Europeanists in Combat Boots

Three years of war in Ukraine. Perhaps with a truce in sight, albeit in the heated climate of the European shock over the Atlantic crisis and the American about-face. Trump wants to make a deal with Putin without regard for Kyiv and the EU; doubts are spreading as to whether America can be trusted anymore. Friedrich Merz, the next head of the German government, has been heard uttering words that would previously have been unthinkable for an Atlanticist like him: We must become independent from the United States; Berlin must agree with London and Paris on the nuclear protection of Europe. It is uncertain whether NATO, in its present form, will be suitable for this “epochal break”, or whether new European structures will be needed.

Perhaps the objective is a Europeanised NATO, a centre of gravity in the Old Continent that can contain or compensate for American oscillations and the unpredictable behaviour of its bully-in-chief president. In any case, at the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine we said that the Europeans, caught off guard, would try to parry the blow by reopening the battle for European defence. Re-arming Ukraine to re-arm Europe is already a reality: the EU’s military expenditure in these past three years has increased by half, from about €200 billion to more than €300 billion, 2% of European GDP. Now, however, the Atlantic crisis is speeding things up. The plan is to get to 3%, which will bring military spending close to €500 billion, but this expenditure will be ineffective if it is divided into a thousand rivulets and is not centralised with joint headquarters and collective purchasing plans. For this reason, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain have started to meet: the Five Plus One group, alongside other kinds of groupings, bypasses the slowness of 27 member States and brings the British back into the game after the unfortunate outcome of Brexit. Pushing London back towards the EU is perhaps the first unintended consequence of the new American nationalism.

Time will tell. Washington has always sought to curb Europe’s strategic autonomy and will play its cards so as to divide it; Moscow will react to a missile and nuclear rearmament of the Union. China, an unavoidable force in the crisis of the old order, will also have its say on the new balance of terror. In any case, Europeanism has put on its combat boots. Internationalist opposition to European imperialism is facing a new challenge.

Political Battles of European Leninism

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Chinese Rearmament Projects Itself in Asia

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 5 From the series Asian giants Trends in rearmament spending and comparisons of military equipment are increasingly set to dominate coverage of the contention between powers in the crisis in the world order . The military factor has entered the strategic debate, accompanied by a wealth of figures and technical details. The increase in military spending as a percentage of GDP represents a widespread sign of the rearmament cycle at this juncture, but spending alone cannot entirely explain the situation, given the qualitatively different natures of the arsenals being compared. Nor are comparisons between this or that type of weapon useful in themselves, because ultimately all weapons are only ever used in combination with the complex military means available to a power, either in alliance or in conflict with other powers in the system of States. Therefore, while it is difficult to assess the real significa...

Democratic Defeat in the Urban Vote

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In crises and wars there are events which leave their mark on history because of how they make a decisive impact on the power contention, or because of how, almost like a chemical precipitate, they suddenly make deep trends that have been at work for some time coalesce. This is the case of the defeat of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, which is taking the shape of a real watershed in the cycle of Atlantic decline. For the moment, through various comments in the international press, it is possible to consider its consequences on three levels: America’s position as a power and the connection with its internal crisis; the repercussions on Atlantic relations and Europe’s dilemmas regarding its strategic autonomy; and the relationship between the Afghan crisis and power relations in Asia, especially as regards India’s role in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Repercussions in the United States Richard Haass is the president of the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations; despite having ...

In the Depth of Our Class

The pandemic of the century is a storm that does not subside; it returns to its rampage after 40 million infections and more than a million official victims, perhaps two million according to estimates on the excess deaths. In the contention between powers, China stands as the winner: it seems to have tamed the virus, and industry and services are up and running; the USA and Europe, on the other hand, are moving towards a new wave of infections that casts yet more shadows on the economic cycle. Political structures and health systems are at the height of tension. In America, the elections have judged Donald Trump’s rash demagogy on the basis of the opposite reasons for containing the pandemic and the intolerance of small and large producers; in Europe the executives are attempting to steer between the surge in infections, increasingly stringent confinement measures and the threats of fiscal jacquerie in the tourism and catering sectors. Almost everywhere, in the Old Continent, governm...

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Another Kind of Politics

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German Socialism in 1917

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