Without getting into an actual dissertation, there is a very real effect of big money on foreign policy. However, I think it is much less pronounced in effecting and triggering grand scale hot wars than some would like to believe. I'd say the pinnacle of such events occurred in our history during the Banana wars of Central America. Then if we offer a generous extrapolation, maybe WWI in European history. Yet I have to say, even though I used to be one who went looking for grand cabals and elegant conspiracies by the Illuminati, history and research indicates to me that most conflicts are initiated and driven by simple human ignorance, negligence, hubris, misunderstandings, and various ideological and psychological factors rather than $$ profits. Industries can surely increase global market shares, but they don't create the fundamental perceived security need which enabled the market to exist in the first place. That's cart before the horse thinking and absolves our own responsibilities as humans while condemning shadowy industrial boogeymen that aren't really there.

Bell, Haliburton and Big Oil had no more responsibility for Vietnam and Iraq than ThyssenKrupp did in WW2. When you take into context the actual realities and very real perceptions of Domino Theory, Red Scare, Communist expansion/Yankee Imperialism, cultural misunderstanding, misinterpreted intelligence, racist and parochial world views, repeated violations of International Law and treaties among very poor choices by leaders of nations, one begins to see how the myth of the Industrial Complex boogey cigarette-man (a la X-files) manipulating world events just falls apart under any serious historical, economic or political scrutiny.

Sure, there are very real ethical problems and consequences from such examples as Clinton allowing long range ICBM technology to be sold to China in exchange for the largest contribution of his second electoral campaign. Same goes for Cheney giving Haliburton the inside track to logistic contracts in Iraq. However, these are ancillary issues and have zero potential or would give no cause to actual conflicts being triggered. War is inherently a people problem, not a marketing exercise by corporations.

Lockheed isn't secretly supplying Koran's and machetes to ISIS. General Dynamics isn't subsidizing Putin in Crimea. America has made no money from crude oil in Iraq (most of which now belongs to China, the rest other foreign national concerns like BP/Britain and Shell/Holland. This is not to be confused or equivocated with US concern that Iraqi oil money could or would be used for terrorism and posed one of many potential global security threats post 9/11.). Afghanistan is and was still a very real security concern except for those nut job truthers who think 9/11 and Charlie Hebdo were CIA conspiracies. For the rest of the civilized world without sizable brain tumors, the threat is self-evident.

The political and economic math of the grand defense industrial conspiracy just doesn't add up.

abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129227

www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/11/foghorn/colt-teetering-brink-bankrupcy/

www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/manufacturing/articles/2014-AandD-outlook.html

I'd be more worried about the likes of AIG tbh.