War is not a natural disaster. It is a system – a complex, enduring machinery with distinct, interlocking parts that have been refined over centuries. To understand why humanity remains trapped in cycles of conflict, we must lift the veil of sanitised narratives and examine the gears that drive this machine: the beneficiaries, the manipulation, the hidden costs, and the chilling depersonalisation that makes it all possible.
The Sanitised Nature of Modern Conflict
Modern war is often presented as a sanitised, technical exercise, an “analgesic” used to numb public perception of its true, horrific cost. This has been described as a “calculated estrangement from war’s horrific realities,” where media avoids showing the dead and dying. This deliberate shielding of the public from what can be termed the “Gorgon stare” of war – its full, bloody horror – is what makes perpetual conflict politically manageable.
The Cohorts Who Benefit from War
A tripartite structure of elites consistently benefits from warfare. First are the Political Elites, who often see conflict as a means to consolidate power, unify a population, or cement their legacy. Second are the Economic Elites, particularly in the arms manufacturing and certain resource sectors, for whom war is simply good business. Third is the Security and Intelligence Bureaucracy, whose budget, influence, and reach expand dramatically in a state of perpetual conflict. This was starkly visible in the case of Russia, where a “collective Putin” of security elites, locked out of Western economies, saw anti-Western mobilisation and war as a “pragmatic strategy” to consolidate their domestic power and control over resources.
The Manipulation of Public Will and the “New Isolationism”
Creating an army willing to kill requires the dehumanisation of a distant “enemy” and the promotion of a narrative of existential threat. This process is fraught with danger, as pre-emptively naming future enemies, as intelligence services sometimes do, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In modern times, the public is not mobilised for shared sacrifice as in past wars but is kept in a state of “national obliviousness.” This allows wars to be fought by a professional, hired military with minimal public debate or dissent.
The Complicit Role of Mainstream Media
The mainstream media often acts as a conduit for state-sanctioned narratives rather than a independent check on power. Through embedded reporting and the systematic avoidance of graphic reality, it fails in its duty to provide a full accounting of war’s costs. Analyses note that the true impact of superior firepower, such as civilian casualties from drone strikes, often occurs “under the media radar,” leaving the public uninformed about the brutal consequences of their nation’s actions.
The True, Hidden Costs of War
The price of war is paid disproportionately by soldiers, civilians, and the planet. The financial cost runs into the trillions of dollars, but the human cost is far greater. This includes the generational cost of profound psychological trauma (PTSD), genetic impacts from environmental contamination like depleted uranium, and the wholesale destruction of natural resources and public infrastructure. A 2021 global study on disease burden found that the destruction of healthcare systems in conflict zones exacerbates the spread of communicable diseases, primarily in poorer nations, while battlefield injuries create a devastating pattern of long-term disability across all societies involved.
The Insulation of the Elite from Consequences
Those who lead nations into war are often utterly insulated from its consequences. Their wealth is safeguarded in offshore accounts, their children do not serve on the front lines, and their daily lives are completely untouched by the violence they authorise. This disconnect was ironically highlighted in the case of Russia’s “Westernised elites,” who saw their overseas assets and retirement plans harmed by sanctions, while the more politically radicalised security elites, whose assets were domestically held, were more insulated and therefore more willing to embrace conflict.
The Industrialised Soul: From Person to Payroll Number
The industrial revolution’s logic was applied with terrifying efficiency to warfare, mechanising human beings themselves. The soldier is depersonalised, reduced from a citizen-hero to a unit of production in the factory of war, identified by a number. This is far more insidious than a simple tool for allocating rations and pay; it is the foundational act of bureaucratic depersonalisation. A number can be entered into a ledger, tracked on a spreadsheet, and tallied as a casualty statistic. A number does not have a mother who grieves, a child who waits, or eyes that once held light. This system creates the psychological distance essential for the machinery to function, allowing planners to speak of “acceptable losses” without ever confronting the “fish-eyed dead.” The meticulous account-keeping of war is a grand, grotesque lie – it records the cost of a bullet but has no column for a shattered family, accounting for the price of a tank but unable to quantify the generational trauma it inflicts.
