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Alex Lo

It looks like a modern free verse, an ode to war or at least a war economy. New Nato chief Mark Rutte’s latest speech on the state of the military alliance comes with stanzas of varying lengths and even some sentences that rhyme. But any way you look at it, it’s a call to arms. As laid out on the Nato website, and titled To Prevent War, Nato Must Spend More:
From Brussels, it takes one day to drive to Ukraine.
One day –
That’s how close the Russian bombs are falling.
It’s how close the Iranian drones are flying.
And not very much further, the North Korean soldiers are fighting.
Every day, this war causes more devastation and death.
Putin is trying to wipe Ukraine off the map.
He is trying to fundamentally change the security architecture that has kept Europe safe for decades.
And he is trying to crush our freedom and way of life.
However, it’s not just Russia, but also China:
Putin believes that ‘a serious, irreconcilable struggle is unfolding for the formation of a new world order.’
These are his own words.
Others share his belief.
Not least China.
Conclusions? Whether or not it continues the war in Ukraine, Europe must go on a war footing, by switching to a war economy, with or without American support. Russia has been running as a war economy; that’s how its GDP numbers and the value of the rouble hold up. The European Union, led by Nato, now wants to do the same. More poetry from Rutte:
Danger is moving towards us at full speed …
This requires us all to be faster and fiercer.
It is time to shift to a wartime mindset.
And turbocharge our defence production and defence spending.
On defence production, I am convinced that ramping it up is a top priority …
I have visited engineers at Thales in France, a Rheinmetall factory – no, not in Germany, in Italy and Turkish Aerospace Industries in Turkey and I saw the capabilities they provide.
And I have met with industry representatives who have told me that they require – what they require, to increase their production.
Seen in this light, a “threat” by US president-elect Donald Trump that Nato countries must ramp up military spending to 5 per cent of GDP is more like a “good cop, bad cop” routine, with Nato being the good one.
In a joint interview with My Take, two European intellectuals Santiago Zabala and Claudio Gallo go further and argue the EU leadership wants a war economy to address its own domestic woes. “Europe is going fast in war mode,” said Zabala, a research professor at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University and Gallo, former foreign editor of Italy’s La Stampa newspaper. “What the citizens are thinking – about cutting social services in favour of military expenditures – is a question that doesn’t interest the Atlantic Alliance’s leaders or the European Union.”
A war economy is the price to be paid by ordinary Europeans so the US can concentrate on China. But it won’t resolve deep-seated domestic social and economic problems.
“The European crisis is bound to deepen, bringing turmoil and political instability,” Zabala and Gallo said. “The European elites are becoming the enemies of the European people … The political direction of European countries is increasingly decided from above, and the popular will is a kind of myth kept artificially by a ritualised election in which the candidates are actually decided upstream … Someone is saying that Trump wants to freeze the confrontation with Russia to dedicate himself to the one with China. It seems too late now to be able to divide Russia and China, which were pushed together precisely by the aggressive American stance.”


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Nato

New Nato chief has penned a war poem for Europe and America

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks during a press conference in Brussels on December 4. Photo: dpa

Trump symptom of pathological imperialism of US foreign policy

US president-elect Donald Trump. Photo: Getty Images

Countries get on their high horse while being accessories to murder

A child looks on following an Israeli strike at a post office where people were sheltering in the central Gaza Strip on December 12. Photo: Reuters

China and the paranoid style in US foreign policy

The US Capitol Christmas tree. Photo: AFP

This Week in Asia

Opinion

Whether or not the Ukraine conflict continues, the European Union has been tasked with containing Russia while the US aims to focus on China


Whether or not the Ukraine conflict continues, the European Union has been tasked with containing Russia while the US aims to focus on China.


My Take

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

My Take | New Nato chief has penned a war poem for Europe and America

Whether or not the Ukraine conflict continues, the European Union has been tasked with containing Russia while the US aims to focus on China