But the US administration’s faltering policy-stance on Syria by no means shuts the door on corporatists benefiting from the conflict.

On the 13th June 2013, the US government announced the supply of lethal arms to the Syrian Military Council. After flat lining for over a decade, the impact on Lockheed Martin’s share price was spectacular (a bullish spike begins at the end of June, 2013).

Furthermore, after the Ghouta chemical weapons attack (which Obama called a “red line”) on the 21st August 2013, trading in shares of Lockheed Martin increased 4-fold.

Both these instances are, of course, to be expected. Bruce Tanner, Executive VP at Lockheed Marin, was recorded at a conference in the US saying the company would see “indirect benefits” from the Syrian war. His colleague, Raytheon CEO Tom Kennedy, similarly confirmed his company had seen a “significant uptick” in business in the Middle East.

Lockheed manufacture the F-22 bomber, currently flying US sorties over the skies of Syria, while Raytheon made $18.6m last year from a contract to enhance Jordan’s border security with its war-torn neighbour.

But Lockheed’s political interests should also be noted.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (left), House Whip, stands next to Obama’s then CIA director, Leon Panetta

In 2012, Lockheed Martin donated $25,000 to the Maryland Democratic Party (the largest political donation they have made in the past four years). Congressman Steny Hoyer, the representative for Maryland’s 5th district, is the House Democratic Whip and supported Obama’s course of airstrikes in Syria — so would it seem unsurprising that the President’s call for military intervention was passed?

Dutch Ruppersberger, Maryland’s 2nd district representative, is a US House of Representatives Member (Lockheed also donated to his re-election campaign in 2012).

From 2011 to 2015, Ruppersberger sat on the House Intelligence Committee which is privy to the country’s most secret intelligence activities to maintain proper oversight. His district in Maryland is also home to the National Security Agency (NSA).

He also was responsible for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), designed to increase intelligence sharing between private cyber security firms and government agencies (which Lockheed Martin lobbied for), so that corporations can pass on information to governments to help prevent threats, even if the data is not connected to any threats at all.

Note thatLockheed Martin seems to lobby every quarter, every year, on defence budgets.

In a situation where America and Russia have appeared to swap corporatist-cosplay roles, and the former left with few options, how to sum up the current US position in Syria? Outmanoeuvred, out of ideas and effectively out of time.

Cut bono?

While elected governments frantically sing, dance and clap to us, their captive audience, the real organ-grinders are contently watching from afar, safe in the knowledge that whatever the outcome, they will be the real winners.

They are, of course, a small sub-set of multinational corporations, defence contractors, security firms and banks.

As I have previously written with regard to the nuclear arms industry, the biggest multinational financial institutions have vested interests in every side whenever an opportunity is presented to further ‘disaster capitalism.’

For instance, Barclays and HSBC finance has directly filtered down to Almaz-Antey, the manufacturer of the BUK missile that purportedly shot down flight MH17. Similarly, the publicly-owned Royal Bank of Scotland invests in ten companies involved in the UK’s Trident, but is simultaneously a financier of Russia’s Dolgorukiy nuclear deterrent as well.

The conflict in Syria is no different.

al-Qaeda Nusra Front fighter in Syria proudly manhandles US-supplied BGM-71 TOW missile launcher

Take the US BGM-71 TOW anti tank missile, supplied by the US to the rebels (and frequently making its way into the hands of al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra, and even ISIS).

Manufactured by Raytheon, the company has a $1.25bn credit agreement with top Wall Street bank, JP Morgan Chase.

Also in Syria, the Russians are operating the S-400 SAM missile defence system which is produced by Almaz-Antey. Funding for the company generally comes from either the Russian Government directly, or via the state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB) development bank, and in April 2011 VEB signed an agreement for a syndicated loan worth $2.4bn, from 19 bank.

Somewhat predictably, JP Morgan Chase was one of these financiers.

Next?

Take Fidelity Investments — investors in Atos, Lockheed Martin, Mitie and Raytheon. Fidelity have donated £450,000 to the Conservative Party since 2010, and through their holdings directly benefit from the bombing in Syria at one end, and the humanitarian crisis that ensues at the other: their investees create the weapons used in the war, and construct the fingerprint machines used to register the refugees that end up on European shores.

But, once again, Fidelity are also linked to Russia. They are shareholders in numerous Russian companies: Novatek (natural gas), Lukoil and Tafnet (oil companies), and most notably Sberbank — who are the nominated financiers for Uralvagonzavod, whose tanks are being used by the Syrian Government.

