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Yugoslavia DEFENSE AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY
From 1948 until well into the 1980s, Yugoslavia devoted a
considerable proportion of its national resources to defense. By
all indicators, the economy was fairly military-oriented,
considering the country's modest overall level of development.
Yugoslavia's nonaligned foreign policy made a high military
budget necessary, because the country had no alliances
guaranteeing military assistance. But the Yugoslav situation
resembled that of other communist states such as Cuba, the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), and Vietnam,
which also received considerable amounts of Soviet arms and
military equipment without being members of the Warsaw Pact.
On several occasions in the 1980s, the YPA leadership stated
that the country's economic crisis and diminished resource
allocations to the military directly affected the quality of YPA
weapons, equipment, and personnel, thereby weakening YPA ability
to provide a reliable defense against external threats. On the
other hand, critics of the YPA contended that the military still
spent the major portion of the country's resources, and that
military spending was a major factor in the economic crisis that
persisted and worsened in Yugoslavia through the 1980s.
In 1990 much of the YPA weapons inventory was obsolete. In
previous years, weapons had been stockpiled from both foreign
acquisition and domestic production. But for long periods,
Yugoslavia's nonaligned status precipitated partial embargos by
both East and West. NATO and the Warsaw Pact were cautious about
selling Yugoslavia advanced weapons that could reach hostile
third parties. By 1990 Yugoslavia had strengthened its domestic
arms manufacturing, and that year it claimed that 80 percent of
new weapons came from that source. But both sources remained
problematic; imports were expensive and politically vulnerable,
but domestically produced weapons were generally of lower
quality. Also, importing equipment from many different
manufacturers complicated standardization, maintenance, and
logistics. Critics complained that arms purchases abroad and
domestic military production were too expensive and were
incompatible with long-term economic stabilization. The military,
on the other hand, argued that arms procurement helped acquire or
develop technologies of value in the production of civilian
goods.
Data as of December 1990
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