By Steve Bell
NATO’s defeat
The decision of Trump’s administration to enter peace negotiations with Russia represents a major shift in U.S. foreign policy. As Vijay Prashad has written, there is a reversal of Kissinger’s strategy of making peace with China in order to isolate the USSR.(1) Now the US wants peace with Russia in order to isolate and attack China.
The imperative behind this shift is that the Trump administration has recognised that NATO’s war in Ukraine is lost. This is the most serious defeat in NATO’s history. Trump’s move is facilitated by having not been involved in the war’s launch or pursuit. Biden will have this failure as his legacy.
Of course, this move to end a hopeless war does not sit so lightly on West European shoulders. The EU Commission, the majority of the EU’s sovereign governments, and both the last Tory and current Labour government, have all invested huge political and material capital in this failure. It’s a twofold embarrassment now – having been caught out and being unable to influence the US government’s decision.
Whatever the bluster, the facts are clear. On February 12th, this year, US Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, said that NATO membership for Ukraine was not a “realistic” outcome for peace negotiations; and that it was also “unrealistic” to try to return Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders. This recognises that the two decisive war aims of the US/NATO will not be reached. In turn, this recognises that the two decisive war aims of Russia – to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine, and to stop the Kyiv government’s assaults on the Russian speaking national minority – will likely be achieved. Peace negotiations will likely take considerable time, and face many obstacles. But the outlines of any final settlement will incorporate these stances.
Deepening the Cold War against China
Trump’s pivot is neither “isolationist”, nor an expression of a “peaceful” turn. It is a choice that US imperialism cannot confront both Russia and China at the same time. Settling with Russia allows for a greater concentration on the political/military build up against China.
It is also being carried out by a government which has threatened to take over Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Gaza. Trump’s government is continuing the bipartisan US policy of relying upon its unmatched military power to overturn the economic powers in the Global South whose growth is higher and more sustained than the US. Trump’s actions are conditioned by the reality of “hyper-imperialism” in the same way that Biden’s administration was.(2)
Certainly there is no attempt to reduce military expenditure as such. The touted “reduction” in Pentagon budgets turns out to be not an 8% cut but actually an 8% reallocation across budgets to better pursue the new line. The phenomenal levels of spending (3) will continue – just with a greater focus on the “Indo-Pacific” – i.e. against China.
What is different is that while withdrawing from the kinetic theatre of Ukraine, the Trump government is mobilising an increase in US-aligned military forces. He is ensuring that the European governments engage in a new arms race in preparation for a later confrontation with Russia.
Despite their grumbles and whinging, the fact is that the West European and British governments are doing exactly what Trump is directing them to. The extraordinary financial increases allocated to arms production and spending authorised by the EU Commission, and the French, German and British governments are motivated by their determination to maintain their, subordinate, role in NATO under Trump.
US hegemony is taken as the very platform of their existence – having made themselves incapable of any independent role in the era of hyper-imperialism. They damaged their economies in line with Biden’s pursuit of war in Ukraine. Now they are going to wreck the living standards of their own populations to ensure that Trump’s pursuit of war with China can be sustained.
Alongside the military reorientation towards China, Trump has deepened the economic offensive against China through a further imposition of tariffs. Trump has also utilized tariffs against “allies” as he tries to wrench around the US’s relative decline. This is unlikely to be effective, not just because of the inevitability of retaliatory tariffs. But also because US consumers face higher prices and US capital faces greater uncertainty.
China is not going to capitulate as the US intensifies its economic war against China. Wang Wen looked at the experience of Trump’s first-term trade war and the prospects for the second-term trade war. He writes: “…Trump’s tariffs and trade restrictions pushed China to strengthen its ties with the non-Western world. Through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative, China deepened its relations with Global South nations. Between 2018 and 2024, trade with these nations grew by over 40% while China’s reliance on the US for trade fell from 17% to 11%. Trump’s trade war with China has driven a rapid restructuring of global trade, leading more Chinese to recognise that the world is far larger than the United States.” (4)
Trump thrashes against the multi-polar world
Many commentators appear dumbfounded at the spectacle of a US administration attacking close allies, alongside renewed attacks on established “enemies” in the Global South. In reality, the change in the world order preceded Trump’s re-election.
In 1993, the Global North accounted for 57.2% of the world’s GDP, while the Global South accounted for 42.8%. By 2022 those numbers were completely reversed, with the Global South now accounting for 59.4%, and the Global North now 40.6%.
