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A deadly billion-dollar grave
If war is the “father of all things,” then profit is its grandfather. For it was profit that first created the pressure on states to acquire more and more and ever more expensive weapons... From today's perspective, an end to all wars seems unlikely. What has proven to be such a good business is hard to kill...
A deadly billion-dollar grave
The military, which is sold to us as a kind of life insurance, devours the wealth of nations and puts them in grave danger.
If war is the “father of all things,” then profit is its grandfather. For it was profit that first created the pressure on states to acquire more and more and ever more expensive weapons. Whether these are now used for killing or just stand around until they start to rust – first of all they cost, and that's the taxpayer. From today's perspective, an end to all wars seems unlikely. What has proven to be such a good business is hard to kill. But humanity might soon be granted a break. That is, when a major war has bombed our species back to the Stone Age and there are hardly any people left to kill and be killed.
by Wolfgang Sachsenröeder
[This article posted on 10/1/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/todliches-milliardengrab.]
In a biting political cartoon, which cannot be reproduced here for copyright reasons, Uncle Sam is sitting on a couch with various weapons, facing a psychiatrist who looks like Siegmund Freud. Uncle Sam says:
“I have 1,800 nuclear missiles, 283 battleships, 9,400 aircraft, spend more on the military than the next 12 countries combined, and every year more and yet I feel threatened.”
The psychiatrist replies dryly: “Quite simply, you have a military-industrial complex.” That's wonderfully to the point, but the reality of our security or insecurity is of course much more complex. As little as the USA may be under immediate military threat, the threat situation for a number of smaller countries is much more concrete, at least subjectively and often enough not without their own fault. Border demarcations and territorial claims are a frequent trigger for conflicts. In extreme cases, it is about uninhabitable islands that have no economic or recognizable strategic value for one of the squabblers, so it is only about the principle. It becomes more difficult when overlapping claims are made for suspected or known mineral resources, as in the South China Sea and Donbass. Ethnic and religious differences are also a common trigger for conflicts, but in other regions or historical situations, these differences have been avoided without bloodshed.
All in all, humanity is anything but conflict-averse, although the acute causes for military conflicts vary almost endlessly. The so-called “Soccer War” of 1969 between Honduras and El Salvador had a more tangible background than just riots at a soccer game. It was about several hundred thousand Salvadoran migrants who had settled illegally in Honduras. More fresh in our memory are the great ideological struggles, such as against European fascism in the first half of the last century or the subsequent worldwide fight against communism, and of course, however verbally veiled, the fight for resources and dominance.
Currently, the popular variant is “freedom against authoritarianism”, even if reasonably clear definitions are largely lacking. Heraclitus' famous saying “War is the father of all things” is not sufficiently understandable in this often-cited abbreviated form. The Greek philosopher from the 5th century BC had added: “He makes some into gods, some into men, some into slaves, some into free men.” Even two and a half millennia later, this is food for thought.
Military, security and the costs for Germany
The 100-billion-euro “special fund for the Bundeswehr”, which was approved by the Bundestag and Bundesrat in 2022, is a financing instrument or a shadow budget of the federal government that is intended to provide 2 percent of Germany's gross domestic product for defense over a period of five years - and bypassing the debt brake. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius expressed the purpose more succinctly and, at the same time, controversially with the formula that Germany should be made “war-ready” with it. In this regard, the majority of Germans see hardly any acute military threat from Russia. There have been debates about the special fund for the Bundeswehr more because of debt financing than because of its war-making capabilities.
This may be because the 100 billion is a figure that most people cannot really grasp. In comparison with the federal budget of 476.8 billion euros in 2024, the dimension becomes clearer, although the subsidies for pension insurance are similarly massive at 116.3 billion, but these are financed by taxes. On the other hand, new debts have to be incurred for the special fund for the Bundeswehr, so the choice of words comes more from the political bag of tricks than would befit a transparent financial policy. Incidentally, the running costs of the Bundeswehr in the normal budget have risen to 52 billion euros, and in alternative calculations even exceed the 60 billion mark.
