European and U.S. “centrist” leaders are increasingly supporting a NATO campaign for more armaments and planning for war. The task facing peace forces around the world is how to stop this expansion of military madness, which is endangering not just world peace but the movements that are resisting Trumpism and the growth of fascism.
A serious question facing the people in both the U.S. and Europe is whether leaders who push for war preparations can be reliable partners in the fight to preserve democracy now under some of the worst threats ever from Trump and his allies around the world.
The major countries of the European Union, under the control of “centrist” or allegedly liberal governments and led by NATO, are arming themselves to the teeth. They are doing so to protect against an alleged Russian threat. In addition, they are pouring armaments into the Middle East which are being used to commit genocide against the Palestinian people, they are sending arms to fight in Syria and Iraq to preserve Western control of Middle East oil resources, they are banging the war drums against Iran and North Korea and they are even sending military support for U.S. efforts to make gains in Asia and the Pacific and to help encircle China.
In most cases, both the major conservative party and the so-called liberal opposition party, in each of the European countries and in the United States, refuse to break with the long-standing capitalist approach of imposing a world order backed by military prowess. On both sides of the Atlantic, the two major parties in most countries are supporting the biggest military budgets in their histories.
In the U.S., too few lawmakers have come out against the now more than one-trillion-dollar military budget. An example of that same type of problem in Europe is the UK’s Labor Party leader and prime minister, Keir Starmer.
He is leading the charge to build up his country’s military. His push for war preparations outdoes anything that the conservative Tories campaigned for before he defeated them and dashes the hopes of those who voted for Labor, thinking they were voting for peace.
Starmer says the military budget is needed to deal with alleged “threats” from so-called “hostile” elements around the world. He identifies those “hostile elements” as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea and aligns himself, therefore, with war hawks in both the Republican and Democratic Parties in the U.S. and war hawks in Germany, France, Poland, and elsewhere in Europe.
Life or death struggle
Labor and progressive forces in the U.S., like their counterparts in Europe, are waging a life-or-death struggle against the fascist threat reflected in the policies of Donald Trump and his allies. That fight is seriously hampered, however, as major sections of the coalition fighting Trump succumb to claims that huge military budgets are needed to protect against alleged enemies.
There are mass protests in the U.S., for example, about how the Trump budget is cutting billions from Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich. There is much less noise, however, about the biggest-in-history, more than one-trillion-dollar military budget the administration is proposing, and how it will also ensure serious and unprecedented cuts in social services for the public.
The mainstream British, German, and French politicians, like their counterparts in the U.S., are identifying China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as enemies ready to pounce on all of us.
Proving that China is not a real threat to democracy in Europe or anywhere else requires only a brief review of what that country has never done.
It has never overthrown governments in foreign countries and has never used the illicit drug trade, for example, as a weapon to do so, and as a weapon to keep the anti-communist governments it installed in power.
China has never sent troops into conflicts in other countries in order to bolster the side in the struggle they support.
Unlike the U.S. and also “democratic” countries like Germany and France, China has no foreign territories it rules as either real or virtual colonies. China, unlike the U.S., often with the support of the “liberal” democracies, has also not surrounded other countries with ships loaded with nuclear missiles and other weapons.
There are no treaties between China and other countries that constitute military pacts to exercise control over sections of the world.
Britain, Germany, France, the U.S., and other “liberal” democracies have done precisely this and have done it many times throughout this and the last two centuries. China itself has been the target of many of these moves.
Neither China nor Russia has, like the U.S., some 800 military bases all over the planet. The bases both those countries have can, in total, be counted on one hand.
There are no Russian troops that have set up permanent shop on the borders of EU countries, including Germany, France, Britain (not in the EU), and the U.S., or in the Baltic States. Yet there are large numbers of U.S., German, British, and other troops parked along Russian borders and inside states that were long a part of the Soviet Union. NATO’s attempts to move into and swallow up Ukraine were a major cause of the ongoing war there.
Know of no attempts
We know of no attempts by Iran to organize a coup or any other action to take over another country, although Iran itself has been the victim of such moves by liberal democracies such as the U.S. and Britain. They overthrew a socialist government there in the 1950s, resulting in decades of rule by the autocratic Shah and then leading to the problems the country still faces today.
North Korea itself was totally destroyed by the U.S., Britain, and other “liberal democracies” in the early 1950s, using the umbrella of the UN to excuse the slaughter of millions for the purpose of preventing formation of a unified socialist country.
The record proves, then, that the “threats” to the “liberal” democracies by alleged “hostile” nations are indeed fictitious and that capitalist and imperialist policies of those countries are the real threat to peace and democracy.
NATO and EU war plans endanger Europe, the U.S., and the entire world. They increase the possibility of nuclear war since one of their targets, Russia, has the second-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on the planet. China, among its other targets, is also a nuclear power.
Trump, with his plans for a big military parade in Washington D.C., and the “liberal” leaders of Britain, Germany, and France are all calling for the same thing—making their countries “war ready.”
Their countries have long been more than just “ready” for war but have waged it frequently, leading us to believe they are more than capable of doing it again will do it again. Witness the aggression committed by Western “democracies” against Vietnam, Chile, Honduras, Cuba, Serbia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries.
And now, after Trump let everyone know he intends to aim U.S. military threats toward China and leave Europe to “fend for itself,” rather than encourage peace, we see leaders of the EU countries planning to deploy more military forces in Ukraine. That is on top of their military support of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Their policy is that of war, which will result in more deaths and push the planet to the brink of disaster. One would have hoped that, free of Trump, the Europeans, at least, would move toward peace rather than war.
In any case, there will be tragedy now, even if the ultimate disaster of nuclear war does not materialize from their folly. Tragedy will come in the form of millions of deaths resulting from unavailability of health care caused by diverting funds for medicine into military expenditures. The standard of living of the world’s working class will continue to be pushed back if the military madness does not stop.
When they harm workers in that way, the neo-liberal leaders help lay the groundwork for fascism. The Trumpites and the rest of the fascists use the problems the workers face to build support for their racist and anti-immigrant ideas and nationalist solutions.
Workers and their allies around the world must rise up in a powerful peace movement to stop the military madness. National leaders who divert massive amounts of money from human needs into war planning are a threat to us all.
A powerful peace movement is not something the war planners envision. The people can, nevertheless, make it happen if Labor and all its allies act now by standing up for peace. It’s the only way to keep out the fascists already at our doorstep.
As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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