Dutch government bans Turkish ministers from speaking in Netherlands

Alex Lantier 

After local German authorities banned Turkish officials from speaking in Germany last week, the Dutch government provoked a major diplomatic incident with Turkey this weekend, provocatively blocking two Turkish ministers from speaking events in the Netherlands.

This attack on democratic rights is part of a reactionary anti-Muslim campaign by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government in the run-up to the March 15 elections, attempting to stem the electoral rise of far-right candidate Geert Wilders by appealing to anti-immigrant and far-right sentiment. It came only after Wilders accused Rutte of being “too weak” to stop rallies by Turks in the Netherlands.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya were denied entry to the Netherlands, whose officials mounted a growing war of words with Turkey. The two ministers were due to speak at meetings to ask Turks living in the Netherlands to vote “yes” in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s constitutional referendum, scheduled for April 16, on transferring full powers to the Turkish presidency. People of Turkish origin in Europe, including 1.4 million in Germany and several hundred thousand in the Netherlands, are eligible to vote in the referendum.

Cavusoglu was to attend a pro-Yes rally in Rotterdam Saturday, but the venue owner cancelled the rally, citing safety concerns. When Cavusoglu said that he would come anyway and threatened the Netherlands with economic sanctions if he was refused entry, the Dutch cabinet blocked his flight from landing, citing the risk of clashes between supporters and opponents of Erdoğan in the Turkish immigrant community. “We are of the opinion that Dutch public spaces are not the place for political campaigns of other countries,” Rutte declared.

Erdoğan denounced the Dutch government’s decision in a statement to a crowd of supporters in Istanbul, declaring: “They are very nervous and cowardly. They are Nazi remnants, they are fascists.” He added that Turkey would now block Dutch diplomatic planes from landing in Turkey.

Only a few hours later, Kaya travelled into the Netherlands from Germany by automobile to speak at the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam, which, according to international law, is Turkey’s sovereign territory. In an extraordinary action, armed Dutch police were dispatched to detain Kaya and expel her from the Netherlands back to Germany.

Kaya issued a statement declaring, “The whole world must take action against this fascist practice! Such treatment against a woman minister cannot be accepted.” She added that the Netherlands were “violating all international laws, conventions, and human rights by not letting me enter.”

Wilders proclaimed that the humiliation of the Turkish ministers was a victory for his neo-fascist Party for Freedom (PVV). “Great! Thanks to heavy PVV pressure a few days before the Dutch elections, our government did not allow the Turkish minister to land here!!” he wrote on Twitter. “I say to all Turks in the Netherlands that agree with Erdoğan: go to Turkey and never come back.”

Wilders also posted a video denouncing Turkey and Muslims and insisting that Turkey would never be allowed to join the European Union (EU). “You are no Europeans and you will never be. An Islamic state like Turkey does not belong to Europe,” Wilders said. “We do not want more but less Islam. So Turkey, stay away from us. You are not welcome here.”

Erdoğan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin responded by writing on Twitter, “Shame on the Dutch government for succumbing to anti-Islam racists and fascists, and damaging long-standing Turkey-NL [Netherlands] relations.”

Clashes broke out as Turkish inhabitants of Rotterdam protested the expulsion of the two ministers, and protesters outside the Dutch consulate in Istanbul pelted the building with stones and eggs.

Cavusoglu spoke from a meeting in Metz, France to demand an apology and warn the Netherlands that Turkey would retaliate. Erdoğan made similar warnings on Sunday. “If you can sacrifice Turkish-Dutch relations for an election on Wednesday, you will pay the price,” he said. “I thought Nazism was dead, but I was wrong. Nazism is still widespread in the West. The West has shown its true face.”

The crisis in Turkey-EU relations is set to escalate. Turkish officials raised the possibility of economic sanctions against the Netherlands and said that the Dutch ambassador to Turkey, who is on leave, should not return to Ankara “for some time.” Venues in Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria are now also reportedly cancelling Turkish officials’ meetings.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen has ruled out a planned visit by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim to Denmark, due to “the current Turkish attack on Holland.”

