By JOSÉ LUÍS FIORI*
Sir Keir Starmer has already managed to surpass German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as the most warmongering leader within Europe, in relation to the escalation of the War in Ukraine
Since the 75th Annual NATO Meeting, held in July in Washington, the new British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has already managed to surpass German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as the most warmongering leader in Europe, in relation to the escalation of the war in Ukraine. It is the new British Prime Minister who is currently leading the position of European governments that support the use of long-range weapons to carry out deep attacks against Russian territory, betting that President Vladimir Putin is bluffing when he says that in this case he will launch an atomic response against the main NATO countries, starting with England itself. And he is also the one who has been trying to convince President Joe Biden to accept the use of American weapons in this collective attack. Many consider Sir Starmer to be an aberration within a social-democratic tradition that has always been “pacifist”. But this is not true, the European history of the XNUMXth and XNUMXst centuries categorically disproves this conviction. Let us see:
In the immediate aftermath of World War I, the Social Democrats participated in several coalition governments in Denmark, Germany, and Sweden, among others, and the Socialist parties themselves participated in the Anti-Fascist Popular Front governments in France and Spain during the 30s. In none of these cases did the European Social Democrats and Labour Party have any kind of foreign policy of their own. Neither of these parties or governments took a clear position condemning the military intervention of the great Western powers in the Russian Civil War in the early 20s; nor did they have a unanimous position against the military intervention of the Italian fascists and the German Nazis in the Spanish Civil War in the second half of the 30s. And even after the Second World War, the European Social Democrats and Labourites were unable to formulate a common and consensual foreign policy to face the challenge of the new wars that followed, for three fundamental reasons: firstly, because they were galvanized by the beginning of the Cold War and by the American policy of permanent containment of the USSR, which was at the origin of the creation of NATO; secondly, because after the formation of the “Atlantic Alliance” and the creation of NATO, Europe was transformed in practice into an atomic protectorate of the United States; and finally, because this protectorate took the form of a direct military occupation, in the case of West Germany, the historical headquarters of the main European Social Democratic party. These three factors left very little room for the exercise of an autonomous foreign policy by European states, particularly in the case of social-democratic governments that submitted, for the most part, to the designs of the so-called “Atlantic Alliance” led by the United States, and unconditionally supported the formation of NATO, often adopting a complicit position with their national states in the face of the wars of independence of their colonies in Africa and Asia.
The European Social Democrats and Labour Party were neither present nor supported the initial project of forming the European Economic Community, which was conceived and led by the Conservatives and Christian Democrats in the 50s, and only received the support of the Social Democrats and Labour Party much later, in the 70s. Furthermore, this part of the European left supported, with a few honorable exceptions, almost all American wars around the world, starting with the Korean War, submitting to George Kennan's argument about the "expansive" and threatening nature of the Russians. Even when the war was very far from Europe, as in the case of the Vietnam War, which was also defined by the Americans as a war of "containment" of communist expansionism in Indochina. In this case, the only major exception was that of Swedish social democracy, which always opposed the war, alongside several groups of left-wing activists and militants in several European countries whose mobilization grew in importance over time and with the advance of resistance within the United States itself.
But there is no doubt that the big surprise in this somewhat repetitive story was the behavior of European social democrats after the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War in 1991. Despite the fact that there was no longer any need to “contain” communist expansionism, most European social democrats and laborists continued to support the United States and NATO in their “humanitarian wars” of the 90s, including the 1999-day aerial bombing of Yugoslavia in 74, which killed hundreds of civilians and almost completely destroyed the Yugoslav infrastructure and economy. And then, in the 2003st century, with rare exceptions, European social democrats continued to support the US and NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Furthermore, in the case of Iraq in 150, it was the British Labour government of Tony Blair that led, together with the United States, the aerial bombardment, the ground invasion and the destruction of that country, with more than XNUMX deaths, without any “just cause” or legitimate motive being presented for this devastating attack carried out without the knowledge of the United Nations Security Council. However, it is worth highlighting, in this case, the opposition to the Anglo-American attack by the German social-democratic government of Gerhard Schröder.
Almost all other social democrats and Labour members maintained their support for the successive wars waged by the United States and NATO in the name of combating “terrorism”, but concentrated on the “Islamic world” of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Wars that left behind a trail of millions of dead, wounded and refugees who were later barred or expelled from European territory itself. At that time, some more idealistic Labour members and social democrats believed that the “humanitarian wars” of the 90s would be the price to pay for a new peaceful world without borders, as in the dreams of the first European socialists and communists of the XNUMXth century. But in the case of the so-called “global war on terror” declared by the United States, what we saw was a European social democrat and Labour left completely dismembered and subjected to the strategic interests of the United States and NATO.
To sum up the argument, today it can be said, after almost a century and a half of history, that the Social Democrats and the Labour Party have always repeated a discourse in defense of peace, pacifism and human rights, but they have always directly supported and practiced warmongering policies, maintaining throughout the 20th and 21st centuries a position of constant confrontation and bellicosity against Russia, regardless of its government. It is therefore not surprising that it is the German Social Democrats, and the British Labour Prime Minister in particular, who today find themselves at the forefront of the most aggressive positions of deep attack on Russian territory, even knowing that this would represent the inevitable beginning of an atomic war.
So it can be said that Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour Party, is indeed the new “bomb man” of the Western powers, but he has the “warm back” of a long history of England itself that supports him. After all, it was the English who would define Russia as their main enemy, after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and it was the English who led the invasion of Russian territory after the First World War. And once again, it was the English who first spoke of the “iron curtain” and kicked off the Cold War, and it was once again the English who interrupted the peace negotiations that were taking place in Istanbul in March 2022, between the Russians and the Ukrainians. And now again, it is the English who are pushing Europe and the world towards an atomic war with Russia, betting that the Russians will not respond with nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, humanity watches in astonishment this absolutely arrogant and senseless gamble by a Sir of the British Crown willing to incinerate the city of London in the name of preserving Anglo-Saxon global military power.
* Jose Luis Fiori He is professor emeritus at UFRJ. Author, among other books, of Global power and the new geopolitics of nations (Boitempo) [https://amzn.to/3RgUPN3]
Originally published in the Economic Bulletin no. 7 of the International Observatory of the XNUMXst Century — NUBEA/UFRJ.
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