The issues of war, militarisation and violence are becoming an ever-greater burden in large parts of the world. Ordinary Ukrainians live in fear of Russian bombs and drones. We see the state terror of Zionism that destroys Palestinian lives year after year. Brothers, daughters, parents… torn from life. Shocking images of the genocide against the Palestinians are being shared worldwide via our mobile phones. They lead to feelings of anger and sustained protest. But sometimes also to feelings of powerlessness, bitterness and, for some, fatalism.
In this article, based on a few questions and answers, we want to examine the rise of militarisation and the threat of war in greater depth. What are the underlying reasons? Will militarisation by the governments of the bosses make us ‘safer’? Is the ruling class using ‘military Keynesianism’ to pull the economy out of the doldrums?
And what stance should workers and young people fighting against oppression and war take? Which position should be avoided? Parts of the socialist trade union at FN Herstal – the arms manufacturer – have fallen into the trap of their warmongering bosses, who follow imperialism. The white-collar unions of FN Herstal and parts of the blue-collar unions criticized the support for anti-war demonstrations by other union representatives!
Accepting militarisation – and giving corporatist support to the bosses – is disastrous if we want to create unity among all the victims of the capitalist system. The trauma, fatalities, maiming, mental terror, and so on, occur mainly in the Global South. During the decades following the Second World War, economic growth and mutual deterrence between Western capitalism and ‘communism’ – read: Stalinism – ensured a temporary absence of wars in the imperialist countries themselves.
In the new era of disorder – of protectionism and heightened imperialist conflict – the threat of war is, however, becoming increasingly tangible for a growing group of workers and the oppressed.
1/ ‘What is the reason for the increased incidence of war?’
Alongside Iran and Ukraine, a series of countries are being ravaged by horrific wars. In Sudan, more than 150,000 people have lost their lives in a civil war. Congo is witnessing genocidal violence in a bloody struggle for resources and power. In West Asia – Syria, Turkey and Iran – the Kurdish population is being violently denied the right to self-determination. In Asia, tensions are mounting between India and Pakistan, which temporarily escalated into armed conflict in May last year.
According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme, the number of state-based conflicts has almost doubled since 2010, rising from 31 to 61 in 2024. The UCDP counted 11 wars in 2024. This is the highest number since 2016. The number of fatalities in conflicts between states has been higher over the last 10 years than in the 2000s. The number of fatalities in the post-Cold War era – following the collapse of the Stalinist Soviet Union – had temporarily fallen at that time. This was a period in which established journalists claimed that global capitalism would bring about greater “peace and democracy”.
These prospects were based on wishful thinking. Following the crisis in profit margins in the mid-1970s, the ruling elites opted for neoliberal austerity to restore them. The anti-social offensive took the form of real wage cuts, cuts in social rights, job relocations, privatisation of public services, and so on. A Marxist analysis warned that the era of neoliberal globalisation would ultimately give way to new economic crises, weaker economic cycles, and eventually protectionism and escalating imperialist conflict.
This more unstable and chaotic era began to come to the fore from the mid-2010s onwards. A central factor was the fierce competition between US imperialism and the emerging state capitalism in China. Free trade and so-called ‘free market principles’ were cast aside. State intervention – economic, geostrategic and military – was on the rise. This was also to temporarily save the system from an even deeper crisis through money creation, as during the economic crises of 2008 and 2020.
The period of peace following the Second World War in the core imperialist countries, such as in Europe, was an exception compared to other parts of the world. Workers, poor peasants, young people and women… in the colonial countries were still confronted with the inherent racism and violence of capitalism and imperialism.
Even after these countries gained official independence, following immense mass movements involving millions, the oppression and recurring imperialist violence continued. Through coups, military invasions, murderous blockades,…
One could say that, with the invasion of Ukraine, Putin began to apply the brutality that was usually the norm in the Global South more widely in the imperialist centres of capital accumulation.
Capitalism carries war within it like clouds carry rain, as Jean Jaurès stated on the eve of the First World War.
The trend towards increased conflict and war has an objective basis in the system’s slower growth and more frequent crises (economic, geopolitical, the climate crisis, etc.). Within states, rights and freedoms are under pressure and the law of the most brutal is on the rise in the international relations of capitalism.
2/ ‘Does rearmament make us safer, as the establishment politicians claim?’
Who is ‘us’? In whose class’s interests are rearmament and the new arms race? For healthcare, education, social housing, etc., there have been insufficient resources for years.
