By Tommy Acosta —
Sedona, AZ –I just don’t get it. How can Russia accept the United States supplying Ukraine with weapons and intelligence that help kill Russian soldiers while, at the same time, negotiating deals with Washington, welcoming diplomatic overtures and participating in meetings where leaders shake hands, smile for the cameras and roll out the red carpet?
Am I the only one who can see this disconnect?
How can the United States conduct business with Russia and China while those countries maintain military and strategic relationships with Iran, a nation whose government has supported armed groups responsible for attacks on American forces and interests?
What is going on here? Have we become so accustomed to the contradictions of international politics that we no longer recognize their absurdity?
Imagine having a violent dispute with your neighbor. Your friends supply him with baseball bats, knives and information about your whereabouts, while their friends provide you with weapons you can use against your neighbor. Then, on Saturday afternoon, everybody gets together for a barbecue, shakes hands, drinks beer and discusses the latest business opportunities.
It makes about as much sense as what we’re witnessing on the international stage. Whatever happened to the principle that if you’re my friend, you shouldn’t be helping my enemy kill me? Apparently, such loyalties become considerably more flexible when geopolitical interests, economic opportunities and billions of dollars are involved.
Consider the extraordinary contradictions. American weapons and intelligence help Ukrainian forces fight Russian soldiers. Russia maintains military relationships with countries hostile to American interests, while China conducts business with governments Washington considers adversaries. Yet diplomatic meetings continue, trade relationships survive, and world leaders periodically gather to discuss economic cooperation, security arrangements and the possibility of peaceful coexistence.
One day, these governments are threatening one another with devastating consequences. The next, their representatives are sitting across polished conference tables negotiating agreements that could benefit their respective economies.
Meanwhile, somewhere far from the conference rooms and ceremonial dinners, a young soldier is being blown to pieces by a weapon manufactured in a country whose leaders may be negotiating with his own government. His mother doesn’t care about geopolitical strategy, his wife doesn’t care about diplomatic leverage, and his children couldn’t care less about the balance of power. They just want him home.
It’s true that diplomacy between adversaries is necessary. Without communication, negotiation and compromise, the world would be an even more dangerous place. Nations have legitimate security concerns and that countries such as Ukraine have the right to defend themselves against military aggression.
We are talking about an international system in which governments can simultaneously negotiate peace, conduct trade, prepare for war and supply weapons that help kill the soldiers of countries with which they continue to do business.
And hovering over this entire arrangement is the global military-industrial complex, an enormous network of weapons manufacturers, defense contractors, government agencies, political interests and financial institutions whose fortunes are tied, directly or indirectly, to military spending.
Weapons manufacturers don’t generate their greatest revenues by allowing missiles, artillery shells and armored vehicles to sit indefinitely in warehouses. Their business depends on government contracts, military modernization, replenishment of depleted arsenals and the continuing demand for increasingly sophisticated weapons systems.
Every destroyed tank creates the possibility of an order for another tank. Every expended missile must eventually be replaced, and every escalation provides governments with another justification for expanding military budgets. The more dangerous the world becomes, the easier it is to argue that additional military spending is essential.
Of course, not every defense contractor wants war, and not every government decision involving military spending is motivated by profit. National defense is a legitimate responsibility of government, and the threat of aggression is very real. But it would be equally naive to pretend that an industry involving hundreds of billions of dollars annually operates without powerful economic and political incentives to preserve and expand its markets.
That raises a question Americans should be asking more frequently: When the pursuit of peace conflicts with the financial interests of industries that depend on military spending, whose interests receive the greatest consideration?
The disturbing reality is that the people making decisions about war and peace rarely experience the consequences personally. They generally don’t sleep in freezing trenches, identify the remains of their children or watch their homes collapse as missiles strike their neighborhoods. Instead, they sit in comfortable offices surrounded by advisers, discussing military strategy, national interests, acceptable losses and the economic consequences of their decisions.
Acceptable losses? Acceptable to whom? Certainly not to the families burying their dead or the millions of civilians whose lives have been shattered by conflicts they neither initiated nor wanted.
And let’s not forget the destruction of infrastructure. Entire neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, power plants, bridges and highways are reduced to rubble, creating enormous humanitarian suffering and economic devastation. When the fighting finally ends, governments and international institutions must spend billions rebuilding what the weapons destroyed, creating another enormous market for construction companies, engineering firms and contractors.
First, money is made manufacturing the machinery of destruction. Then, money is made rebuilding what that machinery destroyed. It is a remarkable economic cycle, although considerably less remarkable to the people who must live through it.
What makes the situation even more bewildering is that international commerce often continues despite military confrontation. Governments impose sanctions on certain products while permitting trade in others. Diplomatic representatives negotiate agreements even as their countries support opposing sides in armed conflicts. Economic interests, energy supplies, technology, strategic resources and financial relationships frequently survive hostilities that are publicly portrayed as irreconcilable.
The result is a world in which governments can describe one another as existential threats while simultaneously searching for mutually beneficial commercial arrangements. Their soldiers may be fighting proxy wars, but their diplomats and business representatives are still looking for opportunities to make deals.
Perhaps this is simply the practical reality of international relations. Nations have interests rather than permanent friendships and maintaining communication with adversaries can help prevent disagreements from escalating into global catastrophes. History provides plenty of examples of diplomatic engagement helping to avert even greater bloodshed.
Acknowledging the necessity of diplomacy does not mean we should stop questioning the moral contradictions surrounding it, particularly when economic incentives appear to reward the continuation of military confrontation.
One wonders what would happen if the world’s political leaders were required to send their own sons and daughters to the front lines before authorizing another military escalation. Would they be so eager to threaten one another? Would negotiations become more productive? Would compromise suddenly appear more honorable than sacrificing another generation of young people?
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is how normal we’ve allowed it to become. We watch presidents shake hands with adversaries, hear announcements of new weapons packages, read about diplomatic initiatives and military offensives in the same news cycle, and somehow accept these contradictions as the natural order of international affairs.
Yet there is nothing inevitable about humanity organizing itself into competing nations, manufacturing increasingly sophisticated instruments of destruction and building enormous economic systems around the possibility of using them against one another.
We have developed technologies capable of exploring distant planets, communicating instantaneously across oceans and performing medical procedures that would have seemed miraculous only a generation ago. Yet when it comes to resolving our differences, we continue to rely on wars that have plagued civilization since the beginning of conscious time.
We still settle disputes by killing one another, and the companies that manufacture the weapons often benefit financially from our inability to find another way.
So, the next time you see two world leaders smiling for the cameras, shaking hands or walking down a red carpet, consider how many young men and women may be dying at that very moment from weapons supplied by the countries represented in that photograph. Consider how much money is being spent to sustain those conflicts, how much is being earned from manufacturing the weapons and how much more will eventually be spent repairing the destruction.
Maybe the real enemy isn’t always the country on the other side of the battlefield. Maybe it’s also the international system that has made perpetual preparation for war one of the world’s most enduring and profitable enterprises.
Until we begin seriously questioning that system, the diplomatic ceremonies will continue, the trade negotiations will proceed, the weapons will keep flowing and the graves will keep filling.