Impact of Domestic and Transboundary Conflicts on Militarization

Security issues are the global concern nowadays, which triggers government spending on military equipment and supply chain. This paper analyzes the global perspective of cohesion indicators on Militarization by using 177 countries panel data from the Years 2011-2018 based on middle/lower and high-income groups. By applied OLS and Fixed Effect modelling, we explored the idea that Group Grievance and Population Growth Rate have a significant impact on Militarization in both income groups worldwide. However, middle/lower income group’s Militarization is more fragile than high-income groups due to state cohesion. It further analyses that Security Apparatus and Fractionalization Elite are significant in Middle/ lower-income countries and have an insignificant impact on Militarization in high-income countries. In the end, the study suggested that the United Nations must keenly observe the militarization trends of the less fragile states by considering global peace concerns and should play its role to resolve the bilateral conflicts in the region to maintain world peace environment.


Introduction
Peace is a Global concern for stability and regional cooperation among territories. Irrespective of the country's development and progress, a government's primary responsibility is to safeguard its people and boundaries from external and internal threats. World War I and II resulted in a massive loss of lives and infrastructure and left the world scarred. However, after these terrible incidents, the world has been moving towards rehabilitation and development, Japan's development or developed status is the best example of it.
Different countries make various arrangements to deal with internal and external conflicts. Some countries face Population size with ethnic diversity, e.g. (Xinjiang issues in China, Muslim & Hindu conflicts in India), some face external threats, e.g. (U.S. & Iran, U.S. & Afghanistan, South Korea, U.S. & North Korea) and regional conflicts, e.g. (China, India & Pakistan conflicts on Kashmiri territories, Israel and Palestine). However, making an adequate security or defense policy by bringing world peace into consideration is a prime objective and responsibility of every government.
It is the right of every state to strengthen its defense force (Military & Paramilitary) to handle uncertain situations to safeguard its people and country's stability. The government spends vast amounts of money on the training of forces, exports & imports equipment and services, and facilities to personnel to train them efficiently. As per BICC (Bonn International Center for Conversion) 2018 Global Militarization Index (GMI), Russia is a significant importer of military weapons and Israel is the top-ranked military equipped country. However, it is a myth that due to massive defense budget allocation, other sectors' have adversely been affected, especially in developing countries.
This paper examines the factors that trigger the escalation of military expenditures of a government in response to structural, internal & external conflicts and threats. However, security issues, e.g. terrorism, and internal & external conflicts make a different impact on different regional locations, and various governments deal with them effectively as per their control measures and budget allocations.
Its observed that only seven out of more than 200 countries are officially declared nuclear powers (the United States of America, People's Republic of China, Russian Federation, France, India, North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) however, due to emergency conditions and for the sake of state defense, some un-declared or controversial countries are alleged to have such nuclear material such as Israel, Iran, and Iraq. Moreover, apart from these mentioned countries, other countries spend huge military expenses by considering their security issues.
This study conducted a comprehensive analysis of government military expenditures based on external and internal conflicts. It also highlighted the region and income categories that are affected mostly due to terrorism or fractionalization conflicts which stimulate a government to make its policy accordingly instead of making significant budgeting expenses on equipping their forces with the latest machinery and avoid to prevail terror environment. This study added a valuable contribution to analyze a comprehensive study at the global level with the income category of the countries and their conflicts status which raise militarization. It observed that lower-income countries face more fragile/worse state conditions that trigger other social and services issues in the countries. This study examined these conditions, factors and outcomes that provided a dimension to policymakers and government to make adequate or strengthen law and order policies within countries to control these issues in both income (Lower and Higher) groups.
The paper is structured as follows: section one consists of Introduction, problem statement with the significance of the study, section two with a relevant research background, section three with research methodology and procedure, section four with research finding and discussion and in the last section concludes policy implication with some future research directions recommended.

