NATO boss Mark Rutte says we must all prepare for a world war-level conflict with Russia. A senior British minister has echoed the call. The UK and European population don’t get a say, it seems. Rutte delivered a fearmongering speech at a conference in Munich:
The full transcript is here. He said:
We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured
Rutte painted a grim picture:
Imagine it, a conflict reaching every home, every workplace, destruction, mass mobilisation, millions displaced, widespread suffering and extreme losses.
As ever, the speech was a pitch for massive hikes in military spending:
Allied defence spending and production must rise rapidly, our armed forces must have what they need to keep us safe, and Ukraine must have what it needs to defend itself – now.
NATO casts the shadow of war?
UK defence minister Al Carns echoed Rutte’s comments. Carns is a former marine who war-horny Labour MPs have been gushing over. They see him as their next leader.
Carns said:
The shadow of war is knocking on Europe’s door once more. That’s the reality. We’ve got to be prepared to deter it.
For Carns, the whole of society would have to be recruited to this hypothetical war:
There’s a whole load of work going on now between us [Ministry of Defence], the Cabinet Office, and the whole of society approach, and what conflict means, and what everybody’s role in society means if we were to go to war and the build up to war.
It’s not clear who these people think they’re kidding. War expenditure is already vast — and rising. Wars are underway (or about to break out) in many locations around the world.
Less war, not more
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute warns military spending spiked again in 2024. Global arms firms are the only winners there. At the moment, there is war in Ukraine and western-backed genocides in Gaza and Sudan. Meanwhile, the UK has started to re-shape its economy around war. And the Trump administration is preparing for an assault in oil-rich Venezuela.
And let’s not forget: war with Russia is a potential nuclear conflict.
The world is a dangerous place but the answer to that is not throwing money at arms firms. Far from protecting us, the UN claims the sheer vastness of war spending is actively pulling us towards war. UN chief Antonio Guterres said in September 2025:
At this critical moment, the international community must confront the stark reality that rising military expenditures are not yielding greater peace but are instead undermining our shared vision for a sustainable future.
There is ample fighting in the world right now. All in all, there are more than enough profits for arms firms already. Ultimately, more wars will deepen poverty and inequality. And it follows that a NATO hot war in Europe will empower far-right and fascist parties and governments around the world. Not to mention the nuclear potential…
Rutte and Carns might be okay with that calculation. There’s no reason we should be.
Featured image via Dutch News













Unbelievable. They have learnt nothing, at our expense . . .
Who thought it was a good idea to put a German as the Chief of NATO and its Armed Forces, I wasn’t alive when Hitler was on the go but I have seen plenty footage and read hundreds of books on the first and second Wars and know Hitlers view on The Communist/ Soviet Union USSR. he Hated This Ideology it is my belief even more than McCarthy and Americans as a whole. I am not speaking in hindsight I bitterly opposed the Demolition of the Berlin Wall because I knew the floodgates of Eastern Europe would burst open and Western Europe and Britain would end up with not the decent people but all the criminal and dangerous members of the respective countries population. Think Who is doing the majority of Money Laundering, Slavery, and worse People Trafficking, the Eastern European Gangs and Russian Mafia and Oligarchs not Muslims!!!!! And if all you immigrant haters stop and use what little of the Brain you have to think about why some British Muslims are Radicalised and hate us. This would be because the British Government has along with the Warmongering Yanks used LIES and Propaganda to Go to War against Iraq and Afghanistan to rid these countries of WMD’ the Taliban and Al Qaeda They then ended up creating a new and more violent group ISIS, And then they used Insurgency against Cuba, Libya, Egypt, and Syria for no other reason than the then leaders of these Sovereign States would rather deal with Russia and China than America. In all these actions the British and American States have Murdered not only the indigenous peoples of the aforementioned Countries but Our own Lads and Lassies who should never have been there in the first place and what did the Great Trumpetty Trump do when he finally managed to get rid of Assad From Syria yep he put good auld ISIS in Charge of Syria You couldn’t make that up.
It was a frightening speech and I do wonder what sort of future these people seem to be pushing us towards. Climate change, poverty and growing inequality are the areas we should focus on not working class killing working class. I suspect if we do go to war then there will be an upsurge in the wealthy claiming bones spurs mean they would not be able to serve.
Hopefully it just a pitch for money and a cover for authoritarian control, because if these clowns really want a war with Russia they have failed to hear what the Russians have been telling them and/or have misunderstood. It will not be a war of tanks and soldiers, like Ukraine – it will be missiles raining down on undefended airfields, ports, energy grids and command-and-control bunkers. The EU/NATO have sent the bulk of their air defence to Ukraine, and it hasn’t stopped the missiles wrecking that nation. The US and its allies (including us) joined Israel in attempting to fend off Iran’s missiles with only partial success. Plus, if the whole EU/NATO bloc goes to war with Russia and starts to inflict substantial damage there is the real risk of nuclear war, since that would pose exactly the existential threat that triggers Mutually Assured Destruction.
“At the moment, there is a western-backed war in Ukraine and western-backed genocides in Gaza and Sudan.”
There., fixed it for you. Joe.
The Ukraine conflict did not start out of the blue in 2022. It goes way back. The present conflict erupted in 2014 with an illegal coup funded by the US with US politicians pulling the strings using neo-Nazi gangs and organisations tracing their inspiration back to Bandera and others who aligned with Nazi Germany in the 1930’s-40’s. In much the same way those same forces pulled the strings of AQ and ISIS.
An illegal coup which outlawed the Russian language and cancelled the majority ethnic Russian Slav populations of Eastern Ukraine that erupted into a civil war in which the NATO (which has since German reunification reneged on its written and verbal commitments not o expand its border by marching right up to the border of the Russian Federation placing missiles minutes from key Russian cities) backed forces were forced to back off. Buying time to rearm and re-group via the Minsk agreements to reach a point in February 2022 in which the mass of the neo-Nazi forces of the Ukraine were concentrated on the South Eastern border of the Donbass Oblasts – rather than further North on the Belarus border – prior to an imminent assault on the Russian-speaking populace of those Oblasts who immediately requested assistance under the United Nations ‘Right to Protect (R2P) Provisions”.
The rationale for the Western/NATO approach here can be found in the 2019 RAND Report which seeks a policy of breaking up the Russian Federation by the Western powers in order to access the resources of Eurasia to provide the collateral for the huge debt driven fiat Ponzi scheme that is the Western rentier and financial based economic paradigm. Without those resources, the economic system of the West – driven by oligarch bankers – will collapse.
Jonathan Cook gets it: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/dont-worry-be-happy-all-those-who
“The biggest profits are made from war, which is ever-present. The corporations use their politician-servants to manufacture enemies from which the public needs defending. This proves a great success. In a fear-driven society, the public is readier to tolerate austerity – the gradual dismantlement of public services, which the corporations can then take over and run as profit-generating enterprises.
The public are persuaded that the flow of money out of their own pockets into corporate coffers – into expanding the war machine – is necessary for national security. The public’s most cherished freedoms have to be sacrificed, they are told, to prevent society from growing weak and vulnerable. And the corporations vilify anyone who questions their power as an internal enemy, allied to the external enemy.”