Military Expenditure as a Proxy for State Power. The Case of France

Abstract

Military expenditure as a proxy for state power The case of France Etymologically, "power" is the capacity to do and to reach one's goals. The main power of a state is to offer a good level of security to its citizens, i.e. the ability to satisfy their main needs, free of any threat. Political power introduces the idea of a control, ascendency or command of a public entity on others. As everybody knows since Adam Smith, "The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force" (A. Smith, 2007, p.536). Said otherwise, a power is able to assure the integrity of the interests of the nationindependency; territory; style of government; life of people...-against any threat. This was true at the time of Smith and it remains true today. Since 1990, the systemic antagonism long evoked to explain the Cold War is no longer on the agenda with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. For the proponents of the theory of globalization such as Ohmae, Krugman, Fukuyama or Sachs (Fontanel, 2004), growing economic interdependence tends to reduce government intervention in the economy because the generalization of market rules is a factor of solidarity and peace. The idea of an inevitable pacification of international relations allowed by international trade takes us back to the origins of liberal theory, where increasing economic interdependence based on market principles increases the economic prosperity of each nation participating in beneficial exchange, while leading to the reduction of the economic role of the state. In this logic, policy should gradually give way to economic imperatives, on the basis of scientific results not polluted by short-term political concerns. But the "end of history", mentioned by Francis Fukuyama (1999) in the post Cold war, has not been subsequently validated 1. Democracy and economic liberalism, then presented as key requirements to establish a permanent and global peace, still does not seem to be on the world agenda. Indeed, this analysis forgets the "political" objectives pursued by states through their policies, including the desire to increase their power on the international scene. In contrast, in a "neo-mercantilist" perspective, the international economy is increasingly the result of complex national strategies, each state seeking to promote its own interests on the world stage. In this regard, world economical and technological competition is fierce, not only among private companies, but also among states and regions 2. Wars still exist. The territories of Afghanistan and Iraq are still at risk, like Ukraine,

A tale of five stories: Defence spending and economic growth in NATO´s countries

“…There are also numerous studies carried out on countries of the European Union, such as the studies by Kollias et al [57,58] who, using the dynamic panel methodology with fixed effects, affirmed the existence of a positive relationship between defence expenditure and the growth of the economy. Other examples are the studies performed by Mylonidis [59], Chang et al [60], who applied the Granger methodology, Hunter [61], Michael et al [62], Daddi et al [63], Dimitraki et al [64], Aben et al [65] and Berg et al [66], among other studies.…”

“…Kishore et al [73] studied how impact the military expenditure in the human development index. Other authors, such as, Dunne et al [47], Aben et al [65], Aziz et al [74], Bolzan et al [75], and Ahmed et al [76], have investigated the relationship between defence expenditure with external debt, state power, foreign direct investment flows, defence imports and energy consumption, among others. In summary, all these studies PLOS ONE highlight that it is important to note that the military expenditure has influence in other productive activities due to the relation that exists between defence expenditure and other factors.…”