The Idea of "Containment"

The American strategic posture since it was set in the postwar period by Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles has been dominated by the idea of "containment." It is hardly necessary here to document its application through overt military and covert CIA actions in the substantially successful repression of national liberation movements, and indeed of the most elemental progressive political developments all around the Third World. Dulles used to say that there are "no neutrals" and "those that are not with us are against us" and have to be combated tooth and nail. After the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States and thereby produced a nuclear "stalemate," the United States found it expedient to "widen its options" through "flexible response" in "limited local wars." According to the American political strategist Eugene Rostow, Khrushchev confirmed in an interview with James Reston that the Soviet Union had undergone a similar policy shift. Khrushchev declared that after Korea, conventional war was too dangerous, because "nuclear weapons don't respect class differences." Therefore, he said, it was necessary to rely on wars of liberation, especially in the Third World. The first major such war was fought in Korea in 1950-1952 with large "conventional" troop formations on both sides. It resulted in a standoff, which is still maintained across the 38th parallel. The Korean experience discouraged subsequent similar troop commitments, particularly because of the increasing threat of escalation into nuclear warfare. The next major such war was waged in Vietnam for two decades and spilled over into neighboring countries in Indochina. The increasing American troop commitment (up to 800,000, of which 500,000 were in the field) in a "nonconventional guerilla war," and particularly the subsequent liberation of Indochina from imperialist occupation, forced the United States into an "agonizing reappraisal" of its military posture. One result was the Nixon Doctrine of disengaging American troops from direct participation as much as possible and maintaining a military presence through arms supplies and other means of using "Asians to fight Asians." A major manifestation of this military posture has been the development of a rapid and flexible U.S. Navy that has modernized "showing the flag" and "gunboat diplomacy," which once seemed to have gone out of fashion, and the design and construction of naval and air forces that permit rapid "deployment" of troops and supporting weapons to "trouble spots" anywhere in the world at a moment's notice. The development and deployment of similar Soviet naval and air capacities and the war between Vietnam and Kampuchea, as well as the presence of Cuban troops in Africa, indicate that the Soviet Union and China may have developed their own versions of the Nixon Doctrine. (Moreover, it is clear that the Chinese welcome, if not demand, an American military presence in Asia.) The other major result of the American reappraisal has been the United States' temporary reluctance to intervene too directly in the Third World, particularly in Africa, where France and Britain seem to be in a better position to do so.

Military Government in Africa

No military government in Africa has ever surrendered power voluntarily. In fact, no government has ever changed hands peacefully through the electoral process in the 20 years since colonial Africa started breaking up into independent nations.

The data suggest that the frequency of military coups increased throughout the 1960s, and then diminished somewhat during the 1970s. The calculations of Kende show that the number of wars and the length of these wars in the Third World have been increasing: from twenty-five years' duration of all wars put together in the period 1945-1949, to thirty-three years' duration in 1950-1954, forty-eight years in 1955-1959, fifty-seven years in 1960-1964, and eighty-nine years in 1965-1969. Kende's graph shows a tendency to longer durations since 1964. The number of wars in any given year was, on the average, six in 1945-1954, ten in 19551964, and eighteen in 1965-1969. The number and length of military conflicts in the Third World therefore seems to have been increasing, particularly since the mid-1960s. This tendency toward more military conflict in the Third World seems to be, at least in part, generated by the world economic and political crisis. The persistence -- and probable aggravation -- of this crisis is likely to generate still more military conflict in the foreseeable future.

According to popular conceptions, the wider distribution of armaments causes wars and other military conflicts. Indeed, Kende does find positive correlations between military expenditures and arms imports on the one hand, and war on the other. But this correlation does not mean that armaments cause war or conflict -- though, of course, the prossession of arms constitutes a credible threat. In his discussion of the "causes of the increasing tendency" of war and other military conflicts in the Third World, Kende notes the shift by the United States from a strategy of "massive retaliation" during the cold war era to one of "flexible response" through "limited war" after the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity; the development of national liberation movements and their repression; the simple statistical increase in the number of states in or among which military conflicts could take place; and the increase of tension within many of these states. We will examine these and related causes of increased military conflict in greater detail.