In 1993, the G7 countries accounted for 45.4% of world GDP, compared to 16.7% for the BRICS countries. By 2022 the G7 accounted for 31.5% of world GDP, and BRICS for 30.3%. In 2023 Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined BRICS, making it definitely the larger bloc. This has been significantly reinforced in January 2025, when Indonesia joined BRICS, it being the 7th largest economy, and 4th largest national population.
In these global shifts, it is China that is recognised as the most influential and dynamic force in the new economic multi-polarity. Comparisons between the Chinese and US economies absolutely illuminate the major dynamics of the international political situation.
Based on IMF data, using purchasing power parity estimates, in 1993, the US accounted for 20% of world GDP, with China on 5%. By 2022, the US held 15.5% and China held 18.4%. Since 2022, the Chinese economy has been growing at around twice the rate of the US. The IMF estimates are that by 2026, the Chinese economy will be 35% larger than the US. (5)
These extraordinary developments are the whole reason for the belligerence of successive US governments. It is not some fanciful mission to “confront autocratic powers” driving US foreign policy. It is an attempt to use military means to upend the dynamics of peaceful economic endeavours. Trump is thrashing against the rise of the multi-polar world.
Rewriting the post-World War 2 order in Europe?
The sharpness of Trump’s turn has led some bourgeois politicians, and even some in the peace movement, to suggest that the US will no longer underwrite the “security” of Europe. This is supposedly a rewriting of the post-WWII order in Europe. Actually, there is no evidence that the US intends to withdraw from its leading position in Europe. The many US bases are to remain, and the US is increasing its forward deployment of nukes inside Europe, including in Lakenheath in Britain.
The confusion is not surprising. Massive resources, both lethal and financial were utilised in pursuit of NATO’s goals in Ukraine. Alongside this, huge state and civil society resources were mobilised in justifying government support for the war in Ukraine. Arguably this may have been the most intensive single ideological campaign since WWII.
From February 2022 until late in 2024 the social atmosphere in most European countries was completely polarised in pursuit of a NATO-led victory for Ukraine. This was with no hesitation in rejecting either negotiations with Russia, or a ceasefire. The US/NATO narrative created a bipartisan atmosphere in most European parliaments where government and opposition were united against an unarguable wrong needing to be righted through ever escalating methods and weapons.
Now, the prime motivating force in the war, US imperialism, has turned. Many politicians and political journalists feel bereft of the moral purpose they invested in NATO’s proxy war. Suddenly, it appears to be a simple expression of Realpolitik – the US President publicly humiliates the beatified Zelensky, and proposes a substantial seizure of Ukrainian resources as payment for the support given.
This sense of abandonment gives a particular charge to the new demands of the US government for a major arms drive by European governments. Having been “abandoned” once, is it possible a second time? So then, no question that Europe needs to defend itself regardless of the cost to its welfare system, or to the majority of the population.
Instead of facing up to failure in Ukraine, there is a displacement of anger and fear towards the US government. A government whose authority is such that it can negotiate with Russia directly, without the involvement of West European governments, or even the Ukrainian government.
This exclusion is not a permanent shift – just a refusal to accommodate the niceties and hypocrisies of European diplomacy. The US is not abandoning Europe, or NATO. It is merely pursuing a course the President outlined in his election campaign. A course which had been widely debated in US foreign policy circles after the failure of the Ukrainian “Spring Offensive”.
This is not to suggest there won’t be a crisis in Europe. The impact of the arms race will have a terrible effect upon Europe’s populace. But it will be up to Europe’s governments to deal with the fallout – the US government has other priorities. And, of course, US governments have long suggested Europe’s welfare state model was unsustainable.
Macron and Starmer rescue everybody, and nobody
The centre of the rearmament race in Western Europe is currently dominated by the efforts of its two nuclear powers, France and Britain. For Macron and Starmer the chance to conjure up the ghost of international influence is a welcome relief from domestic unpopularity.
Macron is using the independence of France’s 300 nukes as the basis for a discussion with other EU nations on a common nuclear safety net. He has offered to “open the strategic debate” that will last for several months to determine “if there are new co-operations that may emerge”. Expressions of interest have been made by the German, Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian governments. The British government is expected to join the discussion.
