Comparative Perspectives on Militarization, Repression and Social Welfare

The focus of this article is upon the costs of high military burdens and militarization. While the primary concern is with the Third World, this analysis also considers costs to advanced capitalist as well as state socialist systems. The work synthesizes findings by more than three dozen researchers, many of whom have published comparative or case studies of substitution effects of military expenditures in socio-economic areas. Particular attention is focused upon damage to the American socio-economic order by high militarization since the early 1960's. In both the North as well as the South, the costs are most obvious in terms of specific tradeoffs when military burdens are high or rapidly increasing. They are occasionally pronounced in such welfare areas as health and particularly education. More frequently, they appear in terms of diminished economic growth rates, unemployment, reduced exports and inflation. In developing nations welfare is less adversely affected in civilian, more industrialized, economically dynamic, heavily aided, state capitalist and especially socialist oriented regimes. Military dominant systems tend to be the most repressive and exhibit the heaviest military burdens. In general, however, systems in both the North and the South vary in how they absorb such tradeoffs as appear. Emphasis is placed upon East-West competitive intervention and commercial gain as a source of both militarization and accelerating militarism in the South.