The Profits Side of the War in Ukraine
Eric Zuesse, June 18, 2022
The war business is extremely profitable, because governments are willing to spend anything in order to win. In a country such as Russia, where all of the weapons-manufacturing firms are 50%+ owned by (controlled by, and serve) the Government itself, profits are not the main objective, national-defense is; but, in a fully (or nearly fully) capitalist country, such as the U.S. and its allies, the people who control the decisions are actually private investors, and profits are their main (or only) objective; and, so, the controlling investors in ‘defense’ firms hire agents (including politicians) in order to control each of their main markets, which are their own country and the countries that those investors are allied with. Also, in order for their weapons to be able to be used, target-nations are needed, whom those armaments-investors (and their news-media) declare to be their nations’ “enemies” and consequently to be lands that their weapons should be targeted against (if “enemy”) or to defend (if “ally”). Both “allies” and “enemies” are needed, in order for these investors to have a thriving armaments industry; and both “allies” and “enemies” are needed in order for those companies to have markets (their own nation, and its “allies”) and to have targets (the “enemies”). The key here is that in order to maximize the profits of armaments-firms’ investors, they need to control their own Government, because that Government will determine which other nations are also markets (“us”), and which other nations are instead targets (“them,” or “enemies”). These investors therefore need to control, above all, their own Government, in order for them to succeed, to be, themselves, “winners” at the investing-game. These investors also tend to control their nation’s ‘news’media, because those businesses validate the Government’s “allies” and “enemies”; and thereby validate its invasions (so as to pump their weapons-sales). And this is the way that capitalism functions; and it is the way that imperialism (which is a natural adjunct to capitalism, because capitalism serves investors above all — not workers, nor consumers, but specifically investors) has always functioned, in order to produce wars (which serve only the wealthiest).
Perhaps the world’s largest and most effective marketing organization for U.S.-and-allied armaments manufacturers is NATO, but many others (perhaps not so well known) also exist, and sometimes provide more candid information to the public.
Here are relevant highlights from an interview with Ukraine’s Government, at a major recent international trade-show by U.S.-and-allied weapons manufacturers, as published by the trade magazine for America’s armaments-industry, National Defense, whose publisher is the National Defense Industrial Association:
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“BREAKING: Ukraine to U.S. Defense Industry: We Need Long-Range, Precision Weapons (UPDATED)”
by Stew Magnuson, 15 June 2022
The war-torn nation desperately needs artillery and artillery rounds, but what can truly give it the upper hand over its Russian invaders are long-range precision weapons such as armed Predator drones, loitering munitions and the multiple launch rocket system.
Denys Sharapov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of the defense in charge of procurement, support for weapons and equipment, and Brig. Gen. Volodymyr Karpenko, land forces command logistics commander, spoke with National Defense Editor in Chief Stew Magnuson and other reporters through an interpreter in the Ukraine Ministry of Defense’s booth at the Eurosatory conference in Paris on June 15. …
At Eurosatory this week, you're meeting a lot of defense companies. What are your expectations since they normally sell through their own countries? What’s the purpose of talking with companies and not countries?
Sharapov: So those are parallel processes. There are constant government negotiations on all levels, diplomatic levels, military levels, ministry-to-ministry — both ministers of foreign affairs, ministers of defense — I believe this is not only an ongoing dialogue, but this is unprecedented dialogue.
It doesn't matter whether we work with private enterprises or government enterprises, any weapon transfer is made upon the decision of the government. So that's why we are really hoping for the support of those governments. …
Our readers are about 1,800 corporate members of the defense industrial base in the United States. What message do you have for them? And what do you need from them urgently?
Sharapov: The [Ministry of Defense] is concentrating currently on fulfilling all the needs of the armed forces. You asked a question about needs. First, you have to understand that the frontline is 2,500 kilometers long. The frontline where there is active combat in more than 1,000 kilometers long. That’s like from Kyiv to Berlin. … As of today, all the people in all of our armed forces and within the defense and security sector is up to one million people. And we have to support them all. We have to supply them with small arms, with personal protection gear and with the means of communication. …
We have received a large number of weapon systems, but unfortunately with such a massively expendable resource, it only covers 10 to 15 percent of our needs. We need artillery, we need artillery rounds, infantry fighting vehicles, combat vehicles, tanks. We really need air-defense systems and the multiple launch rocket system.
