The view that Europe must now rearm, swiftly and on a massive scale, has rapidly become the new orthodoxy. However, engaging in an arms race has never been a route to durable peace. Da Le Monde Diplomatique
With the revival of German militarism, a scramble to rearm across Europe and a worryingly aggressive White House, is rearmament back on the agenda? If so, it’s the most vulnerable who will pay the price, even though they are also our best hope for peace.
The war in Ukraine, fuelled by geopolitical interests, including competition for natural resources, has already killed and wounded hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. According to NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, neither the war nor the arms race is likely to end any time soon: ‘Peace can only last if Ukraine comes to the table from a position of strength. For this, it needs our continued help, more weapons and faster,’ he told the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and security and defence subcommittee on 13 January. But to claim that supplying more weapons will bring peace feeds a dangerous illusion – not just for Ukraine but for all of Europe.
There have always been two aspects to this conflict. The Russian invasion clearly violates Ukraine’s territorial integrity – something countries of the ‘global South’, which feel the importance of sovereignty and international law most keenly, understand all too well. It’s also a proxy war that Russia and the US are fighting at Ukraine’s expense, with tens of thousands of young people used as cannon fodder.
Washington no longer pretends the Ukraine conflict is anything other than an outsourced war, partly fuelled and directed by the US. But Donald Trump has made it plain that China is now the US’s principal adversary, and that all efforts should focus on the coming conflict with China.
Marco Rubio, then secretary of state designate, told the US Senate on 15 January that China ‘is the most potent and dangerous near peer adversary this nation has ever confronted … When they write the book about the 21st century, there’s going to be some chapters in there about Putin, but the bulk of that book will be … about the
