Well, the business of war has helped the US to become one of the richest countries in the world. A section of political analysts believes that the superpower would be in a worse financial position than Africa, if it stops exporting arms to foreign countries.

During the Second World War, the US realised that it could make money from the profitable arms trade. The fear of attacks from Japan and Germany prompted Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), who served as the 32nd President of the US from 1933 until his death in 1945, to concentrate on manufacturing weapons. However, the problem began after the war ended in 1945. As the arms factories faced recession due to lack of capital, arbitrary layoffs started taking place in the US. To get rid of this situation, the top political leadership in Washington DC made a serious attempt to explore new arms markets. By that time, they also realised that it would be important to create the fear of war in order to sell arms. At the same time, it would be necessary to make a false promise of freedom and to trigger a war between two (or more) countries, if necessary.

The US got involved in a Cold War with the erstwhile Soviet Union immediately after the end of the Second World War. As an arms race began between Washington DC and Moscow, the US agents started spreading the fear of communism worldwide to make profits from the arms trade. Almost all the American arms-manufacturing companies benefited the most from this. According to experts, the US arms export flourished from the 1950s to the 1990s mainly because of anti-Soviet propaganda. The US formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a military alliance between European and North American countries, in 1949 mainly to protect the freedom and to strengthen security of its member countries from the Soviet through political, as well as military, means. Washington DC reportedly sold massive arms to NATO members in the next four decades. As a result, the stock index of General Dynamics Corporation (GD), an American publicly traded aerospace and defence corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia, increased by more than 400% in the 1950s!

Once, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out false propaganda in the US to keep the arms market in check. In the 1960s, the US intelligence agency spread rumours that the Soviet troops would enjoy vodka stored in the refrigerators of common American citizens, triggering an anti-Soviet sentiment across the country. In the following years, the arms-manufacturing companies did not face any problems in finding skilled workers or technicians. The CIA revealed secret information from the Cold War era after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As per one of secret documents (of the CIA), the economic condition of the Soviet Union became worse than that of Italy’s in the late 1980s. The then CEO of Lockheed Martin reportedly stated that they deserved a Nobel Prize for the way they campaigned against the Soviet to dominate the arms market.

However, the US was not solely dependent on anti-Soviet sentiment to sell weapons. The CIA instigated the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, triggering the fall of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, in an attempt to strengthen the autocratic rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Monarch of Iran. The Persian Gulf nation experienced a civil war-like situation immediately after the fall of the Mossadegh Government. With this, the US got an opportunity to sell arms to the two warring factions in Iran.

In 1964, an unknown source spread rumours that Vietnam attacked a US warship. Without verifying the authenticity of the information, the US Congress decided to declare a war against the Southeast Asian country. As a result, Bell Textron Inc., an American aerospace manufacturer headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, received a contract for manufacturing 5,000 military helicopters and made a huge profit. In the early 21st Century, the US Navy confirmed that Vietnam had never attacked any of its warships! Who spread the fake news still remains a mystery.

Horrific terrorist attacks rocked New York of September 11, 2001, as al-Qaeda reduced the twin towers of the World Trade Centre to dust. Experts have claimed that the 9/11 terrorist attacks opened up new opportunities for the US defence equipment manufacturers to make profit. Within days, the US troops launched an armed operation in Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. As the US declared War against Terror, the stock price of Lockheed Martin jumped more than 30% in a single day.

The US attacked Iraq in 2003 on the basis of a secret document prepared by George John Tenet, the then Director of CIA. In that document, Tenet mentioned that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had stockpiled chemical weapons (of mass destruction) in Baghdad. However, the US forces found no trace of such weapons after occupying the West Asian nation. Harvard University published a research paper on the Gulf War in 2012 in which it mentioned that the American arms dealers made a profit of nearly USD 106.68 billion from the war! However, the Gulf War claimed the lives of 45,000 US soldiers and 0.3 million Iraqi civilians.

According to Harvard researchers, Washington DC has capitalised on the fear of terrorism to boost the arms trade in the 21st Century. In its 2023 Annual Survey, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) stated that the US accounted for 40% of all major arms exports during 2018-22, up from 33% during 2013-17, compared to Russia’s 16% share. Between 1950 and 2022, the US sold USD 72.9 trillion worth of weapons, with Saudi Arabia as its biggest buyer. Japan, South Korea and almost all the Western European countries heavily depend on the US as far as arms and defence equipment are concerned.

In December 2023, US lawmakers passed the massive Annual Defence Spending Bill, approving the USD 886 billion National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA). It may be noted that the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of USD 91.4 billion on their arsenals in 2023. The three main arms manufacturing companies of the US are Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies Corporation) and General Dynamics Corporation. On January 30, 2025, Lockheed Martin reported that its revenue eased to USD 18.62 billion in October 2024, marking three quarters of declining sales growth. However, RTX reported a 19% increase in earnings to USD 1.54 per share adjusted on 9% revenue growth to USD 21.6 billion during this period, while General Dynamics reported a 14% increase in earnings to USD 4.15 per share on 14.2% revenue growth to USD 13.3 billion! (Source: Investors.Com) In fact, the US spends more on defence than the next nine countries combined as a large portion of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) comes from the arms trade.

The State Department revealed in 2024 that sales of US military equipment to foreign countries rose 16% in 2023 to a record USD 238 billion. Interestingly, Washington DC supplied 70% of the equipment to West Asia! Meanwhile, the Pentagon has claimed that nearly 2.5 million workers are directly involved in arms manufacturing companies. Another 4.7 million people are indirectly involved in this sector. In other words, the US defence industry has been able to create more employment opportunities than the tech giants. Nearly 50% of arms-manufacturing companies in the US experienced recession after the Second World War. Hence, employment decreased by 15%. Later, the CIA managed to explore new markets for the weapons. As a result, employees of the arms-manufacturing companies have never faced layoffs since 1950.

After becoming the US President for the second time on January 20, 2025, Donald John Trump took various steps to stop the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas Movement. He also promised to stop the Russia-Ukraine War. According to analysts, it would be wrong to believe that the US would stop exporting arms because of President Trump’s recent actions. They have argued that Washington DC has discovered a new conflict zone… in the Indo-Pacific Region. Now, the CIA is trying hard to spread the fear of Chinese aggression in an attempt to sell weapons to Southeast Asian nations.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das