Social needs must now give way even further to the demands of capitalist defence. The Governor of the National Bank of Belgium, Pierre Wunsch, stated recently: “We were already grappling with rising costs for an ageing population and defence; now Iran has been added to the mix. In recent years, I have unfortunately had to repeat the same message time and again: due to our high budget deficit, we no longer have the capacity to absorb a shock or even a recession. If we want to take crisis measures, we must cut in government expenses.”
This situation is a consequence of the stagnation and decline of the capitalist system and of bourgeois politicians who refuse to look for the money needed for social needs where it actually is: with the big corporations and the richest 1%. Theo Francken wants to increase defence spending to 2% of Belgium’s GDP in the coming years. At the request of Trump and NATO, this should even rise to 5% of GDP. The billions more going to defence will not make us safer, because the root of the problem is not being addressed. The cause of increased conflict and war is the capitalist system, which is increasingly in crisis.
How could we trust capitalist politicians such as Prime Minister Bart De Wever or other EU politicians with our security? With the recent exception of Spain, virtually all of them supported the genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. These politicians defend the expansion of the power of European multinationals into Eastern Europe, Africa, etc. They support a Fortress Europe with deadly borders for those seeking to flee their exploitation and wars.
The Western imperialist conflict with Russia, Iran or China is not a struggle between “democracy or dictatorship”. These latter countries are certainly dictatorial towards movements of workers, women, national minorities, LGBTQIA+ people, etc.
But US imperialism and the EU countries have had, and continue to have, no problem collaborating with dictatorships – such as Saudi Arabia or various dictatorships in Africa – if this suits their economic and strategic interests.
3/ ‘What is NATO’s role? Does this military organisation have a right to exist?’
Mark Rutte, head of NATO, wants to offer Trump support for his imperialist war against Iran. Rutte even claimed – talk about a delusion – that Trump launched the unprovoked attacks “to make the world safer”.
The corrupt Trump regime itself left little doubt that it wants to control the oil in West-Asia. It also wants to destabilise the Iranian regime in the service of the genocidal Zionist state, which serves as a local imperialist stronghold.
The war propagandist and NATO chief Mark Rutte stated in December, in response to the conflict with Russia: “We must prepare for war as our grandparents experienced it”.
NATO was founded in 1949 as a military alliance between the US and a number of mainly European countries, including Belgium. Its purpose was to defend Western imperialist interests militarily, against the Stalinist bloc and against left-wing and revolutionary forces in Europe and beyond.
NATO was not there to support democratic rights. At the time of its founding, the dictatorship in Portugal was a member. The US financed and supplied weapons to the Greek military regime between 1967 and 1974. Greece remained a member of NATO during the dictatorship.
Following the fall of Stalinism in the late 1980s – when its raison d’être had supposedly ceased to exist – NATO expanded into Eastern Europe. This was partly driven by the US military-industrial complex and its profit interests. It was also a means of strategically securing new markets for Western multinationals.
This dangerous expansion into Eastern Europe – together with the expansion of the neoliberal-capitalist EU in the region – contributed to military and economic tensions with Russia. The invasion of Ukraine by the regional imperialist Putin and the war crimes committed by his armies are reprehensible. But the expansion of Western imperialism in Eastern Europe was also not in the interests of workers and young people.
Today, Trump no longer wishes to guarantee the supposed security of European countries through NATO. The European ruling classes are attempting to build up their own imperialist presence by increasing their own defence and arms spending.
The shared interests with the US remain partly intact, although some commentators – still a minority for the time being – are calling for a break with the US and NATO.
However, an independent so-called European imperialist policy is thwarted by the political and economic contradictions within the EU. There is a trend towards ad hoc coalitions of the ‘willing’, to jointly defend pro-capitalist interests.
Working people, young people and oppressed communities must reject NATO. Belgium must withdraw from NATO. It can never serve our interests. The military alliance exists solely to defend the interests of capital and the richest 1%.
4/ ‘Will militarisation ensure economic growth and make us more prosperous?’
European economies are in a seemingly constant state of stagnation. An economic contraction following the banking crisis and subsequently the Covid-19 pandemic was followed by an energy and purchasing power crisis. Trump’s protectionism and falling Chinese demand for European goods (-10% in two years) are now jeopardising the export sector of the economy.
