Global Military Spending Has Doubled but the World Is No Safer
Sixty-five years ago, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower lamented the hidden human costs of the Cold War arms race: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
In a moment as perilous as ours, President Eisenhower recognized that unrestrained military spending creates distrust, worsens tensions and makes peaceful resolutions to conflict harder to achieve. Perhaps he was helped in this knowledge by his experience in two world wars that killed millions, upended life everywhere and—by imparting on the world a universal and intimate understanding of sorrow—helped birth the United Nations.
photo credit: DVIDSHUB