Tag: Ukraine

The US National Security Strategy 2025: Promoting US Billionaires, Stupefying the Working Class, Exploiting Allies, Stifling China

7 December 2025

“The rich, in particular, are necessarily interested to support that order of things which can alone secure them in the possession of their own advantages.”—Adam Smith

“The enemies of the working class travel in private jets, not migrant dinghies.”—Zarah Sultana

By Stephen Gowans

US National Security Strategy documents are expressions of the interests of the world’s richest country in securing that order of things which can alone secure it in the possession of its own advantages. But more specifically, I think it is fair to say, considering that the ultrarich wield outsize influence over the US state, that US strategy is aimed at securing the advantages of the rich themselves directly, and all other Americans incidentally, if at all. Moreover, to the extent the rich are made richer by the Strategy, it may only be a result of the poor being made poorer. In the view of Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments: “The affluence of the rich supposes the indigence of the many”; of Victor Hugo in The Man Who Laughs: “The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor”; and Karl Marx in Capital: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole.” In line with these arguments, we might expect that in proportion as the Strategy makes the lives of the rich richer, it will make those of the working class meaner.

The National Security Strategy 2025 is a plan, as Trump’s White House puts it, “To ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come.” We can be sure that when the White House says “America” its means “America’s billionaires,” which the administration includes, in greater numbers than any other in history, and which is openly and unapologetically backed by billionaires and is ardently committed to securing them in the possession of their own advantages, through numerous blessings, from munificent tax cuts, to deregulation, to ample opportunities for corruption.

There are at least a dozen billionaires in Trump’s cabinet and among those appointed to major roles. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Tom Barrack, Trump envoys working on key foreign policy issues, are confirmed billionaires, as is commerce secretary Howard Lutnick. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent is a near billionaire. David Sacks, a near billionaire, oversees AI and crypto, the industries in which he has accumulated his wealth. [See note 1 below.] The world’s richest people contributed to Trump’s re-election campaign, transition, and inauguration.

“There were at least 17 billionaires in attendance at Donald Trump’s second inauguration, collectively worth more than $1 trillion”, according to The Washington Post. They included the world’s top three wealthiest people: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, who “took places of honor next to Trump’s family.” Seated nearby were several other billionaires, including Louis Vuitton, the world’s fifth richest person, “Apple CEO Tim Cook, former Marvel owner Isaac Perlmutter and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.”

Billionaires back Trump because he is, himself, a billionaire—the first ever to hold the office of president; because he has loaded his cabinet with their class brethren, other billionaires, who are sure to see the world as they see it and favor their interests; and because he unapologetically caters to billionaire interests. He does so at the expense of the polloi, while aiming to maintain political and social stability by persuading a substantial fraction of the White Christian working class, that he is, notwithstanding the reality, their champion.

This isn’t to say that a cabinet with fewer or no billionaires, or even completely devoid of people of wealth, would produce a national security strategy that is any less ardently committed to securing an order of things that delivers enormous advantages to the wealthy as its priority. Politicians, whether wealthy or not, are dependent on the rich for campaign contributions and post-political-career opportunities. They naturally try to stay on the good side of the rich, and are greatly inclined to lick their boots, since servility to the wealthy eases the road to office.

In addition, the wealthy exercise an enormous sway over public opinion through their control of mass media, think-tanks, public relations firms, and the research agenda at universities. More importantly, their ownership and control of the economy give them the power to make or break governments.  The only way governments can act against the interests of the wealthy and for the interests of the working class is by taking capital, enterprises, and investment decisions out of private hands and bringing them under democratic control. What this means is that capitalist control of the state is over-determined. It is affected by the participation of members of the capitalist class in key positions of the state and the class’s control of the ideological environment. But it is also affected by the influence the class exercises through its ownership and control of the economy—a power which allows it to cripple governments that fail to promote its agenda by ceasing to invest or by moving capital to other countries. No government wants to lose major investments and will kowtow to investor needs to keep capital flowing. The abundance of billionaires in the Trump administrations is an instance of the wealthy exercising direct control over public policy and the day-to-day decision-making of the White House, but even without billionaires in the cabinet, the manifold indirect influences of the wealthy class on government constrains the state to pursue capitalist class interests.

The Biden administration had far fewer billionaires and people of significant wealth, but its key players were members of billionaire-controlled and -directed think-tanks, such as The Council on Foreign Relations, and were thus loyal servants of the US capitalist class. The Biden administration’s national security strategy was no less committed to defending and promoting US billionaire interests around the world than the Trump administration’s is, though the means of accomplishing this goal and the justifications were not wholly the same. For example, the Trump White House is quite open about using its security strategy to pursue profit-making opportunities for US investors and businesses, while the Biden administration cloaked its pursuit of advantages for US billionaires and corporate America in the language of defending and promoting democracy. The New York Times, virtually the house organ of the Democratic Party, complained in a headline that “Trump’s Security Strategy Focuses on Profit, Not Spreading Democracy“, an allusion to the allegedly loftier aims of the Biden administration’s national security strategy. In 1966, the songwriter Phil Ochs wrote a song about US national security strategy titled Cops of the World, which contained a line that perfectly anticipated the Biden administration’s approach to presenting how it would use the power of the US military to defend and promote the welfare of the US business class. The line was “the name for our profits is democracy.”

Analysis of the Security Strategy

The National Security Strategy 2025 has, for me, five salient themes.

#1. Washington will prevent any rival state from doing the following in the Western Hemisphere:

  • Positioning military “forces or other threatening capabilities”; and
  • Owning or controlling assets that Washington deems strategically vital.

