The rejection of increased defense spending is often seen as a moral and
idealistic position, formulated with its back to radically transformed
international relations, which pose various threats to European
democracies. Both the government and the media seek to impose a sense of
urgency through a narrative in which Europe is caught between the
withdrawal of the US defense umbrella and Russia's imperialist expansion
toward the West. Ultimately, Europe would face an existential
threat.[1]Therefore, the debate over the relevance of defense spending
has been taken for granted, and the issue at stake, if anything, is how
it is spent: how much, how, for what, and for what purpose are the
unknowns to be contested. A segment of the left that is positioned or
orbits around institutional politics-including major trade unions and
some sectors of academia-embraces this framework, which it intends to
address. Admitting a rejection of this rearmament, on the other hand,
would be politically ineffective.
However, accepting this framework implies the assumption of an a priori
defeat and depoliticizes measures that are not neutral, but respond to
specific interests. There are strong private capital interests
surrounding rearmament, especially those linked to industry and defense.
Beyond the government's interpretation of rearmament, we believe that,
from a class perspective, specifically our own, the questions we must
ask are different. And it is on their answers that we must focus our
intervention.
What are the interests and goals of rearmament?
Rearmament is presented as a dissuasive defense policy to protect the
formal democracies of European states and the values they are often said
to represent: the rule of law, civil and political liberty, human
rights, among others. It would be, to paraphrase Josep Borrell,
necessary to protect the European garden from the jungle that is
supposedly present outside it. However, this formulation, with its
racist connotations, repeatedly and stubbornly clashes with the facts. A
stark expression of this is the mass grave that the Mediterranean has
become, or the actions of European states as necessary collaborators in
a genocide broadcast in real time in the Gaza Strip. Peeling back this
veneer of cynicism and artifice, we find, unsurprisingly, the matrix of
private interests behind the increase in defense spending.[2]The first
of the purposes underlying the increase in defense spending is closely
linked to large corporations directly or indirectly associated with the
defense business; This is a business that states could incentivize in
many ways: by granting subsidies and loans on favorable financing terms,
guaranteeing a certain volume of public procurement, incentivizing
defense research and development with tax breaks, and so on. This
pattern has been repeated in recent years, first with the post-Covid
reconstruction and the NextGenerationEU program, and now with this line
of public intervention[3]. In short, a public bailout to support a
private accumulation dynamic that has recently encountered growing
difficulties in the European region.
"The military buildup, rather than protecting democracy and
freedom[...]seeks to guarantee the interests of European capitals."
In the midst of the 2008 crisis, despite popular protests and the fact
that many governments were in the hands of progressive or left-wing
parties, transnational private capital and European institutions
disciplined and liquidated the economies of the Mediterranean periphery
with strong structural, fiscal, and labor adjustment programs. Why is
there a willingness today, in the absence of a clear popular demand for
rearmament, to proceed in this direction by suspending fiscal rules and
debt limits? This shift in European governance institutions is not so
much a response to a supposed burial of neoliberal precepts after a
decade of recipes now recognized as failed, but rather provides evidence
of the direction of their actions.
The management of the 2008 crisis was not a poor performance for
capital, to the extent that it socialized losses and disciplined the
working class. The reorientation of these European institutions in the
current situation continues to serve the same interests: to generate a
favorable environment that allows private profitability to thrive. A
clear example of this can be found in Germany: The country that for
years was the strictest on spending rules, and which saw its growth
stagnate after the invasion of Ukraine, has announced a reform of the
so-called "debt brake" to exempt military spending from deficit rules.
In this context, it must be understood that the nature of states is not
to pursue the general interest, nor to arbitrate the social conflict
between capital and labor from a position of externality and impartial
mediation, but to ensure the dynamics of private capital accumulation.
Similarly, the second purpose underlying the increase in defense
spending is not only to directly stimulate economic growth through
spending, but also to ensure the conditions for capital accumulation in
the medium term. In a context of the dissolution of the international
order, marked by the undisputed hegemony of the United States,
instability and competition between blocs for spheres of influence,
markets, and resources are intensifying. Military buildup, rather than
protecting democracy and freedom (values that are, moreover, dispensable
when they conflict with increased private profits), seeks to secure the
interests of European capital. At this time, increased defense spending
should not be interpreted as an attempt to emancipate itself from US
tutelage: the United States is asking its European partners to increase
spending to increase their contribution to the NATO bloc and cover other
"flanks," thus allowing them to focus on their main competitor, China,
and maintain the indispensable support for their main ally in the Middle
East, Israel, to continue its ethnic cleansing.
