As the world was readying for the Second World War, the insightful humane Austrian author Stefan Zweig made the following glum observation: “Openly and flagrantly, certain countries express their will to expand and make preparations for war. The politics of rearmament is pursued in broad daylight and at breakneck speed; every day you read in the papers arguments in favour of armaments expansion, the idea that it reduces unemployment and provides a boost to the stock exchange.”
This is not so different from the approval by European Union countries on May 27 of a €150 billion loan program known as the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) borrowing scheme. A press release from the European Council stated that the scheme “will finance urgent and large-scale investments in the European defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB)” with the intention of boosting “production capacity, making sure defence equipment is available when needed, and to address existing capability gaps – ultimately strengthening the EU’s overall defence readiness.”
The statement also makes a central rationale clear: that SAFE will enable continued European support for Ukraine, linking its defence industry to the program. Despite not being an EU member, Kyiv will be able to participate in the scheme. Interestingly enough, the United Kingdom, despite leaving the EU, will also be able to participate via a separate agreement.
Disbursements to interested member states upon demand, considered along national plans “will take the form of competitively priced long-maturity loans, to be repaid by the beneficiary member states.”
The scheme further anticipates the types of weaponry, euphemistically titled “defence products”, that will feature. As outlined by the European Council on March 6, these will comprise two categories: the first covering, amongst others, such products as ammunition and missiles, artillery systems, ground combat capabilities with support systems; the second, air and missile defence systems, maritime surface and underwater capabilities, drones and anti-drone systems and “strategic enablers” including air-to-air refuelling, artificial intelligence and electronic warfare.
The broader militarisation agenda is confirmed by linking SAFE with broader transatlantic engagement and “complementarity with NATO.” It will “strive to enhance interoperability, continue industrial cooperation, and ensure reciprocal access to state-of-the-art technologies with trusted partners.”Significantly, the emphasis is on collaboration: a minimum of three countries must combine when requesting funding for SAFE defence projects.
There seems to be something for everyone: the militarist, the war monger and the merchants of death. Global Finance, a publication dedicated to informing “corporate financial professionals”, was already praising the SAFE proposal in April. “The initiative has the potential to transform the business models of many top European defense groups – like Saab, which has traditionally relied on contracts from the Swedish state to grow its sales.” What a delight it will be for such defence companies to move beyond the constraints on sales imposed by their limiting governments. A veritable European market of death machinery is in the offing.
The fund is intended for one, unambiguous purpose: war. The weasel word “defence” is merely the code, the cipher. Break it, and it spells out aggression and conflict, a hankering for the next great military confrontation. The reason is traditional, historic and irrational: the Oriental despotic eminence arising from the Asian steppes, people supposedly untutored in the niceties of European good manners and democracy. Not that European manners and democracy is in splendid health. A mere glance at some of the candidates suggests decline in institutional credibility and scepticism. But we can always blame the Russians for that, deviously sowing doubt with their disinformation schemes.
The initiative, and its tightening of ties with arming Ukraine, has made such critics as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sound modestly sensible. “We need to invest in our own armies, but they expect us to fund Ukraine’s – with billions, for years to come,” he declared in a post on X. “We’ve made it clear: Hungary will not pay. Our duty is to protect our own people.”
The approval of the fund by the European Commission has also angered some members of the European Parliament, an institution which has been treated with near contempt by the European Commission. European Parliament Presidente Roberta Metsola warned Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier in May to reconsider the use of Article 122 of the EU Treaty, which should be used sparingly in emergencies in speeding up approvals with minimal parliamentary scrutiny. Bypassing Europe’s invigilating lawmakers risked “undermining democratic legitimacy by weakening Parliament’s legislative and scrutiny functions.” The Council’s resort to Article 122 potentially enlivened a process that could see a legal case taken to the European Court of Justice.
The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) has also supported a legal opinion repudiating the Commission’s cavalier approach in approving the fund. According to that tartly reasoned view, Article 122 was an inappropriate justification, as the threshold for evoking emergency powers had simply not been met.
Ironically, the rearmament surge is taking place on both sides of the Atlantic, at both the behest of the Trump administration, ever aggrieved by Europe not pulling its military weight,and Moscow, characterised and caricatured as a potential invader, the catalyst for decorating a continent with bristling weaponry. The former continues to play hide and seek with Brussels while still being very much in Europe, be it in terms of permanent garrisons and military assets; the latter remains a convenient excuse to cross the palms of the military industrial establishment with silver. How Zweig would have hated it.
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This is a timely and pertinent article by Dr Kampmark, but the situation is more dire than the article suggests.
The appetite for the current crop of European leaders for an all-out war with Russia that could result in a nuclear conflict, is ridiculous in its stupidity.
They have lost the proxy war with Russia that they helped to engineer, and now make noises about doubling down on that failed adventure.
From Sky News (UK) : LAVROV REPRIMANDED AND TAUGHT MERZ A LESSON AT THE SAME TIME
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has literally reprimanded German Chancellor Friedrich Merz with his criticism of him, Sky News correspondent Ivor Bennett reports. “Lavrov reprimanded Merz and admonished him from his 22 years of experience that after 22 days in office, the chancellor still has a lot to learn,” he pointed out.
On Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in an interview with WDR television that Britain, France, the United States and now the FRG have lifted range restrictions on military supplies to Ukraine, Kiev can attack targets deep inside Russian territory with long-range weapons. On Tuesday, Merz clarified that the decision to lift restrictions on the range of weapons supplied to Kiev was made months ago.
Lavrov, commenting on the German chancellor’s words, noted that with this new statement Merz showed that he was not referring to a new decision, but “some other” that was still adopted in the previous administration in Berlin. This, the Russian minister emphasized, suggests that everything was decided long ago but kept secret.
Kept secret?
Europe’s leaders know that in the event of long-range missiles being launched against Russia, that the Russians cannot take the risk that such missiles are not nuclear armed. The stupidity of playing nuclear brinkmanship for a cause that is already lost is beyond understanding.
But the stupidity does not stop there. Europe’s leaders should be more focused on domestic problems than on foreign adventures.
The proxy war is splitting the very fabric of the EU wide open.
Hungary has unsuccessfully tried to limit EU military assistance to Ukraine in recent months. But forcing countries to toe the line when the EU system is based on consensus creates its own problems.
From Global Euronews — Hungary and Slovakia have blocked Poland’s proposed declaration on strengthening democracy in the European Union, Hungary’s EU Affairs Minister Janos Boka said after a meeting of the European Union’s General Affairs Council in Brussels. His words were quoted by the MTI news agency. “Hungary and Slovakia did not support the proposal to strengthen democracy in Europe, which was put forward by Poland, which now holds the EU Council presidency,” Boka said.
According to the minister, the sustainability of democracy, which is mentioned in the document, is misinterpreted by the European institutions and some EU states.
He drew attention to the fact that the draft declaration submitted by Poland lacks a clause requiring transparent financing of non-governmental organizations. The latter, Boka said, are often used by various political forces for their own purposes and receive money from abroad.
At the European Council meeting in Brussels, the bloc’s European affairs ministers discussed, among other things, the possibility of depriving Hungary of the right to vote in the EU because of disputes over the rule of law.
The EU called the latest legislative changes in the republic a violation of citizens’ right to assembly, as well as a restriction on the freedom of the media and non-governmental organizations.
On the eve of the meeting, the European Commission appealed to the Hungarian authorities with a demand to withdraw the draft law “On Transparency in Public Life”, introduced on May 13 in the parliament of the country, prepared by the ruling party FIDES, to which the country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban belongs.
This law, if passed, will make it mandatory to register in a special register of NGOs and media funded from abroad. If the country’s authorities consider their activities a threat to national sovereignty, their funding may be frozen. In case foreign funding continues anyway, serious fines are envisaged, RBC recalls.
The draft law is similar to that already in place in many countries, including the US. Nothing in the EU Constitution puts limits on such laws. Yet European leaders want to reduce Hungary and presumably Slovakia to second-rate status within the union over an issue of no consequence.
You know the European leadership is pretty dumb when, as Dr Kampmark implies, Victor Orban is the most sensible person in the room.
Just came across this at Politico — The U.S., France and the U.K. have all provided long-range missile systems to Ukraine, and last fall moved to allow Kyiv to use those weapons to strike targets inside Russia. Germany, however, has not provided long-range missiles to date, rendering talk of ending range restrictions from Berlin largely academic.
Largely academic.
So Berlin is playing nuclear brinkmanship games just to appear as though it’s doing something.
Victor Orban, take a bow.
More right wing faux anti-imperialist boiler plate PR for Tony Abbott’s chum, Hungarian PM ‘mini Putin’ Orbán?
‘The initiative, and its tightening of ties with arming Ukraine, has made such critics as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sound modestly sensible. “We need to invest in our own armies, but they expect us to fund Ukraine’s – with billions, for years to come,” he declared in a post on X. “We’ve made it clear: Hungary will not pay. Our duty is to protect our own people.”’
The same Hungarian government which encouraged and hosts the Danube Institute, partnered with US fossil fuel Atlas Koch Network’s Heritage Foundation; latter is Opus Dei influenced, co-author with Tanton Network of Project 2025, anti-EU and anti-Ukraine.
Orbán looks like toast vs opposition Péter Magyar who has put frighteners on Orbán’s regime by attracting a mass of middle aged and younger voters, and even many agejng and regional conservatives are not happy, why?
Over two decades Hungary has slid down to the bottom of the CEE EU nations on economic performance (competing with Bulgaria & Greece), corruption, Russian influence and defraying the rights of their own citzens.
Two weeks ago Orbán publicly supported Romanian far right Presidential candidate Simion, who supports Russia, is anti-EU, anti-NATO and anti-Hungarian; confirmed what many suspected, but horrified many in Orbán’s own Fidesz Party base.
Fact is a majority of middle aged and younger or working age support the centre, EU, NATO and the west over Putin, Trump et al. versus ageing, regional, low info, conservative and ageing right?
“Victor Orban, take a bow.”
It’s like poppin’ a floppy lure in front of a hungry barramundi. 🙂