At the national level, for most of the Central and Western European countries, there is indeed no risk of a direct military invasion. And many left and right-wing populists talk only in these national terms: “There is no military threat to our nation, so why would we spend money on defense?”
But this position is counterproductive. By stirring up isolationist sentiments, the left is watering the garden of the far right. The far right is more consistent, and it promotes egoism in all spheres, so the left always loses in this game.
If we look instead from a European perspective, then we must admit: yes, Europe as an entity is under threat. But the form of that threat varies depending on location.
If we include Ukraine in our idea of Europe, then the war is already here – and it is huge.
Meanwhile, European arms production is far from sufficient to cover even Ukraine’s immediate needs. That means production must ramp up – and weapons must be sent where they are needed.
For the countries to the west of Ukraine, the danger is not tanks racing for Berlin. A plausible scenario is a provocation in the Baltics, designed to test Europe’s deterrence credibility. What counts as an invasion, and what does not, is always a matter of interpretation. Remember: Russian warplanes are already violating other countries airspace. Step by step, they test how far they can go.
From Putin’s perspective, this is tempting. Because he believes Western Europe will not fight for a few million Estonians, Lithuanians, Moldavians, etc. And he has reasons to believe it. If the big states decide it is not worth it, then deterrence collapses.
For decades, Europeans were relying on American military power. But this security mechanism is crumbling.
The strategic sectors necessary for the functioning of European armies depend almost entirely on the United States: air transport, satellite intelligence, ballistic missiles, air defense, etc. If the United States withdraws the defense systems of European countries will become completely inoperative. The reality today is that the existence of European countries depends on Trump’s far-right regime, which likely won’t respond in the event of an invasion. They are also vulnerable to Putin’s far-right regime, which is rearming, mobilizing, and actively seeking confrontation.
So the Baltics, Poland, Finland need to rebuild their stocks and reinforce infrastructure. When your neighbor is the world’s second military power, bombing cities daily, spending a third of its budget on war, and calling your country a “historical mistake,” the ability to defend yourself is not an arms race. It is survival. But this survival is only possible with the help of the Western European allies, as no Eastern European country is able to produce the necessary weapons and confront the Russian army alone.
In Western Europe the threat is different. Less about invasion, more about the rise of the far right. For Putin, for Trump, for J. D. Vance, the dream scenario is clear: Eastern Europe under Russian domination, Western Europe led by far-right governments that accept their vision of a world divided into authoritarian zones of influence.
So here defense means something else: countering disinformation, protecting infrastructure, blocking foreign money in politics, defending against cyberattacks, sabotage, and energy blackmail. And helping those who need weapons immediately for their survival.
In short: we must match tools to threats. And above all, we must stop thinking only in narrow national terms. Because it was precisely that national logic which fueled centuries of war, destruction, and division on the European continent.
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So where does that leave us?
I think we must distinguish between militarism and defense.
Militarism is the war as a business opportunity, driven by capitalist profit. It’s also putting war at the center and subordinate the entire society to it. Defense is the capacity of the society to protect itself from aggression. (And today, when the three biggest military powers openly threaten invasions—China against Taiwan, the United States even talking about Greenland, and Russia already waging war in Ukraine – one can not pretend that the problem of defense does not exist.)
The problem is not production itself. The problem is letting the market decide what is produced, for whom, under what rules. That is the real battlefield. Who decides? For what purpose? Under what conditions?
And here the left has a crucial role to play: impose strict export rules, transparency on contracts, democratic control.

Now, even in my own organization, I hear: “We don’t have the capacity to impose such rules.” And I ask: do we have more capacity to abolish war and weapons on the entire planet?
At that point, we should be honest. Slogans about abolishing war is no longer politics. It is much closer to religion – untouched by the demands of reality. When we raise supposedly radical demands without any means to achieve them and with no mass organisation in sight, the practical result is simple: we abandon the field to those already in power. They will then organize defense entirely according to their own rules and interests. And we will get exactly the militarism we claim to oppose.
We can, of course, claim that holding maximalist positions will sharpen contradictions, deepen social divisions, and precipitate the collapse of the bourgeois state. And that this collapse will bring the revolution, the final struggle. Even if the radical right is strong. Even if a militarized dictatorship stands next door. Because we bet that when our state collapses, people inside the neighboring militarized dictatorship will rise up – and in our country it will be us, not the far right, who take power.
Fine. But let’s be serious for a moment. What are the likelihood that people will revolt in militarized, far-right, illiberal states with mass surveillance? And in a world of naked violence, where power is decided by force of arms, what chance does today’s left really have against the far right?
Politics is not about fantasy. It is about analyzing the real balance of power, and advancing your goals within it.
So the question for us is simple: what is the realist position of the European left under present conditions?
For me, it has to begin with two requirements at the same time:
* First, ensuring the structural survival of a democratic space.
* Second, fighting from within that space to redefine its political and social content.
That means fighting neoliberal policies twice as hard – but without giving up the democratic framework where this fight is still possible.

Indeed, the European project – liberal democracy in general – is a total contradiction. It protects from arbitrary political power, but leaves people defenseless against the arbitrariness of capital (by the way, in the so-called socialist states it was the reverse: some protection from economic arbitrariness, no protection from political power). But those who today have the capacity and the declared will to dismantle this project are the regimes where citizens are protected neither from political oppression nor from economic one.
Remember, we started by asking what we mean by “us.” Of course, from the left perspective, it is not a nation-state or as European community but a global working class. I think we should keep in mind that neither human life nor workers’ rights or the environment can be protected in a state that falls within the “zone of influence” of autocratic imperial extractivist powers like Putin’s Russia, Trump’s US or China. In a world dominated by unchecked great-power politics, progressive organizations and their values are always annihilated, first politically, then physically.
Liberal democracy is full of contradictions. But they are contradictions we can fight inside of. Freedom to organize unions, women’s rights, social policies, international solidarity — all of these are not abstractions but material infrastructures that depend on our capacity to uphold the tiny space of freedom that was once opened with great sacrifice.
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Now a few words about practical steps that can be taken in the Swiss context.
Switzerland is not an island. Instability in the EU immediately affects Swiss security. Yet again, Switzerland seems choosing the old role: a safe haven for war criminals and their money.
That is why, we should act :
• Against Switzerland’s strategy of hiding behind “neutrality” while trading with war criminals. Against banking secrecy and tax havens that make Switzerland a paradise for the corrupt and the criminal.
• For stronger sanctions and maximum diplomatic measures against states that commit war crimes and violate international law.
• For confiscating the hundreds of billions in frozen Russian assets and using them to fund Ukraine’s defense and European security. Some fear this would set a dangerous precedent. They are right: justice is always a dangerous precedent in a system built to protect the rich. But it is the only precedent worth setting.
• For re-exporting arms to Ukraine, and against selling weapons to dictatorships and states that violate international law.
• Against spending billions on “national defense.” Switzerland is not threatened by Germany, France, or Italy. For contributing instead to European collective security.
• For abandoning Russian fossil fuels and investing massively in renewable energy. Energy autonomy is security. Every franc spent on Russian gas is a franc spent on Putin’s war.

Hanna Perekhoda is a Russian- speaking Ukrainian from Donbass, now living in Switzerland and a member of SolidaritéS