This year's Bastille Day military parade is said to be unlike anything ever seen before: more soldiers, tanks, fighter jets... The aim, we are told, is “a show of strength”.

There’s plenty of money for that, billions of euros for strategic planning and long-term preparation for war! People are dying in heat-trap homes, hospitals have no air-conditioning and there are nowhere near enough resources for fire-fighting but the army is being pampered.

Making us accept their war-driven policies

A former air force general declared, “To better defend peace, we must show our strength.” But who is the government trying to impress? Putin? He couldn’t care less about the parade. The government is actually seeking to get us — the workers and the population in general — ready for war.

Putin is, indeed, waging a terrible war against the Ukrainian population and against his own people, too, as he feeds them war propaganda and uses them as cannon fodder. But, on the other hand, the Western powers are behaving in much the same way. The difference, though, is that they are doing it at the expense of Ukrainian lives and plundering the country under the pretext of “helping Ukraine”. Behind the war in the trenches lies another war – a trade war – where major European and American industrialists are stripping Ukraine, laying their hands on its very rich, fertile farming land and its mineral resources, including the much-coveted rare earths...

Every country is engaged in a massive arms buildup. The main reason for this is that the global capitalist economy is plunged into a deep crisis which is intensifying rivalries between major world powers. And economic rivalry inevitably leads to war. The resumption of airstrikes on Iran serves as a reminder of this, as the issue now at stake is who will control the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil passes.

A coalition… of competing interests

Diplomacy, war and business are intertwined. The French government boasts of being at the head of a “Coalition of the Willing” alongside the United Kingdom – a coalition of states prepared to send troops into Ukraine once a ceasefire has been declared. France hopes that, by securing a prominent position within this coalition, its arms manufacturers, such as Thales, Dassault and others, will obtain substantial contracts.

But German industrialists, for example, don’t see why they shouldn’t get their share of the pie. And, while military budgets skyrocket, business partnerships between major industrial companies are falling through, as was the case with the Franco-German development projects for a next generation fighter aircraft and the “tank of the future”.  Rivalry between capitalists is pushing the world toward war to defend interests that have nothing to do with the interests of ordinary people and the exploited.

Macron’s bluff about what he calls France’s “place in the world” is intended to win us over and condition us to accept the war effort. Unlike the Ukrainians, Russians, Iranians, Palestinians, Lebanese and others, we aren’t being bombed – at least for the time being. War hasn’t yet become part of our everyday lives. But political leaders and capitalists are getting us ready for it — and they are already making us pay for their preparations. They are already making us pay for the weapons and uniforms with which they will send us to fight for interests that are not ours.

Fighting against war is fighting against capitalism

So we cannot truly oppose war without opposing the economic system at its source. To prevent capitalism from leading us to war, we will have to overthrow the system. For governments preparing for war, people’s desire for peace must be crushed. And they know how to stir up nationalist and militaristic sentiment in the public opinion, even when it initially seeks peace. That’s what the “unprecedented” July 14 parade is really meant to do.

It is up to us to understand what is being prepared behind the scenes and to fight to put an end to the march toward war. The fundamental standpoint of workers must be, as the German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht said during the First World War, “The main enemy is in your own country!”

Nathalie Arthaud