{"id":24407,"date":"2014-02-24T08:09:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T13:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24407"},"modified":"2014-02-24T08:09:21","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T13:09:21","slug":"argentina-reported-to-be-increasing-military-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/02\/24\/argentina-reported-to-be-increasing-military-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentina reported to be increasing military spending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Argentine government has announced it will be increasing spending on their armed forces by a third in the coming year. While <a href=\"http:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/news\/world\/461327\/New-arms-threat-Argentina-s-3billion-boost-to-military\" target=\"_blank\">this report in the <em>Daily Express<\/em><\/a> takes it seriously, it fails to account for the overall sorry state of the Argentinian economy &#8230; it&#8217;s not clear if there&#8217;s any actual money to be allocated to the military:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Buenos Aires will acquire military hardware including fighter aircraft, \u00adanti-aircraft weapons and specialised radar, as well as beefing up its special forces.<\/p>\n<p>The news comes months before drilling for oil \u00adbegins in earnest off the Falkland Islands, provoking \u00adArgentina\u2019s struggling President Cristina \u00adFernandez de \u00adKirchner.<\/p>\n<p>Last month she created a new cabinet post of Secretary for the Malvinas, her country\u2019s name for the Falklands.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has refused to confirm that Britain would retake the Falklands if they were overrun by enemy forces.<\/p>\n<p>The extra cash means Argentina will \u00adincrease defence spending by 33.4 per cent this year, the biggest rise in its history. It will include \u00a3750million for 32 \u00adprocurement and modernisation programmes.<\/p>\n<p>They will include medium tanks and transport aircraft and the refurbishment of warships and submarines. The shopping list also \u00adincludes Israeli air \u00addefence systems, naval assault craft, rocket systems, helicopters and a drone project.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As reported <a href=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/02\/01\/argentinas-economic-end-game\/\" target=\"_blank\">earlier this month<\/a>, the economy is suffering from an inflation rate estimated to be in the 70% range, the government has expropriated private pensions and foreign-owned companies, and is unable to borrow significant amounts of money internationally due to their 2002 debt default. Announcing extra money for the military may well be the economic version of Baghdad Bob&#8217;s sabre-rattling press conferences &#8230; just for show.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, military adventurism is a hallowed tradition for authoritarian regimes to tamp down domestic criticism and rally public opinion. Being seen to threaten the British in the Falkland Islands still polls well in Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Argentine government has announced it will be increasing spending on their armed forces by a third in the coming year. While this report in the Daily Express takes it seriously, it fails to account for the overall sorry state of the Argentinian economy &#8230; it&#8217;s not clear if there&#8217;s any actual money to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,5,53],"tags":[145,492,71,493,165,690],"class_list":["post-24407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-military","category-politics","tag-airforce","tag-argentina","tag-debt","tag-falklandislands","tag-inflation","tag-specialforces"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6lF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24408,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24407\/revisions\/24408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}