In the Bollywood movie Article 370, the female protagonist, an Indian intelligence officer navigating the polarised politics of Kashmir, calls terrorism a commercial enterprise. She goes on to exemplify this by arguing that Pakistan would feign efforts to look for Bin Laden only to ensure the continuation of funding worth billions of dollars by the USA. Philippe Le Billon, a cited scholar on war economies, argues in his book The Political Economy of War that war is not just political or military but also deeply economic, and that conflicts are purposely sustained or prolonged because they create economic opportunities for political actors.

Take the world wars, for instance, where the global economy underwent drastic structural changes. The economic impact of World War 1 entailed widespread destruction of infrastructure and industries in Europe, leading to a slump in production and trade. To finance the war, European nations borrowed large sums from the then-rising superpower, the United States, thereby weakening Europe’s economy. Meanwhile, parts of Europe faced soaring inflation due to excessive money printing, with the German economy experiencing severe hyperinflation in the post-war decades. Additionally, the Treaty of Versailles imposed heavy reparations, thus further destabilising the German economy. The hallmark of World War 1, in terms of its effects on the global economic system, was perhaps the........

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