“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” — Albert Einstein
This blog post previously appeared in The National as part of Common Weal’s In Common newsletter.
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Source: British Library
There are many reasons to oppose the UK Government’s push towards increased militarism in an already unstable and increasingly violent world. Adding more bombs – especially nuclear bombs – to the mix is not going to improve matters. The only thing that ever has has been years and decades longs work by diplomats to de-escalate tensions and to build peace. As Master Yoda once said on being accused of being a “great warrior”, “wars not make one great”.
By far the worst reason to support the extra spending is the usual “enemy-at-the-gates” emotional fearmongering that proponents usually cast about when they want more money for more bombs but the second worst is the claim that such spending will “support jobs and the economy”. I’m going to make the case that spending the same amount of money on just about anything else would do more good for the UK and Scottish economies.
The scale of the UK’s proposed militaristic expansion is vast. We don’t yet know how much extra they plan to spend but an increase from the current 2.3% of GDP to 3% (the minimum required to finance the proposed fleet of new submarines and nuclear-armed fighter jets) would cost around £20 billion more than is currently being spent every year. Increasing spending to match Donald Trump’s demand that the UK spends 5% of GDP would cost £80 billion a year. Bear in mind that this is on top of the UK’s already proportionately massive spending on military matters – it’s instructive to note that the UK spends more per capita on nuclear weapons alone than any nuclear-armed nation other than the USA and Israel at around £90 per person per year (that’s more than I spend on my mobile phone SIM contract!).
Trump isn’t likely to get his wish of Britain spending 5% of GDP – that’s about as much as was being spent during the Falklands War when Britain’s GDP was less than half the size is currently is – and it’s not a commitment that the UK have made quite yet so we should only talk about that £20 billion increase for now. What do we actually get for that?
In economic terms, the material assets are useless. The nuclear submarines and nuclear armed jets don’t themselves produce anything or add value to the economy in the way that a factory might. If they’re ever used, they have a negative economic value but Britain rarely counts the cost of its wars as applied to the people we’re bombing or supporting others to bomb. Even if they’re not used, they are likely to have a negative economic impact on Scotland. Military spending is exempt from the Barnett Consequentials that decide the Block Grants given to devolved governments so if the spending comes not from increased taxes (ruled out by Rachel Reeves) or from increased borrowing (ruled out by Rachel Reeves) but from cuts to Barnett spending like education, social security or something similar then that will mean cuts to Holyrood which is far less able to compensate via borrowing or increased taxes. This will have a devastating impact on public services unlikely to be compensated for even by the few jobs that will be “created or sustained” in Scotland (a number that will likely go up and down in its estimate in line with pro-independence polling, as such promises of UK-backed jobs so often do).
How many jobs are we talking? The Government estimates that the £20 billion will buy 31,000 jobs. How many in Scotland? Unknown, but 20,000 of those jobs have been announced for the submarine programme to be based in Barrow-on-Furnace, 9,000 will be dedicated to building new nuclear warheads – most of which will be based in Aldermaston and the remaining 2,000 will be split across “6 munition factories” of which an unknown number may or may not be based in Scotland.
£20 billion for 31,000 jobs is £645,161 per job, per year. That £20 billion per year would support far more jobs if it was directed to civilian research and engineering as it would go on to boost the economy further through “economic multipliers” and the inventions and technology that would come out of that research. It’s estimated that every £1 of public spending on civilian healthcare research, for instance, returns at least £2 to the economy whereas defence spending usually breaks about even – less so if the spending comes at the cost of public spending elsewhere. Given that the weapons are economically useless if they’re not used and economically negative if they are used, then if the goal is supporting jobs it’d be more effective to pay each of those engineers £645,161 every year to stand by the side of the road and wave at traffic – at least they’d go on to spend that money supporting jobs in the wider economy instead of it sitting there in a bomb waiting to blow up someone else’s economy, house and family. Less flippantly, we could give every single person in the UK a £300 end-of-year bonus for the same price – not quite a sustainable Universal Basic Income but that would become a very valuable economic stimulus package on the scale of the similar dividend that residents of Alaska receive every year.
There may be legitimate reasons to invest in military spending but stop trying to either frighten us or bribe us into accepting the illegitimate ones instead. Simply put, if your goal is “jobs” then don’t invest in “defence”. Invest in just about anything else. Maybe even invest in peace. Then you won’t need the bombs at all.
The Common Green 