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Asia's Hidden Arms Race: Six Countries Talk Peace While Preparing for War
Read all about it! Diplomats remain upbeat about solving the nuclear stand-off with North Korea; optimists envision a peace treaty to replace the armistice that halted, but failed to formally end, the Korean War 55 years ago. Some leaders and scholars are even urging the transformation of the Six Party Talks over the Korean nuclear issue, involving the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the two Koreas, into a permanent peace structure in Northeast Asia.
The countries in the region all seem determined to make nice right now. Yasuo Fukuda, the new Japanese prime minister, is considerably more pacific than his predecessor, the ultra-nationalist Shinzo Abe. The new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, despite his conservative credentials, is committed to continuing the previous president's engagement policy with North Korea and plans to reach out to Japan via his first post-inaugural state visit. The party that won the recent Taiwanese parliamentary elections, the Kuomintang, wants to rebuild bridges to the Mainland and, when it comes to the Communist Party there, mend fences the ruling Democratic Progressive Party tried to pull down. Beijing, for its part, is being super-conciliatory toward practically everyone in this Olympic year.
Despite all this peace-talk, something else, quite momentous and hardly noticed, is underway in the region. The real money in Northeast Asia is going elsewhere. While in the news sunshine prevails, in the shadows an already massive regional arms race is threatening to shift into overdrive. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, five of the six countries involved in the Six Party Talks have increased their military spending by 50% or more. The sixth, Japan, has maintained a steady, if sizeable military budget while nonetheless aspiring to keep pace. Every country in the region is now eagerly investing staggering amounts of money in new weapons systems and new offensive capabilities.
The arms race in Northeast Asia undercuts all talk of peace in the region. It also sustains a growing global military-industrial complex. Northeast Asia is where four of the world's largest militaries -- those of the United States, China, Russia, and Japan -- confront each other. Together, the countries participating in the Six Party Talks account for approximately 65% of world military expenditures, with the United States responsible for roughly half the global total.
Here is the real news that should hit the front pages of papers today: Wars grip Iraq, Afghanistan, and large swathes of Africa, but the heart of the global military-industrial complex lies in Northeast Asia. Any attempt to drive a stake through this potentially destabilizing monster must start with the militaries that face one another there.
The Japanese Reversal The Northeast Asian arms buildup -- a three-tiered scramble to dominate the seas, beef up air forces, and control the next frontier of space -- runs counter to conventional wisdom. After all, isn't Japan still operating under a "peace constitution"? Hasn't South Korea committed to the peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula? Didn't China recently wake up to the virtues of soft power? And how could North Korea and Russia, both of which suffered disastrous economic reversals in the 1990s, have had the wherewithal to compete in an arms race? As it turns out, these obstacles have proved little more than speed bumps on the road to regional hyper-militarism.
Perhaps the most paradoxical participant in this new arms race is Japan. Its famous peace constitution has traditionally been one of the few brakes on arms spending in the region. The country has long limited its military expenditures to an informal ceiling of 1% of its overall budget. As that budget grew, however, so did military spending. Japan's army is now larger than Britain's, and the country spends more on its military than all but four other nations. (China surpassed Japan in military spending for the first time in 2006.) Nonetheless, for decades, the provisions of its peace constitution at least put limits on the offensive capabilities of the Japanese military, which is still referred to as its Self-Defense Forces.
These days, however, even the definition of "offensive" is changing. In 1999, the country's Self Defense Forces first used offensive force when its naval vessels fired on suspected North Korean spy ships. Less than a decade later, Japan provides support far from its "defensive" zone for U.S. wars, including providing fuel to coalition forces in Afghanistan and transport in Iraq.
Japan was once incapable of bombing other countries largely because its air force didn't have an in-air refueling capability. Thanks to Boeing, however, the first KC-767 tanker aircraft will arrive in Japan later this year, providing government officials, who occasionally assert the country's right to launch preemptive strikes, with the means to do so. This is not happy news for Japan's neighbors, who retain vivid memories of the 1930s and 1940s, when its military went on an imperial rampage throughout the region.
Tokyo already has among the best air forces and naval fighting forces in the world, trailing only the United States. But leading Japanese officials have displayed an even larger appetite. Some Japanese politicians are lobbying to amend the peace constitution or even scrap it entirely, while sending military spending skyrocketing. To promote these ideas, they use the thin rationale that Japan should be participating regularly in "international peacekeeping missions."
