Under intense pressure from the Trump administration, at its June 25 meeting NATO agreed to massively boost “defence” (I.e., military) spending. Along with the turn to war, an intense Russophobia has gripped the European political elite. To justify its existence NATO needs enemies and Russia fits the bill. Fear and loathing of Russia is both cause and consequence of the NATO countries’ plans to dramatically increase military budgets. The failure of the West’s proxy war in Ukraine has stoked anti-Russia sentiment to unprecedented levels.
However, the arms build-up will have dire consequences for the wellbeing of the mass of ordinary people of Europe as they face fast onrushing climate change. Instead of an all-out emergency mobilisation of society to deal with the consequences of global warming (the need for sustainable energy production, healthcare, public housing, ensuring food production, and so on), the NATO countries (with a few exceptions) are committed to a huge boost in military spending.
NATO to massively boost military spending
A recent Age article reported:
That means each member of the alliance has committed to spending 5% of their GDP on defence, up from a current target of 2%. An analysis of NATO’s published figures suggests that would mean an extra $2.52 trillion a year, up from the $1.85 trillion a year that its member states – including the US – spend now.
That amount is roughly equal to the entire GDP of Spain, a member of the alliance that is known for spending little on defence and refusing the target.
Of that target, 3.5% will be dedicated to core defence spending and 1.5% to broader resilience and security. However, only 22 of NATO’s 32 members have met the current 2% target, raising questions about whether the bloc will reach the new threshold.
The Age provided a dramatic (albeit hypothetical) list illustrating the new equipment this increased spending could buy: 19,842 F-35A fighter jets ($127 million each); 812 B-2 bombers ($3.1 billion each); 34,520 Black Hawk helicopters ($73 million each); 65,116 M1A2 Abrams tanks ($38.7 million each) and 590,163,923 EF88 Austeyr rifles ($4270 each).
This gigantic projected increase in military spending will give a big boost to arms manufacturers like Germany’s Rheinmetall but from the standpoint of human society it is batshit crazy.
UK spending priorities
The UK has its own militarisation agenda including £15 billion for modernising the nuclear warheads carried by Trident submarines, 12 new nuclear-powered attack subs, 7000 long-range weapons including missiles and drones, and £1.5 billion on new factories for military production.
It’s also worth noting that Britain has so far sent £18.3 billion in military and other aid to Ukraine to further the West’s war against Russia. Furthermore, UK military and security services have played an outsized role in planing and executing Ukrainian attacks on Crimea and deep into Russia.
The UK’s military plans are alarming but there is a big question mark over them. Can they actually be achieved?
One hopeful sign is that the Starmer government was recently forced to largely abandon its harsh assault on welfare in the face of a massive revolt by its own MPs. Clearly any plan to put “guns before butter” will face intense popular opposition.
Another heartening indicator is that young people in Britain are decidedly unenthusiastic about joining the military. A September 2024 YouGov survey of 18-27 year-olds found that only 11% would fight for their country if called on to do so. A further 37% would fight only if they agreed with the reasons for the conflict. 44% said they would not fight under any circumstances they could think of.
Russophobia
An April 4 ABC News article captures the Russophobic madness gripping European political circles:
Poland is planning to train every adult male for war, Norway is restoring old military bunkers, and Germany has unlocked billions for a historic boost to defence spending.
As fears grow about the reliability of the United States as an ally, countries across the EU are scrambling to prepare for a possible war with Russia.
Danish and German intelligence have warned that NATO should brace for a potential attack in as little as five years.
Many countries are already telling citizens to prepare survival kits in case of a major crisis.
But the increased Russia threat was brewing long before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump's return to the White House, according to analysts.
The article goes on:
Europe is taking the security shift seriously.
Norway is bringing back a requirement for all new buildings over a certain size to include bomb shelters, in a practice halted in 1998.
And Cold War military bunkers, sitting inside a mountain, that have been deactivated for 40 years are reportedly being restored.
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia last month announced they were withdrawing from the Ottawa convention banning anti-personnel landmines.
The countries, which all border Russia, said they were planning to start stockpiling and using landmines again, arguing it was “paramount” to give their troops “flexibility and freedom of choice” to defend NATO's eastern flank.
Poland, Lithuania and Latvia also share borders with Moscow's ally Belarus.
Poland, which spent almost two centuries as a colony of Moscow, is preparing citizens for combat.
The country of 38 million people has started work to ensure all men undergo military training, with the aim to boost its army to 500,000 troops.
Reading this stuff and the various Russophobic “experts” cited brings to mind such characters as Dr Strangelove and General Jack D. Ripper in the celebrated 1964 antiwar movie.
A Russian invasion of Western Europe?
However, claims that Russia may or will invade Western Europe are without any factual basis. Furthermore, they are politically illogical.
1. Russia does not even want to occupy all of Ukraine. It aims there have always been clear: A neutral, demilitarised, non-NATO Ukraine; a purging of the far right from their strongholds in the power ministries (army and security services); and respect for the Russian language and culture (the Russian Orthodox Church, for instance, has been banned). Now it also wants recognition of its annexation of the Russia-oriented provinces in the south.
