Diario Red editorial
Spain is not deviating even a millimeter from the European consensus. Despite the rhetorical slogans of ‘no to war,’ Sanchez himself has claimed as a personal achievement the tripling of military spending during his term.
Only a part of the political and media left dares to say—in the face of the bombardment of the systemic consensus—that this government is wholeheartedly embracing the worst rearmament we have ever seen.
This Wednesday, the 36th NATO summit began in Ankara with a clear message: European Union countries must continue to increase military spending at the behest of the US.
The fundamental cause of the old continent’s dizzying rearmament is none other than the exhaustion of its industrial capitalism in the face of China’s growing strength. While the Asian giant lagged behind Europe in technology and innovation, Germany and the other more industrialized member states were able to maintain a certain degree of strength in their core industries. A decade ago, it seemed difficult to imagine that Chinese cars could ever compete with Volkswagen. Today, it seems difficult to imagine that Volkswagen could compete with Chinese cars. Now that China appears to have all the elements to displace not only the European Union but also the US as the industrial hubs of high technology, Western capital has embarked on a desperate search for new profitable sectors. The exponential obsession with AI data centers is one of these sectors, but so too is undoubtedly arms manufacturing. In both cases, moreover, it has been accepted that the scheme for making this multi-billion-dollar investment is the transfer of macroeconomic amounts of public money to the private sector.
With this new massive expropriation of resources from the working class to the oligarchic class, the great European and American industrial fortunes seek to usher in a new cycle of capitalist accumulation that will allow them to continue generating double-digit profits for several more decades. To this end, they have not hesitated to incite the fury of war in Ukraine, sending tens of thousands of young Russians and Ukrainians to their deaths and refusing to pursue any peace agreement. After many years of provoking and threatening Russia on its own borders, the European Union as a whole has not hesitated to use the Russian invasion of 20% of Ukrainian territory to try to convince the populations of the 27 member states that any member state is currently in danger of being attacked. To the drums of war hammered not only by each and every head of government of the union but also by the unanimity of the systemic media, has been added the promise of prosperity and the creation of countless highly qualified jobs if we put our countries to work in the death industry.
As if this weren’t enough, this operation has coincided with the hemispheric withdrawal decided upon by the Trump administration and clearly outlined in its public National Security Strategy document. To amass sufficient forces for its priority battle against the Chinese giant, and in a time of declining US hegemony, the US has decided to withdraw from various theaters of war in order to focus entirely on what it considers its sphere of influence: the American continent, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego. To this end—and also to appease the MAGA movement, to whom he promised “America First” and whom he betrayed by unleashing the Iran-Iraq War on Netanyahu’s orders—Donald Trump has launched a fierce campaign pressuring his supposed European partners to increase military spending to historic levels so that the US can use that funding for other purposes. Furthermore, since the European arms industry is far behind the American one, the scheme has the added advantage of involving the transfer of tens of billions of euros of European money to Washington.
What this new NATO summit confirms is that all the countries of the European Union have decided to obey Donald Trump’s order and join forces. Hence, the most important event taking place in Ankara these days is not any of the meetings between heads of state, but rather the so-called NATO Defense Industry Forum, a parallel event where the heads of the military-industrial complex will watch the supposed representatives of popular sovereignty pass by and receive from each of them a blank check, funded with money that should be going to hospitals, schools, and the fight against poverty. Thus, NATO completely abandons the pretense that its objective could ever have been the defense of freedom and democracy—something very difficult to achieve in Turkey anyway—and makes it perfectly clear that its raison d’être is to enrich the warlords as the spearhead of an increasingly predatory and violent capitalism.
As far as our country is concerned, and despite the enormous propaganda efforts by Pedro Sanchez and his government partners, Spain is not deviating even a millimeter from the European consensus. Despite the rhetorical slogans of ‘no to war,’ Sanchez himself has claimed as a personal achievement the tripling of military spending during his term. Spain is currently the country in the European Union with the fastest-growing military expenditure, and this very Tuesday, on the eve of the NATO summit, the government approved—quietly and without even mentioning it at the Council of Ministers press conference—a transfer of more than 6 billion euros from other ministries to the war budget. One of the largest arms programs in which Spain will participate, the creation of a multinational fleet of Airbus A400M military aircraft, was kept secret by the Moncloa Palace so that Mark Rutte could reveal it on Wednesday, with the aim of pleasing and appeasing Donald Trump. If we also consider the latest SIPRI report, which confirms that 49% of the military equipment Spain imports comes from the US, the country’s status as a military vassal of Washington is effectively established.
But faced with this tangible reality, Pedro Sanchez has discovered that it is politically advantageous to lie to the Spanish people and tell them he is doing the exact opposite of what he is actually doing. At the previous NATO summit, he signed the increase in military spending to 5% of GDP behind closed doors—where he remained silent—and then went on to announce at a press conference that Spain refused to accept this increase. In recent months, he has approved a sham arms embargo against Israel, and the Minister of Defense herself has admitted that we continue to buy weapons from the genocidal regime. Sanchez has also proclaimed his “no to war” stance, supposedly denying the US the use of bases on Spanish soil for the attack against Iran, but various studies and researchers have demonstrated that the flights providing logistical and personnel support for the illegal attack landed and took off normally from Rota and Morón.
How then could the president have deceived so many people if the material evidence is so overwhelming? For several reasons. First, because Donald Trump has decided it suits him to insult the only country that shows even the slightest verbal dissent, thus disciplining all the others. Donald Trump knows perfectly well that Pedro Sanchez is obeying his orders and complying with all his demands, but he believes it gives him a tactical advantage to publicly say the opposite of what is true. Something, moreover, extremely common in his modus operandi. Domestically, there is another convergence of discourse that reinforces Sanchez’s false pacifist image. What is happening in Spain is that, for different reasons, the right-wing media and the progressive media consider it beneficial to their interests to defend the same lie. The progressive movement knows that the Spanish people are largely pacifist, and therefore understands that portraying Sanchez as Donald Trump’s nemesis and the only leader who has refused to rearmament is useful for boosting the PSOE’s electoral prospects, even though it’s a false narrative. The political and media right, for its part, repeats the same falsehood but for a different reason. The political and media right also tells us that Sanchez is confronting Donald Trump, but, for them, this is irresponsible since they believe it’s obligatory to obey Washington to protect Spain’s interests. Finally, Sanchez’s coalition partners are also obliged to spread this lie, since the alternative would be admitting that they are part of the most bellicose government since the restoration of democracy.
Only a segment of the political and media left dares to say—in the face of the onslaught of the systemic consensus—that this government is wholeheartedly embracing the worst rearmament we have ever seen, thus mortgaging the future of our public services for decades to come. In these dark days, as the warlords toast the success of their violent plan for global expropriation in Ankara, it is crucial to listen to the few voices that choose not to succumb to the overwhelming hegemonic message and to denounce the biggest lie of all.
