My Take | Ukraine war has been good for the US, but its allies not so much
- While propagating the need for the West to unite against autocracies, Washington is ruthlessly pursuing its own interests against those of its allies
Some American comedians and politicians have been asking why their country is sending billions of aid to Ukraine when many of its own cities and infrastructure are crumbling. That’s a good question but there is also a good answer from Washington. The war in Ukraine has not only been terrible for Ukrainians, but also bad for ordinary Russians and Europeans.
However, it has been extraordinarily good to US business and geopolitical interests. As the title of a recent study by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies suggests, “United States Aid to Ukraine [is] An Investment Whose Benefits Greatly Exceed its Cost”. Unfortunately, that may also be difficult to explain to ordinary Americans, not unless they also hold shares in, or sit on the boards of such corporate giants as Chevron, ExxonMobil, BlackRock, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, not to mention the big five US arms manufacturers.
Intentional or not, the war has proved to be extremely profitable for the US, at the expense of almost everyone else. The most obvious is, of course, energy profits.
Both traders and suppliers have been making a fortune selling cheap US natural gas to the European continent at eye-watering mark-ups, thanks to the almost total loss of Russian supplies. Quoting industry sources, Market Insiders reported that a single shipment worth US$60 million on one side of the Atlantic at the end of last summer could fetch roughly US$275 million once it reached Europe.
ExxonMobil, for example, reported a whopping US$55.7 billion profit last year, the highest in its history, even beating the previous US$45 billion in 2008, when a barrel of oil almost hit US$150.
