Down with the imperialist RearmEU plan, for the unity of the workers of Europe

Resolution voted by the International Conference Against Imperialist War held in Naples (Italy)

The ReamEU plan, later renamed ‘Readiness 2030’, is a clear turn in the policy of European imperialist countries since the end of World War 2. The war in Ukraine, which is a contention between Russia and NATO countries over the territory and resources of Ukraine, has pushed European countries, and Germany in the first place, to abandon the Ospolitik, which meant oil and gas from Russia, in exchange for access to the Russian market. Biden openly maneuvered with this purpose, achieving a partial embargo on Russian oil and gas, also blowing up the  North Stream pipelines. Few months after the start of the war Germany announced an extraordinary rearmament plan for 100 billion euros, revising its Constitution to allow the resulting budget deficit, and military deliveries to Ukraine, while other EU countries committed to raise military expenses to 2% of their GDP.

Trump’s shift regarding the war in Ukraine - through which the U.S. has assured its capitalists the lion's share of Ukraine’s natural resources, has pushed the European governments to decide further steps in their rearmament policies. European imperialisms no longer trust the US military umbrella, at the same time as their interests increasingly diverge from those of America – in Trump’s trade war, Europe is the second main target after China. The € 800 bn rearmament plan (over four years), almost € 2.000 for each EU citizen, means a huge boost in military spending of EU member states, which has already increased by 31% between 2021 and 2024, when it reached € 326 bn, or 1.9% of the overall EU GDP. It is noteworthy that a special ‘escape clause’ will allow governments to increase their public deficits by up to 1,5% above the limits of the EU Stability and Growth Pact if that is used for military spending.

EU countries are now the main supporters of Ukraine in the war against Russia, with imperialist governments that claim to be “democratic” as opposed to Trump leading this warmongering policy. After emptying their arsenals of old weapons, delivered to Ukraine, they are revving up military production to increase production capacity. Some automotive plants, unfit for the production of electric vehicles, are converted to military production. Germany’s industrial-military complex is building up its production in Ukraine. In case the plants outlast the war, cheap skilled labour makes it a profitable production site for the export of death machines.

With the war in Ukraine, the U.S. has achieved the goal of digging a deep ditch between Western and Eastern Europe, a new Iron Wall, albeit shifted eastwards, to prevent the formation of a continental bloc as wished by the Ostpolitik advocates. An alliance of Western Europe with Russia could challenge US world dominance. But by doing so, the U.S. has pushed Russia closer to China. With his approaches to Putin, Trump is trying to loosen this link, but also pushing the European powers to rely on their own military forces. America’s request that European partners increase their share in NATO’s expenses (now the bar is set at 5 percent of GDP!) is double-edged. On the one hand, it allows the US to reduce its military expenses in the European region, and shift its military ‘investment’ to the East Asian pivot, to contrast its strategic rival China, but on the other han,d it will reduce the US clout in Europe, and increase European strategic autonomy.

To counter the danger of a politically and militarily united Europe, Trump is supporting Eurosceptic far-right parties like AfD in Germany, PiS in Poland, AUR in Romania, besides the Orban government in Hungary. France’s Rassemblement National, which also advocates an alternative policy for French imperialism, is not keen to openly accept Trump’s support against the ‘judicial persecution’ of Marine Le Pen. Italy’s Meloni, right-wing prime minister, had to abandon her anti-EU rhetoric of yore as the Italian bourgeoisie takes advantage of being a member of the EU, but is using her close relationship with the Trump administration to take a middle course in foreign affairs.

Even before the growth of the populist-nationalist (‘sovereignist’) parties, European states never agreed to unify their foreign policies and armed forces, due to their different and often competing foreign interests. For this reason, their military industries are built on separate, not integrated national bases, with more links to the US and UK industries than with other European groups. The ongoing € 800 bn rearmament drive is also being implemented on an exclusively national bases, albeit financially coordinated – euro 150 billion from joint borrowing through the SAFE Program (Security Action For Europe) will fund military procurement involving more than one country. However, the second country might be either Ukraine or the UK. The European Investment Bank can also finance part of the remaining € 650 bn increase in military expenses.

To ease these budget outlays, a special “escape clause” will suspend the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact for military spending, allowing a deficit increase of up to 1,5% over 2021. What is not allowed for welfare spending is allowed for military spending! But it is not going to be a free lunch. If not paid through taxes, military expenditure will be paid through inflation, as with the post-COVID inflation.

Our opposition to the arms race in Europe is absolute. It has been justified by the military threat from Russia. Is Russia threatening Germany, France, Italy, or even Poland? Or do European countries need to rearm to defend Greenland from the U.S.? The truth is that European states, after gobbling up a large chunk of Eastern Europe, are building up their militaries to take an active part in the imperialist re-division of Europe and the world, a game fought through the war in Ukraine but also in Sudan, Congo, Libya, etc. EU’s White Paper on Readiness 2030, after saying that “the international order is undergoing changes of a magnitude not seen since 1945,” says that “a new international order will be formed in the second half of this decade and beyond. Unless we shape this order in both our region and beyond, we will be passive recipients of the outcome of this period of interstate competition with all the negative consequences that could flow from this, including the real prospect of full-scale war. History will not forgive us for inaction.” It later explains that “strategic competition is increasing in our wider neighborhood: from Arctic to Baltic, Middle East and North Africa” and concludes that “The moment has come for Europe to re-arm.”