On Sunday morning, in a tacit acknowledgment of the provocative character of his government’s actions, Rutte said that he wanted to “de-escalate” tensions with Turkey. However, he angrily dismissed as “bizarre” any suggestion that he would offer Erdoğan an apology, declaring: “This is a man who yesterday made us out for fascists and a country of Nazis. I’m going to de-escalate, but not by offering apologies. Are you nuts?”

European governments’ blocking of Turkish officials’ travel and speaking plans is an outrageous attack on free speech, appealing to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment. Erdoğan’s referendum to set up a so-called “executive presidency” is undoubtedly a reactionary bid to set up a presidential dictatorship in Turkey. However, this is a matter for the Turkish people to decide—not Dutch, Danish, or other EU officials.

The political significance of Rutte’s intervention is unmistakable. He has increasingly run on the basis of anti-Muslim rhetoric, inciting the same reactionary prejudices as Wilders to divide the working class and shift the political atmosphere far to the right, amid elections marked by deep popular disaffection with his policies of austerity and war.

In January, with Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) trailing Wilders’ PVV, Rutte issued an extraordinary public letter demanding that immigrants totally integrate into Dutch society or leave the Netherlands. Those who “refuse to adapt, and criticise our values [should] behave normally, or go away,” Rutte said. “If you so fundamentally reject this country, then I’d prefer it if you leave.”

Such remarks reflect the broad shift far to the right in all shades of European bourgeois politics, as the Netherlands and France go into critical elections dominated by the rising electoral weight of neo-fascists like Wilders in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen in France.

In Germany, Left Party leader Sahra Wagenknecht issued a statement aligning herself with Rutte’s reactionary attack on the Turkish government. She declared, “Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel are in a position to stop Erdoğan’s propaganda tour for dictatorship and the death penalty, at least on German soil, as the governments of Austria and the Netherlands have decided for their countries.”

Trump hails Australia’s draconian immigration regime

Max Newman

In his speech to a joint session of Congress last month, US president Donald Trump praised the “merit-based immigration system” utilised by “nations around the world, like Canada, Australia and many others.” Trump declared the basic principle to be “those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially.”

Trump reiterated his enthusiasm the following day. “The merit-based system is the way to go. Canada, Australia!” he tweeted. He lauded a recent book, Green Card Warrior, by Nick Adams, who insists that the US admits too many immigrants indiscriminately, instead of stocking the country with foreigners who offer skills American businesses need and who are willing to “assimilate.”

The “Australian model” praised by Trump combines cruelty and inhumanity toward refugees, with a “points-based” immigration program that deliberately discriminates in favour of wealthy applicants and those whose labour power can be most readily exploited by Australian-based employers.

Australia indefinitely imprisons all men, women and children who flee to Australia by boat. They are kept in “offshore detention” facilities in conditions so horrendous that medical professionals have said it amounts to torture.

At the same time, across the entire immigration system, “skills” tests are applied to select the most immediately “employable” applicants, at the expense of the “family reunion” stream, in which people wait for years, even decades, to sponsor close relatives, including parents.

Draconian health tests are also applied to bar entry to applicants, mostly working class or poor, who have any illness in their family or are otherwise deemed likely to be a “burden” on taxpayers. A “good character” test bars those whose views are considered contrary to “Australian values”—essentially acceptance of the corporate profit system and its predatory foreign policy of heavy involvement in US-led wars.

On the other end of the social scale, wealthy people are highly favoured. In fact, “high net worth individuals” can literally buy visas by promising to invest large sums in Australian businesses or real estate projects. Since the last Labor government launched the Significant Investor Visa program in November 2012, more than 1,300 multi-millionaires have bought fast-track residential visas by agreeing to invest at least $5 million each.

The overall political thrust of this falsely labelled “merit-based” system serves to vilify, as law-breakers, desperate or impoverished people fleeing from wars waged by the US and its allies, including Australia, or from countries long-oppressed by the major capitalist powers. This is underpinned by constant campaigns to scapegoat asylum seekers and whip up anti-chauvinism and racism to divide the working class.

