Modern Wars: 7 Ways Armed Conflict Enriches the Few While Impoverishing the World

By Dr. Narayan Rout  · Humanity, Civilisational Thought  ·  65 min read  ·  Published: 7/6/2026

In This Research Pillar

Table of Contents

1. Way 1: The Weapons Industry — The World’s Most Reliable War Beneficiary
2. Way 2: Russia’s War Economy — How Sanctions Became a Stimulus
3. Way 3: The Strait of Hormuz — 21 Miles That Can Shake the World
4. Way 4: The United States — Arms Market, Dollar Dominance, and Strategic Positioning
5. Way 5: Ukraine’s Paradox — Flooded With Weapons, Depleted in People
6. Way 6: The World Reacts — China’s Game, India’s Call, and the Global South’s Pain
7. Way 7: The Human Psychology of War — Why Civilisations Keep Choosing It
8. The Quest Sage Insight — Dharmayuddha, Adharmic War, and the Choice India’s Civilisation Has Always Made
9. What You Can Do With This
10. Conclusion: The Bill Always Comes Due
11. Frequently Asked Questions: Modern Wars — Economics, Geopolitics, and Human Psychology
12. References and Sources
13. 💡 Continue Reading — Related Articles

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes against Iran. The stated objectives were Iran’s nuclear programme and military infrastructure. Within hours, the financial markets delivered their own commentary on the event: Lockheed Martin’s stock jumped 3.4%. RTX rose 4.7%. Northrop Grumman posted a 6% gain. In a single day, before any assessment of the conflict’s geopolitical consequences, before any count of casualties, before any diplomatic response — the weapons industry’s investors celebrated.

This is not cynicism. It is arithmetic.

Modern war is, among other things, a business. The most profitable, most reliably demand-generating, most government-subsidised business on earth. The SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing companies generated record revenues of $679 billion in 2024 — more than the GDP of most countries on the planet. The two conflicts examined in this article — Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and the 2026 US-Israel war on Iran — are simultaneously humanitarian catastrophes, geopolitical realignments, economic disruptions, and, for a specific set of actors, extraordinary financial opportunities.

This article examines who benefits, who pays, and why — with data rather than ideology, and with the impartiality that the subject demands. No nation is assigned the role of hero or villain. Every actor is examined through the same analytical lens: what are their actual interests, and how is the conflict serving or frustrating them?

It also examines something harder to quantify but more important: the human psychology that makes war not an aberration but a recurring feature of civilisation. Chanakya understood it as statecraft. Osho saw it as addiction. Tolstoy documented its human cost with a precision that no geopolitical analysis has matched. The data and the philosophy together offer something rarer than either alone: an honest account of what modern wars actually are.

War is the weapons industry’s product launch, market expansion, and customer satisfaction survey — all simultaneously. Every conflict is a live demonstration of what the manufacturers produce. Every missile that performs as advertised is a sales pitch to every government watching. Every defence system that proves itself under fire becomes the basis of procurement decisions across dozens of allied and watching nations.

The numbers from the current conflict cycle are extraordinary. SIPRI’s December 2025 report confirmed that the Top 100 arms-producing companies generated $679 billion in revenues in 2024 — a record, up 5.9% from the previous year, and higher than spending levels at the end of the Cold War. This is not a small sector quietly benefiting from geopolitical instability. It is one of the world’s largest industries, explicitly sustained by conflict, reliably growing when peace retreats.

How Ukraine Made the Weapons Industry Boom

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has been, for the global arms industry, the most sustained and lucrative market development in decades. Ukraine has received approximately $130–183 billion in total US support since 2022, with $75–130 billion classified as military aid. Lockheed Martin and RTX supplied Javelin missiles, Patriot interceptors, and HIMARS launchers. General Dynamics provided artillery shells and Stryker vehicles. Boeing and Northrop Grumman benefited from replacement orders as US inventories were rebuilt. Lockheed Martin’s missile division revenue rose 13% last year to $12.7 billion. General Dynamics and RTX both reported double-digit gains in their munitions segments.

Ukraine was not merely a recipient of arms. It became a testing ground — the most comprehensive live combat test of Western weapons systems since the Second World War. Every HIMARS launch, every Javelin engagement, every Patriot intercept was observed by defence procurement officials across NATO, Asia, and the Middle East. The weapons that performed well in Ukraine became the basis of procurement decisions worth hundreds of billions. AeroVironment, a drone company, described the Ukraine war as ‘a proof-of-concept’ that got the company ‘on the radar screen of military buyers at the Pentagon and with US allies.’ The company subsequently acquired BlueHalo to expand its presence in larger drones and space technology.

