💡📸 - Cost of Peace - Do we realize it? (Original Photos, analysis and thoughts)
Is the world at peace at the cost of widespread Hunger??
Cannon, cannon balls and the flag of a peace loving country! What a combination this makes. No wonder I started thinking about war and peace and the cost of it all. I was in the Helsingor castle in Denmark in September 2015 and captured this photo, using my Canon SX50HS with a sepia effect to enhance the antiquity of the cannons. Here is the hi-res photo:
I started wondering about the need for armies, defense equipment and why do countries need them at all? As we look around us, we realize that countries need to declare their intentions of peace by maintaining a dominance over their neighbors!
'Deterrent' is the buzz world, used by politicians around the world to justify the huge expenditure on arms, to an average Joe in their countries. It is a fact that an average Joe like me does feel at ease that the 'enemy' is being kept at bay! I sleep without a care at night! Billions of dollars worth of equipment is protecting me!!
The list of top 10 countries by defense expenditure and the amounts they spend looks like this:
Source
As we can see, most of the countries spend a significant amount of their GDP on defense. The total expenditure of the world on arms is more than $1686 Billion per year!! There is no openly known 'cold war' now. There are a few errant countries but would it take $16K Billion per year to keep them under control? The form of attack is now slowly changing to precision attacks with acts of terrorism rather than a full blown war. Under the circumstances, the world must think, how high does the stack of weapons need to be?
This is a question that has been pondered over the years by many years. Obviously, there can not be any definitive answer that everyone would agree upon but at least the scale of the financial aspect of the solution can be gauged by couple of reports we can find like this report in NY times or this report from the Borgen project
As per these reports, a study conducted by the UN, resolution of global hunger crisis could cost roughly $30 B per year.
Let us stack this up against the annual defense expenditure of the top 10 countries as per defense spend.
(Graph prepared by me based on above quoted sources of information)
As we can see, any ONE of these nations could easily address the world hunger crisis WITHIN the amount spent by them on defense.
I am a practical person. I do not believe in Utopian solution which require all the nations in the world to suddenly hug and love their neighbors. Primordial instincts of man will always drive various societies and their leaders to try and expand their empires. Early on, this used to be in terms of land and ideologies. Now it is more about economic dominance and ideological differences fueled by the desire to dominate others. Therefore, there is no magic solution which will persuade nations of the world to cut back on their spend overnight.
However, someday, people will start realizing that small changes in political posturing and foreign policy will perhaps allow for small cuts in defense expenditure and the money can be utilized to feed the people.
Let us realize - People can die with starvation - not just with a bullet or a bomb!
I invite all Steemians to express their thoughts on this topic in comments. Thanks
Wonderful post .. it is really informative ! Keep going!
A great post and to me it is kind of shocking how much is spent on military capabilities as compared to what is spent to reduce hunger in the world or education or so many other things
Having travelled a lot and seen the effects of both war and famine in many countries I hope one day the focus can change from bigger guns to better conditions for everyone
Great post. My suppose is that why do they have to spend such huge amounts yearly. What about the ones that were bought the previous year. Since there was no war fought the previous year, then why do we need to budget for another set of weapons again. If only those monies were channeled to provide better health care and education, or even feeding in developing countries our world will be a better place. Thanks for the post.
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there is so much misdirected spendage in this world - sadly. Great post!
i often think about it... sometimes i wish i knew how to change people's mind... thank you for a very good article @vm2904!