While the document doesn’t spell out who the rival states are, there can be little doubt that they are China and Russia. And while the Strategy doesn’t define what strategically vital assets are, they likely include the Panama Canal and Greenland, at minimum.  The White House has titled the pledge to keep competitors out of the Western Hemisphere, The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine, promulgated by President James Monroe in 1823, warned European powers that the United States would not allow them to acquire new territory in the Western Hemisphere or form alliances with hemispheric states. In exchange, the United States would stay out of Europe’s wars.

In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt updated the doctrine with his eponymous Roosevelt Corollary. Washington, the president warned, would intervene in any country in the Western Hemisphere that engaged in conduct of which it did not approve. Roosevelt’s corollary was a statement of the principle of suprema lex regis voluntas—the supreme law of the Western Hemisphere is the will of the US government, and, I would add, as a matter of sociology, the class that dominates it. It was also, obviously, a statement of informal empire.

Trump’s corollary is not so much a corollary as a restatement of the Monroe Doctrine, aimed not at Europe, as the original was, but at Russia and China.

#2. Washington will continue to engage in a struggle with China over control of sea lanes in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The struggle, from Washington’s point of view, will pivot on preventing Beijing from controlling Taiwan.

Washington, along with its court journalists and intellectuals, is fond of pointing out how much of the world’s shipping flows through the South China Sea. “Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea,” the document declares, disruptions would have “major implications for the U.S. economy.” Were “a potentially hostile power to impose a toll system over one of the world’s most vital lanes of commerce or—worse—to close and reopen it at will,” the consequences could be catastrophic for the US economy. Hence, no US rival (i.e., China) must be allowed to control this body of water.

The tendentious character of the Strategy’s argument is evident if we consider that much of the shipping that passes through the South China Sea flows to and from China. If any state has an interest in keeping the South China Sea open, China is it. Beijing’s planners can reasonably fear that the United States, a competitor, could impose a toll system over this vital (to China) lane of commerce or—worse—close and reopen it at will, severing China’s imports of oil from the Persian Gulf, impeding the flow of raw materials from around the globe, and blocking its exports to foreign markets.

The United States controls the sea lanes of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would like to maintain its control, not because US planners are worried about threats to the US economy if control slips away, but because exercising control over the shipping lanes means leverage over China. US control of critical commercial maritime routes comports with a key goal of the Strategy: “To prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries.” A China that could be blockaded at any moment by the US military, is not likely to grow large enough to surpass the United States as the world’s supreme economic and military power. Hence, Washington has an interest in projecting prepotent military power into the Indian and Pacific Oceans. At the same time, China would like to control the very same maritime routes to protect its own economy from US blockade, disruption, and blackmail, and very likely as well, to gain power over its regional rivals, India and Japan.

The key to this struggle is Taiwan. The Chinese navy is hemmed in by a series of islands, running from Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines to the Malay Peninsula, known as the First Island Chain. The islands are under the influence and control, to various degrees, of the US military. The weakest link in the chain is Taiwan. There is no meaningful US military presence on the island, and Beijing claims it as its own territory, but has yet to bring the island under its control. If Beijing achieves its ambition to recover Taiwan, it will be able to more readily project its navy into the South China and Philippine Seas, and from there to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, reducing the chances the US Navy will be able to enforce a blockade.

To keep Taiwan out of Beijing’s hands, Washington proposes to:

  • Preserve “military overmatch”, that is, to deploy greater firepower to the Indo-Pacific region than China can match.
  • Increase the US military presence in the First Island Chain.
  • Press Japan, South Korea, and Australia to increase their contributions of military equipment and personnel to US-led alliances in order to strengthen the US effort to keep China bottled up within the First Island Chain.

The plan is, thus, in large part, the outline of a program to use the US military to obtain an ongoing commercial advantage over China.

#3. Washington will pressure its allies to increase their contributions to the maintenance of US global military supremacy. The Strategy argues that the United States counts among its “many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense.” It goes on to note that “President Trump has set a new global standard with the Hague Commitment, which pledges NATO countries to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense and which our NATO allies have endorsed and must now meet.”

Notwithstanding the foregoing, Washington is not asking its allies to assume primary responsibility for their regions. Japan, South Korea, and Australia, for example, are not being asked to defend themselves, or lead military efforts, against China. Instead, they are being asked to spend more money on arms (which, owing to the size of the US arms industry means much of the higher military spending will benefit US merchants of death) and on personnel, all of which are part of formal military alliances under the control of the United States. Ancient Roman armies were comprised of legionaries (soldiers from Rome) and auxiliaries (soldiers from allied states) under the command of a Roman general. When allies committed more soldiers, Rome grew in strength. Washington is simply following the same logic. What allies contribute redounds directly to US military power. Japan, South Korea, Australia, and NATO countries are being asked to contribute more money, more soldiers, and more (mainly US-purchased) equipment to their US-led military alliances; hence, to US military projects and supremacy.

The same is true of Europe. Washington makes a pretense of Europe being asked to take on greater responsibility for its defense. But that’s nonsense. The principal European military organization, NATO, is an alliance that is always under the command of a US general, as the NATO charter stipulates. NATO is a US instrument; it always has been and will always remain. Washington isn’t asking Europe to take command of NATO or the defense of Europe, nor the task of confronting Russia. That remains a US leadership responsibility. It’s being asked, nay, told, to contribute more money and troops to what will always be a US-directed project. This will allow the Pentagon to shift a significant part of its forces currently deployed to Europe to the Indo-Pacific region to help impede China’s efforts to recover Taiwan. The project of confronting Russia will remain one in which Europe contributes the bulk of the equipment and personnel, as it always has done, but it will commit more than in the past, and the US contribution will correspondingly diminish, though US leadership will continue.

