Searcing for God # 28

From GZERO.com in a piece entitled, The new global arms race: who’s buying, who’s selling, what’s at stake by Tasha Kheiriddin, Jun 08, 2025:

Welcome to the new global arms race: faster, smarter, more dangerous and more expensive than ever. In 2024, world military spending surged to a record $2.7 trillion, the steepest annual increase since the Cold War's end, driven largely by European, Asian and Middle Eastern nations.

Who's buying?

Faced with threats from Russia, Europe has ramped up defense budgets, with Poland's spending growing by 31% to $38 billion and Sweden’s by 34% to $12 billion in its first year of NATO membership. Germany increased military expenditure by 28% to $88.5 billion, making it the fourth-largest spender globally and rearming the nation that precipitated the two major world wars of the last century.

In the Middle East, Israel's military spending soared by 65% per cent to $46.5 billion, the largest annual rise since 1967, amid its war with Hamas in Gaza and conflict with Hezbollah in South Lebanon. In Asia, China spent 7% more on its military in 2024, adding an estimated $314 billion, raising fears of an imminent operation against Taiwan, which boosted its military spending by 1.8% in 2024 to $16.5 billion. Fellow Asia-Pacific power Japan saw its military budget rise by 21% to $55.3 billion, its largest annual increase since 1952….

Strategic implications

All this warmongering could deal a death blow to arms control agreements. The New START treaty between the US and Russia is set to expire in February 2026, with little hope for renewal. It could also see new theatres of war emerge: in the Asia Pacific around Taiwan, in Europe in countries bordering Ukraine, and in cyberspace, through the use of disinformation and propaganda campaigns. And all that military spending will put a dent in national budgets, possibly requiring cuts to social benefits, increased debt, or fewer government services - which won’t make voters happy, and could contribute to political instability.

Just today, the French aviation manufacturer Dassault announced on the website: Zona Militar en/2025/10/12:

During the course of this week, French company Dassault Aviation announced that it has completed production of the 300th Rafale fighter jet, marking a milestone in the progress toward fulfilling a total of 533 aircraft on firm order from countries such as France, India, Indonesia, and Serbia. According to the company, this achievement reflects not only the operational strengths of the design itself but also its ability to develop an industrial network involving more than 400 local companies, consolidating a strong domestic aerospace industry.

Doubtless, the politicians of all stripes in nations around the globe will champion this kind of information, the rhetoric being at the core of ‘national security and self-defence. The adage that war inevitably benefits the GDP of a nation has been circling for decades, if not longer. However, there is significant research that brings that perception and attitude into question.

On ISCD.org, (International Security and Development Center,11/02/2022) website, we read:

Wars reduce the world economy by 12%-but some countries gain economically from violent conflict. The order of magnitude of the economic burden of war is comparable to that of other ‘global public bads’, such as climate change, land degradation, alcohol consumption and malaria.

And this from the Kiel Institute, kielinstitu.de, 14, 02, 2024, in a piece entitled: Economic Fallout: The Price of War:

These findings are based no a new study by researchers at the Kiel Institute and the University of Tubingen……

Wars often cause immense economic damage. In war sites, the capital stock, which comprises economic assets such as machinery and buildings is destroyed. At the same time, economic output, on average, falls by 30 percent and inflation rises by about 15 percentage points over five years. Yet non-belligerent third countries also bear high costs, especially the neighbouring countries of war sites: here, output fall by, on average, 10 percent after five years while inflation rises by 5 percentage points over the same period…..

Ukraine-what the war could cost by 2026

Base on the experience from past wars, the authors estimate that the Russian invasion will lead to an output loss in Ukraine of about 120 billion by 2026 and a concurrent reduction in Ukraine’s capital stock of more than USD950 billion. At the same time, the economic costs on non-belligerent third countries are also substantial with a GDP loss of about USD 250 billion, USD 70 billions of which are borne by the countries of the European Union and about USD 15-20 billion by Germany alone.

So much, however, brief,  for the GDP and economic impact of the futility, the sheer mindless and the nefariousness of war.

What about the humanitarian costs?

From UNHCR, on unhcr.org, in a piece entitled, “Explainer: War in Ukraine-the human cost and humanitarian response, by UNHCR Staff, 21 February, 2025:

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, nearly 11 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes and are now either displaced within their own country or living as refugees abroad…..Since the start of the full-scale war, almost 6.9 million Ukrainians have registered as refugees. A further 3.7 million area internally displaced within Ukraine …More than 42,000 civilians have been wounded or killed—including 2,500 children-since Russia’s invasion, while attacks have also damaged or destroyed more than 2.5 million homes across Ukraine, roughly 13 percent of the housing stock. It is estimated thT $176 billion worth of damager has been done to vital infrastructure including housing, transport and energy, making civilian life a daily struggle.

From geneva-academy.ch: ( c Mahmoud Sulaiman Unplash)

Middle East and North Africa: More than 45 Armed Conflicts.  This is, in numbers, the most affected region: more than 45 armed conflicts are currently taking place throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the following territories: Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, and Western Sahara.

Africa comes second in the number of armed conflicts per region with more than 35 non-international conflicts (NIACs) taking place in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), The democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.

And then there are some of the words of the American novelist, and war correspondent, Ernest Hemingway, as quoted in  Blue Fire, James Hillman, introduced and edited by Thomas Moore.

Hemingway writes that after World War I: ‘abstract wars such as glory, honor courage…were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the name of rivers, the regiments and dates. (And Hillman continues) How rare for anyone to know the date of Alamogordo (or even where it is ), the date of Hiroshima, of the first hydrogen bomb explosion, or the names of people or places or units engaged. Gone is abstraction. Glenn Gray writes: ‘Any fighting unit must have a limited and specific objective. A physical goal—a piece of earth to defend, a machine-gin nest to destroy, a strong point to annihilate—more likely evokes a sense of comradeship. Martial psychology turns events into images: physical, bounded named. Hurtgen Forest, Vimy Ridge, Iwo Jima, A beach, a bridge, a railroad crossing: battle places become iconic and sacred, physical images, claiming the utmost human love worth more than my life. (A Blue Fire, p.182-3)

And not only are wars currently being waged, and will continue for the foreseeable future; they have also changed, drones, highly sophisticated intelligence technology and highly advanced weaponry, deployed by skilled technicians from miles away from the war front, detached from the bloodshed, the personal confrontation with the sounds, the smells, and the devastation. And hanging over all military conflicts is the spectre of nuclear weapons, notation of which is captured by Hillman:

Quite different is the transcendent experience of the nuclear fireball. The emotion is stupefaction at destruction itself rather than a heightened regard for the destroyed. Nuclear devastation is not merely a cannonade or firebombing carried to a further degree. It is different in kind: archetypally different. It evokes the apocalyptic transformation of the world into fire, earth ascending in a pillar of cloud, an epiphanic fire revealing the inmost spirit of all things as in the Buddha’s fire sermon:

All things, O priests, are on fire…the mind is on fire, ideas are on fire…mind consciousness is no fire….

Or like that passage from the Bhagavad which came to Oppenheimer when he saw the atomic blast:

If the radiance of a thousand suns

Were burst at once into the sky

That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One.

The nuclear imagination leaves the human behind for the worst sin of all: fascination by the Spirit. Superbia. The soul goes up in fire. If the epiphany in battle unveils love of this place and that man and values more than mh life yet bound with this world and its life, the nuclear epiphany unveils the apocalyptic god, a god of extinction, the dog-is-dead god, an epiphany of nihilism. (A Blue Fire, pps. 183-4)