The Iran War’s Immediate Market SignalWhen news of the US-Israel strikes on Iran broke on February 28, 2026, the weapons industry’s stock response — Lockheed +3.4%, RTX +4.7%, Northrop +6% — was not an anomaly. It was the market doing what markets do: pricing in expected demand. Morgan Stanley issued an advisory the same week recommending investors ‘consider increasing exposure around themes like defense, security, aerospace and industrial resilience.’ Within days, the US administration told Congress it planned to spend $153 billion in additional military funding in the next year — money Congress had expected to be spent over five years.

Ukraine was also, paradoxically, the world’s 20th largest arms exporter between 2020 and 2024 — a country fighting for its survival simultaneously providing weapons to other buyers. The arms economy has its own internal logic that operates independently of the human suffering that generates it.

The Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 included what were described as the most sweeping economic sanctions ever imposed on a major economy. Energy restrictions, financial exclusions, technology embargoes, asset freezes, and trade restrictions were deployed simultaneously. The expected outcome was economic collapse severe enough to force a change in Russian policy.

The actual outcome was different. Russia’s GDP declined 1.2% in 2022 — less than expected — then grew 3.6% in 2023 and 4.3% in 2024. How?

The War Economy Mechanism

Russia’s growth was driven almost entirely by state spending on war-related industries. Between 2022 and 2024, fiscal measures worth over 10% of GDP were injected into the Russian economy, primarily through military-linked industries. Production in war-related sectors was up approximately 60% by spring 2024. Defence expenditure consumed the largest share of Russia’s federal budget for both 2023 and 2024. The Kremlin constructed what NATO analysts call ‘a more insulated war-time economy’ — one whose GDP is driven by government spending rather than private investment or trade.

The paradox is that sanctions, by cutting Russia off from Western imports, simultaneously hurt and helped the Russian economy. They hurt by restricting access to technology and financial markets. They helped by forcing domestic production in sectors that had previously imported — an involuntary import substitution policy. Regions with war-related manufacturing saw GDP grow faster than before. Household deposits grew faster in regions where military recruitment was more widespread — because military salaries, paid by a government running a war, are an income transfer from the federal budget to household consumption.

Energy Revenues and the Sanctions Circumvention

Russia’s oil revenues recovered to near-2021 levels by the second half of 2023, funded by redirected energy exports to China, India, and other non-Western buyers. Russia circumvented the Western oil price cap through ‘ghost ship’ tankers sailing without Western insurance, trade denomination in Chinese renminbi, and imports of sanctioned goods through intermediary countries. Russia claimed $15 billion in weapons exports in 2025 — near pre-war levels — focused on Africa and Asia, where longstanding defence relationships and lower costs maintained demand despite diplomatic isolation.

The honest assessment is not that sanctions failed — they imposed real costs, particularly on Russia’s access to advanced technology and its long-term growth potential. But they did not produce the economic collapse that would have forced a policy change. And Russia’s adaptation to the sanctions environment — its construction of a war economy sustained by energy revenues and state spending — has been more resilient than the architects of the sanctions anticipated.

The European Leadership Network’s March 2026 assessment adds the necessary qualification: Russia’s economic momentum ‘culminated by end 2024’ and the country ‘is now drifting into stagflation.’ Inflation pressure, declining real wages outside the military sector, and the structural distortion of an economy organised around war production are accumulating costs. The war economy has limits. The question is whether those limits materialise before or after the conflict concludes.

There is a waterway 21 nautical miles wide, between the coastlines of Oman and Iran, through which approximately 20 million barrels of oil flow every day — roughly one-fifth of everything the world consumes. Through the same passage moves nearly 20% of global LNG, primarily from Qatar, with no alternative export route available. This is the Strait of Hormuz: the most important 21 miles of water on earth, and the geographic centre of the 2026 US-Israel-Iran conflict’s global economic consequences.

What Happened in 2026

US and Israeli strikes against Iran on February 28, 2026 triggered immediate maritime disruption. Iranian forces attacked ships in and around the Strait within days of the initial strikes. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre reported over a dozen attacks against vessels. Large numbers of crude and LNG tankers dropped anchor outside the Strait as operators suspended transit amid rising risks, insurance withdrawals, and direct Iranian threats to commercial vessels. Tanker traffic collapsed to 5% of pre-conflict levels.

