The business of war is booming due to the geopolitical tensions engineered in the last few years and global military spending rose to an all-time high of over $2.2 trillion last year according to analysis by the Financial Times. Their analysis, however, does not include Israel’s assault on Gaza which began in October 2023, with 1,000 bombs on average being dropped daily on the densely populated Gaza Strip, which is already one of the most devastating in modern history.

War, What is it Good For?

“War, what is it good for?” asked Edwin Starr while belting the anti-Vietnam war track “Absolutely nothing” was the singer’s response to his own question, the song continues “I despise, cause it means destruction to innocent lives” […] “It ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker – friend only to the undertaker, War is the enemy of all mankind.” Surely the vast majority of the population would agree with the lyrics of War?

The late Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst, and renowned anti-war activist, certainly would have. “It’s the old Latin slogan, Cui Bono, who benefits? Going all the way back to the wars you could name in the last century,” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera in April 2022.

Daniel Ellsberg was so “guilt-ridden” about the Vietnam war that he leaked a 7,000-page top-secret Pentagon study to the press in 1971 uncovering years of official lies about United States military involvement in the War.

The whistleblower who died in the summer of 2023, said that “war is very profitable for the people who are supplying those weapons to keep it going” but, he had hoped that the revelations from what was known as “The Pentagon Papers” could change how the world viewed war.

However, war continues, despite how some of us may view it, simply because others view it differently and of course they will view it differently when they are in the business of war which is profiting handsomely. At the moment “The order books of the world’s biggest defense companies are near record highs,” according to a new Financial Times analysis.

So what has changed due to the revelations of the Pentagon Papers? “Absolutely nothing“

The article below reveals just how profitable war has been in the last few years for some and was written by Brett Wilkins author at Common Dreams

Business of War Is Booming as Orders Surge at Top Global Arms Firms

Orders at many of the world’s biggest arms companies are “near record highs” due to rising geopolitical tensions in recent years, an analysis published Wednesday by Financial Times revealed.

The London-based newspaper analyzed the order books of the world’s 15 top arms makers and found their combined backlogs were $777.6 billion at the end of 2022—a 10% increase from 2020.

According to FT:

The trend’s momentum continued into 2023. In the first six months of this year—the latest comprehensive quarterly data available—combined backlogs at these companies stood at $764 billion, swelling their future pipeline of work as governments kept placing orders.

The sustained spending has spurred investors’ interest in the sector. [Member of Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment’s] global benchmark for the industry’s stocks is up 25% over the past 12 months. Europe’s Stoxx aerospace and defense stocks index has risen by more than 50% over the same period.

Private equity firms including BlackRock, Vanguard, Capital Group, and State Street are dominant or major shareholders in most of the weapons companies analyzed by FT. These Wall Street speculators are “the ones driving the perpetual wars to maintain their bankrupt financial system,” according to the International Schiller Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“In the U.S., the defense budget was $858 billion in 2023, and it is rapidly heading towards $1 trillion per year,” the institute said last week. “Meanwhile our highways and railroads, our bridges and tunnels, our hospitals and schools are crumbling. And the rest of the world also desperately needs American technology and capital goods to help their development, working with China and Russia, rather than driving the planet towards World War III against them.”

Who owns the Military Industrial Complex?

Factsheet from the @SchillerInst on financial firms that own the military industries in the U.S., and how much civilian economic projects can be otherwise built for the same resources spent on war!https://t.co/Jnj3B3pG1K pic.twitter.com/XjQF4Hajij

— Hussein Askary (@HusseinAskary) December 27, 2023

War, incidentally was originally recorded by the Temptations but they were arguably, not brave enough to release it and appear to be political. (Eye roll)

The title Picture used is the Lockheed Martin’s interceptor missile products on display at the 2016 Association of the United States Army annual meeting and exposition at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in D.C.

Source used Brett Wilkins – Common Dreams