The Impacts of Biological Threats on Defense and Security Budgeting: The Case Study: Covid-19

Biological threats (natural, deliberate, and accidental), particularly pandemics, always have many consequences for the security environment. Among all the others, the pandemic of Covid-19 has created a serious crisis in different aspects for the world and all the countries. The necessity of adopting restriction policies to combating Covid-19, in addition to a health crisis, has led to the probability of economic, social, political-security crises, the most important of which being crisis in the area of defense and security. Considering the importance of defense and security budgeting in security-defense policies and its impact on preserving and promoting national security, enhancing deterrence and defense power, and realizing defense and security strategies of the countries, the present study attempts to investigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on defense and security budgeting through a descriptive-analytic method. The findings of these studies have revealed that the Covid-19 crisis affects defense and security budgeting of the countries by reducing incomes and GDP of countries, the possibility of not realizing yearly budgets in defense and security sectors, incurring excessive costs and increased expenses due to the participation of defense and security sectors in Coronavirus crisis management, infection of some personnel of these sectors by the Coronavirus and the resulting expenses, the possibility of formation and aggravation of protests and riots, weakening of international institutions and collaborative security efforts, disruption of the process of military productions and arms and equipment agreements. This process can introduce significant changes in the defense and security budgeting and make countries modify the mentioned budgeting process and the corresponding organization structure according to the new circumstances.