Military Interventions

Kende finds the United States most active in the kind of foreign intervention, which is not surprising since it replaced Britain and France in their interventionist roles after 1960. Leitenberg also emphasizes foreign "military interventions, in relation to wars and conflicts; this is probably the least systematically studied area relating to war and conflict. In fact, it is barely studied at all, systematically or otherwise." The recent revelations of interventions by the CIA may provide the basis for such studies that go beyond the notorious American interventions in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Lebanon in 1958, the Congo and Cuba in 1961, Panama (and Brazil?) in 1964, and the Dominican Republic in 1965.

Leitenberg also reviewed twenty other studies of military coups d'état and used them to compile a list of both successful coups and unsuccessful attempts. Between 1945 and 1975 Leitenberg counts 276 successful coups (and 269 unsuccessful attempts), of which 100 (and 103) took place between 1945 and 1960 and 176 (and 166) took place between 1961 and 1975. ( Leitenberg says his figures of 18 successful coups and 18 unsuccessful attempts for 1976 to 1978 are very incomplete, so they are not used here.) Until 1960 most of these coups and attempts were in Latin America. But with the creation of many independent states in Africa after 1961, this continent experienced 71 successful coups and 83 unsuccessful attempts, while Latin America had 44 successes and 36 failures. (These figures suggest, incidentally, that on balance there is a nearly even chance of succeeding in a coup attempt; but in Latin America the chances of winning are better and in Africa less than fifty-fifty.) In the decade after 1966, of the 105 successful coups and 96 unsuccessful attempts, 51 and 58, respectively, were in Africa and 23 and 16, respectively, took place in Latin America.

War and Other Military Conflicts in the Third World

It is almost impossible to define and measure the use of military, organization, equipment, and manpower in military conflict. Their very existence is a threat, and the threat itself constitutes a use. Indeed, most of the time the mere possession of weapons and the threat to use them -- nuclear bombs, an action-ready army or police force, or a simple gun in the hands of a bank robber -- produce the effect for which the weapons and the armed organization behind them were designed. The perpetual threat of military "intervention" in the political process in Third World countries, no matter how apparently "free" and "democratic" their elections may seem, constitutes military-political intervention. The difficulty of defining military action and conflict applies equally to "international" conflicts across the borders of two or more states. But in this case the difficulty is augmented by that of defining and identifying "international," since the participation or intervention of a second or third state in any particular conflict is often deliberately vague.

Therefore the many attempts to define, identify, count, and analyze military conflicts in the Third World since 1945 are more confusing than clarifying. Depending on the criteria used by the analyst, the number of such conflicts counted has ranged from 30 to 350. The often cited responsible studies by Istvan Kende and by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) count 119 military conflicts in the Third World between 1945 and 1975, and the latter adds a further 14 conflicts for 1976. According to these studies, then, on the average twelve military conflicts were going on in the Third World on any given day since the Second World War. While he was still U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara claimed in 1966 that:

In the last 8 years alone, there have been no less than 164 internationally significant outbreaks of violence. . . . What is striking is that only 15 of these 165 significant resorts to violence have been military conflicts between two states. And not a single one of the 164 conflicts has been a formally declared war. Indeed, there has not been a formal declaration of war -- anywhere in the world -- since World War II.

Of course, the war Mr. McNamara waged against Vietnam was not declared either. And many of the other "internationally significant outbreaks of violence" were so significant for the United States that it felt impelled to intervene in them in one way or another, usually without declaring it was doing so.

"Irrationally" Producing Armaments

The economic reason, derived from the profit conditions of capital accumulation on the national and international level, also explains away the paradox -- remarked upon by Albrecht, Lock, and Wulf -- of "irrationally" producing armaments that cost more in total expenditures and/or foreign exchange than they would if imported outright. The overriding objective of such arms production is not to save or minimize production costs through domestic manufacture, but rather to maximize public expenditures on, and hence profits in, domestic capital goods and machine-building industry -- even at the cost of high expenditures of foreign exchange. These high expenditures (not coincidentally) benefit the foreign producers who are engaged in joint ventures with local producers.

Thus the production -- not to mention the subsequent use and replacement-of armaments, especially those with the most capital-intensive advanced technology, becomes a "growth industry" with "public sector" demand par excellence. What better ideological justification is there for this "growth industry" than "national security," and what better arguments are there for blue-collar workers than "jobs" and for white-collar employees than R & D and engineering positions? According to the Shah of Iran, huge military expenditures constitute the shortest and quickest route to increased productivity and a highly trained work force. Others have developed ideological arguments supporting military expenditures and production as the "growth industry" best suited to "generate growth." Thus, a peace-loving Quaker under contract to the Pentagon, Emile Benoit, has even claimed to demonstrate in his Defense and Economic Growth in Developing Countries that a "strong positive correlation between high defense burdens and rapid growth rates" shows that "it seems clear that in sample countries higher defense burdens stimulate growth", and not vice versa. Such growth comes especially through military training but also through military equipment and production. When Benoit discussed his thesis at a symposium a large number of concerns were expressed regarding the methodology and the conclusions of the paper. . . . Serious questions were raised, particularly with respect to the statistical treatment of the available data on military expenditures and GDP as a measure for development [which] most participants felt. . . . is not a satisfactory measure since the effect on welfare of people may be negligible or even be negative for a large part of the population. . . . The inference from the correlation could be challenged by pointing out that other causal relationships could be presented to explain this phenomenon. For instance, high economic growth rates achieved in a developing country, especially exported growth under world market conditions, might antagonize large sectors of the population. Since inequalities are increased in such a situation, social frictions could lead to an expansion of military expenditures to ensure, by means of repression, sustained industrial growth. Furthermore, it was pointed out that militarization in the Third World often correlates with crisis situations in the capitalist system. . . . Nonetheless some participants expressed their interest in Benoit's approach and recommended that it be given further study.

Arms Production

The export of arms also seeks to ally balance-of-payments problems, including those that arms production itself generates. Arguments justifying such arms production in terms of "national security" abound, of course, but they are frequently belied by the resulting dependence on the metropolitan producers and their governments, which reserve the right to veto the use and sale of these arms and can enforce this veto by suddenly cutting off the vital flow of supplies, components, spare parts, and so on. Pakistan, India, and Israel, for example, have in recent years found their ability to use or dispose of arms built with foreign licenses or components compromised by such vetoes. This dependence, then, affects not only the use of the specific armaments concerned, but extends to other aspects of foreign and domestic policy. In a sense, these armaments industries are hostages that make their manufacturers most vulnerable to blackmail precisely when these arms are most needed for" national security."

The ideological defense of military expenditures -- as well as a host of other measures -- through the appeal to "national security" obscures much more concrete and immediate economic and political interests.

It is persuasively arguable -- and in some cases, e.g. India and Israel, demonstrable -- that anus production is demanded by the vested economic and political interests of capital accumulation through the capital goods and exports sectors. This is, of course, especially the case when domestic civilian demand is -- as both an instrument and a consequence of this same accumulation model -- insufficient to permit the full or even adequate utilization of installed capacity in steel and other industries or to permit sufficient profits in some manufacturing sectors. As a result of this kind of accumulation crisis, public expenditures on domestic arms production, whether directly by private enterprise or by state-owned enterprises that purchase inputs from the private sector, are a welcome source of demand, insistently promoted by precisely those industrial interests with economic and political influence in the state. They, and their spokesmen in the press and elsewhere, become the loudest defenders of "national security." This political-economic demand extends, where possible, to nuclear power and the atomic bomb, the most capital-intensive industry and armament of all. Here -- and not in threats from Pakistan or even China, from Argentina, or from the African front states -lies the explanation for the Indian atomic bomb and the Brazilian and South African plans to build one, and the Pakistani and Argentine plans to follow suit..)

Military Establishment in India

What perhaps most distinguishes the military establishment in India from that in other Third World countries is the scope and development of military production within the country itself. This phenomenon argues for the economic importance or rationale of military expenditures for Indian capital:

The far-reaching and broad scoped production program of the Indian ordnance factories and armaments enterprises includes not only small arms, munitions and uniforms, but also complex weapons systems like supersonic fighters, jet trainers, fighter bombers, helicopters, medium and light tanks, antitank and ground-to-air missiles, destroyers and patrol boats. Additionally, electronic equipment and precision machine tools are produced. The newest production line of state armaments enterprise is the fabrication of special metals and high quality materials for the construction of airplanes, missiles and electronic equipment and instruments.

