Group H:

· Trần Phan Bảo Ngọc

· Phan Ngọc Thùy Vy

· Mai Huy Hoàng

· Khưu Lý Thanh Thanh

· Manon Juste

Business Communication

Due date : June, 5th, 2016

NATIONAL DEFENSE IS NOT A GOOD WAY TO DEVELOP THE COUNTRY

Nowadays, it is widely known that the power of a country is measured by the quantity of

national defense. The more weapons you have, the more powerful you are. Therefore, with the

target to conquer the world and show off the power, most of the countries participate in the arms

race and waste hundred dollars on purchasing military arms. Competition among countries

encourage government to focus more on defense industry instead of others. However, the

negative effects of the arms race overwhelm the benefits : conflicts happen all around the world,

million people become refugees and homeless, taking away people’s lives, etc. Hence, the use of

governmental resources for national defense is not a good way to develop a country. Therefore,

the true value of a country essentially depends on human resources and labor forces.

Firstly, arms race is a competition among countries. It impulses the process of production

and purchasing national defense in both quantity and quality. The side who has more up-to-date

and antipersonnel weapons is the winner. This battle will never end until both of them become
exhausted. There are different types of military defense costing numerous amount of money such

as guns and bullets, tanks, stealth aircrafts which are assembled to hide from radar frequency or

battleships- the pride of military power. Other types of national defense is nuclear arms. Just an

inconsiderable amount of nuclear power can totally destroy the life in this planet. It can be seen

that participating in this arms race includes not only wealthy countries ( USA, Russia, Japan,…)

but also developing countries ( China, India, North Korea,..). According to the latest figures in

2015, the United State spent 598.5 billion dollars on national defense which accounts for about

54 percent of total federal budget ( National priorities project, 2016 ). Although Vietnam is a

developing country, it is still one of the largest military in Southeast Asian area. The budget for

national defense always makes up more than 25 percent of total governmental spending (

CogitAsia, 2015 ).

Wasting a significant amount of money on purchasing weapons for arms race but the

things we receive back are just losses and deaths. These are some negative effects of national

defense. Firstly, conflicts happen all around the world namely the “East Sea” tension among

Southeast Asian countries, the contradiction between Russia and Ukraine in Europe or the

American war in Afghanistan. Secondly, human are the one to be suffered and injured.

Vietnamese civilians have to live on the fire due to the expansion of China. More than 2 millions

Ukrainian fled to neighboring countries and became homeless after the outbreak ( Euronews,

2015) . Furthermore, 2.5 million Afghans ran away from their own land to hide the terrible wars

and hundred thousand people have to live in refugee camps along national frontier – no freedom,

no house, no job ( Pakistantoday, 2016 ). Next, even the United State waged the war in

Afghanistan, they bear the most burden on military casualties. According to the latest statistics,

around 2500 US soldiers died and more than 20000 American servicemembers were injured
during the war ( statistic, n.d). Another consequences of national defense is the mass destruction

of nuclear weapons. On August 6th and 9th in 1945, 2 atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima

and Nagasaki in Japan, right way more than 250 thousand japanese died immediately ( CNN,

2013 ). However, the long-term effects of this bombing was much more terrible when the

radioactive has destroyed people’s health day by day.

Secondly, there are some examples about the meaninglessness of storing and purchasing

national defense. Nowadays in the East-Asian region, North Korea has a strong influence over

the world military situation because nuclear “treasures” were their on hand. After the collapse of

Soviet Union, North Korea almost had no any close alliance. They met oppositions from the

whole world due to the stubbornness as well as keeping ambition to unify Korea island.

Throughout three periods of supreme leaders (Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un),

their policy is all putting priority on nuclear industry first, others following. Holding exceeding

quantity of nuclear weapons despite of the warning of the whole world, North Korea has to pay

such an expensive price for its economy. There are two typical examples for this. Firstly, facing

sanction from United State seems to be an unavoidable problem. Its consequences are really

terrible. The collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq and Muammar al-Gaddafi’s

government in Libya were proved for that heavy punishment from the United State (Frontline,

2014). Surely North Korea does not want to follow this way. Therefore, leaders choose nuclear

arms as the best choice for protecting their government from the outside attacks which may come

from United State or even the South. Secondly, the nuclear weapon can be used in exchanging

necessary goods (food, medical care or energy). Sometimes North Korean government claims

that they will stop testing nuclear weapon in order to receive the supports from international

community for necessary goods. However, it is shameful that they always break the promise.
After prioritizing nuclear programs, the economic collapse exacerbates more and more. The

average cost for nuclear programs in North Korea is estimated 1.1 – 3.2 billion dollars per year.

That number is really surprising when compared with GDP_28.1 billion dollars (The 2010

Country Profile, 2010). Meanwhile, residents’ life has no any significant changes for a long time.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, it is estimated that up to one million people died, roughly 5% of the

population (History of North Korea, 2014). Starvation in childhood has stunted the growth of an

entire generation of North Koreans. The North Korean government at that time had to lower the

minimum required height for soldiers because 145 cm was too tall for most of 16 to 17 year-old

children. At the present, there are about 25,000 children under age five affected by severe acute

malnutrition (VOA, 2016). According to World Health Organization (WHO), it is evaluated that

Pyongyang budget spending for health is one of the lowest budget in the world, less than 1 USD

per person (WHO, 2006).

