Will European rearmament become a new neoliberal nightmare?

These are real debates. And Europe has a lot at stake on their outcome. (1)

Excellent point from Shahin Vallée and Joseph de Weck: “History teaches us that the political choice has never been about guns or butter, but rather guns or taxes.”

If European leaders and political parties want rearmament to be something other a new excuse for more austerity for the majority of Europeans, they will have to be up a real fight to stop than from happening.

Neoliberal ideology seems to induce the practical equivalent of brain rot in its enthusiasts, as they note here:

For some experts, the only way to build a warfare state that can deter Russia is to slash social spending. After all, goes the misleading argument, governments in the 1990s splashed the savings from defence on expensive welfare promises

Even before the Nato agreement in The Hague, the public were being softened up for the new reality. In a TV address in March, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, warned citizens that in a “more brutal” world, they would have to make budget sacrifices. Macron ruled out higher taxes. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, decided to scrap a public holiday to finance higher defence spending. The UK has cut savagely into its international development aid budget for the same reason.

They state their non-neoliberal response this way: “The “new normal” of higher defence spending should thus also be funded by increasing taxes, especially on corporate income, high wealth and capital gains. This won’t be possible without limiting tax competition at a Europe-wide level.”

Notes:

(1) Vallée Shahin & De Weck, Joseph (2025): Europe does not have to choose between guns and butter. There is another way. The Guardian 07/07/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/07/europe-guns-butter-defence-spending-welfare-state> (Accessed: 2025-07-07).