Global capitalism has entered a phase in which the driving (and driven) capitalists are taking off the gloves. Interests in accumulating profit and expanding power are no longer hidden behind supposed values, while military means to pursue them are normalized. In his contribution to the “Pluriverse of Peace” text series, Florin Poenaru discusses the geopolitical implications for Europe and how this transition – catalyzed by a new arms race – is accelerating the war against planetary human and other-than-human life, in short: the War on Earth.
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One of the most tragically ironic features of our collective predicament today is that talk of peace – at least in relation to Ukraine – is accompanied by pressure to increase military spending. ‘Fighting for peace’ thus ceases to be an oxymoron and describes a situation in which the only possibility for peace is the strength and willingness to wage war. At the height of the ‘struggle for peace’ in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania, there was this subversive continuation of the phrase: ‘We will fight for peace until nothing is left standing.’ The implication was that this construction of peace was already caught up in a very belligerent framework, that of the Cold War, and as such part of a geopolitical, military and ideological confrontation.
When Keir Starmer recently announced an increase in Britain’s defense budget, made possible by austerity measures such as cuts in international aid, the justification was that it would enable Britain to ‘fight for peace.’ This mirrors similar policies across Europe for increased military spending – e.g. the EU’s Rearm Europe plan – ostensibly to counter what is demonized as ‘the Russian threat.’ Surprised by the U.S. U-turn on Russia, Europe’s reaction has been to deliberately respond to an earlier U.S. demand: greater military spending, while presenting this stance as a form of principled dissidence. Once again, it seems that the only way to peace is to prepare for war.
Europe’s multivector calculus
The current warmongering in the EU is paradoxical. While Russia is responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, the war has been in the making for decades following NATO’s eastward expansion. One does not have to be a full member of the realist school to understand the basic historical facts. It was a project largely driven by U.S. interests in the region in the post-Cold War context, a fact many top US officials have acknowledged. The debacle in Ukraine, it should be emphasized, was not some kind of political miscalculation on the part of the U.S., but it was already inscribed in the post-communist trajectory. Before the Ukrainan war, however, Europe had its cake and ate it too.
On the one hand, cheap hydrocarbons from Russia, essential for powering the continent’s economic powerhouse; on the other, economically cheap (but politically rather expensive) NATO military protection via U.S. bases and personnel. The start of the war in Ukraine immediately eliminated the first advantage, leading to exorbitant energy prices across the continent, quickly followed by high rates of inflation. The second advantage is about to end if peace is achieved in Ukraine on terms favorable to Washington.
No wonder the people of Europe are confused. They are about to lose a war that they did not start, and they will also have to foot the bill for the reconstruction of Ukraine, as Wolfgang Streeck rightly predicted at the beginning of the conflagration. In typical fashion, the U.S. is retreating from a mess of its own making (from Vietnam to Afghanistan), leaving others to pick up the pieces.
The West without Europe
But the current situation is fundamentally different. First, the U.S. withdrawal from Ukraine is not simply a tactical retreat following the unintended consequences of an ill-conceived geopolitical strategy. It is much more than that. It signals a reorientation away from Europe and the North Atlantic as key sites of defense and policy. A large military presence of U.S. troops in Europe is no longer necessary for current U.S. interests. The counter-hegemonic forces against U.S. dominance no longer come from Europe, as they did in the 20th century (Germany before 1945, USSR after). In the famous words of Lord Ismay, ‘NATO was designed to keep the Americans in’ (in the North Atlantic and in Europe), ‘the Germans down, and the Russians out.’
Indeed, the increased U.S. military presence in Europe after 1945 and its policy toward the region were dictated by the twin imperatives of preventing the resurgence of Germany as a potential counter-hegemonic power and of dismantling the USSR as a counter-hegemonic pole, at least politically and ideologically, if not economically. In the end, what led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, apart from its internal contradictions, was the fact that it was militarily overmatched by the United States.
Militarism and actual military presence on the European continent, specifically directed against Soviet influence, eventually tilted the geopolitical balance in favor of the United States. The post-1989 eastward expansion was merely the inertial result of winning the Cold War, but it had little actual geopolitical value: Russia, the successor state to the USSR, was and remains – despite the inflammatory rhetoric in some corners – a state actor incapable of posing a counter-hegemonic threat in Europe or elsewhere. As countless studies and journalistic pieces have pointed out, current U.S. interests are focused on dealing with the very real and very concrete counter-hegemonic threat posed by China. It is therefore a strategy focused on the defense of the Western Hemisphere, from which Europe is largely excluded.