Most famous, perhaps, is the Indian production of Soviet-designed Mig-21 fighters, the spare parts for which India sought to sell to Egypt after its break with the Soviet Union. When the Soviets refused to allow India to proceed with this sale, the Chinese offered to replace the parts for free! India has been more successful in the export of other heavy weaponry to other Middie Eastern countries.

Lock and Wulf distinguish two development models of arms production. One attempts, but largely fails, to achieve self-sufficiency in a vertically integrated arms industry. With the much more common model -- which is part of the general "industrialization" model -- arms are manufactured through licensing and/or subcontracting by Western and Eastern producers. This results in a high dependence on imported components, the costs of which absorb all the potential foreign exchange savings of local production, and also in direct and indirect production costs that make domestic production even more expensive for the national economy than importing the same equipment outright. The second model of arms production -- which, like other industrial production, results in a great dependency on imports -satisfies the desire of metropolitan manufacturers to transfer part of their productive operations to cheap-labor economies that do not impose political restrictions and may even offer political advantages for export to Third World countries. An example is West German arms manufacture in Thailand, through which the German firm circumvents West Germany's legal restrictions of arms exports to countries with certain political tensions. This model, of course, generates incentives in the Third World countries to emulate the metropolitan countries in reducing unit production costs by producing more than local demand can absorb and then exporting the excess.

The Production of Modern Weapon Systems

Especially remarkable in this regard is the country with by far the largest number of the poorest people in the world -- India. With its one-million-man armed forces complemented by another 800,000 police and para-military forces, India occupies a proud fourth place in military manpower behind the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. In terms of military expenditures, India occupied fourteenth place in the world in 1973, second after Israel in the Third World (this was before Iran and Saudi Arabia vastly increased military expenditures following the oil price increases). If some 240,000 civilians employed by the armed forces and 200,000 workers employed in the Indian armaments industry and ordnance are added in, the number of Indian workers directly dependent on the military apparatus is of the order of 2,240,000 -- nearly half the 5,100,000 workers engaged in manufacturing, excluding mining and energy. India's direct military defense expenditures, excluding nuclear, missile, and some other development expenditures, consumes about 3.7 percent of GNP, compared with an average of 2.1 percent for Latin America and 2.2 percent for Africa, regions that are known for their military establishments. The 16.5 percent annual growth rate of Indian military spending between 1961 and 1971 exceeded the average growth rate of 12 percent in the Third World and was higher than that of nearly all North and Latin American and European countries and China. Thus after increasing by about 65 percent during the 1950s, Indian military expenditures multiplied about five times during the decade of the 1960s and nearly doubled again in the first half of the 1970s. Not surprisingly, military expenditures shot up during the Sino-Indian border conflict of 1961-1962, and again during the Indo-Pakistani War of 19711972, but declined during the first Indo-Pakistani conflict of 1965, which was quickly settled. Significantly, these expenditures show a striking and consistent correlation with periods of economic crisis -- in 1961-1962, and again for the whole period since 1967! It is reasonable to suspect that the Sino-Indian War -- whose initiation by India has been proved beyond any legitimate doubt -- and the second Indo-Pakistani War, as well as related military expenditures, were provoked by and for economic-political reasons. However that may be, when "development" was the aim of the nation, the Central government was able to raise the revenue ratio of taxes to GNP by 1.5 per cent in a whole decade. But then, when "defence" was called for, the government was able to achieve a similar percentage in a matter of two years -- from 6.4 percent in 1961-62 to 7.9 per cent in 1963-64. . . . The ratio declined again] and then there was a war and we raised our revenue ratio again to 7.7 percent. What this suggests is that in the sixties we have needed wars to motivate us to undertake substantial revenue efforts -- as if development was not a serious aim to make tax efforts for!

Third World Arms Manufacture

Arms manufacture is one of the fastest-expanding, most important -- and most profitable --- industries in many countries of the Third World. Lock and Wulf found that forty-one Third World countries -- eight in Latin America, twelve in Africa, five in the Near East/West Asia, and sixteen elsewhere in Asia -- plus five in the southern periphery of Europe were engaged in or preparing for the domestic manufacture of arms in the late 1970s:

The level of domestic arms production attained so far in the respective countries differs by a wide margin. Most industries are restricted to the manufacture of small arms or ammunition in relatively small quantities, others are specialized in the construction of small naval craft only. In some countries, however, domestic arms production has attained a considerable level and a relatively high degree of diversification including even production for export. Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, South Africa, Spain, possibly Taiwan and Yugoslavia are to be mentioned while other nations like Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey are pursuing an expansion of their domestic arms industry. . . .

