4 ms·

The cost of war is always huge for all concerned, and is very rarely the outcome of any sort of cost-benefit analysis. Most wars between nations are fought for

The cost of war is always huge for all concerned, and is very rarely the outcome of any sort of cost-benefit analysis. Most wars between nations are fought for something like honour: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/07/16/most-wars-are-not-fought-for-reasons-of-security-or-material-interests-but-instead-reflect-a-nations-spirit/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/07/16/most-wars-are-...

lonelappde 7y ago
Cost is huge for the lower classes and maybe half the upper classes. They are sold on honor, but they fought for the profit of the ruling class, via conquest or be diverting fund to the military industrial complex.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  What you describe is the effect of war, not its origin. Ironmongers get rich from war, but they probably don't make the conflict happen. How could Northrup Grumman force the invasion of Kuwait to improve F117 sales?
  - blackrock 7y ago
    One word: Lobbyist
  - adventured 7y ago
    Ironmongers are also a much smaller - less important - share of the US economic pie than they used to be, back when US manufacturing was a much larger share of the economy. Now, granted, even with their lessened share of economy, they still of course carry outsized influence politically as proxy arms of the Pentagon. As recently as the first Gulf War, Microsoft (for example) was a tiny speck compared to the military industrial complex. In five years or so, Microsoft's annual sales will be equal to about 25% of the annual US military budget (not meant to be apples to apples, it merely points out the massively increased scale of big tech vs eg 1990; Microsoft's sales for fiscal 1990 were... $1.18 billion). To put it into tangible dollar terms: Apple, by itself, generates approximately twice the annual operating profit of all US defense contractors combined. Apple benefits from calm globalization, not war. Big tech humiliates the military industrial complex on generating profits. And big tech is still expanding, whereas most major sectors are not. Which is to say, big tech money looks like it's going to double in size again in the next ten years (7% * 10 years). AAPL + MSFT + GOOGL + FB + INTC + AMZN = ~$220-$230 billion in annual operating profit for 2020. There are three trillion dollar corporations in there (Amazon is just shy of it; and FB will join them in that club within a few years). The rest of the world has one, which isn't really a corporation, in Aramco. It's $5.5 trillion in combined market cap. The Tokyo stock exchange is the third most valuable exchange by total market cap in the world, at about $5.5 to $5.7 trillion (the next two are US exchanges).
    - snaky 7y ago
      So digital giants have more lobbyist potential (in financial terms only, they cannot compete in massive 'job creation' in a districts all around the US, especially blue collar jobs) than the whole MIC, and the incentives to use it to counter lobbyist potential of warmongers. Why don't they use it for actual lobbying-for-global-piece?
      - selimthegrim 7y ago
        I think Google under Eric Schmidt during the Obama administration was trying to get involved around the Arab Spring time and it engendered a backlash.
        aedron 7y ago
        The "Arab Spring" was just another power projection project, you only need to examine how many so-called NGOs that ran the social media campaigns were directly or indirectly funded by intelligence agencies. But more to the point of the GP, to think that only the military industrial complex profits from American global dominance is incredibly naive. All the U.S. interventionism in South America for the last century (i.e. armed insurrection against democracies to install fascist dictatorships) was about opening markets and resources for exploitation by American (civil) corporations.
    - xiphias2 7y ago
