A Point of View 2

interests against a colonial power. In other instances, the economic basis may be harder to discern beneath the blather about ‘freedom’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘terror’, or ‘jihad’, But it most surely underlies such conflict, whether it amounts to a desire to secure strategic interests in a particular region, or relative poverty becoming the recruiting sergeant for religious or nationalist groupings seeking to wage a war. What also has to recognised nowadays is that many, if not most wars, do not conform to the classical model of two or more states becoming embroiled in a decisive and time-limited conflict. Many amount to – what with unintentional irony are termed – civil wars. But here too, economic interests or factors – are inseparably bound up with these wars, as has been  demonstrated by the rival factions in Sierra Leone’s cruel little civil war seeking to control the production of ‘blood diamonds’ or the Taliban’s amusingly impious attempts to manage opium production in Afghanistan. Setting aside the horrendous misery and psychological damage visited upon those who survive capitalism’s wars, the material cost of these wars (which have continued unabated ever since that ‘War to end all wars’) is incalculable: Beyond the obvious costs of waging wars and the ensuing destruction of homes, offices, factories, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, dams, and so on, there are innumerable indirect costs which are often not even factored into the headline figures ( an example of which might be a recent (2007) report by the US Congressional Budget Office that .4 trillion would have spent by the US on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by 2017). Consider, for example, the unforeseen environmental consequences, the disrupted

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