The economic consequences were immediate and global. Oil prices surged from approximately $70/barrel before the war to above $103/barrel in March 2026. UNCTAD reported Brent crude rising above $90/barrel as early as March 10 and warned that a prolonged Hormuz disruption could push oil above $100/barrel, raise global inflation by more than 0.6 percentage points, and create the conditions for stagflation. The S&P 500 fell 9% below its January 2026 peak. International markets faced more pressure — many European and Asian economies rely more heavily on imported energy and are therefore more vulnerable to Gulf disruptions.

The Double Disruption — Hormuz and the Red Sea Simultaneously

The 2026 conflict created what TRENDS Research and Advisory called ‘a systemic crisis’ through simultaneous disruption of both major maritime trade arteries linking East and West. The Red Sea-Suez Canal route — which carries approximately 12% of global trade and through which many ships had already been avoiding since Houthi attacks escalated in 2024-2025 — was again paralysed by renewed Houthi attacks on commercial vessels following the US-Iran escalation. Ships that had returned to the Red Sea route after the 2025 ceasefire between the US and Houthis now faced renewed threat.

The result: shipping companies faced the choice between two dangerous routes or the much longer and more expensive diversion around the Cape of Good Hope. Freight costs soared. Insurance premiums multiplied. The companies and countries that produce nothing and import everything — which describes most of the Global South — bore the costs of a conflict they had no role in creating and no power to stop.

The Two Chokepoints — Economic Stakes

Chokepoint	Daily Flow	% Global Trade	2026 Disruption	Who Is Most Affected
Strait of Hormuz	20M barrels oil + 20% global LNG	~20% of oil consumption	Tanker traffic fell to 5% of normal; oil surged to $103/barrel	South and East Asia; oil importers; LNG-dependent economies
Red Sea / Suez Canal	~12% of global trade	$1 trillion/year of goods	Paralysed by renewed Houthi attacks post-Iran escalation	European manufacturers; Asian exporters; any nation using Suez
Combined Disruption	Both simultaneously	Unprecedented in modern history	S&P 500 fell 9%; global inflation threat +0.6 percentage points	Global South bears heaviest burden — imports food, fuel, fertiliser

The United States’ relationship to both conflicts is complex and deserves honest examination. The US is simultaneously the world’s largest arms exporter, the primary financier of Ukraine’s military resistance, the military partner of Israel, and the nation whose currency strengthens when geopolitical uncertainty rises.

Arms Market Consolidation

The US share of global arms exports reached 40-45% during the Ukraine conflict — strengthening American companies’ position in European markets as Russian equipment was systematically replaced. Countries across Eastern Europe that had previously operated Soviet-era systems accelerated the transition to NATO-standard equipment, the majority of which is American-made. Military spending in Eastern European countries grew 164% over the decade 2015-2024 — driven primarily by the Ukraine war. This spending flows predominantly to US and Western defence contractors.

The financial mechanics are straightforward: the US provides military aid to Ukraine (approximately $47-75 billion in weapons), which comes from US military stockpiles, which are then restocked by US defence contractors through domestic procurement contracts, which the US taxpayer funds. The fiscal cost to the US government is real — approximately 0.15% of GDP over three years — but the commercial benefit to the US defence industry is also real and substantially larger. US arms companies received the orders. US shareholders received the returns. US workers in defence manufacturing received the wages. The net transfer, from the perspective of the US economy as a whole, is considerably less negative than the headline aid figure suggests.

The Dollar’s Safe-Haven Benefit

Every major geopolitical crisis since the 1970s has reinforced the US dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency and safe-haven asset. When the Strait of Hormuz disrupted and oil markets spiked in March 2026, investors moved toward the dollar, gold, the Swiss franc, and the yen — and away from emerging market currencies. Countries that hold dollar reserves saw those reserves appreciate in value. Countries that borrow in dollars saw their debt service costs increase. The asymmetry is structural: the dollar benefits from instability in the global economy that it nominally governs.

Russia’s attempts to circumvent this through trade denomination in Chinese renminbi and bilateral currency arrangements have made some progress — but the dollar’s structural dominance has not been seriously dented. If anything, the combination of US financial sanctions on Russia and the flight to dollar safety during the Iran conflict have reinforced, rather than weakened, the dollar’s global position.