Rise of military Keynesianism
It seems that the current political leaders in Europe are the only ones who did not get the memo, and as such were caught off guard by the sudden U.S. retreat. Compounding the problem, and this is the second aspect of this particular constellation, is the deep economic crisis Europe finds itself in. While the U.S. and EU GDPs were comparable at the beginning of the crisis in 2009, the U.S. economy is now twice the size of Europe’s. The economic downturn triggered by the war in Ukraine has only exacerbated long, entrenched trends of rapid economic decline. One does not have to look too far for evidence, just take it straight from the horse’s mouth: the Draghi report on EU competitiveness. Diverting capital to investment in military equipment in such a context will only exacerbate the economic, social, and hence political ills that afflict the Union.
But at the same time, this generalized return to arms, heralded first by the need to send weapons to defend Ukraine and now to defend Europe after the U.S. withdrawal, may in fact dovetail with a broader capitalist imperative that goes beyond strict geopolitical calculations. The capitalist system in its current phase is plagued by falling rates of profit, stagflation, and large surpluses of cash liquidity lying idle in the absence of profitable investment opportunities. Investment in military industry appears to offer a way out of this malaise, promising to restore higher levels of profitability while addressing another major problem of the Western European and U.S. economies: rapid deindustrialization.
Resorting to this strategy of military Keynesianism has precedent. What jump-started the economies of Western Europe after World War II was not simply the injection of capital and technology through the Marshall Plan. More specifically, it was the onset of the Cold War, which increased the demand for military equipment. This effectively meant an increased demand for coal and steel as the primary materials for the post-war industrial boom. It is no coincidence that coal and steel were at the origin of the EU.
Monopolism and ‘military metaphysics’
Another aspect that increases the pressure for remilitarization is the monopolistic phase of contemporary capitalism. The main actors in the system are international and vertically integrated firms that are large enough not only to make competition impossible, but also to abolish market relations altogether, as Yannis Varoufakis has also noted, albeit from a different angle. Tech monopolies in the U.S. are now in the spotlight because of their alignment with Donald Trump’s presidency, but monopolistic firms are the main economic actors everywhere, be they investment funds or military corporations. They are in a unique position to shape state policies and demand protectionist policies and favorable conditions to transfer surplus capital to their own benefit. It is not simply a matter of extracting rent, but of reorganizing the entire economic space, whether national or international, to their advantage. Since these monopolies are structurally hostile to market competition, they seek to steer states toward protectionism rather than free trade in order to maintain their dominance.
Thus, there is a double movement within the capitalist system that is currently reinforcing the drive towards militarization: on the one hand, a geopolitical realignment in the system of states, and on the other, the increasing dominance of the monopoly corporations in a context of crisis of accumulation and subsequent economic downturn.
This geopolitical economy requires the proliferation of authoritarian leaders who are able to balance state and corporate interests in a context of transition and turbulence. This is the significance of the Trump presidency in the U.S., for example, and why his second term is so disorienting for those stuck in the previous paradigm. Socially, this authoritarian leadership necessarily fuels a social climate in which popular mobilization, ideological polarization, and the Schmittian friend-enemy dialectic are essential. Ideologically, it relies on what C.W. Mills called a ‘military metaphysics’: thinking of society through the eyes of a military general. In short, society must be defended.
Negation of life
What is left out of this rapid militarization, this fight for peace by military means, is of course social life itself, and more specifically the possibility of life on this planet. One of the main victims of this rearmament race will be the climate and the planetary ecosystems in general. The EU Commission is tacitly backing away from legislative measures to tackle climate change. And states that used to invest in climate protection are now justifying their cuts in this area by increased military spending. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, green capitalism, with its false promise of restoring profitability while saving the planet, is here to stay.
Of course, as a tool for a real transition to a better world, green capitalism was a dead end from the start. And in reality it has always been quite brown, as the fusion of Elon Musk’s ‘green’ monopolism with Donald Trump’s fossil authoritarianism shows. The question now is how ruthlessly and cynically the green card will be played as a moral card, or whether it will be avoided altogether. In other words, how bluntly will capitalism take off its gloves, and how much more devastating will the next phase be?
It is therefore important to remain skeptical when it comes to echoing complaints about ‘Europe’s decline’ or ‘Europe’s backwardness in the future market of the green economy’ or ‘Europe’s lack of military strength.’ It is very unlikely that real alternatives will emerge from this position of relative weakness, but there is certainly some room for maneuver in this situation in which Europe will not be able to practice dominance by simultaneously fighting for peace and the climate through military-backed market solutions, or, as Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki put it, by weaponizing environmentalism and environmentalizing war. However, chances are that the current EU leadership will try to do both while pretending to be on the moral high ground.
The dispute over Ukraine’s rare earth minerals is indicative of the dual war that is currently being waged: a traditional war between belligerents, and also a war against the planetary life and the environment at large – a War on Earth. Regardless of the outcome of this particular conflict, this dual war is bound to continue.