“As US economic dominance wanes, and Trump expresses its worst morbid symptoms, the need for an independent foreign policy is becoming ever more pressing. The choice is stark: the barbarism of war and militarism, or peace and socialism”
Sam Browse
In our Red Weekly column, Labour Outlook’s Sam Browse examines the latest announcement on increasing defence spending as the government cuts foreign aid.
This week, the Government has pledged to increase defence budgets to 2.5% of GDP a whole three years ahead of the date it had originally set for the hike, while cutting foreign aid to finance the growth in weapons spending.
The move comes as Starmer faces pressure from the new Trump administration to up military spending to as much as 3%.
Before being elected, the Labour Party had already hitched its wagon to US foreign policy. This was reflected in John Heeley’s early response to the Strategic Defence Review. At the time, of course, the US had adopted a hawkish posture on Russia, and Labour’s position mimicked that – carving a specific niche as America’s keenest ally in Europe. This was carried through into Government.
Now, the new Trump administration has brought a shift in US posture. This should not be interpreted as indicative of any change in the overarching aims of American foreign policy.
The US economy has become less and less competitive, becoming over time a net drag on the global economy. The main challenger to its economic dominance is China, which is in the ascendance. Faced with this relative economic decline, the Biden and Trump administrations differ in the strategy for preserving US hegemony.
The Biden “hawk” strategy was to take on both China and its ally, Russia, simultaneously. Conversely, Trump’s is what some have called a “reverse Kissinger”, named because it is the mirror of the US foreign policy approach adopted during the Sino-Soviet split. Originally, Kissinger advocated for making trade and diplomatic overtures to China so as to exacerbate tensions between it and the Soviet Union.
The Trump strategy goes in the other direction. Rather than court China, overtures are instead being made to Russia in an attempt to break one from the other – allowing the US to concentrate resources in a more aggressive confrontation with the Chinese. This “pivot to Asia” – and the rebalancing of resources it entails – has also placed a strain on NATO relations as the US Government demands that European powers stump up the cash for their own defence.
The effect of this demand, which is doubtless not lost on the Trump administration, is that it also maintains the economic dominance of the US within the Atlanticist camp. It does this by forcing European Governments to plough money into arms, rather than productively invest in things which might actually develop their economies.
While the British Government obviously favours the previous Biden administration’s approach – and whatever the fanfare about flying to Washington to enter talks with Trump about Ukraine – Starmer’s response has been, in effect, to give Trump exactly what he wants: a pledge to increase defence spending.
This refusal to break with US foreign policy, despite even the fractures within the camp of those seeking to preserve US hegemony, is demonstrated in the mood music coming from the British Foreign Office – for instance, the outlandish defence of Trump’s incendiary and dangerous remarks on Greenland, or the deafening silence on his administration’s Gaza policy, which amounts to more or less explicit support for ethnic cleansing.
That is the context in which this latest announcement on defence spending and aid should be interpreted. We need a different approach.
Rather than subordinating our economic interest to a division of global labour designed to maintain US power, we need a foreign policy that is oriented to peace. And rather than a domestic economic policy geared towards producing weapons while cutting welfare spending, we need a socialist economic strategy aimed at developing the economy and raising living standards.
As US economic dominance wanes, and Trump expresses its worst morbid symptoms, the need for an independent foreign policy is becoming ever more pressing. The choice is stark: war and militarism, or peace and socialism – or to put it more starkly: socialism or barbarism?
That’s why we’ll be talking about these ideas and more at the “Socialism or Barbarism” day school on 29 March – register now and join the discussion!
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