Another problem has attracted the media’s attention currently is the “East Sea Tension”.

It comes from the endless ambition of Chinese government. They create a thing called U-shape

in the East Sea to occupy all of the islands on the East Sea area such as Hoang Sa (Paracel),

Truong Sa (Spratly) and other archipelagoes as well as tons of benefits from the international

maritime zone. With the target to dominate the East Sea, China constructs a modern airport in

Truong Sa island so as to facilitate military exercises. It causes a trenchant opposition not only

from local countries included Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei,... but also from the global

community. Thus, nations having smaller influence as Vietnam, Philippines are forced to join in

the race about national defense. In the past, both Vietnam and Philippines experienced pain

which the war brought. However, these nations have no different choice, the giant neighbor-

China can attack them anytime. In this arms race, the budget which VN and Philippines spend
for National Defense is not small. Specifically, Vietnam’s budget is 2.4 billion dollars, and those

of Philippines is 1.5 billion dollars. But, these numbers seem to be nothing if they are compared

to China’s investment for the army, about 170 billion dollars (Military spending, 2010). With

such vast amounts of money, developing living standard and human resource in those countries

will have a substantial change. Actually, weapons which every nation owns can not solve the

problem. They just increase the military budget because they see their enemies do that. But

nobody wants to sacrifice because of the meaningless war. Therefore, negotiation is still the best

choice . In some aspects, every conflict can be negotiated in the cooperative spirit to avoid

unnecessary loss.

The investment for national defense helps countries avoid attacks from the outside.

Although arms race is very expensive and costly, most of nations in the world still continue

manufacturing and purchasing tons of weapons, especially nuclear weapons. Many leaders of the

country live by the motto : “ The more weapons we have, the more powerful we are”. It is like

the running race which just has the starting point without the ending pointing. Many events in the

history proved that arms race bereaved a lot of chances of helping people improve their living

condition. In 1986, the world’s military spending exceeded $900 billion ( statistic, n.d ). From

1940-1996, the United States spent a minimum of $5.5 trillion on its nuclear weapons programs

(statistic, n.d). That money was used on testing, developing bombs and warheads ( $409 billion),

deploying them aboard aircraft, missiles, submarines, and a variety of other delivery systems ( $

3.2 trillion). They also spent another $831 billion on controlling, communications, and

intelligence systems dedicated to nuclear weapons. The more arms a nation has, the likelier it

happens the conventional wars and military adventures. For example, the American war in

Vietnam took away about $168 billion. Spending a huge amount of money on this war but after
all, the United State international’s standing is weakened due to failure. During the war, more

than 60000 US soldiers died and around 150000 service member have been wounded up to now

(The Vietnam war, 2014 ). Although the cost was paid by the tax revenue of citizens, innocent

people still receive the most suffering.

If only trillion dollars spent on nuclear weapons or war preparations would be used to

expand on human programs, it can be sured that the world could be better place. Every year,

starvation causes the death of more than 15 million children who are under the age of five just

because they are underfed ( World Food Programme, n.d ). Some luckier children have to line up

to get food distributed. As the same age as other children around the world, however, these

children have to suffer the starvation. About 500 million children all over the world become

partially or totally blind due to the lack of vitamin A ( statistic, n.d ). Around 66 million primary

children take part in classes with the hungry stomachs, whereas African students accounts for a

half in particular ( Globalpartnership, 2012 ). The government just needs a few million dollars to

help these children. According to the book “Lives in the balance: The Cold War and American

Politics”, it proved that “ National defense could be used for space exploration, development of

non-polluting energy sources, and medical research”. If comparing the cost of weapons,

especially nuclear weapons with the cost of improving human’s life, everyone can easily answer

that the cost of improving life is very cheaper. According to UNICEF, more than 115 million

students can not afford to go to school. Everyone knows that education is the basic right;

however, these unfortunate children cannot get that right called foundation. How can they go to

school while they have nothing to eat and drink. In addition, for UNDP, 2.4 billion people have

to use dirty while the price of supplying fresh water for all of them just costs about 4 billion

dollars per year- not a large amount of money when comparing to defense’s budget. From some
above evidences, people really need money to solve basic needs and physiology. Is it worth to

spend such a lot of money on arms race while humans still need money to afford and improve

their life? Government should put priority on human beings before making any decisions related

to national defense.

The development of a country is based on human resources, not power of military. This

type of resources includes knowledge, skills, and motivation of people. They play an important

role in production which can be improved with age and experience, while no other resource can

do. Therefore, human resources are regarded as the scarcest and the most crucial productive

resource that create the largest and the longest lasting advantage for an organization. Singapore

used to be one of the poorest countries 50 years ago. However, Singapore today has become one

of the richest countries in the world and had a strong influence over the global economy just

because they are focusing on human resources. This lion country has been recognized as the best

city for living in Asia and the safest city in the world ( Irene Chew, n.d ). Education, which

Singapore injects a large amount of money, is highly extremely qualitative, affordable and

combines several types of Asian- American-European schooling. Singaporean government also

pays a lot of attention to its population’s health. They have the best medicine and public

healthcare system in Asia ( Mark Goh, n.d ).

