Commentary/Ashok Mitra

Demanding pointless increases in defence spending is the first refuge of the patriotic scoundrel

Pleasure spreads, benignly, affecting each and all. The defence budget deserves to be upped, say the generals and the air marshals and the admirals. The defence budget cries out to be upped, echo the newspapers; following them, echo the parliamentarians. The government itself is perhaps a party to the arranged conspiracy: It appears to be more than willing to yield to pressure, thereby contributing to the ambience of delight and pleasure.

The budget session has long come and gone, another Budget is imminent. But there can be no waiting for the next Budget, there is no holding back of the demand to raise the defence outlay. This outlay has to increase immediately, here and now. Such exercises in the augmentation of defence spending are claimed to be the quintessence of patriotism. The country's defence preparedness cannot be tinkered with.

Whatever the other priorities, the compulsions of defence and national security supersede each of them. Aye, aye, say the defence establishment. Aye, aye, echo the media and the politicians. Was it not to serve a purpose of this nature that the word consensus got smuggled into the vocabulary?

For there is an inner meaning to the outer meaning. Over here, raising the defence outlay is assumed to be akin to giving Pakistan an extra bloody nose. Axiomatic truths being axiomatic truth, nothing is nobler than that pre-set objective. Across the border in Pakistan, adding a couple of billions of rupees to defence spending is similarly taken to be a contribution to the holier than holy cause: Giving India some more bloody nose.

The sequence is easily converted into an unending exercise in futility. Any pair of countries can indulge, if that is the permissible expression, in this pastime. Country A raises its defence budget, country B must follow suit. But, then B having raised its defence outlay, A once more feels compelled to increase its defence expenditure, whatever the strain on the nation's resources. There can be no holding back of the law of reciprocity. A has raised its outlay on defence, B too has therefore to step up its defence spending.

The merry game -- merry to the arms merchants and the concerned lobbyists -- goes on and on, A's turn is followed by B's, and B's turn is followed by A's, until the cows come home. It can actually proceed even after the cows come home.

Some simple algebra will clinch the point: Should the trend of defence spending of the two countries be contingent upon the mutuality of conduct described above, both countries would, sooner or later, exhaust their entire national product on defence preparedness.

The surcease need not take place even then. There can indeed be some sort of life after death. You have exhausted your national income for the sake of ensuring the nation's defence, what could be a more glorious denouement than that. But now you are not only immiserised, you are also comprehensively pauperised, you do not know from where the wherewithal of survival is henceforth going to come.

You need not worry too much though; kindhearted foreigners will take up from this point. They are understanding people, their heart is in all seasons full of the milk of human kindness. They are unable to tolerate a situation where the nation will sink because its leaders chose defence to survival.

A nation whose leadership comprised of such nobility cannot be permitted to fade into death and oblivion. Foreigners will, assuredly, chip in. They will chip in with funds, simultaneously, for country A as well as country B so that neither country suffers from inhibitions in strengthening further their defence effort. The foreigners will, of course, charge a high price for the money they advance to countries suffering from a resource crunch on account of high defence spending.

These countries will, in due course, be rendered into vassal states. So what; they -- euphemism for their leaders -- will have the satisfaction of ensuring the country's defences. There can be no liberty without eternal vigilance. The leadership in such countries have remained eternally vigilant, they have not even lowered their guard on defence spending, none can accuse them of flinching from the lien of duty.

Their country may have been sold to others, but its strategic interests in matters pertaining to defence have not been neglected; at the same time, no opportunity has been lost to give the neighbouring country a bloody, bloodier, even more bloodier, the bloodiest nose.

There is applause all around in the country, reflective of what passes for consensus, every time the ministry of defence succeeds in persuading the ministry of finance to find some extra money to buy a few more fighter planes or some more highly sophisticated howitzer guns or a dozen more cruisers.

The country may belong to the very bottom in the United Nations ranking as per the level of national per capita income. A sense of pride nonetheless persists in the major achievement elsewhere: next to Saudi Arabia, the country's import of armaments and war materiel of different descriptions, is it not simply great, is the highest among nations?