France does not take part in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, unlike Britain. Hence its weapons are not already deployed for Europe’s “security”, unlike the UK. But Macron’s illusion of free resource deployment makes a reassuring sight for European politicians suffering from the phantom of US withdrawal.
Starmer’s conjuring is more ambitious. He is calling up the ghost of Iraq by re-establishing a “coalition of the willing” in support of overt intervention inside Ukraine. To date the willing is around 30 countries, though most lack the will to deliver actual troops. Britain, France and Australia are so willing. And British officials report from discussions that a multi-national force of “up to 30,000” troops could be mobilised.
The coalition bears an entirely ethereal character. Zelensky has stated that he believes a European peacekeeping force would have to be at least 200,000 strong to have any real effect. Starmer has stated that any European troops would require US air cover and support, which Trump has already absolutely rejected. Russia has declared the presence of troops from European NATO countries in Ukraine as “completely unacceptable”, regardless of their number of missions. Starmer has yet to explain how these obstacles will be surmounted.
None of which has prevented Britain’s panoply of belligerent politicians and commentators puffing over Starmer’s leadership, statesmanship, and new found purpose. In a country drowning in nostalgia for lost empire, Starmer’s revival of imperial mission, however illusory, has a ready audience.
Shills for the shelling
A couple of examples, from within labour movement circles, illustrate this. On the 27th February, Labour List published an article by Ed Owen with the suitably hysterical title, “The US sell out of Ukraine can be Starmer’s moment to define the purpose of his government”. This breathlessness continues: “With the post-war international order crumbling around us it falls to Keir Starmer to seize what is a historic opportunity (and challenge!), and recent events suggest he both understands this responsibility and is willing to drive through the change necessary to achieve it.” The article deflates to the single conclusion that Europe and Britain must rapidly rearm. Exactly as Trump is directing.
No better is the speech Lord Hain gave to the Lords on 20th March, where he urged Chancellor Reeves to “break free from Treasury orthodoxy” in these “exceptional and exceptionally dangerous times”, in order to buy and build more arms. After all the arrival of Donald Trump has “transformed everything”. Inevitably, a WWII parallel must be drawn. Hain stated that borrowing had been used by Britain to rearm in the run up to 1939, and without it, “Hitler would have won”. Now the loss of 27 million Soviet citizens, and 30 million Chinese citizens must not be mentioned in any reference to the defeat of fascism – as Russia and China are our enemies now. Just as the people who liberated Auschwitz must not be invited to its 80th anniversary commemoration.
Hain helpfully suggests that the additional borrowing could be achieved by issuing defence bonds. That patriotic manoeuvre will obviously lessen the pain for the public in meeting Trump’s demands, and the debt thereby created.
The delirium of the arms race defies all practical evidence. Starmer and friends are insistent this will expand the economy and create jobs. As Michael Burke has written: ” … the ideas behind military Keynesianism (and a left variant known as the ‘permanent arms economy’) were tested to destruction in the Viet Nam war. The US government granted itself unlimited published and covert budgets to fight the war and almost bankrupted itself in the process, as well as destroying the Bretton Woods economic system and unleashing global inflation.”
And on job creation: “…military spending has one of the lowest ’employment multipliers’ of all economic categories. It ranks 70th in terms of employment it generates out of 100. Health is number one. Everything from agriculture to energy to food manufacture, chemicals, iron and steel, to computers, construction and a host of others in between all have greater ’employment multipliers’ than military spending. Investing in health is two and a half times more ‘jobs rich’ than investment in military spending.”(6)
In Germany, Chancellor Merz decided to relax debt rules and authorise a €550 billion package for arms and environment spending. Analysis by Moody’s found this would lead to rising debt levels while adding only 0.1% to GDP , as most of the money will go on military spending. The EU commission’s €150 billion package is unlikely to fare better. And another perspective was offered in a recent Financial Times article. With French and British nuclear war heads totalling around 600, a further 1000 would be required to “really influence” Russian decision making. Acquiring these would require a decade of spending around 6-7% of European GDP.(7)
The Russian “threat”
In all the jingoism, Russophobia, and moral re-branding of weapons of mass destruction, there are few serious questions about the reality of the Russian “threat”. There is no explanation of why the Russian government would want to attack NATO members.
