Chris Nineham on the new militarism’s latest phase

Expect demands for massive arms spending to be high in the political mix this week as a new strategic defence review is launched on Monday. Widely trailed, it will back the idea of increasing arms spending to 2.5% by 2027 and 3% by the end of next parliament. Others are calling for higher targets still. The review comes in the run up to a NATO summit at which leaders are likely to back a total military-related spend of 5% per country.

The given justification for all this is ‘security’, in particular from the military threat from Russia, by the related need to back Ukraine and to provide a ‘reassurance force’ there if and when there is a ceasefire.

These arguments simply don’t stand scrutiny. Some European leaders may still be Ukraine hawks in public, but the actual Ukrainian forces have been in retreat for months even with massive backing of the US. If that military support is finally withdrawn, the idea that the Europeans could plug the gap is strictly fantasy. There is a peace process going on in Ukraine, however shaky. As Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny recently signalled, given the way the war is going, the Ukrainian leadership has little choice but to pursue peace and accept painful compromises.

Meanwhile European leaders are getting cold feet about plans for a ‘reassurance force’ in Ukraine as serious questions are being asked behind closed doors about whether it would be logistically or politically viable.  The numbers being discussed has dwindled from 100,000 frontline troops to 20,000 guards for infrastructure and ports. Ministers across Europe are worried about low levels of popular support for putting boots on the ground even after a ceasefire currently standing at only 49% in Germany and 43% in Britain. This is before leaders admit to the fact that French, British or German troops would be partly sent as ‘tripwire’ forces designed to deter Russian by pulling these countries into any future war.  

The truth is the whole ‘security’ narrative of Russia as a threat to wider Europe is a product of overheated, hawkish imagination. Fiona Hill, one of the authors of the review was an advisor to Donald Trump in his first term but fell out with him because she thought he was too soft on Putin. She believes ‘we are already in World War Three’.

Russia is a relatively modest economic power, with an economy a bit bigger than Spain’s and a bit smaller than Italy’s. The anti-war movement opposed the Russian invasion from the start; it is against the whole logic of spheres of influence. But the fact that the Russian army failed to get to Kiev in the first few months of the war is a sign of its limitations. As Russian expert Anatole Lieven has pointed out, ‘A Russian army which has had to fight for months to capture relatively small cities in the Donbass hardly looks capable of capturing Warsaw, let alone Berlin’.

The real reason for rearmament is that European leaders are responding exactly as required to Trump’s global military reset. The 5% NATO spending target is being proposed by Dutchman Mark Rutte, but it comes straight from Trump. As US Defence Secretary Peter Hegseth said in Singapore on Saturday, increased military spending in Europe makes it easier for the US to shift focus to its “priority theatre” in the Indo-Pacific. The US in other words wants its hands free to up the military pressure against its main economic challenger, China. The truth is rather than being an effective response to a more dangerous world, ramping up UK arms spending is accelerating the drive to war.

British Defence Secretary John Healey has jumped into the discussion by promising six new arms factories to build long range missiles in what he calls a boost for British manufacturing and jobs. Why is it that the government can only go on a spending spree on making weapons? Anyone who has bothered to check knows arms manufacturing creates fewer jobs than any other sector per pound of investment. Wouldn’t it be better to spend the same money on council homes, on the NHS, on social care?  

Dressing up military spending as job creation is typical of the calculated cynicism of this government. It is a disgrace that the national leaders of Unite and the GMB unions have gone along with it. The real impact of arms spending and militarisation will be disastrous at home. At the very same time as they are promising to plough £7.5 billions into making weapons of mass destruction, they are aiming to make savings on winter fuel payments for pensioners, and cutting support payments for disabled people. While the government commits to long term arms increases, councils across the country are slashing even essential services because of decades of cutbacks. These are set to continue. Whose security is being protected by all this?

The good news is Starmer’s government is starting to buckle under pressure. Frightened by popular outrage and potential back bench revolts they have promised changes to their plans for pensioners and the disabled. Faced with the relentless Palestine protests and growing disquiet even in some elite circles they have reversed their public line and started calling out Israel and demanding a ceasefire. Retreats on both these fronts are ludicrously late and woefully inadequate, but they signal alarm and disarray at the highest levels of government, deepened no doubt by dreadful polling.

All those who stand against the government should take heart. But we must also redouble our efforts to strengthen the opposition. Saturday’s People’s Assembly demonstration against Starmer’s austerity – with ‘welfare not warfare’ as one its main slogans and support from across the unions – could hardly be more important. Following the tremendous half million demonstration on May 18 we need to continue deepening and strengthening the Palestine movement.

It’s also essential we don’t allow anyone to get distracted by all the security hysteria. It is being generated to allow the British government and the other western powers to push further toward war. That is reason enough to oppose it. But as ever the powers that be also hope that militarism and nationalism will deflect attention and anger away from the carnage they are creating at home.

This week: I will be joining the Red Line Around Parliament on Wednesday to demand the government stop arming Israel. I will also be on ‘Welfare not Warfare’ bloc on the People’s Assembly demonstration against austerity in London on Saturday, and doing everything I can to promote it in the meantime.