Features
‘Bread or Guns?’: the dilemma that refuses to go away
It may seem that the age-old ‘Bread or Guns?’ dilemma confronting Southern states in particular is simply refusing to go away. Should a state invest its financial resources on ‘Bread’, or development, or ‘Guns’, that is, security and defence? Expressed simply, this is the essence of the dilemma and in a world brought down by a pandemic, such as COVID-19,the vexatious poser tends to grow in magnitude.
What heightens the urgency of this poser in classical economics, for us in South Asia, is the decision by Sri Lanka to apparently to siphon substantial funds in the coming year to national security or ‘Guns’. It ought to be plain to see that this is the wrong direction in which Sri Lanka ought to go because the principal issue for most countries right now is economic survival.
How is the Lankan state intending to find sufficient food or ‘Bread’ to place on the tables of its citizenry in the coming months, now that economic distress is staring the global South in particular in the face more intently than ever before? It may seem that the simplest lessons in history are not being learnt. History will be compelled to repeat itself in the days to come.
The proverbial writing is already on the wall. As this is being written, a resurgent pro-democracy movement is already asserting itself on the streets of Bangkok. The political opposition in Pakistan is engaged in full-throated anti-government protests in some of Pakistan’s major cities and one of its main demands is more ‘Bread’. ‘You have snatched jobs from the people. You have snatched two-time a day food from the people’, some leading political opponents of Prime Minister Imran Khan were quoted as claiming in Karachi in well attended street demonstrations.
Equally importantly, the causes for the mounting demand for hard drugs among vulnerable sections need to be found out. Put simply, if there is a steady supply of hard drugs, it’s because there is a consistent demand for them and the reasons for the latter trend ought to be found in the area of psychological ill-health. Accordingly, if the generation of psychological health is considered a top priority by the Lankan government, the demand for hard drugs among the vulnerable could be managed better.
Southern governments in particular will be increasingly compelled in the days ahead to resolve, once and for all, the ‘Guns or Bread?’ dilemma in view of the fact that the economic devastation wrought by the current pandemic would be hard to bear. In fact, the pandemic will be here for the foreseeable future. Clearly, governments would need to choose ‘Bread’ instead of ‘Guns’, unless they opt to put down any social unrest resulting from the economic crunch by the force of arms. But the latter course is a sure recipe for chronic social disorder, which has time and again brought down governments. So, ‘Guns’, in the final analysis, is no wise choice.
As time goes by governments of the South are likely to realize that they cannot go it alone in the teeth of worsening world wide economic strife. As past decades of international economic interaction between the North and South have revealed, the relatively wealthy North would not be liberal with economic relief and development assistance. The South, most of the while, has had to manage with the ‘crumbs that fall off the rich man’s table’, and it has barely managed to survive without being severely scarred in the process.
The problem is compounded by the increasing popularity of the political Right in sections of the West; US President Donald Trump being an epitome of this deleterious political trend. The political Right is no staunch backer of equity in any form and governments with the Right at their helm would tend not to favour multilateralism. US-WHO relations bear this out.
If at all there’s a silver lining in the present multi-dimensional crisis that is upon the world it is the realization among the more thoughtful sections that neither North nor South could endeavour alone towards sustained economic and social well being. They would need to collaborate in a spirit of unity and co-habit closely in a mutually-supportive symbiotic relationship if they are to live through these crisis times. It is as if difficult circumstances are driving home to the world the validity of some of the founding ideals of the UN system.
Given the above backdrop, it is hoped that an appeal to the G20 group of countries by some progressive organizations, on behalf of the poorer countries of the South, would not go unheeded. The International Chamber of Commerce, the International Trade Union Confederation and the Global Citizen, for example, have called on the G20 to offer the South ‘a longer freeze in debt payments’ and other forms of urgently needed relief to enable it to manage its present economic problems. In the absence of such relief the South would face multiple social and economic cries, including steepening poverty and job loss. The South cannot make do with mere ‘crumbs’ coming off the tables of the rich any more.
The North’s own economic and social questions in the current pandemic are of such a magnitude that it cannot ignore the situation of the South. Inasmuch as the South needs the North, the North needs the South on account of the economic interdependence that has grown over the years between the hemispheres. For instance, the North badly needs the markets of the South and its investment zones.
Accordingly, the ‘Guns or Bread?’ poser will need to be resolved by governments opting for ‘Bread’ because the latter is the basis for a country’s social stability. Economics always drive politics.