110/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
The report takes the example of demands made on aid recipients to
eliminate food subsidies, to devalue their currencies and to privatise
their state-owned companies. The report then says:
This contrast was particularly in evidence during the period of
structural adjustment in the 1980s. Many donors watched in
silence as dramatic cuts were made in social spending, while
military spending continued to climb. In sub-Saharan Africa,
military spending went from 0.7 per cent to 3.0 per cent of GNP
between 1960 and 1990. Thus, some developing countries
preferred to balance their budgets by compromising human lives
rather than by reducing their military spending.At the end of the 1990s, the governments and arms industries of
the North have once again been prodding the countries of the South
to increase arms spending.
Indeed, at a time when arms spending is on the wane in the North,
governments and the arms industry are scouring the South for new
markets. 'The US arms industry is faced with a substantial drop in
defence spending, which has gone from 6.6 per cent of GDP in 1986
to 3.9 per cent in 1995. The US defence budget (including the
Department of Energy) has dropped from 3 6 0 billion dollars in 19 8 9,
to 320 billion dollars in 1992, to 270 billion dollars in 1995' (Jean-
Paul Hebert, Le Monde diplomatique, November 1995). It is worth
noting that the US defence budget, while lower than before, is still
greater than sub-Saharan Africa's total debt (which was S 240 billion
in 1997, for a total population of 590 million people). To react to the
general drop in military spending in the North (the same tendency can
be observed in EU countries), the North's arms manufacturers have
relied on their governments in their quest for new contracts in the
South and East. US arms manufacturers are ahead of the competition
in this respect. They controlled 48.9 per cent of Third World arms
purchases in 1991, 56.8 per cent in 1992 and almost 75 per cent in
- The competition is fierce. Governments come to the rescue of
their arms manufacturers by throwing their 'bilateral aid' to the
South into the balance. New arms import contracts are encouraged,
as a way to cushion the crisis of the North's arms industry. In fact,
there was an increase in international arms sales in 1996 - for the
second consecutive year, after eight years of uninterrupted decline (Le
Monde, 17November 1997). Gulf and Southeast Asian governments