Europe is in turmoil. October and November saw large-scale protests and strikes take place in countries across the continent. The triggers and causes include anger at austerity and the soaring cost of living as well as opposition to the genocide in Gaza.
In France, repeated high-school student-led protests against the miserable state of public education have rocked the country and brought wider layers into struggle (see photo above). In Italy, a 24-hour strike called by radical unions on October 30 saw huge demonstrations in Rome and other cities against low wages, the high cost of living, rising military spending and the slaughter in Gaza.
Germany too had national youth-led actions on the same day against austerity and the poor state of public education alongside ongoing actions in support of the besieged people of Palestine. In Britain there have been ongoing protests in support of Palestine and against the proscription of Palestine Action.
In Albania, the attempt by an international consortium of corporate crooks (including Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner) to seize parts of a national park for a high-end resort sparked a country-wide upsurge against the whole rotten system presided over by PM Edi Rama. The “Flamingo Revolution” began mid-year and is still going strong.
Poland is convulsed by a different kind of crisis as two wings of the ruling elite — led by EU-backed PM Donald Tusk and rightist President Karol Nawrocki — battle for control. The focus is the country’s Constitutional Tribunal. Neither grouping has anything to offer ordinary people.
And in the east of the continent, Ukraine continues to be the chosen instrument of the US-NATO bloc in its ongoing attempt to defeat and dismember the Russian Federation. This struggle has almost destroyed Ukraine but the West is determined to fight to the last Ukrainian. Neither Zelensky, Europe nor the US will consider the Russian insistence on addressing “root causes” so peace is nowhere in sight.
Against austerity & militarism
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.
Boosting military spending to 5% of GDP inescapably means huge cuts to social spending —education, healthcare, childcare, agedcare, public housing, welfare and so on. This underlies the universal turn to austerity that is fueling the spreading protests.
Just as in Australia with the rise of One Nation, the far right parties in Europe (especially the RN in France and the AfD in Germany) have grown as people recoil from the neoliberal pro-corporate mainstream parties. Just as here, the major part of their pitch is to scapegoat migrants and refugees for all the problems of decaying capitalist society.
But they also draw support by their refusal to support the war in Ukraine and call for phasing out or ending financial and military support. One might well wonder what they will actually do if they win office and come under enormous pressure from the capitalist establishment. (In Italy, despite her earlier rhetoric, Giorgia Meloni morphed into a supporter of NATO and Ukraine when she won office.)
Anti-Russia hysteria grips leaders
British defense chief Wes Streeting recently said the U.K. has 1000 days to be “ready with our allies to fight and win.” The enemy is obvious: Russia. The catch: London doesn’t have the cash to fight, and ordinary folk aren’t interested . . .
Streeting is simply the latest to join the chorus. Earlier in October, he advised British people to stock up on tinned food and bottled water in case of an emergency, a suggestion he has since repeated.
Yet a gap is growing between this war readiness rhetoric and the reality of public finances in Britain. It is evident that the government has little fiscal headroom to increase defense spending rapidly to the NATO target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035. In his annual budget statement last week, Chancellor (and former Defense Secretary) John Healy said the 3% target would be reached “in the next Parliament,” which could be as late as 2034 . . .
Nevertheless, a concerted campaign appears underway to soften Brits up for the fight. This past weekend, the Spectator put out a piece calling for the reintroduction of mandatory National Service for 18-year-olds. “What we need is a resilient, hardened and capable population, ready for the tough times ahead,” wrote Ted Jeffery. “Not a country with 10 million working-age people on benefits.”
No one talks about how to pay for schemes like this, except, one assumes, to cut back on benefits. Herein lies the guns or butter faultline in British political discussion, which you can also witness in Germany and in France. The state should cut back on public services such as welfare and instead spend money on defense and war readiness.
Estonian Defense Minister Martin Herem said that his country is ready for a possible military confrontation with Russia.
Modern.az reports that Herem said during his speech at the meeting of the Presidium of the Estonian Academy of Sciences that his country can fight Russia alone.
According to the minister, if Russia crosses the Estonian border, the Estonian army will respond militarily.
"Estonia can fight Russia alone. If you cross the border, we will kill you all," Herem said.
Supposed Russian ‘hybrid war’
These days, barely a week goes by in Europe without a drone sighting, a fire or a power outage being blamed on Russia. We’re told that these incidents are all part of a relentless, and escalating, “hybrid war” that Moscow is waging against the continent.