Ukraine’s situation in this war defies simple moral categorisation. It is simultaneously the most heavily armed non-NATO country in Europe, a recipient of more Western military aid than any country since the Second World War, a testing ground for the most advanced Western weapons systems, and a country that has lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, millions of its citizens to refugee displacement, and a significant portion of its economic infrastructure.

Ukraine spent $64.7 billion on defence in 2024 — representing 34% of its GDP and 54% of total government spending. Three quarters of its military budget was for personnel costs. It received approximately $48.4 billion in US military aid in 2024 alone. It was simultaneously the world’s 20th largest arms exporter between 2020 and 2024. Ukraine’s military has had the opportunity to develop and test drone warfare capabilities that have attracted international interest — it has become a centre of military technological innovation precisely because the existential stakes demanded it.

The political dimension is equally complex. President Zelensky extended his presidential tenure beyond the constitutional term limit, citing wartime necessity — a decision that provoked domestic debate about democratic norms under existential threat. Ukraine has received NATO-standard weapons, training, intelligence, and economic support at a scale that has fundamentally transformed its military capability. Whether this represents genuine sovereignty or a form of dependent strategic positioning is a question that honest analysis cannot avoid. Ukraine is fighting for its survival and its right to self-determination. It is doing so as the primary theatre of a proxy conflict between the United States and Russia whose final settlement will be determined at a negotiating table where Ukraine’s interests may not be the dominant consideration.

China — Strategic Opportunism Without Direct Commitment

China’s position in both conflicts is a masterclass in strategic ambiguity. China has condemned US-Russian violence and US-Israeli strikes on Iran. It has called for dialogue, ceasefire, and negotiated settlement. It has positioned itself as a responsible global power committed to peace and multilateralism. Simultaneously, Chinese companies have provided dual-use technology and geospatial intelligence to Iran. China has absorbed approximately 90% of Iran’s oil exports at discounted prices. It has traded with Russia in renminbi, helping circumvent Western sanctions. It has deepened military and economic cooperation with Russia in ways that the European Leadership Network describes as ‘a paradigm shift in global order.’

The Iran war ‘is opening strategic avenues for China to strengthen its international and domestic position in a disrupted world order,’ according to Geopolitical Monitor. China absorbs discounted Iranian oil. It acquires influence with a weakened Iran whose pre-war regional network — Hezbollah, the Houthis, various proxy forces — is being systematically dismantled. It positions itself as the alternative patron for Global South countries alienated by Western interventionism. And it does all of this without committing a single Chinese soldier or firing a single Chinese weapon. Russia and China both condemned the US-Israel strikes on Iran — but ‘stopped short of pledging military or civilian support to Tehran,’ as CNBC noted — ‘exposing the hard limits of Iran’s strategic partnerships with Moscow and Beijing.’

India — Principled Neutrality or Calculated Hedging?

India’s position across both conflicts reflects the tension between two genuine but sometimes contradictory Indian values: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family — a call for universal solidarity) and strategic autonomy (the freedom to pursue India’s interests without alignment to any power bloc). In practice, India has abstained from condemning Russia at the UN while importing discounted Russian oil. It has maintained close defence and technology ties with Israel while calling for dialogue. It has resisted choosing between the US-led Western order and the Russia-China-led alternative.

The NUS Institute of South Asian Studies observed that India has ‘signalled its unwillingness to take a strong stance on these issues’ — a characterisation that distinguishes between India’s historical non-alignment, which was principled and sometimes costly, and India’s current posture, which is primarily designed to preserve optionality. India’s call for dialogue and diplomacy is genuine and important. But it carries more weight when backed by active mediation rather than passive equidistance. India has the credibility, the relationships, and the civilisational authority to be a genuine peace broker — but has not yet deployed these assets at scale.

The Global South — Bearing Costs It Did Not Create

The most unjust dimension of both conflicts is their effect on the Global South — the developing world that imports food, fuel, and fertilisers through the maritime routes disrupted by both wars and that has no meaningful influence over the decisions that cause the disruptions. Developing countries that rely on Gulf energy through the Strait of Hormuz face fuel shortages and rationing when the Strait is disrupted. Countries that imported Ukrainian wheat before the war faced food price spikes when Black Sea grain exports were disrupted. Countries that depend on the Suez Canal route for manufactured imports face freight cost increases when Houthi attacks close the Red Sea.

