptance by the community of member-states,” the EU says in a letter to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The EU points out that it attaches “high importance” to the U.N. system of standardised reporting of military expenditures as instituted by the General Assembly in 1980.

“Regrettably, although this measure of transparency and confidence-building has been in effect for about 15 years, the participation of U.N. member states in 1995 barely exceeded 20 and is thus very low,” the EU adds.

The participants in last year’s exercise included Argentina, Austria, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Finland, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, and Sweden.

The United Nations publishes, at least twice a year, a breakdown of individual military budgets as submitted by member- states. The report includes spending on arms procurement, military construction, salaries, operations and maintenance of weapons systems, and research and development.

Natalie Goldring of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), a Washington-based think-tank, says the U.N. exercise is in danger of fading away.

She says that although the General Assembly approved the exercise, the plan did not have much support from the international community.

Noting that the exercise was “a very good idea” in terms of transparency, she told IPS that most countries were cautious about military matters. “Unless there is a strong outcry from the international community, there isn’t much pressure for countries to participate.”

Goldring said the publication of military budgets was to have been a parallel exercise with the U.N. Arms Register, published annually by the world body. Both exercises are voluntary.

Since the Arms Register was set up in 1992, only about 85 of the 185 U.N. members have participated in the effort to record countries’ major arms imports and exports. à Daniel Gallik, Editor of ‘World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers’ which is published by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), says most countries have been reluctant to go public with their defence spending because of “the traditional secrecy relating to military matters.”

Gallik’s own study, published every two years, depends mostly on information in the public domain.

The reluctance of most countries to reveal their defence spending is also attributed to a recent outcry by Western donors that development assistance should be conditioned on military expenditures. On the basis of this argument, developing nations with high military budgets would receive reduced development aid.

Although such conditions have not been laid down either by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both institutions have discussed the possibility of doing in-depth studies on Third World military spending.

According to ACDA, the world’s five major military spenders are the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and France. The largest military spenders among the developing nations are Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, India and Israel.

Since the end of the Cold War, however, military spending has been on the decline. In its latest study, ACDA says that the downward trend in world military spending continued in 1994 with a five percent drop, to 840 billion dollars. This was the lowest level since 1966 and 35 percent below the all-time peak of 1.3 trillion dollars in 1987.

The 1994 Human Development Report, commissioned by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), says that global military spending declined between 1987 and 1994 at an estimated average annual rate of 3.6 percent, yielding a cumulative “peace dividend” of 935 billion dollars.

Of this, about 810 billion dollars was saved by industrial nations and the remaining 125 billion dollars by developing countries. But the report says that one of the biggest mysteries of the post-Cold War era was that the so-called “peace dividend” was never found.