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weapons. They are encouraged to do this by countries such as ours. (The four greatest arms exporting nations are America, Britain, France and Russia.)
Finally, since the merchants of death have better opportunities of selling their wares when there are wars in the offing or in actual progress, they may not exactly strain themselves to stop wars taking place.
WHERE CUTS CAN BE MADE
The new Secretary of State for Defence, Roy Mason, cannot be expected to produce a fully worked out plan for reduction in arms spending within weeks of his appointment, barely having been given time to get his feet under his Ministry desk. He announced in April that he was undertaking a thoroughgoing review of Defence spending and that there would be a Defence White Paper later in the year. This is to be welcomed, even if it was accompanied by a speech which created the impression that those who were pressing for drastic cuts might be disappointed.
As we believe that such cuts are vitally needed we consulted a number of experts as to where they should come. Here is the reply of one of them, Dr. Frank Blackaby, of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
"Drastic economies in defence expenditure do imply some revision of the objectives. So I think one ought to have some medium-term view of where one wants to get to, and make one's short-term cuts in the light of this medium term objective.
So these are the medium term objectives which I suggest :
1. Remove the bits of armed forces still dotted round the world-in Hong Kong, the Mediterranean, Cyprus, and so on. That is, we should not consider that we have any more obligation than Western Germany, for world-wide military activity. We should stop playing at being a world power, since, if for no other reason, we cannot afford to do so. The forces in Hong Kong serve no military purpose; obviously they do not defend Hong Kong against a possible Chinese attack. Hong Kong is essentially a holiday camp as far as the armed forces are concerned.
2. Mainly as a consequence of this, our naval requirements would be much less, because we only need a navy to defend our shores.
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LIA