Ukraine and Gaza: Zelensky and Netanyahu Pyrrhic Victories

Murray Hunter


Guest Editorial: Ukraine and Gaza: Zelensky and Netanyahu Pyrrhic Victories

Lim Teck Ghee
Dec 02, 2024





As the two wars in Ukraine and Gaza grind to a halt and uneasy peace, who are winners and losers; and what are the lessons that the world can take away from the war and aftermath.

First there are no victors amongst the combatants - not military, not political or from any other summation, although so-called independent western and allied Asian media would have their readers believe otherwise.

Apart from those killed fighting the wars, what is more appalling has been the impact on those directly or indirectly in the path of the rockets, missiles and other military weaponry unleashed in war and non-war zones.

Ukrainians, Russians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Israelis - all are casualties, victims and losers with estimates running into several millions and still counting.

War Casualties Estimates

Killed Wounded Displaced

Ukraine* 60,000 to 100,000 400,000 3.5 million (6.8 million abroad)

Russia+ 70,000+ Unavailable Unavailable

Gaza^ 44,000 104,000 2 million

Lebanon^^ 3,580 15,000 1.2 million

Israel^^^ 1,500 8,000 100,000

*https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-war-latest-the-economist-estimates-60-000-100-000-ukrainian-soldiers-killed-in-full-scale-war/

+https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr3255gpjgo

^https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-lebanon-hezbollah-iran-news-11-20-2024-5da3ce43df8662fe9eeab4ad804bdc0f

^^https://mixedmigration.org/lebanon-conflict-displacement-migration-consequences/#:~:text=According%20to%20UN%20OCHA%20estimates,the%20number%20exceeds%201%20million.

^^^https://www.statista.com/statistics/1422308/palestinian-territories-israel-number-fatalities-and-injuries-caused-by-the-israel-and-hamas-war/

Gaza’s Health Ministry has stated that the Palestinian real toll is higher because thousands of bodies are buried under rubble or in areas that medics cannot access. In Ukraine, The Economist newspaper, basing its calculations on leaked or published intelligence reports, defense officials, researchers, and open-source intelligence reported that Ukraine and Russia lost a greater share of their population than the U.S. during the Korean and Vietnam wars combined. The paper may have been paying tribute to President Biden's credo to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

Zelensky and Netanyahu: Winners or Losers

Although still lionized by US and western allies as indomitable fighters of freedom, peace and security, the two leaders of Ukraine and Israel are unlikely to be well regarded by history or even their own people.

Both Volodymyr Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu not only failed to pursue but also spurned the offers of peace for the longest time and were insistent that they could win military victories. Their intransigence and refusal to sit at the negotiation table is now coming to an end.

Zelensky will soon find that his new position, following Donald Trump’s presidential victory, is too little too late in terms of the enormity of the cost to Ukraine which has a reconstruction programme that will stretch for several decades ahead. As for Netanyahu, his repeated promise of “war without end” and refusal to accept a Palestinian state will especially backfire on Israel's future generation if not renounced by the next Israeli leader.

The Big Winners

The real winners of the two wars are US and western military-industrial complexes (MIC). A report in Spanish paper, El Pais noted that the market value of the main military equipment manufacturers in the United States and Europe has skyrocketed over the past two and a half years in the wake of the two wars.

This was confirmed by a study of the financial and strategic consultancy organisation, Accuracy, which analyzed the performance of the seven main U.S. companies in the industry and their European counterparts from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries (NATO). See https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2024-08-27/ukraine-and-gaza-wars-boost-the-value-of-major-arms-manufacturers.html

Not coincidentally, NATO played a key role in the Ukraine war initially by extending its membership to former Soviet Union countries beyond what had been agreed by American and European leaders to their Russian counterparts. It has more blood on its hands in Ukraine than commonly known.

Recent declassified documents dating back to 1990 reveal that security assurances against NATO expansion were made to Soviet leaders by James Baker, George Bush, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Helmut Kohl, Robert Gates, Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher, Douglas Hurd, John Major, and Manfred Woerner. Russian leaders then were Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze

(See https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early).

This chapter of NATO and Russian relations following the breakup of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany provides a different analysis of the origins of the war in which western leaders and media point to Russian president Vladimir Putin as the aggressor and instigator, and insist that the blame is entirely on the Russian side whilst NATO is an innocent and unwilling stake player.

Following the Russian advance into Ukraine in February 2022, NATO member countries have mobilized a massive inflow of military and non military assistance to Ukraine, the intention and effect of which has been to keep Zelensky away from the negotiation table.

According to the Accuracy report, the stock market capitalization of the military dependent companies - mislabeled to the public as defence companies when in fact their products are multi purpose - had increased by 59.7% from 24 February 2022, when the war in Ukraine began to March 2024. The rise is much higher than that of the benchmark stock market indexes on both sides of the Atlantic (S&P 500 and Eurostoxx 50), which in the same period recorded increases of just over 13% and 7%, respectively.

U.S. companies that are winners in the market according to the report are Honeywell International, RTX Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, L3Harris and Huntington Ingalls. On the European side, the winner list of companies included France’s Safran, Dassault Aviation and Thales; the U.K.’s BAE Systems; Germany’s Rheinmetall; Italy’s Leonardo, and Norway’s Kongsberg Gruppen. According to Ignacio Lliso, a partner at Accuracy the companies they selected were those whose activity is heavily influenced by the ‘defense’ sector.

The findings of the study accords with that of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) which found that global military spending in 2023 was $2,443 billion, a 6.8% increase from 2022. This was the largest increase since 2009. The average military expenditure as a share of government expenditure was 6.9% in 2023 and world military spending per person was $306, the highest since 1990. See https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2024/global-military-spending-surges-amid-war-rising-tensions-and-insecurity

Pressure for new wars to feed and strengthen the MIC’s and defence companies of the world will continue unabated. All that is required are leaders such as those currently entrenched who are intent on pursuing the new cold war version of ‘freedom, peace and security’.

Lim Teck Ghee


Lim Teck Ghee, ANU PhD graduate, is a Malaysian economic historian and policy analyst. He has a regular column, Another Take, in The Sun, a Malaysian daily and Oriental Daily; and is the author of Challenging the Status Quo in Malaysia, and Dark Forces Changing Malaysia (with Murray Hunter).