“Militarism is probably the world’s largest barrier to ending poverty. Whether it be armies and weapons of war, or small arms flowing into our neighbourhoods and local communities, militarism destroys communities, wastes resources and prevents sustainable development. Military and weapons spending consumes resources that could be applied instead to human needs. The flow of arms into a conflict region destroys democratic and traditional control structures for land-use, production and the economy and replaces this with warlords, gang leaders and militias.
Armed conflicts push people out of their houses, off their lands and into slavery, refugee camps or having to accept other subhuman conditions. The use of weapons kills or maims people, taking them out of the workforce and adding an additional economic burden of medical care for the wounded. Weapons testing and use also destroys the environment, whether it be the devastation from nuclear weapons testing, the farmlands no longer usable because of landmines or cluster munitions, the toxins released from explosions in war or other weaponry like depleted uranium weapons.
And the use of military vehicles – aircraft, ships, rockets, tanks, armoured vehicles – in exercises and military operations constitutes possibly the largest single global contributor to carbon emissions and climate change.
Addressing militarism is thus the best hope we have of achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals of ending poverty, achieving universal education, providing primary health care, adequately combating major diseases, addressing key environmental concerns such as climate change and providing sufficient renewable energy for basic needs.”
Alyn Ware, a New Zealand peace educator and campaigner, founder and international coordinator of the network Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND)
“Defense spending wastes societal and global resources, and also weakens the U.S. in the medium and long term. Cutting it seems like something people of most ideological persuasions should be able to get behind, but “spending a lot of money on things that can blow shit up” has been conflated with “patriotism” for too long now…..I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.”
Kurt Vonnegut (Economist 2012)
“Ladies, do you know the numbers? Our taxes are higher than three billion and the ministers of the army and navy devour a third themselves….The household with six francs a day for expenses, for example, starts each day by throwing two francs away.”
Sylvia Flammarion, 1905 speech to working class French women.
“If war boosts the economy of the industrial nations that own the war supplies, it smashes the economy of the nations that consume them.”
Fereshten Gol-Mohammadi, Iran, 1983.