The ever-increasing military spending worldwide
Let's stick with the numbers that defy normal imagination, and take a look at the military spending that the international community as a whole “affords”. In 2023, this amounted to a combined 2.44 trillion US dollars, or, to put it another way, 2,440,000,000,000 dollars. The three major powers, the USA, China and Russia, together spend 1.321 trillion, or more than half of this amount. Statista has listed the countries with the highest military spending in 2023 as follows: USA 913, China 296, Russia 109, India 83, Saudi Arabia 76, Great Britain 75, Germany 67, Ukraine 65, France 61. (Military spending by country worldwide 2023 | Statista)
The total expenditure is enormous, but it seems that individual national budgets can cope with it, presumably because its necessity is rarely questioned, at least never radically. An army is indispensable for defense and deterrence of potential attackers.
The question is therefore rather how strong it needs to be and how expensive it can or should be. Compared to the size of the world economy or the global nominal gross domestic product of 105 trillion in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), world military spending accounts for only 2.3 percent. That would be slightly more than the NATO target of 2 percent per country, and significantly more for the US at 3.5 percent.
However, the total expenditure of 2.44 trillion dollars applies largely only to the highly armed countries, with the three major powers far in the lead. According to World Bank and IMF statistics, only 18 countries have a gross domestic product of more than one trillion dollars, and 68 other countries have more than 100 billion dollars. The 20 richest countries account for 80.5 percent of the world economy, while the 157 poorest countries account for only 10 percent. (Countries by GDP (Nominal) 2022 - StatisticsTimes.com) But even the poorest seem to spend money on weapons and armies time and again, not infrequently for their internal conflicts and civil wars.
Special offer: weapons and their prices
The world market for small arms, i.e. pistols and rifles including accessories and ammunition, reached a total value of 6.18 billion US dollars in 2023. In Europe, the big names include traditional companies such as Beretta, Heckler&Koch and Glock. In December 2023, the death of Austrian entrepreneur Gaston Hellmut Glock, who had only developed his legendary pistol in the early 1980s, brought his success story into the German media. The company's turnover in recent years has reached more than 800 million euros, with the main customers including the American and French police forces. The range of types and price categories of handguns is particularly wide because they are also sought after by criminals. Meanwhile, demand has also brought cheap models onto the markets that, in extreme cases, can be produced using a 3D printer, but are no less deadly than industrial models. Excess weapons from army stocks find their way onto the legal and illegal gray and black markets. Even in countries with strong administrative control mechanisms such as Germany, small arms apparently easily fall into the wrong hands, not to mention the misuse of legal hunting weapons.
All military vehicles are considerably more expensive, except for trucks that are only olive green in color and have few other modifications. Prices rise significantly for armored vehicles equipped with cannons, known collectively as tanks. The American M1A2 ABRAMS tank, for example, which has also been deployed in Ukraine, costs 9 million US dollars, while the German flagship Leopard 2 tank can cost up to 20 million euros, depending on the model and equipment. This export hit is built by market leader Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann (KMW) and Rheinmetall, which supplies the turret. Together with the French tank manufacturer Nexter, KMW is working on the Leopard 2 A-RC 3.0, an unmanned variant that can be remotely controlled from an external command center. The accuracy and destructive power of the latest variants of the Panzerfaust, developed from the World War II anti-tank weapon and now in its 5th generation, is so high in the war in Ukraine that territorial gains through tank battles are no longer possible. Nevertheless, tanks are still part of the basic equipment of all major armies worldwide.
It will come as no surprise that prices for military aircraft are set to rise significantly again. Lockheed Martin, by far the world's largest arms manufacturer, is extremely successful with its fighter aircraft. Its F-35 model series costs between 82 and 109 million US dollars per unit. The system costs over the expected service life, from the Pentagon planned until 2088, exceed the 2 trillion mark, of which 442 billion is for the machines themselves and 1.6 trillion for all the necessary ancillary tasks to maintain flight operations. This is becoming too much even for air force planners.
A few days ago, the military magazine Defense One reported that the Air Force wants a successor to the 6th generation, but that it should not cost more than the F-35. The stealth or stealth aircraft fly in an even higher price range. The American A1F cost 1.6 billion dollars four years ago. Meanwhile, however, doubts have arisen as to whether the enormous costs can still guarantee the traditional air superiority that was previously considered a prerequisite for military victories. The development of self-guiding missiles, which can take out aircraft as well as long-range missiles, and robotics in all technical variants in drones and gliding bombs, are putting military planners under as much pressure as the astronomical costs.
