No to Trump’s war drive!

Green Left newsletter, July 4

Even before Donald Trump got NATO to raise military spending, Oxfam said that less than 3% of the richest seven countries’ annual military spending — estimated last year to be US$1.5 trillion — could totally eradicate world hunger. Peter Boyle reports.

NATO spending already comprised 55% of global military spending last year and yet, with the exception of the Spanish government, they agreed to almost double it. NATO has identified China and Russia as the chief targets of its war drive, so those countries will race to match the rise in military spending.

Trump also is demanding that Australia increase its military spending from just over 2% to 5% of GDP. This is receiving loud support from the arms industry, the corporate media and the Liberal-National Opposition.

A global drive to war is in full swing and, at its head, is the fascistic megalomaniac Trump, who brags of his leadership in the genocide against Palestinian people and the illegal bombing of Iran and Lebanon, in partnership with the Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu regime.

The tremendous social and environmental cost of any such a rise in military spending is hard to fathom.

How many urgent social programs for public health, housing and education will face cuts to pay for the increased military spending in each of the countries that bows to Trump’s demands? How many people will be killed, maimed or turned into refugees as a result of the wars that will be fuelled by this militarisation?

Then there is the climate emergency — which Trump denies.

The world’s governments have already failed to meet the inadequate target of the Paris climate accords and now they will have even less funds for climate action.

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A taste of the devastating social cuts to come as a result of greater military spending were on display at the 4th International Conference on Financing Development in Seville, Spain, June 30–July 3, where the richest G7 countries are set to slash spending on aid by 28% from 2023 levels.

This is a cut of US$44 billion to US$112 billion, led by the US (down US$33 billion), Germany (down US$3.5 billion), Britain (down US$5 billion) and France (down US$3 billion).

Arms spending goes up and aid to the poorest countries goes down!

But international aid from the rich countries to the world’s poorest countries is not discretional charity or generous philanthropy.

The world is divided into a handful of rich countries and a majority of much poorer countries, because of the systemic exploitation that grew from Western colonisation and plunder.

This imposed an enduring system of unequal international exchange that has left the majority of countries impoverished and indebted to the richest countries.

The annual net interest repayments (excluding repayments of principal debt) from the Global South amounted to US$847 billion in 2023 — 26% higher than in 2021.

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Moderate French economist Thomas Piketty published a recent paper that calculated that, simply without colonial transfers between 1800 and 1914, Europe would have had a very large debt at the end of that period, while South and South-East Asia (and, to a lesser extent, Latin America) would have accumulated significant foreign wealth.

And that was before imperialist exploitation ramped up over the 20th century.

A more radical study by Jason Hickel and other scholars calculated that, even now, about US$10 trillion a year is being drained from the Global South to the Global North through unequal exchange.

If you take into account the fact that the world’s richest countries — especially the US —are responsible for 90% of excessive carbon dioxide emissions, they owe the Global South some US$170 trillion in climate debt and reparations.

Trump’s push for the rich exploiter countries to raise military spending is a weapon against humanity that also imperils the liveability of Earth. It must be resisted.

Green Left is an essential part of that resistance, but it needs your help to survive.

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