WHEN NORTH Korea’s young dictator Kim Jong Un launched a long-range missile last week – to show off his country’s military muscle and mark the 100th anniversary of grandfather Kim Il Sung’s birth – it cost the impoverished, famine-ridden country $850 million. By the time the missile blew up over the sea a few minutes later, Kim had squandered enough to pay for North Korea’s food needs for a year.
The obscene contrast in priorities is eloquent testimony to the nature of a pariah regime. But arms profligacy is by no means the preserve of Pyongyang. Last year, global arms expenditure rose marginally to €1.3 trillion, or 12 times the total development aid spending of the rich countries of the OECD. It would in one year be enough to pay off all the outstanding sovereign debt of Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece; or to buy up all of Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Google, and still have €500 billion in spare change.
The new arms figures, compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), do, however, reflect harder times in the West – for the first time in 13 years wealthy western countries have actually trimmed their military budgets. As a percentage of global gross domestic product (GDP), military spending actually declined marginally 0.1 per cent to 2.5 per cent. In the US, Obama’s budget cuts, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and a pull-back in Afghanistan are likely to continue the trend.
But Russia, surpassing France and Britain to become the world’s third biggest spender, and China have continued to increase spending on weapons – by more than 9 per cent and 6 per cent respectively last year.
China, the world number two, has raised its military spending in real terms by 170 per cent since 2002, mirroring its rise as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. Its increasing projection in the region as a military power, notably in terms of naval power and missile technology, has made neighbours nervous, although Sipri argues that China’s military technology remains one or two generations behind that of the US and that talk of a regional arms race might be premature. But India and Vietnam, both of whom have border or sea disputes with China, have increased military spending by 66 and 82 per cent respectively over the last decade. Taiwan and the Philippines have, however, responded with only modest increases in military spending, the institute says.
The world is not becoming a safer place; turning swords into ploughshares has yet to catch on.