Living worse to live more securely?[4]
Given the fragile foundations on which an economically stagnant European
Union has been built in recent years, the urgency of a discretionary and
ambitious recovery by public institutions is being channeled through
various intervention channels. But how long will states, caught between
low economic growth and high levels of public debt,[5]last? The state's
fiscal crisis could be a problem, despite the relief valves that can be
provided by the temporary suspension of fiscal rules and the debt ceiling.
Where can the revenues be obtained to finance this active role of the
state if external financing is mediated by private actors?
The potential mismatch between revenues and expenditures in the context
of rearmament will have to be covered by foreign debt, but a progressive
increase in this debt without a solid growth basis could generate
distrust in the ability to repay. It is not possible to sip and puff at
the same time, and a choice will have to be made between spending on
weapons and butter.[6]
Indeed, a certain economic stagnation and the deterioration of welfare
states in Europe are triggering a growing difficulty in fully
integrating a growing portion of the population. The European economic
decline is
accompanied by the pauperization and proletarianization of the so-called
middle classes in these Western societies. Although the intensity with
which this phenomenon manifests itself varies from state to state, a
general trend can be identified in advanced European economies. Growing
segments of the population reproduce themselves in a more precarious
way, when they are not directly excluded from the usual economic support
circuits: employment or state social protection. This is most clearly
evident among the most vulnerable segments of the population, which in
turn are those experiencing the highest demographic growth: the migrant
population.
The growth of the non-European migrant population is another general
trend, particularly marked in the last 15 years in the Old Continent and
destined to increase. This population is increasingly fleeing massacre
zones for places considered safe or where they at least hope for a
better future.
But when they arrive in Europe, especially in countries like Spain, they
find it extremely difficult to integrate economically.
Rearmament against whom?
In this reading of the current situation, it is worth asking whether, in
addition to allocating resources to private enrichment, there is a
desire to strengthen and refine the state's apparatus of control,
discipline, and repression. This growing excluded population and its
political response to this condition will pose a threat to capital in a
context where the authoritarian and disciplinary retreat of Western
states, such as that of Spain after the 2008 crisis, is already evident.
Contexts of crisis and militarization, which generate a state of fear
and alarm among the population, often serve as a pretext and pave the
way for a rollback of rights and political and social freedoms.
In other words, they serve as an alibi to legitimize, in favor of a
greater good, social setbacks that would otherwise be unacceptable. In
other words, they serve as an alibi to legitimize, in favor of a greater
good, social setbacks that would otherwise be unacceptable. Rearmament
helps pave the way and sharpen the tools to do so.
All of this, moreover, is organized around the narrative of security. A
concept whose meaning is expanding and in which the most violent,
authoritarian, and/or exclusionary private and state discourses and
actions are justified and legitimized on this widespread terrain. Faced
with an existential threat, but also to safeguard economic
interests or the sovereignty and integrity of the nation, any action
that compromises freedoms and rights is legitimized.[7]
The EU covers approximately two-thirds of its energy consumption with
imports from outside the EU bloc and imports more than 90% of its oil
and gas.
What role will this rearmament play in a context of growing scarcity and
heightened geopolitical tensions over the control and hoarding of
dwindling energy and material resources? Can this rearmament serve to
continue ensuring the influx of energy and monetary flows from the
global periphery, while simultaneously blocking the entry of people at
borders? This security framework only reinforces tendencies that are
already emerging, but will likely express themselves in the future with
more explicit violence, for which European states will be better
prepared thanks to rearmament.
In short, the left (grouped together in its various political,
ideological, and organizational projects) is currently in a weak
position, struggling to effectively influence an agenda and decisions
over which it has
little capacity to act.
However, it is possible to take advantage of the unfolding framework to
pursue different paths.
A final question, the answer to which can guide the direction, is
whether increased defense spending or rearmament contributes to
improving or worsening the balance of power of our class, whether it
puts us in a better or worse position to face the war that capital wages
against us daily.
*) La Brecha - May 2025 No. 33
[1]This has been the view of high-level European leaders such as former
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and, until recently, the EU High
Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell.
[2]The recent "Report 71: The Business of Banks in Global War. Ranking
of Armed Banks 2025" by the Centre Delàs d'Estudis per la Pau lists some
of the large companies and banks behind the defense business.
[3]Organizations such as the Observatory of Multinationals in Latin
America (OMAL) and the Observatori del Deute en la Globalitzaci (ODG)
have analyzed in recent years the transfer of public money to increase
the profits of large companies.
[4]The introduction of this framework by some media outlets is not
anecdotal. The newspaper El Confidencial headlined an article on March
27, 2025: "Would you be willing to live worse to live in security? All
the sacrifices that Europeans will make."
[5]EU states have significantly increased their debt levels to socialize
the losses caused first by the 2008 crisis and more recently by the
pandemic crisis.
[6]Josep Borrell put it this way: "Everyone prefers butter to cannons,
but sometimes if you don't have cannons, you don't have butter."
