It is estimated that more than $1 trillion is spent on military expenditures worldwide each year (that’s 2 percent of the world’s GDP). Part of this goes to the procurement of hardware and services from the military industry.
“Five times in the past century, the U.S. has fought a major war and then promptly disarmed, with damaging and avoidable consequences. Congress should not repeat the same mistake yet again. Instead, Congress should dare to take a longer perspective by justifying robust defense spending to voters in terms of the national security and economic benefits produced by a sound defense investment and modernization strategy.”
“If our foreign policy aims to prevent suffering and death with finite resources, it makes sense to ask whether this war makes sense on those grounds. I grasp the tiresome point that the choice on the table was not a choice between taking out Libya’s air defences and buying bed nets. The choice was between taking out Libya’s air defences or not. But the question nagging some of us is why this was the choice on the table. Why did this come up as a matter requiring urgent attention and immediate decision? Why is it that the choice to express our humanitarian benevolence through the use of missiles and jets gets on the table—to the top of the agenda, even—again and again, but the choice to express it less truculently so rarely does? If our humanitarian values really set the agenda, how likely is it that the prospect of urgent military intervention would come up so often?”
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