“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Contents
1 PART ONE – Introduction to the Five Percent Campaign
1.1 Tipping Point & the Film ‘We Are Many’
1.2 Why Does Execessive Military Spending Matter?
1.3 Why Now?
1.4 Global Military Spending – a ‘Structural’ Issue for Global Civil Society
1.4.1 Some Basic Facts
1.4.2 Military Spending as a ‘Structural’ Issue
1.4.3 Military Spending and Current ‘Structural’ Campaigns
1.4.3.1 Debt
1.4.3.2.1 Environmental Degradation and Climate Change
1.4.3.2.2.1 Environmental Degradation
1.4.3.2.2.2 Climate Change: The Us Military, Wars and Climate Conventions
1.4.3.2.2.2.1 The US Air Force
1.4.3.3 Tax: Military Contractors, Taxation and Profits from War
1.4.3.3.1 Low to ‘Negative’ Tax
1.4.3.3.2 Government/Defense Industry Contracts 2003-2007
1.4.3.3.2.1 It Pays to Lobby
1.4.3.4 War on Drugs
1.4.4 Summary: Military Expenditure is a Structural Issue
1.5 The Five Percent Campaign – Delivering deep, sustainable cuts to global military spending
1.5.1 Global Military Spending Cuts: Overdue, Proportionate and Just
1.5.2 Aims
1.5.3 The Core Demands – The 5% Formula
1.5.3.1 Cutting Down to $1 Trillion
1.5.3.2 Beyond the First Decade – the 5% Threshold Rule
1.5.3.3 What Is the 5% Threshold Figure?
1.5.3.3.1 Countries with 5% Growth or Less (the Majority)
1.5.3.3.2 Countries with More than 5% Economic Growth (eg BRICS)
1.5.4 How to Track This
1.5.5 Clinton Era Levels of the 1990s
1.5.5.1 Can We Get Back to Mid 1990s Levels?
1.5.6 Conclusion
2 PART TWO: The Campaign – Why, What, How
2.1 Why
2.1.1 We Need Sensible Defence and Sustainable Security
2.1.2 What Is Just?
2.1.2.1 The (In)Security Paradox
2.1.2.2 Non-offensive Defence
2.1.2.3 Sustainable Security
2.1.2.4 Essential for Human Security
2.1.2.5 Oil: a Driver for Military Spending, Conflict and Insecurity
2.1.3 Ending Global Inequality ~ Diverting Excessive Military Spending
2.1.3.1 We All Know It’s Mad, so What Can We Do to Reverse the Situation?
2.1.3.2 Bombs and Bullets or Schools and Hospitals?
2.1.3.3 The Poorest are Hardest Hit
2.1.3.4 An Arms Trade Treaty
2.1.4 $2 Trillion and Counting: How They Spend Your Military Tax Dollars, Pounds And Euros
