Marnie Holborow explains how the recently announced ReArm Europe plan, which will dramatically increase military spending across member states, reveals the EU’s pivotal role in the shifting world of imperialist rivalries.
“Europe is ready to massively increase its defense spending.” Speaking at the launch of the EU plan to ‘ReArm Europe’ on March 6, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, could not have been clearer.
Governments across the EU will now be able to increase defence spending by 1.5% of GDP. For this purpose, the Growth and Stability Pact will be suspended.
€800 billion will be spent on ‘revitalising’ the defence sector, upgrading European network of anti-aircraft, anti-drone and cyber defence systems. More missiles and ammunition will be purchased to boost Ukraine’s artillery supplies. In addition, the European Investment Bank will give access to €150 billion for member states for further capital funding for defence.
Out with the old…
Reference to the Growth and Stability Pact is significant. Up until now, its rules to cap state spending were the backbone of EU fiscal policy and always rigidly enforced. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain all discovered this, to their great cost, during the 2008 financial crisis. It was the Growth and Stability Pact logic that enabled displacing the cost of the banking crisis on to working people.
The Growth and Stability Pact was introduced in the late 1990’s when, with its economies facing competitive globalisation, the EU sought to join forces under a single currency and the strict monetary policy of ‘price stability’ of the European Central Bank. The Pact’s introduction signalled the abandonment of Keynesian state spending and ushered in an era of full-on neoliberalism. The ditching of these rules for defence spending today is done again, not in the interests of the people of Europe, but of those running the EU and the interests of capital, now set on a path of military confrontation.
The move also signals the changing frame of reference of EU imperialism. Trump’s MAGA foreign policy agenda – including the brutal exploitation of both Gaza and Ukraine by American capital – has altered the world order. Where Clinton, Obama and Biden, confronted with the long-term decline of US capitalism, sought to uphold US hegemony through alliances with other pro-Western states, including the EU, Trump seeks aggressive go-it-alone America First tactics. Out with the free market and alliances with other western states; in with protectionism, resource-grabbing and a rearranging of US allies, a stepping away from old allies and drawing closer to new, including possibly Russia.
The elephant in the room of course is China, now a serious competitor in the imperialist order. China’s jumping ahead of the US tech sector with its advanced and cheaper development of AI, and its production of low-cost E-vehicles which threatens the EU car industries, makes China one of the most dynamic economies in world capitalism second only to the US. China is also turning toward serious spending on upgrading its military capabilities. Trump’s manoeuvring to prise Russia away from the China camp leaves the EU standing on its own, suddenly appearing at odds with its imperialist ally, the USA.
Imperialism
For some on the left, the EU has never fitted the imperialist label. For example, the Italian anti-capitalist Tony Negri, supported the various EU constitutional treaties of the early 2000’s. He saw Europe as a counter power to ‘Empire’ and American unilateralism, a regulator of the free market. The Greek radical party, Syriza, in the Eurocommunist tradition (which believed that there was a special European road to socialism which involved alliances with centre parties) believed that the EU could be persuaded to change course on austerity, and they had no plan B when it didn’t. Likewise, the Social Democratic parties across Europe believe in the EU, which is seen as protective of social reform, transcending nationalism, even a force for peace.
To understand the imperialist dimension to the EU, we need to understand the nature of imperialism itself. It is a product of the development of capitalism – the highest stage of capitalism, as Lenin put it. Capitalism is driven not only by the exploitation of labour but also by competition between capitals to amass profits. The race to capital accumulation is one of rivalry between corporations, and ultimately between their protectors – states – who will go to war, if they have to, to maintain their position in the world market. Lenin’s opposition to the first world war, in the name of the opposing interests of working class, was built on this insight.
Modern imperialism emerged in the nineteenth century, making use of the ravages of colonial plunder to build a generalised international system of wage exploitation. The individual European states were deeply implicated in the scramble for colonies, what Marx called a ‘bleeding process with a vengeance’. Geopolitical rivalry intensified as capitalist states carved up the world. State military power and capitalist industry became intertwined as weapons systems and military technology relied on a strong capitalist manufacturing base.