The Japanese Defense Agency -- their Pentagon -- which was upgraded to ministry level last year, wants more goodies like an aircraft carrier, nuclear-powered submarines, and long-range missiles. A light aircraft carrier, which the government has coyly labeled a "destroyer," will be ready in 2009. The subs and missiles, however, will have to wait. So, too, will Tokyo's attempt to take a quantum leap forward in air-fighting capabilities by importing advanced U.S. F-22 stealth planes. Concerned about releasing latest-generation technology to the outside world, Congress scotched this deal at the last moment in August 2007.
Washington has been a good deal more accommodating when it comes to missile defense. Japan has been a far more enthusiastic supporter of missile defense than any of America's European allies. In fact, the United States and Japan are spending billions of dollars to set up an early-warning-and-response prototype of such an advanced missile system. Part of this missile shield is land-based. Last month, Japan installed its third Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) surface-to-air interceptor and plans on nine more by 2011. The more ambitious part of the program, however, is based at sea. In December, Japan conducted its first sea-based interceptor test.
With Japan and the United States in the lead, a space race is also on in Northeast Asia. Last year, China tested its own anti-ballistic missile system by shooting down one of its old weather satellites. While at present this is far from an actual missile-defense system, China effectively served notice that it is up to the technological challenge of hitting a bullet with a bullet in space. Meanwhile, thanks to U.S. pressure Russia too is upgrading its missile defense systems, while pouring money into the development of new missiles that can bypass any putative shield the U.S. and its allies can develop.
Give Me Peace, But Not Just Yet
The two most recent South Korean presidents, Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-Jung and the left-leaning Roh Moo-Hyun, have been well-known for their efforts to foster reconciliation with North Korea. Less well-known have been their programs to beef up South Korea's military. The dark side of their engagement policy has been its unstated quid pro quo of satisfying the security concerns of South Korean hawks by giving their military everything it wants -- and then some. Between 1999 and 2006, South Korean military spending jumped more than 70%. In 2007, at the launching ceremony for a new Aegis-equipped destroyer, which brought South Korea into an elite club of just five countries with such technology, President Roh Moo-Hyun declared, "At the present time, Northeast Asia is still in an arms race, and we cannot just sit back and watch." By 2020, the South Korean navy wants to build three more Aegis destroyers at a cost of $1 billion each.
South Korean hawks are not only responding to concerns about North Korea, the traditional threat around which the South has organized its military. They are concerned about a declining military commitment from the United States, which has reduced the levels of American troops that traditionally garrison the country and pushed hard for greater military "burden-sharing."
South Korea's leaders and military officials are anxious that the Pentagon may continue to focus on the Middle East and Central Asia to the exclusion of its Pacific commitments. To prepare for the contingency of going it alone, South Korea has embarked on an ambitious $665 billion Defense Reform 2020 initiative, which will increase the military budget by roughly 10% a year until 2020. In those years, while troop levels will actually fall, most of the extra money will go to a host of expensive, high-tech systems such as new F-15K fighters from Boeing, SM-6 ship-to-air missiles that can form a low-altitude missile shield, and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles.
If South Korea's spending spree remains largely under the radar, China's military expenditures have received considerable media scrutiny. Newspaper accounts have focused on China's military spending, which officially rose to $45 billion for 2007. However, that public figure, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, tells only half the story. Beijing's spending, claim these sources, is really in the $100 billion range. With this money, China is pushing forward with an ambitious naval program that will include the addition to its naval forces of five new nuclear-powered attack subs, a mid-sized aircraft carrier, and -- clandestinely -- the supposed construction of a huge 93,000-ton nuclear-powered carrier by 2020.
Lost in the hype around China's apparent quest for a world-class military to match its world-class economy are the gaps in the country's offensive capabilities. It has only a couple of hundred nuclear weapons and fewer than two dozen ICBMs pointed at the United States. Its navy doesn't have a "blue-water" capability, lacking (as yet) any aircraft carriers, a large force of nuclear-powered submarines, and the overseas basing infrastructure to support them. It relies heavily on imports and can't yet build the sort of aircraft that would allow it to project serious force over large distances.
