Peace dividend

Remember when the Berlin Wall came down, closely followed by the rest of the Iron Curtain? Remember we were told by our leaders that and era of peace was upon us, that we would no longer need huge armies and massive stockpiles of weapons and instead could spend the money on global aid and development?

Well guess what? Our desire to beat, subjugate, abuse and kill our fellow humans has outweighed our desire to help them. How utterly depressing and yet utterly predictable.

Global spending on arms tops $1 trillion

Less than a month before leaders of the world's most powerful nations meet to discuss financial help for Africa, a new report reveals the extraordinary sums spent by those same countries on weapons compared to the relatively modest sums spent on aid.

In 2004 - the sixth successive year in which arms spending increased - the global total spent on munitions topped $1 trillion for the first time since the height of the Cold War. In contrast, the amount spent on aid over the same period was $78.6bn.

Once again, America was by far the greatest spender on arms. In 2004, it spent $455bn, an increase from 2003 of 12 per cent, fuelled largely by the investment in President George Bush's "war on terror". America's foreign aid spending is around 4.1 per cent of its arms bill. Britain, the second largest arms spender, spent $47bn - a tenth of the US total.