The deceptions of imperialist Europeanism in the new world framework. For a socialist Europe as the only real alternative.

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Communist Party of Workers (Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori)

The current turning point in world relations presents a new challenge to the European imperialisms. If U.S. imperialism opens up to Russian imperialism, breaking the traditional transatlantic axis, European imperialisms will have to find other ways of satisfying their military needs. That is the meaning of the call for the “rearmament” of Europe pronounced in a solemn tone by the President of the EU Commission.

The expression “rearmament”, in itself, is ridiculous. European imperialisms are far from being “disarmed”. Gone are the days of disinvestment in military spending after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The military budgets of European states have been expanding for at least a decade. For a long time, U.S. imperialism indicated that the threshold for defense spending is 2% of GDP as a minimum target for all NATO countries. All NATO countries, under any government, have moved in this direction, and the Russian war in Ukraine from 2022 has naturally been an accelerating factor.

Trump’s advance: a new test for European imperialisms.

However, Trump’s advance today raises the need for a qualitative leap. It is no longer a question of replenishing military arsenals to compensate for the “aid” sent to Zelensky, it is a question of responding to the announcement of an American withdrawal from the European front. This announcement is still undetermined in its quantitative scope, in its strategic reflection on NATO’s internal relations and in its consequences in terms of perspective on the very strength of the Atlantic Alliance. However, its new orientation is very clear. Donald Trump declared that US imperialism wants to reduce its presence in Europe in order to focus on the strategic confrontation with China. That is why he is opening up to Russian imperialism. He seeks to separate Russia from China, offering it in exchange not only Ukraine, but a global role in the partition of the world. Exactly the role Putin aspires to.

The European imperialisms had taken into account the fact that a new Trump presidency would create problems in the field of relations with Europe. But they did not expect such a rapid and radical change.

European capitalism has long been experiencing a marginalization of its role in the political and market competition between the old US power and the new Chinese power. But US military assistance is a matter of course. To ensure the continuity of this assistance, the European imperialisms have respected the discipline of NATO and its American leadership, sometimes even beyond their own specific interests, or forcibly in the so-called wars of humanitarian invasion (Afghanistan, Iraq), in the direction of military budgets and in the political positioning of the antecedents in the different cadres of the world scene. Receiving in return their involvement, albeit as a second line, in the imperialist policy of the West. Above all, a return of the geostrategic position in the relationship of force with the new imperialist powers (China, Russia).

Panic in European chancelleries

Now everything seems to be collapsing rapidly and dramatically. Hence the panic reaction of the European chancelleries and their frantic rush for “rearmament”. This is not about the choice of World War III by the European Union, as the differently observant fools behind Putin and/or Trump and their respective propagandists claim. It is about the reconstruction of a military deterrence of European imperialism in the new season of global militarism.

Imperialist relations are based on the balance of power. And the balance of power is not only economic and financial, but also military.

The military strength of the European imperialisms, on a global scale, has so far been guaranteed by NATO. But only by NATO? No. Each imperialist nation state has its own specific weight in relation to its military equipment, its experience and tradition, its experimentation in the field. The nuclear endowment of France and Britain, for example, helps to measure their status in international politics, even within the old continent. It is not by chance that all the European imperialisms, Italy at the head, compete for their respective areas of influence (Balkans, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East) also and first of all by strengthening their military technologies.

However, it was NATO membership and with it U.S. protection that was the guarantee of last resort for European imperialisms. What now? If the U.S. leaves, what happens to the Baltic countries? Will the announced partition of Ukraine between the U.S. and Russia provoke the domino effect of a wider partition in Eastern Europe? These and others are the concerns of the upper echelons of the European bourgeoisie and its General Staff.

“Carnivores and Vegetarians. Ambitions and limits of imperialist Europeanism.

“In a world of carnivores we cannot be vegetarians,” said Mario Draghi repeatedly. From an imperialist point of view, this is a well-founded consideration. If the great powers are betting on the partition of the world due, in the first place, to their military strength, there is no future for European imperialisms without the reconstruction of their own armed power. And a power in arms is accompanied, in turn, by the suggestion of a unification of Europe.