The EU and imperialism
US imperialism enveloped the founding of the EU. The Coal and Steel Community, then the European Economic Community, was formed alongside US domination of Europe. Washington’s Marshall Plan provided the much-needed capital and materials that enabled Europeans to rebuild the continent’s economy post-WWII. For the United States, this investment in Europe provided markets for American goods, created reliable trading partners, and encouraged the development of stable governments within the US sphere of influence. From its beginnings, European unity became part of the cold war project to isolate what was an emerging imperialist power, Russia, and to put down communism and the forces of mass resistance at home.
The US helped create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Europe to challenge Soviet influence. America’s post-World War 2 Western European grand strategy, as Alex Callinicos points out, was one of double containment – of both the Soviet Union and Germany. Germany would be partitioned, and France would keep its military power intact.[1] The US secured its world hegemony by bringing together the advanced capitalist states through institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and through consolidating military might under NATO. The EU fitted into this capitalist rules-based order as a junior, US-deferring group of nations.
Under NATO’s Wing
Today NATO’s power in Europe is extensive. It includes six pre-positioned weapons stockpiles in Europe, equipped with tanks and armoured vehicles, eight air squadrons, four navy destroyers and, frighteningly, an estimated 100 nuclear bombs. Additionally, the US has some 10,000 soldiers on rotational deployment in Poland – a key part of NATO’s eastern flank with Russia.
The EU is aligning itself more tightly with NATO. Today 23 EU states out of 27 are NATO members. Finland and Sweden, long standing neutral countries, have quietly joined the fold. The Irish Government’s desire to weaken Irish neutrality reflects the same pressure from the EU to strengthen itself as a military power.
More Irish soldiers are proposed to participate in operations increasingly under the command of NATO. The Partnership for Peace is a NATO program; so is the Individual Tailored Partnership Programme, set up for greater information and intelligence-sharing in areas such as peacekeeping, maritime security and tackling cyber threats. The EU Battlegroups also operate alongside NATO. An EU fact sheet reveals, somewhat contradictorily, that, ‘The EU Battlegroups strengthens the EU’s strategic autonomy in military terms, thus also strengthening NATO’. The new rearming plan for Europe copper fastens the EU working closer with NATO, strengthening its own ‘defence readiness’ in lockstep with the military alliance.
In this situation, it is disappointing to see Sinn Féin, once a staunch campaigner against EU militarism, drop its pledge to withdraw from the EU and NATO defence arrangements. Matt Carthy has said that they want to remain in both PESCO military cooperation between member states and in NATO sponsored Partnership for Peace projects. This is definitely not the time for such concessions.
Imperialist Mindsets
Besides militarisation, the political practice and ideology of the EU is steeped in imperialist and racist mindsets. Migrants in the European Union face human rights violations, discrimination and racist violence. Fortress Europe today constitutes a massive repressive apparatus consisting of eu-LISA, dealing with the maintenance and operation of large-scale IT systems and databases, and Frontex, which deals with border control and deportations. The material cost of this is massive, stretching to billions of euros each year, but the human cost far greater. The EU’s ‘migrant crisis ‘frame is precisely what has emboldened parties of the far right. Today, at least five EU countries have far right or neofascist parties in government.
The EU also enables the continuation of imperialist plunder. Andy Storey, in a recent article for Rebel, has shown how EU Memorandums of Understanding with Rwanda facilitate the systematic theft of critical raw materials from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Relations between the EU and Africa remain one of domination which, through its old colonial power channels, including armies, and its multinationals, continue to empty Africa of resources.
The EU’s vastly different responses to the invasion of Ukraine and to the invasion of Gaza shows up its neocolonial mindset. The EU’s foreign policy, as Alvaro Oleart and Juan Roch point out, is built on the logic of ‘‘the garden and the jungle’, a racist metaphor used by Josep Borrell, former High Representative for Foreign Affairs of the European Union. Ukraine is part of the “garden”: a predominantly white and Christian community with a status close to NATO and the EU; part of the “European family”, in von der Leyen’s own words. Gaza is seen entirely differently. Terms such as “Nakba”, “genocide”, “occupation”, “colonialism” or “apartheid” do not appear in the EU narrative. Ursula von der Leyen certainly does not hide her shocking civilising mission-type bigotry. In 2023, 75 years on from the Nakba, she praised Israel for having “made the desert bloom”.
