Mirroring Marx's observations on productive consumption, that consumption stimulates production and production is also an act of consumption, it is also true that violence is both a destructive and creative phenomenon. Accelerated wartime production and the transformation of industrial nations' infrastructures and technologies are a good example of the productive capacities of violent conflict. But setting aside the obvious, violence is also very different from production.
For one, prolonged warfare is quite famous for draining monarchical and national coffers. That dreaded war debt (or deficit) is there for a reason: one may be pouring finances and resources into arms and implements, but all of that is being smashed up in battle, when it is not being used to smash up the enemy's resources of course, so that accumulated productivity tends to burn up and then prolonged warfare begins to act as a steady nonrenewable draw on resources, whereas with times of productive expansion, rapid developments in technologies and infrastructure are used to build upon each other and accelerate accumulation and available resources multiply, fueling the developments in turn. Though this pattern is by no means indefinitely sustainable. One can mount a war on the earth in a manner of speaking.
But in shorter timescales, warfare often follows overdevelopment and expansion, and then after the surplus has been burned up, it peters out, as flat out looting can itself only be sustained so far as there is loot to snatch. But then that scorched earth has cleared the way for new spurts of development, and those revolutionized wartime technologies and capacities are put to use to fuel a voracious hunger for new growth and indulgence after a long period of deprivation and struggle.