Also, high-precision weapon systems, because we believe that high-precision weapon systems will give us an edge over the enemy, the upper hand in this war.
There is a debate in the United States about whether to send Ukraine armed Predator drones. How important are they to your fight?
Sharapov: The party that will win in this war will be the party that will first start using contemporary high precision equipment and weapon systems. And those drones that you mentioned, they are a part of the modernized, highly accurate, highly precise, modern equipment. …
As of today, we have approximately 30 to 40, sometimes up to 50 percent of losses of equipment as a result of active combat. So, we have lost approximately 50 percent. Approximately 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles have been lost, 400 tanks, 700 artillery systems. …
Equipment that has gone to the rear of the frontline is maintained solely by Ukrainian specialists that have been trained by different foreign companies for that specific purpose. …
Quite unfortunately for us, we have become the biggest consumer of weapons and ammunition in the world. And we’re hoping to receive support from the entire Europe and the entire world. …
At Eurosatory this week, you're meeting a lot of defense companies. What are your expectations since they normally sell through their own countries? What’s the purpose of talking with companies and not countries? …
We really expect that the governments we're cooperating with will fully support their weapons factories in support of Ukraine.
My first Eurosatory was 20 years ago. And all those years Ukraine was a seller of weapons. And this is the first exhibition when instead of being a seller of the weapons, we have become the largest consumer. This is the first year of Eurosatory where we are represented not by our industry, but instead by our ministry of defense, who is the consumer, who is the client, the purchaser of all these weapon systems. …
You can trust us with your weapons, your technologies, to use them to best of our abilities. We know how to use them. We know how to fight a war with them.
And it is largely due to the efforts of the Ukrainian armed forces that many foreign brands are currently on the front pages of newspapers. People are naming their children Javelin.
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A good example of how this works is that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, which is one of America’s leading marketers of U.S. invasions and wars; and his Amazon Web Services subsidiary supplies the cloud-computing services to the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and entire Intelligence Community; so, he, himself (as Amazon’s top stockholder), is a major U.S. Government contractor. Subscribers to news-media in America are paying subscription fees in order to be inundated constantly with propaganda to increase the sales by contractors to the U.S. Government. The controlling investors derive part of their wealth (in Bezos’s case, a major part of it) from their Government, and another part of their wealth from selling to the subscribers to (and advertisers in) their publications and news-networks the propaganda that will cause the U.S. public to vote for their preferred political candidates and against the ones that those investors don’t prefer. This makes the entire operation “democratic,” even if the winning candidates of each of the two political Parties — both candidates — back even larger ‘defense’ expenditures by the one government in the world, the U.S. Government, that already spends approximately half of the entire world’s costs for ‘defense’.
The United States Government, and the Governments in Europe, don’t have enough money to protect the health of their people, and to provide the educational systems that they need, and to reduce crime, and to maintain and improve the infrastructure for them, but instead are prioritizing weapons-production, in order to defeat Russia on the battlefield of Ukraine, which borders Russia. That is their top priority. Ukraine has threatened Russia ever since Obama’s coup there in 2014. That was the opening round of World War III. Ukraine is an authentic national-security interest of Russia, because it’s on Russia’s doostep. That’s why Obama grabbed it. But Ukraine isn’t an authentic national-security interest of the United States, nor even of other nations in Europe. None of them were not only on Russia’s border but couped by the U.S. Government in 2014 and thereby transformed from being neutral to being rabidly anti-Russian. Russia struck back on 24 February 2022, which precipitated the current explosive boom for U.S.-and-allied armaments firms and their investors. Those investors are being well served by their Governments. But those nations’ publics are not. Is this democracy? Or is it instead fascism? Will one find reliable, trustworthy, evidence on that matter, in the newsmedia to which one has subscribed? In a time of war, should one seek-out to access, on a regular basis, especially newsmedia from countries that one’s own Government labels as being “enemies”? In a capitalist country, how can a person intelligently seek-out truth regarding international relations? It’s a real problem. Therefore, it is a problem that’s ridiculed (as ‘conspiracy theory’ or such) by all of the mainstream media in those countries. Sometimes, some things are too true to be publishable within the mainstream. That’s especially common in a dictatorship. Anyway, it is the case in U.S.-and-allied countries today.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
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