NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/soc/culture/banglade/5979

Text File | 1992-11-17 | 2.9 KB | 71 lines

Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh
Path: sparky!uunet!caen!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!zahin
From: [e-mail] (Kazi Zahin S. Hasan)
Subject: aid and bangladesh military
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: Oberlin College Computer Science
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 02:54:14 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ashraf Al
Hakim) writes:

> 1. Bangladesh is poor.
> 2. We have to develop ECONOMICALLY.
> My position on defense is that
> we have to
> 1. Take the US military aid.
> 2. Cut of our own expenses on defense to develop.
> 3. Create super relations with the US so that we can get the US to
> build up our defense just like the US does to Israel.

A couple of points.

1.    In spite of having recieved huge amounts of american aid over
the years, Israel has a lousy economy. One reason for this is that
most military assistance comes in the form of military trade credits -
all you can do with it is buy arms from the US. This kind of aid has
no effect on the recipient's economy, as it does not finance any kind
of production (and hence, it cannot create any new jobs) in the
recipient economy.

2.    Since the end of the Marshall Plan to reconstruct postwar
Europe & Japan in the 40's the only countries to have recieved
substantial amounts of aid in the form of grants have been South
Korea, Taiwan, and Israel. Aid (whether military or otherwise) to
almost every other country, including Bangladesh, has been mostly in
the form of loans. We will eventually have to repay these loans, which
will drain us of our scarce foreign exchange. Last year Bangladesh
spent almost 30% of its export earnings on interest payments. We
cannot afford to take any more loans. we need our export earnings to
import the capital goods (such as power generation equipment) which we
are not capable of producing. We need these things to develop.

3.    I would like to point out that Taiwan and South Korea have
been doing so well largely because of favorable trade agreements with
the US. Their phenomenal growth has been largely export-driven, and
has little to do with the military aid they have recieved.

4.    Economic considerations aside, our armed forces have been a
significant destabilizing element in national politics. Any third world
country whose army is more powerful than its democratic structures is
likely to fall under the heel of a series of military dictators. In
other words, we should disempower the armed forces to pre-empt the
installation of another Ershad.
--
Zahin Hasan
[e-mail]
[phone]
OCMR box 1551
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio 44074


    When a stupid man is doing something he's ashamed of, he always
declares that it is his duty.

                                  George Bernard Shaw