A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova: Let's jam the death machine (War industry) (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The death machine is one of the main growth axes of the capitalist 
economy. This is not a spontaneous choice dictated by the market, it is 
rather a precise direction of national and international political 
institutions. To clarify this concept, I report below excerpts from 
reports and press releases regarding the death machine: the war 
industry. ---- The defense industry is the first sector to which Mario 
Draghi draws attention in his report on European competitiveness (April 
2024) "In the defense sector, ..., the lack of scale is hindering the 
development of European industrial capacity , a problem recognized in 
the recent European Defense Industry Strategy. The top five operators in 
the United States represent 80% of its largest market, while in Europe 
they make up 45%. This difference largely arises from the fact that EU 
defense spending is fragmented. Governments do not procure much together 
- collaborative procurement represents less than 20% of spending - and 
they do not focus enough on our market: almost 80% of procurement in the 
last two years has come from non-EU countries. To meet new defense and 
security needs, we must step up joint procurement, increase the 
coordination of our spending and the interoperability of our equipment, 
and substantially reduce our international dependencies."

The European Defense Strategy was presented by the European Commission 
in March 2024. The aim is to ensure industrial readiness in the defense 
sector in the European Union through a clear and long-term vision. The 
document presented by the European Commission states that: "We must have 
defense systems and equipment ready when they are needed and in the 
necessary quantities.

The strategy defines several new actions aimed at:

encourage EU countries to invest more, better, together and at European 
level, thanks to new programs to buy and collaborate more easily in Europe.

make the European defense industry stronger, more responsive and more 
innovative. Measures will also be taken to support research, stimulate 
investment and work on supply chain issues. In this context, an office 
for innovation in the defense sector will open in Kiev.

finance operations to prepare the defense industry, through a new EUR1.5 
billion European Defense Industry Program and by discussing defense 
needs for the next long-term EU budget.

collaborate with partners from all over the world - for example, Ukraine 
will be able to participate in EU programs in the defense industry sector."

The final considerations of the governor of the Bank of Italy, read on 
31 May 2024 at the meeting of the bank's shareholders, also deal with 
the war industry: "Common policies are necessary in the environmental, 
defence, immigration, training, and in others still.
The financial commitment will be huge: for the climate and digital 
transitions alone and to increase military spending to 2 percent of GDP, 
the European Commission estimates a public and private investment 
requirement of over 800 billion every year until 2030.
Pursuing such a vast plan at a national level would result in 
duplication of spending and the foregoing of economies of scale. It 
would encounter obstacles in the fiscal capacity of several countries, 
with the risk of compromising the necessary breadth of commitment and 
accentuating the fragmentation of the single market.
And since many projects concern common public goods such as the 
environment and external security, an insufficient amount of investment 
would harm all countries and all citizens of the Union.
It is therefore necessary, in the collective interest, to implement 
initiatives at European level."

The program that is outlined is particularly complex and is divided into 
different levels: public budget choices, the production and distribution 
of weapons, weapon systems and ammunition, which implies interventions 
on infrastructure and logistics, i.e. financing, as Draghi says in 
another passage of the cited report, "the investment gap will have to be 
covered by private investments. The EU has very high private savings, 
but they are mostly channeled into bank deposits and do not end up 
financing growth as they could in a broader capital market. This is why 
advancing the Capital Markets Union (CMU) is an indispensable part of 
the overall competitiveness strategy."

The fight against the death machine must therefore start from the 
production plants and logistics nodes in the area: a movement is growing 
on these issues, both in general against the production and trafficking 
of weapons, and in particular against individual aspects such as 
logistics soldier who supports Israeli aggression against the 
Palestinian people. However, we must realize that our fight is not only 
against illegal trafficking towards states at war, it is above all a 
fight against the new model of development linked to the death machine.

Stopping the death machine does not just mean stopping the main cause of 
wars, it means forcing governments to adopt a different budget policy, 
which puts the needs of the populations at the center and not the 
profits of the war industry lobbies and military circles. The fight 
against poverty, for a decent income and for the reduction of working 
hours cannot fail to benefit from questioning the plans of the 
strategists of death.

In this struggle, those involved in war production have an important 
role. It is important that those who work realize what they produce, and 
organize themselves and intervene to change these productions; it is 
important to realize that today the war industry is affected by 
restructuring, delocalization and outsourcing processes like any other 
industry; it is therefore no longer a safe haven. All this is important 
but it is not enough.

It is necessary for the pacifist and anti-militarist movement as a whole 
to realize the centrality that the war industry has today in the death 
plans of governments, as do the budget operations and investments that 
fuel it. It is necessary for the pacifist and anti-militarist movement 
to free itself from a sort of fetishism that sees war as its 
instruments: even in this case, things end up representing people and 
the relationships between them. The growing threat of war materializes 
in the new base, in the production of death and in illegal trafficking, 
in militarist propaganda in schools. These phenomena are the product of 
the relations of domination that innervate this society and generate 
war, relations guaranteed by the role of governments. Despite what 
institutional pacifists tell us, the death machine in Italy has thrived 
in the shadow of Article 11 and the "most beautiful constitution in the 
world". Starting from the territories, starting from the factories of 
war and the nodes of its logistics, we must build a general mobilization 
against governments and their plans of death.

Tiziano Antonelli

https://umanitanova.org/inceppiamo-la-macchina-della-mort/
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