The New Order created by NATO

The brand-new NATO agreement signed this week restores the arms race of the post-World War II era and the Cold War, but without the growth and economic joy of the thirty glorious years from 1945 to 1975. It's a new order in which, despite bombastic declarations, the reality is that Europe is acquiescing to Donald Trump's pressures, accepting the economic drain, and becoming even more satellite-like. If they had no alternative, they should tell their fellow citizens instead of fabricating baseless arguments. Mark Rutte, the Dutch NATO Secretary General, and anyone else who has done something similar should show their private messages to the emperor. Where, then, is the crisis of US hegemony?

The European political elite, stunned by the ultra-advanced US bombing of Iran, has agreed to jeopardize the already weakened foundations of the welfare state in exchange for a supposed strategic understanding with the US. It will pay the bulk of the tax demanded in exchange for the arms umbrella in the hope of keeping US markets open to its products, especially German cars.

For Trump and the US, the agreement is as much about military strategy and international relations as it is about trade policy. The 5% spending target is seen in Washington as a huge backlog of orders. And as a strengthening of the dollar's role, despite its fiscal crisis.

A package of up to a trillion additional dollars each year. A large part of which will boost its defense companies, which have a 40% share of global exports and will contribute to the reduction of its trade deficit. Europe will be part of the large group of countries that purchase massive arms, similar to the Gulf regimes, especially that of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia. For Europe, this refoundation of NATO represents a historic turning point equivalent to the creation of that military alliance itself. Not surprisingly, this increase in spending has been the desire of several US administrations, from George Bush to Joe Biden.

Keir Starmer's United Kingdom, harassed by criticism within his own party for its cuts to welfare and social services, has already announced the purchase of 12 F-35A aircraft, at a cost of around 2 billion euros. Similarly, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced a procurement program that also includes F-35 aircraft, in addition to 60 Chinook helicopters, already ordered, for a value of 8.5 billion euros, and Patriot missiles. The list includes Arrow 3 missiles for Israel, which is at the height of the carnage in Gaza and the West Bank.

The ultra-populism that emerged after the 2008 crisis is preparing to come to power with this new momentum.

Obviously, the German Social Democratic Party, the SPD, a junior ally in the coalition government with the Christian Democrats, is showing signs of serious division. Europe's largest economy, heading into its third year of continuous recession, has gone from rejecting infrastructure modernization to revitalize its economy to increasing its military budget by 100% in three years.

The most dramatic consequence, leaving aside the arms race itself, will be the diversion of vast public resources to purchase weapons from the US, which will exhaust public budgets. In return, promises of enormous benefits through development and economic growth are made, however, unsupported by the lessons of history. A campaign to persuade public opinion has been launched to forge a new consensus around the advantages of rearmament, which is not only necessary and inevitable, but also highly beneficial.

The conclusion is clear that the political elites who rule Europe have drawn few lessons from the last financial crisis, that of 2008, and the consequences of the austerity policies that were implemented: the breakdown of democracies and the legitimacy of the political systems embedded within them.

The European political elite has agreed to put at risk the already weak foundations of the welfare state.

The vast amount of resources intended for rearmament will only be available by further increasing the enormous mountain of public debt already burdening state accounts and, above all, by reducing the quality of their basic services. Pensions, education, and the healthcare system are the prime candidates to pay for the party. Pensions, an object of desire. Despite the elements of political opportunism it may incorporate, Pedro Sánchez's argument against this runaway spending dynamic recognizes the main social and political dangers.

In the long term, a fiscal crisis for the state, barring tax cuts or increases. The latter will provoke an uprising, in this case, among the economic elites, already well on the way to that path, and an even greater collapse of the middle classes.

And, above all, political bankruptcy, the definitive push needed by the populist far right, fueled by the same phenomenon after 2008. A political enemy of democracy that thrives especially on the economic desperation of the middle class to find false culprits and erode public trust.

This populism that spreads the idea that those responsible for future scarcity will be immigrants, those who are different (culturally, linguistically, territorially), the supposed intellectual elites, and the political system through which citizens express their needs and choices. In reality, this far right is simply operating on fertile ground plowed up by parties that, in government, fail to draw lessons from the immediate past. And it is already edging toward its rise to power. A scenario that Trump himself has especially prepared. It is paradoxical that European politicians believe they have stopped the US president, just as he is laying the groundwork for the enemy to rise to power.