Anti-COVID response would be more effective with less arms spending

By Roberto Morejón

The U.S. Democratic administration foresaw only a tenuous reduction in military spending by 2022 compared to what Donald Trump outlined, which manifests a lacerating reality, more investments in the world in that area, as warned by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. 

Speaking at the High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly, the Cuban Foreign Minister described as shameful the arms sales, when there is so much inequality on the planet in access to vaccines against COVID-19.

The denunciation was timely at a time when, as the head of Antillean diplomacy pointed out, the United States and its allies are adopting more aggressive nuclear doctrines and modernizing and expanding their arsenals.

The statistics of international organizations support the above assertions, since global military spending rose again in 2020, despite being a year marked by the pandemic and the consequent impact on the collapse of the Gross Domestic Product.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, reported that military spending on Earth in 2020 was up 2.6 percent over 2019.

The United States consolidated the first step and when Joseph Biden became president, he disregarded suggestions to sharply reduce such allocations.

Finally, he projected for 2022 only a slight decrease in contrast to what was stipulated by his Republican predecessor.

Trump announced defense investments of $722 billion and Biden finally proposed $715 billion, a derisory decrease.

With the argument of the alleged threat from China, the Democrats remain in the club of those who spend the most on cannons, submarines and airplanes, while in several latitudes people are sinking in shortages.

The Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez pointed out that more than 800 million human beings suffer from hunger in the world.

The perfidy of the United States could be added, by also extending sanctions against other countries, including Cuba, in the midst of the pandemic.  

As many speakers reiterated at the UN, including Cuba, the prohibition and total elimination of nuclear weapons and the decline in the galloping exports destined to military industries are urgently needed in order to free resources for the fight against the great problems of Humanity.