Third World Arms Purchases

It is practically impossible to give an accurate accounting of Third World arms purchases, since in official trade statistics arms are frequently camouflaged as "transportation" and other equipment. In some cases, however, armaments reach one-fourth to one-third of total expenditures on imports (as in South Korea in 1965 and Egypt in 1969) and one-third to one-half of foreign technology imports during particular years. As many Third World countries have learned, the initial purchase price of military equipment often represents only half the total expenditure necessary to keep it operational -spare parts and supporting equipment account for the rest. Then when the arms race makes the equipment obsolete, it must be replaced by much more expensive equipment. To these costs must be added the interest payments on the debt incurred to purchase the equipment.

It is in the nations of the developing world -- in Asia, Africa, and Latin America -- that the most pronounced relative increase in military expenditures has occurred. In fifteen years, military spending in developing countries has more than doubled, from $15 billion in 1960 to $39 billion in 1974 (in constant 1973 dollars). The mildest increase was in Latin America [which already spent most], where expenditures were up two-fold, the sharpest in the Middle East, where they were up eight-fold. In the developing world as a whole, military expenditures increased twice as fast as the economic base to support them. . . . The growth of [armed] forces has exceeded both the rapid growth of population and the development of an industrial base. In the developing countries, on average, there are now four soldiers in the regular forces to ten workers in manufacturing industry. In developed countries, the ratio is about one to ten. . . . For at least some fragile industrial economies, the military is the fastest growing sector of the economy.

Between 1960 and 1973 military expenditures -- conservatively estimated, since military imports are difficult to identify -- rose from 3.4 percent to 4.4 percent of Third World gross national product. Since then, of course, the absolute and relative growth of military expenditures in the Third World has shot up. An important contributing factor has been the crisis-generated accession of military governments, which are particularly prone to expanding the size of the armed forces -- they have doubled in size in Chile since the military coup, for example-and to supplying themselves with military hardware. Another contributing factor has been the (usually unsuccessful) attempt by civilian governments to buy off their coup-prone and trigger-happy military brass. A third factor in the increase has been the worldwide arms race fired by international tensions and national political ambitions.