Posted by: John Phoenix
The imperialists’ wars are wars of plunder. Their ‘defence’ is the defence of privilege. Their ‘values’ are the values of exploitation.
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Lots of offensive talk about defence
Lalkar articles have always been presented with the clear intention of providing readers with an alternative, correct analysis to the detritus consumed through mainstream corporate media. If we were to use a food analogy, our articles would be an organic, nutritious, well-balanced meal compared with a McDonald’s takeaway. The former feeds the mind and invigorates the spirit; the latter produces lethargy and depression.
None of that has changed. What has shifted, dear reader, is you. In the past you may have read our analysis with some hesitancy, suspicion or even incredulity. However, recent events have hardened your already deepening distrust of the murky figures who run our society and manage the state, and have opened your mind to the possibility that, from time immemorial, communists just may have been revealing the truth.
It is important there is mutual understanding before we get to the substance of this article, which is about expenditure and war. We must go beyond one-dimensional rhetoric to grasp the real direction in which the ruling class is taking us. So let us examine their perfidious posturing through the lens of eyes that are now wide open.
Starmer in Munich: ‘Be ready to fight’
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) on Valentine’s Day 2026, at face value it sounded as if our lowly prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was expressing his love for the British people when he declared: “We must be ready to fight. To do whatever it takes to protect our people, our values and our way of life.”
But his audience was not the British people, nor the wider working class of Europe or North America. He was speaking to high-level political leaders, diplomats, military representatives and private ‘experts’ – that is, representatives of the western ruling elite. The ‘people, values and way of life’ he is keen to protect are theirs, not ours.
You do not have to be a communist to see that we are witnessing the long decline of the western imperial system. The road is well-travelled: western civilisation is politically corrupt, economically weakened, morally bankrupt and socially isolated. Where does this leave a ruling class that remains desperate, dangerous and determined to maintain power? In Starmer’s words: ready to fight.
And that is where we come in – the working class. Because you can bet your life (and that’s what it will come down to: your life and that of your kids and grandkids) that it won’t be the ruling class and their families facing fire as fodder.
Imperialism means war
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Vladimir Lenin explained that imperialism inevitably leads to conflict. When capitalist powers face crises that threaten their dominance, war becomes a tool to preserve their interests.
Over a century ago he wrote: “The struggle for a redivision of the world, which is the essence of imperialism, leads inevitably to war.”
Lenin made it clear that imperialism, by its nature, drives capitalist powers into conflicts when their dominance is threatened. Economic competition and the contest for resources among imperialist powers creates tensions that inevitably result in war, as those powers act to secure their position. Not only is the west threatened by the rise of a multipolar world and the defiance of an anti-imperialist bulwark of nations in China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran, Palestine, Cuba, the Sahel and others, but the imperialists are fighting among themselves more openly and viciously to secure the meagre spoils still available.
That’s why we are seeing tensions between the USA and Europe in particular, and even within imperial factions of those nations.
So with all of that in the forefront of our minds, let us return once again to the rhetoric of our ruinous leaders.
Keir Starmer reaffirmed to world leaders at the MSC the UK’s commitment to defend Nato allies and claimed that Russia’s rearmament “would only accelerate” if a peace deal was agreed with Ukraine. (Starmer deploys warships to Arctic and tells EU ‘be ready to fight’ by by Larisa Brown et al, The Times, 14 February 2026)
Yet in complete contradiction to that unfounded assertion, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister of 21 years, in a TV Brics interview on 9 February said: “Beyond what they claimed to offer on Ukraine … we also see no positive outlook on the economic front. Washington, in our view, is seeking control over global energy supply routes serving major economies across multiple continents.” He said that Russia remains open to cooperation with the USA but argued that “the Americans themselves are creating artificial obstacles on this path”. (‘No rosy future’ Lavrov slams Trump administration in interview, Moscow Times, 9 February 2026)
At the MSC, Starmer described Europe as a “sleeping giant”, asserting that the continent’s combined economies “dwarf Russia’s, ten times over”.
His call for unity was repeated by Ukrainian actor-stooge president Volodymyr Zelensky who, in his own speech to the conference, said: “No country could defend himself alone.” Zelensky went on to describe Russia’s president Vladimir Putin as a “slave to war” and added: “No one in Ukraine believes he will ever let our people go, but he will not let other European nations go either, because he cannot let go of the very idea of war.”
President Putin can’t let go of the very idea of war? Who does history prove to be the most warmongering of nations? Well, the United States, Britain and France rank top. These most aggressive of states have overwhelmingly been the dominant imperialist powers of the capitalist system and, allied in Nato, have conducted the majority of global interventions and been the manipulators of many proxy conflicts driven by competition over resources, energy, and geopolitical control rather than defence.
As we have already said, military aggression intensifies during periods of capitalist crisis and decline. There has been no more intensive period than the present day, and Russia is not the offender. The offensive, belligerent talk of ‘defence’ hails directly from western camps. Legitimate cause for defence measures elsewhere.
War is a costly exercise for the working class, but for the ruling elites it represents a great opportunity. Business booms for the military-industrial complex and its shareholding minions as tensions escalate and war ensues. Business booms for the lucky imperialists who capture resources plundered in a victorious war. Business booms for the hedge-fund-owned corporations that are contracted to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by the profit-making machinery of war.
