DISARMAMENT: Peace Dividend Overrated, Says Former U.N. Head

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 2 1997 (IPS) - Former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali contends that the international community grossly overestimated the benefits of post-Cold War disarmament.

“I don’t even know whether there really was a peace dividend,” says Boutros-Ghali.

The former U.N. head, who served the world body for five years ending last December, says total costs of disarmament clearly outweighed the projected economic and financial benefits from global demilitarisation.

“We underestimated the price of disarmament,” Boutros-Ghali told IPS, noting the staggering costs of destroying chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles. “When (the international community) talked about a peace dividend, they did not take into consideration the price of destroying these huge stockpiles.”

The United States and Russia are the two major possessors of chemical weapons. As part of the post-Cold War disarmament process, the United States is expected to eliminate all its chemical weapons by 2004. Russia is expected to follow suit.

The United States has appropriated 4.2 billion dollars since 1988 for the destruction of its stockpile of chemical weapons. But the U.S. Department of Defence says that an additional 23.4 billion dollars is needed to complete the process.

The General Accounting Office, a U.S. Congressional watchdog body, said last month that key factors affecting the programme include public concerns about the safety of incineration and the impact of the destruction of chemical weapons on the environment.

For its part, the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) says that one of the biggest mysteries of the post-Cold War era is “the vanishing peace dividend.”

In its Human Development Report for 1994, the New York-based UNDP estimated that the peace dividend amounted to about 810 billion dollars in military savings from industrial nations and about 125 billion dollars from developing countries. The savings, to come mostly through military cuts, never found their way into social or economic development, as anticipated.

The Bonn International Centre for Conversion said last year that the overall costs of disarmament over 10 to 20 years was about 90 billion to 185 billion dollars.

The costs of disarmament include the dismantling of nuclear ballistic missile submarines, the mothballing of fighter aircraft, cleaning and safeguarding nuclear sites and facilities, and the dismantling of nuclear weapons.

Boutros-Ghali says he is disappointed that small arms continue to be the preferred instrument of war in most of the civil wars and conflicts throughout the world.

He says that during his stint at the United Nations, he advocated what he called “micro-disarmament” — the elimination of the use of small arms such as anti-personnel landmines, rocket- propelled grenades, and howitzers.

“But they still continue to pay attention to heavy arms and nuclear weapons and ignore small arms,” he says.

Boutros-Ghali, who was elected President of the Rome-based Society for International Development (SID) two weeks ago, sees a correlation between disarmament and development.

“One of the explanations for conflicts is poverty and under- development,” he says. “I consider these the two important elements of civil conflicts.”

Boutros-Ghali, who once said that “civil wars are no longer civil,” says that in his very first speech to the U.N. Security Council in January 1992, he pointed out the close links between peace and democracy on the one hand and development on the other.

“Development is not only the basis for peace but also the basis for democratisation,”‘ he adds.

During the last few years, the international community paid little attention to development, he says. “So any organisation that promotes development deserves our attention. That is why I am grateful that the Board decided to elected me president of SID,” a non-governmental organisation (NGO) of individuals and networks around the world.

He also laments the fact that official development assistance (ODA) from wealthy nations has been declining over the years. He sees an important role for NGOs to create the necessary awareness for investment in development.