The advances in naval weapons technology are likely to have a similarly questionable impact. The gigantic aircraft carriers, whose construction costs exceed the 12 billion mark (USS Gerald Ford) and whose operation costs more than 1 billion dollars per year, have ensured air superiority for decades, even in remote regions. It is increasingly questionable whether their own defense systems can guarantee their security or invulnerability in the long term. Weapon technology and unconventional methods of warfare, for example in the Red Sea, also point to increasingly asymmetrical methods of warfare in the navy and the corresponding vulnerability of the highly specialized navy.
Can the arms spiral lead itself ad absurdum?
The analysis handed down by Heraclitus that war is the father of all things has largely been on the technological level since the Second World War. The development of rocketry, which originated with the German V2, has led to world-shaking advances, from space travel to the “Mutual Assured Destruction” of nuclear continental missiles, aptly abbreviated to “MAD”. Albert Einstein's warning that he did not know how World War III would be fought, but that in World War IV it would surely be with clubs and stones again, has probably become even more relevant in the meantime.
But an end to all arms races is unlikely or impossible because the production and export of weapons is all too good a business.
According to Statista, the largest exporters between 2019 and 2023 were the USA with 41.7 percent, followed by France with 10.7, Russia with 10.5, China with 5.8 and Germany with 5.6 percent. Equally illusionary are the idealistic and optimistic counter-calculations of how much good could be done for humanity with the billions spent on armaments, how many apartments and schools could be built or how much bitterest poverty could be fought. It is not only due to the military-industrial complex, even if its ideological and financial tentacles reach into almost all areas of politics.
Wolfgang Sachsenröder, born in 1943, has worked as a political consultant in Asia, the Middle East and Southeast Europe and has been living in Singapore again since 2008. He is particularly interested in Southeast Asia, where he has been observing and commenting on politics for a total of 25 years. In his latest book, he describes the history of the opium trade and its political consequences to this day: “From Opium to Amphetamines – The Nine Lives of the Narcotics Industry in Southeast Asia”, published by WorldScientific in April. In his blog partyforumseasia.org, he highlights political developments in the region.
Related article
The declining naval power
At the beginning of the 19th century, the US Navy set new standards in maritime warfare. However, battles at sea are also becoming increasingly asymmetrical, which is why the former naval power will lose its leading position.
17.09.2024 by Wolfgang Sachsenröder
The military, which is sold to us as a kind of life insurance, devours the wealth of nations and puts them in grave danger.
If war is the “father of all things,” then profit is its grandfather. For it was profit that first created the pressure on states to acquire more and more and ever more expensive weapons. Whether these are now used for killing or just stand around until they start to rust – first of all they cost, and that's the taxpayer. From today's perspective, an end to all wars seems unlikely. What has proven to be such a good business is hard to kill. But humanity might soon be granted a break. That is, when a major war has bombed our species back to the Stone Age and there are hardly any people left to kill and be killed.
by Wolfgang Sachsenröeder
[This article posted on 10/1/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/todliches-milliardengrab.]
In a biting political cartoon, which cannot be reproduced here for copyright reasons, Uncle Sam is sitting on a couch with various weapons, facing a psychiatrist who looks like Siegmund Freud. Uncle Sam says:
“I have 1,800 nuclear missiles, 283 battleships, 9,400 aircraft, spend more on the military than the next 12 countries combined, and every year more and yet I feel threatened.”
The psychiatrist replies dryly: “Quite simply, you have a military-industrial complex.” That's wonderfully to the point, but the reality of our security or insecurity is of course much more complex. As little as the USA may be under immediate military threat, the threat situation for a number of smaller countries is much more concrete, at least subjectively and often enough not without their own fault. Border demarcations and territorial claims are a frequent trigger for conflicts. In extreme cases, it is about uninhabitable islands that have no economic or recognizable strategic value for one of the squabblers, so it is only about the principle. It becomes more difficult when overlapping claims are made for suspected or known mineral resources, as in the South China Sea and Donbass. Ethnic and religious differences are also a common trigger for conflicts, but in other regions or historical situations, these differences have been avoided without bloodshed.
All in all, humanity is anything but conflict-averse, although the acute causes for military conflicts vary almost endlessly. The so-called “Soccer War” of 1969 between Honduras and El Salvador had a more tangible background than just riots at a soccer game. It was about several hundred thousand Salvadoran migrants who had settled illegally in Honduras. More fresh in our memory are the great ideological struggles, such as against European fascism in the first half of the last century or the subsequent worldwide fight against communism, and of course, however verbally veiled, the fight for resources and dominance.
