“World War II broke out in 1939, and many people credit that war with saving the economy.”
– Robert Kiyosaki
President Joe Biden of the United States announced the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas just last week, eleven days after the conflict started this time around. Biden also did something that all other presidents have done so far. He waited to call for the ceasefire, at least in public, until Israel was ready to have one.
By that time Israel had accomplished most of its military aims, destroying most of Hamas’ missiles and tunnels. Hundreds of Israeli air strikes have killed at least 254 people and injured about 2000 including a lot of women and children in Gaza.
Israel
Israel reports 13 deaths and hundreds of injuries among their citizens due to rocket fire by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters. It is very interesting to see the political, economic, and sometimes even contradictory nature of the statements, by President Biden, such as: “There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel, period. No shift, not at all. Let’s get something straight here. Until the region says, unequivocally, they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace. We will help rebuild Gaza and we are committed to bring the two parties to the negotiating table with the intention of achieving a sustainable two-state solution that will bring peace to the region.”
It has been shown over the years that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is basically the “beggar’s wound” through which the US can control the stability of the region. Time to time the stability is shaken a bit so that Israel and other nations in the region will be buying weapons from the US in order to increase their security against the threats. When the weapons are being used, then the destruction is allowed to continue until Israel achieves its short-term targets and then offer aid for reconstruction.
Then all the reconstruction contracts are given to American companies so that the money ends up back in American hands. There are some American companies still engaged in reconstruction activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the end of the process the public money in the US has been spent in the name of foreign aid allowing a few companies to make big profits making a small group of rich people even richer.
Blessings
Similar to the Israel-Palestine conflict, almost all the other conflicts in the world have the blessings of powerful countries based on similar political and economic motives. Disaster capitalism is not a new concept. Throughout the history governments have imposed privatisation, deregulation and cuts in social spending as supply-side policies to improve the growth of the economies of their countries after disasters (natural or man-made). These policies usually are implemented even before the victims of the disaster are able to regroup and stake their claims to what is theirs. By the time the victims get to know about the policies implemented and the procedures to follow, the money allocated for the program would have been used up by the big corporations and powerful individuals who get a head start through their political connections.
Usually, the politicians help these corporations or individuals out in receiving big chunks of public money through these programs as paying gratitude to the support they got during their election campaigns. Covid-19 is also a disaster through which some in the state as well as the private sectors around the world are getting richer. There were billionaires, country clubs, private jet companies and some rich celebrities alleged to have received millions in government funding under the Paycheck Protection Program which was a part of the US$2 trillion relief package designed to help small businesses hurt due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Similar situations can be found not only in the US, but also in a lot of other countries. Buying and distributing test kits and vaccines for Covid-19 throughout the world was another process where public and private sectors were alleged to have formed partnerships without proper tender procedures and sometimes even following the usual legal and ethical business practices. This model of capitalism goes way beyond exploiting disasters. Many ongoing crises around the world seem to have been sustained by businesses to fuel industries in which they have a financial stake. Governments around the world have been entering into more and more partnerships with private businesses under the guise of providing a better life to their citizens even with the limited resources available for public service.
Citizens usually see and hear about success stories of such public-private partnerships (PPPs) mainly due to timely completions of projects with tangible outcomes and the propaganda used by both public and private entities involved in particular projects. Even though PPP became popular around the world in recent years, the concept of governments collaborating with non-state resources for infrastructure development and/or economic development has existed from the beginning of governing structures.
PPP, as we know it today, is just one such collaboration where public sector decision makers enter into a contract with one or more partners from the private sector in order to provide the necessary infrastructure or goods and services to the citizens of the country.
This process is known as the “Alternative Service Delivery (ASD)” in more general terms where the concept of the government has also been reinvented to facilitate such measures. What started as partnerships in mega construction projects such as highway systems, air and sea ports and subsidised housing for low-income people have expanded now to almost all the areas of services such as education, health, utilities, agriculture, waste management, environmental conservation, prison operations and even conducting wars. This may have given some ideas to Joseph Heller when he wrote his novel “Catch-22” in 1961, in which the character First Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder once said, “Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole feud to the private industry”. Unfortunately the world is not perfect and human beings involved in the negotiations of such PPPs, more often than not, have no idea what integrity means.
While the participants from the private sector should not be blamed for negotiating for an optimum profit they should be held responsible for fair play and transparent negotiations. Public sector participants, relevant officials and decision making political bodies should take the responsibility of implementing all the rules and regulations providing equal opportunity for all interested and qualified bidders and they should not be looking for any personal gains through such negotiations. It is ironic that the countries that can benefit the most by properly implemented PPPs, due to lack of funds and resources available to the state, are also the ones known to be full of corruption due to extreme selfish behavior of the negotiators involved from both public and the private sector.
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fourteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected])