Across Europe, from London to Berlin, capitalist politicians are beating the war drums ever louder.
Under the guise of ‘maintaining peace’ and ‘defending democracy’, imperialist governments are racing to rearm. And the jingoistic establishment is insisting that it is workers and the poor who must shoulder the costs, through savage cuts to social spending.
For decades, as part of the postwar world order, US imperialism established itself as the planet’s policeman. Through NATO and other pacts, Uncle Sam provided military support and security guarantees to its allies.
But now American imperialism is undergoing a relative decline, the major powers are carving up the globe, and Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the old status quo, leaving the rest of the western world in the lurch.
Alarmed European leaders are therefore ramping up ‘defence’ spending, in a desperate attempt to fill the vacuum created by the US President’s ‘America First’ approach.
The ruling classes demand that the ‘bloated’ welfare state be replaced with a ‘warfare state’. It is time to put ‘guns before butter’, we are told.
EU representatives have proposed an €800bn ‘Rearm Europe Plan’. In Germany, the outgoing government is rushing to remove constitutional restrictions to the country’s military expenditure. And in Britain, ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer has pledged to hike the UK ‘defence’ budget from 2.3 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent, with a future target of 3.0 percent.
The bogeyman of Putin’s Russia is being hysterically deployed to justify this military mania. According to the warmongering establishment and its mouthpieces, the Baltics face imminent invasion unless Europe muscles up, committing billions to bombs and bloodshed.
And before we know it, if we don’t splurge on new tanks, missiles, and nuclear weapons, the shores of Dover will be swarmed not only by small migrant dinghies, but by big Russian warships also!
In reality, this sabre-rattling and ‘patriotic’ chest-beating has nothing to do with ensuring our safety and security, and everything to do with protecting the pride and profits of the elites.
The ruling class doesn’t care about ordinary people, either at home or abroad. For the imperialists, workers in Britain, Ukraine, and everywhere else are just expendable material for exploitation.
For Starmer, meanwhile, the current pandemonium is an opportunity to puff himself – and puny British imperialism – up on the world stage; a convenient distraction from the crises bearing down on his deeply unpopular government; and a useful pretext for waging war on the working class.
Militarism and austerity; conflict and cuts: this is all that capitalism can offer. War, chaos, and misery are part and parcel of this decrepit system.
Only the fight for international socialist revolution can put an end to this barbarism.
Britain’s military: Delusion vs reality
Ben Cownley, Manchester
When Starmer raised an offer for the UK to provide the ‘peacekeeping’ force in Ukraine, he said 20,000 troops. A few days later, it was 10,000 – or maybe 12,000 if we’re lucky.
This paltry figure (ten times less than Russia’s active personnel) reveals just how much Britain has declined as a military power – and in turn how deluded the PM is to think he can cobble together some sort of ‘peacekeeping force’.
Not only is the puny British army outmanned, it is also outgunned, following decades of neglect and bureaucratic mismanagement.
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Of the 400 battle tanks bought in the 90s, only 160 are in a fit state. But the Royal Armoured Corps estimates that it can only deploy an armoured brigade of 55 tanks with support. And it’s the same story for armoured artillery. Both were shown to be decisive in the Ukraine war.
To make matters worse, there’s no spares available, and the companies supplying the parts have gone out of business!
Based on experience of fighting in Ukraine, a minimum supply of shells costs £350 million a month, and it would take years to build the facilities to produce them.
In addition, these 12,000 troops that our would-be Marshall in Number 10 has touted would need to be rotated with 12,000 more troops after six months… and the same again after another six months.
And let’s remind ourselves that morale in the army is at an all-time low, with only 29 percent of soldiers satisfied with pay, and 11 percent reporting high morale. If your army has a recruitment crisis during peacetime, good luck with sending them off to the trenches!
Experts estimate that the total cost of such a ‘peacekeeping force’ would be between £3 billion and £5 billion per year. You can almost hear Ms. Reeves sharpening her knives.
It’s no wonder that Trump pulling the rug from under European powers has led to such a knee-jerk reaction from Starmer and co. An end to US military support in Europe leaves Little Britain looking even more pathetic.
The British army is in no fit state to be deployed anywhere. But that doesn’t mean Labour won’t use the guise of militarism to carry out attacks on the working class.
Labour MPs want to tear up arms industry restrictions
Mike Hogan, Liverpool
In support of Starmer’s militarism, and prompted by supposed ‘solidarity’ with Ukraine, 100 Labour MPs and Lords signed an open letter calling on the financial sector to “sweep away ill-considered anti-defence rules” to clear the way for banks and pension funds to invest in the arms industry.
My colleagues and I have written to Britain’s financiers calling on them to seize this moment and update their ESG procedures to facilitate defence companies to support Ukraine and contribute fully to the UK’s national security. (2/3) pic.twitter.com/6aTn9ciZDO
— Alex Baker MP (@Ms_Alex_Baker) March 6, 2025
So-called environmental social and governance mechanism (ESG) rules have been promoted in recent years as a way for banks and other financial institutions to tout their ‘ethical’, ‘green’, and ‘fair’ credentials.
They are in fact a marketing strategy to gain capital from those who have qualms about the ravages of capitalism across the world.
The Labour parliamentarians have complained that these poor arms companies face unnecessary barriers to the developments of military technology, which in turn is hurting the Ukrainian war effort.
The ADS, the trade organisation for the arms industry, describes these barriers as enhanced money-laundering checks, and making sure that they are not financing weapons banned under international treaties – which include chemical weapons, anti-personnel mines, and cluster bombs. And these regulations are what our so-called ‘Labour’ politicians want to tear up!
Even with these restrictions in place, investments in arms companies has soared with the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, and Starmer’s latest militarist tirade.
The share price of BAE, for example, increased by 15 percent at the start of March. Pension funds – both private ones like Aviva and public ones like the Local Government Pension scheme – have massive investments in the arms industry.
As Lenin once said: war is terrible, yes. Terribly profitable.
The letter serves two purposes. One: to gather every last penny of investment in the drive to supply the war machine (and make plenty of money in the process).
Two: the letter is a propaganda attack against those in the labour movement who oppose the arms industry and its complicity in the crimes of British imperialism.