Being the world’s largest trade power and the second industrial power does not assure a corresponding political clout and influence. France has been expelled from a swathe of its neocolonial Françafrique domain; Italy is losing its clout on Western Libya. In the Sudan and Eastern Congo wars, European countries are among the main contenders behind the curtains. European imperialist powers, which have lost economic ground not only with respect to emerging countries like China and India but also to the United States, are rearming not to defend their homelands, but to fight for control/influence over Eastern Europe, Africa, and other continents. RearmEU is an aggressive imperialist policy, not a national defence policy as it is presented. This is true irrespective of whether it will remain based on strict national boundaries, or it will mark the beginning of a likely continental coordination, or an unlikely federal centralization, or unification into a European imperialist power.

At their Bruxelles summit, European defence ministers are pledging to increase defence spending to up to 5% of their gross domestic product, three times as much as their average before 2022. This means using social resources to produce, maintain, use death and destruction machines, and training personnel specialized as killers instead of supplying healthcare, education, environment and other social goods. The jump in military spending is a socially reactionary policy at the service of the imperialist interests of big capitalist groups, which are seeing their profits and share values soar – against the interests of proletarians and of the people in general. The European Union is the general staff coordinating the continental military offensive.

Our campaign against ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 should therefore be directed:

• Against each imperialist state in Europe and collectively against European imperialism, for the dissolution of NATO and all military alliances;
• Against the EU,  an institution serving the needs of the capitalist regime. As a capitalist integration, it actively promotes imperialist interests, protects the ruling class, and perpetuates oppression. Thus, our interests and our future lie in the struggle both against the EU and against the bourgeois politics in each country. We oppose the EU not from the point of view of the return to previous bourgeois “sovereignty” but from that of the rebuilding of Europe under the leadership of the working class. We do not view this as an isolated issue, but we treat the struggle against the EU as a necessary link in our organized struggle against capitalism. Our interests and our future lie in the unifying, international anti-capitalist struggle towards a revolutionary workers' union
• Against military spending, no vote for war credits. For universal welfare, free health care, free education for all, care for the environment, and no greenwashing. If governments can find the resources to more than double military spending, we must demand these resources for social welfare, instead of privatizing it and de facto abolishing its free and universal coverage.
• We know from historical experience, confirmed by ongoing events, that in a society based on the exploitation of the majority of the population by the ruling capitalist class, competition between capitalists for their share of this exploitation inevitably brings about war. Our antiwar opposition has its strategy for transforming war into a civil war against the capitalist class. Our main enemy is within our borders. War, with its atrocities and deprivations, has on several occasions brought revolution – from the Paris Commune to the October Revolution in Russia. In order for our anti-war opposition to be consistent, it must point to capitalism as the  ultimate responsible for wars and the arms race, and revolution as the only ultimate solution.
• For this very reason, a consistent and thorough opposition to rearmament and war can only be waged by the working class and proletarians in general. However, the rise of the populist far Right among wage workers, as well as other persisting class collaboration orientations with the imperialist bourgeoisie, shows that there is no mechanical relation between working-class conditions and anti-capitalist consciousness. We denounce the complicity of the majority trade union leaderships and the European so-called left with the imperialist rearmament plan, even voting for the military budgets in the parliaments, and we call for the workers' organizations to break these ties. Our antirearmament and anti-war campaign must make it clear to working class people that their difficulties and the threats to their living conditions, health and lives don’t come from the outside world or from immigrants, but from their own rulers and exploiters, that the solution is not in rallying around the national flag against the outside ‘enemy’, but in the national and international union of workers and oppressed peoples across borders, to overthrow the rule of their exploiters, refusing to be cannon fodder for their interests. In a society without exploitation, where production is for the satisfaction of human needs, respectful of nature, there will be no interest in war, no need for weapons.
  
  Fight for:
• Dissolution of  NATO
• Closure of the NATO bases in each country
• Down with all imperialist plans and alliances
• Down with the imperialist EU. For the unity of the workers of Europe, including Russia.
• Cross-border fraternization – against  war economies for workers’ rights—for better wages, pensions, job stability, public services under workers' control.
• Unite the anti-war front with the fight for bread, peace and freedom.
• War can only be stopped by the working class, by revolutionary struggle, and by transforming imperialist war into class war. 
• Let’s build a Europe-wide opposition to RearmEU in close connection with protests against genocide for a free Palestine, Israel’s new attacks on Iran, and against massacres in Ukraine, Sudan, Congo!