Currently, the popular variant is “freedom against authoritarianism”, even if reasonably clear definitions are largely lacking. Heraclitus' famous saying “War is the father of all things” is not sufficiently understandable in this often-cited abbreviated form. The Greek philosopher from the 5th century BC had added: “He makes some into gods, some into men, some into slaves, some into free men.” Even two and a half millennia later, this is food for thought.
Military, security and the costs for Germany
The 100-billion-euro “special fund for the Bundeswehr”, which was approved by the Bundestag and Bundesrat in 2022, is a financing instrument or a shadow budget of the federal government that is intended to provide 2 percent of Germany's gross domestic product for defense over a period of five years - and bypassing the debt brake. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius expressed the purpose more succinctly and, at the same time, controversially with the formula that Germany should be made “war-ready” with it. In this regard, the majority of Germans see hardly any acute military threat from Russia. There have been debates about the special fund for the Bundeswehr more because of debt financing than because of its war-making capabilities.
This may be because the 100 billion is a figure that most people cannot really grasp. In comparison with the federal budget of 476.8 billion euros in 2024, the dimension becomes clearer, although the subsidies for pension insurance are similarly massive at 116.3 billion, but these are financed by taxes. On the other hand, new debts have to be incurred for the special fund for the Bundeswehr, so the choice of words comes more from the political bag of tricks than would befit a transparent financial policy. Incidentally, the running costs of the Bundeswehr in the normal budget have risen to 52 billion euros, and in alternative calculations even exceed the 60 billion mark.
The ever-increasing military spending worldwide
Let's stick with the numbers that defy normal imagination, and take a look at the military spending that the international community as a whole “affords”. In 2023, this amounted to a combined 2.44 trillion US dollars, or, to put it another way, 2,440,000,000,000 dollars. The three major powers, the USA, China and Russia, together spend 1.321 trillion, or more than half of this amount. Statista has listed the countries with the highest military spending in 2023 as follows: USA 913, China 296, Russia 109, India 83, Saudi Arabia 76, Great Britain 75, Germany 67, Ukraine 65, France 61. (Military spending by country worldwide 2023 | Statista)
The total expenditure is enormous, but it seems that individual national budgets can cope with it, presumably because its necessity is rarely questioned, at least never radically. An army is indispensable for defense and deterrence of potential attackers.
The question is therefore rather how strong it needs to be and how expensive it can or should be. Compared to the size of the world economy or the global nominal gross domestic product of 105 trillion in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), world military spending accounts for only 2.3 percent. That would be slightly more than the NATO target of 2 percent per country, and significantly more for the US at 3.5 percent.
However, the total expenditure of 2.44 trillion dollars applies largely only to the highly armed countries, with the three major powers far in the lead. According to World Bank and IMF statistics, only 18 countries have a gross domestic product of more than one trillion dollars, and 68 other countries have more than 100 billion dollars. The 20 richest countries account for 80.5 percent of the world economy, while the 157 poorest countries account for only 10 percent. (Countries by GDP (Nominal) 2022 - StatisticsTimes.com) But even the poorest seem to spend money on weapons and armies time and again, not infrequently for their internal conflicts and civil wars.
Special offer: weapons and their prices
The world market for small arms, i.e. pistols and rifles including accessories and ammunition, reached a total value of 6.18 billion US dollars in 2023. In Europe, the big names include traditional companies such as Beretta, Heckler&Koch and Glock. In December 2023, the death of Austrian entrepreneur Gaston Hellmut Glock, who had only developed his legendary pistol in the early 1980s, brought his success story into the German media. The company's turnover in recent years has reached more than 800 million euros, with the main customers including the American and French police forces. The range of types and price categories of handguns is particularly wide because they are also sought after by criminals. Meanwhile, demand has also brought cheap models onto the markets that, in extreme cases, can be produced using a 3D printer, but are no less deadly than industrial models. Excess weapons from army stocks find their way onto the legal and illegal gray and black markets. Even in countries with strong administrative control mechanisms such as Germany, small arms apparently easily fall into the wrong hands, not to mention the misuse of legal hunting weapons.
