The USA, Western Europe, Egypt, Israel and the Soviets have come out in favor of weapons control for ballistic missiles and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. But when it comes to conventional weapons like tanks and planes, their policy remains permissive mainly for economic and political reasons. A continuing but slow reduction in weaponry spending could be expected in the coming years. Turkey 1,376 Germany 1,064 Japan 1,181 Great Britain 673 Un. Cambodia Armed conflicts start where discussions or negotiations fail.
Some people even consider war as an instrument of foreign policy .
The use of weapons and killing is deeply ingrained in human nature. This is caused by aggressive instincts such as survival, tribalism, ethnicity, nationalism, religious fanatism, strong emotions of all kinds and the lust for power and domination which are all aspects of the lowest levels of human consciousness. A scrutiny of history and its 14,000 wars will prove that, in almost every case, one or more of these lower instincts were at the root of the conflict. If we estimate that the 14,000 wars mentioned above, have killed as an average about 100,000 people each, we reach a total figure of 1,400,000,000 people killed by wars since the appearance of Homo sapiens on this planet. This killing percentage is the ratio between the total number of people killed by war and the total number of people, populating this planet since the arrival of Homo sapiens, between 40,000 and 20,000 years ago.