I want with the example of a geographic area illustrate how enormous amounts of money can be wasted, and not even generate anything in return. Željava Air Base (code name Objekat 505) is the name for one of the largest and most costly military construction projects during the 20th centuary, located in former Yugoslavia. In what today is the border between Bosnia & Herzegovina and Croatia. Built between 1948 and 1968 costing $6 billion. This was one of the biggest among many other sites constructed during the Yugoslavian era. Another air base similar to Željava is the similar but smaller underground air base in Mostar.
The planes were kept in the mountain and the purpose of the airbase was to be the Yugoslavian army early radar warning system, like NORAD in U.S.A. It was also constructed to last a direct 20 kiloton nuclear bomb, like the one that hit Nagasaki. There are more impressing details about the base but I’ll skip that since it has nothing to do with my point here.
During the Bosnian War in the early 1990’s in the cuty of Bihać there was approximately 40 million dollars spent by ARBiH for the liberation of the city in one battle. That means the aggressors, VRS, must have spent similar amount of money. Destruction, death and no limit in material and human cost. Nothing spent in it gave any income or anything in return afterwards. All it did was to require more money spent after the war to rebuild the infrastructure. For the human cost there is no price.
None of this made any money in return, which means none of those money spent in this small geographical region did any real kind of investment for the people living there. So imagine, how all that money could have been put in alternative energy sources, concert halls, research and what have you. Anything that could have had returned the investment and generated something for the people and the area.
So when all the billions of billions $ put into war around the world turn into a dreamy statistic, seen every other week – I remember how much actually a small geographical region can burn up for nothing. That puts a perspective on the actual amount of money wasted in nothing good. That is the cost of people not living the way they think they live. With love for love and love for wisdom we would see more money put in our lives for good and for the well being of all sentient beings on earth.
Photo sources: The old photos were taken by the then Yugoslavian army so they are in the public domain now. Thanks to Siete Meeter from F-A-P for the newer photos. The Mercury Press photos are from a Daily Mail for their article about the air base which wrongly states it being a “Soviet” base, it was the Yugoslav People’s Army base of course. Rather spooky place these days, like scenes from a Tarkovskij film.
What do you think?