The catastrophic bridge collapse in Italy this week has prompted a
public outcry over the country’s crumbling infrastructure and how it is putting
lives at risk. But the question the public in Italy and across Europe should be
asking is: why are their governments spending extra tens of billions of dollars
on NATO militarism, while neglecting vital civilian infrastructure?
When the iconic
Morandi motorway viaduct came crashing down this week over the city of Genoa –
with a death toll so far of 39 people – the consensus among Italian news media
and members of the public is that the bridge was a disaster waiting to happen.
Nearly 200
meters of the motorway flyover section spanning a river, houses and an
industrial area collapsed while dozens of cars and trucks were passing. Shocked
witnesses described the scene as “apocalyptic” as vehicles plunged 40 meters
along with concrete and iron girding to the ground below.
Lack of due
maintenance has been blamed for why the bridge collapsed. Weather conditions at
the time were reportedly torrential rain storms and lightning. But those
conditions can hardly explain why a whole motorway viaduct wobbled and crashed.
The Morandi
Bridge was built 51 years ago in 1967. Two years ago, an engineering professor
from Genoa University warned that the
viaduct needed to be totally replaced as its structure had seriously
deteriorated. There seems little doubt that the disaster could have been
avoided if proper action had been taken by the authorities rather than carrying
out piecemeal repair jobs over the years.
Italian media
reports say the latest is the fifth bridge collapse in the country over the
past five years, as cited by the BBC.
Now the Italian
government is calling for a nationwide survey of roads, tunnels, bridges and
viaducts to assess public safety amid fears that other infrastructure
facilities are prone to deadly failure.
What should be
a matter of urgent public demand is why Italy is increasing its national
spending on military upgrades and procurements instead of civilian amenities.
As with all European members of the NATO alliance, Italy is being pressured by
the United States to ramp up its military expenditure. US President Donald
Trump has made the NATO budget a priority, haranguing European states to
increase their military spending to a level of 2 per cent of Gross Domestic
Product (GDP). Trump has even since doubled that figure to 4 per cent.
Washington’s
demand on European allies predates Trump. At a NATO summit in 2015, when Barack
Obama was president, all members of the military alliance then acceded to US
pressure for greater allocation of budgets to hit the 2 per cent target. The
alleged threat of Russian aggression has been cited over and over as the main
reason for boosting NATO.
Figures show
that Italy, as with other European countries, has sharply increased its annual military spending
every year since the 2015 summit. The upward trend reverses a decade-long
decline. Currently, Italy spends about $28 billion annually on military. That
equates to only about 1.15 per cent of GDP, way below the US-demanded target of
2 per cent of GDP.
But the
disturbing thing is that Italy’s defense minister Elisabetta Trenta reportedly gave
assurances to Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton that her government
was committed to hitting its NATO target in the coming years. On current
figures that translates roughly into a doubling of Italy’s annual military
budget.
Meanwhile, the
Italian public have had to endure years of economic austerity from cutbacks in
social spending and civilian infrastructure.
Rome’s new
coalition government comprising the League and Five Star Movement has called
for a reversal in austerity policies and has vowed to increase public
investment. Its leaders, like deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, have also
at times expressed a lukewarm view of NATO.
After this
week’s bridge disaster, the populist coalition government has renewed its calls
for more investment in public services.
Nevertheless,
why then is Italy’s defense minister giving assurances that the country will
adhere to Washington’s demands for increasing its NATO budget? Minister Trenta,
who belongs to the Five Star Movement, says her government remains committed to
buying up to 90 units of the US new-generation F35 fighter jet.
Aggregate
figures show that Italy spent nearly $300 billion over the past
decade on military. The previous decade’s outlay was even higher in constant
dollar terms, before the financial crash in 2008. And yet the Italian
government – despite its populist appeal – is planning to allocate even more
resources to military over the coming years in order to meet Washington’s
ultimatum for the NATO 2 per cent of GDP target. A target figure that seems
wholly arbitrary and abhorrent in the light of so many urgent social needs and
neglected public infrastructure.
If Italian
motorway bridges are collapsing now, the future for public safety looks even
bleaker when more of the country’s economy is diverted to satisfy US-led NATO
demands.
Moreover, this
dilemma is not confined to Italy. All European members of NATO are being
railroaded by Washington to significantly expand their military budgets.
President Trump has lambasted European states as “free loaders” cadging off
“American protection”. Trump has singled out Germany
for harassment to boost its military budget. After all the hectoring, the
Europeans seem to be responding too. At the annual NATO summit held last month
in Brussels, the Norwegian secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg boasted that non-US members had increased
their national military budgets by an aggregate $40 billion in one year alone.
A cruel irony
is that last year NATO planners complained that Europe’s infrastructure of
roads, tunnels and bridges needed significant upgrades to facilitate
mass-transport of military forces in case of a war with Russia. The implication
was that European governments would have to increase their national spending on
civilian transport networks specifically to facilitate NATO military
requirements.
That is
tantamount to a parasite craving for more blood from its host. Already European
infrastructure is in disrepair largely because of economic austerity enforced
by disproportionate spending on NATO militarism. At a time when public need for
social investment is acute, European governments are obeying orders from
Washington to plough more financial resources into subsidizing the American
military-industrial complex. All this madcap, irrational expenditure is
supposedly to keep European citizens safe from Russian threats.
All too
evidently, however, the biggest threat to European citizens is the way
Washington and its NATO racket is bleeding Europe of financial resources –
resources which instead should be spent on building safe roads, bridges and
other infrastructure.
