EDITORIAL
The shocking cost of the world's wars

The world spends too much on military might. The $956 billion spent worldwide on defense costs in 2003 corresponded to 2.7 percent of the world's gross domestic product, according to a prominent European think tank whose report was issued this week.

Imagine what that money could do for children who don't get enough to eat, who die of preventable diseases, who struggle at back-breaking labor, who don't have schools to attend — not just in the world's poorest countries, but here at home.

Amazingly, nearly half of this military spending comes from the United States alone — 47 percent of the total. Second place, in something of a surprise for those who suppose it's a pacifist nation, is Japan. But Japan only contributes 5 percent of the total. Britain, France and China spend 4 percent each.

World defense spending dropped off after the end of the Cold War, but was steeply on the way up again by the year 2000. The war on terror then brought a giant surge in spending. In the past two years, world defense spending has increased 18 percent.

Beyond the obvious campaigns being fought by the United States, the Bush administration has undertaken an even more ambitious goal for national defense:

"Our forces will be strong enough," says the National Security Strategy, produced in September 2002," to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."

In other words, the United States spends almost as much on defense as all the rest of the world's nations combined — in order to remain the world's pre-eminent power.

The administration is spending billions for missile defense when the nations against which this unproven technology is intended don't have missiles capable of challenging it. It is developing at great cost new nuclear weapons, meant for war-fighting, not deterrence, even as it tries to dissuade other nations from acquiring or using nuclear weapons. It persists in developing weapon systems unsuitable for the new challenges of stateless terrorism.

Is it worth it?