This is leading to low confidence in the economy among both the working class and businesses. The result is a deepening trend towards the hoarding of money and low investment in the real economy of services and goods. We are facing a crisis of over-accumulation of capital.
This stagnation is felt most acutely in the eurozone’s largest economies, with Germany leading the way. This is a problem in a system that measures politicians’ success by the economic growth they supposedly create.
But, look! Putin is at the door and the US is no longer a reliable military partner. So for some, the solution is obvious. After the Cold War, it was no longer possible to justify massive military budgets. But now they can once again stoke fear and nationalism to the full. So pour massive amounts of public funds into weapons and we’ll boost the economy in no time!
And yes, the data shows that in developed economies these investments provide a boost to economic growth. But an upward trend on a graph says little about real prosperity. It is evident that the positive effects are mainly reserved for the military industry itself. When investing in military equipment, the government channels vast sums of money from taxpayers into the bank accounts of, usually private, defence companies.
Moreover, the idea of ‘military Keynesianism’ assumes that we are building our own military-industrial complex. Without such a complex, more than half of the money spent on equipment purchases flows to the United States. That is already the case today. Greater demand for equipment means, in effect, greater demand for products that Europe manufactures only to a limited extent.
Capitalist politicians think: can’t we then invest in such a ‘military-industrial complex’? Economists (Wolff, Eichengreen,…) doubt whether this is even possible in this Europe. Interests vary too widely between countries, regulations are (understandably) complex, and many of the raw materials are scarce here… Brown University argues that if the aim is to stimulate the economy, this money would be better spent on infrastructure projects, education and healthcare. A euro spent by the government in these areas yields more for the economy ‘down the line’ than an extra euro spent on the military.
And it is indeed a question of ‘either/or’ rather than ‘and’. Numerous researchers (Fan, Ikegami,…) conclude that military spending has a ‘crowding-out’ effect. An extra 1% for defence leads to as much as 0.62% less for healthcare: an effect of governments’ strict budgetary constraints. Moreover, this effect is greatest in low- and middle-income countries. After all, not every country can benefit from the hyper-exploitation of the Global South… So, for prosperity, the predictions are mixed; for well-being, they are simply disastrous.
The logic behind military investment naturally goes beyond merely boosting the economy, whether temporarily or not. It follows in the footsteps of a number of major military powers that are increasingly willing to ‘defend’ their own interests by force of arms: access to markets, capital and, above all, raw materials. The US attacked Venezuela to gain greater control over its oil, gas and gold reserves. Ukraine is allowed to continue fighting in the name of the West as long as it promises to supply its raw materials to the US. In three deals, two of which are secret, Ukraine is surrendering part of its sovereignty in order to continue fighting for that very independence.
Even now, with Russia in full war mode, the EU alone is still spending almost three times as much on defence. If the EU wants to put more money into its armies, we must make it clear that it is not doing so out of self-defence but to play this game in the future. Will ‘we’ become more prosperous as a result? No. Not in Europe, and certainly not in the Global South, which is already the military and economic pawn of the various power blocs.
5/ ‘What should we make of attempts to reintroduce conscription, as in Germany?’
The economic logic of the European bourgeoisie is not absolute. Admittedly, youth unemployment remains a major problem. Conscription could offer temporary relief for the labour market in this regard. But in fact, that is simply replacing one problem with another. After all, one of Europe’s biggest long-term problems is a creeping shortage of new workers.
In numerous sectors, EU countries already have little choice but to relax training requirements or attract migrant workers.
A move towards reintroducing compulsory military service is therefore not desirable for the ruling class in the long term. In the short term, however, it appears to politicians to be a cheaper alternative to large professional armies.
What makes conscription so appealing in the minds of many of those in power is that it would strengthen a country’s social cohesion. People from different backgrounds must undergo a disciplining training programme together. In this way, it reinforces a sense of national solidarity and pride.
Throughout history, capitalists have always used national unity as a weapon against overly critical social movements. Viewed from that perspective, we see a project for class reconciliation and, to put it somewhat dramatically, subjugation to the nation-state. Conscription is thus merely one of many ideological attempts to stabilise an inherently unstable system.
We must wholeheartedly reject a model of conscription that disciplines, stifles social criticism and elevates the nation as the highest good. Certainly on a continent that still economically exploits parts of the world and, at the expense of others, pursues geopolitical interests closely linked to access to markets and raw materials. Military conscription then serves as a training ground for pro-imperialist ideas.
