The Other Side of Security

...Beyond a prudent limit, more can turn out to be very much worse...

...The U.S...

...And there are many alternatives to an arms race...

...I have met the leaders of this new world—its Jeffersons and Washingtons and Franklins?and have sensed its peoples' pride in their new national independence, as well as their frustrations at their economic dependence...

...These clearly call for realism, but realism is not a hardened, inflexible, unimaginative attitude...

...Perhaps the beginning of its breakdown can be dated from that cold December day in 1942 when the first nuclear chain reaction began...

...What would it cost the United States and the other industrialized countries to do more...

...The point is simply that excessive military spending can reduce security, rather than strengthen it...

...And any sensible way out of it must begin with a realization of the dangers and disproportionate costs that extravagant military spending imposes on human welfare and social progress...

...When we reflect on this profile of poverty in the developing world, we have to remind ourselves that we are not talking about merely a tiny minority of unfortunates, a miscellaneous collection of the losers in life, a regrettable but insignificant exception to the rule...

...The same sort of relationship of mutual interdependence exists between the other industrialized countries—the Common Market, and Japan—and the developing world...

...Among the developed nations, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Australia, France, Belgium, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, and even the United Kingdom?with all its economic problems—devote a greater percentage of their GNP to Official Development Assistance than does the U.S...

...Preventable diseases maim and kill their children...

...For those who are nevertheless not persuaded by the mor-ral argument, there are some very strong arguments that center on self-interest...

...By and large they are making that effort...

...In the past decade, the poor nations have financed over 80 per cent of their development investments out of their own meager incomes...

...Consequently, for the developed nations to do more to assist the developing countries is not merely the right thing to do, it is also increasingly the economically advantageous thing to do...

...security is fundamental...

...The question of how we can help lift the burden of absolute poverty off the backs of a billion people is one that the World Bank has been dealing with intensively for the past six or seven years...

...Indeed, to the extent that such expenditure severely reduces the resources available for other essential sectors and social services—and fuels a futile and reactive arms race—excessive military spending can erode security rather than enhance it...

...It is clear that we in the richer countries cannot do it by our own efforts...

...Nor can they, the masses in the poorest countries, do it by their own efforts alone...

...Our task, then, is to explore—to explore a turbulent world that is shifting uneasily beneath our feet even as we try to understand it...

...But it is just as necessary to recognize that the concept of security encompasses far more than merely military force, and that a society can reach a point where additional military expenditure no longer provides additional security...

...In any event, whatever the degree of neglect the governments in the poor countries have been responsible for, it has been more than matched by the failure of the developed nations to assist them adequately in the development task...

...Is there any way, then, to moderate the mad momentum of a global arms race...

...When, two years later, I left the Pentagon for the World Bank, this was an aspect of world order with which I was particularly concerned...

...There are today more than one billion human beings in the developing countries whose incomes per head have nearly stagnated over the past decade...

...It is...

...No nation can avoid the responsibility of providing an appropriate and reasonable level of defense for its society...

...Most of the effort must come from the developing countries' own government...

...In 1949, at the beginning of the Marshall Plan, U.S...

...Official Development Assistance amounted to 2.79 per cent of GNP...

...But when the distribution of land, income and opportunity becomes distorted to the point of desperation, political leaders must weigh the risk of social reform against social rebellion...

...The miraculous gift of life itself, and all its intrinsic potential—so promising and rewarding for us—is eroded and reduced for them to a desperate effort to survive...

...It may ultimately turn out to be the most important...

...In statistical terms, and in constant prices, they have risen only about two dollars a year: from $130 in 1965 to $150 in 1975...

...McNAMARA Robert S. McNamara, former secretary of defense and current president of the World Bank, last month received from the University of Chicago the first Albert Pick Jr...

...And to explore our own values and beliefs about what kind of a world we really want it to become...

...The whole of human history' has recognized the principle that the rich and powerful have a moral obligation to assist the poor and weak...

