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In which way? Right now money is shifted from the EU to the US and Ukraine is accumulating dept. The West, in total, doesn't make money, only the weapon manufacturers
Weapons manufacturing is a significant percentage of GDP in the countries involved in supplying those weapons. That's what makes the military industrial complex so successful, and insidious.
And right now, Ukraine is becoming more and more important in that cycle of funding. They are on the cutting edge of cheap drone manufacturing. Everyone wants what they're making...and the investments are already rolling in. Both Ukraine and the countries supplying them with supplementary weapons systems, are all making bank off of each other.
People can be paid to digg holes and fill one with the dirt from another. That creates GDP, but only with surplus money that could be spent more productively.
Or from the other side, Russia and Iran are also building drones that other people want, and China is supplying everybody with the parts.
Ignoring the economy, the war will escalate, and the only thing that will matter is, who can deliver more drones to the front.
I think China will be able to produce more, but the transport will be the bottleneck since the West will close China's access to the sea and there is a limit to what can be delivered by train.
@Archangel1313 @plyth
The problem with the arms industry generally is that while it contributes to an apparent "GDP" growth & makes billionaires of its shareholders, in terms of overall ROI for the people of the countries it "serves", it is zero-sum. There is NO ROI. Because arms' singular purpose is to destroy, not build.
The arms race (to the bottom) is ultimately the total failure of diplomacy: the wrong people are in charge. Everywhere.
That's not necessarily true. Obviously, the people at the top make the lion's share of the profits...that's just the unfortunate reality behind all Capitalism. But military technology requires an enormous amount of supply chain infrastructure to produce. There are entire downstream industries that support those manufacturers, that also support a ton of completely unrelated industries as well. Without those primary industries, all the others would be severely underfunded.
Economies are like ecosystems. Every part contributes to the overall health of every other part, either directly or indirectly. And unfortunately in most countries that have a military industrial complex, the weapons industry acts like a keystone species. Get rid of that, and entire branches of the national supply chain simply cease to exist, and all the jobs associated with them also disappear.
The unfortunate reality that this creates, is a dependency on war, in order to maintain economic stability. That's why countries like the US simply rotate between different enemies...only ever letting peacetime last long enough to restock weapons stockpiles, before moving onto another target.
@Archangel1313
I don't agree with you at all. :ablobsmile: The MIC is a virus in the ecosystem. There is nothing to prevent investment in downstream & related industries anyway, without the MIC. Referring to them being productive as an excuse to justify the MIC is ignoring the massive overall LOSS to all military-driven & -affected economies.
That said, we as yet do not have a viable response to the literally (& *growing*) *capitalist* reflex for more war machines & more wars.๐คท
I don't think you understand what I was saying. I wasn't making an endorsement...just an explanation. It's not something you need to agree with, in order to understand.
Of course there are better ways to build an economy. The unfortunate reality however, is that a sizable portion of the US economy is currently dependent on the MIC to function. It's not that easy to just "change".
It would be like wanting to turn one kind of forest into another kind of forest, just because you like the other kind of trees better. I mean, yeah...you can cut down all the trees and replant them with another variety...but that ecosystem will take a long time to reestablish itself, and some of what depended on those original trees will never recover.
Should it be done...yes. But, will the people in charge of making those decisions actually do it? Probably not. Those politicians were elected to represent those communities that currently depend on those industries for their livelihoods. Those people obviously don't want to lose their jobs...and their representatives obviously aren't going to do anything that's going to negatively impact their local economy. The status quo is self-reinforcing.
It's easy to say, "just find different jobs for everyone to do"...but it's enormously difficult to actually do. This is what makes it an "economic dependency". If you cut those local economies off from their current revenue stream...they probably won't survive the withdrawal.