https://phys.org/news/2018-07-military-crowd-welfare-middle-east.html

However, a team of researchers who analysed economic and security data from MENA nations in the 16 years leading up to the Arab Spring found no evidence of a trade-off between spending on the military and public services, specifically healthcare.

The researchers from Cambridge and the Lebanese American University argue that much of the evidence for the 'guns versus butter' causal link come from analyses of wealthy European nations, which has then been assumed to hold true for the Middle East.