All military vehicles are considerably more expensive, except for trucks that are only olive green in color and have few other modifications. Prices rise significantly for armored vehicles equipped with cannons, known collectively as tanks. The American M1A2 ABRAMS tank, for example, which has also been deployed in Ukraine, costs 9 million US dollars, while the German flagship Leopard 2 tank can cost up to 20 million euros, depending on the model and equipment. This export hit is built by market leader Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann (KMW) and Rheinmetall, which supplies the turret. Together with the French tank manufacturer Nexter, KMW is working on the Leopard 2 A-RC 3.0, an unmanned variant that can be remotely controlled from an external command center. The accuracy and destructive power of the latest variants of the Panzerfaust, developed from the World War II anti-tank weapon and now in its 5th generation, is so high in the war in Ukraine that territorial gains through tank battles are no longer possible. Nevertheless, tanks are still part of the basic equipment of all major armies worldwide.
It will come as no surprise that prices for military aircraft are set to rise significantly again. Lockheed Martin, by far the world's largest arms manufacturer, is extremely successful with its fighter aircraft. Its F-35 model series costs between 82 and 109 million US dollars per unit. The system costs over the expected service life, from the Pentagon planned until 2088, exceed the 2 trillion mark, of which 442 billion is for the machines themselves and 1.6 trillion for all the necessary ancillary tasks to maintain flight operations. This is becoming too much even for air force planners.
A few days ago, the military magazine Defense One reported that the Air Force wants a successor to the 6th generation, but that it should not cost more than the F-35. The stealth or stealth aircraft fly in an even higher price range. The American A1F cost 1.6 billion dollars four years ago. Meanwhile, however, doubts have arisen as to whether the enormous costs can still guarantee the traditional air superiority that was previously considered a prerequisite for military victories. The development of self-guiding missiles, which can take out aircraft as well as long-range missiles, and robotics in all technical variants in drones and gliding bombs, are putting military planners under as much pressure as the astronomical costs.
The advances in naval weapons technology are likely to have a similarly questionable impact. The gigantic aircraft carriers, whose construction costs exceed the 12 billion mark (USS Gerald Ford) and whose operation costs more than 1 billion dollars per year, have ensured air superiority for decades, even in remote regions. It is increasingly questionable whether their own defense systems can guarantee their security or invulnerability in the long term. Weapon technology and unconventional methods of warfare, for example in the Red Sea, also point to increasingly asymmetrical methods of warfare in the navy and the corresponding vulnerability of the highly specialized navy.
Can the arms spiral lead itself ad absurdum?
The analysis handed down by Heraclitus that war is the father of all things has largely been on the technological level since the Second World War. The development of rocketry, which originated with the German V2, has led to world-shaking advances, from space travel to the “Mutual Assured Destruction” of nuclear continental missiles, aptly abbreviated to “MAD”. Albert Einstein's warning that he did not know how World War III would be fought, but that in World War IV it would surely be with clubs and stones again, has probably become even more relevant in the meantime.
But an end to all arms races is unlikely or impossible because the production and export of weapons is all too good a business.
According to Statista, the largest exporters between 2019 and 2023 were the USA with 41.7 percent, followed by France with 10.7, Russia with 10.5, China with 5.8 and Germany with 5.6 percent. Equally illusionary are the idealistic and optimistic counter-calculations of how much good could be done for humanity with the billions spent on armaments, how many apartments and schools could be built or how much bitterest poverty could be fought. It is not only due to the military-industrial complex, even if its ideological and financial tentacles reach into almost all areas of politics.
Wolfgang Sachsenröder, born in 1943, has worked as a political consultant in Asia, the Middle East and Southeast Europe and has been living in Singapore again since 2008. He is particularly interested in Southeast Asia, where he has been observing and commenting on politics for a total of 25 years. In his latest book, he describes the history of the opium trade and its political consequences to this day: “From Opium to Amphetamines – The Nine Lives of the Narcotics Industry in Southeast Asia”, published by WorldScientific in April. In his blog partyforumseasia.org, he highlights political developments in the region.
Related article
The declining naval power
At the beginning of the 19th century, the US Navy set new standards in maritime warfare. However, battles at sea are also becoming increasingly asymmetrical, which is why the former naval power will lose its leading position.
17.09.2024 by Wolfgang Sachsenröder
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We battle with low information people
dummified by the corporate media obsessed with "business-friendly" news.
As an example, Trump tried to explain the economy with two different sizes of the Tic-Toc breath freshener! According to MSNBC, Trump created more debt with his 2017 $8 trillion dollar tax heists than all US presidents combined! We are a debtor economy now saddled with a one trillion dollar annual interest payment!