“Anti-Trump resistance can’t be ‘hands off’ on militarism”
This morning I had an op-ed published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
“Anti-Trump resistance can’t be ‘hands off’ on militarism”
On April 5, people in western Massachusetts and throughout the U.S. demonstrated against the Trump Administration’s escalating attacks on what’s left of our tattered social safety net and personal rights. Rallying around the hashtag #HandsOff, the website coordinating the actions included essential demands such as “Hands off Social Security, Medicare, and Personal Data.”
Building a broad-based movement against Trump’s billionaire class domestic agenda is extraordinarily urgent, but the movement must recognize the intertwinement of domestic and foreign policy. Let’s face it: the U.S. military devours half of federal spending. Trump just proposed a record breaking $1 trillion Pentagon budget. We can’t defend, let alone extend, programs of social welfare domestically without shrinking the military. Unfortunately, this issue was absent from the #HandsOff agenda.
Defending oppressed minorities within the U.S., such as immigrants facing unjust incarceration, was part of the national demands. Defending civilian populations in countries like Palestine and Yemen, tormented and massacred by the regular explosions of U.S. bombs, was not. After reimposing a total blockade in March, Israel is once again starving and exterminating Gaza’s population with full U.S. support. While many rallygoers created homemade signs on April 5 to protest the Trump Administration’s active participation in this genocide, “Hands Off Gaza” was excluded from the #HandsOff demands.
The only foreign policy demand was “Hands off NATO.” NATO is a military alliance led by the U.S. It initiated wars in the former Yugoslavia in 1999; Afghanistan from 2001-2021; and Libya in 2012. Starting in the 1990s, NATO expanded toward Russia by incorporating the old Soviet Bloc countries. Under Obama, NATO set up an anti-Russian military bulwark in Ukraine, which grew under Trump. Under Biden, NATO reiterated past commitments to make Ukraine a member. This far-fetched gambit crossed Russia’s clearly articulated “red line,” provoking an avoidable, unwinnable, and extremely dangerous war.
Since its 1948 founding, NATO has been Washington’s instrument for aligning Europe politically and militarily with U.S. foreign policy objectives. After World War II, the U.S. made a deal with Western Europe: military protection in exchange for cooperation on foreign policy. U.S. elites believed they could afford the enormous cost, because the dollar was uncontested as the world’s reserve currency, which gave them extraordinary global economic power.
The deal freed up money for Western Europe’s social safety net, providing stability for its working class. In the U.S., money that might have gone to services Europeans were enjoying, such as free health care and free education, was instead spent maintaining 800 foreign military bases and interventions across the globe to overthrow governments Washington considered uncooperative.
Since January, the Trump Administration has limited U.S. funds for military protection of Europe. This abrogates the deal the U.S. made with Western Europe at NATO’s founding. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio insists the U.S. remains committed to NATO. The main change is that instead of spending 2% of its GDP on the military (an already ridiculously high proportion), the Trump Administration now demands Europe spend 5%. Europe appears intent on compliance.
In response to Washington’s recent policy shift, Germany is already re-arming itself for the first time since World War II. The far-right AFD Party, which JD Vance recently graced with a visit, supports this. So does the Christian Democratic Party, which just won the February election. Trump is effecting a political realignment in Europe that promotes a far right agenda. Germany will now have to sacrifice its social welfare state to afford its re-militarization.
NATO should be replaced with a non-militarized security infrastructure. That’s what Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, offered to the West in the late 1980s. If they had more humility, Western elites would be offering to Russia what Gorbachev offered them almost 40 years ago: a steady ratcheting down of tensions so countries can live in security without wasting their wealth on the tools of destruction.
The “Hands off NATO” demand supports the world’s leading institution for promoting militarism. This path requires the West to abandon what’s left of its social welfare state — the opposite of the domestic policy goals of #HandsOff. Moreover, excluding demands like “Hands off Palestine” entails complicity with our government’s support for the destruction of the Palestinian people.
For resistance to Trump to be politically relevant and morally persuasive, its foreign policy agenda can’t support NATO militarism and ignore U.S. participation in the Gaza genocide. Our country has to choose either to fund our bloated military or care for the needs of the people. Protest organizers should not indulge the illusion we can afford both.
Ben Grosscup is an activist folksinger living in South Deerfield.
Author who is a folksinger and dedicated to efforts for peace and justice performs “Palestine” by Jim Page:
