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