Why the UK/EU are preparing for war with Russia

The UK and EU are ramping up defence spending while at the same time cutting welfare spending. What explains this synchronicity? Happenstance? Hardly.

Europe’s economies are tanking and their feckless leaders have hit upon the brilliant idea of spending vast sums to militarise in the hopes that this will regenerate growth. It’s militarised Keynesianism. They justify these vast expenditures because they and their media mouthpieces have been hammering the message that Russia is a mortal threat to their nations, while not providing a shred of evidence.

The EU has launched “Rearm Europe/Readiness 2030,” a plan to splash out EUR 800bn to finance its war machine.

Former BlackRock Chairman in Germany and incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz has already received Bundestag approval for a EUR 500bn defence fund and is pushing for more.

Major German companies are going along with it, just as they did in the 1930s. Hit with declining sales, soaring energy costs and fierce competition from China, VW CEO Oliver Blume said he is willing to repurpose manufacturing capacity to start churning out tanks and other military equipment to keep his shareholders happy and save jobs that would otherwise be lost.

And Keir Starmer has pledged to spend an extra £13.4bn on top of the £3bn a year he’s funnelling to the avaricious and corrupt Ukrainian regime, while cutting welfare payments to the most vulnerable at home.

BAE Systems and others in the Military Industrial Complex are thrilled, as is BlackRock, which has large investments in Ukraine.

In addition, the UK has made loans to Ukraine, so ending the war would jeopardise payback from, as Starmer hopes, the profits generated on illegally seized Russian sovereign assets.

There are also growing calls for the UK to reintroduce conscription, which won’t go down well with the young.

All this military spending will produce a short term bump in GDP but will also make people poorer. The defence industry doesn’t create tons of jobs because most people aren’t in the market for a tank. Tanks destroy whereas cars provide a needed service - transportation. Once European tanks and not cars start rolling off assembly lines, the only way to keep them humming is to start wars like the one currently raging in Ukraine.

But as Sir Keir has discovered when trying and failing to pull together his ‘coalition of the willing’, Europe consists of sovereign nations who don’t always agree with each other. The UK, France and Germany may be willing to send more weapons and money to the Ukraine regime and commit to rearming themselves, but Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Ireland, Hungary and Slovakia, to name a few, aren’t so keen.

Nevertheless, ‘the willing’ seem hellbent on aping the US and creating their own Military Industrial Complex. Do they realise that once established, the insatiable beast will need to be fed continually - by war?

The next war European elites are gearing up for is with their enormous neighbour. The endless stream of western anti-Russian propaganda has worked to convince even intelligent people that Putin is evil incarnate, intent on conquering Europe.

The fact that their militaries are in dire shape, lacking not only sufficient soldiers and weapons, but also the logistics to provide food, ammunition, equipment and medical treatment once troops are actually deployed, doesn’t concern them. Nor does it worry them that they would be going up against the world’s largest, most sophisticated and battle-hardened military that possesses the largest nuclear arsenal. Have they considered public opinion when their young men start returning home in body bags? Their level of delusion in thinking they can ‘take on’ Russia is off the charts.

Russia not only holds military superiority over Europe, but economic superiority. Western sanctions have failed. They’ve made Russia self-sufficient and stronger, not weaker. On March 18 President Putin addressed a conference of Russian industrialists and told them that sanctions are not going away and that Russia shouldn’t look to the US or Europe for help. It doesn’t need to. Russia has the world’s 4th largest economy in purchasing power parity, ahead of Germany and Japan, and has forged closer economic ties with China and India, its biggest trading partners.

And the West? Its decline is evident in the growing impoverishment of its populations. The middle classes are disappearing, vampiric rentier capitalism has supplanted productive industrial capitalism and governments are abdicating responsibility for the welfare of their citizens and can think of no other remedy than to go to war.

Starmer, Macron and Merz should heed President Eisenhower’s warning before they deliberately lead their nations down the same ruinous road as the US, which has lost both security and liberty:

We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.