...We need to think more profoundly about the new kind of world that is emerging around us...

...It is precisely the opposite: Assistance to the developing countries is a continuing social and moral responsibility, and the need now is greater than ever...

...Nor will it happen—if we just turn our minds seriously to the fundamental issues involved...

...They remain largely outside the entire development effort, neither able to contribute much to it, nor benefit fairly from it...

...manufacturing, but take the output of one out of every three acres of U .S...

...The world as a whole is today facing this situation...

...Today, it is less than one-tenth of that: .22 per cent of GNP...

...Moral principles, if they are really sound—and this one clearly is—are also practical ways to proceed...

...It remains my view now...

...It enjoys the largest gross national product in the world, yet it is currently one of the poorest performers in the area of Official Development Assistance...

...It is imperative that we understand this clearly...

...Once they are thought through, it will be evident that international development is one of the most important movements under way in this century...

...But if one reflects on the issue more deeply, I continued, it is clear that force alone does not guarantee security, and that a nation can reach a point at which it does not buy more security for itself simply by buying more military hardware...

...The point is not that a nation's security is relatively less important than other considerations...

...There must be a partnership between a comparatively small contribution in money and skills from the developed world, and the developing world's determination both to increase its rate of economic growth and to channel more of the benefits of that growth to the absolute poor...

...I have shared their feeling of achievement at the remarkable rate of economic growth many of them have attained, mostly by their own efforts...

...We still tend to conceive of national security," I noted, "almost solely as a state of armed readiness: a vast, awesome arsenal of weaponry...

...In the matter of military force-as in many other matters in life—more is not necessarily better...

...Thus it is not a question of the rich nations diminishing their present wealth in order to help the poor nations...

...But support for development is not a luxury—something desirable when times are easy, and superfluous when times become temporarily troublesome...

...As I look back over my own generation—a generation that in its university years thought of itself as liberal—I am astonished at the insensi-tivity that all of us had during those years to the injustice of racial discrimination in our own society...

...Too little too late" is history's universal epitaph for political regimes that have lost their mandate to the demands of landless, jobless, disenfranchised, and desperate men...

...there are many far better ways of contributing to global security...

...Social justice is not simply an abstract ideal...

...Will we live up to that responsibility...

...That was my view then...

...Is the problem of absolute poverty in these nations solvable...

...And this after a quarter-century during which the income of the average American, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled...

...In an imperfect world that is necessary...

...The old order is certainly passing...

...The consequences of that event were to transform our whole concept of international security, because now Man had the capacity not only to wage war but to destroy civilization itself...

...they would only have to give up a minuscule proportion of the additional per capita income they will earn over the coming decade...

...But it is in the developing countries, not industrialized nations, that military budgets are rising the fastest...

...We cannot build a secure world upon a foundation of human misery...

...Squalor and ugliness pollute and poison their surroundings...

...The developed nations, being understandably preoccupied with controlling inflation and searching for structural solutions to their own economic imbalances, may nonetheless be tempted to conclude that until these problems are solved, aid considerations must simply be put aside...

...The need is for policy reforms, something that is always politically difficult...

...Illiteracy darkens their minds, and forecloses their futures...

...Exports, for example, not only provide one out of every eight jobs in U.S...

...Malnutrition saps their energy, stunts their bodies, and shortens their lives...

...Indeed, the U.S...

...Let me be precise about this...

...In fact, the developed nations would not have to reduce their already immensely high standard of living in the slightest...

...His article here is adapted from the address he delivered at the ceremony...

...Great security...

...An estimated 36 million men are under arms in the world's active regular and paramilitary forces, with another 25 rnillion in the reserves, and some 30 million civilians in military-related occupations...

...Increasingly, the old priorities and the old value judgments are being reexamined in the light of the growing degree of interdependence that is developing among nations—and it is right that they should be...