Only a few hours after Trump’s speech, Australian media outlets erupted in a frenzy, with articles triumphantly declaring that Trump was adopting Australia as an immigration model. According to one report, a senior Trump policy advisor, Stephen Miller, held 12 months of private talks with Australian diplomats on the issue.

The overblown media response is partly bound up with concerns in the media and political establishment that the Trump administration will renege on the reactionary refugee-swap deal that Prime Minister Turnbull’s government struck with the Obama administration last year. Trump reportedly branded the agreement “the worst deal ever” in an infamous phone conversation with Turnbull, which Trump ended abruptly.

Last month, the Trump administration said it would honour the deal, but emphasised that the agreement was based on “extreme vetting” of refugees, with the US under no obligation to take anyone at all.

The swap agreement would remove to the US some of the 2,200 refugees locked in Australia’s refugee prison camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. This aspect of the deal was announced last November, some weeks after Turnbull offered to take an undisclosed number of refugees similarly languishing in detention camps run by the US in Costa Rica.

On both sides of the Pacific, some of the world’s most vulnerable people would face permanent separation from their family members already living in either Australia or the US. The Turnbull government, backed by the Labor Party opposition, declared that those removed from Australia’s camps would never be permitted to enter Australia.

Last year, the Turnbull government denied that the agreement was a “swap” but Immigration and Border Protection Minister Dutton last month publicly linked the two deals for the first time. He said Australia would not take anyone from Costa Rica “until we had assurances that people are going off Nauru and Manus Island.” Asked whether the arrangements could be called a “people swap,” Dutton replied: “I don’t have any problem with that characterisation if people want to put that.”

The Obama administration set up the Costa Rica camps last July, ostensibly as a humanitarian response to the large numbers of asylum seekers fleeing Central America to escape gang-related violence. In reality, the camps are designed to halt the influx, and prevent access to the US, by herding refugees into camps to be “heavily vetted.” More than 100,000 Central American asylum seekers had arrived in the US during 2015, a fivefold increase from just a few years earlier.

Obama’s administration negotiated “protection transfer agreements,” limited to 200 individuals over six months, which require pre-screening by US State Department officials in their countries of origin. Refugees are then forced into the Costa Rica camps to await removal to the US or another country, such as Australia.

The Turnbull government last year attempted to obfuscate the link between the two agreements struck with Australia, in order to present the swap deal as a humanitarian arrangement. In reality, the arrangement only serves to reinforce the inhuman detention regime, while assisting the US government to adopt similar measures.

Over the past two years, current and former Australian detention staff have courageously defied bipartisan secrecy laws to publicly reveal the abuses of basic rights and other horrors in the Nauru and Manus camps, contributing to public outcries and demands for the camps to be shut.

In response, the Labor Party and the Greens, who are directly responsible for reopening the camps by the Greens-backed Labor minority government in 2012, have feigned sympathy for the imprisoned victims. They have presented the US swap deal as a step toward closing down the camps. Regardless of how many detainees are ultimately shifted to the US, however, the facilities will remain in place, ready to imprison new refugees fleeing for their lives.

Republicans push plan to gut Medicaid and slash taxes for the wealthy

Kate Randall 

Top Trump administration officials appeared on the political talk shows Sunday morning to promote the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the House Republican bill for the repeal and replacement of Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare.

The Republican proposal builds on the core features of Obamacare, designed to boost the profits of the private insurers and slash health care costs for the government and big business.

The ACHA seeks to strengthen the grip of the for-profit health care delivery system in America while making sweeping cuts to Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor jointly funded by the federal government and the states. It also slashes financial assistance to low-income people seeking to purchase health coverage and cuts taxes for the wealthy and big business by an estimated $600 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is expected to release its numbers on the Republican plan today. The Brookings Institution on Thursday predicted that the CBO’s analysis will likely find that at least 15 million people stand to lose coverage under the AHCA by the end of the 10-year scoring window.

