Ukraine: The True Cost of Endless War The Working Class Pays the Price

From The Butcher’s Bill to Your Energy Bill: The Working Class Pays the Price

Three years ago today, as tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders, we witnessed one grinding conflict morph into another – the eight-year civil war giving way to a broader confrontation with Russia. Now, as peace talks hover on the horizon, the hawks circle overhead, their appetite for conflict undiminished by the staggering human cost. Yet the true tragedy isn’t just in the battles fought, but in the peace they are trying to prevent.

The numbers tell a story too devastating to comprehend: 14,000 lives lost in the civil war that began in 2014, now swallowed by the grotesque estimated toll of one million casualties since Russia’s advance into Donbas. Each statistic represents a shattered family, a grieving community, a future erased. While communities crumbled and body counts mounted, defence industry executives and energy conglomerates watched their profits soar. Now, as peace finally beckons, a second horseman of this apocalypse rides in the form of corporate vultures circling Ukraine’s mineral wealth, ready to feast on the spoils of war. This conflict, fought on Ukrainian soil with Ukrainian and Russian blood, was never just about territory – it was about profits, resources, and empire.

The voices warning us of this catastrophe were silenced long before the first shells fell. Before Starmer prescribed the Stop the War coalition as political poison, prophets of peace stood firm – Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway and Lindsey German among them. Dismissed as cranks, extremists, or Putin apologists, they spoke truths the establishment couldn’t bear to hear.

But perhaps the most damning prophecy came from an unexpected quarter: President Eisenhower himself, a military man who had seen the beast from within. His “Cross of Iron” speech wasn’t mere rhetoric but a desperate warning from someone who understood war’s true purpose. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,” he cautioned, “signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.” His words weren’t abstract concerns but a precise diagnosis of what has now metastasised into a global system where war is the most reliable business model on earth followed closely by contractors for peace.

In all this…let’s be clear: This is not about diminishing Ukraine’s right to self-determination or dismissing the conflict’s complexity. Rather, it exposes a bitter truth: this war, like so many before it, was always about resources and empire, dressed in the rhetoric of freedom. While the military-industrial complex reaps record profits from this prolonged tragedy, a web of corporate vultures circles overhead, eyeing Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Defence contractors celebrate in boardrooms as working-class families bury their loved ones. Energy conglomerates exploit supply fears to drive up prices, plunging millions across Europe into fuel poverty. The resulting inflation spiral has given central banks their excuse to hike interest rates, crushing working families under mounting mortgage payments and debt – all while bankers collect record bonuses and oligarchs shelter their wealth in luxury real estate.

This isn’t just a war economy; it’s a transfer of wealth from the masses to the privileged few, marketed to us as necessary sacrifice for freedom.

But more so it’s public money spent on this catalogue of misery. The math is devastating. The cost of a single modern weapons system could build schools, hospitals, and housing for thousands. Every missile launched represents resources diverted from addressing climate change, healthcare, or education. Yet we rarely hear this calculation in mainstream media coverage, which often seems more aligned with defence industry interests than public good.

Of course, those beating the drums of endless war – politicians, military contractors, and hawkish pundits – share a telling characteristic: their own children rarely serve on the front lines. They speak of “necessary sacrifices” from the comfort of secure offices, while working-class families bear the burden of their decisions. This hypocrisy cannot stand unchallenged.

Some will argue that military spending ensures security, and I’ll gladly support a British military capable of defending our sceptred Isles. But what security exists when we become the very aggressor we claim to fear? What twisted logic defines “security” as Trident missiles bought from good old Uncle Sam and British military uniforms bought cheaply from China. All the while Manchester’s sawing machines are dusty relics in Museum displays. Meanwhile, millions shiver in unheated homes? Real security isn’t measured in warheads but in Jobs and well-funded hospitals, secure housing immune to the predatory cycles of interest rates, and communities where eviction notices don’t arrive with every banker’s bonus season.

The bitter irony stings: we’re told a functioning NHS is unaffordable while billions flow unquestioned into weapons programs. We discover limitless funds for bombs yet find our pockets mysteriously empty when faced with homeless veterans, children in poverty, or schools with leaking roofs. This isn’t prudent governance – it’s a deliberate choice.

Peace is possible and it will come very soon…

As Eisenhower understood when he warned a nation drunk on military might, we are suspending “the hopes of our children” from that grim cross of iron, sacrificing their futures on the altar of a security that exists only in ministers’ speeches and defence contractors’ bank accounts.

In the end, to the victor, the spoils and the US have always understood who the winner of this conflict would be so forget the weaselly words of those that want more death kill destroy – with the hollow bravado of endless escalation, the steely resolve required to forge peace from the furnace of conflict must endure. Those who dismissively label peace talks as appeasement conveniently forget that every war in history has ended at a negotiating table in one way or another.

And for those who question who gets the spoils – History teaches us bitter lessons about the price of war and peace. Just as “Lend-Lease” during World War II came with strings that bound America’s allies for decades, today’s military aid isn’t charity – it’s business. President Trump’s demand for $500 billion in mineral rights – particularly Ukraine’s vast lithium deposits – lays bare this cold reality. The billions poured into this conflict were never a gift; they were an investment expecting returns. This isn’t cynicism; it’s the raw arithmetic of empire. Trump’s brazen $500 billion demand merely strips away the veneer of humanitarian concern that previous administrations draped over the same imperial ambitions. Whether packaged as ‘spreading democracy’ under Bush, ‘responsibility to protect’ under Obama, or ‘defending freedom’ under Biden, the underlying equation remains unchanged: war creates opportunities for resource extraction that peace does not. The only difference is in how openly they admit the transaction.

But for us, the working class. The time has come for the working class to heed Eisenhower’s warning before it becomes our epitaph. The time has come to question the constant march to war only to find it’s really a race for resources. When we speak of “rebuilding Ukraine,” we must ask: rebuilding it for whom? Whether under Biden’s proxy war or Trump’s naked demand for mineral rights, the game remains the same – only the rhetoric changes. Empire’s appetite for resources knows no party lines. True patriotism lies not in mindless military spending but in recognising how thoroughly we’ve all been played in this deadly game of resource extraction and military profiteering.

For if we fail to understand the events of this latest tragedy, if we allow the merchants of death to dictate our future, we risk becoming exactly what Eisenhower feared: a humanity forever crucified on that cross of iron, our resources, our youth, and our hopes sacrificed to feed the insatiable appetite of empire. The choice before us is stark: we understand their game and fight for a future with peace and justice, or submit to endless war for profit. The working classes of Ukraine, Europe, America, and indeed the world deserve better than to be pawns in the great game of military profits and resource plunder, their lives measured only in mineral rights and political soundbites.

Paul Knaggs