Peace treaties almost always fail or are short-lived, despite the hype surrounding them. There have been numerous efforts to redirect humanity towards peace. One of the earliest and most influential was philosopher Immanuel Kant's 1795 essay Perpetual Peace, which later influenced the League of Nations (1920) and the United Nations (1945). It included in its recommendations a coalition of independent nations and the gradual dismantling of standing armies. Instead we see a 41 percent rise in global military expenditure over the past decade, reaching a record US$2.9 trillion according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Ukraine tops the world, spending 40% of its GDP on military expenditure. Increasingly destructive weapons continue to be invented, along with the less visible funding of propaganda and espionage. The United States remains the world's largest arms exporter by a wide margin, accounting for roughly 42 percent of all global arms exports. T...