The first lesson from economics, appearing at the beginning of Nobel Laureate Paul A Samuelson’s magnum opus “Foundations of Economic Analysis” (1948), is that a country must choose between military spending ~ guns ~ and spending on social goods ~ butter. This trade-off was apparent to politicians much earlier; the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels had said: “We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms,” which was repeated by Hermann Göring, the Nazi Supreme Commander of the Air Force, who said: “Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.”

From the beginning of history, till very recently, the choice was very clear ~ all countries chose swords or guns, as every country was perpetually at war with every other country, since all countries looked for opportunities to subjugate their weaker neighbours. Civilisations diverging from this trend paid the price ~ barbarian invaders repeatedly ransacked ancient Greece and Egypt. Closer home, Indian kingdoms were repeatedly assailed by foreign raiders, who had little culture or education, but carried long guns. The nadir was reached when the Khans – Chengiz, Kubla, Halaku et al, nomads from a desert region ~ rampaged through the civilised world, establishing the Mongol Empire ~ the largest contiguous land empire in world history, covering almost a quarter of the Earth’s total land area.

Notably, the Khans concentrated all their energies into warfare, and effortlessly triumphed over their much more civilised enemies. The advent of democracy curbed the bloodthirsty tendencies of rulers, because the public increasingly wanted good infrastructure like roads and schools, to the exclusion of war trophies. Also, the Industrial Revolution enhanced the role of technology ~ factories were required to mass produce guns ~ linking industrial progress to military power. The US, which remained aloof from the internecine wars in Europe, gained prosperity by leaps and bounds.

Jumping late into both World Wars, the US provided heft to Allied powers ~ decisively proving the need of an industrial base to wage warfare, in modern times. After the destruction brought about by World War II, most countries, except America, USSR and China, chose butter over guns; America and Russia, inimical to each other, stockpiled an array of nuclear weapons, and tried to divide the world into their client states. After more than a quarter century of rivalry, good sense dawned, and the next twenty years saw a thaw in the Cold War.

And after disintegration........

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