Modern fighter aircraft, jet trainer or aeroengines are built in 12 developing countries, generally under license, while light aircraft are manufactured in 14 nations of the Third World. Eight aircraft manufacturers in 14 nations of the Third World produce or assemble helicopters, for missiles and rockets the corresponding figure is 11, for military electronics and avionics nine. The construction of hulls for small naval craft and fighting ships takes place in more than 30 developing countries, while engines, armament and electronic equipment are normally imported. About ten developing nations have constructed warships for their navies above 500 ts or plan to do so, while eight countries produced annoured personnel carriers or even tanks. At present more new projects than ever are still in the pipeline, some of them quite demanding. Eight more countries, alone, pursue plans to take up the production of modern fighter aircraft or jet trainers. Additional countries are certain to enter the register of domestic arms production soon. Other countries will expand and diversify their present productive capacity. . . . Quite often the share of locally added value in the production of weapon systems is minimal.

The production of modern weapon systems imposes itself by backward and forward linkages on previous and subsequent production stages. The choices of techniques in large sectors of industry are predetermined by the technological imperatives of arms production. Capital-intensive, minimum scales of production, quality otherwise not warranted and too expensive for civilian production such as quality steels and other metal alloys are determining industrial standards of incipient industries in these developing countries.

Arms in the Third World Countries

Ninety-three countries in the Third World are receiving arms from abroad. In 1974, 57 percent of these nations devoted over 10 percent of their government budgets to military expenditures, 30 percent spent over 20 percent, and 25 percent spent over 25 percent of their budgets on the military. Since then, not only the amounts of military expenditures but also their shares of national income and government budgets have increased greatly. In Africa the annual growth of military expenditures increased from 8 percent in the five-year period before 1973 to 15 percent in the five-year period following that year. The biggest increases and the largest amounts spent on the military have been in the Middle East. There total arms expenditures approximately equal those of the rest of the Third World put together. Middle Eastern military expenditures were about 11 percent of regional GNP in 1973 and 17 percent in 1975. In 1974 military expenditures as a percentage of GNP were 32 percent in Israel, 23 percent in Egypt, 14 to 15 percent in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, and 9 percent in Iran. In 1977 military expenditures were $7.9 billion (or 24 percent of the government budget) in Iran, $7.5 billion in Saudi Arabia, $4.4 billion (or 37 percent of the budget) in Egypt, and $4.3 billion (or 35 percent of the budget) in Israel.

The same pattern of military expenditures, albeit on a lesser scale, is apparent elsewhere: Since South Vietnam's Fall World's Arms Salesmen Find Southeast Asia a Big Market

The non-Communist nations of Southeast Asia, all strengthening their military forces in the wake of South Vietnam's defeat, have become a big market for international arms salesmen . . . [with] concluded or pending deals that total about $1.1 billion. . . . The forces are being strengthened far less for any external threat than to counter local insurgencies. . . . Cash deals exceed military aid to the area for the first time. The biggest arms purchaser may be Thailand. . .

Mary Kaldor argues that high levels of military spending . . . can be partly explained by the direct role of the armed forces in the allocation of resources, absorbing surplus product created in the countryside and mobilizing its expenditure in towns. . . . The benefits accrue to small groups in towns and the metropolis. . . . Whereas military expenditure previously consisted largely of expenditure of foreign exchange and could be seen as a method of channelling resources from the periphery to the metropolis, now the bourgeoisie can claim a larger share of the surplus product and military expenditure can also be seen as a method of channelling resources from countryside to town. Military expenditure is paid largely out of surplus generated in the countryside but it is spent in the metropolis and the towns. . . . This is the role that the industrial army plays in the allocation of resources. It is a role that is not peculiar to arms expenditure.

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.