EU militarisation in plain view
Wolfgang Streeck, a German sociologist critical of EU neoliberalism, calls the EU a ‘liberal empire’ because it lacks the independent capacity for military intervention. But this hasn’t been the case for some time.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, EU militarisation had been steadily growing. In 2021, the overall amount of money earmarked for security and defence spending was €43.9 billion, or 123% more than in the previous seven-year budgetary cycle. The European Defence Fund, aimed at the research and development of high-tech military weaponry, saw an even larger increase.
After the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, military expenditure in Europe saw its steepest year-on-year increase in 30 years. Spending for the first time surpassed that in 1989, as the Cold War was ending, and was 30 per cent higher than in 2013. Adding UK’s military spending makes the EU-related countries the world’s second largest military spender after the US and before China.
The EU’s almost fanatical support – led by Germany – for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has exposed the EU’s war stand. The International Criminal Court – to which EU states are signatories and which the EU strongly supports – found Israel guilty of apartheid against the Palestinians and labelled Israel as an enabler of genocide.
This year has seen more European countries criticising Israel’s actions in Gaza while at the same time officially recognising the state of Palestine. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the end of last year were weekly events across all of Europe’s capitals. Yet the EU leadership has stuck rigidly to its pro-Israel position. While some EU states such as France, Spain, Italy, Belgium reduced arms sales to Israel there was no EU arms ban on Israel during the bombing of Gaza. One wonders how ‘Rearming’ Europe will affect arms sales to repressive regimes in the future.
Arms to Ukraine
The European Union has sent a total of $141bn in aid to Ukraine, including $51bn in military assistance, according to the European Commission.
Since February 2022, the EU has imposed 15 packages of sanctions intended to reduce Russia’s ability to finance the war against Ukraine.
Europe has overtaken the US in terms of Ukraine aid. In total, Europe has allocated €70 billion in financial and humanitarian aid as well as €62 billion in military aid. This compares to €64 billion in military aid from the US, as well as €50 billion in financial and humanitarian allocations.
Europe also holds a significant edge over Russia in military spending. In 2024, before the ReArm Europe plan, EU nations collectively spent $457 billion on defence compared to Russia’s $146 billion defence budget in the middle of a war. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk welcomed ReArm Europe, openly declaring Europe to be in an arms race with Russia, necessary because ‘we are in pre-war times’.
Changing face of imperialism
The relative economic decline of the US compared to the other leading capitalist states has been slowly unfolding since the 1980s. The US sought to maintain its hegemony by binding the advanced states together in a neoliberal capitalist bloc. This was the so-called “rules-based international order”, and it is collapsing.
Before our eyes the militarisation of Europe is forging ahead. We have seen the biggest war on the continent since 1945. In Gaza, at least 50,000 killed including more than 18,000 children, unspeakable pain and suffering continues to be meted out on Palestinians.
The markets are anxiously calculating “geopolitical risk”. Financial commentators predict, more cynically, that Germany’s increased military spending offers the biggest stimulus to that economy for decades. Governments will say that we face security risks, that Russia poses a danger to Europe, that we all need to increase our military spending.
We must reject these narratives and understand the underlying imperialist, capitalist logic that feeds them. The EU can no longer be presented as somehow a third force between the major imperialist powers. Its sharp turn to much greater military spending sounds the drums of war.
We need more hospital beds, more houses, more teachers, not more cyber defence systems for the military, more missiles, more tanks.
Micheál Martin response to the ReArm Europe policy was to say that Ireland would not have to avail of loans from the EIB, as it could pay for extra defence from its own budget surplus. He made no mention of Irish neutrality and how more defence spending might not sit well with this.
Indeed, the ReArm Europe plan will create the backdrop under which he will promote even more strongly undoing the Triple Lock mechanism. He will claim that more spending on defence is about taking on our responsibilities as Europeans.
The EU is going down a path to greater militarisation and to war. We must oppose the form it takes here, at home. We have to say our responsibility is to reject war and military spending.
Socialists in the First World War refused to go along with war. In Ireland, they said ‘neither King nor Kaiser’ and James Connolly made a declaration of Irish Neutrality the pivot of their opposition to the war. Today confronted by the EU’s ReArm plan, far greater militarisation and a much more uncertain world, we must follow suit: No to NATO, No to EU Militarisation and Keep Ireland Neutral.
[1] Alex Callinicos, Imperialism and Global Political Economy, Polity , 2009, pp172-173
