European leaders lecture people constantly about the supposed need to cut spending in response to the economic crisis sparked by the private banking industry.

But no such thrift is demanded of the Nato military alliance, which will fritter much-needed funds on creating a rapid response force based in eastern Europe.

Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen claimed, after the cold war alliance’s two-day summit in Newport, that this “spearhead” force would send a clear message to potential aggressors.

In reality, this new development has not been driven by events in Ukraine.

It forms part of consistent Nato policy to erect a ring of steel around Russia as impenetrable as that imposed on the centre of Cardiff to enable a few dozen big wigs to have a meal with Charles Windsor in Cardiff Castle.

France and Germany have both argued against extending the Nato network of permanent bases up to the borders of Russia, acknowledging the alliance’s agreement with Moscow in 1997 not to do so.

But international treaties mean little to aggressive politicians intent on imposing their will on rival powers.

This is not a return to the cold war between capitalism and socialism. 

Russia has no pretensions to an alternative model of society, but it has national interests separate from those of Nato and the European Union.

Moscow, along with China, has acted on the UN security council as a brake on imperialism’s military adventures, refusing to back innumerable Western demands to tackle international crises by means of aerial bombing campaigns.

David Cameron has never reconciled himself to his failure to win Parliament to unleash British warplanes against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime.

He explained in the House of Commons this week that, because he designates Assad as a “war criminal,” this removes the need to consult Damascus over any air strikes against Islamic State positions in Syria.

His uncontested parliamentary assertion raises the suspicion that Britain and the US will exploit public fears about Islamic State to combine a bombing campaign in Iraq with efforts to effect regime change in Syria to the West’s benefit.

Nato leaders must be reminded that the current chaos in Iraq is not a home-grown crisis.

It is the foreseeable and foreseen result of the US-led illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 that bombed the country’s infrastructure into ruins and encouraged sectarian religious and national divisions.

Nor can Nato and the EU avoid responsibility for the bloodshed and destruction that has befallen Ukraine this year.

Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, reflecting the multinational reality of many Soviet republics, including a large Russian minority.

Nato and EU determination on a “winner takes all” approach for Ukraine, breaking its historical links with Russia in favour of an exclusive trade pact with the EU, underpins the ongoing crisis there.

Unless there is a political solution that satisfies the democratic and national aspirations of the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics and stays the hand of the Banderist forces driving events in Kiev, further fighting is inevitable.

Setting up a Poland-based rapid response force headquarters and basing Nato planes in the Baltic states and Romania are not serious efforts to defuse current difficulties.

They amount to a criminal conspiracy against the peaceful aspirations of all the peoples of Europe to foster war psychosis as an antidote to popular demands to end the continent-wide austerity offensive against working people.