Two other points, both significant.

First, it is not the case that Washington believes that Europe has underspent on its militaries and has thus left the continent vulnerable to Russian aggression. On the contrary, the Strategy document declares that “European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons.” This is obvious to anyone who has taken the time to look at the numbers. What this means is that the discourse favored by the news media, NATO’s secretary-general, and some governments, that European countries must increase their military spending, because Russia stands as a looming threat, is utter nonsense. Even the White House doesn’t believe this.

Second, the Strategy seeks to “restabilize” Europe by seeking to bring about an end to the conflict in Ukraine and, importantly, an end to “the reality of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”

#4. The White House believes that Europe is imperiled, not by Russia, but by liberal immigration policies and the suppression of White nationalist political parties and their anti-immigrant discourse. “The larger issues facing Europe,” the strategy document opines, “include”: 

  • “Migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife”, and
  • “Censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition.”

The Strategy’s authors worry that demographic change in Europe is undermining the continent’s Western Civilizational values, noting that it “is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European” (in other words, majority non-White and Muslim). “As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”

The fear of Eastern peoples undermining Western Civilization was a particular concern of the Nazis, who saw Jews and Communists as Eastern. The White House’s concerns about immigration are not only consistent with those of the Nazis and contemporary White nationalist parties in Europe today, but also with the Trump administration’s own racist domestic policy of mass deportations of illegal immigrants and banning immigration from such countries as Afghanistan and Somalia. The Washington Post summarized White House thinking on immigration as: “Somalis are ‘garbage,’ and ‘we don’t want them in our country.’ Migration from ‘all Third World countries’ should be halted. Any foreign national deemed ‘noncompatible with Western civilization’ must be deported.” Like the Nazis, who worked to replace Klassenkampf (the struggle of classes) with Razzenkampf (the struggle of races) in order to divert the working class from its efforts to liberate itself from the miseries and disadvantages of capitalism, the Trump administration is likewise engaged in a project of scapegoating immigrants to keep the White Christian working class from blaming its woes on Trump’s billionaire cohorts and their program of exploitation of the poor and left-behind and indulgence for the rich and comfortable.

#5. The United States will continue to dominate West Asia to ensure the region’s oil resources remain under US supervision, while at the same time maintaining the US position as the world’s top exporter of oil and gas. In this way, Washington will control a vital input into the economies of Japan and Germany, potentially threatening economic competitors, and its top rival, China. Regarding the latter, US strategy stipulates that Washington will control not only West Asia, a major source of energy for China, but also the sea lanes connecting the Middle East to China. This goes a long way toward meeting the major US strategy objective of preventing the emergence of a dominant adversary.

Finally, I will note that, as an obiter dictum, the White House says that it will continue to protect Israel. It doesn’t say why. I can’t help but think that one of the reasons is that Israel is viewed as an outpost of Western Civilization in the East and that, comprising a Jewish master race that is mostly white, it is, as a consequence, a White supremacist regime—one moreover that embodies the most repugnant aspects of the Western tradition (settler colonialism, racism, genocide, imperialism), the very foundations of US wealth and power. Israel is a model of the White nationalist golden age that appears to lie so close to the heart of the US president.  In chiding the Europeans for allowing their continent to undergo an immigration-induced demographic change, and then censuring various European powers for repressing anti-immigrant, White nationalist, discourse, the Trump White House poses as a champion of Western (i.e., White Christian) Civilization. This is a civilization which, under the guidance of Trump and his Corollary, aims to keep Eastern power out of the Western Hemisphere, but claims a prerogative to impose Western power on the East. So it is that while re-asserting the Monroe Doctrine, Washington at the same time makes clear that it intends to control the Eastern Hemisphere, especially the sea lanes that connect China to the rest of the world.

The Indo-Pacific region is very important to the Trump White House. It is, the Strategy notes, “already the source of almost half of the world’s GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), and one third based on nominal GDP. That share is certain to grow over the 21st century. Which means that the Indo-Pacific is already and will continue to be among the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds. To thrive at home, we must successfully compete there.”

Thriving at home can be taken to mean the US billionaire class growing fatter, while it sucks the blood of the US working class, as it endeavors to keep it in a state of stupefaction by recruiting it to a campaign of saving Western Civilization from the immigration of “garbage” from the global south. Concurrently, the US state will plunder the working class of allied countries that will be forced to contribute money, equipment, and personnel to US-led military projects aimed at making Trump’s fellow US billionaires richer. At the same time, Washington will keep its boot-heel on Chinese energy sources and vital sea lanes, aided amply by its allies. This will be done in the service of the White House’s overarching goal: Ensuring that US investors and corporate America secure possession of the lion’s share of the major profit-making opportunities of the Western Hemisphere and Asia. 

The New York Times’ take on the security strategy is that it reflects the “world as seen from the White House”—one in which “America can use its vast powers to make money.” I would amend the assessment somewhat. The strategy reflects a world as seen from a White House that is controlled by a battalion of billionaires, and that uses race and anti-immigrant rhetoric to divert the White Christian working class from the reality that it is being fleeced and immiserated. The world the billionaires see is one in which US investors and major US businesses use the vast power of the US state to cut Chinese enterprises and billionaires out of the action to ensure that the lion’s share of the world’s economic surplus remains in the hands of the Donald Trumps, Steve Witkoffs, Jared Kushners, Howard Luttnicks, and their friends, associates, business and golf partners, and political backers, among them Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—in other words, the US capitalist class.

