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Top: Military expenditure by country as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Bottom: Military expenditure by country in dollars. Click images for source links.

Besides the general subject being absorbing on its own, and from the standpoint of a concerned citizen exhausted at the prospect of more worries about the state of the world, an audio clip was played during the program which riveted my attention.

“…humanity hanging from a cross of iron”

After the death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took the opportunity to address concerns over a growing arms race - the “dread road” to which he refers at the start of the clip, along which the Cold War was traveling. Titled “A Chance for Peace”, the speech as come to be known as the “Cross of Iron” speech (which will be evident upon listening to the clip).

Cross of Iron, excerpt (mp3, 2:54)*

What is striking to me are several things:

First, the restrained indignation and empathy in the President’s voice at the misallocation of the world’s resources.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Second, the direct comparison of costs of military equipment to their better civilian and humanitarian use.
“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.”

Third, the fact that the speech was delivered by a former military general instrumental in the Allied successes of World War II and a recently-elected Republican President usually known best for restraint and caution.
This is no bleeding-heart cry for peace… and yet it is.

Finally, the timeliness of a 1953 speech to 2008.
These words ring true still, after years of questionable war on several fronts, in the face of growing financial sluggishness, and in an era of extreme concern over the way we often squander our resources - whether considering precision-guided, armor-piercing weaponry versus much-needed infrastructure or the way we heat, cool, and power our homes and buildings.

* Source: University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs— Dwight D. Eisenhower Speeches

Learn more

Chance for Peace Address, (text)
Forgotten in Iraq: Eisenhower’s Cross of Iron
Why We Fight - documentary by Eugene Jarecki
Eisenhower Presidential Library