Just musing:

If only all that creativity and those budgets could be used to solve other problems.

Even with no war going on, and no acute necessity of creativity for defence, we appear to be afraid enough all the time (or manipulated into thinking military expenditure is important) to spend many moneys on development of weaponry, and somehow we are at our most creative when that development involves killing other people.

If you can kick-start an economy by, for instance, killing many Germans, why can't you kick-start an economy by solving some famine problems here and there? Why does all that creativity go into (para-)military development even when there is no acute need for it, ie. no current circumstances dictate it?