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
idealistic position, formulated with its back to radically transformed
international relations, which pose various threats to European
democracies. Both the government and the media seek to impose a sense of
urgency through a narrative in which Europe is caught between the
withdrawal of the US defense umbrella and Russia's imperialist expansion
toward the West. Ultimately, Europe would face an existential
threat.[1]Therefore, the debate over the relevance of defense spending
has been taken for granted, and the issue at stake, if anything, is how
it is spent: how much, how, for what, and for what purpose are the
unknowns to be contested. A segment of the left that is positioned or
orbits around institutional politics-including major trade unions and
some sectors of academia-embraces this framework, which it intends to
address. Admitting a rejection of this rearmament, on the other hand,
would be politically ineffective.
However, accepting this framework implies the assumption of an a priori
defeat and depoliticizes measures that are not neutral, but respond to
specific interests. There are strong private capital interests
surrounding rearmament, especially those linked to industry and defense.
Beyond the government's interpretation of rearmament, we believe that,
from a class perspective, specifically our own, the questions we must
ask are different. And it is on their answers that we must focus our
intervention.
What are the interests and goals of rearmament?
Rearmament is presented as a dissuasive defense policy to protect the
formal democracies of European states and the values they are often said
to represent: the rule of law, civil and political liberty, human
rights, among others. It would be, to paraphrase Josep Borrell,
necessary to protect the European garden from the jungle that is
supposedly present outside it. However, this formulation, with its
racist connotations, repeatedly and stubbornly clashes with the facts. A
stark expression of this is the mass grave that the Mediterranean has
become, or the actions of European states as necessary collaborators in
a genocide broadcast in real time in the Gaza Strip. Peeling back this
veneer of cynicism and artifice, we find, unsurprisingly, the matrix of
private interests behind the increase in defense spending.[2]The first
of the purposes underlying the increase in defense spending is closely
linked to large corporations directly or indirectly associated with the
defense business; This is a business that states could incentivize in
many ways: by granting subsidies and loans on favorable financing terms,
guaranteeing a certain volume of public procurement, incentivizing
defense research and development with tax breaks, and so on. This
pattern has been repeated in recent years, first with the post-Covid
reconstruction and the NextGenerationEU program, and now with this line
of public intervention[3]. In short, a public bailout to support a
private accumulation dynamic that has recently encountered growing
difficulties in the European region.
"The military buildup, rather than protecting democracy and
freedom[...]seeks to guarantee the interests of European capitals."
In the midst of the 2008 crisis, despite popular protests and the fact
that many governments were in the hands of progressive or left-wing
parties, transnational private capital and European institutions
disciplined and liquidated the economies of the Mediterranean periphery
with strong structural, fiscal, and labor adjustment programs. Why is
there a willingness today, in the absence of a clear popular demand for
rearmament, to proceed in this direction by suspending fiscal rules and
debt limits? This shift in European governance institutions is not so
much a response to a supposed burial of neoliberal precepts after a
decade of recipes now recognized as failed, but rather provides evidence
of the direction of their actions.
The management of the 2008 crisis was not a poor performance for
capital, to the extent that it socialized losses and disciplined the
working class. The reorientation of these European institutions in the
current situation continues to serve the same interests: to generate a
favorable environment that allows private profitability to thrive. A
clear example of this can be found in Germany: The country that for
years was the strictest on spending rules, and which saw its growth
stagnate after the invasion of Ukraine, has announced a reform of the
so-called "debt brake" to exempt military spending from deficit rules.
In this context, it must be understood that the nature of states is not
to pursue the general interest, nor to arbitrate the social conflict
between capital and labor from a position of externality and impartial
mediation, but to ensure the dynamics of private capital accumulation.
Similarly, the second purpose underlying the increase in defense
spending is not only to directly stimulate economic growth through
spending, but also to ensure the conditions for capital accumulation in
the medium term. In a context of the dissolution of the international
order, marked by the undisputed hegemony of the United States,
instability and competition between blocs for spheres of influence,
markets, and resources are intensifying. Military buildup, rather than
protecting democracy and freedom (values that are, moreover, dispensable
when they conflict with increased private profits), seeks to secure the
interests of European capital. At this time, increased defense spending
should not be interpreted as an attempt to emancipate itself from US
tutelage: the United States is asking its European partners to increase
spending to increase their contribution to the NATO bloc and cover other
"flanks," thus allowing them to focus on their main competitor, China,
and maintain the indispensable support for their main ally in the Middle
East, Israel, to continue its ethnic cleansing.
Living worse to live more securely?[4]
Given the fragile foundations on which an economically stagnant European
Union has been built in recent years, the urgency of a discretionary and
ambitious recovery by public institutions is being channeled through
various intervention channels. But how long will states, caught between
low economic growth and high levels of public debt,[5]last? The state's
fiscal crisis could be a problem, despite the relief valves that can be
provided by the temporary suspension of fiscal rules and the debt ceiling.
