EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has called for the EU to turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine” and for Europe to undertake a massive rearmament.

If successful, the project would convert the EU from a largely political-economic union into a military-industrial superpower. It could also create a debt bomb as well as cluster bombs of social discontent that explode at various points in the future.

Fresh from a meeting of allies in London, von der Leyen said of the plan, “It is basically turning Ukraine into a steel porcupine that is indigestible for potential invaders.”

The broader massive rearmament plan will consist of three pillars: the relaxation of fiscal rules to allow greater public financing, the mobilisation of common EU money and the larger participation of the European Investment Bank in the “re-armament” project. These will be presented to an emergency summit in Brussels this month.

Each of these come with inevitable consequences for public spending in the EU.

Unity through war. We’ve been here before

The Trumpian Moment is being seized on as a Bismarckian Moment – unity through war. Historians (AJP Taylor, Gordon A Craig, etc) recognise that the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck provoked the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 as a mechanism to unify the German states into a single polity. The country we call Germany today was actually proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on 18 January 1871, days before Paris surrendered.

Some 25 duchies, grand duchies, free cities, kingdoms and principalities were brought together by the war, fulfilling Otto’s maxim:

“Die großen Fragen der Zeit werden nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse entschieden sondern durch Eisen und Blut.” “The great questions of the time will not be resolved by fine speeches and majority decisions but by blood and iron.” The current misguided EU strategy, however, is closer to SurrealePolitik than to Bismarck’s Realpolitik. Where the comparison with Bismarck holds up, I believe, is around these similar strategies:

1. Provoke a country (France in the 19th century, Russia today) into declaring war, thereby making themselves seem defensive.
2. Rally multiple states against a common enemy.
3. Use war to promote political-military unity.
4. Leverage the war’s outcome to establish a bigger, more powerful polity.

Terence O’Brien, the late New Zealand diplomat, said: “Historians now agree that Cold War tensions were driven by exaggerated rhetoric about capabilities and intent, so as to justify stupendous military budgets and forward deployments.” Something similar is occurring here, with the EU trying to turn Russia into a forever enemy, the bogeyman to the east.

Mearsheimer and von der Leyen have their own porcupines

I have heard John Mearsheimer use the porcupine metaphor many times in recent years – but with the opposite intent to von der Leyen. Back in 2014 he said: “If you really wanted to wreck Russia, what you would do is invite it into Ukraine and let it try and conquer the whole country and swallow it. It would be like swallowing a porcupine. It just wouldn’t make any sense. And the same goes for almost all the other countries on their border. It’s just not in the cards." Mearsheimer, I believe correctly, continues to hold this opinion to this day.

Measured investment in defence is one thing but Von der Leyen’s is a dark vision for the European continent, making the EU elites a clear and present danger to the wellbeing of the very populations they nominally serve. The EU was founded to prevent future wars, not perpetuate them. It was a better project when it focussed on political and economic development to the benefits of populations, not the concentration of power and the expansion of war machines – which is to the sole benefit of elites.

Militarism is good for elites, bad for ordinary people

The relaxation of fiscal rules proposed by von der Leyen (for example, the Stability and Growth Pact) likely means removing fiscal guardrails designed to prevent unsustainable debt accumulation, including ditching the requirement for member states’ budgets not to exceed 3% of GDP and public debt not to exceed 60% of GDP.

The risk is the EU abandons sound public finances in favour of quickly building itself into a military superpower. Raising debt in this way could easily set up a debt-bomb – Italy, as just one example, already has a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 135% . As well as increasing, not decreasing, the likelihood of major war, it could easily drag the continent into a quagmire of debt, inflation, and reduced living standards which will only exacerbate the social divisions that are roiling Europe.

The third pillar of the plan — mobilising the European Investment Bank in the rearmament project — is a red flag. The EIB is a major funder of infrastructure projects, and has a heavy focus on climate change mitigation and jobs growth. How much more will they end up spending on defence – $500 billion? $1000 billion? These people don’t lack ambition.

Turning the EIB into a piggybank to fast-track a military-industrial scheme will inevitably lead to reprioritising away from social services, education, healthcare, and other public services. Labour under Keir Starmer has spent a year attacking social spending, including winter fuel allowances for pensioners, in order to heat up the war with Russia. Germany is on a deindustrialisation trajectory that is wreaking havoc with social cohesion and fuelling a rise in far-right and populist parties. Pumping billions of euros into a formidable war machine will, as sure as night follows day, lead to a punishing squeeze on other spending. Funds previously allocated to regional development, agricultural subsidies and climate change initiatives must surely be reduced.

Their plan is tantamount to “Beating their ploughshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears", to reverse Isaiah 2:4; apt because this could easily lead to consequences of biblical proportions. Will it lead to “victory” or an escalatory spiral?

Rearmament in WWI saw Britain stagger out of the war with a massive debt (up from 26% of GDP in 1914 to 127% by 1919) that led to decades of stagnation, reduced public spending as money had to be redirected to debt repayment. It is worth noting that it hastened Britain’s decline as an industrial power. One thing we can all be certain of is that the burden for all this will be borne by ordinary people, not the billionaire class or the globalist elites.

Von der Leyen — or Frau Genocide as former MEP Clare Daly called her — pitched her case in ringing, noble tones:

“We are ready, together with you, to defend democracy, to defend the principle that there is a rule of law that you cannot invade (and) bully your neighbour or cannot change borders with force,” she said.

Fine speech; I just don’t believe a word of this. Defending democracy would mean encouraging votes cast in elections to stand whether you like the politics of the winners or not. The EU tacitly backing the cancellation of the first round of Romania’s presidential election was just one of many low points. Defending democracy would mean that the secret police in Germany, Austria and England did not raid hard-working and decent journalists’ homes or cancel meetings in order to stop people like United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese or economist Yanis Varoufarkis expressing their opinions. Defending democracy and fuelling the Israeli genocide are similarly incompatible concepts.

Ukraine and all of Europe deserve a better future than their leaders are currently cooking up. This plan will help elites thrive and make ordinary people bleed. Vive sanity, restraint and diplomacy. Blessed are the peacemakers.