In a prerecorded interview aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price attempted to evade moderator Chuck Todd’s question: “Can you say for certain that once this bill is passed nobody, nobody will be worse off financially when it comes to paying for health care?”

Price answered by pointing to the high premiums under Obamacare and the fact that patients are forgoing health care as a result of high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. The HHS secretary, a rabid opponent of Medicaid, Medicare and government “intrusion” into health care, knows full well the Republican plan will make the situation for millions of working people, as bad as it is under Obamacare, even worse.

Todd pointed to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) estimate that the $4,000 tax credit that a 60-year-old in Fayette County, West Virginia would get under the AHCA “is almost $8,000 less than they would get under Obamacare.” Price brushed this off, defending the Republican plan’s tax credits, which would provide from $2,000 to $4,000 to those making up to $75,000, based purely on age and not income, with older people receiving the most.

A KFF analysis has found that for virtually every age group of individuals with incomes of $20,000-$40,000 and families making $40,000-$75,000, tax credits would be substantially lower under the ACHA than the subsidies provided under Obamacare.

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney appeared on ABC’s “This Week” program. Host George Stephanopoulos raised that independent analysts had projected that there will be about “$370 billion less in federal funding for Medicaid over the next 10 years” under the AHCA. He asked how this squared with Trump’s promises during his presidential bid that there would be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

The OMB director defended the Medicaid funding cuts, saying, “The Medicaid system as it exists today is a one-size fits-all system. We fixed that. You can provide better services for less if we get the federal government out of the way.”

In addition to the massive cuts to Medicaid, the AHCA would implement the de facto end of the program as an entitlement by 2020. Federal funding based on need would be replaced with a per capita cap, forcing states to cut benefits and deny coverage to qualified beneficiaries.

The plan would also eliminate the enhanced matching federal funds for Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, which has enrolled about 10 million people. Taken together, these cutbacks will result in denial of benefits and care to millions of poor, disabled and elderly people and to pregnant women. Some 74 million people are currently covered by Medicaid.

Republican opponents of the bill are pushing for the funding changes to Medicaid to be pushed forward to as early as next year. Mulvaney said he was willing to consider this and other amendments to the plan.

He said, “I think Congressman Morgan Griffith from Virginia had some really good ideas regarding things like changing the expansion date or perhaps putting work requirements in on Medicaid—those are great ideas that would improve the bill. If the House sees fit to make the bill better, they’d certainly have the support of the White House.”

A number of Republican governors are already pushing to impose a work requirement for Medicaid for low-income adults without disabilities.

Last year, under Obama, hundreds of thousands of so-called ABAWDs (able-bodied adults without dependents) were cut off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, due to the return in many areas of a three-month limit on benefits for unemployed adults aged 18-49 who are not disabled or raising minor children.

If a work requirement is implemented for Medicaid, recipients who cannot prove their disability, or are unable to find work, could summarily be denied benefits. Many of these individuals, the poorest of the poor, would be the same people who have lost their SNAP benefits.

Stephanopoulos raised new figures showing that the AHCA “will provide about $157 billion in tax cuts to people of incomes over $1 million in the next 10 years, yet older Americans, middle-income Americans, are going to be paying more for their insurance.”

The budget director was indifferent, saying, “Look, we promised to repeal the taxes for Obamacare. That’s what the bill does.” He pointed to features of the AHCA that would allow people at every income level to put away unlimited funds tax-free in health savings accounts (HSAs). He also claimed that “lower premiums that come from competition” would ease the burden on ordinary Americans.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that these unlimited HSAs would result in $19 billion in tax savings—almost exclusively for the wealthy. For workers and their families who are struggling to pay for basic necessities such as food, housing and utilities, the concept of squirreling away “surplus” money to pay for health care is an absurdity.

The Republicans’ AHCA is making its way through various House Committees, and Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, hopes to bring it before the full House before the end of March. The Democrats are opposing the legislation, making the defense of Obamacare their main domestic agenda, second only to their anti-Russian campaign against Trump.

