Thinking Peace 7: Dr. Jelena Juvan: The Slovenian Defence Budget

“Slovenia has a very good legal framework and also mechanisms for civilian control over the security sector.
So regarding that we do not have to worry that the armed forces, for example Slovenian armed forces will gain any more influence in the society so that we can talk about the militarization.  The militarization also includes or also means that the society adopts the values and the processes of armed forces.  They adopt discipline, hierarchy and sub-coordination which I think Slovenia is very far away from that.

But regarding this let’s say statements from our government that the budget for defense will be raised in a way that we will build roads and hospitals.  First of all that is not in line with the NATO criteria for defense budget.  NATO has a very strict methodology of what can be calculated as a defense budget and building a hospital which they say it will be dual use cannot be calculated as defense budget.

So this idea of our government that they will try to sell everything under a defense budget for example as the Italian Vice Prime Minister said that they will build a bridge to Sicily and pay it from the defense budget.  So that is not possible.  I think in my opinion that was only an idea from our government trying to sell higher defense budget to the Slovenian public and it was not done professionally.

I am not sure if that is the right word but I cannot remember it on the image.  So I honestly doubt that we will build highways or we will build bridges and hospitals with the money that we were supposed to spend for defense.  And if we take a look at our historical experiences regarding defense budget I think it is more likely that we will not raise defense budget although it looks like everybody expected that from us that we will.

It took us, well we are still not there, but we joined NATO in 2004 and at that time there was this 2% hovering around above our heads.  It was not something that NATO expected but at that time we already said that Slovenia will raise defense budget 2% and in 2015 we were up to 0.9%. So we did not go high, we went down.  So in 2014 NATO after the Russian colonization of the Crimean peninsula NATO adopted this border of limit of 2% and that was 11 years ago and we are still not there.

And then this year in June at the NATO summit in Wales our Prime Minister promised 5% and then he came home and he said ‘No, no, I did not promise 5%, I promised 3%’ and 1.5% or something like that. So actually we don’t know what he promised. But we also said that it will be reached 2% by the end of this year but it will not be reached.

So all this talk about defense budget in Slovenia is very specific and it’s mostly intended for our internal public, also for political parties who are in the government.  So I would say there is much talk but honestly I do not expect any of it to be fulfilled.”

– Dr. Jelena Juvan, Roundtable “The Necessity of Armament? Between Security, Profit, and the Illusion of Peace”, Thinking Peace Series