What N-threat means to global arms market

Commentator and Author

Even as the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, Russia should be more alert so as not to get provoked or trapped in the politico-diplomatic cobweb to prevent further erosion of the global public perception, opinion and confidence owing to her Kyiv invasion. Indeed, whatever may be the justification for the invasion, Russia’s action is potentially self-defeating in the long run, leading to a further break-up of or loss to Moscow’s huge landmass, like in 1991. Singularly, Moscow’s East Europe aggression has woven an unprecedented unity amongst the smaller/weaker nations on security concerns alone. The writing is on the wall.

Fact is that the long Russian geography’s longitudes — from the Baltic Sea to Bering Strait and the latitudes extending from the Arctic to Aral Sea and beyond, to Pamir knot — constitute an eyesore to most, in an era and area of tiny nations and their unavoidable dependence on muscular and moneyed-states of a “global village”. Globalisation has led to glaring economic domination of a few “developed” Western economic powerhouses and pushed a majority of the weaker nations to perceived political subordination. Because, the traditional money-powered but declining demography of a White West doesn’t like being overwhelmed by a traditional transcontinental pariah state’s military ops in mainland Europe, notwithstanding the Western European nations’ deplorable record of human rights violations and gross unethical wars on an alien land.

Financially, commercially and economically, the sanction-hit banking transaction of the dollar has already damaged Moscow, and it is a chilling warning to non-European and Indo-Pacific nations too. None dare mess with the US-led West (European heartland). The economic hammer will fall hard with force for defiance. Understandably, therefore, an alternative to “dollar transaction” in international trade and commerce appears inevitable and imminent for those already sanctioned and its business partners. The only question now is: which or whose currency should be accepted or is acceptable in lieu of the dollar?

That Putin erred in assessing the situation appears certain. However, what turned error to provocation is uttering the word “nuclear” to deal with the Europe “situation”. Non-nuclear “conventional war” or “occupation”, from Korea (1950); followed by Suez, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Falklands and various conflicts across the globe, are “good economics” for arms manufacturers and mentors, but not public utterance of the word “nuclear”. The unprecedented reaction of the West was expected.

Duplicity, however, is visible here. When the Communist Party of China (CPC), in July 2021, threatened to “nuke” Japan “non-stop” if the latter “tries to defend Taiwan” and “dares intervene, Beijing will launch a full-fledged war”, none of the world powers reacted or is known to have even diplomatically rebuked China. Why? Is it because Tokyo is far from the West? In remote, desolate corner of the Pacific? Being the sole state of the world to have been horrendously harmed by the US nuclear holocaust?

Has the world forgotten the history of the West’s criminality for distant wars, far from one’s own soil? Should one refer to the legendary Bertrand Russell’s “Has man a future?”, the erudite icon, in his 90s, plunging into civil disobedience to be imprisoned only with the hope to survive a nuclear war? Truly and truthfully, Russell exposed the “hypocrisy of the West on nuclear weapons” to forcefully write in 1961 that there are a “number of territorial questions” which will have to be decided before peace can be considered secure. “The West has been to blame, ever since the Russian Revolution, for a Rip Van Winkle policy. For long, the West refused to acknowledge the Soviet government… communist… will never consent, except as a result of defeat in war. But such defeat would only happen…. in which the West would be equally defeated and all ordered government would come to an end.”

Russell’s six-decade-old prophecy on world remains unchanged. Because today, the West doesn’t have minimum, stable demography to fight even a conventional war owing to its slowest growing population. At least 30 European (including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Italy and East European) states face a declining population. Hence, none of the developed European states can afford the luxury of losing able-bodied men to multiply widows, orphans and disabled like that of battered, shattered and wretched Afghanistan.

The reality is that prosperous men cannot fight from the high table. For them, it is easy and profitable to make non-prosperous people fight and die in a hot terrain. Death for the poor is ‘development’ for rich arms manufacturers. Soldiers die for a purported “cause”; sovereigns thrive, with or without a “cause”.

Coming back to the 2022 war, the Pope, Switzerland, Jews and the arms bazaar link to the Moscow-Kyiv conflict make things interesting and intriguing. In a departure from traditional policy, the turnaround announcement, to abjure neutrality, by the Pope and Switzerland for an anti-Russia stand, stands out. The head of the Rome-based Roman Catholic Church must be disturbed by the word “nuclear”, thereby making him stand with the majority. Switzerland, the perennially neutral state, to preserve its merchant banking and financial services, nevertheless appears to have followed the conventional forces of Europe as the lake-country is surrounded by all, being in the same boat. Since there’s no Germany versus France, or Italy versus the Allied powers of the UK and the US, the Swiss decision of “discretion is better than valour” comes out loud and clear, following the West’s “sanction against Russia”.

Regarding the Jews, numbering 2 lakh in Ukraine, Zionist Israel is understandably apprehensive of its religious fraternity’s well-being and survival in another unfolding European horror story. To Israel, the war in Europe is an unexpected opportunity to tackle its eternal internal turmoil of Muslim Palestinians in Israel-claimed land. Can the Jews in Ukraine be permanently shifted to Israel to bolster the number of followers of Judaism, thereby upgrading a religious demography balance in the zone of endless conflict like Gaza or the West Bank?

And then come the merchants of the machine gun. In a sensational February 27 announcement, Germany’s 2020 $51.3 billion defence budget was overnight hiked to $113 billion, thereby making it the third highest in the world, behind the US’s $770 billion plus and just announced China’s $240 billion budget. How one local war in the European heartland’s eastern wing becomes a super booster dose for the arms bazaar? How coolly the Cold War of yesteryear becomes the Cold Peace of profit for the fighter, bomber, tanker and carrier? Stock shares instantly turning bear to bull and the West’s post-Cold War era closed shops of the 1990s suddenly rejuvenated?

Make no mistake! Watch out the rush for big-ticket arms orders. From island to landlocked land; Switzerland to Poland; Iceland to Holland; Australia to Austria; India to Indonesia; Japan to Jordan, all will “strengthen security”. Expect the unexpected. How the word “nuclear” changed the global military market! The worst part of the story is: suddenly everybody’s talking about war and national security and few have time for the welfare and safety of the people in distress. Cash prevails over casualty, wealth precedes wanton wreckage.