Неолиберализм превратил войну в бизнес: как милитаризм служит интересам корпораций

Behind neoliberal ideology lies a rising new class, the class of managers, experts, and consultants, the class directing the new economy. This class ignores social commitments. It has come along after the welfare state and rejects it. It regards everything that the government spends on social services as useless, wasteful spending. As Elon Musk has said, the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. In this way, wars have become a subject on the neoliberal economic agenda. The relationship between neoliberalism and war involves how free-market economic policies, privatisation, and financialisation shape modern military conflicts, state power, and global interventions. Rather than opposing war, neoliberal governance often uses military force to open new markets, restructure foreign economies, and generate corporate profits. The occupation of Iraq by the United States is a striking example of the relationship between war and politics, as it demonstrates that war has become a key mechanism for the expansion of neoliberal policies and financialisation. The new era of global-neoliberal militarism began in the 1980s, not coincidentally with the onset of the Reagan/Thatcher era. In the United States, the objectives of global-neoliberal militarism are served by military spending, which boosts the profit rate of large corporations, creates new technologies such, and contributes to policies that confront the onset of recessions. The objectives of lowering the unemployment rate, raising wages, and contributing to workers’ economic security are no longer a consideration, as they were in the days of military Keynesianism. Studies on war profit – often analysed through the lens of defense economics and reports like the Quincy Institute’s Top Beneficiaries of Pentagon Spending – demonstrate that major military conflicts consistently yield massive financial windfalls for private aerospace and defense contractors, even as they drain public funds and contract broader national economies. According to this report, published in 2025 (Brown University), Despite the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the scaling back of the “War on Terror,” Pentagon spending and contractor revenues have continued at extremely high levels, due in large part to the military’s focus on China as the new national security challenge. The U.S. arms industry has also profited enormously from the surge in foreign arms sales tied to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In other words, from 2020 to 2024, the last five-year period for which full statistics are available, private firms have received $2.4 trillion in contracts from the Pentagon, approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4 trillion over that period. During those five years, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion). By comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion. That’s to say, the U.S. government invested over twice as much money in five weapons companies as in diplomacy and international assistance. At the same time, record arms transfers have further boosted the bottom lines of weapons firms. These companies have benefited from tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel and Ukraine, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. U.S. military aid to Israel was over $18 billion in just the first year following October 2023, plus at least $30 billion in commitments to future weapons sales; military aid to Ukraine totals $65 billion. Moreover, a surge in foreign-funded arms sales to European allies, paid for by the recipient nations − over $170 billion in 2023 and 2024 alone − have provided additional revenue to arms contractors over and above the funds they receive directly from the Pentagon. According to the aforementioned report from Brown University, the shape of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” is shifting as military technology companies are being awarded an increasing share of the Pentagon budget and gaining political power. The military-industrial complex involves the collaboration of the uniformed military and the arms industry in promoting spending that serves their bureaucratic interests and corporate bottom lines, often independently of or in contradiction to considerations of America’s actual security needs. Today, the tools of influence used by the arms industry are consistente – lobbying, millions in campaign donations, and others – but they are also expanding. One of the latest trends, for instance, is that Pentagon officials are now going on to work for venture capital firms investing in new military tech. Neoliberalism preaches that the free market is the solution to all problems. It advcates the destruction of barries and borders that hinder the free circulation of goods or capital. If the free market causes problems, the remedy is always the same: more free market. It wants to downsize the state. But this preaching is contradictory, as we have seen in the case of the military-industrial complex. In fact, part of the neoliberal ideology is to destroy the state, except insofar as it defends the institutions of business ownership and the ability to project military power. However, unlike in the Keynesian era, under neoliberal capitalism, even military functions are to be privatized to whatever degree possible. Any conceivable activity in which the military sector engages is analysed in terms of its potential to generate profit for the private sector. Therefore, for those who rule the world, war is a business. It means profiting from bloodshed and human suffering. The banality of evil. Subscribe to Our Newsletter Get the latest CounterCurrents updates delivered straight to your inbox. Ivonaldo Leite is a sociologist, PhD from the University of Porto/Portugal, and Professor at the Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil.