Although Trump is assembling a huge armada against Iran and threatening massive military strikes against the country, not a single voice was raised against this at the conference. On the contrary, the conference served as a promotional platform for the next imperialist crime. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah who was overthrown by the 1979 revolution, was invited as a guest and spoke on the sidelines of the conference to supporters who had been carted in from all over Europe. His demand: The US should bomb Iran and install him as the new ruler, just as the CIA did with his father after the 1953 coup.

French President Emmanuel Macron demanded that Europe must become a geopolitical power, explicitly including nuclear deterrence. He said he had already begun a “strategic dialogue” on this with Chancellor Merz and other EU heads of government.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer committed to close military cooperation with Europe. Europeans must “build our hard power, because that is the currency of the age. We must be able to deter aggression, and yes, if necessary, we must be ready to fight.”

There is no opposition among the established parties to this military superpower policy, which will inevitably lead to a third world war absent the political intervention of the international working class. In addition to Germany’s Social Democrats, the Greens, the Left Party and their sister organisations also support it.

The Democrats who travelled to Munich from the US supported the European demand for an intensification of the war against Russia. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) which is allied with Germany’s Left Party, accused Trump of creating conditions through his withdrawal “where Putin can sabre rattle around Europe and try to bully around our own allies there.”