      War is still highly profitable for oil companies (like Aramco) as long as they can get oil fields for cheap, set the price for oil and poor people (central banks) pay for the costs. In the next 20 years both oil companies and central banks are getting distrupted, at the same time a brave new world is coming...
    - artificialidiot 7y ago
      You have a good point about tech getting bigger. What worries me is that tech starting to profit more from war. Surveillance , GIS, AI, chips, robotics... are already a huge area and expanding. It is not a stretch to imagine a scenario like facebook signing a deal to provide intelligence, google or amazon providing infrastructure.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    I don't know about Northrup Grumman, but General Electric, also a major defense contractor, could fire anti-Iraq-war hosts from MSNBC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    The MIC whispers in the ear of the movers and shakers of Washington to ensure conditions are good for business. General Eisenhower witnessed this happening. They are directly responsible for the last 100+ years of American military adventurism.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      > General Eisenhower witnessed this happening. I know he warned about it in his last speech, but do you have a source or more specifics on how he witnessed it?
      - baddox 7y ago
        His speech was about the result of the Second World War: > Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. His point wasn’t about specific instances of armaments manufacturers influencing foreign policy, it was simply about the existence of a new and vast industry permanently dedicated to manufacturing armaments.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Eisenhower’s speech was precisely about the fact that, in conflicts before World War 2, existing manufacturers would temporarily make weapons, but that World War 2 left us with a “permanents armaments industry of vast proportions.” Literally his point is that it used to be ironmongers making weapons, but now it’s weapons manufacturers making weapons.
  - ezconnect 7y ago
    Kuwait was invaded because it was part of Iraq and Saddam was lobbied to do what he did.
1000units 7y ago
This article is profoundly unconvincing, and its thesis rather idiotic (I use this sharp term only to honor the fallen warriors of many Just wars).
- pjc50 7y ago
  There are not a lot of wars that have turned out to be "just" in retrospect; the American entry into WW2 as a defensive war is one of the bigger exceptions. Pretty much all of the wars of choice after that have been disasters.
joe_the_user 7y ago
It seems like the catastrophic prospects that nuclear war presented played a part in preventing that sort of war - but such things are hard to know for sure.
elfexec 7y ago
> Most wars between nations are fought for something like honour: This is not true. Wars are fought for wealth or to protect wealth ( perceived or not ). "Honor" ( like freedom, human rights, etc ) is the lie the elites employ to sell the war to the public and dupe the masses into sending their sons and daughters to the battlefield. We didn't fight the korean war, vietnam war, iraq wars, etc for "honor". We fought it for wealth. Every single war we fought ( from the Revolutionary War to the wars today ) was about wealth. The cost-benefit analysis of war is another thing altogether. It isn't an exact science and it's like playing a game of "what-if". In some wars, you can see clear winners who made out like bandits. I don't think anyone would claim the US didn't come out the big winner of ww2. There are clearly some wars where it was a complete waste of lives ( ww1 ) since no side really won and the only winners were bankers and war profiteers. Most other wars, who knows. The cost-benefit analysis comes down to your own biases and how you perceive a non-military solution would have worked out. If wars were truly fought for honor, then we'd have a lot more wars and a lot more nukings. Honor is the fake thin veneer of war. Scratch it and you'll find the true cause of wealth - greed.

