Arms for the poor: trading in death

Abstract

The World Bank has recently begun to point out the cost to Third World development programs of a continuing high level of military expenditure and global arms transfers. While countries like Australia continue to publicly deplore this imbalance, they make a farce of such criticism by seeking to expand their own arms exports in order to pay for their own costs of military production. Another recent alarming tendency has been for a number of developing countries -particularly in South and East Asia - to start exporting weapons themselves in order to pay for their own expensive imports. This paper traces the contrast between military expenditure and expenditure on education and health in a number of countries in South and East Asia, where Australia is actively promoting a regional arms race by seeking to double its own military exports.