China, however, has been the only modestly credible threat on the horizon that the Pentagon has been able to wield to justify military spending at levels not seen since World War II. The Pentagon can't use its big naval destroyers against al-Qaeda; Virginia-class subs can't do much to fight the Taliban or insurgents in Iraq. Yet these systems figure prominently in the Pentagon's long-range plans to build a 313-ship navy. Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), who made headlines back in 2005 with his newfound opposition to the Iraq War, is typical of congressional hawks when he warns of the need to prepare for a coming conflict with China. "We've got to be able to have a military that can deploy to stop China or Russia or any other country that challenges us," he recently told Reuters. "I've felt we had to be concerned about the direction China was going." To counter China, the United States has pursued a classic containment strategy of strengthening military ties with India, Australia, the Philippines, and Japan.
The Bush administration trumpets its accomplishment of increasing military spending 74% since 2001. In addition to the $12.7 billion for new warships, there's $17 billion for new aircraft and over $10 billion for missile defense. The administration wants to increase the Army from 482,400 to 547,400 troops by 2012. A sizable portion of the administration's $607 billion Pentagon budget request for 2009, which doesn't even include massive supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will go to maintaining and expanding the U.S. military presence in the Pacific. The Democratic frontrunners for the presidential nomination have also called for troop increases and have said nothing about slowing, freezing, or even cutting the military budget. No matter who is elected, under the next administration, as under the last one, the United States will surely continue to be the chief driver of global arms spending.
The Armies of Austerity
Increased military spending is not always just a function of affluence. As the Russian economy contracted in the 1990s, the arms export industry became an ever more critical way for the faltering country to earn hard currency. Today, flush with oil and natural gas revenues, Russia has regained its place as the world's second largest arms dealer by almost doubling its arms exports since 2000. Washington's moves to establish a global missile defense system and encroach on Russian interests in Central Asia have only encouraged Moscow to boost its military spending in an effort to recover its lost superpower status.
With the renewed growth of the Russian economy on the strength of energy sales, Russian arms expenditures began to take off again in the new millennium, increasing nearly four-fold between 2000 and 2006. The Russian government, which projected a 29% increase in spending for 2007, plans to replace nearly half its arsenal with new weaponry by 2015.
Compared to Russia, North Korea has had the full experience of economic collapse with very little subsequent recovery. Yet, despite its woefully limited means, it has tried to keep up with the great powers that surround it. By many estimates, Pyongyang devotes as much as a quarter of its budget to the military (even though prosperous South Korea still spends as much, or more, on its military than the North's entire gross domestic product). North Korea's failure to match the conventional military spending of South Korea, much less Japan or the United States, was what made the building of a "nuclear deterrent" increasingly attractive to its leaders. In other words, the current nuclear crisis that sucks up so much diplomatic attention in Northeast Asia today is at least partly a result of the region's accelerating conventional arms race and North Korea's inability to keep pace.
Critics of the North Korean regime often point out that its military spending is ultimately a human rights violation, because the government essentially takes food out of the mouths of its people to spend on armaments. North Korea is, however, just a particularly gross example of an expanding global problem. Each of the six countries in the new Pacific arms race has devised a wealth of rationales for its military spending -- and each has ignored significant domestic needs in the process.
Given the sums that would be necessary to address the decommissioning of nuclear weapons, the looming crisis of climate change, and the destabilizing gap between rich and poor, such spending priorities are in themselves a threat to humanity. The world put 37% more into military spending in 2006 than in 1997. If the "peace dividend" that was to follow the end of the Cold War never quite appeared, a decade later the world finds itself burdened with quite the opposite: a genuine peace deficit.
John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories, 2003) among other books.
Copyright 2008 John Feffer
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15 Comments so far
Show AllThere is little way to diminish the gravity of all this.
But wise words from power positions might help some. I don't think John McCain has that "touch". I do think that Barack Obama just might. Which "jawbone" do we want our adversaries to be hearing from?
Throughout history people have done silly things. What story did the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt use to build the pyramids? What story did the Church tell in the middle ages to sell indulgences to build the cathedrals? What story are the Merchants of Death telling now? Throughout history people have done silly things. Again and again.
It's worse than I thought -- Japan, China, Russia, and the two Koreas are being run by morons as well.
