THE TWO-DAY NATO summit ended yesterday with US president Donald Trump walking out and announcing that he had forced the European nations to submit to the will of US imperialism. Trump descended on the European leaders demanding they stump up vast sums over and above the fortune already committed to the imperialist war machine.
Trump stunned these leaders with a vitriolic attack which singled out Germany, Spain and Belgium for not paying enough stating that the US ‘pays tens of billions of dollars too much to subsidise Europe’ and he was not prepared to tolerate it any longer. Unless every country in NATO paid up 2% of their countries GDP immediately Trump made it clear he was prepared to pull the US out of NATO.
Trump went even further in the course of the meetings, making it clear he wanted every NATO member to double their contributions in the near future. German leader, Angela Merkel was savaged by Trump over the proposed gas pipeline between Germany and Russia which he denounced saying: ‘It should never happen. Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they will be getting 60%-70% of their energy from Russia.’
Trump added: ‘On top of that, Germany is just paying a little bit over 1% (of GDP on NATO defence contributions), whereas the United States is paying 4.2% of a much larger GDP.’ Trumps brutal ultimatum to his NATO ‘allies’ that US imperialism will no longer carry them and if they don’t submit to his dictatorial demands for doubling their contributions then the US would pull out and crash the alliance forced them to surrender with Trump leaving the summit declaring victory. A victory for US imperialism that will be paid for by the working class in Britain and Europe through even greater attacks on wages, conditions and welfare.
In Britain, it means the Tories will step up the privatisation of the NHS and the destruction of the welfare state to pay for the billions Trump is demanding to be used for military spending. Already the US spends more on the military than China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, Saudi Arabia and India combined. It spends more than three times as much as China and Russia together.
Already US imperialism is massively armed but this is not enough for Trump and the American ruling class. They are now hell-bent on military re-armament on a scale not seen before with the aim of launching an all-out war to re-divide and conquer the world. US imperialism’s drive to re-arm on this scale is a complement to the trade war that Trump has launched against China and every one of his western ‘allies’.
Both wars have the same aim – to smash US capitalist rivals or turn them into mere vassals while at the same time preparing for a military war against Russia and China. American capitalism, gripped by the world crisis and surviving only through relying on huge debts, is determined to seize the vast largely untapped wealth of these countries.
This is the only salvation American capitalism has today, to crush its rivals and overthrow the gains of the Russian and Chinese revolutions opening them up to exploitation. From his NATO meeting, Trump is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin next Monday after going out of his way to praise the Russian president as a friend not an enemy. No one should be fooled by Trump’s declaration of friendship.
In 1939 Stalin signed up to the Stalin-Hitler pact, a monumental act of class treachery by Stalin which enabled Nazi Germany the time and resources to launch its surprise invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Trump’s overtures to the Stalinist Putin are treading the same path, to disarm the Russian leadership into thinking that they can peacefully co-exist with a bankrupt capitalist system intent on a war for survival. In its death agony capitalism can offer the world nothing but war, and is provoking revolution.
The only way to end imperialist war on a world scale is through the victory of the world socialist revolution. This requires the building of revolutionary parties of the Fourth International in every country to lead this struggle.