The Ukrainian Institute of Politics’ 2024 review was precise: ‘it is impossible to talk about the war as an unambiguous incentive — for some, it has created a war rent, while for others, it has created losses.’ The losses fall disproportionately on those least able to bear them, in countries that had no voice in the decisions that created the conflict and have no power to end it.

The economic and geopolitical analysis of war is important and necessary. But it is insufficient. It explains who benefits and how — it does not explain why human beings, with full awareness of war’s costs, keep returning to it. For that, we need to look at the psychological and philosophical dimensions that the data cannot capture.

Chanakya’s Arthashastra — War as Rational Statecraft

Chanakya’s Arthashastra — written approximately in the 4th century BCE and rediscovered in 1905 after nearly 2,000 years of absence from recorded history — is the world’s most sophisticated ancient text on statecraft, economics, and military strategy. It preceded Machiavelli by 1,800 years and Clausewitz by 2,200 years. Its analysis of war is unsentimental, systematic, and remarkably applicable to contemporary geopolitics.

The Arthashastra identifies six policies (Shadguna) available to a ruler in relation to neighbouring states: Sandhi (peace treaty), Vigraha (war), Asana (neutrality), Yana (march), Samshraya (seeking shelter), and Dvaidhibhava (dual policy — allying with one power against another while maintaining relations with both). The choice among these policies is not moral but rational — determined by the relative strength and interests of the parties involved. War, in Chanakya’s framework, is one instrument among six, to be deployed when the cost-benefit analysis supports it and abandoned when it does not.

The Arthashastra’s concept of Vijigishu — the ruler who aspires to conquest — is explicit that the purpose of war is not justice or revenge but the expansion of power and resources. It is equally explicit that a wise ruler prefers diplomacy to war: ‘A conquest that can be achieved through the Sama (persuasion) and Dama (inducement) policies need not be achieved through Danda (force).’ The Arthashastra’s impartiality — its treatment of all states as rational actors pursuing their interests — is precisely what makes it uncomfortable for those who prefer to frame contemporary conflicts in moral terms. Russia, the United States, Israel, Iran, China — all are, in Chanakya’s framework, Vijigishus calculating their Shadguna. The language of moral justification is the modern equivalent of the Arthashastra’s diplomatic posturing — necessary for domestic and international legitimacy, but distinct from the actual calculus of interest.

Osho — The Addiction to War

Osho’s discourse on war is the most psychologically disturbing perspective in this analysis — precisely because it locates the problem not in the decisions of leaders but in the psychological needs of populations. Human beings, Osho argues, cannot live without war — not because war is inevitable in some deterministic sense, but because it fulfils psychological needs that peace fails to meet.

War provides the adrenaline that ordinary life denies — the heightened aliveness that comes from proximity to death and danger. It provides tribal belonging — the deep solidarity of people who face a common threat, which makes even strangers feel like family. It provides moral simplicity — the relief of a world divided into us and them, right and wrong, defenders and aggressors. It provides a sense of purpose and historical significance — the feeling of living through and contributing to events that matter. And it provides an enemy — which is psychologically perhaps the most important gift, because having an enemy relieves the unbearable anxiety of not knowing who is responsible for one’s suffering.

‘Give people an enemy and they will follow you anywhere.’ This is not Osho’s exact formulation but its practical content. The psychological mechanism is not unique to any culture or civilisation — it is cross-cultural, documented in social psychology, evolutionary psychology, and the historical record of every century. Leaders who want populations to support war do not need to manufacture enthusiasm from nothing — they need only point toward an enemy and give the existing psychological hunger a direction.

Tolstoy’s War and Peace — The Individual in the Machine

Tolstoy’s War and Peace — one of the greatest novels ever written and one of the most profound meditations on the relationship between individual human experience and historical forces — offers a perspective on war that the data cannot provide. Pierre Bezukhov, standing on the battlefield of Borodino, experiences not the heroic clarity of national purpose but bewilderment, terror, and the complete dissolution of the grand narrative he had attached to the conflict. The soldiers die not for Russia or for Napoleon but because the machine of war consumes them. The generals, Tolstoy shows us, do not control the battle — the battle controls them. The history written afterwards imposes a pattern of intention and cause that the chaos of the actual event does not contain.

