War impacts reach everyone

March 12, 2026

key points from this story:

• War benefits some large corporations
• Average citizens rarely gain from war
• Trump sent US troops into Iran
• Middle East fertilizer exports disrupted
• Oil and fuel prices rise globally
• Farmers face higher input costs

War might be good business for some international corporations poised to grab profits amid the upheaval and fear that follows the deployment of troops, but rarely is conflict good news for the average citizen. While you can certainly point to wars which mattered – one photo of survivors from the liberation of a German concentration camp confirms the madness of Adolf Hitler had to be stopped – too often the reasons for war seem like something only the instigator thinks is so important that people must be authorized to die. History will ultimately determine if there was a good reason for US President Donald Trump to send troops into Iran, although his track record would not suggest it was a particularly well-thought-out decision. We must realize this is the man who has threatened – veiled as it may have been – both Greenland and Canadian sovereignty.

But whatever the reason for American troops in Iran, the result has quickly rippled throughout the Middle East and beyond. As with any war, there is a cost, first in lives lost. Soldiers die and, worse, so do civilians. Imagine going to school and a missile from a foreign army dropping. Somewhere, a military strategist has no doubt termed such occurrences as acceptable losses, but they should not exist in a humane world.

Then there are the tax dollars spent on bombs, missiles, tanks, and guns. Imagine the homeless housed, the hungry fed, and the sick treated with the money spent by the US on a single missile. Then the war splashes back on people as far away from the flying bullets as we are in North America. Farmers are likely to feel the impact rather directly if the conflict lasts a few more weeks. The Middle East accounts for roughly 50 per cent of global sulphur exports and 34 per cent of urea shipments. War easily disrupts such exports, and even the threat of such delivery issues will drive up prices, which hits farmers in the pocketbook.

Likewise, you cannot drive to the gas station of choice without noticing prices have edged up. To think that is not a result of war in Iran would seem short-sighted. You might ask why fuel prices inch up given Canada sits on huge reserves, but if world oil prices move up because of the expected impact of a war in the Middle East, the perceived value of Canadian oil moves up too, and corporations will gladly take the extra revenue. Of course, for farmers fuel prices may well be up by seeding time, and that too will increase operating costs. So we all will pay extra for a war initiated by the US president without a great deal of understanding of why the war was thought necessary.