Analysts Believe Increased Spending On Ukraine Disproportionately Benefits Western Military Industrial Complex

  |  
Jan 9, 2023

In a post published by TASS on January 9, 2023, two international relations analysts declared that the Collective West’s defense industry stands to benefit from weapons shipments to Ukraine. 

Andrey Kortunov, the director general at the Russian International Affairs Council think tank, is of the view that the United States’ defense industry is one of the principal beneficiaries due to how it has exploited the Russo-Ukrainian conflict as a way to expand its reach into European defense markets.

“We are now seeing from the latest budget decisions that spending on new weapons is increasing and the shares of most Western defense companies are sharply going up,” he stated, when he was questioned about future Western arms shipments to Ukraine.

The analyst believes that British, French and German defense industries also stand to benefit from these non-stop streams of arm shipments.

“Other players are emerging in this market, and they quickly solidify their positions, for example, South Korea. Seoul wasn’t previously ever referred to as an arms exporter, but now it’s starting to supply weapons even to Europe,” Kortunov stated. “A serious market shakeup will now be taking place to reflect the geopolitical situation.”

Vasily Kashin, director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Higher School of Economics, declared that Western countries will probably ramp up their military aid spending to Ukraine in 2023 due to Ukraine exhausting the majority of its Soviet-era arms inventory.

“These are major expenses, but they are comparable to what the US spent for a long time on Iraq and Afghanistan, on waging the wars,” the analyst observed. “In principle, they can’t do this indefinitely, but long enough, so that the assistance will go on. The US defense industry is operating at the top of its production capacity.”

In addition, Kashin is of the opinion that the US and the rest of the Collective West supply military assistance to Ukraine in order to defeat Russia.

“The defense industry per se benefits from the contracts, but it doesn’t get the broader economy anywhere,” the analyst declared. “It all requires a strenuous effort just to defeat Russia and nothing else.”

As a response to Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine, countries of the Collective West have sent billions in arms and military equipment to Ukraine. On December 22, 2022, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the US spent $45 billion on military aid to Ukraine while the EU dropped $28 billion in military aid. 

Indeed, these Russian pundits are on to something here. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict is not only a geopolitical project that satisfies the anti-Russian fetish of some members of the DC Blob but it’s also a huge money grab for the US defense industry. It has every financial incentive to perpetuate this conflict and turn it into a prolonged conflict that enriches the military industrial complex.

For once, the US should pursue military objectives that serve a national interest — i.e securing our border and making sure the Western Hemisphere is safe from hostile external actors. Any foreign policy function that falls outside of that realm is as America Last as it gets. 

Our Latest Articles