What Tolstoy reveals is the gap between the political language of war — which speaks of security, justice, sovereignty, and national interest — and the lived reality of war, which is the systematic destruction of the conditions under which human life has meaning. Natasha’s grief for Andrei is not geopolitically significant. It is simply what war costs at the level where cost is actually experienced: the individual human being who loses what cannot be replaced.

The Ukraine of 2022-2026 has its Natasha Rostovas — its parents who lost children, its children who lost parents, its couples separated by displacement or death, its communities destroyed not by ideology but by the mechanics of artillery and drone warfare. So does Russia. So does Iran. So do the families in Gaza and Lebanon whose suffering is entangled with the conflicts examined in this article. The data — the GDP figures, the stock prices, the barrel-per-day figures — are real. But they exist in a different register from the human cost. Tolstoy’s achievement is to make that difference impossible to ignore.

The Mahabharata — the text that contains the Bhagavad Gita and remains the most comprehensive single work of political philosophy in human civilisation — is, at its core, a meditation on the conditions under which war is justified and the conditions under which it is not. Arjuna’s crisis on the battlefield of Kurukshetra is precisely the crisis this article examines: what is the relationship between the apparent justifications for war and its actual human and cosmic costs?

The Vedic tradition distinguishes between Dharmayuddha — just war, conducted as a last resort after all other means have been exhausted, governed by ethical rules about the conduct of warfare, and aimed at restoring a violated Dharmic order — and Adharmic war: war waged for profit, power, or revenge, disguised as justice. The distinction is not between war and peace but between the uses to which war is put and the ethics by which it is conducted.

By the Arthashastra’s analysis, the conflicts examined in this article are Adharmic in their structural incentives. The weapons industry has a financial interest in war’s continuation. Russia’s wartime economy benefits from the conflict. The US arms sector grows with every year of fighting. These are not the incentives of a Dharmayuddha — a just war reluctantly entered and eagerly concluded. They are the incentives of an Adharmic war — a war that those who profit from have structural reasons to sustain.

This does not mean that there are no genuine grievances, no legitimate security interests, no real injustices being addressed. It means that the presence of those genuine dimensions does not neutralise the presence of the economic and strategic interests that benefit from the conflict’s continuation. Both can be true simultaneously — and honest analysis requires acknowledging both.

India’s call for dialogue and diplomacy is not weakness, equivocation, or strategic calculation alone. At its best, it is the expression of a civilisational understanding that war — in the Adharmic form it takes when it enriches weapons manufacturers and extends the political tenure of leaders — is not a solution but a symptom. The Arthashastra’s Sama and Dama — persuasion and inducement — before Danda is not naive idealism. It is the pragmatic recognition that the costs of Adharmic war ultimately fall on everyone, including the powerful.

The world has not learned this. The evidence from 2022 to 2026 suggests it is not learning it now. The weapons industry’s record revenues, the Hormuz disruption’s global economic cascade, the continuing body count on Ukrainian and Russian and Iranian soil — all of these are the costs of a failure to deploy Sama and Dama with the urgency that Danda’s consequences demand.

• Examine your own information sources about both conflicts. Who funds them? What are their interests? Every narrative about a war has an author with interests. The BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, and Times of India all produce genuine journalism and also serve institutional interests. Reading multiple sources from multiple perspectives is not relativism — it is the minimum requirement for honest understanding.
• Ask the Arthashastra’s question about any conflict: who benefits? Follow the money, the weapons orders, the energy contracts, the strategic positioning. The answer will not give you the complete picture — legitimate grievances and genuine security interests are also real — but it will tell you something about which actors have structural reasons to want the conflict to continue, which is information that the official narratives rarely provide.
• Support India’s call for dialogue — not as a nationalist position but as a civilisational one. The Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam principle is not foreign policy — it is a recognition that the world is one interconnected system, and that disruptions of the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea affect Indian farmers and consumers as surely as they affect the countries doing the fighting. India has the credibility and relationships to be a genuine peace mediator. Demanding that its government use them is a legitimate democratic position.
• Read Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Not as a political statement but as a corrective to the abstraction that geopolitical analysis requires. The numbers in this article are real. But behind each of them are human beings whose experience is not captured in GDP growth rates or stock price movements. Tolstoy’s 1,400 pages are the antidote to the risk of forgetting this.

