Absolutely nothing. If you believe the song by Edwin Starr, anyway. I disagree. Eisenhower warned in the 1950s about the military industrial complex in the USA and sadly, time has proved him right, with a gigantic industry going on that relies on conflicts occurring in faraway places. All under the modern excuses of protecting democracy, while, it may be noted, most of the action seems to occur in resource-rich countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, but countries like Zimbabwe are left to collapse.
Take for example, the latest situation in Ukraine. When it comes down to it, it’s a conflict based on what media tells us is happening. Unless we actually have our own feet on the ground, or know someone there who can tell us better, then it may as well all be lies, exactly the same as Orson Welles and his radio dramatisation of War of the Worlds in 1938, that had Americans packing their bags and fleeing for the hills. However that might have saved them is unclear, but I’m wishing I knew someone in Ukraine or Russia border regions who could tell me what the fear level really is.
Initially, stock markets responded by marking down Russian shares, and they have declined markedly, by about 30% since October last year, suggesting the insiders were in the know, as per usual. The USA continued to rise until a couple of weeks ago, since when it has fallen markedly too, along with EU markets. It’s interesting that the UK has not joined in the falls, and it could be that a market containing lots of resource, oil and financial stocks may be resilient in the coming years. Last couple days though, things have changed, with marked rises in Russian stocks especially, but the US beginning to curve upwards again too. The conclusion must be that the insiders know World War 3 isn’t happening quite yet and just perhaps the USA has had a little bit of a bloody nose from a playground scrap against a more established player. In fact, the USA has quietly slunk away, defeated from a few scraps in recent years. They tried to start a coup in Venezuela, the world’s richest nation in oil reserves and failed, suggesting the decline of this cycle of their power is well and truly underway.
So, what do we learn from all this? Wars happen and mostly they are engineered by someone looking to profit in some way. It wouldn’t surprise me if Ukraine agrees a major arms deal with the USA in coming months, to help defend against the Russian “threat” and the military industrial complex continues to profit from human misery and fear. As an outsider, with no hope of knowing when the next conflict incident is planned, My reading of this is : buy Russia, they really have it all, the resources and tons of under-used agricultural land that once supplied the world and just perhaps, buy the UK. People are still convinced Brexit was a bad idea, but the performance of UK stocks and funds suggests they have missed out on ten years of very good rises. Perhaps they missed that Royal Dutch Shell decided the EU is such a bad place to be, they dropped the Dutch after over 100 years and moved their head office to the UK in December 2021. It goes back to thinking before that resource stocks and banks may well be the right places to be for the next ten years. I am in no way saying that it’s going to be a great ten years for people living in the UK. “We are on a train journey, and some of the people on the train at the beginning are not going to be there at the end”, as I was once told by my employer during a meeting where mass redundancy was clearly planned. With coming rises in food prices, living in a country that must import over half it’s food and can easily be blockaded by uncooperative neighbours might not be a picnic. However, resource companies with their HQ there, but most of the earnings coming from elsewhere in the world, may well be a great place to be for your hard-earned savings. Along with…choke…big pharma. Reminds me of another war going on right under our noses that few are even aware of, the war on humanity itself.