🪖 Military Money

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With conflicts in Congo, Kashmir, and the Middle East, and months-long discussions over European rearmament in the face of Russian aggression (and Donald Trump), the world today can feel entrenched in war. Clearly, many national leaders are not quite as peace-driven as they pretend to be.

Yet there are bright spots too. Take Latin America: the region has not seen an international conflict over territory in over thirty years. The last time two regional countries – specifically, Ecuador and Peru – fought over land, Michael Jackson was on the radio and teenagers were still wearing bell-bottom jeans.

Sure there have been some close calls, such as the 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis involving Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. But for the most part, Latin America has left behind the days of warring with neighbors over things as trivial as land boundaries or soccer games.

And the fiscal policy reflects this peace: the average defense budget in Latin America and the Caribbean is less than 1% of gross domestic product (GDP). Not bad, especially given the bloated armed-force expenditures seen across Eurasia or the Middle East and North Africa.

Warfare is bad for people, it’s bad for societies, and it’s quite simply bad for business. Meanwhile, countries like the US or Russia, which invest between 3.5% to 6% of their total GDP on the military, inevitably draw back resources in critical other domains such as healthcare provision or social benefits.

Truly, more of us could learn from the great Costa Rica, which went beyond just forsaking violence when it literally abolished its standing army in 1948. Talk about walking the walk.

So, who are the biggest military spenders in Latin America nowadays?

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