CAPITALI$M IS A WAR ECONOMY
New Year’s Resolution Number One: Join the Movement Against World War
Image by Allison Saeng.
There’s a precipice and we are standing on its edge. The world as it exists on the eve of 2025 is a world of war and genocide. It is a world where millions of humans exist in a state not just of uncertainty, but in a state where tomorrow is likely to be worse than today. If not tomorrow, then next week or next month. From the bombed-out streets of Gaza where starving dogs eat those killed by US-made armaments wielded by Israelis in military uniforms to the streets of the world’s cities where the poor and the lost beg for inflated coins in order to buy food to eat in the back alleys where they “live,” this moment in time is both desperate and dangerous. Indeed, it is that desperation that feeds the danger.
It does not have to be like this. There is a simple reason that it is. That reason is the current nature of the capitalist economy. Always based on inequality and avarice, capitalism has reached a point in history where it can only continue by intensifying both phenomena. The refusal of governments to put real brakes on the hoarding of wealth by a relatively small number of humans and the need for this economy to consume everything in its path has led to those governments being nothing more than agencies of the wealthy. These governments reject taxing the wealthy at a rate approaching fairness while they deny health and housing to the poor—whose numbers increase with each denial. Most dangerously, the wealthy and their governments flirt with world war. The money they make from the weapons that would be used feeds their greed for wealth and power.
Only we the people can stop them. It remains to be seen if we have the will. Most politicians in power today don’t know war. Of the few that do, many have drawn the wrong lessons from their experience. They think wars can be won with little to no damage to them or their interests. Those who oppose war are not necessarily few in number. However, their voice is seriously muted. The mainstream media—often owned by some of the same people and banks that profit from the war industry—has little to no interest in providing antiwar voices a forum, not even in its editorial pages. Despite this, an antiwar movement does exist. It is present in the protests and opposition to the US-Israeli genocide in Palestine and it is present among a small but growing number of people opposed to the foolish and pointless war being fought between NATO and Russia in Ukraine. Of course, it is also present in other wars not as well known.
To prevent a greater war while ending the current conflicts, there can be no halfway approach. One cannot call for a ceasefire and arms embargo in Palestine yet not call for the same in Ukraine. Both conflicts are part of the same war on the world waged by Washington and its supplicants; the war for full spectrum dominance and US hegemony that Washington has been waging since the end of World War Two. This fact does not ignore Russia’s role in the Ukraine conflict or the role of others in the world’s other wars. However, it does demand one ask themselves whether any of the world’s conflicts that Washington is involved in would exist as armed conflict if Washington was not involved?
It is more than lazy foreign policy to eschew diplomacy and insist on war. This kind of foreign policy is a policy of war and bloodshed. It is the foreign policy of the United States and has been for longer than anyone alive. This fact makes one thing quite clear to me: the primary focus of a movement against war must be the United States government and the corporate powers that profit from its policy of war, war and more war. Since the end of the second world war, Washington has not won a military conflict. It has lost a few and the rest remain stalemated. Despite this, the Pentagon and its political and corporate backers continue to insist that war is the answer. This insistence has led to a growing recklessness on the part of the politicians who vote to fund the war machine. It is this recklessness that we must end before it ends us all.
We don’t know what will happen when the trumpists take power back in Washington, DC. Some of their leader’s recent statements only add to the uncertainty. However, what does seem pretty clear is that the rich will continue to stuff their bank accounts with our money and that US-funded wars will continue to be a main element of US foreign policy. What the US government and the nation’s sycophant media calls defense spending continues to increase with each Congressional budget passed. The Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs recently published a series of reports, one of which included the following statement: “According to a recent forecast prepared for The Financial Times (FT), the world’s top 15 defense contractors will be logging $52 billion in free cash flow in 2026 (almost double the amount in 2021), of which $26 billion will accrue to five U.S. defense companies. A significant proportion of this windfall is due to the rise in military spending related to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The FT points out that based on previous behavior, these defense companies are likely to use some of this cash for share buybacks, dividends, and acquisitions—effectively using taxpayers funds to subsidize wealthy shareholders.”[1]
The pretense of diplomacy carried out by Anthony Blinken while war escalated is just as likely to be replaced by the end of any diplomacy as it is to continue. The swagger of Trump’s “diplomats” (like so much of Trump’s approach to politics) seems to draw its inspiration from the world of TV wrestling and 1990s gangsta rap videos. While some might consider this entertaining, it’s mostly just reckless. It cannot be emphasized enough—this is a recklessness we can ill afford. Killing more people and destroying their world is a path towards greater war, not a path to a just peace.
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