[GM105] The rearming of the States

This subject has been broached before, at the June 2006 party meeting in Viareggio, when data from the 2006 edition of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute yearbook was presented.

In particular a table listed the 15 States with the highest military expenditure, ranking them not according to the dollar value of this expenditure but on a par with purchasing power, that is taking account not of the official currency exchange rate but the actual cost of armaments in the various countries. The series was no longer the traditional one of old, and revealed the changes in interstate relations which following the collapse of Moscow’s empire. The United States was still in first place, with 41.4% of global military expenditure, but was followed, though lagging some way behind, by the People’s Republic of China (14.6%), and by India (7.4%). In fourth place was Russia (6.0%), followed by France (4.7%), Great Britain (4.2%), Germany (3.4%), Japan (3.2%), Italy (3.1%), Saudi Arabia (2.6%,) Turkey (2.2%), South Korea(2.1%), Brasil (1.9%), Iran (1.7%), and Pakistan (1.5%).

The current report was based on SIPRI’s 2009 yearbook, which tallied with other sources, such as the 2008 edition of the French Republic’s White Book on defence, the 2009 edition of the People’s Republic of China White Book on defence, and articles in the international press.

The tables covered a 20 year period, commencing in 1988, characterised on the global scale by a reduction in military spending during the first decade, up to 1998, and then by a subsequent period of constant growth continuing up to now, and as Le Monde notes, “despite the economic crisis”.

Indeed the pattern of the last twenty years might lead one to believe that military spending tends to fluctuate. We Marxists know otherwise. The world capitalist system, just as it prompts an ever greater increase in the mass of commodities produced, so does it also lead to constant expansion of the “arms” commodity and its associated derivatives. Also the tendency of States is to increase their military spending, arming themselves with increasingly sophisticated and costly weapons systems in order to address the need, constantly emphasised in the military policy programs of all the major imperialist States, of defending their economic interests and their access to markets and sources of raw materials.

In confirmation of the accelerated pace of State rearmament the report analysed the military expenditure of the United States of America since the Second World War. Following the peak reached during the imperialist war, this was followed by a significant reduction in spending in the period which immediately followed it; but already in the early fifties, due to the Korean War, it had started to rise, continuing its virtually uninterrupted ascent up to the present day. The brief fall in expenditure between 1988-1998 is to be explained not only by the dismemberment of the Russian Empire but by the process of modernisation which hit every army, with a marked reduction in personnel and light arms and on the technical side the introduction of more sophisticated weaponry.

The comrade then gave a brief description of the rapid rearmament undertaken by the People’s Republic of China, paid for by the exploitation of the most numerous proletariat in the world. Beijing is accelerating the pace at which it is building an army, navy and air force but it is still far from being able to defend its strategic lines of communication into the country, along which flow the necessary raw materials needed to develop its gigantic economy.