Another financial institution benefiting from the Syrian conflict (whatever the outcome) is State Street Corporation. State is a 17% majority shareholder in Lockheed Martin, but simultaneously owns holdings in Gazprom, and like its competitor Fidelity Investments, in Sberbank.

But possibly most worrying is State Street’s relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — or, specifically, the firm’s $6m fee for being custodians of the Foundation’s investment portfolio. The foundation provides money for the relief effort to support those affected by the Syrian conflict —the same conflict which State Street Corporation directly profits from due to its shares in a giant defence contractor like Lockheed Martin.

The interlocking, overlapping relationships between organisations which profess to support some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet and financial institutions with a direct hand in putting these individuals into precarity in the first place, is not unusual. The same relationship occurs at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation with the Bank of New York Mellon, which directly links to Oxfam.

Aside from Oxfam being heavily involved in humanitarian operations in Syria, the charity operates a scheme called the “Inclusive Impact Investment fund” — a mechanism to issue finance to SME start-ups in Africa and Asia.

Funding is provided by private donations and by charitable/philanthropic organisations — one of these beingthe Hewlett Foundation, which has contributed just under $4m since 2007.

The custodian of the Hewlett Foundation's finances and credit provider is the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation — which simultaneously invests in a multitude of arms companies (including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, active in Syria), along with NATO contractor Atos and Russian energy giant Gazprom. Yet they also sponsor the likes of the Boston Foundation’s charitable dinners to help raise funds for, amongst other things, the humanitarian response in Syria.

The public, and specifically those subject to war and its resultant consequences, are merely shockable, expendable pawns in the financial system’s global game of chess. Here, corporatist governments play the disaster capitalist roles of bishops, rooks and knights, while the King and Queen represent the banking institutions themselves.

This is, of course, one game where there will never be a discernible ‘check mate’ (however much propaganda we are fed in an attempt into coercing us to think otherwise) — because that would, of course, be unprofitable.

Perpetual shock?

Written in 2007, Klein broadly and tentatively concluded that “the shock” was wearing off; Latin America was broadly rejecting Friedman’s legacy; in Europe battles raged between the “free markets and the free people”, and she also (prophetically) wrote that Eastern European countries, Russia and the US were beginning to see the rise of far-right, racist manifestos in a cynical response to decades of corporatism:

“Once the mechanics of the Shock Doctrine are deeply and collectively understood, whole communities become harder to take by surprise, more difficult to confuse — shock resistant.”

This may well be true, but I think Klein underestimated the nefarious resilience of the phenomenon she identified so well. You only have to look at events in Ukraine; China’s forward-march to what it calls (without irony) “internal consumption”; the US-instigated chaos in Venezuela and the Paris attacks in France to realise that the “Shock Doctrine” is alive and ferociously kicking.

But is Syria, in becoming centre-stage for the pinnacle performance of disaster capitalism, its final curtain call?

I am highly doubtful.

We are witnessing the first “World War” of the 21st century — but one that is executed by proxy. Every corporatist nation is writhing together in their own greed-driven Friedmanite excrement, all feverishly trying to gain control of the last Middle East outpost as yet untouched by globalised multinationalism: Russia, seeking to secure the same gas supply and commodities as the EU; the US, desperately wanting regime change so it can plunge its claws into the one blank corporate canvas left in the Middle East; the Sunni Gulf regimes, frantically suppressing any Shi’a uprising for fear of losing their archaic, totalitarian grip on their kingdoms; and Turkey, under the increasingly despotic Erdogan, attempting to play everyone off against each other.

The outcome of this power struggle will be macabrely fascinating. Will we see a cessation of hostilities between Russia and the West, and a working relationship developed to wheedle out Syria’s resources in two directions? Will Putin’s oligarchs get their way, ushering in a new phase of corporatist-led proxy wars in the region? Or will the US manage to impose Klein’s “holy trinity”?

Whatever the outcome, it will not be the people of Syria who benefit.

Estimates indicate that more than 470,000 Syrians have died since the conflict began, with more than 6.5m being internally displaced, 480,000 effectively besieged (preventing them from receiving supplies of life’s basic necessities) and 13.5m in need of humanitarian aid.

The only beneficiaries will be those furthest from Syria’s ‘Ground Zero’, the corporatists in front of their computer screens — watching their bank balance rise, with every life lost.

Steve Topple is a freelance journalist who writes for The Independent, OpenDemocracy, The CommonSpace and @ConsentedUK, among others.