WAR fever has gripped politics across Europe.

In Germany, a new law orders every male citizen to register and undergo a fitness assessment for military service on turning 18.

In France, a political storm has erupted after Chief of the Defence Staff General Fabien Mandon warned the nation to be ready to “lose its children” in looming European wars.

Our own politicians and media hype up mundane incidents into international crises. Political interventions by soldiers and spies were once frowned upon: now every briefing from top brass or MI5 is relayed by the mass media as disinterested fact. It shouldn’t be: besides inherent institutional biases, our generals routinely walk into lucrative arms industry roles that incentivise warmongering, while our secret service is intertwined with that of the aggressive superpower across the Atlantic.

This week, the Ministry of Defence whipped up panic over a Russian ship accused of espionage in “British waters.” Few reports informed readers that it was outside British territorial waters, and not violating any maritime law.

It was within Britain’s exclusive economic zone — but our navy regularly sails into Russia’s exclusive economic zone and publicly announces the fact. Indeed, our warships prowl the coasts of China where they once enforced the sale of opium at gunpoint, and scream “freedom of navigation” if anyone objects.

More ludicrous still was a recent Daily Mail “investigation” into the number of Chinese takeaways near military bases. Evidence-free speculation about how Beijing might make use of these restaurants was served up with a parody of statistical analysis whereby the ratio of Chinese to Indian restaurants in an arbitrary selection of locations, with no demographic data supplied, was presented as suspicious.

Laughable, yes — but dangerous. A Chinese restaurant in York was defaced with racist graffiti during the summer’s far-right riots: irresponsible propaganda, alleging ethnic minority businesses are not what they seem, will encourage racist attacks in the context of an increasingly menacing far right. That the state’s choice of official enemies has knock-on effects we know from the rise in Islamophobia that accompanied the so-called “war on terror.”

All this alarmism raises the prospect of the first direct war between global powers since World War II — and thus the first in which multiple belligerents are nuclear-armed.

The United States has played the leading role in dismantling the arms reduction and trust-building pacts that helped end the cold war, from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces to the Open Skies treaties. Now the big powers are again enlarging their nuclear arsenals, while generals — real and armchair — flirt more frequently with their actual use in conflict.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s Stop Nuclear Expansion — End the War Drive conference this weekend could not be more timely. The horrific reality of nuclear war needs to be brought home to millions, so popular pressure can put a brake on our reckless politicians.

So too does the real cost of rearmament — which, as Nato chief Mark Rutte admits, will be funded by cuts to spending on healthcare, education and pensions.

The anti-war voices that have been driven out of the big Westminster parties and most of the press must be raised, louder than ever. In France, the left immediately challenged General Mandon’s readiness to sacrifice the country’s young people to war: and France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon’s reminder that war can only result from “our diplomatic failures” rightly shifts the debate back to what we are doing to defuse conflict and prevent war.

Britain needs such a left.

Whether it’s left Labour MPs worried about retaliation from the whips, “Your Party” organisers arguing over the finances and structures of a new left vehicle, or Greens whose leaders still view a rapidly militarising EU as some kind of progressive force, we need more seriousness and urgency over the deadly threat to us all posed by the ruling-class drive to war.