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Originally Posted by Lothar5150
In from a stand point of intellectual equity I am willing to listen to an explanation. Please explain the economic mechanism for war leading to wealth creation as you understand it.
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Two words: conflict investment.
OK, look at all those third-world nations. Look at the resources they sit on: minerals, ores, oil, agriculture. Often too poor to exploit these for themselves, sometimes unwilling to trade with the West on political grounds (or vice-versa). Wouldn't we want to get our hands on those, hmmm? The Western economy that supports our relatively wealthy lifestyle is a hungry beast. It needs feeding, or it will, in the end, collapse. So what do we do? We engineer there to be governments in those resource-rich countries that will trade with us (and of course, on terms that work very well for
us). There are many political ways to do this, but war is one of them.
Conflict investment asks two questions: in a politically unstable country, lots of civil conflict going on etc., which party is likely to win? And if they do, will they pay?
We back the one that is likely to do business with us. We support them with weapons, resources, intelligence or by turning a blind eye. War is a means of making sure that a country ends up with a government that is willing to let its resources be exploited by us.
Of course those parties know this as well, and may "advertise" their willingness to engage in such a "business relationship" through their political ideology. As such we know that fundamentally religious or communist factions will look at the Middle East or Communist nations respectively, while Capitalistically inclined factions will be courting us.
Of course strategic interests come into play as well, but if you get down to it, this is again about economic control. Just as we back one faction, competitor nations may be backing another. If you look at the tremendous ammount of weapons and resources that are poured into such conflicts for years on end, you get to appreciate just how hungry and demanding our economies and associated lifestyles are.
I'm not saying that Western Governments are purely motivated by economic considerations, but they do play an important role. They do have their own business interests and investments. They do have their sponsors and backers (I mean, it makes sense that they would
try to influence the political process, wouldn't it?). And an unhappy economy means unhappy voters (i.e. us).