The conflicts examined in this article — Russia’s war in Ukraine and the US-Israel war on Iran — have produced a consistent pattern of winners and losers that cuts across the moral narratives used to justify them. The weapons industry generated record revenues. Defence stocks outperformed the broader market. Russia’s wartime economy grew despite sanctions. The US consolidated its arms market dominance. China absorbed discounted Iranian energy while maintaining diplomatic distance. These are the beneficiaries.

The costs fell elsewhere. Oil surged past $103/barrel. Hormuz tanker traffic collapsed to 5% of normal. The Red Sea route was simultaneously disrupted. The S&P 500 fell 9%. Global inflation pressure increased. And the Global South — which imports food, fuel, and fertilisers through the disrupted trade routes — bore costs it had no role in creating and no power to prevent.

Chanakya would recognise this as the predictable outcome of Adharmic war: war waged for the interests of the powerful, dressed in the language of justice. Osho would recognise the psychological machinery that makes populations accept these costs — the enemy, the tribal solidarity, the moral simplicity of us and them. Tolstoy would ask us to hold the human cost in our minds at the same time as the geopolitical analysis — because the two do not cancel each other out. They coexist, and honest understanding requires both.

The bill for modern wars is always paid. The question is who pays it — and whether the people who make the decisions that generate the bill are among those who pay it. In both conflicts examined here, the answer is largely no. The weapons executives whose companies generated record revenues did not lose children in Ukraine or Iran. The strategists who calculated the benefits of Hormuz disruption do not live in the South Asian countries that face fuel rationing. The political leaders who extended their mandates through wartime emergency did not die in the trenches they ordered others to hold.

This is not an argument against all war. It is an argument for Chanakya’s honest calculus: for asking clearly who benefits and who pays before the weapons are deployed, and for recognising that when the answer consistently is ‘the powerful benefit and the powerless pay,’ the moral language of justice is being used to sustain what is, in the Vedic framework, Adharmic.

1. SIPRI. (2025, December 1). SIPRI Top 100 arms producers see combined revenues surge as states rush to modernize and expand arsenals. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Record $679 billion in 2024; 5.9% growth; highest since Cold War. https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2025/sipri-top-100-arms-producers-see-combined-revenues-surge

2. Jacobin. (2026, March 6). Defense Contractors Stand to Profit Off the Iran War. Responsible Statecraft. Lockheed +3.4%, RTX +4.7%, Northrop +6% on day of Iran strikes; $153 billion military funding announcement; Morgan Stanley advisory. https://jacobin.com/2026/03/defense-contractors-military-iran-war

3. Intellectia AI. (2026, January). 7 Best Defense Stocks to Buy in January 2026. BAE Systems order backlog £78.3 billion record; stock +49% in 2025; +240% over five years; RTX revenue $80.74 billion in 2024. https://intellectia.ai/blog/best-defense-stocks-to-buy-2026

4. CNBC/Reuters. (2025, October). Ukraine and Middle East conflicts boost US arms makers profits. Lockheed missile division revenue +13% to $12.7 billion; double-digit gains for General Dynamics and RTX munitions; defense sector outperformed S&P 500 by 20%+.

5. CEPR VoxEU. (2024). The Russian economy on a war footing: A new reality financed by commodity exports. War-related production up 60%; small fiscal deficits; regional wage growth. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/russian-economy-war-footing

6. RFE/RL / Global Security. (2024, February 7). Boosted by defense spending, Russian economic growth jumped 3.6% in 2023. Russia GDP +3.6% in 2023; Rosstat data; defence spending main driver. https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/russia/2024/02/russia-240207-rferl02.htm

7. IFRI (French Institute of International Relations). (2025, November 4). Europe-Russia: Balance of Power Review. GDP growth 4.3% in 2024; Russia now drifting into stagflation; benefits from military support of North Korea and Iran. https://www.ifri.org/en/studies/europe-russia-balance-power-review

8. European Leadership Network. (2026, March 20). Understanding Russia’s wartime economy and why it matters for Euro-Atlantic security. Fiscal measures over 10% of GDP; momentum peaked end 2024; stagflation risk. https://europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/understanding-russias-wartime-economy

9. Defense News. (2026, February 2). Russia claims $15 billion in 2025 arms exports, with focus on Africa. Near pre-war level rebound; Africa and Asia focus; sanctions circumvention evidence. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2026/02/02/russia-claims-15-billion

10. Britannica. (2026). 2026 Iran war. Oil prices surged from $70 to $103/barrel in March; thousands killed in Iran and Lebanon; ceasefire April 7-8; brinkmanship over Hormuz following ceasefire. https://www.britannica.com/event/2026-Iran-war

