It's hard to have any appreciation of how big or small numbers are. Wolfram | Alpha helps sometimes, if you look things up. But it doesn't work for money numbers, so other times you conveniently find two numbers on the same site to compare:

• Global cost of conflict reaches $14.3tn, says report
• Foreign aid close to record peak after donors spend $135bn in 2014

To make it a little easier to compare, I'll write the zeros, and add another big number for comparison[1, 2]:

14.300.000.000.000 - Global cost of conflict
   135.000.000.000 - Global foreign aid
 2.458.000.000.000 - Nominal GDP of African in 2014

I'm not an expert on economics or war; the topic is open to discussion! I'll start: I feel like there'd be a great deal less conflict if some money were diverted from conflict to aid. Too simplistic? Let me know below!