Image source: Yuliy Ganf, published in 1953
Today is World Peace Day, the UN’s International Day of Peace, and the theme for this year is Investing in Peace.
Well, our political leaders are certainly doing their bit in investing our hard-earned tax money in the opposite of peace, in war. Trump is on a bombing spree on Iran, Israel is on a bombing spree on Gaza and Lebanon, Putin is invading Ukraine, and Trump is threatening to step up his destructiveness.
The madness is spreading.
Humanity is not wholly stupid, it is just that money seems to be attracted towards stupidity, as in global arms spending of $2.4 Trillion per annum, and rising. Click here to make sure you understand what a trillion really looks like.
The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget is £66 billion a year.
The British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development (FCDO0 budget is £11 million a year.
So the MoD gets 6,000 times more money than the department of government that takes some kind of an interest in non-British countries, and buried within the FCDO are a handful of excellent government officers whose job it is to try to prevent these foreign countries from killing each other (and us).
There are of course also a large number of people and organisations outside His Majesty’s Government who are trying to prevent war, but they are funded by tiny private donations, not by tax money, so the funding amounts are negligible.
The conclusion is that our Government is vastly more interested in investing in war than investing in peace, and if it did as the UN is suggesting and actually brought its investment in peace building up to a not insignificant proportion of its investment in war, peace might have a chance.
My suggestion is that the UN’s International Day of Peace on September 21st 2026 should set the tone for the remainder of 2026 and the months of 2027 up to September 21st again, when we will have a new theme.
I will continue with this theme tomorrow and for the rest of the year.
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