Strategic Culture – April 17, 2026

European nations are being destroyed by war and militarism, and adding to the madness, their political class and media are driving the process with ever-increasing speed.

The fate of the continent could hardly be more tragic, given that it emerged from the ashes of World War II with the hope of being a model for international peace.

Hungary’s divisive elections this week, which saw the government of Viktor Orban ousted from power, were dominated by political and financial pressures exerted by the EU leadership on Budapest owing to Orban’s steadfast rejection of Brussels’ warmongering towards Russia. Hungarians cast their vote amid turmoil caused by Brussels and the energy blackmail of the NATO-backed Kiev regime. There are concerns that other EU nations, such as Slovakia, will face a similar assault on their democratic process if they do not conform to the elite agenda of making everything about an existential confrontation with Russia.

European citizens are enduring an economic crisis that has been brought on by NATO and the EU’s proxy war with Russia. Fuel, energy, food, and other living costs are going through the roof as a direct result of war and militarism. First, the energy supplies from Russia were cut off through government-led sanctions. Now, Trump’s aggression against Iran has hit energy supplies from the Persian Gulf, leaving Europe doubly exposed.

Instead of reversing course, the European NATO states seem intent on going full throttle towards a disastrous crash. This raises fundamental questions about democratic representation. Does it even exist anymore in Europe, including Britain?

This week in Britain, there were strident calls for massive extra spending on its military budget, paid for by slashing investment in social welfare and other public services. The calls were led by a former British minister, George Robertson.

“Lord Robertson”, who is a member of Britain’s unelected House of Parliament, is also a former head of NATO (1999-2003). He has long been urging the British government to expand the military budget even though figures show that Britain is spending more on so-called defense than at any time since the end of the Cold War.

In a high-profile public lecture, and with a touch of hysteria, Robertson claimed: “We are under-prepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe… Britain’s national security and safety are in peril.”

His bottom line: “We cannot defend Britain with an expanding welfare budget.”

This is the same toxic delusion that the current NATO chief Mark Rutte and other hawkish European leaders like him are peddling. Namely, that record military expenditures are not enough and that social spending must be sacrificed to pay for even more increases in armed forces and arsenals of weapons, a portion of which are handed over to the NeoNazi regime in Kiev to wage war with Russia.

With his usual Freudian slip, Rutte once made the bizarre but telling comment: “Defence is not in the same category as illicit drugs and pornography. Investing in defence is an investment in security. It’s a must.”

According to NATO figures, its 30 European member countries are spending an average of 20 per cent more on military. Last year, the total spend was $500 billion. And still, we are told, that is not enough for “security”. Over the next decade, European nations, including Britain, are being urged to double their military budgets. The United States under Trump is projecting to allocate $1,500 billion on its military.

Former British diplomat Peter Ford condemned what he said amounted to “welfare for warfare”. He warned that it was destroying British society and that of other European countries.

“We should not be spending more on what is misleadingly called defence,” writes Ford, who is also deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain. “We would be safer if we spent less, indulged in less post-imperial posturing, sought to calm conflicts rather than exacerbate them, and focused on a domestic front where so much has been neglected and run down.”

Another sane voice is that of Professor Richard Murphy, who suggested that Lord Robertson and his warmongering ilk are “the real enemy” of Britain and Europe.

“Defence is not [just] about weapons, budgets, or protecting elite interests overseas,” commented Prof Murphy. “Defence is about protecting people. It is about ensuring people enjoy freedom from fear, including from physical threat, from poverty, from want, and from the social instability that erodes the fabric of a nation from within. By that definition, which is the only definition that actually serves the majority of British citizens, social security is not the enemy of defence: it is the foundation of it.”

Poverty in British society, as with the rest of Europe, is on the increase. It is estimated that over 14 million people in Britain – more than 20 percent of the population – are living in poverty. One in three British children is subsisting in deprived households, suffering from inadequate housing, food, education, and health services.

Warmongering European elites like Robertson, Rutte, Kaja Kallas, and Ursula von der Leyen, who personally benefit from the weapons industry in terms of lucrative careers and lobbying, justify their undemocratic policy choices by constantly talking up irrational threats allegedly emanating from Russia, Iran, China, or some other purported enemy.

Their war psychosis is not only impoverishing the majority of workers and citizens, but it is also self-reinforcing and self-defeating. The international tensions that such warmongering generates lead to further irrational calls for increasing militarism even more because of the perceived insecurity and threat.

What Britain and other European states need to start doing is to stop warmongering. In particular, Europe needs governments that are not driven by Russophobia and the paranoia of Cold War-style thinking.

Clueless European governments and media have indulged the American-led transatlantic military-industrial complex that has driven illegal wars, which in turn have led to mass migration problems, dangerous international tensions that could spiral out of control, and now, as we are seeing, huge economic repercussions from chaos in energy trade.

Adding insult to injury and throwing more fuel on the fire, the elites are demanding that the basic democratic rights of citizens be gutted. Hungary’s election debacle is an ominous sign of the times. A warmongering dictatorship is telling people how to vote for a predetermined result: more war.

The illusion of Europe as a democratic peace project is fast receding. It is reverting to historical type. An elite-driven warmongering system where peace has become a dirty word.

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