6/ ‘Why is the struggle against colonialism linked to the struggle against militarisation?’
You can send as many people to the front as you like. If they don’t have modern weapons, they won’t amount to much. So, once again, it comes down to the production and import of equipment. Where does industry source these materials? Bauxite, copper, iron, rare earth minerals… These raw materials are necessary for the production of weapons systems. At the same time, these and other raw materials are often at the heart of conflicts. The imperialist centres of the US, the EU and China do not have to deal with these conflicts on their own territory. They export them through inter-imperialist competition, in which local actors can serve as proxies.
Many of Europe’s declining manufacturing industries have everything they need to produce batteries, surveillance equipment, engines and so on. These are goods for which demand is often falling in traditional markets. However, demand for these products for defence purposes is increasing. To promote exports, export conditions are being relaxed in various European countries. In this way, we in Europe are rapidly expanding the repressive arsenal of ‘friendly regimes’. Volkswagen is cutting 50,000 German jobs by 2030, but they were able to save a number of them by becoming a supplier for the Zionists’ ‘Iron Dome’.
Palestine has been used as a weapons testing ground for decades. Numerous Belgian companies also have links with, for example, Elbit, the main supplier for the genocide in Gaza. Expanding arms production will only strengthen those connections.
Producing weapons means either using weapons or exporting them. Such exports often go through clandestine or illegal channels, but frequently also simply via direct military support to governments. In Sudan, the UAE, Russia, China, Egypt and other global and regional powers have interests. They all supply weapons, sometimes to both sides of the conflict. Rheinmetall, Thales, Leonardo,… The list of European companies supplying weapons to the IDF is a long one. As far as we are concerned, the number of companies on that list should be zero.
7/ ‘How do we advocate for an alternative to war and capitalism?’
You hear more and more often that the Third World War has already begun. Is that alarmism? How a war will be described in the history books doesn’t matter much if it is your house, your street, your family that is being bombed.
However, talking about a Third World War as an allusion to the Second World War is not yet appropriate. At present, it also serves a narrative whereby those in power can pressure us to ‘choose sides’. Unlike in the 1940s, there is currently no direct clash between superpowers, and although there is a shift towards defence, there is no question of ‘total war’ or ‘war economies’ (with the exception of Russia, depending on where you draw the line).
Some defence analysts speak of a hybrid war involving simultaneous proxy conflicts, such as in Ukraine or Nagorno-Karabakh, alongside a massive increase in cyberattacks and political influence.
In virtually every conflict, the major world powers choose their preferred partner to defend their own interests.
In the Global South, the brutality of old-style colonialism is still very much alive. You can see this in the lingering consequences of the Syrian civil war, in Libya, Sudan, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Iran, Congo, and elsewhere.
In this context, advocating for an alternative to war and colonialism is no easy task. The ruthlessness of capitalist leaders in these conflicts is often relentless. The shareholders (whether governments or private individuals) of the big companies who manage supply chains have no need for ‘democratic values’—only for profit and growth.
Advocating for an alternative therefore begins today with resistance to militarisation. This means opposing the construction of new arms factories and the conversion of existing production for defence purposes. We have more than enough needs in infrastructure, green public transport and energy.
The anti-colonial struggle is a second necessity. No country should be the plaything of any superpower. The right to self-determination for every oppressed national group is essential in this regard. Self-determination is also economic self-determination. Every year, multinationals and governments illegally siphon off 90 billion dollars from the African continent. If you add to that the extraction of profits abroad, the figure is many times that amount. That money belongs to the workers there!
Only by placing international trade across all continents in the hands of the working class can we stop this plunder.
And what about the outbreak of war? How do we stop that?
In 1905, Sweden and Norway were on the brink of war. The working class stopped it. Swedish workers threatened a general strike. They ran a campaign making it clear that if they were called up to fight, they would turn their weapons against their own government. Even today, movements that dare to strike, block, challenge military blockades, even use sabotage, are the most inspiring for all the oppressed.
Numerous accounts make it clear that the Palestinians, even in the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe, draw courage from international solidarity. The strikes by dockworkers, the student occupations and the Sumud flotilla are just a few examples of this.
A new anti-war movement can build on these radical examples.
To defeat imperialism and fascist tendencies, we must build our self-organisation as a diverse working class. In our view, there is a need for a revolutionary struggle by the working class and oppressed communities for a different, democratic socialist system. On the basis of this struggle, we could consign imperialist wars and oppression to the past.