Arms for Southeast Asia
Arms for Southeast Asia
In this decade of ethnic warfare, international legal and
illegal arms sales and trafficking is on the increase and has
become a multi-billion dollar business with plenty of room for
growth.
It has been reported that the legal sales of arms, both used,
like the 101 M-60 A-3 model tanks Thailand is thinking about
purchasing, and those off the assembly line like the Patriot
missile interceptors sold to Taiwan and South Korea, is the
world's second largest industry, a $250 billion business.
It is second only to the much-heralded oil industry which
takes in no less than $430 billion.
Can the West afford to ignore this money spinner?
"The American market share of new arms deals in developing
Third World countries, especially in Southeast and East Asia,
soared to 73 percent in 1993, up from 56 percent in 1992," said
the New York Times in a recent editorial.
By the 1980s the U.S. was committed to the largest peacetime
military build-up in its history. At the same time, it cut
expenditures for domestic education, health and other social
programs.
At a time when the U.S. was losing ground to competitors in
the global markets, they invested the people's savings in the
military buildup.
The U.S. arms buildup made it look stronger, but in fact, this
was only an illusion. By pushing people deeper into debt, it
undermined the health of its economy.
By spending a bigger share of its scarce resources on
research, it further impaired its competitiveness. By absorbing
funds that might have gone into education, it limited its future.
After eight years of building up the military, the world's
largest economy was really much economically weaker.
By 1989, it favored sharp cuts in defense spending. But it was
too late as the recession had set in.
With Western economies still in low gear and unemployment on
the rise, arms manufacturers are competing, not only by
undercutting each other but also by sowing the seeds of disunity,
suspicion and fear within the region, triggering an unprecedented
arms procurement race among the ASEAN states.
It is an irony that Southeast Asian leaders have not taken a
moral lesson from what happened in other parts of Asia,
especially in the Middle-East.
It would be a tragedy, at this stage of determination to
develop our region, if those guiding the destinies of Asia fail
to observe and realize the hypocritical designs of the Western
powers and their move to divert considerable resources, which
could be put to better use for the benefit of the ordinary people
of this region, to keep Western arms manufacturing industries
working overtime.
-- Thailand Times, Bangkok