Visiting Japan a few years ago changed the way I look at the difference between conventional and nuclear war.
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the target for the first atomic bomb dropped on civilian populations, a chilling example of the use of non-conventional weapons. That moment is now commemorated around the world every August.
But when I saw Hisoshima, it was a bright and bustling place, and the only obvious sign of a catastrophic past was the absence of anything from the period before 1945 – save for one beautiful tree left unharmed and the smashed and twisted relic of one building, the only rubble kept as a memento.
After a day’s numbing tour of the peace memorial and another day touring the newly-sprouted city, I returned to Tokyo. One of the world’s five most powerful cities, Tokyo stands alone among the world’s great cities for having no significant signs of human habitation from before 1945. That city had been bombed “back into the stone age,” by conventional planes dropping conventional firebombs.
This reality is worth noting when the world is spending more on military tools than ever before, much of that for conventional weapons. That’s why, for example, August commemorations of Hiroshima need to reflect on recent Canadian decisions to spend $18 billion on conventional military tools – based on a tally of new fighter planes, the contract for maintaining them, as well as two new naval ships costing a mere $2.6 billion. I worry that people, even critics, don’t get it.
To date, most commentators on the arms deal controversy have criticized the proposed purchasing contract. It’s been called a “boondoggle” because one of the largest purchasing contracts in Canadian history will be awarded solely to one U.S corporate giant, Lockheed Martin, without benefit of a competitive bid subject to public oversight or input. The House of Commons defence committee has not even been convened. The lack of governance smells bad in an age when transparency is seen as essential to democracy; a retired assistant deputy minister of defence has publicly protested this.
The military logic, if there is such a thing, also comes up wanting, say most commentators. Why a one-engine plane, instead of a more resilient model with two engines? Why a “flying Cadillac” that can’t fly very far without refueling, making it difficult to service protection of Canadian sovereignty or conduct search and rescue in the Arctic? Why are these planes so similar to the stealth planes recently bought by the U.S. military, when Canada has rarely mounted surprise attacks of aggression?
Because of the impact my visits to Hiroshima and Tokyo had on me, I’d like to explore this deal from a different angle. I want to figure out why, two decades after the cold war ended and a period of some dampening of nuclear overkill capability, governments of all types and sizes are spending more than ever on tools of war.
According to research by the well-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures in 2009 topped $1.5 trillion. That’s more than the total income of half the world’s population, about 2.4 per cent of the world’s total economic expenditures, or about $217 for each person in the world today – enough to solve at least one major problem such as hunger every year.
Two-thirds of that war money is spent by the same Big 5 world powers who sit on the United Nations security council, and who are formally responsible for world collective security (aka world peace), as well as the UN’s millennial commitments to end poverty, hunger and discrimination.
U.S. spending accounts for 46 per cent of global spending on war tools. The UN’s entire budget amounts to 1.8 per cent of weapons spending.
Long ago, in the period after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell, there was talk of a “peace dividend” – of money freed up from military purposes and made available for human development, not destruction. Indeed, there was a significant decline in military spending during the 1990s – from $1.2 trillion in 1985 to 809 billion in 1998. Then along came the terrorist threat – a threat quite different from that posed by competing national governments, usually fought out during wars. But that’s when budgets to fight enemy governments soared – up 48 per cent relative to 2000. The U.S. alone spends 44 times more on weapons than all six governments labeled as rogue states;
Though people like me, who promote food-based economic development strategies, like to brag that demand for food is recession-proof, I have to admit that the sources of life are nowhere near as recession-proof as the sources of death. In 2009, a year before G20 nations decided it was time to clamp down on government spending to stimulate economic recovery, 16 members of the elite club spent more on weapons than the year before.
Oddly enough, few analysts of the global economic recession attribute any damage to world economies wrought by this expenditure on materials that create no social, health, community or other value and very few jobs – compared to what that money would yield if invested in food and shelter, both labor-intensive sectors. But prisons and armies – what some economists call military and gulag Keynesianism – always get to the front of the line.
By global standards for wealthy nations, Canada remains a bit player. As a bit player, Canada spends about 19 billion a year on the military, or about 1.3 per cent of the GNP. That doesn’t affect the world balance of terror, just the misbalancing of priorities. As the late Tommy Douglas (founder of Canada’s medicare system, among other accomplishments) used to say, the US has hawks and doves; but Canadian governments are always parrots.
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