1. According to The Washington Post, 13 billionaires — including Donald Trump —have held roles in the administration this year. They are:

  1. Donald Trump, President of the United States, Net worth: $5.1 billion
  2. Howard Lutnick, Secretary, Commerce Department, Net worth: $3.2 billion
  3. Linda McMahon, Secretary, Education Department, Net worth: $3 billion
  4. Steve Witkoff, Assistant to the president and special envoy for peace missions, Net worth: $2 billion
  5. Kelly Loeffler, Administrator, Small Business Administration, Net worth: $1.3 billion
  6. Elon Musk, Leader, U.S. DOGE Service (resigned in late May), Net worth: $342 billion
  7. Joe Gebbia, Chief design officer, Net worth: $8.3 billion
  8. Antonio Gracias, Volunteer, DOGE (left in July), Net worth: $2.2 billion
  9. Tilman Fertitta, Ambassador to Italy and San Marino, Net worth: $11.3 billion
  10. Melinda Hildebrand, Ambassador to Costa Rica, Net worth: $7.7 billion
  11. Stephen Feinberg, Deputy secretary, Defense Department, Net worth: $5 billion
  12. Warren Stephens, Ambassador to Britain, Net worth: $3.4 billion,
  13. Paul Atkins, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission, Net worth: $1.2 billion

The list omits Jared Kushner and Tom Barrack, who may not be billionaires, but near billionaires.

How Aid to Ukraine Harms Most Canadians (and Most Citizens of Other NATO States) and What to Do About It

4 December 2025

By Stephen Gowans

Canada has shelled out $22-billion of taxpayer money on assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February, 2022. [1] Might our money have been better spent on other matters?

For example, 20 percent of Canadian adults do not have a family doctor. [2] Could this money have been used to help provide Canadians with access to physicians and nurse practitioners?

“Affordable housing,” according to The Globe and Mail, “is out of reach everywhere in Canada.” [3] Could Ottawa’s generous aid to Ukraine have been spent instead on helping to solve Canada’s housing and rental crisis?

Ottawa plans to cut over 11 percent of the federal public service, a move which, on top of increasing the jobless rate—already near 7 percent—will likely mean longer wait times for unemployment benefits, passports, and government assistance programs. [4] Might future outlays slated for aid to Ukraine be better spent on maintaining public services for Canadians?

According to the government’s own statistics agency, “Over one in four Canadians live in a household experiencing financial difficulties.” [5] Could $22 billion have helped relieve these Canadians of their financial burdens?

Prime Minister Mark Carney says that “Canada will always stand in solidarity with Ukraine.” [6] In practice, helping Ukraine means doing less for Canadians. It means poorer public services, under-funded health care, less affordable housing, and more economic insecurity. Carney doesn’t say why Canadians must make sacrifices to stand with Ukraine, but knowing why is important if pressing domestic needs are to be ignored. Is the diversion of funds that could be used to meet Canadians’ needs justified?

To answer that question, we must first understand why Ottawa is backing Ukraine. The answer has a lot to do with Canada’s place in the informal US empire.

Canada is part of a US-led alliance that regards Russia as a “revisionist” power—that is, as a country which challenges the US-led world order—an order which naturally puts the United States at the top. The war in Ukraine is a contest between Washington, on one side, and Moscow, on the other. Russia is one of two states (along with China) powerful enough to challenge US ‘leadership’, or, to put it less euphemistically, US tyranny. While the word tyranny seems harsh, what else would one call a US-led global defined by Washington to, by its own admission, put US interests above all others? [7] Napoleon’s order in Europe was summed up by the watchword France avant tout, while Nazi Germany sought to create an order in Europe defined by the phrase Deutschland uber alles. Implicitly, Washington predicates its own global order on the idea of the United States above all others, or, America First.

Russia, Washington says, wants to revise the US-led world order. There’s no question that Moscow wants to do this. It has no intention of acquiescing to the will of Washington, and because it’s strong enough—unlike most other states—to challenge US primacy, it resists integration into the informal US empire. Russia prefers to carve out its own empire, where its own billionaires exercise influence and monopolize profit-making opportunities. The war is, thus, au fond, a contest over which country’s billionaires will get to exploit the profit-making opportunities Ukraine has to offer—the United States’ or Russia’s?

On a broader level, the war is being fought—with Ukraine as the tip of the US spear, or proxy—over the question of who will dominate parts of Eastern Europe that have historically fallen under Russian, or Soviet, domination. Will it be Russia or the United States? Ukraine, being the largest and most significant part of the contested territory, is the cockpit of the current struggle. The prize for the winner is lucrative investment opportunities and strategic territory, vital to the questions of a) whether the United States will continue to lead a world order as rex, and b) whether Russia will successfully resist US efforts to make it bow to US pre-eminence.

In disbursing $22 billion to the US side of the contest, instead of using the funds to improve the lives of Canadians at home, Ottawa is playing a vassal role to US investor and corporate interests and aiding, what in the end, is a project of furnishing US billionaires with investment opportunities at the expense of Russian magnates.

Defenders of Ottawa’s decision to aid Ukraine will point to a moral obligation on the part of Canadians to defend a victim of illegal aggression. To be sure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is both a contravention of international law and an aggression.

However, Canada does not aid all, or even many, countries that fall prey to the aggression of imperialist marauders. If it did, it would soon fall out with its patron, the United States, the world’s imperialist marauder par excellence. If Ottawa genuinely stands with the victims of aggression as a matter of principle, it would have funneled military and other aid to Iran (only recently the target of a blatant and flagrantly unlawful US-Israeli aggression); to Syria, when Washington was bankrolling Al-Qaeda to bring down the Arab nationalist state (which it did do, successfully); to Cuba, the victim of a cruel six-decade-long campaign of US economic warfare aimed at ensuring that an alternative to the capitalist order will never thrive; to Venezuela today, the target of a US military pressure campaign whose object is to install a puppet regime in Caracas to better loot the country’s land, labor, and resources, especially its oil; and on and on, ad nauseum.  Need I mention Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Panama, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya?