11. UNCTAD. (2026, March 10). Strait of Hormuz disruptions: Implications for global trade and development. Brent crude above $90/barrel; inflation increase 0.6+ percentage points; fertiliser and food costs threatened. https://unctad.org/publication/strait-hormuz-disruptions

12. Stimson Center. (2026, March 3). Global Markets and the Strait of Hormuz: The Economic Shockwaves of the Iran War. 20 million barrels/day through Hormuz in 2024; tankers dropped anchor outside Strait; airspace disruption; safe-haven asset flows. https://www.stimson.org/2026/global-markets-and-the-strait-of-hormuz

13. US Bank Asset Management. (2026, May). Geopolitical Conflict and Impact on Global Markets. Tanker traffic remained 5% of pre-conflict levels 5 weeks after ceasefire; S&P 500 fell 9%; MSCI EAFE/EM down 8-12%. https://www.usbank.com/investing/financial-perspectives/market-news/russia-ukraine-global-market.html

14. TRENDS Research and Advisory. (2026, April 27). The Impact of the US-Israel-Iran Conflict on the Global Economy. Dual disruption of Red Sea and Hormuz; Qatar LNG no alternative route; Saudi alternative pipeline insufficient; stagflation risk. https://trendsresearch.org/insight/the-impact-of-the-u-s-israel-iran-conflict

15. CAAT. (2026, April 28). Ukraine. Ukraine spent $64.7 billion on defence in 2024 — 34% of GDP, 54% of total government spending; US FMS to Ukraine $1.21 billion 2020-2024; world’s 20th largest arms exporter 2020-2024. https://caat.org.uk/data/countries/ukraine/

16. NUS Institute of South Asian Studies. (2026, March 9). India and the Middle East War: Growing Pressure, Limited Options. India’s neutrality characterised as unwillingness to take strong stance; decoupled from Iran energy; Modi visited Israel February 2026; Strategic Partnership elevation. https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/papers/india-and-the-middle-east-war

17. CNBC. (2026, March 2). Why Iran should not count on allies Russia and China to come to its aid. Russia and China condemned strikes but pledged no military support; Russia monitoring oil prices; Iran sends 90% oil exports to China. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/02/iran-china-russia-strikes-assistance-alliance

18. CSIS. (2026, January 23). India’s Future Strategic Choices: Complications of Mass. Strategic autonomy will be tested; India’s aspiration ‘friend to all, enemy to none’; growing economic power. https://www.csis.org/analysis/indias-future-strategic-choices

19. Kautilya/Chanakya (~4th century BCE). Arthashastra. Shadguna — six foreign policies; Vijigishu — aspiring conqueror; Sama, Dama, Danda — persuasion, inducement, force in order of preference; rational statecraft framework.

20. Tolstoy, L. (1869). War and Peace. The Maude translation. Battlefield of Borodino; Pierre Bezukhov; the gap between political narrative and individual human experience of war.

21. Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). Discourse on War and Human Psychology. Human psychological need for enemies, tribal solidarity, moral simplicity, and adrenaline as drivers of war’s persistence.

22. Narayan Rout. KUTUMB: When Guests Became Masters — Amazon Bestseller. ES Square VJ Publication. (Colonial economic extraction and its relationship to contemporary geopolitical power imbalances.)

• The Cost of Inequality: 5 Ways Economic Disparity Damages Health, Mind, and Society (TheQuestSage.com) — The economic structures that make war possible and profitable.
• Yogic Intelligence vs Artificial Intelligence (TheQuestSage.com) — What remains irreducibly human when technology is deployed for destruction.
• Six Schools of Indian Philosophy: The Shad Darshanas (TheQuestSage.com) — The complete philosophical framework from which India’s call for dialogue derives.
• The Success Trap: 7 Structural Reasons Why Middle Class Youth Cannot Break Through (TheQuestSage.com) — The structural inequality that makes ordinary people bear the costs of elite decisions.
• What Is Wealth Really? 3 Ancient Answers That Modern Economics Has Still Not Learned (TheQuestSage.com) — The Arthashastra’s Artha-Dharma framework for legitimate and illegitimate wealth.
• Complain, Compare, Compete: 3 Evolutionary Instincts Running Your Life (TheQuestSage.com) — The evolutionary psychology of competition and conflict.

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