[Translation of radio broadcast by GegenStandpunkt – Kein Kommentar! October 31, 2007]
Under the headline: “The world arms!” the “Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” reports on the current statistics for the absolute amount and national distribution of the global spending on arms -- it exceeds one trillion US dollars. Gigantic and ever growing amounts of money is spent by states for military equipment. This newspaper dedicates a comment to this evil:
“2006 was not a good year for peace. Instead of peace the world becomes more brutal. What good does it do to point out that 850 million people worldwide are starving? The fact that 80 US dollars per year would be enough for a family to survive –this is a drop in the bucket compared to defense spending. Poverty and violence belong together on a global scale. In 25 of the 40 least-developed countries last year violent conflicts erupted. There is no panacea for peace, but whoever wants to stop violence must fight poverty, not export weapons. Ideas and money are called for. 2007 -- a good year for peace?”
Apropos arms, it strikes the author that it is equal to the hunger in the world that one could feed with all the beautiful billions spent on arms. And it would be even cheaper. Come again? With the 1000 millions one could satisfy more hunger than wage wars? What is this for a comparison! As reported by the statistics, defense spending kept rising -- and hunger strikes the commentator. The fact that arms are ordered by states that know their good reasons for it and that fighting poverty is not an objective of any state does not bother the newspaper writer. He means to compare arms spending / poverty fighting in all seriousness. He refers the global arms spending and the failure to fight poverty equally to the noble goal of peace and compares the preparations for war as a bad means to protect it, that the fight against poverty is not only a kinder, but a particularly more far sighted means to the same end. Because "poverty and violence belong together on a global scale."
He only knows the connection between violence and poverty upside down: for him it is not arms and war that make the affected population poor, but it is the poverty of the poor that causes war; the fact that armed conflicts arise in some less developed states seems convincing evidence. The small cynicism that our humanist recommends food for the poor primarily as a means to defuse the security threat that they represent barely falls in importance given that he also confuses the perpetrators and victims of war in the poor countries: presumably it is known to him that the weapons that are used there are purchased not just by those who cannot even buy food for themselves; let alone that they are used in their interest. But a friend of humanity who wants to make hunger a reason for war and famine relief a security policy in the heart of a militarizing world of states may not simply distinguish between the miserable in the devastated countries of the south and the warlords who lead wars and civil wars there over the last sources of wealth.
For the same reason, it is precisely conflicts of this type that occur to him when he looks at the list of global defense spending. Indeed, it does not follow from this list; in its rankings the "least developed countries" are very far behind. A handful of powerful states lead by far, not only in arms production and arms trafficking, but also in the use of killing machines. The biggest military powers and the biggest wars of the present simply do not occur to the arms critic. They do nothing for his good tidings of peace policy by fighting poverty. Therefore, they probably seem negligible to him. But also because he peruses the construction and application of the great powers’ means of war as a necessary security policy, which, as terrible as the world is, needs it on the side of responsible big states. He becomes critical not against their sky-high superior violence apparatus, but only its lack of responsible handling. Actually, even the world's largest weapons manufacturers and possessors blame themselves; namely, when they do not keep their powerful devices for themselves, but export them to poor countries where they cause mischief and equip warring parties for whose security interests the man from Europe now allows absolutely no good reason to hold. So he appeals to just those great military powers and weapons exporting nations as the appointed hope of the war victims and poor in the Third World; in any case they could / should / must be that: it would be the rich world dominating major powers who “stop the violence" by “fighting poverty, not exporting weapons.” In their defense budgets they have the money for this, and they could use their monopoly on all kinds of weapons technologies for good by denying the firing devices to the regents of misery who do not have much money.
As everybody knows, he thinks the great powers could heal the world, a noble mission that they do not fulfill. Our commentator could infer from this that they have other purposes and their influence on the world is suited for different orders than he would like to give them. Actually he is not wrong here at all. He asks rhetorically: “What good does it do…?” and thus says that nobody listens to him. And that 2007 was “a good year for peace” he may not even believe. He still does not desist from taking note of world improvement as the real order of his state and the other powers, at which they fail. A transition to an objective determination of the purpose and means of armaments in world politics is the last thing that the humanist on the newspaper's editorial staff would go for.
Once again: “What good does it do” in view of a trillion dollars for weapons “to point out that 850 million people worldwide are starving?” That’s just the way it goes! In the form that the commentator laments that he himself can barely believe any more in the good intentions of his government, he holds this belief in line. In hearing the annual report on spending for technologies of killing, one just reminds not to forget the good.