Tensions escalated dramatically last month after Germany formally attributed to Moscow a “failed” drone attack on Leipzig/Halle airport. But does the evidence support Western claims that Russia is engaged in a systematic hybrid war against Europe? . . .
. . . there is no agreed-upon definition of what a hybrid attack even is. The IISS itself admits that the term is “amorphous.” Some reports only count acts of physical sabotage; others include pro-Kremlin stickers, graffiti, peace demonstrations and even the Russian Navy passing through the English Channel. In other words, it is a concept that can be used to include almost anything. Moreover, in most cases, the evidence linking Russia is very weak or, in fact, non-existent. Evidence of Russian responsibility usually consists of news articles reporting that Western officials suspect so. If a government claims “Russia did it,” the case ends up on the list.
Yet many of the most widely publicized cases of alleged Russian sabotage — the “jamming” of the GPS signal of von der Leyen’s plane, the Baltic cable incidents in late 2024, a crashed DHL cargo plane, a fire at Heathrow Airport in 2025 — ended up collapsing upon basic scrutiny. In each case, Russian involvement was ultimately ruled out. The signal of von der Leyen’s plane, it turned out, was never lost. The Baltic cables were damaged by anchors dragged by Chinese- and Hong Kong-flagged ships, with investigators finding no evidence of intent. The DHL crash in Vilnius was caused by pilot error, and the Heathrow fire by a fault in a substation that had been identified years earlier but never fixed.But how many people actually know this, considering that such retractions generally receive a fraction of the coverage of the original allegations?
The same goes for the drone panic that swept Europe in the fall of 2025, when near-daily sightings caused the closure of several airports across the continent. Leaders openly blamed Moscow, yet virtually all the “Russian drone” sightings turned out to be unfounded: a Dutch investigation of some 60 incidents found “much panic and hardly any evidence of Russian involvement,” with many sightings turning out to be hobby drones, planes, helicopters, satellites or even stars.
Finland destroys itself for NATO
Once considered the standard bearer for the good life, for competent governance and a strong social state, Finland is unravelling at warp speed. What has gone wrong so quickly?
In three words, NATO, austerity and Russophobia.
All are linked. Finland is slashing its social state to the bone to meet NATO’s 5% GDP military spending target, a target which became necessary after the country abandoned neutrality and swapped the welfare state for the warfare state after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The whole article is well worth reading. Here are a few specific points which illustrate the madness.
- Finland’s 1340km border with Russia was previously effectively demilitarised, especially after Russia invaded Ukraine. But Finland has now closed border crossings and created a barrier to seal off the country from Russia. The border region economy has taken a heavy beating and unemployment there has risen sharply.
- Finland used to get most of its gas from Russia. That has ended. Now it buys way more expensive US LNG and has the highest gas prices in Europe.
- Finland used to import wood from Russia. Now it adheres to an EU ban on buying wood from Russia. A number of pulp mills in Finland went bust.
Finland has effectively taken a scythe to all the things that made it, in the eyes of many, the envy of the world. The country has trashed the model which delivered such a high standard of living, a model which included neutrality and good relations with Russia.
Instead the country has enacted a self-imposed structural adjustment program to pay for membership of a military alliance it didn’t need, with that membership creating an enemy that didn’t exist, an enemy which happens to be a nuclear superpower with which it shares a huge border.
EU's anti-democratic push
The EU has not merely failed economically, falling steadily behind the world’s other major advanced economies. Far more troubling, it has mutated into a quasi-dictatorial, pseudo-imperial power — one that sets the terms on which 450 million people work, trade, consume and invest; that continues to dismantle Europe’s welfare states in the name of austerity; that financially coerces entire states into compliance; that overturns national laws and constitutions at will; that runs multi-billion-euro propaganda operations and engages in widespread online censorship; that interferes directly in national elections (Romania, Hungary, etc.); and that extra-judicially sanctions its own citizens, stripping them of basic civil rights. All of this, while remaining almost entirely insulated from democratic pressure and largely beyond the control of the governments that nominally constitute it.
This is the product of a long process of creeping “Commissionisation” and supranationalisation of Europe’s decision-making process. Over the past decade, the EU’s institutional centre of gravity has shifted decisively towards the European Commission, which has steadily colonised policy areas once reserved for national governments — fiscal policy, public health, foreign affairs, defence.
EU imposes 'civil death' sentences