Certainly there is a reason for the bad conscience. The eastward expansion of NATO was always opposed by Russia as a threat to its independent existence. The 2014 US-organised coup in Ukraine was to prevent the Ukrainian government developing the Ukrainian economy in its Eurasian context. The coup inevitably created a government which treated the Russian speaking national minority as an obstacle to European and NATO integration. That government attacked the national, religious, linguistic and political representation of the minority. The agreements intended to resolve the conflict, the Minsk Accords, were, as Angela Merkel revealed, merely cover to further mobilise against the national minority and expand NATO. The attacks by Kyiv on east Ukraine led to 14,000 deaths prior to February 2022.
The refusal to enter into a security agreement with Russia in the negotiations before February 2022, was based on the assumption that Russia would neither defend the national minority, nor actually resist Ukraine’s incorporation into NATO. The thousands of ceasefire breaches, by the Ukrainian government, immediately prior to February 24th 2022, were most likely a prelude to a full scale invasion and military assault upon the autonomous governance of the national minority. The vetoing of all peace efforts in the first period of the war, including Boris Johnson errand running for the US, were entirely in the US/NATO remit. That policy has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian deaths.
In these processes, we can see why the Ukrainian war was an inevitable product of NATO’s eastward expansion. But of these issues, nothing must now be said.
Instead, the fiction that NATO is a purely defensive alliance must be restated. NATO’s wars, without UN sanction, against poorer countries, such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, alongside wars conducted by leading NATO members in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, are given justifiable motivations. Justifiable – perhaps or perhaps not. Defensive – absolutely and clearly not. In not one of these instances was NATO as an organisation, or NATO members, under threat of invasion or attack by the governments of these benighted countries.
Campaigning against war hysteria and the new arms race
The anti-war movement is now in a position to emerge from the isolation that NATO’s war in Ukraine imposed upon it. It has two priorities.
Firstly, to use its voice to insist upon a peaceful settlement of the war. The conditions for this are negotiations, a ceasefire, exclusion of NATO membership for Ukraine, and an acknowledgement of national rights for the Russian speaking minority.
Negotiations and a ceasefire are perhaps easily understood. But the exclusion of NATO membership is absolutely fundamental, given NATO’s promotion of the war. Equally, the refusal of the Kyiv government, with NATO’s support, to recognise the rights of the national minority has been responsible for armed actions against nearly a third of the population since 2014. This has rendered a peaceful settlement within the Ukrainian state impossible. Now it must be acknowledged that the national minority has the right to decide its future relations, if any, with Kyiv.
The second priority is for the anti-war movement to unite the broadest possible opposition to the arms race initiated by Trump in Europe and Britain. For this it is not necessary to agree on who bears precise responsibilities for the catastrophic war. Nor is it necessary to agree precisely how the settlement should be reached. But it is necessary and possible to organise together against the huge diversion of economic resources to prepare for a later war against Russia, or an earlier one against China.
As difficult as these tasks appear, the fact is that NATO’s war-mongering has taken a setback. Nor is it surprising that almost the entirety of the Global South was not actively persuaded to assist with the Ukraine war or sanctions on Russia. So if we lift our heads we can see that larger numbers will be prepared to stand up against another such debacle.
The opposition may begin from concern about the slashing of the aid budget, the destruction of welfare provision and services, the environmental consequences of further warfare, or the obscene glorification of arms production. Whatever people’s starting point, a movement is necessary against Trump’s attempt to harness the economies and peoples of Europe to new and globe-threatening wars. The minority already stirring in the labour movement have a crucial role yet to play.
- “Donald Trump’s Reverse Kissinger Strategy”, Vijay Prashad, No Cold War Perspectives, published by No Cold War February 2025
- “Hyper-imperialism : A Dangerous Decadent New Stage”, published by Tricontinental, January 2024
- “Actual U.S. Military Spending Reached $1.537 Trillion in 2022-More than Twice Acknowledged Level: New Estimates Based on U.S. National Accounts”, Gisela Cernadas & John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review, November 1st 2023
- “Trump 2.0 – The view from China”, Wang Wen, No Cold War Perspectives, published by No Cold War March 2025
- All figures in this section taken from “Hyper-imperialism”
- “Increasing military spending will not raise living standards”, Mick Burke, Socialist Economic Bulletin, 28 February 2025
- “Why Europe cannot rely on French nuclear umbrella alone”, Leila Abboud,Ben Hall & John Paul Rathbone, Financial Times, 18th March 2025
Image: US President Trump signs executive orders shortly after taking office. Photo by the White House, photo cropped.
The above article was originally published here by Labour Outlook.