Which brings us to the Palestinians. If the Canadian government was really motivated to defend the victims of expansionary rogue regimes that flagrantly violate international law, it would have provided aid to the Palestinian national liberation movement long ago. Palestinians are the principal victims of Israel, a notorious practitioner of rapine, aggression, territorial expansion, and contempt for the UN Charter. Instead, Canada has faithfully assisted the Zionist state to carry out what the United Nations, countless human rights organizations, and top genocide scholars, have called a genocide. Ottawa has sent arms to Israel; banned Canadians from sending aid to Palestinians standing up to the aggression and demonized Palestinian freedom fighters as terrorists; lavished diplomatic support on the Zionist state; and has refused to take meaningful action to pressure Tel Aviv to abide by the countless UN resolutions directing Israel to end its illegal occupations of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.   

So, no, Ottawa isn’t sending billions of dollars to Kyiv because it deplores aggression, champions international law, and feels morally bound to stand with the victims of Russian imperialism. To believe this is to close one’s eyes to Canada’s record as faithful backer of US and Israeli imperial aggressions. The reality is that Canada is furnishing Kyiv with generous aid because Ottawa’s standard operating procedure is to support—or at the very least, not get in the way of—the foreign policy preferences of its US master. If backing Washington and its proxies in West Asia (Israel) and Eastern Europe (Ukraine) means skimping on satisfying the needs of ordinary Canadians, then, from Ottawa’s perspective, so be it.

While this is bad enough, it’s about to get much worse.  Ottawa has committed, along with other NATO countries, to significantly increasing its military spending to five percent of GDP from a little over one percent today.  This is part of a Pentagon strategy to shift responsibility for confronting Russia from the United States to Washington’s NATO subalterns, so the US military can either turn its full attention to intimidating China [8], by one plan, favored by so-called prioritizers in the US state, or concentrate on shoring up US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, advocated by so-called restrainers [9].

The problem here is that there is no compelling rationale to increase military spending almost five-fold. The ostensible reason for the increase is to ‘deter’ Russia from further aggression in Europe. But no serious observer believes Russia is able to take on NATO, even at NATO’s allegedly paltry current levels of spending.  Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that “A senior NATO official said Russia doesn’t have the troop numbers or military capability to defeat the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe.” [10]

The idea that the United States carries the burden of defending Europe and that Europe could not defend itself without US assistance—and that therefore Washington’s NATO subalterns must significantly boost their military outlays—is false. In point of fact, the United States contributes much less to the defense of Europe than Europe does itself. Table 1 shows that the United States spends $50 billion annually on military operations in Europe, overshadowed by the $476 billion that Europe’s NATO members spend yearly. Whereas 100,000 US troops serve in Europe, the alliance’s European members contribute over 2 million infantry, air crew, and sailors to the continent’s defense.

Table 1. Russia vs. NATO in Europe
 Military spending ($B)Military personnel
Russia$1421,200,000
European NATO members$4762,041,300
US contribution to Europe$50100,000
European NATO members + US contribution$5262,141,300
(Europe + US contribution) / Russia3.71.8
Sources:
Russian military spending: Robyn Dixon, “Russian economy overheating, but still powering the war against Ukraine,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2024.
Russian military personnel: CIA World Factbook. NATO military expenditures and personnel: “Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2024)” NATO. March 2024.
US military spending in Europe: Steven Erlanger, “NATO Wants a Cordial Summit, but Trump or Zelensky Could Disrupt It,” The New York Times, May 26, 2025.
US military personnel: Daniel Michaels, Nancy A. Youssef and Alexander Ward, “Trump’s Turn to Russia Spooks U.S. Allies Who Fear a Weakened NATO,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 20, 2025.

What’s more, together, NATO’s European members spend over three times as much on their militaries as Russia does on its armed forces, while the number of NATO personnel in Europe, excluding the US contribution, is almost double Russia’s (Table 2).  Were Europe’s NATO members to meet Trump’s five percent target, they would exceed Russia’s military spending by a factor of eight. To be sure, this would deter a Russian offensive in Europe, but it would be overkill. When the idea of the five percent target was first broached by the incoming Trump administration, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder dismissed it as “a made-up number with no basis in reality.” He said that “European NATO members now spend three times as much as Russia does on defense, and at five percent Europe would outspend Russia by $750 billion annually, spending roughly 10 times what Russia spends.” [11] Daalder’s numbers and those of Table 2, while differing slightly in some respects, point to the same conclusion: the five percent target is far too high.

Table 2. Russia vs. NATO (European members)
RussiaEuropean NATO membersEurope / Russia
Population143,800,000592,872,3864.1
GDP ($B)$2,021$23,02311.4
Military spending ($B)   
   At current levels$142$4763.4
   At 5% of GDP (NATO) $1,1518.1
Military personnel1,200,0002,041,3001.7
Sources:
NATO population: CIA World Factbook.
NATO GDP, military expenditures, and personnel: “Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2024)” NATO. March 2024.
Russian military spending: Robyn Dixon, “Russian economy overheating, but still powering the war against Ukraine,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2024.
Russian military personnel: CIA World Factbook.
Russian population and GDP:  World Bank.

