It’s conventional to date the end of the Cold War to the break-up of the USSR, in 1991. Around that time, people started talking about a “Peace Dividend” – the economic benefits that would come as economies like the UK stood down from the partial war footing that they’d been operating under for the previous half-century. In the early 1980’s, the UK was spending more than 5% of its GDP on defence; in the late 80’s there was an easing of international tension, so by 1990 the fraction had already dropped to 4%. The end of the Cold War saw a literal cashing in of the peace dividend, with a fall in defence spending to around 2.5% in the 2000’s. The Coalition’s austerity policies bore down further on defence, with its share of GDP reaching a low point of 1.9% in 2017 [1].