By IWL-FI European Secretariat
We write this statement while we are witnessing the conflict between Iran and Israel, parallel to the continued Israeli brutal genocide in Gaza while the European governments hide their complicity with the Zionist entity, with crocodile tears and lukewarm and hypocritical denouncements. A genocide with which Israel has not managed to defeat the Palestinian resistance and which has reactivated international solidarity, as we saw in the last mobilizations that took place all over the world.
In this context, a new NATO summit will be held in The Hague on June 24 and 25. A summit at which European governments will commit themselves to a sharp increase in their military budget.
A brutal increase in military spending to 5% of GDP
The most important point on the agenda will be the US demand to European partners to increase military spending up to 5% of their GDP, so that Trump can concentrate his forces against China in the Indo-Pacific, knowing that, at least for the coming period, European governments will continue to massively purchase American armaments.
Let us remember that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine gave NATO the conditions to try to regain a social credibility it had lost and to strengthen itself with the entry of Sweden and Finland, countries bordering Russia and historically neutral. Likewise, Putin provided the perfect excuse for European imperialism to increase its defense budgets. Germany thus initiated a militaristic turn unprecedented since the Second World War (23.2% increase between 2023 and 2024). The same can be said of the other countries.
In the heat of this continued increase in the military budget, governments have campaigned to convince us of the priority of “helping Ukraine” (although they only sent weapons in dribs and drabs and largely obsolete) and “defending our democratic values and becoming independent from the US defense umbrella.” This, in addition to the promise to create jobs in the military sector. A militaristic path that will mean deep cuts in social spending and higher taxes for the working class.
A rearmament plan at the service of its economic and imperialist objectives
This summit is being held within the framework of the European rearmament plan (ReArm Europe) approved in March by the EU, with 150,000 million Euros (SAFE) in military credits to governments and the forecast of spending 800,000 million more in the next four years at the expense of the different budgets of each country.
This is a rearmament that has nothing to do with guaranteeing our security nor with the defense of democracy and peace as they say. Even if Russia were to enter the Baltic countries or if the US were to occupy Greenland, NATO would not intervene. The real reason is the attempt of the European bourgeoisie to use public funds to regain economic dynamism and profits through a kind of military Keynesianism, which mainly favors the military industry.
In relation to the so-called “European army,” it would consist of yet another attack by French and German imperialism on the sovereignty of the peripheral countries of Europe, who lack a base due to the fragmentation into different States with different interests and the very existential crisis of the EU, which the extreme right wants to reduce to its minimum expression.
On the Israeli attack on Iran
Depending on how the conflict develops, the war between Israel and Iran will also have to occupy part of the agenda of this meeting. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he was “concerned” and stated that “it is crucial to work towards a de-escalation of the situation.” However, the US remains and will remain unconditionally on Israel’s side and European imperialisms continue to support Israel’s “right to defense.”
For our part, we repudiate this new aggression of the Zionist State against Iran and support its counterattack on Israeli territory. We do so because it is an expression of the struggle of the peoples of the region attacked by the military enclave of imperialism that is the State of Israel, which can only maintain itself as such with permanent military offensives. We are in the military camp of Iran, while maintaining our total political independence from this bourgeois dictatorship.
What interests are therefore at stake in this new NATO meeting and what is the way out that we advocate?
It is important to note that the increase in military spending is not confined to Europe. Globally, military spending reached a whopping $2.8 trillion in 2024, up 9.4 compared to 2023. All NATO member countries increased it their spending.
Along with this, we are witnessing the highest numbers of wars since World War II, with Ukraine and Gaza at the forefront, developing with new technologies such as drones that are transforming military clashes.
The backdrop to this arms race is the rivalry between the U.S. as a hegemonic imperialism whose military supremacy remains unquestioned and China as an emerging imperialist power, which disputes its hegemony in Asia and in strategic sectors of the world economy.
It is this dispute (in which the EU is trapped) that explains the change of the Trump administration in its foreign policy and its military strategy and, in particular, the U.S.’s turn towards Putin to seek to procure an agreement at the cost of the sovereignty of Ukraine, its wealth and its territorial integrity, also bypassing the main European powers.
