When I talk about the dynamics of power and control which must be considered very carefully before undertaking armed struggle, I am not talking about comparative numbers of troops, or access to advanced weaponry.
The entire system of domination has changed and this has had a profound impact on the strategies which must be used to resist it. To a great extent, the traditional logic of war no longer applies.
I don’t know if our readers are familiar with the system called the Military-Industrial Complex? It is a term coined by former US President Dwight Eisenhower (a retired military general), referring to the use of war as an economic stimulus mechanism. There isn’t a single significant sector of the American economy that is not connected to the Defense Department. You are only able to read this post because of this system. The internet itself was developed as a project from the Defense Department.
The industrial sectors which spend the most money lobbying congress and financing political candidates are weapons manufacturers, the aerospace industry, infrastructure and energy companies. They lobby for policies which will increase their revenues, and their primary customer is the US military. War is how they make money. They make money just from rumors about war.
You have to understand that the money spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is money essentially given to these companies. Most of the military aid given to countries like Egypt and Israel, is, again, a gift to multinational corporations. This is not depletion of their resources, it is a mechanism for funneling public funds into private profit.
War is a marketplace.
The multinationals invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to control politicians, and in return they receive billions of dollars in war and reconstruction contracts. It is a tremendous return on their investment. Within months of the civil war in Syria, conferences were being held to discuss who would win the contracts to rebuild the country and how much potential profit they could earn.
If we do not update our understanding, and instead insist on applying obsolete strategies of fighting, we will end up only fighting to consolidate our enemies’ domination over us.