The only real answer to Trump’s turn comes from the development of the European Union in the direction of a federal state, say in chorus the thousand voices of bourgeois Europeanism. However, there is an unpleasant detail: the federal solution is incompatible with the national nature of the different European imperialisms, in their different roots, traditions, areas of influence, competing interests. Their own military apparatuses compete furiously for orders and market spaces, one against the other, armed. France is pro-European only if it is a French and nuclear Europe. Germany does not want to subordinate itself to France, and is increasingly aiming at a major military renaissance on its own. Italy flaunts the jewels of its war industry (Leonardo, Fincantieri) often in partnership with Britain, competes with Germany for hegemony over the Balkans, and wants to capitalize on France’s waning influence in Africa (Piano Mattei). How can these different interests live under one roof?

800 billion in arms. Who pays and who gets paid. The contradiction between different national interests

Von Der Leyen’s rearmament project reflects in its very structure the dividing line between different national interests. Germany has opposed further recourse to European indebtedness to finance new military expenditures. The (outrageous) 800 billion in armaments that have been evoked are largely entrusted to the various national budgets (to the tune of 650 billion over four years). It is true that national spending on armaments is freed by the Stability Pact (unlike spending on health or education), and can increase by 1.5% of GDP. But “there is a risk of accentuating the differences between Member States that have room for maneuver and those that are already heavily indebted,” notes the daily Confindustria (March 5). There is concern that Italy is lagging behind its other European competitors, including in the area of armaments. On the other hand, Von Der Leyen guarantees EU governments the possibility of converting “European social cohesion funds” intended for the continent’s disadvantaged and depressed areas into military expenditure. As if to say that the Italian Mezzogiorno will pay the new armament expenses of the Meloni-Crosetto government.

The truth is that within the capitalist framework European unification will be impossible or reactionary. So wrote Lenin in 1915, during the Great War. And he was right. The current European scenario is emblematic. On the one hand, the different imperialisms of the EU cannot create a pan-European federal state, wrapped as they are in their insurmountable national contradictions, even more so in the face of the emergence within them of the (worst) sovereigntist forces. On the other hand, all the pro-European projects, on the present capitalist basis, imply the development of imperialist militarism, at the expense of the workers, of all the exploited.

The deception of liberal Europeanism. The subordination of the reformist left

The idea of a Europe “autonomous from the United States”, and therefore a “peace power”, is often repeated in the progressive rhetoric of the reformist left. But this is an ideological inversion of reality. A capitalist Europe autonomous from the US can only be an armed power. Not less armed, but more armed. A “carnivorous” power among “carnivorous” powers. A power that fights against other powers for the distribution of the planet.

The multipolar world as a guarantee of peace is a naive illusion or a conscious mystification. It is precisely the multiplication of imperialist poles, fighting each other for the sharing of the world, that increases the momentum towards war. The rearmament of Europe, in response to Trump’s withdrawal, is nothing but a further reinforcement of this international trend line. The reservation of another seat at the planet-sharing table.

The “secret plans” of military reconversion of the Italian automotive industry, revealed by Corriere della Sera (March 1), are in this sense eloquent of the current European trend. “Germany is reconverting in armaments, preparing to spend two hundred billion, Italy must adapt in order not to lose the supply chain,” the daily Banca Intesa (quoting Giorgia Meloni) states verbatim. Producing tanks instead of cars undoubtedly responds to the stock market triumph of all war industry stocks. But it is not exactly a reconversion of “peace”. It is to participate in the race towards a historical perspective of war.

Fortunately, however, these rearmament projects have a problem: the open distrust or hostility of a large part of European public opinion. Especially among the working masses, once affected by wage compression and social cuts in the name of “progress”, and today called upon to pay out of pocket for the arms race in the name of the defense of their homeland, be it national or European. Yesterday as today, in the exclusive interest of the capitalists and their profits.

For a socialist Europe as the only alternative for peace

For all this, we fight against all imperialist rearmament, national, European, world. Against all NATO, old or new. Against any war economy. Against any increase in military expenditures, and even for their decrease, for the benefit above all of health and education. For the nationalization without compensation of the entire war industry under workers’ control.

The struggle for peace is either a struggle against all imperialism, beginning with its own, or it is not.

The problem is not to arm Europe, but to disarm the European bourgeoisie. This can only be done by a social revolution.

The only possible Europe of peace is a Europe governed by the workers. A socialist Europe. The only one that can unify on a progressive basis. The only one that can defend all the oppressed peoples and their right to resistance, without rapine. The only one that can encourage the revolt of the working masses of America, Russia, China, against their imperialisms, their wars and their colonial policies.