When War Starts, Scarcity Ends
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Governments, institutions and citizens often say there is not enough money, time or capacity for peace, justice and sustainable development. Then conflict erupts, and those limits suddenly disappear.
The modern world speaks as if peace is normal and war is the interruption. But public spending tells a different story. When conflict begins, governments move money, loosen rules and mobilize institutions at speed. That raises a harder question: do states really see peace as the natural order, or do they govern as though conflict is the permanent condition and peace only a temporary break from it?
For years, governments, organizations and citizens have said much the same thing about peace, poverty, inequality, climate resilience and the UN Sustainable Development Goals: these goals matter, but there is not enough money, not enough time and not enough capacity to do more.
Then war starts.
Budgets expand. Rules bend. Production rises. Legislatures approve emergency spending. Suddenly, the same systems that said peace was too expensive discover that billions can be found when leaders decide the threat is urgent.
That is the central point. War does not create resources. It exposes priorities.
This is not an argument against defence. States face real threats. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed Europe’s security outlook. Conflicts in Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere show that armed force remains a defining fact of international life. Governments have a duty to protect people.
But war reveals something else as well. When leaders say there is no money for prevention, justice, food security, public health, education or climate adaptation, conflict shows that the problem is often not pure scarcity. The problem is that peace is not treated as urgent until it is already failing.
What the numbers show
That contradiction becomes clearer when the numbers are set side by side. Global military spending reached a record US$2.718 trillion in 2024, according to SIPRI. The UN says developing countries face an annual financing gap of about US$4 trillion to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. OECD figures show official development assistance from donor countries totalled US$214.5 billion in 2024 and fell in real terms. The UN peacekeeping budget for 2024-25 is US$5.6 billion.
Those figures do not show that military spending is always wrong. They show that governments can move large sums quickly when they decide the stakes are high enough.
Germany made that plain after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Berlin announced a €100-billion special fund for its armed forces and pledged to spend more than two per cent of GDP on defence. The European Commission has since said its defence readiness plan could help mobilize up to €800 billion in additional military spending. In the United States, lawmakers approved a major Ukraine package worth about US$60.84 billion under the House description, though that amount included more than direct aid to Kyiv alone.
The point is not that these decisions were simple, or necessarily wrong. The point is that they were possible.
What if the world has the story backwards?
Humanity tends to speak as though the normal condition of the world is peace, interrupted from time to time by war. That assumption shapes public language, moral language and development language. Peace is treated as the baseline. Conflict is treated as the exception.
But the spending pattern suggests a more troubling possibility: modern states may speak as though peace is normal, while governing as though conflict is.
If that is true, then 'When War Starts, Scarcity Ends' is no mystery at all.
It would mean the world has the story backwards. It would mean war and conflict are not rare disruptions in an otherwise peaceful order, but the condition political systems are always preparing for — through military structures, alliances, procurement systems, emergency laws and strategic industries. Peace, in that reading, is not the permanent state. It is the more fragile achievement, interrupted not by occasional violence, but by the deeper reality of rivalry, coercion and struggle.
“War does not create resources. It exposes priorities.”
Why peace keeps losing the budget fight
War is visible. It is immediate. A missile strike, an invasion or a territorial threat can be named in a speech and funded in a budget. Prevention is harder to see. No leader can stand in front of a camera and point to the war that never happened, the famine that did not spread or the institution that quietly held society together under strain.
Peace also lacks the political machinery that war already has. Defence spending has ministries, contractors, alliance structures and procurement systems built to operate at scale. Peacebuilding is spread across departments, aid envelopes, community programs, development agencies and local institutions. It is supported in principle, but often weak in budget politics.
That difference matters because peace is not cheap. Strong schools cost money. Public health systems cost money. Courts cost money. Housing costs money. Food security costs money. So do climate adaptation, anti-poverty programs, credible local government and social institutions that can absorb strain without breaking.
These are not soft extras. They are part of what keeps societies stable.
