Chickens come home to roost (II)
With deadly missiles still streaking through the skies above the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz not yet relieved of its constipation, it is difficult for my mind to
With deadly missiles still streaking through the skies above the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz not yet relieved of its constipation, it is difficult for my mind to be shifted from that region. I acknowledge that life outside that war zone remains apparently unchanged but as long as that war is still in progress, normality anywhere else in the world must be regarded as an illusion. An illusion which retains the memory of the earliest days of the Covid pandemic, before the world became properly aware of the destructive power of a virus hell bent on making a mockery of what was up till then regarded as normal. We are now at the incubation period of whatever is responsible for what is happening in the Middle East. In the case of the pandemic, it was fairly obvious that what was needed was the rapid development and deployment of a safe and effective vaccine. There is no such get out of jail response to the current situation which has the potential of spiralling totally out of control and in the worst case scenario of precipitating the descent into the Third World War. Even if it does not, its potential to inflict pain on a global level is undeniable which is why an immediate de-escalation of the war in the Arabian Gulf is imperative. Anything else is totally unacceptable.
The Arabian Gulf sits right in the middle of the world as it is equidistant from any other region of the world but its importance goes well beyond the issue of simple geography. World trade depends on the industrial production of everything that is used to procure human comfort anywhere in the world and the energy for this purpose comes from the crude oil that is daily pumped out of the ground in the Middle East. The political and commercial importance of this region are obvious and those that have leverage in that region quite simply, control the world. From this point of view, it is clear that the dominant power in that region is the USA which is desperately anxious that the status quo is
maintained. This is why the Americans have not only surrounded the place with military bases bristling with power and menage but are continuously spending ever increasing amounts of money on the development of the sophisticated weapons with which those bases are equipped. This situation is put in some perspective when it is noticed that Americans spend more on armaments than the next twenty-five countries put together. This is reminiscent of the two navy policy of the British in the period leading up to the First World War. In trying to enforce that policy, the British government poured so much money into equipping the Royal Navy for war that she ended up committing her economy to a watery grave. We all know how that ended.
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I am no economist. Far from it. But, I remember browsing through Samuel Galbraith's famous book on economics quite a long time ago. The one thing I took away from that perfunctory excursion was his illustration of the element of choice with guns and butter. Given a defined amount of money and a choice between spending the amount of available money on guns with which to wage war or on butter with which to feed people, the amount of money available to produce butter must depend on how much money is spent on guns. You can only produce one at the expense of the other. At the moment, it is obvious that the USA is spending far more on guns than butter and this is creating a noticeable imbalance which is causing the American economy to tilt dangerously in the water preparatory to sinking under the waves.
On the eve of his departure from the White House in 1961, General Dwight Eisenhower whose previous appointment before he attained the Presidency was as Commander in Chief of Allied forces in Europe, warned his country of the danger of the increasing power of what he called the military - industrial complex. The cut throat contest between the USA and the USSR was then in its infancy and the Vietnam debacle was still in the future. Yet, the USA had become increasingly militarized so that other items of public expenditure had begun to lag behind military spending. Eisenhower's admonition was unfortunately simply dismissed out of hand and military spending has now gone through the roof. Currently, the US maintains some eight hundred military bases all round the world including one in Ghana. It was from there that missiles were launched into Nigeria last Christmas to deter the bandits operating around the North West region. Since then there has been no credible analysis of the result of that raid. What is clear is that part of the armament launched fell out of the sky over Offa hundreds of kilometres from the intended target and another fell into a rice field a fair way away from the bandits which were to be punished for their sin. I admit that this is a digression but I just could not resist from straying down that path. Taking this scenario into consideration however, this may be part explanation for why the Americans, even with more than a little help from Israel have not been able to subdue the Iranians more than twenty-four days after their pre-emptive strike on Teheran. They have even managed to blot their copybook rather badly when they killed no less than 170 girls in a tomahawk missile attack on a school. The single act should be regarded as a war crime and those responsible for it ought to be tried for it. This is not to excuse them for the deliberate and summary execution of the Ayatollah and several members of his immediate family. I have a feeling that there is a case to answer here.
The military aspect of this war is out there for all to see. What may not be so visible is the damage that is being done to world trade. In the first place the cost of the war on all sides is racing towards the one trillion dollar mark. Money that could have been used to make life that little bit more comfortable for the people whose taxes are being incinerated in the course of this war. What is more worrisome however is the effect which this conflict is having on global trade. A few days before the war began we were buying petrol. at around 800 Naira per litre. I have just paid 1,400 Naira for the same volume of petrol and the longer the war drags on the more we would have to pay for it. This is because the world has just been deprived of 20% of the crude oil required on a daily basis to fuel the world's industrial production. Perhaps more than that, there is a consequent shortage of natural gas supply from Qatar and there is no way to make up this short fall. In addition to this, the world is running out of helium without which some sensitive medical equipment can no longer be operated. MRI machines are in this category. The world is still running on the reserves of these materials and the true scale of the problem will soon be exposed when the reserves run out and there will be nowhere to hide. We have in recent times been congratulating each other on the reduction of the rate of inflation. With the price of petrol hovering around 1500 Naira per litre, our inflationary rate will roar back, more fearsome than it has ever been.
News filtering out of Washington suggests that the Americans are trying to seek an accommodation with the Iranians. It is however too early to attach any credence to the imminence of talks which will bring an end to current hostilities. All that is known is that Trump's chickens have come home to roost but the whole world is having to pay for their return.
