13th December 2024
Mark Rutte, Secretary General of NATO, beating the drums of war
Mark Rutte, recently appointed Secretary General of NATO, is saying today that the military alliance should shift to a “wartime mindset”, as Russia “is trying to crush our freedom and way of life” and could be in a position by 2029 to invade NATO countries. In order to combat this so called ‘threat’ spending on weapons of destruction should be increased to at least 3% of GDP, the current target for NATO members being 2%, which many struggle to achieve.
Britain currently spends 2.3% of GDP on the military and is committed to increase that to 2.5% ‘when economic conditions allow’. Military spending is not, however, primarily about economic conditions, it is about the political vision, assessment and understanding of where threats come from and how they are countered. The outcomes of such political assessments certainly have economic consequences. The more that is spent on tanks, guns and nuclear submarines, the less there is for roads, schools, hospitals and local government services.
Successive governments, Tory and Labour, have tried to mask their excessive spending on weapons by arguing that the first duty of government is to keep its citizens safe, to defend the nation. This argument is as bogus as that of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the United States who insist that the constitutional right to bear arms is about keeping citizens safe. The death toll in US schools over recent years should be enough to counter that argument but gun control is shied away from by Republicans and Democrats afraid to lose the gun lobby vote.
Manufacturers of military weapons hate a vacuum, they want to see their goods tested in real battlefield scenarios. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria can testify to the impact of this approach over the recent years. The supply of weapons to Ukraine, fuelling a conflict which could be settled by peaceful means, continues this strategy.
The reality is that the more arms there are in circulation the more likely someone is to use them. That is true at the individual level and is equally true at an international level, either by design or by accident. The Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) may have held a precarious post war balance between the Soviet Union and United States but the real drive from a US perspective was to keep the pressure upon the Soviet economy, diverting resources from socially useful production, till it reached breaking point.
That goal having been achieved, with the active support of counter revolutionary elements inside the Soviet Union, the United States was left with a highly armed gangster capitalist economy in the form of post Soviet Russia which, given the nature of capitalism, soon developed ambitions of its own and did not just fit neatly into the concept of unipolar world dominance the US desired.
The European Union proved a useful tool with which to absorb Eastern European nations into the orbit of the West, as both new markets and sources of cheap labour. For most, NATO membership followed quickly on, tying them economically and militarily to the Western ‘alliance’ in every way.
That Russia should perceive this encirclement as a threat is no surprise and the belligerent tone of much of the rhetoric from Western leaders has only reinforced such perceptions. The anti-Soviet rhetoric of the post war years quickly translated into anti Russian rhetoric, when it became clear that the post Cold War scenario was not one of Russian resources being absorbed into the coffers of Western corporations but one of inter-imperialist rivalry. The current conflict in Ukraine is a direct result of over 30 years of Western belligerence and provocation, in an effort to bring Russia to its knees and ensure Western access to its vast market and resources.
The warmongering comments of Mark Rutte are a continuation of this process. His appeal to NATO members to provide the arms industry with “the big orders and long term contracts they need to rapidly produce more and better capabilities” is a clear signal that as far as NATO is concerned any form of détente is off the agenda.
Rutte’s comments should be a clarion call to the peace movement to redouble efforts to demand that Western governments do the exact opposite of what Rutte is urging. In Britain Labour should be pursuing policies based upon the peaceful co-existence of states, with mutual co-operation between them to address the climate emergency and ensure the long term safety of the planet.
Building more weapons, being part of the ‘nuclear club’, is not going to achieve anything other than Britian being a target, if NATO’s provocations do lead to a wider conflagration in Europe. There is evidence enough in the Middle East alone in recent years, that a policy of trying to resolve issues through military means only leads to the destruction of states and societies, along with the exacerbation of the international refugee crisis.
Mass extra Parliamentary action, along with the mobilisation of progressive MPs and opinion in the Labour and peace movements, must be mobilised if those beating the drums of war are to be silenced and the voice of the people, desperate for peace, is to prevail.
Avanti Populo 