“We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.”
This was from NATO chief Mark Rutte in a speech last week. He’s talking about the First and Second World Wars, when an estimated 20 million and 60 million died worldwide. All bets are off with a third world war where nuclear weapons are held by a growing number of countries and ‘conventional’ ones are capable of deadly destruction.
Yet there is no doubt that our rulers are preparing us for war. Former Tory minister Tobias Ellwood opined this week that “we are already at war with Russia”. Rutte says that Russia will attack a NATO country within the next five years. There is no evidence of this. Instead we are given a series of examples: that Russia is producing more tanks and other weapons, or that there are a series of ‘grey’ attacks such as drones over airports or deniable cyber-attacks. These examples ignore the increases in arms production across the NATO countries, and the hugely greater military power of those countries over Russia and the cyber warfare and drones on both sides. The justification for this talk is the bloody war in Ukraine, which Rutte and his NATO allies, including Keir Starmer, are determined to continue at any cost. “Listen to the sirens across Ukraine, look at the bodies pulled from the rubble,” he said as justification for putting Europe on a war footing, despite the very specific circumstances of the war. There is no mention of NATO’s eastward expansion in recent decades, or the conflict in the Donbas from 2014, both of which are key to understanding how the war happened. While there can be no support for Putin and his actions, nor can there be for the actions of our own warmongers.
Here there is growing talk of conscription for military service among young people – already happening in France and Germany – and an assumption that the sky’s the limit in spending on ‘defence’ and militarism while living standards are slashed and public services in ruins. The growing fervour comes at an important conjuncture.
Firstly, the Ukraine war is being lost but European governments are determined to keep it going. To do this they are determined to fund the war for much longer by stealing Russian frozen reserves in western Europe. These are largely sited in Belgium, whose government is understandably terrified about its future liabilities if this goes ahead, hence the pressure from the other European powers in a series of meetings in recent weeks. To this end, they dismiss talk of a negotiated settlement, which is regarded as ‘appeasement’.
However, Donald Trump wants a settlement over Ukraine so there is conflict between them, but the Europeans are frightened of upsetting him because their defence systems still rely heavily on the US. So the person they are desperate to appease is Trump himself. One notable feature of Trump’s new national strategy document is its disdain for most European leaders and its praise for the far right ‘patriotic’ parties. While he has made it clear that the Europeans will have to bankroll themselves, they will still be dependent on US arms and arms production. The EU leaders and Starmer are using this crisis to strengthen militarisation and arms production, egged on by its ‘foreign minister’ Kaja Kallas who wants to make war with Russia central to foreign policy. Thus the deadlock over any peace settlement. But the war can only end in one of three ways: victory for Russia, which isn’t happening; victory for Ukraine, which cannot happen without direct NATO involvement; or some sort of negotiated settlement.
Trump is not backing off from war, he is escalating it – but he is just choosing different theatres of war. Trump’s restatement of the Monroe Doctrine means he is increasing intervention in Latin America, most dangerously in the repeated attacks on Venezuela which threatens war and regime change there. And he wants to remake the Middle East, aided by the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and by Israel to contain the Palestinians and to defeat Iran. So there is no end to the oppression of Palestinians, no ceasefire, so no end to war in the region.
The anti-war movement needs to do much more to oppose the coming war before it starts as well as opposing those elsewhere. Our rulers are both foolish and reckless: they talk of war in glowing terms but have little idea of what it means. For working-class people it means one thing: fighting other working-class people with whom we have no difference but for the name of our country. We all pay the price for that. We also pay in terms of our conditions – worsening health and public services, money for guns not education, environmental crisis made more severe. A mass movement against militarism and war must be a big priority for the year ahead.
That’s why the international peace conference held in Paris last October was so important, and why the sister conference now planned for London on 20 June next year is absolutely vital.