Deficits by military spending

Press, 13 October 1983, Page 15

Deficits by military spending

The economic arguments for halting the arms race are getting stronger, according to a Canadian commentator on international financial and development issues.

Mr Bernard Wood, director of the North-South Institute of Canada, is touring New Zealand after a visit to Australia to address a conference on disarmament and development.

He believes that the deficits faced by many countries can be directly related to their military spending.

Mr Wood was the Canadian member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s expert group on the relationship between disarmament and development, between 1980 and 1982. The group had a research budget of SUSVz million and used some of that money to commission studies on military expenditure.

“We concluded that a lot of military expenditure is a bad investment,” Mr Wood said.

He said that SUS7OO bil-

lion was being spent each year on military expenditure.

“This is a sub-optimal investment in terms of generating growth, employment, and science and technological spin-offs,” he said.

He is also concerned about the more active military involvement by developing countries — this has risen to 20 per cent of all military spending in recent years. Most were not nuclear but some would become so, he said. Mr Wood’s institute was established in the mid-1970s to do research that government cannot do itself.

“There was always a limit to the expertise the members of Parliament could call on to balance what they were hearing from officials,” said Mr Wood.

The institute also accepts commissions for research work but the findings are always made public and no private research is done. Commissions have come

from the World Bank and United Nations organistions. The non-profit making institute is funded through charitable means, government grants, subscriptions, and sales of published research.

One research project by the institute that the Canadian Government would not have been able to do was a

look at Canada’s foreign aid programme. The results are only now trickling through, and those relating to Tanzania and Bangladesh have already been published. Mr Wood said the objectives of aid were very mixed and one of the problems researched was whether the aid was effective. This would depend on compromises reached between political, diplomatic, and commercial objectives.

He said the aid donor was only a supporting actor and was likely to run into problems of partnership with the developing country. “There is also the problem of delivery — do we provide the most useable resources in the way they can be best used?" he said.

Mr Wood did not believe that Mr Muldoon would be successful on his own in calling for a Bretton Woodstype conference, although he thought it valuable that a country such as New Zealand had expressed a con-

cern and a commitment to the process. He said that support for the conference was coming now from middle-power developing and industrialising countries, and the call might soon not be seen as a Muldoon initiative.

“We should all be giving some commitment to the international financial system — like increasing allocations to the World Bank, which is in very serious difficulties," said Mr Wood.

Initiations on the trade front were also called for and Mr Wood suggested that Canada should call a halt to protectionist trade barriers, as some of the developing nations would never be able to get themselves out of the bind they were in without trade opportunities.

On his return to Canada, Mr Wood will finish the aid evaluation project, and one on the role of women in development in the light ol the end of the United Nations decade for women. in 1985.