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in biotechnology multiply the potentially lethal applications of such weapons. Likewise, the deliberate manipulation of the environment (for example. through artificial earthquakes and floods) would have consequences far beyond the borders of those involved in a coflict, were they ever used. Chemical agents can seriously damage the environment, as demonstrated by the defoliants used in South-east Asia. Th dangerous and environmentally unpredictable consequences of biological and chemical weapons have led to international agreements banning their use.[1] But there is need for further efforts to strengthen the regimes to which these agreements contribute. In particular, the Geneva protocol prohibiting the use of chemical weapons should be supplemented by agreements prohibiting the production and stockpiling of such weapons.
23. Military applications of new technologies now threaten to make outer space a focus of international competition and conflict. (See Chapter 10.) Most countries in the international community see space as a global commons that should benefit humanity as a whole and be preserved from military competition a feeling reflected in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, under which nations agreed not to deploy weapons of mass destruction there. Governments should now agree on measures to prevent an arms race in space and stop it on Earth. Failing such agreement, the arms race could expand, with dire consequences for humanity.
3. The Costs of the 'Arms Culture'
24. The absence of war is not peace: nor does it necessarily provide the conditions for sustainable development. Competitive arms races breed insecurity among nations through spirals of reciprocal fear. Nations need to muster resources to combat environmental degradation and mass poverty. By misdirecting scarce resources, arms races contribute further to insecurity.
25. The coexistence of substantial military spending with unmet human needs has long evoked concern. President Eisenhower, for example, observed at the end his term in office that 'every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and art not clothed'[2]
26. Ciobaz military spending in 1985 was well in excess of $900 blllion.[3] This was more than the total income of the poorest half of humanity. It represents the equivalent of almost $1,000 for every one of the world's 1 billion poorest. Put another way, military sending surpassed the combined gross national products of China, India, and the African countries south of the Sahara. Moreover, global military spending has risen not only absolutely but proportionately – from an estimated 4.7 per cent of world output in 1960 to over 6 per cent – representing an increase of about 150 per cent in real (constant price) terms. Three-quarters of current expenditure is in the industrial world.[4]
27. The true cost of the arms race is the loss of what could have been produced instead with scarce capital, labour skills, and raw materials. The plants that manufacture weapons, the
- ↑ Outright banning of particularly lethal weapons has its origin in the St. Petersburg Declaration banning the use of 'dum-dum bullets' and the Hague war rules outlining the use of shaped charges (1899). Also relevant are the Geneva Protocol banning the military use of chemical and bacteriological weapons (19Z5); the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons (1975); and the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (1978).
- ↑ The Eisenhower quote is taken from his final valedictory address (Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors Washington. DC, April. 19) which also includes the more famous reference to the 'military-industrial complex'
- ↑ Estimates from R.L. Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures (Washington. DC: World Priorities. Inc. 1986). More details in M. Brzoska et el., 'World Military Expenditure and Arms Production', SIPRI Yearbook, op. cit. The figure of total military spending, is necessarily approximate because of the enormous problems of aggregating spending in different – and often non-convertible – currencies and from countries with different statistical conventions. According to Sivard, total military spending in 1983 was $728 billion. On the basis of trends and preliminary data, a figure of at least $900 billion and possibly $1,000 billion in current prices and exchange rates seems appropriate for 1986.
- ↑ Sivard, 1986 edition, op. cit., SIPRI Yearbook, op. cit.
