IMI-Standpunkt 2025/022en
Europe’s White Paper: Full steam ahead for war
Where is the left-wing resistance?
von: Christoph Marischka | Veröffentlicht am: 26. März 2025
If it is indeed true that the election of Donald Trump and the negotiations for a ceasefire in Ukraine represent the greatest upheaval for Europe since the end of the Second World War, then it would certainly appear as a pressing necessity to analyse the causes, explore realistic options and initiate strategic realignments. Yet political leaders in Germany and Europe are doing just the opposite. Debt programmes for an unprecedented arms build-up are being launched at warp speed. On 19 March 2025, in the midst of ongoing negotiations for a ceasefire in Ukraine, the still relatively new EU Commission adopted a „White Paper“ that reflects the current widespread panic about a supposedly imminent attack by Russia on EU states. Hysteria and opportunism characterize the entire text. Even on a linguistic level, the document smacks of a hastily written and poorly translated draft of a lobby paper by the armaments industry: no balanced or diplomatic formulation, no consideration for divergent interests within and between the member states, no room for ambivalence.
White Paper: armaments mania in lieu of strategy
Even beyond stylistic issues, it is difficult to take the White Paper seriously as a strategy paper. A strategy paper should actually consider various scenarios, contain a realistic assessment of future developments and own capabilities and define goals. However, nothing of this sort can be found in the Commissions White Paper. It only recognises one goal: unrestrained and accelerated armament at all levels and by (almost) all means with the aim of being able to wage a major land war by 2030 even without the USA.
Throughout the document, Europe is depicted as threatened from all sides, including from within, as its own „rules-based order“ continues to decline. The greatest threat is of course Russia, but China is also mentioned several times, as is the increasing „[s]trategic competition … in our wider neighbourhood, from the Arctic to the Baltic to the Middle East and North Africa“. In addition, the document lists other threats from technological change, migration to climate change, and elsewhere from terrorism, extremism, organised crime to cyber criminals. The White Paper has only one answer to this very cursory list of threats: „The moment has come for Europe to re-arm.“ It contains multiple references to „the real prospect of full-scale war“.
In fact, the word „scale“ appears 24 times in the 22 pages of the document. It is serious in its aim to think big, whether in terms of weapons systems, troop deployments or the economies of scale to be achieved through the mass production of armaments: tanks, drones and ammunition are finally to be rolled out en masse.
No alternative: Ukraine must continue to fight!
The White Paper makes it very clear that regardless of the negotiations for a ceasefire in Ukraine, the war there will not be over for Europe. „The future of Ukraine is fundamental to the future of Europe as a whole“ … „Ukraine is currently the frontline of European defence, resisting a war of aggression driven by the single greatest threat to our common security.“ … „[T]he future of Europe is being determined by the fight in Ukraine“ … „Ukraine … is the key theater to define the new international order“. Accordingly, Europe’s rearmament should essentially serve the goal of „maintaining and expanding military support for Ukraine“.
It should be noted that this document was published while the USA, Russia and Ukraine were negotiating a ceasefire. However, the document does not even consider the possibility of a peace agreement, let alone lasting peace and disarmament efforts. One almost gets the impression that the hasty publication of this rearmament programme is intended as diplomatic sabre-rattling in order to guarantee the EU (or the European leading powers and their Baltic chain dogs) a place at the negotiating table after all with the threat: ‚there will be no peace without us‘ or ‚we will not accept a peace that is negotiated without us‘. Such an initiative would be morally questionable, but understandable in the immoral game of powers for influence. However, to take it in the form of a long-term strategy document, which will establish the EU’s arms build-up for years to come and is virtually irreversible, not only harbors the danger that ‚all-out war‘ will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It will also contribute to states worldwide entering the arms race – with all the consequences for existing forms of arms control and the regulation of new weapons systems.
For although the White Paper primarily assumes an existential threat to Europe, a „direct“ threat to „our way of life“, it also claims to „shape“ the international order – „in both our region and beyond“. The aforementioned „strategic competition“ from the Arctic to the Middle East and the references to Taiwan also ultimately express the fact that „Europe“ wants to have a greater say here in the future and sees the ideal way to achieve this in massive armament. This will also be understood by the other participants in the „strategic competition“ as an announcement that the battle for influence will be fought out even more and faster at the military level in future.
