THE Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, was in Britain this week meeting with Labour Prime minister Keir Starmer to hammer home the demand from the US, and its imperialist war machine, that the UK and Europe must ramp up spending on the military or face the imminent danger of invasion by Russia.
In a speech at Chatham House in London on Monday, Rutte ramped up all the dire warnings that Russian missiles could reach Western European capitals in minutes if there is not a drastic increase in defence spending by the UK and EU nations.
Whipping up a war hysteria, Rutte claimed such an attack could take place within five years, and this called for ‘a quantum leap in our collective defence’ that requires ‘a 400 per cent increase in air and missile defence’ to counter the Russian ‘threat’.
The scale of the rearmament by NATO countries that the US and Rutte are demanding is massive and includes a fivefold increase in air defence and thousands more tanks, along with millions of extra artillery shells.
Rutte said that he firmly expected that the NATO summit in the Hague later this month would see ‘Allied leaders agree to spend 5% of GDP on defence’.
Last week in Parliament, Starmer unveiled Labour’s defence spending review which committed the government to increase defence spending to 2.5%.
Within hours, NATO bosses were on the phone instructing Starmer this wasn’t enough, and he immediately increased the amount to 3.5% of GDP.
None of this was costed, Starmer and Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves refused to reveal where the extra billions would come from.
Now NATO has upped the cost even more to 5% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product – the total wealth produced by the UK) which is exactly the amount US president Donald Trump has insisted on from his ‘allies’ in NATO.
Rutte made it clear where the money would come from when, in response to a question from the Daily Telegraph after Monday’s meeting about whether Labour should increase taxes to fund the 5% defence budget, he replied:
‘If you do not go to 5%, including the 3.5% for defence spending, you could still have the NHS… the pension system, but you had better learn to speak Russian. That’s the consequence.’
In other words, workers will have to sacrifice the NHS and their pensions to pay for the billions of pounds being demanded to combat a non-existent threat from Russia to invade Europe and Britain.
Rutte went further in his attempt to whip up the war hysteria that the ruling class believe is necessary to create the conditions where workers and youth will sacrifice their lives, and all the gains of the past, without rising up and rebelling.
Rutte insisted that ‘Danger will not disappear even when the war in Ukraine ends’.
The future that capitalism, in its imperialist death agony holds for the working class, is one of never ending wars against Russia, China and any country that doesn’t submit to the domination of a capitalist ruling class that is in a desperate economic and political crisis.
The working class will never allow its rights and lives to be destroyed by a capitalist system collapsing into bankruptcy, and a ruling class determined to risk even nuclear war that would destroy humanity.
Now is the time for the powerful working class in the UK and Europe to take advantage of the crisis tearing capitalism and the ruling class apart, by forcing its trade union leaders to act.
Workers must demand their unions call mass strike actions to bring down their capitalist governments and bring in workers’ governments and socialism.
Leaders who refuse to call strike actions against the imperialist war drive must be removed and replaced by a new leadership that is prepared to organise the struggle for power.
This makes essential the building up of the WRP and Young Socialists in Britain, and sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country, to provide the leadership required to advance humanity from imperialist wars and barbarism with the victory of the world socialist revolution.
In the period ahead the future of the world will be decided by the building of the Fourth International, with sections in all of the major countries, to organise and lead the victory of the world socialist revolution!
This will replace the completely bankrupt capitalist system with a worldwide socialist planned economy.
