The pact between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to divide up Europe and impose reactionary warmongering, pro-austerity and authoritarian regimes within their respective spheres of influence.
In the short term, this plan involves crushing the Ukrainian people in the east and supporting far-right, Trumpist, nationalist and sovereignist parties in the west. Both Trump and Putin are relying on social atomisation and Europe’s disintegration to achieve this aim.
Beyond that, the two despots have their own agendas: for one, separating Russia from China; the other, restoring Russia to the borders of the former Tsarist empire. As with the Hitler-Stalin pact to partition Poland prior to World War II, about faces are likely, depending on the correlation of forces. The threat of new wars will be a determining factor.
The Trump-Putin pact has plunged the European capitalist class’ post-war project into deep crisis — that of building an ultra-liberal European Union as US imperialism’s privileged ally and NATO’s European pillar.
The goal was to position itself as a major player in the struggle for global hegemony. But this project now faces the threat of bankruptcy.
In response, the European ruling class is scrambling to come up with a project that is even more closely aligned with the interests of big business. The Moscow-Washington pact has served as as the excuse to accelerate in this direction: full-throttle remilitarisation, more austerity and gifts to the bosses, the rollback of already inadequate ecological measures, toughening shameful policies of migrant deportations — while kowtowing to Trump in the hope of grabbing a slice of Ukraine’s “reconstruction”.
European governments baulked at providing Ukrainians with the resources to legitimately defend themselves. But no expense is too much when it comes to weapons for a “powerful Europe”. The dogma of “balancing the budget” now no longer applies — except to “justify” austerity, repression and unabated ecological destruction.
“Defending Ukraine” is being used as a pretext. In reality, EU leaders have applied the brake on support for Kyiv for the past three years.
Despite everything, Ukrainian people continue to heroically resist. Meanwhile, Russia is exhausted due to suffering enormous losses in terms of soldiers and materiel.
If Ukraine falls, Moldova and Georgia will be in Russia’s sights. But beyond that, Putin hopes to rely on political decomposition rather than military conquest to increase his influence. The idea that his army is preparing to sweep across western Europe is pure manipulation.
The EU could help destabilise Putin’s neo-fascism by providing Ukraine with supplies from its existing military stocks, cancelling Ukraine’s debt, transfering the $200 billion in frozen Russian assets to Kyiv, applying a special levy on large fortunes, supporting civil society, and initiating a broad internationalist mass mobilisation for democracy and peace (through the dissolution of all military blocs and respect for borders). This would also open up possibilities for a different future for Europe and the world.
But we cannot expect anything from an undemocratic EU that supports [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people, is responsible for the deaths of thousands of migrants at sea every year, imposes unequal trade on Global South countries, and defines itself as “an open market economy with free competition”.
The EU’s “defence policy” is a policy for defending capitalist interests — at the expense of workers, youth, women, oppressed peoples and the planet.
If the peoples of Europe want to avoid being caught up in the struggle between the US and China for world hegemony (with Russia as their pivot), and be agents of their own common destiny, then they must unite their social movements and trade unions in a struggle for another Europe — a democratic, social, open, generous and ecosocialist Europe.
A Europe that brings big business to heel by socialising finance, energy, the arms industry and other key sectors.
A Europe that raises wages, improves social security, strengthens public services, fights inequalities and eliminates poverty.
A Europe that finances an ecological transition worthy of this name — that means no fossil fuels, nuclear power, unproven technologies or agribusiness.
A Europe that cancels the debts of Global South countries, renounces neo-colonial plundering and transfers technologies that are essential for decarbonising the economy.
A Europe where the working classes are willing to ensure their own defence if required, and where universal military service replaces professional armies.
The path to building this Europe is political — it involves fighting against nationalist tendencies toward disintegration and mobilising to elect a European-wide constituent assembly.
The situation is urgent. Europe and the world are at a crossroads. Democratic and social rights first emerged in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries as a result of labour’s struggle against capitalist exploitation.
The future of these rights are now at stake as despots dream of imposing the unlimited diktat of capital while the planet burns.
[First published in French at . Translated and edited for clarity for 鶹ý by Federico Fuentes.]