BRUSSELS: As NATO countries across Europe come together around the drive to increase military spending to 2 percent of their gross domestic product, Belgium is launching a major rearmament drive. As the Belgian army and state apparatus denounce the condition of the country’s weapons systems and troops, the government is proposing a drastic solution.
Its 2018 military budget includes 4.7 times more so-called engagement credits—that is, cash to be paid on delivery and that therefore does not appear in normal operating budgets—than the 2017 budget. Altogether, this involves spending €9.2 billion ($US11.3 billion) on military equipment between 2020 and 2030.
The technical plans of the Belgian government, as of its counterparts in other imperialist countries, show that it is preparing for aggressive wars, not for a more “credible” defensive posture.
The plan is not, however, only to mount imperialist wars in former colonial countries. The European Union is engaged in a massive rearmament program in anticipation of growing international conflicts as the world has not seen since World War II. This emerged notably in French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement last year that “we have entered into an era in international relations where war is again a possible horizon of politics.”
Many countries are launching “civic service” programs that are thinly disguised calls for a return to the draft. Macron wants to establish a universal military service, and Sweden has already introduced obligatory military service that was canceled in 2010. Above all, in 2014, Berlin announced that it would re-militarize its foreign policy.