Military and Economic "Aid"

Military and economic "aid" have gone hand in hand, with much of the former disguised as the latter. The vast bulk of American "economic" aid to the Third World has gone to a few countries of special strategic political and military importance: South Korea, Taiwan, Indochina, and Israel. Outright U.S. military aid exceeded economic aid by five to four in fiscal year 1974 and, according to Western estimates, Soviet military aid was double its economic aid in the same year. Furthermore, military aid has progressively given way to military sales on a simple commercial basis. In the United States military grants predominated in the 1950s; grants and sales were roughly equal in the 1960s; and in the 1970s grants have been increasingly replaced by commercial arms sales. In response to the cut in the space program, the end of the Vietnam War, the 1973-1975 recession, and the American balance-of-payments crisis, U.S. sales of armaments abroad increased from about $1 billion in 1970 to $10 billion in 1975. Other Western manufacturers also launched arms sales drives, if only to extend their production series and pay for the enormous fixed overhead costs of increasingly expensive weapons that their own armed forces cannot use in sufficient quantities to lower unit costs. Armaments have become the number-one export industry of France. Without it, the already weak French economy would suffer a grave crisis. "The equilibrium of our foreign trade is, it is true, a function of our arms sales," French Socialist Party leader François Mitterand, has admitted. Lock estimates that military exports as a proportion of all machinery and transport equipment exports (Standard International Trade Classification -- SITC 7) are about 19 percent for the United States and Italy, 12 percent for France and 7 percent for Britain -- and 60 percent for the Soviet Union. Lock identifies arms imports as 12 percent of Third World imports of SITC 7 imports of equipment and technology but thinks that including the arms imported as "transport equipment" etc. it is safe to assume that arms transfers to the Third World countries exceed 20 percent of their imports of production technology. The purchasers of these economically generated metropolitan arms manufactures are largely in the Third World. Third World countries imported 66 percent of these arms in 1970 and 85 percent or $7.4 billion worth in 1973. A summary of suppliers and recipients of arms transfers until 1974 appears in Table 8.1. Since then, encouraged by the war and the petroleum price increase in the Middle East in 1973, Third World countries have increased their arms purchases enormously, by 40 percent in 1974 and by another 40 percent in 1975. Between 1960 and 1977-1978 (when they levelled off, but perhaps only temporarily) Third World military expenditures increased four fold in constant prices and reached approximately US 86 billion in 1978. By comparison, total world military expenditures increased by about 70 percent and reached $425 billion. Previously these countries had usually bought obsolescent or second-hand arms, though with a component of modern arms.

The Arms Trade

The military alliance between the United States and certain Third World countries, for example, has a relatively stable tradition. Since World War II a few Western countries have trained well over half a million military personnel from the Third World. The United States alone has trained almost four hundred thousand, of whom two-thirds were officers; 80 percent of these were trained within the United States itself or in its Canal Zone possession. In addition, the United States has given advanced training to ten thousand foreign policemen at its International Police Academy in Washington and has provided training to over one million policemen in the Third World through its "public safety advisers" in forty countries. Because of repeated scandal, the police training programs were canceled by Congress in 1973 and 1974. Yet many of these same activities and related supply programs (of military and police equipment) continue under the overseas operation of the "Drug Enforcement Administration," whose expenditures now match those of the discontinued training programs. The military and police programs of the United States have political and ideological objectives. In countless testimonials it is declared that they are designed to "win friends and influence people" destined one day to be in positions of power or poised to take power in their respective countries. The ideological direction of these programs has been to inculcate participants with negative images of "communism, neutralism, leftist revolution, forces of disruption, revolutionary ideas, political dissidents, insurgents, extremists, radicals, ultranationalists, and political instability in general". Third World military personnel have also been trained and supplied in or by the socialist countries, with a different ideological direction, of course. But this has not prevented many of them -for example, in Egypt and Syria -- from putting their expertise at the service of local and international reaction. In some cases the socialist countries have sent military missions to support outright reactionary regimes that openly collaborate with the West and international capital, such as those in Pakistan and India. The socialist countries have even supported rulers who were placed in power by and remain subservient to the U.S. CIA, like Mobutu in Zaire. In exceptional circumstances, U.S. and other Western military training programs have also backfired in that a dominant sector of the armed forces, as in Peru, has turned moderately "nationalist" against the imperial power and individual trainees have become nationalists or even revolutionaries. By and large, though, Western and particularly U.S. military training and "assistance" programs have been eminently successful in introducing an armed fifth column to defend "Western values" into the societies of the Third World.