Breaking the Cycle: Enduring the Stare
The machinery of war depends entirely on our willingness to look away. It thrives in the cultivated “national obliviousness.” The path to breaking this cycle is not through another, final war, but through the courage to endure the Gorgon’s stare. We must re-personalise the cost by rejecting sanitised statistics and centering the human stories of all victims. We must follow the money to expose and challenge the tripartite coalition of elites who profit, always asking Cui bono? (Who benefits?). And we must reclaim public scrutiny by demanding a media that shows the full, horrific reality and re-engaging as a public in the moral and political debate over war and peace. The account books of war are written in ink, but the true cost is written in blood, trauma, and lost futures. Until our ledger of accountability matches that grim reality, the machinery will continue to grind.
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I read a comment from an interview that Tony Gilroy, the showrunner for the Star Wars-related sci-fi thriller Andor, said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year…
He said, in relation to the series, that “the really sorry truth about this question — and we get it a lot — is that peace and prosperity and calm are the rarities. Those are rarities throughout the last 6,000 years of recorded history. You could drop this show at any point in the last 6,000 years, and it would make sense to some people about what’s happening to them.”
Hard to disagree. Andrew Klein refers to the ‘Enduring Machinery of War’ in the title of his latest essay. American army General Smedley Butler wrote a book 90 years ago called War Is a Racket, wherein he discusses the nexus between business and war, along with the tacit support at all levels of influence for the continuity of warring behaviour.
History is replete with stories of conflict within and between nations.
All strength to those who prosecute for peace, for the battle (pun intended) is a difficult one, man being the most aggressive creature on the planet, the only one that kills for reasons other than an immediate need for food, the only one that kills for reasons of ideology, belief, hatred, passions, including, paradoxically, love, jealousy, envy, greed, fear and more. I suggest there will never be an end to wars and conflicts, not until the human race has run its race and its time is over.
Thanks Andrew, for another excellent and important article.
The role to the “Economic Elites” is often overlooked. Huge corporations gave their support to the Nazi fascists in Germany, as did huge corporations in Japan for instance. More importantly to the present is the despicable support huge tech and weapons-manufacturing corporations have given to the genocide of Palestinians.
Michael West exposed yesterday what was peddled at a weapons expo in Tel Aviv. One expression used was ‘normalizing’ of war, the murdering fields of Gaza was referred to as a ‘battlefield’. It also talked about turning Iran into another Gaza.
https://michaelwest.com.au/make-iran-like-gaza-chilling-insider-view-from-israel-weapons-expo/
After the mass murder in Bondi there were some linking Iran with the atrocity; we still haven’t seen any evidence from ASIO or Anthony Albanese linking Iran with antisemitic acts here; when Trump ordered an illegal attack on Iran Anthony Albanese quickly jumped in to give his support – are we seeing Australia being dragged into another US/Israel war against any country in the Middle East with any power to rival Israel’s, as Howard did with his lies about weapons of mass destruction?
Let’s not forget Minns and Allen defended the use of violent police force in reaction to protest against such weapons expos in Australia. Let’s not also forget the US gave support to ISIS to help it destablize Syria and bring about regime change.
And now Anthony Albanese has invited the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, to Australia. Herzog is listed in the Database of Israeli Incitement to Genocide, 4th January 2024, DECISIONMAKERS for saying “There are no innocent civilians in Gaza”.
Anthony Albanese has invited a man who incited genocide to Australia, possibly to appease Israel, he has become to Australia what Mahmoud Abbas is to Palestine – does he not realize it doesn’t matter how much he does for Israel it won’t be enough.
Andrew, your series of articles have been brilliant, thank you and Merry Christmas to you.
We only have to look back to the assination of JFK and Lyndon Johnson’s revocation of Kennedy’s plan to circumvent the Vietnam War and you have your answer as to who benefits.
Put your feet up and get your favourite beverage, it’s 7 hours long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8iYLzsYHKI
Stunning series of articles Andrew, keep up the cracking pace, you leave the so-called journalists of the MSM in the dust.
Merry Christmas to you and your family.
heather, I’ll see your seven and offer you three and a half.
