One nation's quest to abandon the fever of war. | dG1fWTZiM1VpcTROVUE
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
00:06 We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
00:12 This is not a way of life at all.
00:15 Is there no other way the world may live?
00:20 [Music]
00:33 He's a man who is so brave.
00:37 That's why he was able to do something that is unique in the history of mankind.
00:46 He first disarms the communists, then he eliminates the army,
00:51 and then he disarms his own army that was expecting that he would make war
00:55 against the dictators in the rest of Central America.
00:58 The most important consequence of not having an armed force in Costa Rica
01:02 was the financing of public institutions, and most of them related to social well-being.
01:08 The social reforms that Don Jose Pepe Figueres initiated in the '40s
01:13 were very much like the New Deal.
01:17 And so their experiment, their social democratic experiment, has been marvelous.
01:22 They shot for the pie in the sky, and I think they've achieved incredible things.
01:26 We don't have an army, and that means we don't have to be afraid of the army.
01:32 The United States channeled all the money to support the countries, to support civil wars,
01:38 so therefore the United States is accountable for almost 30 years of bloodshed in Central America.
01:45 You know, the U.S. is a country that was born fighting.
01:49 Violence does not, in any moment, prevent more violence or cure a society of violence.
01:56 We must stay on the offensive. We must be determined, and we must be relentless.
02:02 We will be relentless in defense of our citizens.
02:07 [crowd cheering]
02:09 The world doesn't need to spend $1.3 trillion in arms and soldiers.
02:16 The U.S. can have a peaceful society, and if the U.S. can do it, then it will be a peaceful world.
02:26 We don't want to participate in wars. We want to develop pacific ways of solving conflicts.
02:33 Countries need a mission to follow, that everybody gets involved and will work for the same idea.
02:41 There are one billion people who have no access to clean water.
02:45 With a tiny percentage of military spending, we could bring potable water to everybody on this planet.
02:53 [music]
03:07 (music fades)