With the Amerikan Empire on its final last leg and weaker by the day both militarily and economically, it would appear that the angry Asin wolves are surrounding the Amerikan lamb. My god, the damage that president ding-dong has accomplished is reprehensible and unforgiving. Aren't these people sick and tired of conflicts and wars?
This may be the most important article to appear not only today but for quite a while in CD. These folks have the industrial infrastructure, the managerial expertise, the population base, the accumulated capital, and now the will to go to war. My bet is that it won't stop in Asia.
Many centuries from now, when more sentient beings come upon the ruins of the "new American Century", and after years of investigation, they will conclude that it was two things that lead to their downfall.
1- they put assholes in charge
2- they shit in their own nest
All of these countries military budgets added together are only a fraction of the US military budget. None of them have bases on foreign soil, the US has over 700 foreign bases. None of them are occupying foreign nations, the US is currently in two.
So why are we picking at the mote in Asia's eye and ignoring the log in our own? It is telling that even "liberal" media tows the military welfare state line in America.
expatincebu, i'm not sure Feffer is trying to push America's own responsibility toward armament under the rug: "No matter who is elected, under the next administration, as under the last one, the United States will surely continue to be the chief driver of global arms spending." There are certainly hundreds of current articles addressing that side of things.
It's nearly inconcievable to determine who (and what constitution) could actually fulfil the roles for accountability or oversight, at this point. Very frightening. We have such a momentous task before us.
kloshe chako
In response to a few of the comments, war is likely the last thing on the minds of the military industrial complex. Arms races are great economy builders from some perspectives. Its like going to war but with less obvious loss of life. The author hits the nail dead on. What we need to be worried about is the distraction. Poverty, climate change, population growth, etc. etc.. are far more scary issues that continue to grow with no signs of any real solution. While these arms races may be money makers for those at the top they will eventually ruin us for the really big fights we are mostly ignoring. Good luck one and all.
Good comments from all. Keep in mind though that not only do many Americans consider a military industrial complex to be an excellent way to create jobs, but many other foreign leaders and their corporate puppet masters think the same way. The Fear factor (fear of the U.S.) is a good excuse for foreign governments to 'beef up' their own armies. Many Koreans and Japanese beleive that a large military would enable thm to kick the American forces out of their countries. China and Russia clearly recognize the U.S. as a very dangerous meddler in Asian affairs and North Korea feels that the U.S. is the biggest obstacle to their own economic progress.
The biggest danger of out-of-control military budgets is that they invariably lead to war. At some point action is neccessary to justify the expenditures. The wish of most Americans that someone like Hillary or Obama can reverse this ugly trend is hardly promising. Most citizens in any country are conditioned to trust their elected (or unelected?) officials to procure the neccessary military hardware to safeguard their national interests. But in relality it is the hard sell tactics of defence contractors that ultimately dictate policy. The system is so entrenched that it would take a huge shift in the global mindset to reverse this dangerous course. If or when this occurs, humanity will finally elevate itself from a culture plateau we have been stuck at since recorded history began. How to get the ball rolling, is the greatest challenge of our time!
alexnosal: The system is so entrenched that it would take a huge shift in the global mindset to reverse this dangerous course.
Grassroots is the best approach, that is, individuals make the change of attitude and that spreads. The individual learns to ignore and avoid the military. Ignoring means refusing to acknowledge its legitimacy or usefulness. Avoiding means denying the enterprise one's exchange/association. So the individual helps to alienate the military in the society and culture. This way, the military loses its hegemony over the society - it can't get as much funding, it cant get as many recruits. People consider it more of a vice occupation. Fewer entertainment stories are produced with military themes. The feedback cycle goes negative.
When individuals fail to take action to help alienate the military it's like adding a chip to a pile of consent - same with everything - we consent to all the insanities the elites heap upon us by failing to act. The big deterrent to such a grassroots movement is the indoctrination to "think big" so that individuals turn to "dear leader" and pray he will pull a rabbit out of his hat. Instead we should "think small" and do our individual duty to help reign in all the capitalist, militarist skulduggery.
Interesting "fun fact:" A lot of people who work at Lockheed Martin are really frustrated space geeks who would much rather be building cool spacecraft. Honest! I know a few of them.
The US might have set a better example...
