The old tragic farce “Shall Germany Re-arm?” that occupied the European stage between the end of World War I and the emergence of Hitlerite Germany, has been revived and is playing to full houses wherever the world's statesmen gather together to discuss peace and war. The revived version is much the same as the old one but some of the actors are playing different roles. In the nineteen-twenties, with Russia out of the running, the near-disarmament of Germany under the Versailles Peace Treaty brought as its consequence the threat of Europe being dominated by French capitalism and its Polish and other allies. So the British and American capitalists had an interest in helping Germany to recover and in this, though for different reasons, they were pursuing the same policy as Russia. The Russian Government took the view that a stronger Germany would curb the power of all the Western capitalist groups. So as late as the end of October, 1939, when Hitlerite Germany was armed to the teeth and was actually at war, Mr. Molotov, who is now furiously denouncing the re-armament of Germany, was still telling the world what a good thing it was that Germany was strong, because “we have always held that a strong Germany is an indispensable condition for durable peace in Europe.” He was to discover not long afterwards that the Germany whose re-armament the Russian government had encouraged was to turn those arms against Russia as she had already turned them against Britain and France.
But after World War II Russia faces the western powers with huge armed forces equalled only by those of the U.S.A. So now it is not French expansionism that the other Powers fear. They fear Russia and, despite the obvious risks, they prefer to see Germany re-armed to offset the Russian threat.
The decision is a difficult one for them all since they can only guess whether German capitalism will in the long run seek to use the West to squeeze the East, or use the East to squeeze the West.
All the West European political parties including the Tories are worried about the problem but above all the British Labour Party. As long ago as 1950 the Labour Government's Foreign Secretary, the late Ernest Bevin, accepted in principle the re-armament of Germany but he did so against the wishes of many Labour M.P.s and their supporters. When the question was voted on in the Parliamentary Labour Party in February, 1954, the Executive secured the passage of its resolution favouring German unity and re-armament and German assistance in the defence of Western Europe, by only 113 votes to 104 (Daily Herald 25/2/54). The justification urged for this policy is “fear of Russia,” just as, 30 years ago, an earlier Labour Party Executive was using “fear of France” as a reason why the Labour Party should support armaments.
Some of the present spokesmen of the Labour Party have evidently been studying the arguments current at the time of the old controversy. In the nineteen-twenties Mr. Lloyd George used to talk about general disarmament and indeed it was the announced intention of pursuing such a policy that was used by him and others as justification for keeping Germany with strictly limited armed forces. Now it is Mr. Aneurin Bevan who says that “we should be seriously discussing the possibility of universal disarmament” as an alternative to uniting and defending Western Europe (Sunday Despatch 14/3/54). It is as unrealistic now as it was then.
In those days disarmament was to come through the League of Nations as now through the United Nations; though already the manifest failure of the latter has led Mr. Attlee to say in a speech to the Oxford University Labour Cub: “I think that in our Commonwealth we have something which is really better than the United Nations and something to set an example on how the United Nations should work” (Daily Telegraph 23/2/52). It is odd to recall now what were the explanations then given for the failure of the League. The most plausible line was that if only U.S.A. and Russia would join the League and if only the League bad power to enforce its decisions all would be well.
Now indeed U.S.A. and Russia are members of United Nations but each pursues a policy of building up huge armaments on the ground that the other is a war maker. And in Korea, where a large scale “United Nations” war was fought, these two Powers were backing the rival armies.
An argument used by Labour Party and other opponents of German re-armament is that the Germans have caused two world wars, are a militarist nation and cannot be trusted. In other words that the Germans are an “inferior race” by comparison with all or some of the others.
In the controversy each national group can state what, in its own estimation, is an unanswerable case. As each group maintains that its own armaments are purely defensive, and as each can provide ample evidence of fiendish barbarities used by other Powers in war, this is easy. All war is bestial and no nation has a record much less horrifying than any other. The whole argumentation is bedevilled by a blank inability to recognise why capitalism needs arms and why wars occur. The capitalist-minded patriots of all countries denounce the methods used by the others but fail to recognise that they are pursuing the same objectives in the same way. They all seek to control sources of raw materials, seek to invade new markets, and seek strategic bases to protect their territories and trade routes. But each and every one regards its own activities as necessary, lawful and legitimate, and for those who accept capitalism and seek to perpetuate it so they all are. Given a capitalist world Russian attempts to dominate the Dardanelles or seize North Persian oil (as in 1946) have just as much necessity and legitimacy as the British hold on Suez or Abadan or the American control of Panama or oil resources in the Middle East. It is the law of the jungle.
Not recognising this, those who argue superficially about war being caused by American, Russian, British or German aims of world domination allow themselves to be deluded into the belief that aggression is an inherent characteristic of one particular nation or is the outcome of some ideology. It is only necessary to glance at the present trouble spots of the world to see how remote this is from the truth. Is it “ideology” that sets Egyptian capitalism against British at Suez. Russian against Turkish in the Dardanelles, French against Indonesian, Argentine against British over control of territories in the Antarctic, America against Russia in Europe, the Pacific and elsewhere, Israel against the Arab States, India against Pakistan over Kashmir, British against African in Kenya? The list could be enormously extended and the explanation in all cases is that capitalism is by its nature a competitive, expansionist system breeding rivalry, hatred and war. There is no way out of this terrifying threat of continuing wars except by abolishing capitalism and establishing world socialism in its place.
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