ARMAMENT Speaking serenely about weapons and war

Of all the activities to which people have constantly dedicated huge volumes of material and human resources, of intelligence and imagination, war remains by far the least understood. In spite of a comprehensive volume of literature written by those interested in finding out the "eternal" laws of victory/defeat in military confrontations; in spite of the even more massive volume of paper and time spent on studying it, ever since the Antiquity and until today, with the hope their heirs will have learnt the unrepeatable, yet always repeated lessons of war; in spite of the humanistic, anti-war literature, and despite the equally humanistic literature glorifying the deeds of war, the major and simple questions about weapons and their use in conflicts are left without the answers that could reach the degree of precision which science can provide. When and under what circumstances do wars begin? What is the role of inventions and economic structures in the dynamic of war, which lead to the creation of an increasing number of weapons, since prehistory and until now? What is the nature of the relationship between war and development? Do social crises spark wars, or on the contrary, do wars start major social crises? What types of wars are societies faced with, and which type of war is the most likely to occur at a certain time? Are "civil" wars the same with wars between cities/states/nations? Do ideologies (political and religious ones) cause wars or are they merely an additional ingredient, useful and necessary? Are wars merely the violent means to solve the common issue of the competition over the reallocation of power and resources in a system based on local or global interaction, or do they serve other essential purposes? Why do human societies, political decision-makers, accept so easily these huge destructions of lives and social resources, merely out of greed, out of overinflated pride, out of petty interests concerning shifts in the balance of power, or are the aforementioned elements not the only factors that encourage and start belligerent manifestations? What role do semi-rational, or irrational collective and individual emotions play in the beginning and course of wars? Are there indestructible, fundamental and unavoidable ties between the bio-psychological data of humans and war? Does the possibility of a war that would end all wars exist? Does a peace that would end all future wars exist? The list of questions is long, and the deficit of definitive answers is huge!

Whereas the generation that was born after WW2 lived in fear of the final nuclear war, which could have turned the entire planet to ash and found the ways to avoid it, the post Cold War world entertained the idea that war in general has become a void notion. It was peace that needed reworking! Reality actually avoided submitting to this prediction, and the number of so-called local conflicts, internal, civil, never acknowledged as wars or considered full fledged wars is currently greater than at any other time in the 19th or 20th century. So is the number of victims, especially civilians. And in spite of all this, industrialized, semi-industrialized and hyper-industrialized societies keep manufacturing weapons, storing them and using them in various types of conflicts. As a result, the technical and scientific apparatus which produces the tools of war, is the part that stubbornly refuses to go away in almost all of the world"s economies. Hence the fierce struggle, waged in politics, in the media and in the intelligence sector, for "armament markets". A battle that was pushed as far as "creating events", the so-called "consumption conflicts", military confrontations which have the intense consumption of armament and ammunition as their main goal. This entire picture stands out even more, in the context of the huge financial economic crisis that the world has entered into almost without notice. The world"s biggest power has accrued the world"s largest foreign debt and has sparked the great game of the (controlled?) financial and economic collapse, while allocating 500 billion dollars a year for its Ministry of Defense!

At the opposite end of the spectrum, one of the world"s smallest countries racks up a debt that exceeds its ability to produce goods and services which would allow it to repay its loans. Even as its sovereign debt is rising, the country in question makes massive international loans, to the tune of billions of dollars to purchase military equipment - from military aircraft and submarines, to communication and anti-air equipment. These are the realities of a world that seems out of whack, in which the rational and irrational seem to have the same odds of occurring! Perhaps it is not an accident that over these past few months, the notion of war (it"s not clearly mentioned between whom, nor how it would be waged, and this lack of precision doesn"t seem to have bothered anyone!) was uttered by several prominent politicians, or by economic and political analysts of the Eastern and Western World alike.

So this is one good reason if you are the owner of a weapons plant, not to shut it down now, even though its current profitability may not be all that hot, and if you own stock in one company in the sector, not to rush and sell it!