2. Confronting Ukrainian forces that have been preparing for war since 2014 and backed to the hilt by the West, Russian progress has been slow and costly in both human and material terms. Russia is clearly winning the conflict but to suggest that it has the capacity — let alone the desire — to launch an invasion of Europe is simply crazy.
3. The Russophobic madness actually inverts reality. In actual fact, Russia has never threatened Europe. Whatever one thinks of them, the few wars Russia has fought since the breakup of the old Soviet Union have all been connected with its “near abroad”. Rather than threatening the NATO countries, Russia has itself been threatened by the remorseless eastward expansion of NATO.
And in 2014 the US organised a regime change operation in Ukraine, bringing to power anti-Russia, pro-West forces backed by the far right. Ukraine's military was built up by the West and the country became a de facto member of NATO. The regime waged an eight-year long civil war against ethnic Russians in the Donbas region. NATO technology and personnel have been behind the military strikes deep into Russia.
What does the West want here? It wants to crush Russia, to dominate it, to break it up into smaller pieces. Like China, Russia is capitalist but it values its independence and is thus a threat to Western hegemony. Ukraine is just a means — a proxy — in the West's war against Russia. Ukraine is being destroyed in this war but that is of no consequence to its US-NATO masters.
That is the reality. To obscure this reality we have political leaders, the media and all sorts of pundits screaming non-stop about the Russian threat to Europe …
4. A corollary of the West's Russophobia is Putinophobia. Vladimir Putin is routinely portrayed as a Hitleresque figure, a veritable devil, someone uniquely evil. We have no desire to polish Putin's image. He is the political leader of Russia's capitalist oligarchy. He presides over an authoritarian, undemocratic system. But is he really any worse, morally or politically, than imperialist politicians like Trump, Starmer, Merz or Macron? I think that would be a very hard claim to substantiate.
Austerity: 1.1 million preventable deaths
A June 30 article by the EU news service Eurostat contains some startling data about the health situation across the EU.
In 2022, 1.1 million deaths among people under the age of 75 in the EU … were considered avoidable by early treatment or prevention of diseases. This figure includes 386,710 deaths from diseases that are treatable, which could have been avoided through high-quality healthcare, as well as 725,625 deaths from diseases that are preventable, which could have been avoided through effective public health interventions …
The most common cause of death from treatable diseases and conditions was ischaemic heart disease with 77,704 deaths … followed by colorectal cancer with 57,476 and breast cancer in women with 40,970 deaths.
For preventable diseases, the most common causes of death were lung cancer with 136,199, ischaemic heart disease with 77,704 deaths … and COVID-19 with 71,919 deaths …
Of course, some countries do better than others. But overall we are talking about Europe here, not Africa, Asia or Latin America. There is also a huge shortage of healthcare workers. According to a November 2024 OECD report:
The European health workforce faces a severe crisis. Twenty EU countries reported a shortage of doctors in 2022 and 2023, while 15 countries reported a shortage of nurses. Based on minimum staffing thresholds for universal health coverage, EU countries had an estimated shortage of approximately 1.2 million doctors, nurses and midwives in 2022.
Instead of spending astronomical sums on militarism, EU countries should spend it instead on healthcare, dealing with climate change, public housing and so on — as well as serious aid to the Third World.
Climate change
Climate change resulting from global warming is the existential challenge facing the human race. But the way our imperialist political leaders are going we are likely to be facing war against Russia and China — while the cyclones howl, the bushfires rage, the floods inundate, heatwaves scorch us and rising sea levels swallow up coastal areas.
In early July Europe was gripped by an unprecedented heat wave. Soaring temperatures led to wildfires in many places. A Lancet study cited by the Guardian put the yearly death toll from heat and cold in Europe at 407,000! This is an enormous figure but it is just a portent of what is to come; it will only get worse.
And in the United States, home of Trump and MAGA, just this year we have seen the Los Angeles mega fire and the recent Texas floods (which killed some 200 people). And the Colorado River basin, on which so many states depend, is drying up as the snow melt reduces and cities in the area keep growing. Furthermore, extremely destructive cyclones are now a regular occurrence.
Change the system
Clearly we can’t go on like this. The wheels are falling off the world capitalist system. If we don’t effect a drastic change of direction, the human race faces decimation if not complete annihilation.
The Israeli-US genocide in Palestine and the refusal of Western governments to decisively break with Israel has shown millions of people around the world the utter depravity of our political leaders.
We need to resist the imperialist war drive against Russia and China. Military expenditure needs to be cut to the bone.
We also need drastic and urgent action on climate change. People are resisting but it is clear that there can be no solution under capitalism. To save our world and its people we need public ownership and control of all the key elements of the economy. We cannot move forward while the huge corporations control the means of production, distribution and exchange upon which we all depend. They must be removed as economic (and political) actors.