It is widely known that the value of a country is not measured by the amount of weapons,

but by the level of knowledge. “Education is the most powerful weapon which human can use to

change the world” (Mike Trickey,1990). This effective tool which helps human beings easily

understand and deal with any problem supports people to set a goal and go ahead by working on

that throughout the life. From a better health to increase the wealth, education is a potential

factor in the future for millions of children, youth and adults. No country has ever climbed the
socioeconomic development ladder without steady investments in education. Education is the

key to eliminate gender inequality, reduce poverty, create a sustainable planet, prevent needless

deaths and illness, and foster a peace. Furthermore, in a knowledgeable economy, education is

the new currency which nations maintain economic competitiveness and global prosperity.

From the military to the economy, people are often considered hard power rather than

soft power. Hard power is based on military intervention, coercive diplomacy and economic

sanctions and relies on tangible power resources such as armed forces or economic power. On

the contrary, soft power which is the ability to shape the preferences of others through appeal is

based on attraction, emulation and associated with intangible power resources such as culture,

ideology, and institutions. A country’s soft power is its ability to make friends and influence

people not through military might, but through its most attractive assets, notably culture,

education, language and values.Soft power is the thing that makes people love a country rather

than fear it, thing that is institutions and culture rather than governments. The United Kingdom is

one of the great nation countries hold the top spot in soft power. The power and global influence

of the United Kingdom in soft power is many times greater than the economic stature or their

military ( statistic, n.d ). Despite of the small size in natural resources in some Nordic countries,

these nations lead the world in economic indicators as well as social development namely

Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The increasing soft power in China can be explained by

looking at Chinese economic growth and regarding economic engagement with many African

countries. The Chinese expansion of trade and investment in the African continent and the spread

of Chinese-led infrastructure projects give positive impression about China towards people in

Africa ( Ding-Sheng, 2006 ).

 Finally, to improve the life of their citizens, a government can reform different areas

namely income, education, employment, work conditions, environment, health services, culture,

etc. We will give three example.

First, in a country, we can improve population’s health. The goal was to reduce

inequalities and mortality rate. But consequences of this measures are bigger. Improvement of

growth and productivity, better social cohesion, and citizen involvement. So, fighting against

malnutrition of poor people is very important, because today approximately one million people

die because of malnutrition ( Planetoscope,n.d ). As a consequences, actual victims can not

participate to the economic development of their country due to their poor health. Government

can increase the budget earmarked for malnutrition to create health workers, monitor the health

of victims, and organize actions to improve the situation. That is the reason why improving

medical care is compulsory. Making available health care, establishing free treatments and

operations would allow more peoples to get well. It’s very important to inform people about

health problems, so the government can encourage healthy behaviors such as the practice of

physical exercise and healthy diets for ill peoples. Government should also educate people about

infections, so they can take care of themselves.

Then, people’s mental health can be improve. The goal is to fight against social

discrimination and breakdown, because nowadays around 350 thousand of people suffers from

nervous breakdown which can easily lead to suicide ( Livre vert, n.d ). Hence, it’s important to

improve genders equalities because inequalities are very present, in the labor force for example,

which can make women feel inferior, and more, become victims of bully in the workplace. So

the government should improve legislation that promotes gender equity and respect. Moreover,

education is a long-term factor for the economic growth and combating poverty. All children
have a right to be provided compulsory primary and secondary education quality from an early

age. Once population is educated and well-spoken, citizens can participate actively to the country

growth, have less probabilities to be poor and have more chance to get better jobs with higher

income.

To finish, living conditions should be improved too. Many factors can be taken into

accounts namely the wealth for example. The government have to assure an egalitarian

distribution of wealth because it will increase the total consumer spending and develop the

economy. Next, quality housing, clean water and sanitation for all people should be established

and paid more attention by the government. Organizations can be created to help people with

repairing their house, building new ones or installing sanitations. According to the latest figures,

nearly a billion people on earth live in slums today ( BSI, 2015 ). Furthermore, improving the

security is also very important in some countries. Government can fight against violence ( both

outside and inside ) and crime through stabilizing political situation, regularly controlling social

security. Nowadays, violence is seemed to be an obligatory part of some countries’ religions. For

example, between 120 and 140 million women are victims of genital mutilations in the world (

AFD, n.d ). Therefore, the government have to improve working conditions to provide more safe

jobs and pay enough salary to increase people’s standard of living.

At the conclusion of our essay, we can see that countries in general spend a lot of money

on national defense. And that even if the poverty of his population is high! But we have to

understand: the development of a country is directly related to his human development, involving

the development of human resources and improvement of living standards of the population. The

population problem for development is not only about numbers, it's also a matter of human

welfare and development. (The income point of view, health, education and welfare in general).
You can have a big and strong national defense, but if your population is sick, poor, incompetent,

and unhappy, you will never evolve. So to develop a country, take care of the population is the

key !

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