De volgende (Engelstalige) toespraak werd gegeven door Nick Krekelbergh van Zannekinbond op het 8ste Colloquium van het World Anti-Imperialist Platform in Amsterdam: “NATO Expansion and the Danger of World War III”. Hierin werd de medeplichtigheid van de Belgische staat aan de forever wars van het Westerse imperialisme belicht, en werd de militaristische en Atlanticistische houding van de huidige federale regering-De Wever I streng bekritiseerd door te wijzen op de wortels van de hedendaagse, belligerente Vlaams-nationalisten van de N-VA in de progressieve, anti-autoritaire en pacifistische Frontbeweging van na de Eerste Wereldoorlog.
“Belgium has had a neoliberal government at least since the 1980s, with the Martens administration following the path laid out by Reagan and Thatcher. Today, it is essentially De Wever I, named after a politician who has dominated Belgian politics for over two decades. He hails from the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), a party of neoliberal, bourgeois Flemish nationalists which—due to electoral circumstances—has become a dominant force at the federal level and now governs the country.
Belgium consists of several language communities, which identify as cultural communities and, at times, as distinct nations. The Dutch-speaking (Flemish) community in particular has gone through a long and complex struggle for emancipation, seeking recognition, autonomy, and equal status within the Belgian state. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this linguistic emancipation was deeply intertwined with social struggle, as large segments of the Flemish population—mostly working class and rural—fought simultaneously for cultural rights and socioeconomic justice.
Belgium has long been a loyal NATO ally, but in recent years, fanatical NATO worship and ideological Atlanticism have increasingly permeated its foreign policy. It is crucial to criticize both the historical roots and the ideological angle from which the current government operates. These roots lie in a Flemish national liberation and pacifist movement that emerged after World War I, but which, after a few decades, partly took a reactionary and even fascist turn—now aligning itself fully with imperialism and neoliberalism.
Historical roots of NATO in Belgium
Perhaps the deepest wound etched into Belgium’s landscape was carved during the First World War. Four years of devastating trench warfare left behind a scarred terrain—eerily reminiscent of the destruction we witness today in Ukraine. But the war did not only reshape the soil; it also gave rise to a movement. From the mud and blood of those trenches emerged a cry for justice and peace. Disillusioned Flemish soldiers, most of them working-class men or farmers, began to demand equal treatment from their French-speaking officers—members of the bourgeois elite who often looked down on them. These soldiers, having endured one of the most horrific chapters in modern warfare, insisted that this Great War must be the last. “Nooit meer oorlog!”—“Never again war!”—became their rallying cry.
This was the birth of the Frontbeweging, or Front Movement—a pluralistic grassroots initiative made up of veterans who had experienced the futility of war firsthand. They carried with them a powerful vision: a rejection of militarism and imperialist ambition, grounded in the shared trauma of the trenches, and coupled with demands for social and linguistic rights. This movement emerged in the same historical moment as the Russian Revolution, sharing its spirit of upheaval and longing for a more just and egalitarian order. It was hence supported by many socialists and communists, like Berten Fermont, Jef Van Extergem, Herman Van de Reeck or the socialist feminist Roza De Guchtenare.
But history, as we know, took a different turn.
Another brutal war would engulf Europe scarcely two decades later. In the 1930s, part of the Flemish emancipatory movement turned to reactionary Catholicism and eventually ended up collaborating with the German occupiers. Belgium itself would later take part in a violent colonial conflict in the Congo, attempting to keep the country within its own sphere of influence—and that of the United States—while preventing it from falling into the orbit of the Soviet Union. Far from renouncing imperialism, the Belgian state became a cog in its machinery.
What is perhaps most striking, however, is that this small corner of Europe—shaped by suffering, once the home of a grassroots anti-militarist cry—is now the political and military center of one of the most powerful imperialist structures in modern history. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has made its headquarters in Brussels for many decades (1967 – originally in Paris, but moved to Brussels when Charles De Gaule withdrew France temporarily from NATO).
Initially presented as a purely defensive alliance formed to contain the spread of socialism in Eastern Europe and Asia, NATO’s true function was always more complex—and more insidious. Its creation was less about defense, and more about shielding liberal capitalism from the rising tide of communism that threatened to upend the postwar Western order. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO’s mask slipped. No longer needing to pretend to be defensive, it became what it had always been evolving into: the military arm of a neoliberal unipolar world order.
It emerged as the enforcer of what Francis Fukuyama prematurely called the “end of history”—a moment where neoliberal capitalism would reign unchallenged. NATO became the spearhead of this system: the armed wing of global finance, of the so-called rules-based order, of the market without borders. Its mission was to absorb Eastern Europe, to encircle and isolate rival powers across the Eurasian landmass—above all, Russia and China—and to enforce compliance on a global scale.