Research Background
Security concerns in terms of a national, international and political level trigger militarization worldwide, however, due to robust security control, some countries avoid unnecessary expenses and invest less in other deserving sectors such as the socio-economic.
Militarization refers to equipping the army (Armed forces) and paramilitary (Police) personnel with weapons and other resources to deal with state/border violence and domestic social conflicts (Be-Ari, 2004& Steidley, 2019. Militarization includes armed supplies, personnel's perquisites and other security measures to safeguard the state. Along with Militarization is Militarism, which considers public behavior/ attitude/response to militarization situation (Dowler, 2012& Fox, 2018. Moreover, it triggers a sense of security and unrestricted freedom with protection (Flint, 2009& Loyd, 2010. Due to this linkage between the two terms, researchers have studied them simultaneously in different contexts of security & conflicts in different regions with the deployment of various strategies and techniques (Baaz, 2018;Frowd, 2018;Davis, 2019& MacLeish, 2020. Studies also focused on Militarization's impact on the socio-economic situation of the country (Louderdole, 1986) with the deployment of funds in security fears instead of economic activities. As per the World Bank database, Militarization to GDP ratio can also be analyzed through a security and government policy framework. Moreover, Militarization and sovereignty are both linked with each other, and their estimation of public funds raises the effects on the economy (Bildirici, 2017& Lutz, 2018. There is also evidence that the increasing trend of Militarization affects the social cohesion in a country (Higate, 2019).
Cohesion is a collective term used by the Fund for Peace for measures prevailing security and the adverse situation in a country and simple terms of structural unity. Cohesion is a term composed of Security Apparatus (measures the external threats with war and terror condition), Fractionalization Elite (Ethnic and religious groups conflicts) and Group Grievance (Government and Public groups conflicts). A state with distressed economic, financial, social and political conditions is called a fragile state. Moreover, this indicator summarizes the social, ethnic unity and structural fragmentation. Researchers have discovered evidence that social cohesion is significantly impacted by Militarization (Baliamoune, 2009), especially in underdeveloped countries (Glawion, 2018& McKay, 2019. Security Apparatus in terms of International Terrorism is defined by the United States Federal Investigation Bureau as violence and criminal acts by an individual and groups supported by foreign funded and domestic terrorism by local extremist groups. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime report (2018) and the International Court of Justice, The Hague, have endorsed the Terrorism description of Brian Jenkins, an expert on terrorism, that political parties consider everything against them by their opponents as terrorism. So, it is defined by the point of view of a particular group or state (Jenkins, 1974).
However, after the 9/11 incidents, experts tried their best to explain the standard definition of Violence/ Terrorism. The Institute of Economic & Peace annually issues the Global Peace Index (GPI) by considering the Global Violence/Terrorism Database (GTD) of 163 countries (LaFree, 2007). Countries face these terror threats within a country and at border lines which make them vulnerable (Mukherjee, 2014), especially in disputed areas (Kashmir, Palestine, Burma). However, proper negotiation and table talk can be fruitful to avoid such incidents which has been suggested by the scholars (Barquet, 2014). Terrorism also disturb the daily routine of life and services of institutions, even in developed countries e.g. 9/11 incident (Freilich, 2009). Terrorism acts as a predictable factor that impacts political and economic institutions (Morris, 2016).

H 1 : Security Apparatus have a significant impact on Militarization.
Researchers have empirically shown that group conflicts have significantly impacted Militarization, especially in Islamic states (Nwachukwu, 2017& Muller, 2017. Religious conflicts, international and intranational are frequent in Islamic countries. Moreover, with the interference of government in religious institutions, violent activities trigger and affect the other development institution's progress (Henne, 2019). Along with religious, ethnic, tribal groups, social conflicts/violence were also studied by the researchers (Nielsen, 2008;Shapiro, 2009& Verweijen, 2020. Civilian conflicts and their protection strategies are also covered under the militarization ambit (Baines, 2012). Instead of this, Governments make adequate decisions with Militarization and other means to resolve the issues in the context of fractionalization elite at their best (Ruwanpura, 2020).

H 2 : Fractionalization Elite have a significant impact on Militarization.
In some states/countries, political dominance with all the relevant discretionary powers makes a state vulnerable which can cause political riots and distress among people, triggering paramilitary enforcement to control those activities (Ishiyama, 2012). Political or state conflicts are also a significant factor in accelerating militarization and its associated activities (Mukherjee, 2014) because political party(s) in a few countries have a strong influence on Military command, which make them superior in holding key positions and significant decisions (Zhou, 2019).

Research Framework
The above research and discussions put light on the importance of Militarization in the response of security and conflict situations for a country and its role for state defense. Based on these researches, we computed our study research design by considering Militarization as a response to variable and Security Apparatus, Fractionalization Elite and Group Grievance as explanatory variables. Below, figure 1 also portrays the impact of Militarization on state stability and peace to the response of above explanatory variables; however, this scenario is not our study focus here.  . For the analysis, STATA regression and correlation were used in this study. We assigned a "0" I.D. code to Middle/Lower-income countries and "1" for the highincome group based on the World Bank GDP per Capita statistics.

Findings
In this paper, 177 countries data have been analyzed. Table. 2 depicts the year-on-year global trend of Peace situation and their GDP impacts in the response of Militarization and security issues. The finding showed that GDP growth, Militarization and the peace situation are directly related to each other. Moreover, their economic impacts are also associated with these effects. We divided Results and Analysis into three groups for discussion. The first group was related to Medium/Low-Income countries, with the second Higher Income group and third Global perspective results as one unit. Due to the data availability constraints, 154 countries data have been analyzed/ran through the system out of 177 samples selected.

Group 1: Middle/Lower-Income Countries.
Pearson's Correlation. In Table 3 Table 4. Explains the regression analysis of 110 Middle/Lower Income countries by applied Dynamic and Static OLS and Fixed Effect modelling, and the results show that Fractionalization has significantly impacted on the response variable Militarization along with Security Apparatus and Group Grievance significantly impacting on Militarization with a 99% confidence interval. Population Growth Rate as a control variable has also significantly impacted on MiExp with a 90% confidence Interval. All Explanatory and control variables have significantly impacted on Militarization with a positive R 2 value of 0.043, which supports our study objective.

