The most alarming examples of imperialist build-up today can be the more aggressive ones, like that of Donald Trump in Venezuela and Iran, or Putin in Ukraine.

But the actions of their more "polite" counterparts, like Mark Carney in Canada or Merz in Germany, are no less dangerous. Same goes for Australian Labor spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the military, with China explicitly in their sights. All of these actions only raise the temperature of imperialist competition across the world.

This session will explore the so-called kinder, more diplomatic face of world military rearmament, and the pressures driving the current capitalist order towards war.