Refugees are a commodity to be traded for political ends. In the last two decades while nuclear rivalry has reduced the spectre of world war from the old arenas like Europe or the Europeanised settler colonies of North America and Australia, proxy wars or surrogate conflicts have been fought all over the world. So here I come to the myth of the welfare state. Western welfare states become welfare states because of their investment in war. Not war to be carried out by their own people but proxy wars to be carried out by somebody else killing somebody else.
Every proxy war is an arena to promote new arms.
We saw that after the Gulf War with the Middle Eastern countries purchasing SCUD and Patriot missiles. The Vietnam War in itself was an arena to publicise all the effectiveness of American weapons. And the Timorese War, which happened after the Vietnam War was ended, carried the left-overs of the Vietnam War. So you see every war is a sales promotion of the newest weapons, and that's why to think that Western societies are only welfare states is a myth. Western societies are welfare states because they are also warfaring states.