What if They Had Spent It on Peace?

Published on Mar 15, 2026, filed under politics. (Share this post, e.g. on Mastodon or on Bluesky.)

I wrote this before Israel and the US started their war against Iran, and decided not to massage that war into the final draft anymore. It didn’t need an additional example.

Wikipedia says that “according to most estimates, every day of the war in Ukraine costs Russia $500 million to $1 billion.”

After four years, this means Russia has spent at least 700 billion US dollars on their war against Ukraine—and perhaps more than a trillion.

Now, what if Russia had spent just half of this on treating Ukrainians well?

Like, donating to Ukrainian projects, investing in Ukrainian infrastructure, supporting common causes, running image campaigns, &c.?

Would Russia have been able to achieve their aims through these means?

My hypothesis is, yes.

What if Israel, back when the colonization of Palestine started, had invested in working with Palestinians, negotiating with Palestinians in good faith, helping Palestinian needs be met, ensuring Palestinian statehood like their own, working on a framework and a foundation to establish a small state next to theirs, one they hold in high esteem?

The United States. What if the United States had only taken half of their military budget, too, to do good to countries like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, the Philippines, or, indeed, China?

What if the European nations had, instead of force, used only a part of the respective resources to build relationships and do something for the tribes and nations they attacked or subjugated over the centuries?

When looking at US and Israeli continued warmongering, one could get the idea that force was actually a way—and the only way—of accomplishing a goal.

Yet that is bizarre: Not only do we know that there are myriad of ways to achieve goals, but on this shared planet, for anyone to be well—which includes the ones enjoying force—, we have to work together.

Force is not a form of collaboration and it’s not a sustainable way of accomplishing goals.

As suggested with diverted military spending, there would be so much more beautiful—and so much cheaper—ways to accomplish goals than force.

What we need to understand about force is this:

Force is expensive, force creates enemies where there were none, it hardens enemies where there were some, and force poisons the well, for generations.

And yet—and this is the part that should have us think—force is still the default.

Not because it works (Israel and the US could know this by now). But because it’s familiar. Because it’s what states have always done. Because it’s what institutions are built around, what budgets are structured for, what careers are made in—the military-industrial complex and its many arms.

The question is not why countries resort to force, then, but why the alternative remains so underdeveloped, so underfunded, so unimaginable to those in power.

We do know alternatives:

Investment is the word for spending money on others so that they prosper.

Diplomacy is the word for building relationships across difference so that both sides benefit.

Wisdom is the word for the recognition that what harms others ultimately harms oneself.

These aren’t new ideas. They don’t require invention. They require only the will to choose them over the other thing—over the assassination, the siege, the occupation, the… genocide.

The countries and transgressions named are not cherry-picked exceptions. They are, depressingly, recent examples of the norm—the record of how powerful actors have chosen to relate to less powerful ones, across centuries and continents.

What’s important to keep in mind, what may give reason for something like hope, is that alternatives have worked, too, in places where they were tried: in the Marshall Plan, in certain post-colonial transitions, perhaps Botswana’s, in the slow, imperfect, but real work of international institutions, like the United Nations.

It has worked when tried. It is simply tried too rarely (even more rarely now under US–Israeli imperialism), and defended too poorly (especially by Europeans).

The question this leaves open is not rhetorical.

It is real, and it becomes pressing:

What would a world look like in which the resources spent on conflict were redirected, even partially, toward making things better for the people at the other end?

Not as charity. Not as soft power dressed up as generosity. But as a genuine recognition that others’ well-being is not separate from our own—that on a shared planet, there is, after all, no other end.

We are not separate from each other. What hurts one, hurts all—and what benefits one, benefits all.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you use every day (like Google) and companies you’ve never heard of, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also with respect to politics and philosophy. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my experiences and perspectives. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, but do be critical.)