In 2024, 61 armed con­flicts were record­ed across 36 coun­tries, 22 of which are cur­rent­ly clas­si­fied as being in a state of war. All oth­er efforts to “beat swords into plow­shares” hav­ing failed, maybe it’s time to try the sim­plis­tic approach and just stop sell­ing swords.

Ukraine is the only con­flict where nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty are clear­ly at stake, Few if any of the oth­ers come close to that level.
They may be mess­i­ly com­plex, but are in the main more of a tan­gled and often invent­ed web of griev­ances, his­tor­i­cal errors, greed and just plain pig-head­ed, vain and uneth­i­cal polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, none of which add up to a rea­son for being grant­ed free flow access to arms.
The ongo­ing (despite Trump claim­ing he solved it) blood-let­ting in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go boils down to con­trol over the region’s mas­sive min­er­al wealth.
Sudan is a sim­i­lar case. On the brink of its third year, the civ­il war there has cre­at­ed the world’s largest human­i­tar­i­an crisis.
One para­graph in a recent news report tells you all you need to know on that score: “Repeat­ed strikes on a kinder­garten and hos­pi­tal in Sudan killed 114 peo­ple, includ­ing 63 chil­dren, and tar­get­ed the respon­ders who were try­ing to get the wound­ed to safe­ty, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion said on Monday.”.
The worst offend­er is the so-called Rapid Sup­port Force (RSF), whose excess­es make Ram­pant Sav­agery Force a more apt trans­la­tion of its ini­tials. The group has no arms indus­try. Its main sup­pli­er of every­thing from small arms  to armed drones and artillery is the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE).
The Gulf nation recent­ly host­ed “The Inter­na­tion­al Defence Exhi­bi­tion (IDEX) 2025” an arms bazaar that includ­ed 213 firms from the UAE, and fea­tured 1,565 com­pa­nies from 5 countries.
Just what the world needs when, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Strate­gic Stud­ies: ”Between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025 glob­al vio­lent-event fatal­i­ties rose  23% to near­ly 240,000.”
In a speech to mark the end of his tenure in 1961, U.S. Pres­i­dent Dwight Eisen­how­er famous­ly warned against “… the acqui­si­tion of unwar­rant­ed influ­ence, whether sought or unsought, by the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al complex.”

                        MONEY BETTER SPENT

Region­al wars cre­ate refugee crises that draw resources from cop­ing with human­i­tar­i­an issues caused by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and famine, many of them made and all exac­er­bat­ed by the oth­er great human-made and neglect­ed prob­lem of cli­mate change.
Dras­tic cuts by the Unit­ed States and Euro­pean gov­ern­ments to their for­eign aid bud­gets, have forced the Unit­ed Nations to halve its requests from donor coun­tries in 2026 to help peo­ple affect­ed by war and nat­ur­al disasters.|
That includes: $4 bil­lion in emer­gency relief for Gaza, where aid enter­ing the ter­ri­to­ry remains well below the lev­el of need; $2 bil­lion for the mil­lions of civil­ians dis­placed by the war in Sudan and anoth­er $1 bil­lion to sup­port refugees who have fled from it. $1.4 bil­lion to aid vic­tims of con­flict in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go; more than $2 bil­lion for emer­gency aid to Syr­ia and near­ly $3 bil­lion for Syr­i­an refugees.
Pak­istan and Afghanistan are trad­ing blows over what amounts to a kink in the colo­nial-estab­lished Durand Line that marks their bor­der. Mon­ey that could bet­ter be spent on edu­ca­tion and health care is being wast­ed on weapon­ry to dri­ve civil­ians from their homes, in a con­flict that could drag on for years.
The list of blood­shed where talk­ing would serve seems endless.
Accord­ing to data from the Upp­sala Con­flict Data Pro­gram ”… con­flicts often don’t end as much as decline to low­er lev­els of vio­lence. Forty per­cent of all wars end with­out a for­mal agree­ment and six­ty-six per­cent of all wars end in some com­pro­mise rang­ing from a stale­mate or a for­mal cease­fire and/or a peace agreement”.
That’s not to say mak­ing peace is easy. Peace nego­ti­a­tions are often as much about image as get­ting down to business.
While the shoot­ing war in Viet Nam raged on, ten weeks were spent on what came to be known as the “Bat­tle of the Tables” in Paris. From Novem­ber 1968 through Jan­u­ary 1969, the var­i­ous par­tic­i­pants argued over the shape of the con­fer­ence table, how many there would be and how they’d be set out.
The les­son on how much blood and trea­sure was wast­ed while that went on doesn’t seem to have been learned.
Gaza is a case in point. From home grown indus­tries to the arms sup­plied by their allies to Israel, Hamas and Hezbol­lah, weapon­ry super­sedes log­ic and com­mon sense.
Think­ing, although “think­ing” is real­ly over­stat­ing the case, that copi­ous­ly sup­ply­ing par­ties to oth­er­wise resolv­able strife will result in swords being turned into plow­shares is wish­ful at best.

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