Submitted 8 months ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to globalnews@lemmy.zip
https://truthout.org/articles/g7-countries-spend-62-times-more-on-military-than-humanitarian-aid/
Amid historic levels of forced displacement due to armed conflict, G7 countries’ military spending has hit record highs.
Archived version: archive.ph/22pTI
That’s even deceiving since most of that foreign aid is military aid that has to be spent on the giving country’s arms.
American foreign aid is just a subsidy for domestic industry.
All those bloodthirsty dictators won’t prop up themselves.
Weapons tend to be more expensive than wells.
And yet somehow Ukraine is still suffering materiel and ammo shortages ...
Because all the future conflicts that where prepared for where low intensity high tech skirmishes, or curb stomping terrorists in caves.
Too many people in the decision tree believed that high intensity positional warfare that uses over 10k shells a day where a thing of the past.
Just look at the stats of south Korea’s artillery stockpiles. They know how to party.
If you want to field even 20pct of the artillery at war strength 800 artillery pieces that each fire 10 shells a day. That would be 8K shells a day.
If you calculate for a 90 day engagement you would need a stockpile of 720.000 shells. Based on the fact north Korea supplied several million shells to Russia, and south Korea loaned 500k shells to the US, you can imagine the stockpile south Korea has will also be several million shells. But in Europe, ammo stockpiles run dry with 2 weeks of bombing Libya.
And it is not as if military leadership was not yelling about this. But the peace dividend was spent on other stuff than war stocks. While Russia stocked it’s war machine (and funded super yachts).
We all have to thank our lucky stars for the corruption in Russia… because if they would have spent effectively and organized effectively and actually trained. They would have rolled up to the Polish border.
It’s. The. Capitalism.
Hegemony is costly.
Eheran@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That is not exactly surprising when the USA is in the group. Might as well only talk about them considering how extremely shifted it is.
Like looking at 5 people, one is a millionaire and 4 homeless, and taking about how they have above average income.
Turun@feddit.de 8 months ago
Additionally, this is total military spending vs foreign humanitarian support. So giving food to children in Gaza counts, but feeding the homeless in your own country does not.
I still agree with the conclusion, but the headline is kinda rage bait.
tyler@programming.dev 8 months ago
It doesn’t say it’s only foreign humanitarian support. It’s humanitarian aid for wars and disasters, which is literally the definition of humanitarian aid
What you are talking about is social welfare which isn’t the same thing at all.