The surveys (like the SIPRI arms transfers database) illustrate that the military budgets are growing in the Middle East. Since the majority of these purchases come from the United States, Britain and France. Some Human Rights activists believe that these countries contribute to the spread of insecurity and humanitarian crises around the world and in the Middle East. It is undeniable that the nations of what we call the West, and I would count Israel amongst them, are intentionally causing insecurity and humanitarian crises in the Middle East.
Certainly, weapons sales from the West accomplish this end, but there are other, more nefarious means. Obviously, the invasions of such countries as Lebanon and Iraq have contributed to this. In addition, the West has supported terrorist groups in countries like Syria which has caused chaos and great human suffering in that country. In the case of Israel, which in turn is backed by the US, it is intentionally undermining the stability and indeed livability of the Occupied Territories, and especially Gaza. The plan of the West, indeed, appears to be sewing chaos and instability in the Middle East in order to prevent the people of that region from governing over themselves and controlling their own resources.
One would like to think that the people of the US would be able to put limits over the military-industrial complex through elections and political pressure. However, as President Eisenhower warned, even by the 1950’s, the military-industrial complex had become so powerful that the elected officials of the US themselves were beholden to and controlled by it. The situation is much worse now. Probably the best example of the power of the military-industrial complex is its quite apparent assassination of President John Kennedy and his brother Bobby who was running on a peace platform when he was killed. This tells one everything they need to know about whether there is actual democratic control over the defense and intelligence institutions. In short, there is none.
The mainstream media serves the function of promoting the foreign policy aims of the United States, barely covering wars like those in Yemen which the US is backing and which the US government doesn’t want the American people to know about and giving disproportionate and skewed coverage to conflicts like those in Ukraine in order to create consent for conflict against Russia. While there was once hope that social media could provide an alternative to the mainstream media and such coverage, the giant social media companies serve exactly the same role, especially by censoring and de-platforming alternative voices.
Human Rights activists could help in curbing US-backed atrocities around the world by shining a spotlight on them and informing the American people about them. However, most of the Human Rights organizations, themselves funded and backed by US government agencies and big US corporations, fail in this function. Rather, just as the mainstream media, they downplay the crimes of the US and its allies while focusing attention on the crimes – real, imagined and just made-up — of the US’s adversaries.
The UN, almost since the very beginning and as evidenced by its support for the US war against Korea in 1950, is sadly a tool of US hegemony in the world. As such, the UN has done little to nothing to halt the catastrophic war in Yemen. The UN also did nothing to ensure that Ukraine abided by the Minsk Agreements – Agreements approved by the UN Security Council – thus inevitably leading to the current conflict in Ukraine. And, once the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in February of this year, the UN has done nothing to try to broker a peace deal to end it.