Anti-war activity is now a defining characteristic of democratic politics

European rulers are not trying to hide it: they are openly campaigning for rearmament and war.

Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, announcing the ReArm Europe plan last year, said that Europe is ready to ‘massively boost its defence spending’ because ‘Europe must urgently rearm’.

French President Emmanuel Macron has openly advocated a ‘war economy’ and argued that defence production should be expanded on a long-term basis. Poland’s Donald Tusk has supported some of the highest defence spending levels in Nato relative to GDP and has advocated expanded European military capabilities.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has been one of the strongest advocates of German and European rearmament. In his first major Bundestag speech as chancellor in May 2025, Merz said Germany would build ‘the strongest conventional army in Europe’ and that Germany must do ‘whatever it takes’ on defence. This was widely described as Germany’s largest rearmament programme since World War II. And Merz insisted Germany must be ‘war-ready’.

Not to be left out, Keir Starmer has repeatedly backed calls from the military for a huge rearmament programme in the UK.

All this marks a decisive shift in great power politics.

The continued decline of the US, now past its zenith as the world’s only superpower, has forced upon it a reordering of imperial priorities. The US will not cease trying to control the globe, but it is now forced to do so through increasingly self-financing proxies.

Israel and the Gulf dictatorships, in that order, are the chosen satraps in the Middle East, and the European states continue in that role in Eurasia.

Of course, Israel has long been a US proxy, and the European states have been bound to the US through Nato since the 1940s.

But now that deal is being unilaterally renegotiated by Donald Trump, brutally instrumentalising the relationships so that they cost the US as little as possible and give the US’s allies very little but a diplomatic headache in return. For their part, the European powers are out to recreate imperial power independently of the US.

This means demonising the Putin regime, which is a state which lends itself to that propaganda all too obligingly. It means doubling down on Nato expansion, one of the main drivers of the Ukraine conflict in the first place.

And even while the Ukraine war grinds on, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands on both sides, the Nato powers are preparing to fight an even larger future conflict on European soil.

To defeat this war-drive and the austerity that comes with it, the entire left and the labour movement need to face this challenge head on.

The European ruling class is already spending billions on rearmament, and their propaganda machinery is running an extensive campaign to justify it. Politically, only the far right can benefit from this.

Anti-war activity is now a defining characteristic of democratic politics, let alone any kind of socialism. This is the task that confronts this generation.

Book now for the International Conference Against War, Saturday 20 June, Central Hall Westminster

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet