For the arms industry to flourish, it needs wars, preferably protracted, destructive stalemates in far-off places
Paul Rogers
23 June 2023, 5.19pm
A missile on display at a DefExpo 2022, a defence industry trade fair in India |
T. Narayan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
While most would agree there is no such thing as a ‘good war’, those taking a calculated view might argue that such a thing would mean a quick victory with minimal losses on your own side, with the other side so defeated as to present few problems in the future. A ‘perfect war’, then, might be one where there is capitulation and complete surrender without a shot being fired.
The world’s arms dealers will take a devastatingly different view. Their primary function, like that of any other industrial endeavour in a shareholder capitalist system, is to make money for shareholders while ensuring decent salaries and even more decent bonuses for the CEO and senior colleagues.
To them, a ‘perfect war’ is one that degenerates into a violent stalemate that creates an insatiable demand for arms and the replacement of worn-out equipment, while at the same time, each side constantly tries to improve its weaponry and tactics. Profit is placed over lives, though it is arguably better if the war has relatively low casualties so that public support remains high and the war – and the money it generates – can continue.
An even ‘better’ scenario for an arms dealer is selling arms to another country that’s engulfed in an everlasting war that their own country is not fighting, and better still if they are selling to both sides at the same time.
Now carry over this line of argument to the real world of the early 21st century, and we come up with some unusual and appalling results. The US-led coalition’s war in Afghanistan was long, and the 20 years of conflict certainly helped the armourers in many countries make plenty of money, as did the shorter eight-year war in Iraq.
Neither war, though, proved particularly popular back home and both came to a catastrophic end, with hundreds of thousands of people dead and two countries wrecked – but there were still plenty of profits for the armourers.
Iraq actually turned out to be a more complicated war, with ISIS emerging rapidly from the chaos left by Western forces. By 2014 it had taken control of much of northern Iraq and Syria. A US-led coalition was rapidly put together to organise an intensive air war across the two countries, with thousands of airstrikes and cruise missile attacks over a four-year period until ISIS was crippled.
According to AirWars, some 30,000 targets were attacked using more than 100,000 missiles and guided bombs, and at least 60,000 people were killed. Some of these will have been ISIS paramilitaries, but thousands will have been civilians of all ages. However, hardly any Western military personnel were killed apart from occasional accidents, there was little media coverage except when cities such as Mosul and Raqqa were taken, so there was little public attention paid to what appeared – from a Western perspective – to be a successful war.
Even its ‘success’ is debatable, though, as around a thousand US troops are still in northern Syria, many more are in Iraq, coalition forces still carry out air strikes in both countries, and ISIS is expanding its links with like-minded Islamist paramilitaries across the Sahel and on to the DRC, Uganda and even Mozambique. That war is still not over, so the profits still roll in.
For arms dealers, a ‘perfect war’ is one that degenerates into a violent stalemate that creates an insatiable demand for arms
Returning to today, there are many conflicts around the world that arms firms are looking at and seeing dollar-signs. Let’s start with the Indo-Pacific region, where there are plenty of new opportunities for arms marketing. Chinese manoeuvres towards Taiwan are combining with greater US military activity, stimulating a veritable arms sales bonanza across southeast Asia. Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines are all investing heavily, especially in new naval forces.
Further south, Australia is integrating its military posture closely with the United States and Britain in the AUKUS programme of new nuclear-powered attack submarines, while further west, a mini-arms race is developing between India and Pakistan as each invests in new generations of air-defence missiles. According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, Pakistan’s new weapons are centred on the advanced S-400 long-range ground-launched missile from Russia.
India, meanwhile, sees issues with China but is also concerned with what it views as rather too-close links between China and Pakistan. It, too, has bought into the S-400 system but is also buying Barak-8 medium-range anti-aircraft missiles from Israel.
As for China itself, people from its own version of a military-industrial complex have had little role in the national leadership until now, but that has changed in the wake of President Xi’s re-election for a record third term: five new members of the politburo are from the military sector. China may be a hybrid state-capitalist economy but individual corporations still look to business success and their own well-being.
Then there is Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is turning out to be both long and brutal, with many catastrophes and much loss of life. Three weeks into Ukraine’s offensive in the Donbas region, casualties on both sides are high and there are already signs that the offensive is unlikely to succeed in forcing Russia to agree terms.
The Russian military sector has proved more than able to continue producing large quantities of artillery and ammunition, and the leadership has learned from some of its early errors. Putin remains in firm control and though his position could change overnight, there is little sign of this happening.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is still receiving plenty of weapons, ammunition and materiel from NATO, though much of it is very slow in coming, especially the much-desired F-16 interceptors. The war may yet last years, not months – offering ideal conditions for arms’ companies to profit.
Many such arms industry leaders may choose to view themselves as patriotic guardians of their country. But the system in which they operate raises real ethical questions, which few seem to want to answer.
Meanwhile, as the conflict in Ukraine moves slowly towards a ‘perfect war’, more people will die, more towns and villages will be levelled – all of which will simply be seen as collateral damage in our global culture of war.
THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
AND
THE PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY TODAY
No comments:
Post a Comment