...Secretary of Defense, I of course had to wrestle with the problem of the fundamental nature of international security, and in 19661 spoke publicly about it in a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting in Montreal...

...economy, then, increasingly depends on the ability of the developing nations both to purchase its exports, and to supply it with important raw materials...

...The self-perpetuating plight of the absolute poor tends to cut them off from the economic progress that takes place elsewhere in their own societies...

...This means that at the present levels of spending, the average taxpayer can expect over his lifetime to give up three or four years of his income to the arms race...

...Yet as one who participated in the initial nuclear test ban arrangements, and other arms limitation discussions, I am absolutely convinced that sound workable agreements are attainable...

...Further, the U.S...

...During my tenure as U.S...

...On the contrary, we are talking about hundreds of millions of human beings?0 per cent of the total population of over a hundred countries...

...exports more to the developing countries than it does to Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China, and the Soviet Union combined...

...Far less than most of us imagine...

...Global defense expenditures have grown so large that it is difficult to grasp their full dimensions...

...If we examine defense expenditures around the world today, and measure them realistically against the full spectrum of actions that tend to promote order and stability within and among nations, it is obvious that there is a very irrational misallocation of resources...

...it is only a question of their being willing to share a tiny percentage?perhaps 3 per cent of their incremental income...

...I suggested a number of them in my address in Montreal in 1966, pointing out the importance of accelerating economic and social progress in the developing countries...

...Still, it is true they must do more...

...On the contrary, the realistic mind should be a restlessly creative mind —free of naive delusions, yet full of practical alternatives...

...It was T. S. Eliot, in one of his most pensive moods, who wrote: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time...

...They have permitted me to explore the whole new world that has come to political independence in large part over the past quarter century...

...We cannot let that happen...

...the overall total is currently in excess of $400 billion a year...

...There are, of course, many sound reasons for development assistance...

...But I have been appalled by the desperate plight of those who have not shared in this growth, whose numbers have risen relentlessly with the great tide of population expansion...

...What is beyond the power of any set of statistics to illustrate, though, is the inhuman degradation the vast majority of these individuals are condemned to because of poverty...

...farmland—and roughly one-third of our exports now go to the developing countries...

...The position of the United States is illustrative...

...They have invested too little in agriculture, too little in population planning, and too little in essential public services...

...What will he have bought...

...Eleven years at the Bank, combined with visits to some 100 developing countries, have contributed immeasurably to my international understanding...

...Germany, Japan and the United States are particularly deficient in the level of their assistance...

...At these exaggerated levels, only greater risk, greater danger, and greater delay in getting on with life's real purposes...

...now gets growing quantities of its raw materials from the developing world—more than 50 per cent of its tin, rubber and maganese plus very substantial amounts of tungsten and cobalt, to say nothing of its oil...

...There had long been an almost universal tendency to think of security as being exclusively a military problem, and to think of the military problem as being primarily a weapons-system or hardware problem...

...Moreover, too much of what they have invested has benefitted only a privileged few...

...My central point was that the notion of security itself had become dangerously oversimplified...

...Public expenditures on weapons research and development now approach $30 billion a year, and mobilize the talents of half a million scientists and engineers throughout the world...

...But the fundamental case is, I believe, the moral one...

...Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding...

...The United States and the Soviet Union together account for more than half of the world's total defense bill, and for some two-thirds of the world's arms trade...

...And unless there is visible progress toward a solution we shall not have a peaceful world...

...it is a sensible way of making life more livable for everyone...

...That is what the sense of community is all about—any community: the community of the family, the community of the nation, the community of nations itself...

...That is a greater research effort than is devoted to any other activity on earth, and it consumes more public research money than is spent on the problems of energy, health, education, and food combined...

...No very easy way, given the degree of suspicion and distrust involved...

...On average around the globe, one tax dollar in six is devoted to military expenditure...

...Will it now take another 50 years before we fully recognize the injustice of massive poverty in the international community...