However, the differences between the Democrats and Republicans on health care are essentially a conflict between two right-wing factions within the ruling elite. Both parties uphold the principle of private ownership and the subordination of the health care system to the capitalist private market. Obamacare has paved the way for an even more ferocious attack on health care for the working class by Trump and the Republicans.

UN officials warn of worst famine crisis since World War II

Patrick Martin 

More than 20 million people face imminent starvation in four countries, United Nations officials warned over the weekend, the largest humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II. All four countries—Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and Nigeria—are wracked by civil wars in which the US government is implicated in funding and arming one of the contending sides.

UN emergency relief coordinator Stephen O’Brien gave a report to the UN Security Council Friday detailing the conditions in the four countries, and the UN issued published further materials on the crisis Saturday, seeking to raise $4.4 billion in contributions for emergency relief before the end of March. So far, according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, only $90 million has been pledged, barely two percent of the total needed.

As outlined by UN officials, the populations most immediately at risk number 7.3 million in Yemen, 2.9 million in Somalia, 5 million in South Sudan, and 5.1 million in Nigeria, for a total of 20.3 million. The number of children suffering symptoms of acute malnutrition is estimated at 462,000 in Yemen, 185,000 in Somalia, 270,000 in South Sudan, and 450,000 in Nigeria, for a total of nearly 1.4 million.

While adverse weather conditions, particularly drought, are a contributing factor in the humanitarian disasters, the primary cause is civil war, in which each side is using food supplies as a weapon, deliberately starving the population of the “enemy.”

US-backed forces are guilty of such war crimes in all four countries, and it is American imperialism, the principal backer of the Saudi intervention in Yemen and the government forces in Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria, which is principally responsible for the danger of famine and the growing danger of a colossal humanitarian disaster.

The worst-hit country is Yemen, where US-armed and directed military units from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf monarchies are at war with Houthi rebels who overthrew the US-installed president two years ago. Some 19 million people, two-thirds of the country’s population, are in need of humanitarian assistance.

The Saudi forces, which fight alongside Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, control the country’s major ports, including Aden and Hodeida, and are backed by US Navy units in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in imposing a blockade on the region controlled by the Houthis in the west and north of the country.

US forces operations range throughout the country, with drone missile strikes and occasional raids, like the disastrous attack on a village at the end of January in which at least 30 Yemeni civilians were killed, many of them small children, and one US Special Forces soldier was shot to death.

In Somalia, the protracted civil war between the US-backed government in Mogadishu and Al Shabab militias, who control most of the country’s south, has laid waste to a country which already suffered a devastating famine in 2011, and has been ravaged by civil war for most the past quarter-century.

At least half the country’s population, more than six million people, is in need of humanitarian aid, according to UN estimates. Drought conditions have killed off much of the country’s animal population. In Somalia, too, US military units continue to operate, carrying out Special Forces raids and drone missile strikes. There is also an extensive spillover of Somali refugees into neighboring Kenya, where another 2.7 million people are in need of humanitarian aid.

The civil war in South Sudan is a conflict between rival tribal factions of a US-backed regime that was created through Washington’s intervention into a long-running civil war in Sudan. After a US-brokered treaty and a referendum approving separation, South Sudan was established as a newly independent state in 2011.

Tribal conflicts within the new state have been exacerbated by drought, extreme poverty, and the struggle to control the country’s oil reserves, its one significant natural resource, which is largely exported through neighboring Sudan to China. The country is landlocked, making transport of emergency food supplies more difficult.

The crisis in South Sudan was said to be the most acute of the four countries where famine alerts were being sounded, with some 40 percent of the population facing starvation. Last month, UN officials declared a full-scale famine alert for 100,000 people in South Sudan. A cholera epidemic has also been reported.

The famine crisis in Nigeria is likewise the byproduct of warfare, this time between the Islamic fundamentalist group Boko Haram and the government of Nigeria, which has military support from the US and Britain. The focal point of this conflict has been the Lake Chad region, where Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger share borders. This is the most densely populated and fertile of the four areas threatened with famine.

A recent offensive by Nigerian government forces pushed backed Boko Haram and uncovered the extent of the suffering among the local population in the region, where food supplies were cut off as part of the US-backed military campaign.

