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World Military and Social Expenditures by Ruth Sivard
4th edition (1978)

 

Foreword by John Kenneth Galbraith

There can be few seemingly unequal political contests in the world than those over military spending, its claims against social needs. On the one side, powerful military bureaucracies, influential and richly financed weapons industries, their lobbies, their captive legislators, those for whom paranoia or past wars are a way of life. On the other side, only reason, the will to survive, the inarticulate poor

But on second glance, the contest, if dangerously weighted toward disaster, is not wholly unequal. Reason has power. So has compassion. People do wish to survive; in American public life seeming carelessness in the attitude toward atomic weapons has been for some numerous politicians and even some generals a ticket to oblivion. No one now remembers Curtis LeMay.

But reason and the will to exist need to be informed. That is why the patient word of Ruth Sivard is so important. She has rendered a great service in informing all of us. Now let every reader do his or her part. Every word needs to be read, every chart studied, every figure weighed, and then as reason dictates, let all respond. In this contest it is on that response- to political leaders, the press, in elections- that life depends.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Economic theorist and best-selling author
Harvard Professor
Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1946 and 2000

 

Dr. Galbraith also wrote the following commendation for Ruth Sivard for an award presented by SANE-FREEZE: Campaign for Global Security, in Washington DC on June 13, 1991:

In any view of the political power of our time, there stands on one side the arms manufacturers and dealers of the world with
Ruth Leger Sivard on the other. They are more nearly equal than anyone can imagine.

I join with admiration,  affection and gratitude in this salute to the source of, I venture to think, the most important economic, social and political research of our time."

John Kenneth Galbraith
June 13, 1991

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