In the short term, this plan involves crushing the Ukrainian people in the east and supporting the far-right Trumpist, nationalist and sovereignist parties in the west. Both Trump and Putin are betting on the fragmentation of society and the disintegration of Europe.

Beyond that, the two despots have their own agendas: separating Russia from China for one, restoring Russia to the borders of the Tsarist empire for the other. As with the Hitler-Stalin pact to partition Poland, reversals are likely, depending on the balance of power, with new threats of war looming.

The pact between Trump and Putin is already putting the post-war bourgeois project in deep crisis. The construction of an ultra-liberal European Union, the privileged ally of US imperialism and the European pillar of NATO enabled the European bourgeoisie to establish itself as a major protagonist in the competitive struggle for world capitalist hegemony.

Now that its project is threatened with bankruptcy, the European ruling class is scrambling to come up with a response that is even more closely aligned with the interests of big business. The Moscow-Washington pact serves as an accelerator: remilitarisation at full throttle, more austerity, more gifts to the bosses, cutting back the very inadequate ecological measures recently addopted, hardening the shameful policies of refoulement of migrants... Not forgetting the European kowtowing to Trump, in the hope of sharing the cake of Ukrainian “reconstruction”.

When it comes to giving the Ukrainian people the resources they need for their legitimate defence, European governments balk. When it comes to producing weapons for a “powerful Europe”, they stop at nothing. The dogma of a balanced budget suddenly no longer applies... except to “justify” the austerity, repression of freedoms and ecological destruction that continue unabated.

The “defence of Ukraine” is used as a pretext. In reality, EU leaders have been putting the brakes on support for Kyiv for three years. On the one hand, despite everything, the Ukrainian people are resisting heroically. On the other hand, Russia is exhausted by its enormous losses in men and material. If Ukraine falls, Moldova and Georgia will be in its sights. But beyond that, Putin is betting on political decomposition rather than military conquest to increase his influence. The idea that his armies are preparing to sweep across the western part of the continent is a manipulation.

Under the present conditions, the EU’s provision of its existing military resources, the cancellation of the Ukrainian debt, the transfer to Kyiv of the 200 billion in frozen Russian funds, a special levy on large fortunes, the support of civil society and a vast internationalist mass mobilisation for democracy and peace (through the dissolution of all military blocs and respect for borders) would create the possibility of destabilising Putin’s neo-fascism. As a result, a different future would open up for the continent and for the world.

In any case, there is nothing to expect from an undemocratic European Union, which supports Netanyahu’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people, causes the deaths of thousands of migrants at sea every year, imposes unequal trade on the peripheral countries, and defines itself as “an open market economy with free competition”. The “defence policy” of this EU can only be a policy of defence of capitalist interests, at the expense of workers, young people, women, oppressed peoples and the planet.

If they refuse to be caught up in the struggle of the USA and China for world hegemony, with Russia as their pivot, if they want to be agents of their own common history, the peoples of the old continent have no choice but to unite their social movements and their trade unions in the struggle for another Europe, one that is democratic, social, open, generous and ecosocialist.

– A Europe that brings big business to heel by socialising finance, energy, the arms industry and other key sectors;

– A Europe that raises wages, develops social security, strengthens public services, fights inequality and eliminates poverty;

– A Europe that takes the money where it is to finance an ecological transition worthy of the name, without fossil fuels, nuclear power, sorcerer’s apprentice technologies or agribusiness;

– A Europe that cancels the debts of the countries of the South, renounces neo-colonial plundering and shares the discoveries that are essential to decarbonising the economy;

– A Europe in which the working classes will have at heart to ensure their own defence in case of need, where conscription replaces professional armies.

The path towards the foundation of this Europe is a political one: it involves the fight against national withdrawal and mobilisation for the election of a European constituent assembly.

The situation is urgent. Europe and the world are at the crossroads of history. Democratic and social rights were born in Europe in the 19^th and 20^th centuries as a result of labour’s fight against capitalist exploitation. Their future is at stake on a planet on fire that despots dream of subjecting to the unlimited diktat of Capital.

Daniel Tanuro