Topic:
Country: Cuba
Delegate Name: Jack Doyle
Disarmament and International Security
Reduction of Military Budgets
Cuba
Jack Doyle, Forest Hills Northern High School
The catastrophe now known as COVID-19 had a demolishing impact on the structural inequities of the world. With over 4.5 million deaths, the pandemic’s effects on societies around the world are incalculable. And despite the ray of hope during the pandemic that were the vaccines, more than 80% of them were administered to high or middle-income countries, even though they make up for less than one-half of the world’s population. Hundreds of millions of persons in low-income countries are still waiting to receive their first dose and cannot even estimate when, if ever, they will receive one. And yet, in the midst of all of this chaos and lack of resources, the world’s military budget in the year 2020 amounted to almost $2 trillion. How many lives could have been saved if those resources had been invested into pandemic relief or vaccine manufacturing and distribution?
Cuba has been reducing its outlays for the military since 1986 after a devastating hurricane causing more than $1 billion worth of damage made it realize that some causes are more deserving of the national budget than the military. Cuba reduced its military budget by more than $165 million, focusing the budget on more demanding causes.
Cuba believes that there must be a collective effort, mainly one executed by those highly developed countries who own the necessary resources as well as a moral obligation to take responsibility for the situation they have placed us in. Cuba would like to explore possible solutions and regulations to military overspending, both to benefit those not receiving what they deserve because of an extreme military budget as well as to reduce, if at all, the competition or tension between nations in order to maintain global peace. Cuba hopes to work with cooperating nations in order to attempt to create a more peaceful world.
