War games played by those who benefit

Most of us judging the Afghanistan war over the past 20 years, with the enormous public expenditure and loss of life involved, would say it was an abject failure, especially the chaotic last days of withdrawal. Not so, for the top five defence contractors and their shareholders.

If you purchased £10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defence contractors on September 18, 2001, which was the day President Bush signed Authorization for Use of Military Force in Afghanistan, and then faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth £97,295.

In fact, defence stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58% during the war. No wonder now several news commentators, with undisclosed ties to the defence industry, are lambasting President Joe Biden’s hasty withdrawal, in parallel with members of the general public, without declaring their vested interest.

It’s truly amazing – and has been for decades – how the so-called MIC (Military Industrial Complex) maintains such command and financial clout over whatever politicians and their governments say and do over the thorny subjects of wars and investment in armaments.

As we all know from previous defence policies and warfare logistics, these involve procurement from big private corporations in the armaments industry where making war, not peace, and big profits from our public purse, are bound to be the order of the day.

The big question is: to what extent do we allow them to set the scene and call the “war games” tune, when obviously their best interest always, whether here or in Russia and China (now both authoritarian capitalist), is to push for more enemies and more wars.

Alongside the travesty of the world’s capitalism not being able to construct the real immediate action needed to stop the climate and biodiversity emergencies, we also see the same – particularly in the UK – on the phasing out and banning of nuclear weapons in this year’s non-renewal of the real International Non-proliferation Treaty.

This leaves the present severe threat of runaway “sixth extinction” of life on Earth to doom by either horrendous climate collapse and/or horrendous nuclear warfare.

Alan Debenham Somerset