Inter-bourgeois rivalries, in full swing, are expressed today in the military field in the multiplication of military agreements and alliances. From the enlargement and reinforcement of NATO, the OCX (Shanghai Cooperation Agreement) or the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom and USA). Likewise, in the growth and proliferation in recent decades of private military companies, subcontracted by the States to serve the imperialist objectives of their own multinationals, in different parts of the world.
All this is also a source of internal tensions, divisions and even uncertainty as to what should be the objective and the future of the Atlantic organization. Under its apparent unity under the boot of the USA, the clash of interests between the different imperialist countries continues. In the EU, Germany is rearming itself in alliance with French imperialism, dragging along other countries, seeking a semblance of independence in the face of the inter-imperialist conflict between China and the US.
That is to say, basically, the European rearmament plan responds to the struggle of its bourgeoisie to defend its piece of the ever-shrinking pie of world profits. As for the military support to Ukraine, it is equally at the service of maintaining its imperialist objectives. After three years of Putin’s invasion and following the Minerals Deal between Trump and Zelenski, the EU is trying not to be left out of the game in the plundering of Ukraine.
The real objective of the European NATO powers is to continue to play a relevant role at the international level and to intervene in conflicts outside the EU if necessary, when the interests of their multinationals are threatened. In parallel, they are stepping up xenophobic and racist measures against migrants in Europe, with expulsions, thousands drowned at sea and the establishment of deportation camps outside EU borders, while continuing to plunder semi-colonial countries. The rearmament also goes hand in hand with a strong regression in the already very lukewarm environmental measures, while the social majority suffers the increasingly evident consequences of climate change.
We can therefore expect nothing from this new summit of thugs created by the US after World War II and which has a record of military aggressions, occupations and crimes.
From the IWL, we will continue to denounce that the working class and the peoples of Europe and of the whole world, will not be safe or protected by increased militarization; we will be more threatened by the military alliance.
We denounce a European military rearmament that is leading to further indebtedness of the countries and that will result in more and more social cuts and more misery for the population!
We demand an increase in the budget to deal with the environmental catastrophe underway, to guarantee education, health and decent public services and more investment in public housing within the reach of all!
We demand nuclear disarmament and the destruction of weapons of mass destruction that threaten the existence of humanity and life on the planet!
Dissolution of NATO and all military alliances and pacts and the dismantling of its military bases abroad!
Stop imperialist interventions!
Immediate rupture of military, commercial and diplomatic relations with the genocidal state of Israel! No to the false solution of the two States! Long live the Palestinian resistance, for a Palestine free from the river to the sea!
Our unconditional support and solidarity with the Ukrainian people and their right to defend themselves against Putin's invasion! Out with Russian troops and US and EU hands from Ukraine!
We advocate the dissolution of professional armies and repressive corps or growing private armies and their replacement by an army based on the principle of the people in arms!The only road to peace is socialism
Our demand for the dissolution of NATO is part of our principled opposition to all imperialist blocs and our active support for all the struggles of the workers and peoples; as in the case of the Palestinian and Ukrainian resistance which, despite Zelensky’s capitulationist leadership, has been waging a three and a half year war of national liberation against Russian imperialist aggression. On that terrain, we fight to build an independent working-class camp to fight for a revolutionary socialist program.
In the face of increasing expressions of capitalist barbarism we need to transform the growing indignation and rage we feel into a social war against our real class enemies.
It is important not to forget that left organizations that today rightly protest against the increase of military spending, helped the strengthening of NATO by supporting or joining the governments of the day, which increased the defense budget. Like Podemos in Spain during the first coalition government of Sanchez, or Portugal, or the PCP and the Left Bloc during their support to the PS governments, in the Geringonça.
Maximum unity of action against the rearmament plan of the imperialist countries is necessary, but it is equally important to have a debate on what is the strategy to continue the struggle against capitalism. This requires combating the ideas promoted by false pacifism, class collaboration and all forms of reformism without reform, which tell us that world peace and prosperity are possible under this decaying imperialist system. There is no possibility of achieving a firm, lasting and democratic peace without a revolutionary movement to overthrow it and open the road to the seizure of power by the working class and to socialism.
