The Cost of War

It is almost universally agreed upon that war is a terrible event whenever it occurs. It leads to anywhere from tens of thousands to tens of millions of people dying, the collapse of a country’s economy and infrastructure, and leave the people who fought scarred and jaded because of the atrocities they witnessed. Some of these effects can be diminished in a few years, but some of these consequences of war last for decades or in some instances never go away. In addition to this, the cost of waging war is also extremely high, with the Iraq war alone costing 2.1 trillion dollars. The United States’ annual defense budget is also a whopping 1.64 trillion dollars, with the average defense budget from 2000–2020 being 826 billion dollars according to the Scientific American. This shows that although war is extremely horrible, business make huge profits by contributing to the war machine. It is not too far of a stretch to assume that some businesses actively hope for war, or even for the United States to be on a war footing, because they make extremely large profits fulfilling the needs of a nation at war. One fact that reflects this is the massive market that helps to create tools to wage war. This market is worth roughly 541 billion as of today and is projected to reach 629.23 billion by the end of 2030. This shows that war is profitable, so it is in certain business’ interest to encourage destructive wars to make a larger profit. How can the system be reformed so that it is almost impossible to profiteer off of war, which is a horrible catastrophe that leads to many needless, long-lasting or sometimes permanent consequences?