Global spending on armaments and the military reached an all-time high last year in 2021. According to SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), states spent a combined total of 2.1 trillion dollars on rearmament. The front-runners, as expected, are the Yankees with spending of 801 billion dollars. The USA is followed by China, India, Great Britain and Russia. The FRG is in seventh place with 56 billion dollars.

In the USA, particularly high sums flowed into military research and development. Between 2012 and 2021, this expenditure increased by 24 per cent. The development of new weapons technology seems to be a particularly high priority for the US imperialists.

With the war in Ukraine breaking out in February, the current peak of $2.1 trillion is expected to be quickly surpassed this year, as well as in the years to come. All the imperialists' talk of a "turn of the times" justifies any additional expenditure on war and the big arms build-up has already begun. The FRG alone, which has finally decided to meet or exceed the NATO 2 per cent target in the future and in addition has decided on a "special fund" of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr, will multiply its military expenditure.

It is confirmed again that we are not living in times of peace but in times of war, that imperialism cannot continue peacefully and is lurching into deeper and deeper contradictions. It is confirmed that imperialism is neither the last nor the superior system. It will perish in a complex system of wars of all kinds and thus be relegated to history.