Where can the revenues be obtained to finance this active role of the
state if external financing is mediated by private actors?
The potential mismatch between revenues and expenditures in the context
of rearmament will have to be covered by foreign debt, but a progressive
increase in this debt without a solid growth basis could generate
distrust in the ability to repay. It is not possible to sip and puff at
the same time, and a choice will have to be made between spending on
weapons and butter.[6]
Indeed, a certain economic stagnation and the deterioration of welfare
states in Europe are triggering a growing difficulty in fully
integrating a growing portion of the population. The European economic
decline is
accompanied by the pauperization and proletarianization of the so-called
middle classes in these Western societies. Although the intensity with
which this phenomenon manifests itself varies from state to state, a
general trend can be identified in advanced European economies. Growing
segments of the population reproduce themselves in a more precarious
way, when they are not directly excluded from the usual economic support
circuits: employment or state social protection. This is most clearly
evident among the most vulnerable segments of the population, which in
turn are those experiencing the highest demographic growth: the migrant
population.
The growth of the non-European migrant population is another general
trend, particularly marked in the last 15 years in the Old Continent and
destined to increase. This population is increasingly fleeing massacre
zones for places considered safe or where they at least hope for a
better future.
But when they arrive in Europe, especially in countries like Spain, they
find it extremely difficult to integrate economically.
Rearmament against whom?
In this reading of the current situation, it is worth asking whether, in
addition to allocating resources to private enrichment, there is a
desire to strengthen and refine the state's apparatus of control,
discipline, and repression. This growing excluded population and its
political response to this condition will pose a threat to capital in a
context where the authoritarian and disciplinary retreat of Western
states, such as that of Spain after the 2008 crisis, is already evident.
Contexts of crisis and militarization, which generate a state of fear
and alarm among the population, often serve as a pretext and pave the
way for a rollback of rights and political and social freedoms.
In other words, they serve as an alibi to legitimize, in favor of a
greater good, social setbacks that would otherwise be unacceptable. In
other words, they serve as an alibi to legitimize, in favor of a greater
good, social setbacks that would otherwise be unacceptable. Rearmament
helps pave the way and sharpen the tools to do so.
All of this, moreover, is organized around the narrative of security. A
concept whose meaning is expanding and in which the most violent,
authoritarian, and/or exclusionary private and state discourses and
actions are justified and legitimized on this widespread terrain. Faced
with an existential threat, but also to safeguard economic
interests or the sovereignty and integrity of the nation, any action
that compromises freedoms and rights is legitimized.[7]
The EU covers approximately two-thirds of its energy consumption with
imports from outside the EU bloc and imports more than 90% of its oil
and gas.
What role will this rearmament play in a context of growing scarcity and
heightened geopolitical tensions over the control and hoarding of
dwindling energy and material resources? Can this rearmament serve to
continue ensuring the influx of energy and monetary flows from the
global periphery, while simultaneously blocking the entry of people at
borders? This security framework only reinforces tendencies that are
already emerging, but will likely express themselves in the future with
more explicit violence, for which European states will be better
prepared thanks to rearmament.
In short, the left (grouped together in its various political,
ideological, and organizational projects) is currently in a weak
position, struggling to effectively influence an agenda and decisions
over which it has
little capacity to act.
However, it is possible to take advantage of the unfolding framework to
pursue different paths.
A final question, the answer to which can guide the direction, is
whether increased defense spending or rearmament contributes to
improving or worsening the balance of power of our class, whether it
puts us in a better or worse position to face the war that capital wages
against us daily.
*) La Brecha - May 2025 No. 33
[1]This has been the view of high-level European leaders such as former
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and, until recently, the EU High
Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell.
[2]The recent "Report 71: The Business of Banks in Global War. Ranking
of Armed Banks 2025" by the Centre Delàs d'Estudis per la Pau lists some
of the large companies and banks behind the defense business.
[3]Organizations such as the Observatory of Multinationals in Latin
America (OMAL) and the Observatori del Deute en la Globalitzaci (ODG)
have analyzed in recent years the transfer of public money to increase
the profits of large companies.
[4]The introduction of this framework by some media outlets is not
anecdotal. The newspaper El Confidencial headlined an article on March
27, 2025: "Would you be willing to live worse to live in security? All
the sacrifices that Europeans will make."
[5]EU states have significantly increased their debt levels to socialize
the losses caused first by the 2008 crisis and more recently by the
pandemic crisis.
[6]Josep Borrell put it this way: "Everyone prefers butter to cannons,
but sometimes if you don't have cannons, you don't have butter."
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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