education of individuals who might otherwise have had much to contribute towards society, the social problems directly or indirectly resulting from the consequential fracturing of social institutions that might have helped individuals to lead ‘normal’ lives, the cost of treating and rehabilitating injured combatants and non-combatants… the list goes on and on. And yet this is not all: Even when countries are not actually engaged in a war or wars, significant amounts of their resources and manpower are channelled into building up and maintaining their so-called defence forces. (How is it possible for two ‘defence’ forces to ever engage with each other, one may wonder!) The annual military expenditure for the entire world in 2004 was 00 billion (Obscenely, the US accounted for about 0 billion of this). Now, if the premise is accepted that war and military expenditure are integral to the running of capitalism, then it behoves anyone wishing to cobble together some sort of apologia for this divisive, wasteful, conflict-ridden form of society to justify this outrage. Just how many of the huge intractable problems facing most of the world’s population, like hunger, illiteracy, malaria, or AIDs could be resolved at a fraction of the cost? A single Chinook mk3 helicopter costs over £52.5 million today to be made operational, for example (Dominic Lawson, The Independent, 14th July 2009, p27). Just how many Third World schools could be made operational with this sort of money? Moreover, just as there are less obvious consequences to the waging of war, so are there less obvious consequences to the preparation for war. I shall just mention one: The huge amount of money and scientific personnel involved in military research and development.
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