George Orwell once said that “war against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it”, and he was right on target. War is enormously profitable, but once the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan ended the military industrial complex needed a new cash cow. So now we have the war in Ukraine, and we are being told that it could go on for years. Life is good again for the big arms manufacturers, but it could be even better. A war with China would cause military spending to soar to unprecedented heights that we have never been before, and we are getting closer to such a conflict with each passing day.
But before I get to that, let me start by taking a look at the impact that the war in Ukraine is having. The Biden administration is asking for a whopping 802 billion dollars in defense spending for the upcoming fiscal year, but it looks like Congress is going to give him about 850 billion dollars instead…
While lawmakers haven’t struck a deal yet on spending for the coming fiscal year, increases backed by the armed services committees point to national defense spending that could approach or exceed $850 billion, versus the $802 billion Biden requested.
Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.), a House Armed Services Committee member who voted in favor of the topline increase, noted the swiftness of the deliberation over the topline. “In the committee, there was almost no debate,” he said.
With the war in Ukraine being so trendy, there is very little appetite on either side of the aisle for a battle over such reckless spending.
So more money than ever is going to be flowing to the military industrial complex, and those that are raking in the cash couldn’t be happier.
For example, every single Javelin missile that is used in Ukraine costs approximately $78,000…
Washington is sending 6,500 Javelin anti-tank missile systems, which are made by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. The cost of each missile is about $78,000 (£66,000) and the reusable launcher is another $100,000 (£85,000). Ukraine will receive more of the systems from France and Estonia, with another 200 coming from the UK.
Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, it turns out that the Javelins don’t work very well against Russian tanks.
But we are going to keep sending them even more Javelins because they are hugely profitable.
Stinger anti-aircraft missiles are more effective, and Raytheon has been given a fresh 625 million dollar contract for more of them…
Another boon for Raytheon will come from the US decision to send 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft missile launchers. The company has already been awarded a $625m (£494m) contract to replenish the stocks. Germany is giving Ukraine 500 of the systems and more are coming from Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands.
War is a racket, and it is making a lot of people a whole lot of money.
Unsurprisingly, that even includes some members of Congress…
Some members of Congress stand to personally profit off Russia’s war on Ukraine.
At least 20 federal lawmakers or their spouses hold stock in Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin, which manufacture the weapons Western allies are sending Ukraine to fight Russian invaders, according to an Insider analysis of federal financial records.
So when these members of Congress vote for more military spending, it is making them even wealthier.
There is something very wrong with that picture.
And it looks like everyone involved with be laughing all the way to the bank for a long time to come. In April, a group of leaders from the top arms manufacturers in the country was told by the Pentagon that the war in Ukraine could last for “years”…
The Pentagon will host leaders from the top eight U.S. weapons manufacturers on Wednesday to discuss the industry’s capacity to meet Ukraine’s weapons needs if the war with Russia lasts years, two people familiar with the meeting said on Tuesday.
Demand for weapons has shot up after Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 spurred U.S. and allied weapons transfers to Ukraine. Resupplying as well as planning for a longer war is expected to be discussed at the meeting, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
You would think that would be enough to satisfy the military industrial complex for a while.
But why have just one war when you can have two instead?
The Biden administration has been relentlessly provoking China for months, and this week persistent rumors that Nancy Pelosi will soon visit Taiwan have prompted furious remarks from Chinese officials. Here is one example…
“If the US side insists on making the visit, the Chinese side will take firm and strong measures to safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.
“The U.S. must assume full responsibility for any serious consequence arising thereof,” Lijian added.
Those are very strong words.
On Twitter, one of China’s most famous journalists was even more blunt…
Hu Xijin, the retired editor of the state-backed newspaper Global Times, went further.
“If the U.S. can’t restrain her, let China restrain her & punish her,” he wrote on Twitter. “[The Chinese] Air Force will surely make her visit a disgrace to herself and to the U.S.”
Most Americans don’t realize that this could be a real turning point.
The Pentagon is pledging to do whatever is necessary to protect Pelosi on her trip, and the Chinese are reportedly threatening to impose a no-fly zone over Taiwan in response…
“If there’s a decision made that Speaker Pelosi or anyone else is going to travel and they asked for military support, we will do what is necessary to ensure a safe conduct of their visit,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the AP. “And I’ll just leave it at that.”
Officials declined to provide specifics but said measures could include fighter jets, ships and surveillance equipment to create redundant shields around Pelosi. China threatened to impose a no-fly zone over Taiwan if Pelosi visits and has dispatched warplanes into Taiwan’s claimed air defense identification zone, CNN reported, as a possible countermeasure.
I really hope that China does not do this.
Imposing a no-fly zone over Taiwan would be an act of war, and the Biden administration would inevitably escalate matters in response.
Meanwhile, the Chinese military continues to deepen ties with the Russian military…
The Chinese military is sending a delegation of troops and military vehicles to participate in a series of military competitions in Russia next month.
On Tuesday, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced its delegation of troops participating in the 2022 International Army Games (IAG) in Russia had departed by train from the Chinese Inner Mongolian city of Manzhouli, on its way to the city of Zabaikalsk in Russia’s southeast. The Chinese delegation left for China along with vehicles for the “Masters of Armored Vehicles” and “Tank Biathlon” competitions.
Could we eventually see a global war with the United States on one side and Russia and China on the other?
There is something about all of this that sounds awfully familiar.
If they are not extremely careful, our leaders could soon cross lines that will never be able to be uncrossed.
I have always said that all politicians should be forced to fight in the wars that they start, because if that was the case there would be a whole lot less wars.
Just look at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. While other Ukrainian men are literally being dragged out of their homes and sent to the eastern front to die, Zelensky is doing photo shoots for magazines such as Vogue.
Zelensky does a photoshoot for Vogue in the middle of a war.https://t.co/8RViZ6ytAS
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) July 27, 2022
I would love to see Putin, Zelenskyy, Biden and all of the other politicians involved in starting this war be forced to serve on the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
It is often said that war is hell, and what is going on in eastern Ukraine right now is a tremendous tragedy.
Unfortunately, more war is on the horizon, and all of us will pay a very great price for the recklessness of a few.
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Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
