Death For Export – OpEd

War in Ukraine becomes protracted and even laymen are coming to an understanding that nobody actually strives for peace. Appeals to good sense from such respected and competent figures in world politics as Antonio Gutterres go unheard. The shroud of state propaganda from Washington and Brussels to Kyiv and Moscow doesn’t let people realize that the world war has already started. People continue to believe that Ukraine or Taiwan are somewhere on the other side of the TV screen.

Parties that could contribute to the peace process instead decided to monetize the Ukrainian conflict merely scaling it up. The war yields profits which means that the perspective of a bigger war implies bigger profits. 

Everybody makes money. Fuel market players make money, food speculators make money, creditors make money etc. And the most cynical in making money are companies of the military-industrial complex supplying death for export. Colossal lobbyist potential of the US military industry guaranteed them the state support and lulled public opinion by means of ostensibly independent media.

Few care about the further fate of the arms sent to Ukraine. There is no oversight mechanism for those arms and it may not even exist in the war-torn territory. The Ukrainian conflict created conditions for the formation of an unprecedented in scale weapons blackmarket.

Even Interpol expressed concern over the issue recognizing its inability to counter the threat of smuggling of the weapons intended for Ukraine. There have already been reports of selling and reselling of the arms delivered to Ukraine.  The principal is simple: the war will write off everything. This even goes to the point where samples of the western weapons delivered to Ukraine flow into the hands of the Russian military. The western weapons spread from Ukraine not only in Europe but all over the world creating new hotbeds of lawlessness and violence. 

Has anybody tried to avoid it? Has anybody proposed a particular program of peaceful settlement? No. Arms shipments bring profits and lead to victims, victims lead to a bigger escalation of the conflict and then to bigger shipments of the arms which brings bigger profits. Everything is simple: market. The market where death serves as futures.