The global escalation of the climate crisis, social inequality, and authoritarian backsliding doesn’t affect us separately. These are all expressions of a global system built on exploitation and oppression, exclusion and violence. Militarization is not a fringe phenomenon — it is a central tool of domination.
Worldwide, war regimes are emerging. The ruling powers try to control planetary chaos on all levels and respond to crises — climate disasters, resource scarcity, legitimacy crises of governments, migration movements, the crisis of social reproduction, and growing national competition — with massive military force. These are crises the system itself has created.
More and more, the law of the strongest prevails — both internationally, where saber-rattling and escalating wars are the norm, and domestically, where state apparatuses increasingly deploy violent repression against populations and social movements. The link between war and fascism is often clear: Right-wing to fascist figures like Musk, Meloni, Merz, and Milei comfortably align with the war-hungry NATO camp and other military alliances. Their reactionary politics are well-organized internationally. That’s why our fight must also be international and based on transnational solidarity — even as we specifically confront the structures of the German war regime.
The German state harbors big ambitions in this global restructuring. Its dominance in Europe is to become global dominance — as a self-styled "defender of the free world," backed by military power. The fact that the interests of military might take precedence over supposed moral values is clearly demonstrated by Germany’s active support and endorsement of the genocide in Gaza, carried out by its far-right ally, the Israeli government.
Rearmament is sold as the only answer to these crises — and it infiltrates every aspect of life, sometimes insidiously, sometimes aggressively: Hospitals assess staff for “wartime usability,” the Bundeswehr recruits actively in schools, universities are urged to open up to military research, and even advertising and entertainment media portray war as a viable career path. This all-encompassing mobilization affects us all — whether we work, study, provide care, conduct research, or seek rest. Meanwhile, the arms industry is being deliberately expanded: In Cologne, for example, a new underground “bunker hospital” is being planned, engineering firms are developing the “tank of the future” and space technologies are being militarized.
The German state and its arms industry not only participate in wars through weapons exports — they systematically profit, both economically and geopolitically, from the doctrine of military readiness. What’s needed is a broad movement that rejects militarization in all its forms and in every area of life, and fights for a society that rejects war-mongering, fear tactics, and the hyper-secured rule of the elite — built instead on transnational solidarity, class struggle, climate justice, (queer-)feminism, and the emancipation of all the oppressed.
We are convinced: Let’s desert together!We believe the coming protests against the state of war have an incredibly important role to play: Protesting the massive rearmament of Germany and the EU could become a catalyst for returning to arms control and de-escalation. Protesting the increasingly militarized and racist EU border regime is more relevant than ever in times of rising nationalism. Protesting the already announced social austerity measures by the new Merz government and budget cuts at municipal and state levels must be connected to the astronomical loans that are suddenly available — when the ruling class deems goals like European military independence from the U.S. important enough.
Refusing war means more than just rejecting military service as a soldier. Refusal begins when we publicly contradict war propaganda; when we reject military recruitment; when we refuse to contribute to military purposes — whether in research, on the assembly line, or in hospitals; and when we demand resources for a safe and good life instead of organized killing and dying. Refusal is present in feminist struggles against soldierly masculinity and patriarchal structures. It is also part of struggles against deadly border regimes around the world.
We must not fall for the rulers’ illusion: the belief that self-defense is only possible through the armament of a state and its military. We must adopt a different perspective — by considering how we can defend ourselves against war and militarization. We must build practical solidarity among those who are chewed up by the war machine or dehumanized through racism and anti-feminism, and we must strengthen the camp of those resisting war readiness.
We are convinced: We are ready to move!Getting started is always hard — including building an effective, socially rooted anti-militarist practice. At the same time, we know: We are not alone. In many countries, cities, and contexts, groups, friends, and comrades have been working for decades against militarization, arms production, and the logic of war. What we now need is a collective movement that works together, not side by side — cross-spectrum, in solidarity, and capable of action. A movement that draws the line not between nations but between the bottom and the top.
International solidarity and concrete resistance are already visible around the NATO summit in The Hague in 2025: While negotiations there aim to further escalate rearmament, including drastically increasing member states' defense budgets, people are already organizing — through protest camps and in the streets.
That’s what we value about the Disarm-Rheinmetall-Alliance: It’s a space where different political perspectives come together to develop shared practice — from critiquing the arms industry to concrete actions and practical international solidarity. We are part of the alliance — and thus part of the camp and the action week in August in Cologne. We’ll actively participate, connect with others, learn from each other, and collectively take a stand against the normalization of war.
We are convinced: You won’t get us! We will claim our space in Cologne!
This is a declaration. A declaration we believe is politically necessary at this moment. But it can only be fulfilled if many of us claim it for ourselves and actively help to realize it in the coming months. Together, we can turn this announcement into a collective promise — a promise to take over the space in Cologne by the thousands and show them: We refuse your war!
Join us — in the streets, in the camp, in everyday life.
They won’t make us war-ready.
But together, we’ll be ready to fight their wars — by resisting them!
During the action days, we will reclaim the spaces occupied and expanded by the war industry and the military: their control of our lives, their ugly military zones, their mansions built with profits from the suffering and deaths caused by dozens of warzones worldwide. No place of war readiness should be safe from us and our demand for peace, liberation, and justice. We won’t let their nationalist death cult rob us of the joy of life. Our desire for a good life for all will not stop at their militarized borders.
We will reclaim these spaces and show them that we won’t submit to their militarization.
We, the deserters, traitors to the fatherland, dreamers, and the defiant.
We who collectively refuse war — we’ll see you in Cologne.
Interventionist Left, June 11, 2025
