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The World Still Splurges on War
Lawrence S. Wittner
National officials certainly assume that war has a future. According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, world military expenditures totaled nearly $1.75 trillion in 2013. Although, after accounting for inflation, this is a slight decrease over the preceding year, many countries increased their military spending significantly, including China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, 23 countries doubled their military spending between 2004 and 2013. None, of course, came anywhere near to matching the military spending of the United States, which, at $640 billion, accounted for 37 percent of 2013’s global military expenditures. Furthermore, all the nuclear weapons nations are currently “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals.
Meanwhile, countries are not only preparing for wars, but are fighting them — sometimes overtly (as in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan) and sometimes covertly (as in portions of Africa and the Middle East). Nevertheless, there are some reasons why war might actually be on the way out.
One reason, of course, is its vast destructiveness. Over the past century, conventional wars (including two world wars) have slaughtered more than a hundred million people, crippled, blinded, or starved millions more, consumed vast stores of nonrenewable resources, and laid waste to large portions of the globe.
Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/war-terrorism/world-still-splurges-war/