JFK to 9/11 : Everything Is A Rich Man’s Trick. I’ve watched this twice. It’s pretty damning of the powers that be. The nexus between the British and European royal families and Hitler and the Socialist Party is a bit eye-popping. The narrator goes into some depth as to the alliance of dark forces behind Kennedy’s assassination, naming and speaking of motive.
Johnson, by the way, was consistently rumoured to have had his alcoholic sister, Josefa Johnson, murdered, before she said too much.
From dropsitenews
Elbit Systems, the Israel weapons company that reportedly signed a multi-billion deal with the United Arab Emirates, was also heavily represented at the conference. Executive Vice President Yehoshua Yehuda boasted of “combat proven technologies” that allowed people to be struck even when “the targets are less than a pixel.”
The UAE is financing and arming the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, a militant group carrying out a campaign of mass slaughter that is on track to eclipse the genocide in Gaza if it hasn’t already.
Israeli weapons are playing an increasing role in global conflict, Levy told the audience. “Eighty percent of our activity is really for export—only 20 percent of our activity goes to the Israeli market,” he said. “I think that all of the things that we learned during this war in Israel impacts our future business capabilities. And IAI as of now has $27 billion of new orders and has something like $7 billion of sales every year.”
War on a global scale is a very new thing which travels arm in arm with the greed and waste that characterise modern capitalism. What is the ideal product? Something that you are making is so highly desired that you are paid (subsidised)to make it, that you can sell for an exorbitant price to a very wealthy buyer, who then takes it out and destroys it, and comes back for more. The relatively modern notion of the nation-state is a contributing factor as defining borders will always create conflict. Meanwhile, there are also much greater movement of people, often displaced by the total destruction of their homes and traditional ways as collateral damage from modern warfare.
I accept that there have always been episodes of hostility between different groups, that there have been incidences where countries amassed great power and defeated weaker ones. But war on today’s scale is historically a very new thing.
There are some obvious shared interests between Russia and the west, some regimes in particular following a form of autarky.
Usual suspects are found around fossil fuels and Big Tech with other donors and influencers against minimum standards and regulation of fossil fuels, environment, labour and consumer standards; secular EU has heft, with ease of doing business across borders and mobility for citizens.
Accordingly corrupt fossil fueled regimes of Trump, Putin’s Russia, Netanyahu’s Israel and Orbán’s Hungary have it in for the EU, the west and eg. the ICC; latter also suggests some whiff of corruption.
In the policy background, post Brexit, fossil fuel Atlas Koch ‘segregation economics’ and Tanton anti-immigrant Network’s agitprop; latter segues with the ‘anti-globalist’ Soros conspiracy of miscegenation or ‘great replacement’.
Central is the ‘Trojan horse’ of Anglo ultraconservatives via the Danube Institute in Budapest partnered with Atlas Koch Heritage Foundation; latter is Opus Dei, anti-EU, anti-Ukraine and allegedly anti-semitic* pining for autarky of Franco’s Spain?
*While the related Atlas Koch, Tanton and Fox/RW MSM have a footprint and influence in Australia on media and politics (esp Nats), shouting about ‘anti-semitism of the left’ they are coy about recent news in Washington.
Many Heritage personnel have walked after the head’s mealy mouthed response to former Fox News presenter and alleged Russian & Hungarian asset Tucker Carlson interview with Nick Fuentes inc. anti-semitism and praise for Hitler…….masking splits in MAGA and difficulty in stopping righ wing anti-semitism?
Related locally is how Heritage developed Project Esther to denigrate Palestine and university campus support as anti-semitic (latter majn game vs science, the enlightenemnt, freedom of speech and empowered citizens).
Post (barely) Bondi Hannukah tragedy, immediately News led RW MSM, LNP/ON and related influencers online kicked off a disgusting campaign of partisanship which included Netanyahu and far right voices in the US to attack the PM, Ministers, government and ‘the left’.
Same tactics were used by the industrialist supported NSDAP in late Weimar era Germany to denigrate ‘cultural Marxism’ of the Frankfurt School; wink wink……
Canguro, thank you and yes, I have that ‘Rich man’s trick’ in my collection.
We can never learn enough, not just about history but the people who inhabit it, for good, perverse or worse.
Thanks Andrew Klein et al. How true it is.