Does likelihood of an expanded military response to ISIS signal a boom for the arms industry?
Stock prices for weapons manufacturers sharply increased just after the terrorist attacks in Paris.
When the New York Stock Exchange opened Monday morning, less than three days after terrorists attacked in Paris, five leading American weapons manufacturers saw their stock prices jump. On Monday, nearly as soon as the markets opened, stocks for weapons manufacturers began to soar — Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Thales saw increases in a day that was rather calm for the rest of the market.
Fox Business attributed the bump to a “reaction to the attacks in France.” Over the weekend, French President Francois Hollande had announced that his country would “lead a war which will be pitiless” against ISIS and launched a “massive” airstrike on its stronghold in Syria.
Shares of Lockheed Martin, known for its Hellfire missiles and its lead role in the troubled $1.5 trillion F-35 project, jumped 3.5 percent. Raytheon, manufacturer of Tomahawk missiles used in air strikes against ISIS, climbed 4.1 percent. Northrop Grumman, which in October landed a $55 billion deal to build the next stealth bomber, saw a 4.4 percent rise. Both General Dynamics, maker of F-16s, and Boeing, whose Small Diameter Bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munitions have been used in the air campaign against ISIS, ended the day with increases of 1.9 and 1.3 percent, respectively. On the first day of trading after the Paris attacks, the Dow Jones average rose slightly less than 1.5 percent.
Billions of dollars in tax money is spent every year so militaries can wage wars across the planet and there is an unspeakable amount of money to be made by the people who sell weapons and ammunition to countries at war. Arms dealers and weapons manufacturers never take sides, but are always happy to take billions of dollars from opposing nations in every war so they can destroy each other.
Related: Paris Attacks: Lessons From Mumbai & Madrid Attacks
In fact, it could be argued that the financial incentive created by both the weapons industry and the plunder of foreign resources, is what drives governments to war to begin with. In fact, a recent study from the Universities of Essex and Portsmouth proved that resource-rich nations are 100 times more likely to have a foreign power intervene in their internal conflicts.
The study, “‘Oil Above Water’: Economic Interdependence and Third Party Intervention” was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution and studied 69 instances of civil war since World War II where a third party government intervened. It found “clear evidence that countries with a potential for oil production are more likely to be targeted by foreign intervention,”.
So how exactly is this Third Party Intervention for resource exploitation achieved?
The answer to that question is explained in a systematic detail in the first part of our East India Company Series titled Noble Objectives. The process is thus explained below.
In the 20th century all East India Companies were scrapped and they were given rebirth as MNCs. These MNCs like EICs want uninterrupted trading rights to sell their products, exploit resources and manufacture goods including food and water in all of their former colonies. But these colonies are now ruled by different forms of political governments. MNCs need economic resources to manufacture and human resources (people) to sell. Thus for all socialist and communist forms of governments a new concept of Liberalization and Privatization was evolved. For Monarchies and Dictatorial forms of government the concept of “freedom” and “democracy” was coined.
The concept of preaching these socialist/communist nations to privatize and liberalize can be defined as Privatization; asking the governments not to control resource bases of their own countries, encourage native governments to sell government industries to private people. Then the private people in the small countries may not be that rich to buy these huge corporations which run into billions of dollars. Then comes Liberalization. EICs will come to these colonies as MNCs and invest via their domestic partners to buy privatized public industry and thus develop these countries to become modern and civilized. MNCs want no government or people control on resource utilization or commodity selling. MNCs want to decide as what people should consume (perishable, non-perishable goods), what people should enjoy (music, cinema and Television), and how people should live (where to live and how to travel, whether to use diesel or natural gas for their cars etc) and what people should know (what to read, learn, analyze and how to teach). MNCs just want the local national governments to protect their economic interests in all the above fields.
Same thing happened with EICs. They allowed local national governments like monarchs to rule as long as they allowed them to do whatever they wanted to do. Once local, national leaders say no to EICs they occupied them and ruled directly. MNCs, as they control what people should know (media) will immediately launch a media attack to mould public opinion on any local, national government that goes against their interests and brand them as regressive, racist, rightwing and will replace them with another government of their choice if these governments are democratic in form. These governments (state and central), after MNCs enter do not control anything within their countries including their own operating budgets except their political right to rule. Even to fight a political battle and enforce their rule these parties need vast amounts of money that is liberally provided by private corporate funding channeled via MNCs donations anyway. Once MNCs fully take over any nation, their leaders are as helpless as kings and princes under EICs.
In those days when EICs brought their noble commodities to China under Free Trade and Globalization and wanted unrestricted authority to sell those commodities, the Chinese Emperor said that they do not need those commodities as those commodities do not advance human civilization and values. EICs were enraged. They declared war on China stating that they have to civilize the Chinese people. England, Germany, France, Hungary, Russia, United States of America, Spain, Portugal and Italy all at once engaged China and divided the country for next 25 years to sell their valuable products they thought will advance Chinese civilization. This war occurred in the year 1900 and is called the Boxer War. Europeans won and what they did after that is history. Chinese said it was aggression. Europeans said it was for the Freedom and Democracy of China and to modernize them from oppressive rule. One can see the same sentiments with Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Syria etc.
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