Letter from Mark Langabeer (Hastings and Rye CLP)
Lenin was alleged to have commented that war was not just terrible, but was also terribly profitable, at least for some. Like many, I no longer read newspapers on a regular basis. I remember the days when virtually every household would buy a paper, but the advent of 24 hrs news programmes and the Internet have put the skids on daily paper readership for many. However, I picked up a copy of the ‘i’ because it was only 70p and it had a feature on the arms industry and its prospects for the future.
An article by Cahal Milmo appears to confirm Lenin’s observations of past imperial wars. Milmo states that one source believes that annual spending on arms will increase by $240 billion, to counter the ‘threat’ posed by Russia and China. Milmo states that the shift in global geopolitics that took place when Putin invaded Ukraine has alarmed the ‘west’ and the world’s biggest arms manufacturers will be handsomely rewarded for their efforts. Germany has announced an extra £100 billion in defence and the ‘new reality’ has witnessed a rise in share values for the largest arms manufacturers.
The uncomfortable truth
Milmo states that Lockheed Martin’s shares have risen by 13%, BAE Systems by 16% and Thales by 36%. He quotes Arjun Sreekumar, a defence specialist at the consultancy Frost & Sullivan, who believes that the Ukrainian conflict will strongly influence how defence budgets are going to be spent. According to one industry source: The uncomfortable truth is that war is good for business. Ukraine, to put it bluntly, hasn’t a pot to piss in and the economic, though not the human, cost of the conflict will be borne by the working class in Europe and elsewhere. The strategy of Western Imperialism is a protracted war with the hope that Crimea and the Donbass regions transfer to Ukraine’s control. This, they believe, would put Putin’s Russia back in its box.
At this stage, it’s still unclear who will win this conflict. It’s the people of Ukraine and Russian youth that will pay the price for a war that neither will benefit from. Only socialism in both east and west, can eradicate wars for ‘spheres of influence “, profit and control over natural resources.