It's not a case of building arms for war but to prevent the USA even thinking of starting one. The USA is regarded, even by my own country, Britain, as a rogue state, unstable, going broke and likely to do anything to increase its rapidly diminishing influence.
Why is N.Korea always singled out as rogue, compared to the USA they've been model citizens, so how come Europe, Japan and the USA are so adamant about N. Korea and Iran. What would you do to defend your resources in a Bush world. I would start building a massive DEFENCE structure.
"Excellent" article in that it's good to know the terrible import and implication of what this means.
@rtdrury: you're right about the need to shift the mindset. But you need a strategic multi-level and layered approach to undo the military industrial complex.
The economic system needs to be gutted and redesigned but that probably won't happen until there is a devastating Third World War, massive catastrophic climate change (to precipitate the resource wars) or a complete Economic Recession-Depression requiring a re-tooling for those who manage to survive. And then they're going wake up to a more obvious feudalism than is apparent today as those with the most resources will still be "in charge" having weathered the storm, whatever type of storm it may be.
Changing the mindset is about changing the ideas society and civilization currently run on. The corporatocracy owns the media and publication mechanisms that keep the mainstream of the Bell Curve from examining alternatives or putting them into action. But which ideas are you going to change? And how are they to be changed? And to what? And if you start doing such a thing what will the Elite do?
Man, the very idea that we use this term "the Elite" in this world of ours should tell us just how screwed our notions of freedom are. The very use of the term makes me want to puke with disgust because of the deception we're forced to swallow, the mythology we have thrust into our minds in preparation for the economic slavery of adulthood that awaits us.
But do you really think they will sit idly by while some brave souls start promoting the new ideas of peace and equity that will erode the Elite ideas upon which they validate and continue their game of top dog?
How would you identify such a group today and be sure and certain they're not some front group set up to lure in the activists and wrap them up in a do-nothing-effective trap that sucks them of their already precious, scarce and depleted resources? Where are the individuals today who have the guts to step outside the system and survive while they gnaw at its corrupt vitals? How will they live and prepare and protect what they are doing and become an effective organized force for real freedom? And who will believe some new movement are what they say they are when the environment and prevalent attitude is mistrust, suspicion and apathy towards all things political and social? When you already mistrust a system, helping to create a new one requires a courageous assault upon one's own cynicism that few today are equipped to do because their ability to trust anything has been undermined by the propaganda that polarizes truth and obfuscates it through the wielding of economic power and control.
Try to do all this within the very system you want to change without amassing the capital to do so, which would immediately mark you as a target to the Elites and "an Elite" to those who want such change, thereby driving them away...? Man, think it through, it's a diabolical mess we've got ourselves into that's for sure.
Perhaps the purge of nature, or of that gross human folly war, and or devastating economic collapse are what we really need to rid ourselves of such a putrid and revolting state of affairs as what we call "civilization," but which is really nothing more than greed and power run rampant with irresponsibility that has accumulated such immoral momentum as to confound even the most brilliant minds as they hunger without cease for the full realization of the ideas of liberation, equity and real peace.
At a time when resources are becoming scarce, the military industrial mediaplex continues to plan for the consumption of more destructive machines whose very construction will sap economies even further. If there were truly smart men and women on planet earth those resources would be put into managing climate change and developing alternative energy sources, and minimizing human impact on planetary ecology.
But the human race is simply not as intelligent as it wishes to believe. Of all the species that inhabit this planet it is the only one hell-bent on destroying it. THE ONLY SPECIES that is doing so. Think about that.
So perhaps we need to start there--with human arrogance about an intelligence that is obviously immature--with this change of ideas.
But who will teach a human being in their early years "You're a human being with the power to destroy everything but you must not"? Such an idea would contribute to the dumbing down of the population and you'd have to have everybody agreeing to the notion simultaneously, "We're smart, but we're not as smart as we would like to think we are."
And you'd have to have the trust that every human being on this planet would agree to do it? And why will they when faced with the current crappy situation that is in fact surrounding us in every direction...the follies of our own human construction.
It is easy to toss out these words and indeed any words in support of such articles and the discussion and attention is good, but the complexity and nature of the problem and others that also confront the human race is such that we are all overwhelmed by them. And this itself produces a numbness that has us grasping like drowning men at straws for solutions that will not work because the straw itself has been genetically modified not to float by a human being whose failure to think through was overcome by his hunger for "the good things in life."
