This is a brief letter to Labour List, which they published in their “Letters of the Week” section.

Marco Rubio’s speech to the Munich Security Conference was a call for a reassertion of unashamedly racist “Western” imperial dominance, for Europe to slash its welfare states and green transition, to prepare to compete for “new frontiers” of exploitation in the global South through assertions of raw military power. The audience gave him a standing ovation. This is a route to catastrophe; austerity and crumbling infrastructure at home, along with tearing our communities apart ICE style, and military adventurism abroad – replacing aid with raids. It should be utterly rejected, not greeted with “sighs of relief”. 

Laura Kyrke-Smith and Melanie Ward’s argument that Europe “must stand strong” on its own does not confront the projection by George Robertson that doing so militarily within the current framework of escalating  the confrontation with Russia, would cost not 5% of GDP but 7%. That’s an additional £135 billion every year. That would be ruinous in the immediate term and, in so far as it sucks resources away from the energy transition, will kill us in the longer term, even if the temptation to use all this hardware is resisted and it didn’t lead to nuclear war within the decade.

What we need instead is meaningful peace negotiations with Russia over Ukraine to resolve this European civil war, reintegrate our economies within a mutual security arrangement that would also help us form a more developmental relationship with China and the rest of the global South.

With less concern for brevity I could have added that

• “Europe lay in ruins” in 1945 precisely because the dog eat dog rivalry between imperial powers that Rubio sees as a model for the future, came home to roost in the imperial heartlands in two World Wars once the global South had been fully carved up.
• Saying “we are not afraid of climate change” is an attempt to will it away instead of dealing with it; empty bragadochio an expression of fears that have been suppressed.
• In claiming the Rolling Stones as exemplars of White Western Civilisation, he obviously hadn’t done his homework on who the Rolling Stones themselves were inspired by, or heard anything by Muddy Waters.