Imagine a world where the ones who declare wars are the first to pick up a rifle. Imagine their adult children shipped off to the front lines, not behind a press podium or nestled in some gilded palace—but in the mud, with bullets overhead and fear crawling under their skin. How many wars do you think we’d still be fighting?
Let’s be real. It’s easy to talk tough about war when you’re sat in Number 10 with a biscuit in one hand and a PR advisor fixing your tie. Easier still when you’re wrapped in the illusion of duty and nationhood, under fake flags designed to make you look like a statesman rather than a well-fed salesman of conflict.
Across the Channel, it’s no different. Slip on your Cuban heels in the Élysée Palace, let mummy comb your hair, then strut out in your tailor-made suit to pontificate on “security”—a word that’s never meant seeing a friend bleed out next to you. And in Berlin? Sure, enjoy your bratwurst and briefing in the Federal Chancellory while another anonymous young man in another dusty, nameless battlefield dies a slow, screaming death for interests that aren’t even his own.
The military brass itching for relevance, the politicians faking gravitas, the financiers pulling the strings from both sides—it’s all part of the same grotesque theatre. Aid and loans? Most of it boomerangs back to Western arms dealers. “Humanitarian efforts” turn into contracts and kickbacks. And let’s not forget the carbon hypocrisy—one missile erases a thousand “green” pledges. But when war’s on, suddenly Net Zero doesn’t matter. The planet can burn as long as the bombs land on schedule.
We live in a world steered by hollow men with full bank accounts. Men who sell death with a straight face and call it strategy. They send the poor to die in deserts, jungles, and cities they couldn’t point to on a map—all while polishing their Nobel Peace Prize dreams. The blood of others fuels their careers. The suffering of strangers lines their pockets.
There has got to be a better way than this.
Strip war of its profit, remove the safety nets of power and legacy, and you’d see diplomacy bloom like never before. Put the children of Davos, Downing Street, and D.C. on the front lines, and you’d witness an overnight obsession with peace talks.
Until then, we’re stuck in this deadly cycle—manufactured conflict, media theatrics, and a public kept distracted by flags and slogans.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. And the more people speak out, the more pressure builds to call this what it is: a racket. One we no longer consent to.