Russia is militarily incapable of territorial expansion beyond Ukraine, and even in Ukraine—a country with only one-quarter of Russia’s population—its capabilities are severely tested.  Russia is no match for an alliance, whose European members alone, have four times its population and over 11 times its GDP. The idea that Russia has the capability to invade a NATO-alliance member is—to use a favorite phrase of US international relations specialist John Mearsheimer—“not a serious argument.”

Despite these realities, various NATO governments, Canada among them, are trying to foster the illusion that Russia threatens Europe. They are doing so in order to manufacture consent for a stepped-up level of military spending that is far in excess of what is necessary to defend the continent from a Russian invasion.  Not only is military spending at this level unnecessary, it will harm the interests of the vast majority of Europeans and Canadians. Higher defense spending will almost certainly mean cuts to public services. During a visit to Britain, the NATO secretary general warned British citizens that if they chose to funnel public-spending into maintaining the National Health Service and other public services, rather than meeting Trump’s arbitrary five percent target, they had “better learn to speak Russian.” [12] The message is clear: Important pubic services that benefit most of us, must be sacrificed in order to squander public funds on the military to meet a spurious threat. “Ramping up to 5 percent would necessitate politically painful trade-offs”, warns the New York Times. [13] Painful trade-offs mean painful for all but business owners and the wealthy. Within the current climate, the idea that higher military outlays will be underwritten by higher taxes on the rich and big business is unthinkable. Instead, the formula is: gull the public into believing a Russian offensive is imminent so they’ll accede to the gutting of public services.

Why would NATO countries commit to spending far more than necessary? There are three reasons that suggest themselves as hypotheses.

  1. The expenditures are intended for offense rather than defense. You don’t spend 8 to 10 times as much as your rival on weapons and troops to defend yourself. Doing so would be wasteful. But you do vastly outspend your rival if your intentions are intimidation and aggression, or your aim is to arms-race your opponent into bankruptcy and submission.
  2. Punishingly high military expenditures offer a pretext for NATO governments to ween people off public services. Public services are increasingly starved of adequate funding, often to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and increases in military expenditures. That governments routinely make these trade-offs show that they favor the wealthy, who rely little, if at all, on public services, but benefit from tax cuts. The wealthy also benefit from robust military spending, inasmuch as it provides investment opportunities in arms industries and underwrites hard-power which can be used to defend investments and trade routes and exact trade and investment concessions around the world.
  3.  Much of the increased spending will flow into the coffers of US weapons makers, to the greater profit of investors who have stakes in the arms industry, while improving the balance of US trade, a major Trump administration obsession. By diverting public funds from public services to US arms dealers, NATO’s non-US members are submitting to US economic coercion and arm-twisting in order to placate their master.

Given that the accelerated spending increases will almost certainly be financed by budget cuts to public services, Canadians will see their healthcare, education, and pensions suffer—even more than they already do—so US arms manufacturers can enjoy generous profits. Canadians, perhaps, should have expected no less for having recently elected as prime minister the former head of Brookfield, a leading global investment firm. But even if they hadn’t, Canada, like all other capitalist countries, is so thoroughly under the sway of the leading lights of the business community—as a result of the community’s lobbying and other direct efforts to influence the government and its policies, but also as a consequence of the power the community wields by virtue of its ownership and control of the economy—that it doesn’t matter who is prime minister. With or without Carney, the policy and direction of the government would be the same.  The only way it is going to change is if the power of private business to dominate government and public policy is ended by bringing private industry and private investment under democratic control.

NATO governments are presenting their citizens with a spuriously inflated threat as a pretext to significantly increase military expenditures.  We’re expected to believe that over 590 million Europeans are unable to defend themselves against 144 million Russians who, after almost four years, still can’t defeat 40 million Ukrainians. (Of course, a big reason they can’t defeat Ukraine is because they’re also fighting the United States and its NATO lackeys, Canada included, who furnish Ukraine with training, weapons, and intelligence.) We’re expected to believe that even though Europe’s NATO members spend three times as much on the military as Russia does, and have almost twice as many troops, that the alliance is vulnerable to a Russian invasion. These military spending increases—totally unnecessary for self-defense—will not come without a cost. Already, officials of various NATO governments have initiated a discourse on the necessity of making painful cuts to public services. The Russia threat is spurious—a stalking horse for advancing the sectoral interests of wealthy investors. If we allow this deception to stand and meekly submit to runaway militarism, all but the superrich—friends and class cohorts of the Trumps, the Carneys, the Merzs, the Macrons, and the Starmers—will pay a heavy price.

With one in five Canadians without a family doctor, one in four households in financial straits, 40,000 public servants on the chopping block, and the housing and rental markets in crisis, we are already paying a price. Unless we act now—by withdrawing from the war over Ukraine for billionaire profits, prioritizing the needs of Canadians, and bringing industry and investment decisions under democratic control—the price will grow larger still.

 1. Steven Chase, “Canada buying $200-million in weapons for Ukraine from U.S. stockpile,” The Globe and Mail, 3 December 2025.

2. Tia Pham and Tara Kiran, “More than 6.5 million adults in Canada lack access to primary care,” Healthy Debate, 14 March 2023.

3. Steven Globerman, Joel Emes, and Austin Thompson “Affordable housing is out of reach everywhere in Canada,” the Globe and Mail, 2 December, 2025.

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQHljrFMbfA&t=46s

5. Labour Force Survey, October 2025, Statistics Canada, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/251107/dq251107a-eng.htm

6. Bill Curry and Melissa Martin “Carney pledges support for Ukraine, unveils defence aid details at Independence Day visit,” The Globe and Mail August 24, 2025.

7. John McCain once wrote that “We are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from our political and economic values. We have grown vastly wealthier and more powerful under those rules.” John McCain, “John McCain: Why We Must Support Human Rights,” The New York Times, 8 May 2017.

