Anthony Rowley

Macroscope | Drums of war are drowning out calls to fight climate change and poverty

Despite the prospect of protracted fiscal and monetary austerity, defence budgets around the world are ballooning as governments focus on security

This rise in defence-related spending is absurd when the world should be focusing on preventing pandemics, surviving climate change and eradicating poverty

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A local resident rides past an abandoned Russian tank in the village of Kurylivka, in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, on October 1. Photo: Reuters

Anthony Rowley

Published: 3:30am, 3 Oct 2022

French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is reputed to have observed that “an army marches on its stomach”, meaning that well-fed soldiers are the best in battle. If that is so, then can we expect to see the combat readiness of Asian and other militaries decline as economic recession sets in?

It would seem logical to expect defence outlays to decline along with other government spending as the world enters a possibly long period of fiscal and monetary austerity. The global economy is being battered by everything from the Covid-19 pandemic to supply chain disruptions as it struggles to recover.

And yet, most of the world’s major military powers – from the United States, China and India to Japan, Germany and the UK – are in the process of dramatically increasing their defence spending just as their revenues come under strain and demands on overall spending rise.

It is all a matter of priorities, of course, and traditionally in Asia and elsewhere those have centred on social security spending plus health, welfare and education outlays. Defence spending has been by no means negligible, but it has had to take its place in the queue.

Priorities change over time, however, and “security” – which can mean everything from military to economic security – is fast becoming an obsession among national leaders and politicians. So, if something has to give in the prospective new age of austerity, it is unlikely to be defence spending.

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And yet, it seems absurd that defence-related spending should be increasing at both the national and international level just as the world faces its biggest-ever external threat in terms of potential magnitude and prospective cost – the war on climate change, pandemics and poverty.