April 18, 2001
I have been nervous the past few weeks.
The US and China have been having some heated negotiations over an incident involving a Chinese jet fighter and a US spy plane. The incident reminded the world once again of America's heavy military deployment around the South China Sea.
I always feel uneasy when I hear "America" and "peace" in the same sentence. Motives related to war and peace are, at best, questionable.
America is now the technological leader in warfare (or peacekeeping or defense or whatever it is called today). It has strong interests in maintaining this lead, for defensive reasons as well as economic ones. As long as America stays ahead, it will continue to get first dips on the world weapons market.
In the period from 1986-1994, the US held 28.2% of world military spending. That's a hefty chunk. And it all stems from the high costs involved. Research and development is domestic. Manufacturing is domestic. And America is not exactly the cheapest place to manufacture anything. But everything has to be domestic. Timex makes watches for the US military, just in case on the off chance that America goes into war with Switzerland, US troops would still be able to tell the time. All this readiness during peacetime costs money.
Staying ahead in technology also costs money. What can America do with all the old war planes and tanks that cost billions of dollars to design and build? Somebody somewhere has to buy the old stuff. The administration cannot possibly be expected to bear the entire cost from what they collect in taxes.
Fortunately, for America, buyers can be found. Middle East countries still need tanks, guns and bombs to fight over the Holy Land. Taiwan needs more planes and missiles to resist China. High school kids still demand semi-automatic weapons to punish other kids who ridicule them. Just take a guess what was the original purpose for the manufacture of the Intratec and HiPoint semi-autos used in the Columbine massacre. I suspect they were not designed for duck hunting.
The US sold an estimated 12.1 Billion in weapons for financial year 2000. And remember we are just talking about just the exports. For financial year 1999 it was 12.2 Billion. That's a lot of money to be throwing away if we ever really achieved world peace.
Here's more numbers for you. With the end of the cold war, the requirements for the National Defence Stockpile (NDS, raw material for building weapons) dropped from $7 Billion to $43 Million. And yet, as late as 1998 (the latest available figures) the NDS was still as high as $5.3 Billion. What does that say about intentions? We're not even talking about the same number of digits. About a decade after the Cold War, America still has over 100 times the material they need to build weapons of ‘defense’.
In 1998, Madeline Albright, then US Secretary of State, had announced to the world that the US would lead NATO to war with Iraq again over a weapons inspection incident. Out of nowhere, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan emerged with a signed agreement with Saddam Hussein saying there will be no war. Not long after that, sure as clockwork, war erupted in the Balkans instead. Today, we have small isolated voices reporting how easily that war could have been avoided too.
Now, I’m not saying there is a big conspiracy theory here. Like everyone else, I am just trying to make sense of the world through the bits and pieces that the media feed me. I still largely believe what CNN, BBC, and CNBC reported during the Gulf War and the so-called "Conflict in the Balkans". You will probably never catch me defending Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein. But I often get the feeling that the messes they created might have been resolved in less spectacular displays of wartime capabilities.
- Sim
