If they can manufacture wants, can’t they manufacture wars?

The business of war has never been as profitable as in recent years. To obliterate the role of war mongers in the current state of the world is easy but if you want to be impartial, honest and objective, you simply cannot take them out of the equation.
Industrial producers cannot rely solely on human wants for consumption. If that were the case, we would be using one phone ever five years, one car for ten years and may be a fridge for a lifetime. That’s not good business, is it? So they manufacture your wants. No, I’m not another one of those conspiration-ists you’ve been warned of. Through marketing, they are able to increase your cravings so that you end up changing your phone every year, your car every three years and your fridge every ten years. Better no?
If they can manufacture wants, can’t they manufacture wars? The perversion of capitalism as an economic system has brought about an invisible hand of demand that is grossly and extensively manipulated by the supply side. You think you are in control of your consumption but that is an illusion. They control your mind and hence your consumption. And it is an identical rationale that exists for lords of wars. The subtle difference being that one cannot use traditional marketing tools to make a case for war, so you need to manufacture a good enough illusion.
For a nation to wage war against another, it needs popular support. The people need to be convinced of the need for it. Who does not remember the infamous canister episode at the UN whereby a watching world was supposed to be convinced of the undeniable proof of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We know how that story unfolded…
While I would not go as far as saying that the events in Paris over the week end was a staged tragedy to steer public opinion in favor of a war, I am adamant that war mongers must be lobbying hard in the alleys of the Elysees for France to go to war.
France is a major arms supplier worldwide (among the Top 5) and the weapon industry is an important economic segment for Western economies. Put another way, if the world would be totally peaceful, Western economies would be in a deep recession. In so many aspects, ISIS did not attack Paris but rather the West attacked Paris.
The problem with liberal capitalism is that policy implementation is restricted to first degree consequences and hence indirect effects are unfortunately overlooked. The weapon industry manufactured the Gulf Wars under the two different Bush administration and the geopolitical implications for the world and especially the Middle East has been instability. An instability which created the ideal breeding conditions for monsters like ISIS to come to the front. ISIS is not a consequence of Islam but rather a consequence of Western intervention in the Middle East on the grounds of shameful weapon economics!
So while I mourn the deaths in Paris, you will excuse me for not veiling my Facebook profile picture in French colors. As a major weapon supplier, the French Republic is as responsible as anyone else.
Life will not be the same in Paris…Life was never the same in the Middle East once the weapon industry decided that the region should be at war for the sole sake of the industry’s prosperity.
Let us not forget that the beautiful life of Paris, London and New York is stained with the blood of many ‘collateral’ corpses elsewhere in the world and let’s hope that this taste of their ‘own medicine’ can bring about a necessary paradigm shift.

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