Matt Carr's Infernal Machine

Anyone who still believes we live in the best of all possible worlds would do well to read the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s background report on global military expenditure for 2010.   According to SIPRI’s research the world spent $1, 630 billion on ‘defence’  last year, of which the United States spent a jaw-dropping $698 billion – 42.8 percent of the total.

Next on the list was China, with an estimated $141 billion (7.3 percent of the global),  followed by the United Kingdom – punching above its weight as usual with a humble but...