But for the emasculated working class there is only death, destruction, devastation and downfall. There is nothing to be gained from killing other working-class people in the name of king, country or any other label you care to apply to capitalist corruption. For we all undeniably now know that corruption and perversion flow through the capillaries that feed the heart of the capitalist system.
Workers continue to pay the price in blood and treasure
The economic preparation for war is already underway. According to recent analysis, the British government will need to mobilise more than £800bn of new funding for defence projects and wider strategic infrastructure by 2040 in order to meet Nato’s targets. The UK has promised to lift defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP by the middle of the next decade, with a further 1.5 percent allocated to wider security needs. (UK needs £800bn of new funding by 2040 to meet defence pledge, says report by by Sam Fleming and David Sheppard, Financial Times, 29 December 2025)
Consultancy EY Parthenon estimates that meeting a 5 percent target would require a cumulative £804bn by 2040 for projects that currently lack funding. These include new barracks, munitions factories, autonomous weapons systems and naval hubs. Further investment in road and rail networks is planned to improve military mobility and supply chains, along with spending on strategically critical technologies.
Senior military figures are already pressing the government to accelerate these commitments. Core defence spending is expected to rise to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027, with ambitions of 3 to 3.5 percent thereafter. When combined with wider capital investment needs in energy, transport and infrastructure, estimates suggest total funding requirements of almost £2tn by 2040, with defence forming the largest share.
That means when all these planned but currently unfunded projects are added together over the 15 years to 2040, the bill is enormous. In simple terms, it is like saying if the country wants to rebuild its military, energy system and infrastructure at the same time, it will need to find trillions of pounds in total over the next couple of decades. That money will ultimately have to come from borrowing, from taxes or from shifting resources away from other parts of the economy – you can rest assured it won’t come from taxing billionaires!
Millions, billions, trillions – it’s all semantics. The bottom line, which we are all concerned about for different reasons, is that we recognise that war, imperialist war, has nothing to do with our defence, and certainly nothing to do with ‘values’. Our values, working-class values, human values, socialist values – like justice, equality and fairness – are not the values of the ruling elites. Their drive to war is all about maintain a prevailing system that for several hundred years has allowed them to plunder, exploit and commit genocide with impunity, and to live like vultures off the blood, sweat and tears of working-class people across the world.
The charade of British democracy is also being exposed as imperialist stakes rise. Policies once presented as settled (through apparent democratic referendum) like Brexit, are being reshaped under the banner of ‘security’. Starmer called for a more “European Nato” and a shift from “overdependence” on the United States to “interdependence”. He declared: “We are not the Britain of the Brexit years anymore … There is no British security without Europe and no European security without Britain.”
Such statements signal deeper military integration with European Nato countries and the erosion of previous ‘democratically won’ settlements – revealing the truth, that democracy has never been anything but chicanery to dupe the working class into believing that they had a societal stake.
The propaganda required to prepare us for further austerity and then war will be vast and relentless, invasive, pervasive and persuasive. Already underway, but nowhere near as extensive and zealous as it is going to become, you will recognise it as:
- Intensified hostility towards migrants, Muslims, communists and other scapegoats.
- Celebration of military expansion as economic opportunity for us all.
- Constant media campaigns portraying rival powers as existential threats.
- Battering propaganda campaigns against Russia, China, Iran et al suggesting ‘our way of life’ and our very lives are at risk, or that we must save those countries’ working classes from the clutches of their ‘evil’ leaders.
- Appeals to patriotism, monarchy and vague, undefined ‘British values’.
- Recruitment drives promoting careers in the armed forces (just ask the Ukrainians how well that worked out for them).
- Further economic hardship as resources are diverted from social provision to war preparation, and the consequences are blamed on everything and everyone but that.
No cooperation with the war machine
As workers, we are not powerless. We produce the weapons, build the infrastructure and supply the labour that makes war possible. Those who declare war are not our leaders; they are our rulers. They may be the warmongers, but we are the war minions. Our participation makes it possible.
We know our ruling class now. Their secrets, their corruption and their contempt for ordinary people – for us – stand exposed. We know that they serve only wealth, power and empire. Nothing in their conduct resembles the humanity we cherish or the future we seek.
Their wars are wars of plunder. Their ‘defence’ is the defence of privilege. Their ‘values’ are the values of exploitation. The path they are preparing, and the diversion of our taxes into war preparations will mean falling living standards, growing repression and, ultimately, the sacrifice of working-class youth – our sons and daughters – on battlefields far from home. The suffering of the Ukrainian people today is not an accident. It is the inevitable result of Nato’s imperialist aggression and an illustration of what awaits workers across the West.
But history does not end with their plans; it begins with our resistance. When workers unite across borders, when we reject nationalism and chauvinism, when we organise consciously and collectively, we become stronger than any ruling class. History proves that to be true.
The future does not belong to imperialism, it belongs to socialism, to peace and to the organised power of the working class.
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See our page on No Cooperation to learn more about the necessary steps towards building a mass movement of non-cooperation with the imperialist war machine.