10.06
The motivations for nations starting, entering, or ending wars are often brought into question by conspiracy theorists. Munitions suppliers are often blamed for devising, coordinating and precipitating the events that lead nations into war, either in part or in toto. According to this view, there is always a party within a nation that benefits from war, on whatever pretext: the suppliers of weapons and other military material. President Dwight Eisenhower referred to this source of potential conflict of interest as the military-industrial complex. President Abraham Lincoln is known to have made a similar observation near the close of the American Civil War.
Related is the allegation that certain wars which are claimed by politicians to be in the national interest, or for humanitarian purposes, are in fact motivated by the conquest and control of natural resources for commercial interest. In the Spanish-American War, the explosion of the USS Maine prompted the United States annexation of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. Opponents of the war, such as Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, claimed that it was being fought for imperialist motives.
In recent times, wars in the Middle East such as the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq have been described as wars for oil. In many cases, critics have accused the U.S. of engaging in realpolitik in the cynical sense of political action without regard for principle or morals. A war planned for economic gain can be seen as a conspiracy in the conventional sense of a secret plot — particularly when the public is presented with false pretexts for war. It has been suggested that war is a perfect way of distracting citizens, as an electoral tactic, from difficulties facing the current administration. This premise is the basis of the film Wag the Dog, and the George Orwell novel 1984. Some have claimed that this was the motivation behind the Falklands War. At that time El Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional, the right-wing dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, was facing increasing discontent among the population and this may have contributed to the decision to invade The Falkland Islands.