Why the SDGs matter to security
The UN’s 2024 report on the Sustainable Development Goals says only 17 per cent of targets are on track, while progress on more than one-third has stalled or gone backwards. The report links that slowdown to conflict, climate change, debt pressure and weak international co-operation. In other words, the world is already paying the price of underinvestment in peace, resilience and institutional strength.
The economic case for prevention is also stronger than public debate often suggests. IMF research says every dollar invested in prevention can save between US$26 and US$103 in conflict-related costs, depending on the context. OECD analysis found that aid for conflict prevention in fragile settings fell each year from 2019 to 2021, reaching US$1.85 billion in 2021, while donor countries spent US$35.8 billion reacting to symptoms of crisis in the same year.
The pattern is hard to miss. The world is more willing to pay for collapse than to pay for resilience.
This is why the Sustainable Development Goals should not be treated as a side agenda for better times. They are tied to security. Hunger can fuel instability. Weak schools can narrow opportunity. Corruption can hollow out trust. Fragile health systems can deepen shocks. Poor governance can turn grievance into violence. By the time these failures are widely recognized as security threats, the cost of repair is already far higher.
Goal 16 says this most directly, calling for peace, justice and strong institutions. But the broader SDG framework points in the same direction. Societies are safer when people can eat, work, learn, get care, trust institutions and resolve disputes without fear.
“Modern states may speak as though peace is normal, while governing as though conflict is.”
What war reveals
None of this means development can replace defence. It cannot. Some threats require deterrence. Some aggressors will not be stopped by diplomacy alone. A serious argument about peace must admit that.
But a serious argument about peace must also say this clearly: if governments can mobilize billions for war, they can mobilize far more for peace than they usually claim. The barrier is often not capacity. It is political choice.
So why are billions available for armed conflict, but not for peace?
Because war is treated as an emergency.
Peace is treated as an intention.
That is the illusion conflict exposes. It strips away the language of helplessness. It shows that states can spend, mobilize and act at speed when leaders decide the stakes are high enough. The tragedy is that violence is still what most often forces that decision.
A more honest politics would stop pretending peace is the natural, inexpensive state that can be maintained with good wishes and underfunded institutions. Peace is hard work. It requires law, money, trust, public capacity and long-term investment. It requires governments to act before the crisis, not only after it.
War, in the end, does not only destroy.
It reveals.
It reveals that the resources were never entirely absent.
It reveals that scarcity was, at least in part, a political choice.
And it reveals that a world which says it believes in peace still too often budgets for conflict as though conflict were the more permanent condition.
Sources:
SIPRI: World military expenditure rose to US$2.718 trillion in 2024, the highest total ever recorded by SIPRI, with a 9.4 per cent increase from 2023.
United Nations: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024 says only 17 per cent of SDG targets are on track and notes an annual SDG investment gap of about US$4 trillion in developing countries.
OECD: Official development assistance from DAC member countries amounted to US$214.5 billion in 2024, down 6.0 per cent in real terms from 2023.
UN Peacekeeping: The approved peacekeeping budget for July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, is US$5.6 billion.
German Federal Government: Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a one-off €100-billion special fund for the Bundeswehr and a commitment to invest more than two per cent of GDP in defence.
European Commission: The ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 framework aims to unlock over €800 billion in defence spending across the EU.
U.S. House Appropriations Committee: The House one-pager for the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024, said the section totalled US$60.84 billion, including replenishment of U.S. stocks and regional operations.
IMF: IMF research published in 2024 found returns to prevention policies can range from US$26 to US$75 per dollar in countries without recent violence and as high as US$103 per dollar in countries with recent violence.
OECD: An OECD paper on peace and official development assistance said DAC members’ ODA for conflict prevention in fragile contexts fell to US$1.85 billion in 2021, while DAC members spent US$35.8 billion reacting to symptoms of crisis.
Pathways for Peace / World Bank-UN: By 2030, around half or more than half of the world’s poor could be living in countries affected by conflict and violence, depending on the formulation used.
