‘The number of deaths or serious disabilities as a result of warfare as well as the number of hostile engagements has steadily come down’. I would give the credit(whatsoever) to ever developing technology which has made a war possible without less and less contact. And if you include the counter insurgency or the ‘war on terror’ (more below in response to mheck), I think the numbers will speak otherwise. I think never before there has been such continued loss of life and property except the two world wars.

@ mheck:

1. A little correction: There are no major wars ‘between any two nations’ at the moment. The face of the war has changed. Now it is mostly waged as a ‘proxy war’ (or guerilla war?) as no nation wants to become or be seen directly involved in a war due to the huge economic and political costs involved in a large scale war. As you correctly mentioned, USA has been able to wage such direct, unilateral wars in the past and will continue to do so because they have been able to cleverly tweak the public opinions and minimize their economic and political costs (Some even argue that they have benefited out of their wars).

2. Though I agree with your reasoning for a possible war for natural resources (which has caught much attention of the intellectuals in recent past), I however feel that a more plausible reason for continued large military expenditure and may be a large scale war would be terrorism. In the past decade or so, the clout and power of extremists (not only Islamic but otherwise also) has only grown, so has the size of the ‘war on terror’, the spending on the militaries and the cost of reconstruction. And this war is not being fought only in Afghanistan and Iraq today, many developed countries are already increasingly being drawn into it, not to forget the now-regular ‘victims’ like India, Sri Lanka, UK and now Pakistan. And if you consider the linkages of the extremists with the conflict-torn regions like Palestine, Sudan, Chechnya, Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon, the problem reveals its size.

The access to natural resources certainly has the potential to become a reason for the next world war, but at present and for some time to come extremism will continue to be the most tangible threat on the minds of the generals.

3. I also want to mention the growing power and clout of China and again Russia here. Though many would put India in this list, I don’t yet count India as a super power in military context. I feel that a new cold war is in the becoming with USA being challenged by China, openly or covertly supported by Russia. This cold war will seriously question the loyalty of regular allies of USA. Nevertheless, this cold war will again create some high tension moments as in the last one.

Sincerely,
Prabhat

The recent Defence Procurement Procedure-2006 (DPP-2006), mandates that 30 per cent of the cost of military purchases exceeding Rs 3 billion has to be reinvested in the country. Just yesterday Requests for Proposals (RFP) were issued for 126 fighter aircraft for the IAF in a project that is likely to be worth $10 bilion (Rs 42,000 crores). The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) has set the offsets to be 50% which means that approx $5 billion is going to be churned back into the economy as services, technology transfers and spare component manufacturing.

The reason why there are no major wars at the moment is, that there is only one nation which has the power to make a war abroad and for most people can have hope for a better future.

As soon as there are serious shortages in resources like water, oil, copper and other industrie metals, and sufficient power in more countries to make war without being punished for low cost by the USA, there will be new wars.

It is a lucky moment in history not an evitable developement which will go forever, that we have a relatively peaceful time.

As we get more civilized and find non-violent ways of competing, we might shift our spends in the direction of alleviating poverty, improving education, healthcare and productivity, not to speak of the environment protection and climate change.