8.  Michael R. Gordon and Lara Seligman, “Pentagon Official at Center of Weapons Pause on Ukraine Wants U.S. to Focus on China,” The Wall Street Journal, 13 July 2025.

9. Yaroslav Trofimov, “A Newly Confident China Is Jockeying for More Global Clout as Trump Pulls Back, The Wall Street Journal, 2 December 2025.

10. Matthew Luxmoore and Robbie Gramer, “Marathon Russia-U.S. Meeting Yields No Ukraine Peace Deal”, The Wall Street Journal, 2 December 2025.

11. Daniel Michaels, “Trump’s NATO Vision Spells Trouble for the Alliance,” The Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2025. 

12. Mark Landler, “NATO Chief Urges Members to Spend Far More on Military,” The New York Times, 9 June 2025. 

13. Landler.

NATO Invents Russia Threat to Justify Military Spending Increases and Painful Budget Cuts

NATO countries are on track to boost military spending at the expense of public services in order to deter a threat from Russia that has been vastly overstated.

By Stephen Gowans

June 11, 2025

It is almost certain that NATO governments will commit to spending 5 percent of their GDPs on their militaries and military-related infrastructure at the upcoming June 24-25 NATO summit, as demanded by US president Donald Trump. The US president has complained that the United States carries the burden of defending Europe and that NATO countries must do more to contribute to their own defense. NATO secretary general Mark Rutte has said that the 5 percent target—which would represent a substantial increase in military spending and would likely come at the expense of public services—is necessary to deter Russia from invading Europe. Russia, Rutte warns, “could mount an effective offensive against NATO in five years,” unless steps are taken now to boost military spending. [1]

The idea that the United States carries the burden of defending Europe and that Europe could not defend itself without US assistance, is false. In point of fact, the United States contributes much less to the defense of Europe than Europe does itself. Table 1 shows that the United States spends $50 billion annually on military operations in Europe, overshadowed by the $476 billion that Europe’s NATO members spend yearly. Whereas 100,000 US troops serve in Europe, the alliance’s European members contribute over 2 million infantry, air crew, and sailors to the continent’s defense.

Table 1. Russia vs. NATO in Europe
 Military spending ($B)Military personnel
Russia$1421,200,000
European NATO members$4762,041,300
US contribution to Europe$50100,000
European NATO members + US contribution$5262,141,300
(Europe + US contribution) / Russia3.71.8
Sources:
Russian military spending: Robyn Dixon, “Russian economy overheating, but still powering the war against Ukraine,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2024.
Russian military personnel: CIA World Factbook. NATO military expenditures and personnel: “Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2024)” NATO. March 2024.
US military spending in Europe: Steven Erlanger, “NATO Wants a Cordial Summit, but Trump or Zelensky Could Disrupt It,” The New York Times, May 26, 2025.
US military personnel: Daniel Michaels, Nancy A. Youssef and Alexander Ward, “Trump’s Turn to Russia Spooks U.S. Allies Who Fear a Weakened NATO,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 20, 2025.

What’s more, together, NATO’s European members spend over three times as much on their militaries as Russia does on its armed forces, while the number of NATO personnel in Europe, excluding the US contribution, is almost double Russia’s (Table 2).  Were Europe’s NATO members to meet Trump’s 5 percent target, they would exceed Russia’s military spending by a factor of eight. To be sure, this would deter a Russian offensive in Europe, but it would be overkill. Six months ago, when the idea of the 5 percent target was first broached by the incoming Trump administration, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder dismissed it as “a made-up number with no basis in reality.” He said that “European NATO members now spend three times as much as Russia does on defense, and at 5% Europe would outspend Russia by $750 billion annually, spending roughly 10 times what Russia spends.” [2] Daalder’s numbers and those of Table 2, while differing slightly in some respects, point to the same conclusion: the 5 percent target is far too high.

Table 2. Russia vs. NATO (European members)
RussiaEuropean NATO membersEurope / Russia
Population143,800,000592,872,3864.1
GDP ($B)$2,021$23,02311.4
Military spending ($B)   
   At current levels$142$4763.4
   At 5% of GDP (NATO) $1,1518.1
Military personnel1,200,0002,041,3001.7
Sources:
NATO population: CIA World Factbook.
NATO GDP, military expenditures, and personnel: “Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2024)” NATO. March 2024.
Russian military spending: Robyn Dixon, “Russian economy overheating, but still powering the war against Ukraine,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2024.
Russian military personnel: CIA World Factbook.
Russian population and GDP:  World Bank.

Russia is militarily incapable of territorial expansion beyond Ukraine, and even in Ukraine—a country with only one-quarter of Russia’s population—its capabilities are severely tested.  Russia is no match for an alliance, whose European members alone, have four times its population and over 11 times its GDP. The idea that Russia has the capability to invade a NATO-alliance member is—to use a favorite phrase of US international relations specialist John Mearsheimer—“not a serious argument.”

Despite these realities, Rutte, along with various NATO governments, are trying to create the illusion that Russia threatens Europe. They are doing so in order to manufacture consent for a stepped-up level of military spending that is far in excess of what is necessary to defend the continent.  Not only is military spending at this level unnecessary, it will harm the interests of the vast majority of Europeans. Higher defense spending will almost certainly mean cuts to public services. During a recent visit to Britain, the NATO secretary general warned British citizens that if they choose to funnel public-spending into maintaining the National Health Service and other public services, rather than meeting Trump’s arbitrary 5 percent target, they had “better learn to speak Russian.” [3] The message is clear: Important pubic services that benefit most of us, must be sacrificed in order to squander public funds on the military to meet a spurious threat. “Ramping up to 5 percent would necessitate politically painful trade-offs”, warns the New York Times. [4] Painful trade-offs mean painful for all but business owners and the wealthy. Within the current climate, the idea that higher military outlays will be underwritten by higher taxes on the rich and big business is unthinkable. Instead, the formula is: gull the public into believing a Russian offensive is imminent so they’ll accede to the gutting of public services.

Why would NATO countries commit to spending far more than they need to for defense? There are three reasons that suggest themselves as hypotheses.

  1. The expenditures are intended for offense rather than defense. You don’t spend 8 to 10 times as much as your rival on weapons and troops to defend yourself. Doing so would be wasteful. But you do vastly outspend your rival if your intentions are intimidation and aggression, or your aim is to arms-race your opponent into bankruptcy and submission.
  2. Punishingly high military expenditures offer a pretext for NATO governments to ween people off public services. Public services are increasingly starved of adequate funding, often to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and increases in military expenditures. That governments routinely make these trade-offs show that they favor the wealthy, who rely little, if at all, on public services, but benefit from tax cuts. The wealthy also benefit from robust military spending, inasmuch as it provides investment opportunities in arms industries and underwrites hard-power which can be used to defend investments and trade routes and exact trade and investment concessions around the world.
  3.  Much of the increased spending will flow into the coffers of US weapons makers, to the greater profit of investors who have stakes in the arms industry, while improving the balance of US trade, a major Trump administration obsession. By diverting public funds from public services to US arms dealers, NATO’s non-US members are submitting to US economic coercion and arm-twisting in order to placate their master.

Canada, also a NATO member, has recently pledged to significantly accelerate planned increases in military spending in order to “try to placate President Trump amid sensitive trade talks.” [5] The Wall Street Journal reported that “Canadian officials have been making the pitch to U.S. negotiators that Canada will now be in a position to make big deals with U.S. defense contractors.” [6] Given that the accelerated spending increases will almost certainly be financed by “painful” budget cuts to public services, Canadians will see their healthcare, education, and pensions suffer so US arms manufacturers can enjoy generous profits. Canadians, perhaps, should have expected no less for having recently elected as prime minister the former head of Brookfield, a leading global investment firm.

NATO governments are presenting their citizens with a spuriously inflated threat as a pretext to significantly increase military expenditures.  We’re expected to believe that over 590 million Europeans are unable to defend themselves against 144 million Russians who, after more than three years, still can’t defeat 40 million Ukrainians. We’re expected to believe that even though Europe’s NATO members spend three times as much on the military as Russia does, and has almost twice as many troops, that the alliance is vulnerable to a Russian invasion. These military spending increases—totally unnecessary for self-defense—will not come without a cost. Already, officials of various NATO governments have initiated a discourse on the necessity of making painful cuts to public services. Already, US politicians are working on legislation to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and significant increases in US military spending with cuts to public services and new debt. The Russia threat is phony—a stalking horse for advancing the sectoral interests of wealthy investors. If we allow this deception to stand and meekly submit to runaway militarism, all but the superrich—friends and class cohorts of the Trumps, Carneys, and Ruttes—will pay a heavy price.

1. Mark Landler, “NATO Chief Urges Members to Spend Far More on Military,” The New York Times, June 9, 2025.

2. Daniel Michaels, “Trump’s NATO Vision Spells Trouble for the Alliance,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 8, 2025.

3. Landler.

4. Landler.

5. Vipal Monga, “Canada to Boost Military Spending to Try to Placate Trump,” The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2025.

6. Monga.

The Bedlamites in Paris and London

By Stephen Gowans

May 6, 2024

“French President Emmanuel Macron repeated last week that he doesn’t exclude sending troops to Ukraine, and U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Kyiv’s forces will be able to use British long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia.” This prompted “Russia to hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons.” “Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council said that the comments by Macron and Cameron risked pushing the nuclear-armed world toward a ‘global catastrophe.’”

The words of the French president and UK foreign secretary are madness. These two bedlamites are flirting with an escalation of the Ukraine conflict to World War III. There is no military solution to the struggle over Ukraine, of the United States and its NATO instrument on the one side, and Russia on the other. The only outcomes are (i) a permanent war of attrition, in which the United States fights Russia to the last Ukrainian, an option which has some advantages for the US ruling class, to be sure; it weakens a geopolitical rival, Russia, at no expense in US lives; keeps Europe securely under US control via a beefed-up NATO; and maintains pressure on the Europeans to buy US military equipment to underwrite interoperability with US forces, to the benefit of US arms industry shareholders; (ii) escalation to World War III; so long as the war persists, and so long as lunatics like Macron and Cameron are prepared to risk the existence of humanity by elevating the level of threat to Russia, the total annihilation of humanity in a nuclear show-down between great powers has a probability above zero; (iii) a political solution. Russia is strong enough militarily that its ability to enforce a sphere of influence in parts of Ukraine, if not the outright absorption of a large fraction of the country, is insuperable. There is nothing the United States and its European clients can do to stop it. They can finance an indefinite Ukrainian war against Russia, but the chances that Kyiv is ever going to recover the Ukrainian territory Russia has already ingurgitated appear to be very small. It would seem highly probable that Washington recognizes that the loss of Ukrainian territory to Russia is an irreversible fact, but that this is of little moment, since Washington is willing to settle for an achievable goal, namely, weakening its Russian rival by keeping it bogged down in a Ukrainian quagmire.

The danger, so far as a political solution continues to be eschewed, is that the world will end and humanity with it as foolish and dangerously bold politicians gamble that they can stare down a nuclear-armed opponent and make him yield. Maybe they can, but is it a chance worth taking?