In doing so, it has helped orchestrate a series of interventions, wars, and so-called “color revolutions” on the fault lines of this expanding Western sphere. It began in the Balkans, spread across the Middle East, reached into Ukraine, and today continues in the brutal bombardment of Gaza. Each of these crises, presented as isolated or humanitarian in nature, are in fact integral to the logic of imperial containment and economic domination.
Thus, what began as a popular cry from the trenches—“Never again war”—has been perverted. The same soil where ordinary soldiers once resisted militarism now hosts the command center of a global military alliance that wages war under the banner of peace.
Today, we argue for a return to the original anti-imperialist and anti-militarist meaning of “Never Again War,” a stance that rejects imperialism and militarism outright—especially the Western variant, with the Belgian state as a willing accomplice.
The Western Empire and Belgium’s Role
Since the Second World War, the leading global source of imperialism has been the United States and its allies. NATO, of which Belgium is a founding member, has never been merely a defensive alliance. From its inception, it has served as a geopolitical tool of U.S. imperial strategy, confronting the USSR during the Cold War and expanding its reach aggressively after the Soviet Union’s counterrevolution. Unlike the Warsaw Pact, which was dissolved, NATO kept expanding eastward, incorporating 14 new countries since the 1990s.
Belgium, like all NATO members, is thus complicit in a deeply militarized geopolitical order. It hosts 11 U.S. military bases and around 1,000 American troops. Despite being promoted as protectors of peace and human rights, these bases serve American financial and military interests—not the wellbeing of local populations, as author Catherine Lutz thoroughly demonstrated in The Bases of Empire.
Critics often counter this narrative by pointing to Russia’s actions in Ukraine or Syria. But unlike the United States, Russia lacks the economic and financial infrastructure necessary for imperialism. It is primarily a resource exporter, not a global exporter of capital or ideology. Its military actions stem more from defensive realpolitik than imperial ambition. Russia has not built hundreds of foreign bases nor imposed its governance on others. Therefore, the term “imperialist” does not fit.
The NATO Machine: Military Arm of Financial Capitalism
U.S. capitalism shifted fundamentally in the 1970s toward rentier sectors—military, finance, real estate, and energy. This transformation, which Michael Hudson describes in his analysis of financial imperialism, positioned NATO as the foreign policy arm of Western capital. NATO enforces economic discipline among its members, drives austerity and privatization, and promotes aggressive foreign interventions under the pretext of collective security.
In this context, Belgium’s foreign and defense policy is not neutral. It is embedded in an imperial project whose goal is to secure global dominance for Western finance. The military investments planned under Belgium’s new federal government—De Wever I—are not incidental or defensive. They are ideological and economic commitments to the imperial status quo. This includes purchasing drones, warships, surveillance systems, and other tools that serve not the people, but elite interests.
The Myth of Neutral Military Engagement
Proponents of Belgian military engagement often claim these operations serve broader humanitarian or crisis-management goals. But history tells another story: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria. In each case, NATO and its allies, including Belgium, acted as imperial enforcers under a humanitarian guise. There was no broad public support, no democratic mandate, and certainly no benefit to the populations affected.
The constitutional framework in Belgium provides no mechanism for the population to block foreign military deployments. Parliament is informed but not asked. The real decisions are taken at the EU or NATO level, in forums entirely insulated from public influence. The elites in charge—rotating seamlessly between national and international roles—share a vested interest in preserving Belgium as part of the Western imperial machine.
Historical Betrayal
From the “strategy of tension” during the Cold War—with the Gladio network and far-right violence potentially aided by state security—to the silent complicity in modern-day imperial campaigns, Belgium has a long record of elite collusion in repression and foreign intervention. The contemporary silence of bourgeois Flemish nationalists on these issues is deafening.
By investing in military hardware, the Belgian state is not just preparing for defense. It is preparing for suppression—both foreign and domestic. These tools can be used to repress dissent, surveil citizens, and maintain the Belgian state against any challenge, including from within its own borders.
Conclusion: Towards an Anti-Imperialist Alternative in the Legacy of the Original Front Movement
We are at a historical juncture. We must ask: Will we, as a people continue to accept a role in this imperial system? Will we allow our land to host foreign nuclear weapons? The true spirit of “Never Again War” demands rejection of all this. It demands a principled anti-imperialism that refuses complicity with U.S.-led militarism. And it requires that we recognize the Belgian army not as a neutral force, but as a pillar of the neoliberal world order and the bourgeois state we seek to dismantle.
In joining the international anti-imperialist movement, we are not retreating from the national liberation of the Flemish and Walloon peoples. We are fulfilling it—radically, honestly, and without compromise. In doing so, we reclaim the historical mission of the original Frontbeweging: to stand against militarism, oppression, and imperial domination. This stands in stark contrast to the path taken by the bourgeois Flemish nationalists, who have aligned themselves with liberalism and right-wing nationalism, choosing the side of Western imperialism rather than resisting it.
Thank you!”
