Trump's Casino Wars

“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

That was written by two-time congressional medal of honor winner Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler in 1933 in his book ‘War is a Racket’. Unfortunately for some, you couldn’t really tell when this was written, since the United States has always been an economy living by the fruits of profit-driven military adventurism. Many political candidates run on a peace platform, until they’re sitting in the oval office. And Donald Trump is no different. In seven months, this ‘peace’ candidate has managed within 9 months to create further tensions with Russia, escalate the war in the Middle-East and threaten North Korea with all out nuclear war. But while the end of the world may seem near, there’s always an opportunity for the military industrial complex to make even more bank before the doomsday clock hits midnight.

According to an article by CNBC, they claim that the weapons industry giant Raytheon have never had better prospects since the cold war. Due to the escalating North Korean threat, there has never been a better opportunity for U.S. defense contractors to increase their share value.

“We enjoyed an analyst dinner with Raytheon management last night … and came away reinvigorated by the opportunity set available to the firm,” Drexel Hamilton analyst Pete Skibitski wrote in a note to clients Thursday.

Corporations of course exist solely for the purpose of profit, that I understand, but to seem giddy at the potential prospect of all out war just to earn a bit more money defines the Trump administration in a nutshell: opportunistic at every turn. But the dollar doesn’t stop at weapons industry profits. Where you can’t make money, you can probably find valuable natural resources.

The circus surrounding the never ending battle of insults, weapons tests and machismo between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un makes it less problematic (and entertaining) to distract you from what may be the real reason why America has been so involved in dealing with North Korea. According to an article by Business Insider, North Korea is an incredibly mineral-rich nation, which may be sitting on trillions of dollars worth of value.

While it is highly improbable we will see a U.S. led invasion of North Korea anytime soon, it is worth noting that while Trump is exacerbating the threat of war further and further, Obama did actually broker the nuclear weapons deal between America and Iran. While both administrations nonetheless rejected peace deals with North Korea, it nevertheless proves that the situation with the rogue nation can be resolved peacefully.

The lure of the mineral rich environment of Afghanistan also gives war profiteers to celebrate with Trump at the helm. In an article by the New York Times, the estimated total worth of minerals in the region may total up to around $1 trillion.

“Mr. Trump has discussed the country’s mineral deposits with President Ashraf Ghani, who promoted mining as an economic opportunity in one of their first conversations. Mr. Trump, who is deeply skeptical about sending more American troops to Afghanistan, has suggested that this could be one justification for the United States to stay engaged in the country.”

The article goes on to say that trump officials actually met with the head of American Elements (a firm that specializes in extracting rare-earth minerals) Michael N. Silver in mid-July of this year, and discussed how he may promote the effort to increase the rights for American corporations to extract these minerals. While the Taliban, albeit dwindling, still manage to maintain their level of sustained fighting in the region, they also control the opium supply and Helmand province, which contains most of the undiscovered rare-earth minerals.

American military expansion is nothing new and not of course exclusive to just Donald Trump. The weapons industry is booming thanks to the United States bloated defense budget, and they of course have an important say in Washington. But now, more than ever, we are presented with an administration that aims to set the world record on foreign policy blunders that was previously set by George Bush and Barack Obama: alienating Americas’ allies, causing further instability and unrest in the middle east and playing a very dangerous game with North Korea; all while the defense contractors, private military firms, oil companies and the overall American military machine continues to make massive profits in an increasingly unstable world.

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