2.1.4.1 SIPRI’s Definition of Military Expenditure
2.1.4.2 Make War Not Peace – Peacekeeping Profoundly Underfunded
2.1.4.3 Nuclear Spending
2.1.4.4 Strategic Defence Initiative – USA And EU Wasting Money
2.1.4.5 Military Expansion into Space
2.1.4.6 Militarization of the Drug War
2.1.4.6.1 Latin America
2.1.4.6.2 Afghanistan
2.1.4.7 Excluded Expenditures -The ‘Bi-products’ of War
2.1.4.7.1 Excluded Military Related Expenditures (SIPRI)
2.1.4.7.2 The Arms Industry
2.1.5 The Influence of the Arms Trade
2.1.5.1 Arms Sales
2.1.5.2 The Work of Andrew Feinstein
2.1.5.3 War Is Good Return for the Defence Company Shareholder
2.1.5.4 New Business – Drones
2.1.5.5 And If You Have a Bank Account, You’re Involved
2.1.6 The Current Scale of Military Spending
2.1.7 Military Spending/War Spending Is Not Good for the Overall Economy
2.1.7.1 War Spending
2.1.7.1.1 The USA Is the Most Exposed as a Result of the Two Post 9/11 Conflicts
2.1.7.1.2 Greece – a Bailout with Arms Sales Built in
2.1.7.2 Better Value – Spend on Wider Society
2.1.7.3 How Government Allocates Your Taxes
2.1.7.3.1 USA
2.1.7.3.2 UK
2.1.8 Some Reasons Why Military Spending Is Not Yet a Structural Issue
2.1.9 Summary
2.2 What
2.2.1.1 Redressing Imbalance of Power
2.2.1.2 From Defence Contractors to Civil Society – Redirecting Taxes
2.2.1.3 Redistributing $600bn over Ten Years and Resetting Priorities
2.2.1.4 And If We Do Nothing?
2.2.2 What If Top Military Spenders Diverted Military Spending Increases To Fund The MDGs In The 2000s
2.2.3 Divert. Transform. Sustain ~ the Winners
2.2.3.1 Immediate and Essential Development Needs of Millions
2.2.3.1.1 Fund Global Health
2.2.3.1.1.1 World Health Organization (WHO)
2.2.3.1.1.2 Health Spending
2.2.3.1.1.3 The Five Percent Formula – new funds
2.2.3.2 Sustainable Development
2.2.3.2.1 Fund Civil Society and the Economic and Climate Justice Agendas
2.2.3.2.2 Climate Change
2.2.3.3 Fund Peacekeeping; Early Warning & Conflict Prevention; Post-conflict Cleanup
2.2.3.4 The Global Green Economy
2.2.3.4.1 Switching Priorities From Oil to Renewables
2.2.3.4.2 EU Submission To Rio+20 – Words Not Actions?
2.2.3.4.3 Renewable Energy Investment 2009: G20 Countries
2.2.3.5 The United Kingdom – the Green New Deal ~ the New Economics Foundation
2.2.3.6 Summary
2.2.4 Campaign Goals & Messages
2.2.4.1 Goals
2.2.4.2 Messages
2.2.4.3 Campaign Targets
2.2.5 The Same Vision – Expressed in a Variety of Ways
2.2.5.1 Regional Relevance and Appropriateness Is Key to the Campaign
2.2.5.1.1 Brazil
2.2.5.1.2 Far East
2.2.5.1.3 Indian Sub-Continent
2.2.5.2 Current Military-spend Related Campaigns
2.2.5.3 Suggested Arms Sales Campaign – ‘Don’t Buy, Don’t Sell’
2.2.5.4 Proportionality and Fairness
2.3 How
2.3.1 Identifying Cuts – Some Underway but Much, Much More Needed
2.3.1.1 Where to Cut: the United States
2.3.1.1.1 The Sustainable Defense Task Force – Cuts that would Save $960bn over 10 Years
2.3.1.1.2 The Center for American Progress
2.3.1.1.3 The United Kingdom
2.3.1.1.4 Greece
2.3.1.1.5 NATO – an Obstacle to Reductions
2.3.2 Implementation – Public Support Leading to Pressure on Law-Makers
2.3.2.1 Jubilee Debt Campaign
2.3.2.2 The Financial Transaction Tax
2.3.2.3 The Next Stage of Campaign Research
2.3.2.3.1 Feasibility: demands, hurdles/opposition, implementation; coalition building; public support
2.3.2.3.2 Military Spending Initiatives of Relevance
2.3.3 Re-directing 50%: New Priorities and Where Funds Could Go
2.3.3.1 Immediate and Essential Needs: MDGS
2.3.3.1.1 new funds for global health
2.3.3.2 Sustainable Development – Reflecting Climate & Economic Justice
2.3.3.3 Climate Finance
2.3.3.4 Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Post Conflict Clean Up – Uranium, Landmines
2.3.4 Funding the Global Green Economy
2.3.4.1 In The UK
2.3.4.2 In The USA
2.3.5 Influencing Public Opinion
2.3.5.1 Public Opinion in the USA – Majority Favour Defence Cuts
2.3.5.1.1 CBS Poll 2012: Cut Military Spend and Tax the Rich
2.3.5.1.2 However, We Have Further to Go in the UK
2.3.5.1.3 And this Is Echoed across the EU
2.3.6 The United Nations – 10% Option Resolution
2.3.6.1 10% Option
4 Appendix
4.2 Top Defense Contractors – U.S. Pretax Profits & Federal Income Taxes
4.3 Lobbying and Federal Contracts
4.4 “Balance” of Global Military Expenditures In 2010
4.5 USA President’s Proposed Discretionary Spending (FY 2013)
4.7 What If Top Military Spenders Had Adopted ‘the 5% Threshold Rule’ retrospectively (2001-2010)
4.9 Top Military Spender (per Capita) 2010
4.10 Opportunity Costs: Military Spending and the UN’s Development Agenda
4.12 Arms Trade
4.12.1 Arms export agreements
4.12.2 Changes in Regional Arms Export Agreements between 2 Periods
4.12.3 Top 15 arms exporters 2007-2011
4.12.4 Top 20 arms importers 2007-2011
4.12.5 5 largest arms exporters and their major recipients, 2007–11
4.12.6 5 largest arms importers and their major suppliers, 2007–11
4.13 While Most People Were Hit Hard by the Recession, the Defense Industry Boomed
4.14 The World’s Biggest Defense Contractors (Sales)
4.15 Drone Proliferation
4.16 Better Ways to Create Jobs
4.16.1 Massive Defense Spending Leads to Job Loss
4.16.2 How many jobs does $1 billion buy?
4.17 G20 Countries: Renewable Energy Investment (2009)
“We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach.”
Óscar Arias Sánchez, former President of Costa Rica (the first country to formally abolish its military forces)
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Transform defence for sustainable human safety 