Lack of realism and tech fantasies
And this leads us to a lack of realism, which can be dangerous and downright fatal in a foreign and military policy strategy. This lack of realism is expressed, among other things, in a conspicuous void in the document: the mobilisation of people for war, and thus the large-scale popular commitment to die for „Europe“ and its self-proclaimed ambition to shape the global order. Admittedly, the White Paper is primarily concerned with armaments policy. Nevertheless, the exclusion of the question of who is to operate these weapons systems in which wars and who is to die while operating them is blatant. There is no realistic assessment of how much military-based power Europe can project globally, given that it ultimately consists of a fairly disparate group of nation states, almost all of which already struggle with recruitment problems worthy of democracies.
This omission is glossed over by heady hopes of superior technology that pervade the entire document. Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and quantum computing are mentioned repeatedly and are to play a key role in European armament. However, there is no mention of their regulation – or of regulation in general. The clichee-ridden way in which Europe shall achieve „superiority“ in and through these technologies corresponds to the long-cherished wish list of the defence industry and the tech industry, which is becoming ever more closely intertwined with the former: more money, more money for defense research and dual use, more support for start-ups and venture capital, deregulation and faster procurement as well as the further technological armament of borders and internal security. These conditions of deregulation and accelerated armament will shape the further development of these new technologies and thus contribute to them actually becoming a serious threat to people and their rights.
Ultimately, it is industrial interests that take the place of strategy in the White Paper. The fact that they can articulate themselves here (and currently elsewhere) in such a pure form is an expression of an armament hysteria that has not really been seen in Europe since the Second World War. There is a real danger that these interests and the hysteria spread as a catalyst, combined with the claim to validity of a new „Europe“ (under German leadership), will lead to a Third World War. Beyond this danger, which is described in the White Paper as the „real prospect of all-out war“, it is absolutely clear that the new arms race proclaimed in the White Paper and a protracted war in Ukraine will further exacerbate the climate catastrophe that is already unfolding. Climate change is indeed addressed in the document, but only within the melange of threats that is intended to legitimize the EU’s massive arms build-up: High armament against climate change – so much for a lack of realism.
Where is the left-wing resistance?
The situation is particularly dangerous because there is close to no resistance to rearmament across Europe, and wherever there is, it is often motivated by the wrong motives from the wrong side. Public opinion is dominated by hardliners – often those „experts“ who have been urging Germany and Europe to take „more responsibility“ internationally at every opportunity in recent years. In many cases, these are the same people who spent years preparing the ideological terrain for the failed military adventures in Afghanistan and the Sahel region and led Europe into the strategic impasse from which it now wants to free itself with an irrational and destructive rearmament plan. Critical voices are only occasionally heard. The anti-fascist and parliamentary left in particular remains silent on the rearmament programme – or even agrees with it, as in the case of the German Left Party in the federal states of Bremen and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania during the vote on the constitutional amendments for war loans in the Bundesrat.
Left-wing approval and left-wing silence are particularly disastrous in Germany. They are overlooking (or secretly favoring) the fact that Europe is in fact in the process of dismantling the „post-war order“. This also includes the disposal of Germany’s World War II history. A German Commission President – kept in office with the approval of Italian fascists – is launching a historic programme of debt-financed rearmament. Germany is paving the way by exempting only defence spending (in the broad sense) from the debt limit in its constitution. The leading German media and high-ranking government representatives are talking and fantasising about a „war against Russia“. A brigade of the German army is stationed in Lithuania and German weapons systems with Ukrainian crews have advanced into Kursk. It is no wonder that there are increasing calls for Germany to be armed with nuclear weapons and for the Two Plus Four Agreement („Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany“) to be canceled. This „Final Settlement“ included the restrictions on armament and sovereignty that were imposed on Germany as a result of its defeat in the Second World War: including the final recognition of Germany’s external borders, the renunciation of nuclear weapons, the ban on preparing a war of aggression and the limitation of armed forces to „370,000 men“.
The fact that the parliamentary and anti-fascist left does not take to the streets en masse in the present situation to oppose Germany’s forced arms build-up with all its might may well turn out to be a failure of historic proportions.