As human beings we continually underestimate the effort required for anything except war. In war we know the biggest army with the biggest bombs can get the job done. Oh, there are a few exceptions here and there, as Vietnam proved when it bought the might of the US military to a halt and forced a retreat. Perhaps _there_ is a lesson to be learned about how to accomplish such a shift of mindset as you propose.
But developing such a strategy would take years of covert organization, and an infrastructure designed to achieve it would require massive planning and resources - let alone trust.
So I guess that means, "We're all fucked" because the only people who have that sort of infrastructure and ability are the very people we send our taxes to every day and we know what they're doing with those from simply reading this article. And even that act of willingly submitting to taxation is adherence to a system that is a lie (Seen Aaron Russo's "Freedom to Fascism"? You can watch it at http://freedocumentaries.org/theatre.php?id=1111&wh=800x520)
So where today do you find a selfless human being who will give up everything to make such a thing happen, I ask you? And if you saw him or her would you know that they were that person? Frankly, I doubt it. We are more likely to think they are stark raving mad, because that too is part of the way in which the current power structures maintain their grip.
The degree of selflessness required to make it even possible to achieve what you're talking about is so rare today because the system is designed to marginalize and destroy such selflessness and idealism. Thus are people trapped in a system where suspicion and mistrust rule the daily thought with such rigid emotional grip that the ability to shake it free so they may honestly commit their time and effort to something greater than their own immediate need is blocked.
In a situation where food prices are soaring and creating even more economic pressure, who is going to do this?
Shifting such barriers requires patient work. And patient work requires time. And time is running out.
"What a predicament!" is one of John Travolta's script lines from a brilliant and no doubt underpaid and faceless Hollywood script writer whose name nobody knows or will ever remember is called to mind. "Face/Off" is the movie. It's the lines that follow that are the big kick, but nobody will remember those, even though they are the most appropriate to the particular scenario described by this article.
"Oh Well, plan B - Let's just kill each other." (Face/Off)
And if one were to find such selfless people by some miracle, what then? Why they would be destroyed by foul deed; or their effectiveness fawned upon as a guru by a mindless mass who listen but DO nothing; put upon pedestals that teeter, totter, and fall over hurting all and destroying the icon needed to symbolize such a movement and guide it forward.
So how can you keep it secret and yet move it forward anyway? And the more you move it forward the more risk you run of exposure.
Perhaps one should just "come out" with such a movement. But you'd have to pick the moment very carefully, and the Time Pressure is enormous. And when people are outed it is not always a moment of empowerment. One would have to prepare to manage any scenario of such an outing in such a way as to be able to capitalize upon any potential disaster, and that would require a knowledge of strategy and tactics that few are prepared to acquire, and precious few of that handful able to adapt with any degree of effectiveness to assure an optimum outcome, let alone exercise.
The courage and commitment required to say and truly mean it, "Enough. No more." Is truly rare in any man or woman today. Those who so eagerly may say such words, but then never follow through with any meaningful action abound.
Where would one start such a movement as suggested? With what ideas, constructs and models would one work? How would one overcome the political inertia that is the disengagement of the people with the political system that supposedly supports their freedom according to the words, but not the deeds or tangible results on their lives? The damage this has done to trust is practically incalculable though we can certainly see the cost in terms of social and political capital as well as to the prestige of a once great nation. Mind you, if you're prepared to dig a bit one can read much which brings even the Framers into disrepute if one cares to look about and question the status quo and look for causes that lead to this most Damoclean (See Damocles) state of our world. We can see the cost of the war in Iraq in terms of lives, disability (war is a major factor in the industry of disability! - so often overlooked as a credible statistic that accurately measures the cost to those who lose limbs or faculties and the ongoing cost to society), and in terms of dollars. We can see the profits generated for a few at the expense of so many.
And yet, though we know these things, the folly continues. What then is the inertia that must be overcome? And how would one go about it?
In order to remove power one must gather power (in terms of support, numbers, knowledge, resources, etc.), how then is one to dispense with power, so that one does not become what one seeks to replace? And please do not offer representative democracy, that grand experiment has so obviously failed.