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| US President George H.W. Bush (41) and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher |
"Peace dividend" is a political slogan popularized by US President George H.W. Bush (41) and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1990s, purporting to describe the economic benefit of a decrease in defense spending. It is used primarily in discussions relating to the guns versus butter theory. The term was frequently used at the end of the Cold War, when many Western nations significantly cut military spending. Wikipedia
Just how did that turn out?
Find more statistics at Statista
“By some latent intuition, Fleming was able to peer beyond the Cold War limitations of mere spy fiction and to anticipate the emerging milieu of the Colombian cartels, Osama Bin Laden and indeed the Russian Mafia.”
“It was Fleming who first conjured it and who reached beyond the KGB into our world of the Colombian cartel, the Russian mafia, and other “non-state actors” like al-Qaeda. “SPECTRE,” I noticed recently, is an anagram of “Respect,” the name of a small British party led by a power-drunk micro-megalomaniac called George Galloway, a man with a friendly connection to Saddam Hussein.” Christopher Hitchens
Living here in NY, I got to see the reaction of people who'd lost loved ones on 9-11 in 2011 file in the streets on the announced killing of Bin Laden. Many sang; many cried. For many young people, this was their "Pearl Harbor," the moment int their lives they'll always remember. I would like to think many waited for this political "peace dividend."
I don't know if we really want to know how to do that.
The National Ignition Facility (the "Warp core" on the Star Trek reboot) achieved a milestone last year: "the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel." There was no fanfare, no parades, no endless loop on the daily news talk shows. It was ignored with the exception of the Facility and the article I provide from the BBC: the BRITISH Broadcasting Company. Australia - "a country that gets more solar radiation per square foot than anywhere on the planet" - has gone back to coal. MIT Technology Review notes "clean tech's failure" with 2013's surge in Carbon Dioxide. I have to disagree with that. There is a thread here, a cynical, sinister thread. I think "peace dividend" scares the bejesus out of more than a few people invested in the status quo.
War is essentially a struggle over resources in what we now have: a global scarcity economy.
Wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few. It has been that way since the European Renaissance and Protestant Reformation. Those few know how to make their vast incomes in scarcity resources and are not interested in changing that paradigm. Those few in the US and other countries have taken over governments, hijacking democratic republics' political processes to maximize revenue. Armies are now supplied by design firms and defense contractors that only make profits when we have a "boogie man": Russians (Vlad the ex-KGB bare-chested, horseback-riding impaler is making a comeback); Russian Mafia, Colombian cartels - the "War on Drugs"; Saddam Hussein (deceased); Osama Bin Laden (deceased); now ISIL/ISIS emerges, formless, leaderless and in Toyota trucks. Congress is rediscovering its war powers responsibilities, even while publicly insisting they'd rather watch from the safe sidelines to either cheer or criticize if the president acts alone.
"Non-state actors"...and profit: Iraq 4.0: 41, 42, 43 and 44 - dip, lather, rinse and repeat.
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