WHAT'S THE ISSUE? Apparently, War Is Still on Special. There was a time when politicians talked about peace. Remember peace?

That quaint old-fashioned idea where countries tried to solve problems without first calculating how many people they could kill, how many billions they could spend doing it, and whether the taxpayer would notice.

Ah. Those were the days. Donald Trump's America is now planning a 2.8-billion Dollar munitions sale to Israel, including 40,000 2,000-pound bombs. Forty thousand. That is not a shopping list. That is an industrial-scale reminder that, when diplomacy gets difficult, our leaders always seems to find the weapons catalogue.

The UN has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. Whatever your position, the civilian death toll and destruction are undeniable. And the proposed bomb package raises the obvious question: at what point does supplying the hardware become part of the problem rather than simply supporting an ally?

Then there is the mess in Ukraine. Western governments continue supplying weapons to Kyiv as if Putin won't notice. Attacks have increasingly reached infrastructure and targets far from the traditional front lines. The argument is that more weapons are necessary for security. Apparently, if one weapon doesn't solve the problem, the solution is another weapon. And another. And another.

Meanwhile Britain has decided it would like another small slice of the Middle Eastern action.The UK government has announced that it will provide Saudi Arabia with an RAF Voyager air-to-air refuelling aircraft following renewed Houthi attacks. London says the support is defensive and aimed at protecting Saudi Arabia, regional stability, trade and energy supplies. They certainly have a penchant for war over there.

Wonderful. Because nothing says "de-escalation" quite like helping military aircraft stay airborne longer.

And then in Germany, where the political establishment has discovered that voters can be remarkably stubborn.The AfD won 44% in Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month, its biggest state-election result, and subsequently made major gains again in regional elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Other German parties continue to maintain a political "firewall" against cooperation with the AfD.

Thousands have protested against the party. Politicians have warned about its ideology. Debate over whether it should be banned or simply defeated politically continues. Yet the voters keep turning up.

That does not tell us that everybody voting AfD believes the same thing. It tells us something more uncomfortable: a substantial number of Germans are dissatisfied enough with the established political parties to vote for a party those parties have spent years trying to isolate.

You can condemn the AfD. You can oppose it. You can build a firewall around it. But eventually somebody has to ask why it keeps getting bigger. Because telling voters what they should think has never been quite as effective as politicians imagine. And perhaps that is the real issue.

Governments have become extraordinarily good at explaining why another war, another weapon, another military commitment or another multibillion Euro bill is necessary.

What they seem less good at explaining is when any of it ends. War has become an industry.

Weapons have become policy, and taxpayers remain the world's most reliable source of ammunition money.

So perhaps we should stop asking who is winning these wars and start asking something rather more awkward: When exactly does peace become the objective again?

Because at the moment, we seem to have confused peace with simply running out of things to blow up.