{"id":70052,"date":"2024-04-04T07:29:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T05:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-lardor-bellicista-deuropa\/"},"modified":"2024-04-05T08:32:15","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T06:32:15","slug":"idees-dactualitat-lardor-bellicista-deuropa","status":"publish","type":"newspaper","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-lardor-bellicista-deuropa\/","title":{"rendered":"Idees d’actualitat – Warmongering Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Less than three months before the European elections, the EU is experiencing an alarming climate of warmongering. At the end of January, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland signed an agreement to establish a military transport corridor with the aim of improving the mobility of troops and weapons across Europe. Siemtje M\u00f6ller, the German Secretary of State for Defence, described the initiative as a step towards a ‘military Schengen’. It is the first time that a European politician recognizes the existence of a weapon transit area without restrictions or customs controls, as already exists for the free movement of EU citizens. Not to mention that January saw the start of Steadfast Defender, the NATO manoeuvres on Poland’s eastern borders that will last until May and mobilise more than 90,000 troops in what is the Alliance’s largest show of force in 36 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days ago, the French Defence Minister announced that he does not rule out requisitioning personnel, stocks or production tools, or even requiring manufacturers to prioritise military needs. For his part, the president of the Czech Republic has announced that he has located 800,000 shells of various calibres in arsenals in countries outside the EU, and at least 18 countries – including Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands – have pledged money to finance their purchase to the tune of 1.5 billion euros. There are concerns about the opacity of this transaction, in that so far no one has disclosed details about the suppliers and the procurement process, raising serious questions about the transparency of the operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EU is thus progressively transforming the European economy into a veritable war economy. Huge amounts of money are intended for the military industry, financed through loans, confiscated assets and donations. European countries now spend $380 billion on defence, compared to $230 billion in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. This is unprecedented security and defence spending, which continues to rise and has not yet reached its peak: last year, Atlantic Alliance members increased their defence budgets by 11 per cent, and the estimation for this year is that 18 of the 31 countries will reach the target of 2 per cent of GDP spent on defence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks ago, the Commission presented its strategy for the defence industry of the future: it proposes to inject 1.5 billion into the sector and sets the goal that by the end of the decade member states should buy 40 per cent of military equipment jointly. The EU-27 are also discussing the proposal to issue Eurobonds to buy arms, following the same procedure used during the COVID-19 pandemic for the joint purchase of vaccines. Still, frugal countries – mainly the Netherlands and Germany – are strongly opposed and the consensus is shifting towards asking the European Investment Bank (EIB) to change lending policy and allow defence industry financing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means a radical shift in the priority of the EU’s economic objectives away from the pursuit of material prosperity for a maximum number of citizens and towards ideological control to justify conflict preparedness. Not surprisingly, the Commission is pushing ahead with the idea of creating a directorate-general dedicated to armaments and assigning a specific commissioner for war issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, the implementation of an industrial policy based on the construction of a European Defence Policy should be the subject of greater debate and public scrutiny. The recurrent framework in most media and conveyed by most European politicians revolves around three ideas that should not necessarily be linked: working for peace, investing in defence and curbing a hypothetical imminent Russian danger. A line of argument that coincides in time with two events that have led European leaders to raise the bellicose tone of their interventions: Donald Trump’s statements on the future of NATO and the slow but steady advance of Russian troops in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the one hand, at a Republican primary rally, Donald Trump warned NATO allies that he would encourage Russia to threaten or attack countries that do not take on the increase of up to 2 per cent of GDP in security and defence approved at the 2014 Wales Summit<\/a>. On the other hand, the failure of the Ukrainian spring-summer 2023 offensive, attributable to shortages of arms, ammunition and troops, as well as to strategic mistakes and disagreements in the Ukrainian military leadership that led to the dismissal of General Zaluzhny a few weeks ago. The delay in the approval of new budget allocations in the US Senate, as well as the reduction of Western aid in recent months, have had a brutal impact on the Ukrainian front. Indeed, according to estimates by Western military institutes, the Russian army would fire an estimated 10,000 artillery shells a day, while the Ukrainian armed forces would only be able to respond with 2,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On these premises, an opportunistic debate is being promoted linking the potential Russian threat to NATO territory with the need to increase security and defence spending, irrespective of any other considerations. This in a context where NATO’s over-dependence on the United States is being raised – a dependence that is now problematic, as simply increasing defence spending will not solve the problem as Europe is currently unable to sustain collective action over time and has limited organisational capacity. But instead of debating increased defence spending and the need for the EU to have genuine strategic autonomy in the framework of democratic consultation with citizens, a univocal narrative based on fear is being articulated, which is also indebted to the enormous pressure that the arms industry is putting on the EU to increase its production and, above all, to maintain it in a sustained manner over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reorganisation of the European security and defence architecture in the current geopolitical situation must go beyond the short-term reading of the war in Ukraine and entails unavoidable costs and risks of which the public should be made aware through a profound democratic debate and policies that have a consistent and well-articulated basis. Governments should therefore be required to abandon alarmist rhetoric and explain clearly what their plans – if any, beyond rearmament – are for building a new, autonomous European security and defence policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, all these initiatives indebted to the si vis pacem para bellum<\/em> collide with the founding principles of the EU, which sought precisely to avoid war in Europe after the two devastating world wars of the twentieth century. A scenario is emerging that is almost a profession of faith, with progressive forces voting for war credits alongside nationalist right-wingers, while Sweden reintroduces conscription and other countries such as Germany and the UK are considering it. Meanwhile, the many social, economic and political contradictions and needs are put on the back burner. The empirical foundations on which peace has historically been built are not based on a rearmament race, but on the ability to manage contradictory transformations, generate consensus and provide opportunities for all. If we want peace, let\u2019s prepare peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Photography: Olivier Hoslet \/ European Press Photo Agency<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eduard Mayol, trainee student at the CETC, has participated in this issue of Idees d\u2019actualitat<\/em>.<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Less than three months before the European elections, the EU is experiencing an alarming climate of warmongering. At the end of January, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland signed an agreement to establish a military transport corridor with the aim of improving the mobility of troops and weapons across Europe. Siemtje M\u00f6ller, the German Secretary of State for Defence, described the initiative as a step towards a ‘military Schengen’. It is the first time that a European politician recognizes the existence of a weapon transit area without restrictions or customs controls, as already exists for the free movement of EU citizens.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":69952,"template":"","category_newspaper":[584],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-70052","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-584"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIdees d'actualitat - Warmongering Europe – IDEES<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-lardor-bellicista-deuropa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Idees d'actualitat - Warmongering Europe – IDEES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Less than three months before the European elections, the EU is experiencing an alarming climate of warmongering. 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