There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. " Sun Tzu: The Art of War :chapter 2-6 "
"And soon the snakes of the abyss swallowed the mighty ship while the waves of frozen blood were reaching the walls of the falling town..."
You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.