The Arms Economy and Warfare in the Third World

A new world military order is being forged much more successfully and rapidly than a new international economic order. Third World arms imports have skyrocketed in response to pressures to export ever more sophisticated and expensive military equipment from the North and sometimes competitive pressures by military or militarily threatened governments in the South to import these weapons. Additionally, more and more Third World countries are increasing their own production of arms, including sophisticated weapons systems, both for their own use and for export. From an economic point of view, armaments are just another major world industry that is adapting to the changing international division of labor. Military conflicts in the Third World, including international wars, civil wars, and military coups, are increasing. This is not necessarily because of the growing stocks of armaments in Third World states. Military conflicts are also provoked by pressures and incentives produced by the world economic crisis. Third World governments are affected both directly and indirectly by the growing international geopolitical tensions and the competition between the great powers. These conflicts are likely to provide the setting and opportunity for further political change in many parts of the Third World, but they are not likely to further the cause of socialism.

The progressive militarization of society and the growing arms economy in the Third World are part of the "militarization of the world economy" and of the "New International Mlitary Order". The trend to an arms economy is among the most significant real characteristics of the real emerging "New International Economic Order" lately heralded at international meetings and in the press. We argued that the militarization of the state and society in the Third World is the logical derivative of the economic exigencies of capital accumulation in the Third World, which in turn is essentially determined by the process of world capital accumulation, especially during its present period of crisis. Of course, this militarization has consequences in policy and action, including war, that are also directly derived from or related to international political, strategic, and military concerns in a world of bi- and multinational alliances and their shifts. Clearly, the superpowers seek political and military alliances with the states and military establishments of the Third World, particularly in politically sensitive or strategically important areas. The fragile nature of most of these alliances and the frequent changes, often for economic or economically determined political reasons, from one side to another are illustrated by Sadat's shift of Egypt from the Soviet camp to the American, by Quadaffi's constant shifting of Libya from one ally and enemy to another, and by the "exchange" of Ethiopia and Somalia in the system of international alliances. Some military alliances are more long-standing and have more far-reaching consequences, however.

The Third World Countries

The sharpening of the economic and political conflicts generated in the world economic crisis may lead to substantially increased metropolitan protectionism and to a breakdown of the international financial and economic system, and therefore also to a reduction of western imports from Third World countries. In that case, the Third World countries will not be able to carry out the role now assigned to them in the "new international division of labor" or to pursue their present policies of "export promotion." This international economic breakdown, of course, would severely undermine the economic basis of the new authoritarian regimes. A weakened economic basis could perhaps alter the political coalitions and alliances in some Third World countries in the direction of the nationalist-populist alliances and internal market policies of the "import substitution" era of the 1930s-1950s. Some important pressures and tendencies in this direction are already visible in both the metropolis and parts of the periphery. Some American business and labor interests are already calling for the "human rights" enforcement of minimum wage and labor standards in Third World countries whose exports compete with domestic production and jobs.

At least two other intermediary alternatives are visible on the horizon: limited export promotion in very specialized product lines in particular Third World countries, which may or may not permit regeneration of production for an internal market and its expansion; and the formation of economic and political blocs -- e.g. United States -- Latin America, Europe -- Africa, Japan -Southeast Asia -- in which more limited or specialized export promotion and some expansion of the internal market might be reserved for Third World countries in the respective imperial area. The second alternative would make it likely that the metropolitan political regimes in each bloc would experience marked shifts to the right, with concomitant political repercussions in the neocolonies. The productive apparatuses of the Third World countries would then be even more dominated by the metropolitan capital of their respective bloc than they are now.

In short, the immediate prospects for a democratic summer since the 1977-1978 liberalizing spring are not very bright. Mr. Carter's "human rights" campaign never held much promise for the Third World, and it is now being abandoned for domestic economic and foreign policy reasons anyway in concert with renewed recession. Prospects for a democratic summer will remain dim unless and until popular revolutionary movements are organized, as in Nicaragua and Iran, on a new basis in the Third World countries themselves, in the imperialist ones, and perhaps in the socialist ones as well.