lonelappde 7y ago

Cost is huge for the lower classes and maybe half the upper classes. They are sold on honor, but they fought for the profit of the ruling class, via conquest or be diverting fund to the military industrial complex.

jvanderbot 7y ago
What you describe is the effect of war, not its origin. Ironmongers get rich from war, but they probably don't make the conflict happen. How could Northrup Grumman force the invasion of Kuwait to improve F117 sales?
- blackrock 7y ago
  One word: Lobbyist
- adventured 7y ago
  Ironmongers are also a much smaller - less important - share of the US economic pie than they used to be, back when US manufacturing was a much larger share of the economy. Now, granted, even with their lessened share of economy, they still of course carry outsized influence politically as proxy arms of the Pentagon. As recently as the first Gulf War, Microsoft (for example) was a tiny speck compared to the military industrial complex. In five years or so, Microsoft's annual sales will be equal to about 25% of the annual US military budget (not meant to be apples to apples, it merely points out the massively increased scale of big tech vs eg 1990; Microsoft's sales for fiscal 1990 were... $1.18 billion). To put it into tangible dollar terms: Apple, by itself, generates approximately twice the annual operating profit of all US defense contractors combined. Apple benefits from calm globalization, not war. Big tech humiliates the military industrial complex on generating profits. And big tech is still expanding, whereas most major sectors are not. Which is to say, big tech money looks like it's going to double in size again in the next ten years (7% * 10 years). AAPL + MSFT + GOOGL + FB + INTC + AMZN = ~$220-$230 billion in annual operating profit for 2020. There are three trillion dollar corporations in there (Amazon is just shy of it; and FB will join them in that club within a few years). The rest of the world has one, which isn't really a corporation, in Aramco. It's $5.5 trillion in combined market cap. The Tokyo stock exchange is the third most valuable exchange by total market cap in the world, at about $5.5 to $5.7 trillion (the next two are US exchanges).
  - snaky 7y ago
    So digital giants have more lobbyist potential (in financial terms only, they cannot compete in massive 'job creation' in a districts all around the US, especially blue collar jobs) than the whole MIC, and the incentives to use it to counter lobbyist potential of warmongers. Why don't they use it for actual lobbying-for-global-piece?
    - selimthegrim 7y ago
      I think Google under Eric Schmidt during the Obama administration was trying to get involved around the Arab Spring time and it engendered a backlash.
      - aedron 7y ago
        The "Arab Spring" was just another power projection project, you only need to examine how many so-called NGOs that ran the social media campaigns were directly or indirectly funded by intelligence agencies. But more to the point of the GP, to think that only the military industrial complex profits from American global dominance is incredibly naive. All the U.S. interventionism in South America for the last century (i.e. armed insurrection against democracies to install fascist dictatorships) was about opening markets and resources for exploitation by American (civil) corporations.
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    War is still highly profitable for oil companies (like Aramco) as long as they can get oil fields for cheap, set the price for oil and poor people (central banks) pay for the costs. In the next 20 years both oil companies and central banks are getting distrupted, at the same time a brave new world is coming...
  - artificialidiot 7y ago
    You have a good point about tech getting bigger. What worries me is that tech starting to profit more from war. Surveillance , GIS, AI, chips, robotics... are already a huge area and expanding. It is not a stretch to imagine a scenario like facebook signing a deal to provide intelligence, google or amazon providing infrastructure.
- deogeo 7y ago
  I don't know about Northrup Grumman, but General Electric, also a major defense contractor, could fire anti-Iraq-war hosts from MSNBC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  The MIC whispers in the ear of the movers and shakers of Washington to ensure conditions are good for business. General Eisenhower witnessed this happening. They are directly responsible for the last 100+ years of American military adventurism.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    > General Eisenhower witnessed this happening. I know he warned about it in his last speech, but do you have a source or more specifics on how he witnessed it?
    - baddox 7y ago
      His speech was about the result of the Second World War: > Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. His point wasn’t about specific instances of armaments manufacturers influencing foreign policy, it was simply about the existence of a new and vast industry permanently dedicated to manufacturing armaments.
- baddox 7y ago
  Eisenhower’s speech was precisely about the fact that, in conflicts before World War 2, existing manufacturers would temporarily make weapons, but that World War 2 left us with a “permanents armaments industry of vast proportions.” Literally his point is that it used to be ironmongers making weapons, but now it’s weapons manufacturers making weapons.
- ezconnect 7y ago
  Kuwait was invaded because it was part of Iraq and Saddam was lobbied to do what he did.

1000units 7y ago

This article is profoundly unconvincing, and its thesis rather idiotic (I use this sharp term only to honor the fallen warriors of many Just wars).

pjc50 7y ago
There are not a lot of wars that have turned out to be "just" in retrospect; the American entry into WW2 as a defensive war is one of the bigger exceptions. Pretty much all of the wars of choice after that have been disasters.

joe_the_user 7y ago

It seems like the catastrophic prospects that nuclear war presented played a part in preventing that sort of war - but such things are hard to know for sure.

elfexec 7y ago

> Most wars between nations are fought for something like honour: This is not true. Wars are fought for wealth or to protect wealth ( perceived or not ). "Honor" ( like freedom, human rights, etc ) is the lie the elites employ to sell the war to the public and dupe the masses into sending their sons and daughters to the battlefield. We didn't fight the korean war, vietnam war, iraq wars, etc for "honor". We fought it for wealth. Every single war we fought ( from the Revolutionary War to the wars today ) was about wealth. The cost-benefit analysis of war is another thing altogether. It isn't an exact science and it's like playing a game of "what-if". In some wars, you can see clear winners who made out like bandits. I don't think anyone would claim the US didn't come out the big winner of ww2. There are clearly some wars where it was a complete waste of lives ( ww1 ) since no side really won and the only winners were bankers and war profiteers. Most other wars, who knows. The cost-benefit analysis comes down to your own biases and how you perceive a non-military solution would have worked out. If wars were truly fought for honor, then we'd have a lot more wars and a lot more nukings. Honor is the fake thin veneer of war. Scratch it and you'll find the true cause of wealth - greed.