There would hardly have been a war yet from which some dirty *$%# wasn't making money out of - with neutral countries being amongst the worst offenders. (e.g. WWII, in which both sides used the Swiss-made 20mm Oerlikon cannon, and also the Swedish-made 40mm Bofors gun. Both those countries were officially "neutral" in that conflict).
It is a sad fact that once a country's economy reaches a certain level of industrial development, it can only then be sustained by the production of armaments. This is hardly rocket science - I recall learning that during Grade Nine history.
Some examples include:
1) The way in which the world's economy was only lifted out of the Great Depression of the 1930s by the outbreak of WWII (with America's economy being in a particularly bad way during the month's leading up to Pearl Harbor).
2) Australia's economy being transformed from an agricultural one into an industrial one by the Korean War (1950-1953). This saw the price of the country's main export - wool - skyrocket almost overnight, thus laying the basis for removal of its reliance on that same product. (Other major wool producing countries, such as New Zealand, also greatly benefited from the Korean War).
What was that they said about "The more things change, the more they stay the same"?