Group 2: Higher Income Countries.
Pearson's Correlation. Table. 5 depicts the correlation results of higher-income countries worldwide 2 . Militarization has positively correlated by the independent variables S.A., F.E. & G.G. with a 99% confidence interval. Moreover, control variable PGR has also positively correlated with Militarization with a 99% confidence interval, and all these results support this study.  Table.6 shows the results of the regression analysis of 44 higher-income countries. Group Grievance as an explanatory variable and population growth rate as the control variable have significantly impacted on Militarization. However, Security Apparatus and Fractionalization Elite have insignificantly impacted on Militarization. In overall, the R 2 value shows a positive 0.014 value which is in support of this research objective.

Group 3: Global Perspective Analysis.
Pearson's Correlation. In Global Perspective, Table.6 shows Pearson's' correlation of 154 states (as per appropriate date availability). The results explain that all three independent variables Security Apparatus, Fractionalization Elite and Group Grievance have a positive relationship with Militarization with a 99% confidence interval along with a control variable population growth rate that also has a positive relationship with Militarization with a 99% confidence interval worldwide.

Regression Analysis (Static and Dynamic OLS & Fixed Effect Modeling).
Regression analysis of global perspective analyzed in table .7, an explanatory variable Fractionalization Elite and a control variable which is the population growth rate has significantly impacted on MiExp. Along with these variables, two other explanatory variables (security apparatus and group grievance) have also significantly impacted on Militarization with a 99% confidence interval. A global analysis of dependent and independent variables shows a positive R 2 value 0.022, which backs this research framework.

Discussion
The above results and analysis show the worldwide trends and impacts of Cohesion variables on Militarization as studied by the previous researchers (Dowler, 2012& Frowd, 2018. Middle/Lower Incomes countries' Militarization expenses have been positively impacted by internal & external violence, ethnic diversity & conflicts, political grouping and instability with demographic pressure (Jacob, 2014& Kindersley, 2019. However, the results are somehow different in higher-income countries where Group Grievances in terms of political conflicts (Mukherjee, 2014) and demographic pressure have significantly impacted these higherincome countries (Amoore, 2007;Davis, 2019& MacLeish, 2020. Militarization increases due to different social policies and the need for security measures along with population growth. Moreover, Security apparatus in terms of violence (terrorism) internal and external, Fractionalization Elite in terms of ethnic, tribal and religious conflicts (Sadan, 2013& Muller, 2017 have insignificantly impacted on Militarization. However, higher-income countries have not been strongly impacted by these conflicts, which depicted little interaction of ethnic conflicts and militarization in high income countries. And positively correlate with efficient governments policies in these states. In terms of a global perspective, which is the original context of this research framework, Cohesion factors have a positive relationship and have significantly impacted Militarization. Demographic pressure (Jacob, 2014) supports this relationship by triggering militarization usage worldwide for the maintaining of a peaceful situation. Middle/Lower incomes countries have shown more impact with higher significance on their Militarization due to cohesion variables than High-Income countries.

Conclusion And Policy Implication
In the above results, more than a 2/3 majority of the countries in the middle/lower-income countries where conflicts and security issues trigger militarization usage and less than 1/3 countries do not face such security issues. However, their militarization usage has increased which is a sign of global concern. There is evidence that Militarization is significantly impacted by security issues globally in terms of internal, external, religious, ethnic and political conflicts in lower-income countries as compared to higher-income countries. Apart from the direct effects, some indirect or regional effects also affect the global security concerns such as the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the recent killing of Iranian General Commander in a U.S. airstrike in January 2020. These issues raise the global concerns of World War III, which in a very real sense, will be a nuclear war of mass destruction. The United Nations should keenly focus on unnecessary military expenditures patterns of a country. Otherwise, it will cause global security concerns and a state of fright among people. The results and findings depict that some small countries such as Israel, Armenia, and Singapore have spent huge amounts of money towards military equipment which need to be controlled and must be keenly observed, because these countries have not faced any major destruction incidents yet. However, defense is a right of every nation, but its unnecessary usage foregoes other social and economic sectors that affect the country's stability.
Global negotiation bodies such as the U.N. should play its role of mediator to resolve the conflicts at the global level because security issues and military power usage have been affecting the more than 11% of the global GDP ratio and the global peace situation also deteriorated aggregately since 2010. Population size also significantly impacts on Militarization because as the population increases, so do government concerns towards the social and security issues of the citizens. If the global peace condition is under control, then governments are able to spend budget allocations towards social protection and population welfare programs for citizens' betterment and prosperity.
A recent Peace agreement on 29th February, 2020, between Afghan Taliban and U.S. was a great step to keep the world peace situation under control and we hope that more global conflicts will be resolved soon.
International cooperation and security agencies should give continuous assistance to these regions and work with their government for a better strategy to control these regions. These global peace strategies will also be helpful to resolve domestic issues as well. Fruitful table talks on the resolution on the autonomy of Occupied Jammu & Kashmir and other sub regions, along with Burma, Palestine & Israel and other territories' issues are needed make the World more peaceful and prosperous.

Declaration of interests
The authors declare that they have NO known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Funding Statement
There is NO Funding for this research.