TEHRAN – Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on 10 December 2018 released its report on the sale of weapons and other military hardware by the world’s largest 100 weapon manufacturers. The U.S. weapon manufacturers dominated the ‘top hundred list’ with a 57 percent share of arms sales. According to the report, the U.S. companies benefitted from the U.S. Department of Defense’s ongoing demand for weapons.
The pro-war U.S. foreign policy is meant to serve the interests of military industrial complex as the U.S. has a long history of waging unilateral, belligerent wars across the globe from Vietnam to Syria and constant escalation from the South China Sea to the Black Sea and from Strait of Hormuz to the Strait of Kerch.
The creation of al-Qaeda, scraping peace treaties, sanction game and orchestrating Shia-Sunni conflicts are all part of the U.S. military industrial complex agenda. The former CIA Director Robert Gates and former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski began funding extremists in 1979, barely six months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Osama Bin Laden, Maktab al Khidmat and Afghan Mujahideen received about $1 billion from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia through Pakistan’s ISI. The brainchild of CIA by the name of al-Qaeda waged its war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Later during the 1990s, al-Qaeda extended its reach to Bosnia that in turn justified the NATO air strikes against the country. After that al-Qaeda extended its network further to Kosovo and helped ‘Kosovo liberation army’ fight against Yugoslavia and Serbia for the creation of Greater Albania. The Kosovo Liberation Army was an Albanian terrorist faction backed by the U.S. and NATO and is responsible for ethnic cleansing of 90% of Serbians, while western corporate media portrayed Albanians as victims of Serbian aggression.
Another puppet of the U.S. military industrial complex, Saudi Arabia was brainwashed by the U.S. regime to fight against communism rather than the Israeli aggression against the Arab States. Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz was Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. from 1983 to 2005 and also the de-facto leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who helped in arming various terrorist factions all across the Middle East on the behalf of U.S. military industrial complex.
Back in 2013, Hamid Karzai stated that the U.S. is collaborating with the Taliban that is regularly conducting suicide attacks inside Afghanistan as it provides a pretext for the U.S. military presence inside the country. So the expansion of al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups from Afghanistan to Syria has provided an excuse to western war machine for conducting military aggression against different countries.
The creation of ISIS was meant to serve the interests of Israel in addition to war profiteering. According to a former CIA contractor Steven Kelly, the U.S. intention behind the perpetual war in the Middle East is to eliminate any opposition against Israel from its neighboring states like Syria. Kelly in a Press TV interview stated that the creation of ISIS was meant to nullify any opposition to Israel by the complete destruction of Syria and Iraq.
In addition to this, a perpetual war in the Middle East provides a fertile ground for the U.S. military industrial complex to reap huge profits by selling weapons to both the U.S. and terrorist factions. Additionally, the expensive Iraq war drained the U.S. treasury; still the pro-Israel power configuration and military industrial complex have been batting for endless wars.
The scraping of peace treaties is also the agenda of the military industrial complex. Recently President Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty of 1987. Back in 2002, the U.S. scrapped the Anti-Ballistic missile (ABM) treaty. According to Russian MP Alexi Pushkov, the abandoning of INF and ABM would bring humanity close to the ground zero.
The downfall of the Soviet Union in late 1980 brought an end to excessive military spending and the funds were diverted towards civilian purposes. Now it is obvious that Trump wants to revive the Cold War era as it will enormously benefit the U.S. weapon manufacturers.
According to a 2014 study by Morgan Stanley, the major U.S. arms manufacturers have witnessed a growth of 27,699% in the last 50 years. From 2010 to 2013 Northrop Grumman has returned 114%, Raytheon 124%, and Lockheed Martin 149% to their investors.
In April of 2017 and April 2018, the U.S. fired Raytheon manufactured Tomahawk missiles on Syria. Soon after the attack the Raytheon shares surged by 3% and closed above its 50 days moving average. The shares of other U.S. weapons manufacturers like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman also edged higher. From 11 April 2018 to 17 April 2018, the shares of Raytheon went from $219 to $228 per share.
The sanction game is yet another trump card of the U.S. military industrial complex as it is trying to exclude Russia from the international arms market. According to Rostec spokesperson, Washington’s sanction against Russia is “just an excuse for pushing Russia out of the global arms market.” The U.S. weapons manufacturers are losing their market even in the U.S. friendly states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and also in Turkey and India. So the U.S. is targeting Russian defence industry as back in 2017 more than 30 Russian arms manufacturers were included in the list of potential sanctions target.
A 2008 report by the RAND Corporation under the title “Unfolding the Future of the Long War: Motivations, Prospects, and Implications for the U.S. Army” warned that the U.S. will engage the Muslim world in unjustified warfare at least up to 2020. According to the report, the US military industrial complex will capitalize on the Sunni-Shiite conflict in order to sway the U.S. enemies. The report mentioned that the U.S. will provide a full-fledged support to pro-U.S. regimes by selling them sophisticated weaponry in order to contain the influence of Iran in the Middle-East.
It is obvious that the “iron triangles” of the U.S. political system is the intersection of corporations, pro-war lobbies, and government officials. So, at least in near future, the U.S. will favor pro-war strategies, instead of negotiations.
Mudasir Sheikh is a Kashmir-based writer and independent researcher.
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