Front page of The New York Times on February 26: The CIA has a network of 12 secret bases in Ukraine, on the border with Russia, fully operational. “Without them there would have been no possibility of us resisting the Russians,” according to a former head of the kyiv secret services quoted by the American newspaper.

Financial Times, eleventh paragraph of a cover story on February 28; a senior defense official from a European country: “Everyone knows that there are Western special forces in Ukraine – it just hasn’t been officially recognized.”

Le Monde, March 2: The United Kingdom maintained 350 troops for several months for special operations who assumed “a high political and military risk.” More cases of sending soldiers on missions labeled as training have been published. These are examples that the affected governments have not denied.

War drums. They reveal what is happening on the ground without citizens having been warned or consulted. A dangerous escalation that brings closer the possibility of a major conflict.

Wars have been declared for much less in the past. It is therefore not for lack of excuses that it has not happened, but for strategic and political considerations. It is in this context that Emmanuel Macron, the French president, spoke the words of him not ruling out any scenario, including the sending of troops, to avoid the Russian victory. The French press has explained that Macron brought the secret of Polichinella to light. Regardless of its internal usefulness, confirming the Russian sympathies of Marine Le Pen’s extreme right, sought to highlight the refusal of Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, to deliver missiles to Ukraine, because this would involve sending military personnel to the theater of war. , had not been an obstacle for other governments.

In France, they reproach Germany for only acting, internationally and militarily, if the US does so first. This happened again with the crisis in Ukraine. Berlin felt trapped between two opposing empires and chose when it had no choice.

Macron displays military muscle, is the only nuclear power in the European Union and tempers the economic complex against Germany. He takes the grandeur out for a walk, implying that it could be the nuclear umbrella that Germany and Europe would need in the face of the Russian threat.

But he also and to the same extent states that he wants to take advantage of the upcoming military spending festival. There’s big money at stake. Many even expect it to be the main economic and technological engine of Europe in the future.

The manufacture of weapons is an important business for France, the second largest exporter in the world, but with little popularity among its neighbors and partners in Europe, who only buy 10% of the total, mostly from a single country, Greece, and for a single product. . They prefer the American friend, who has more arguments, coercive and commercial. It already happened when Australia canceled a submarine contract in favor of the US in 2021.

How are European partners supplied now? Well, mostly with imports from the US, although apparently not in sufficient volume, if judged by the vehemence of the complaints of Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

The argument for the arms escalation in Europe is the combination between the aggression of Vladimir Putin’s Russia against Ukraine and doubts about the US military deployment in Europe, especially in the event that Trump regains the presidency. A dilemma that has already been a classic of European politics since the end of the Second World War.

The North American and NATO military coverage against the threat from the Soviet bloc always had as a counterpart or compensation, offest, in the language of the sixties and seventies of the last century, in the form of arms purchases from Washington.

And to achieve this compensation, in each crisis the US threatened to withdraw its troops and its nuclear umbrella, such as when the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, or during the escalation of the Vietnam War. The Europeans ended up giving in; especially the Germans, who bought even without knowing what they had ordered and paying in advance. Now the episode is repeating itself and Europeans are confused about how to pay the bill.

We will have to see what the European rearmament program looks like and the intention for suppliers to be mainly European. It seems difficult for its modest war industry, in relative terms compared to that of the great leader, the US, to sufficiently tempt EU governments.

Meanwhile, the option of spending more on weapons is beginning to shake up European politics. The German Minister of Finance, the liberal Christian Linder, has announced a budget gap of 25 billion, to which must be added the increase in defense spending. The division is served in the Government of Berlin, which fears that social cuts will further weaken the electoral strength of the extreme right.

Very explicit has been the Prime Minister of Denmark, the social democrat Mette Frederksen, who has called for cuts in the welfare state and fewer tax cuts for more defense outlays.

They thus follow in the wake of Ursula Von der Leyen and the European Commission, who propose a large military investment program that in theory will be manufactured in Europe. It will be with the permission of the US.

In Spain, politics is now busy with other things – the Government seeking its stability and the opposition denouncing the apocalypse of the end of the State – and the sweet economic situation invites us not to think about those debates, but everything will work out. The drums of war are also the drums of austerity.