No to NATO/EU war!

Britain is out of the EU, yet not fully liberated because we remain a member of NATO, as well as being signed up to the defence structure of the EU. We are bound by both to cooperate militarily.

NATO describes the EU as “a unique and essential partner”. So we need to understand that special relationship – the EU and NATO – and how the British government forms a collaborative threesome in addition to the US.

NATO chiefs say we have already been at war for two years – not cold war, not hot war, but a new form – “hybrid war” – with presumed Russian cyber-attacks on business and industry here, and computer-savvy British teenagers recruited as proxies to commit crimes of sabotage such as arson or hacking.

Then up jumps Poland’s Donald Tusk and invokes Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, one perilous step away from Article 5’s instructions – an attack on one demands retaliation by all.

British escalation

And which country is first to answer Tusk’s call to escalate? Britain – offering to escalate operations along the EU’s eastern flank. Operation Eastern Sentry involves hundreds of British personnel doing NATO’s work.

‘And which country is first to answer Tusk’s call to escalate? Britain…’

NATO’s new head Mark Rutte instructs our armed forces to shift to “a more lethal wartime mindset”. That word “lethal” has upset a lot of people who had believed in NATO as a peacekeeping force. So prime minister Keir Starmer offers British boots on the ground – the so–called peacekeeping boots that people remember from Yugoslavia and Afghanistan – the boots that trample on sovereignty, and prolong hostilities.

Now NATO overtly acts to protect finance capital worldwide. And that makes Starmer so proud, he repeatedly claims that “Britain stands ready to act” – “stands ready to support any further NATO deployments”, and a whole chorus of Labour MPs sing of unshakeable commitment to NATO.

Storm missiles

Last year, British Storm Shadow missiles were authorised for use inside Russia. This escalation by NATO forces violated an undertaking that they were for use only in Ukraine and prompted the warning that British military facilities could face retaliation. We hear now of Russia blocking SKYNET, Britain’s space-based communications satellites (operated by Babcock International, British-based, for now).

NATO expansion multiplies the likelihood that Article 5 might be invoked. The more members, the greater the risk. The rules governing Article 5 have been increasingly bent to include non-members – 35 so-called partners for peace – many taking part in exercises simulating response to an attack on a member state.

For example, manoeuvres take place in the Nevada desert clearly simulating war against China. War over Taiwan is predicted within two years. It would be NATO’s war not ours.

China is accused of weaponising its industrial and economic superiority. Sinophobes accusing the government of appeasement should consider the real reason China occupies such a dominant position in British industry, technology and in our universities. For decades, the British ruling class has pursued a policy of dependence on foreign investment, imports and funding. It has sold off its assets, destroyed its industrial base, and through the City of London subjected the working class to the predations of the market.

It’s not the Chinese the British government has kowtowed to, it’s finance capital, the real enemy of workers.

In June Starmer brought out his updated National Security Strategy. With no shame it says, “Foreign policy should answer directly to the concerns of working people…Wars drive up their bills”. The Strategy views “higher living standards as an essential national security goal”.

Then, the Defence Industrial Strategy was published in September. This contains Starmer’s big PR reveal – his “Defence Dividend” – priming us to think of NATO and war as a public benefit.

In that strategy, the MOD credits the war in Ukraine with a “rapid, continual cycle of innovation between industry and the front line”. It’s saying, technical innovation is defeating Putin and is the way forward for NATO, fuelled by flows of venture capital, private equity, public-private partnerships and the like.

The cost

Let’s look at the cost of being in NATO’s war. NATO has demanded that defence spending rise to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, and to 4.1 per cent by 2027. Does this meet working class concerns about the cost of living? Starmer agreed to it, saying “it honours our commitment to be a leader in NATO”, and the EU congratulated him for “doing the right thing”.

Britain is NATO’s third biggest spender after the US and Germany. This includes the cost of supplying a nuclear deterrent specifically at the disposal of NATO allies. Britain is the only European country to offer a nuclear deterrent to defend the NATO allies. And then there’s the cost of taking part in NATO-led operations – on average 14 of these each year from 2015 to 2023.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has added to the expense. She calls for a “drone wall” costing billions on the EU’s eastern flank, and surveillance from space. She announced a “drone alliance” with Kyiv at 6 billion euros out of a 100 billion euro loan from the EU.

Defence contractors say parts are already deployed and fully automated to intercept. They are waiting to see whether countries other than the Baltic states want to invest.

‘The EU has its eyes on Britain as a source of joint borrowing. That would be by means of an EU defence bond. Was that the idea all along?’

The EU has its eyes on Britain. A policy paper reveals that the EU views Starmer’s Coalition of the Willing, with Britain at its heart, as a potential source of joint borrowing. That would be by means of an EU defence bond, which they say could be issued within EU rules only by a coalition of countries. Was that the idea all along?

We’d do better to remove ourselves altogether from further entanglement in coalitions and build up our own defences suited to our own needs, not the needs of NATO – not to Rutte’s dramatic instruction to “turbocharge defence production with a 400 per cent quantum leap”.

We must make a switch from finance capital which controls us, to industry and production which we could control. Funding for our industry and services is no longer controlled by Brussels. It must not be controlled by NATO or the US. If you want peace, why put your trust in people who want war?

De-escalate

From this moment in history, de-escalation must be the way forward for Britain, and the best way to do that is by leaving NATO.

Instead of producing to serve foreign powers, we must use our resources for what we need at home. The task of workers now is to rebuild and maintain an independent industrial base – including defence, our nuclear deterrent, nuclear reactors, electricity grids, steel and chemicals, oil refineries, undersea cables, railways and energy pipelines. If attacked we would defend ourselves.

With the working class in control we could build up our armed forces and train them for peacetime as much as military work – for coastal defence, and for protection of trading and fishing vessels, our sea routes, and our farmland.

• This article is an edited extract from the introduction to a CPBML public meeting in London in October