US military forces range throughout the Sahel region, the vast area on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert which encompasses much of western Africa. The armed forces of French and German imperialism are also active in former French colonies like Mali and Burkina Faso, as well as further south, in the Central African Republic.

According to the UN reports, the humanitarian disaster in Yemen has accelerated in recent months. The number of Yemenis in immediate danger of starvation jumped from four million to seven million in the past month. One child dies every 10 minutes in Yemen from a preventable disease.

When the UN humanitarian chief’s mission was in Yemen last week, it was able to secure safe passage for the first truckload of humanitarian supplies to the besieged city of Taiz, the country’s third largest, which has been blockaded for the past seven months.

The debate on O’Brien’s report to the UN Security Council featured one hypocritical statement after another by imperialist powers like the US, Britain, France, Japan and Italy, as well as by China and Russia, all bemoaning the suffering, but all concealing the real cause of the deepening crisis.

Typical were the remarks of the US representative, Michele Sison, who declared, “Every member of the Security Council should be outraged that the world was confronting famine in the year 2017. Famine is a man-made problem with a man-made solution.”

She called on the parties engaged in fighting in the four countries to “prioritize access to civilians” and “not obstruct aid”—although that is exactly what the US-backed forces are doing, particularly in Yemen, and to a lesser extent in the other three countries.

The UN report does not cover other humanitarian crises also classified by the World Food Program as “level three,” the most serious, including Iraq, Syria, Central African Republic and the Philippines (the first three due to civil war, the last due to the impact of several Pacific typhoons). Nor does it cover the devastating civil conflict in Libya or Afghanistan, ravaged by nearly 40 years of continuous warfare.

Nor does it review the worldwide total of people in acute need of food assistance, estimated at 70 million in 45 countries, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. This figure is up 40 percent since 2015, as a result of escalating civil wars, drought and other climate-driven events, and rising food prices.

The World Food Program experienced a shortfall in contributions of nearly one-third in 2016, receiving only $5.9 billion from donors towards a total outlay of $8.6 billion, forcing the agency to cut rations for refugees in Kenya and Uganda. Total unfunded humanitarian aid appeals came to $10.7 billion in 2016, larger than the combined total of such appeals in 2012.

While these sums are gargantuan in terms of the need, they are a drop in the bucket compared to the resources squandered by the major powers on war and militarism. The total deficit in humanitarian aid amounts to less than three days’ worth of global military spending. The $4.4 billion in aid sought for the famine crisis is half of what the US Pentagon spends in a typical week.

Is the US preparing for war against North Korea?

Peter Symonds

A dangerous confrontation is rapidly emerging on the Korean Peninsula between the United States and North Korea, with the potential to plunge North East Asia and the rest of the world into a catastrophic conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

Amid a barrage of commentary in the American and international media inflating the threat posed by the Pyongyang regime, the Trump administration is actively considering “all options” to disarm and subordinate North Korea.

The immediate pretext is North Korea’s test-firing of four medium-range ballistic missiles last week, following the launch in February of a new intermediate-range missile. However, the drumbeat of US military threats has been preceded by months of high-level discussions in American foreign policy and military circles over action to prevent North Korea building an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the continental United States.

President Barack Obama, who, according to the New York Times, was considering the most extreme measures against Pyongyang, urged then-President-elect Donald Trump to make North Korea his highest security priority. Since taking office, the Trump administration has been conducting a top-level review of US strategy toward Pyongyang, considering every option, including, as a White House official told the Wall Street Journal, those “well outside the mainstream” such as “regime-change” and military strikes on North Korean nuclear facilities and military assets.

A worried New York Times editorial last week, headlined “Rising Tensions with North Korea,” underscored the dangers of war breaking out in North East Asia. “How Mr. Trump intends to handle this brewing crisis is unclear, but he has shown an inclination to respond aggressively,” the newspaper wrote. “On Monday, the White House denounced the missile tests and warned of ‘very dire consequences.’”

The editorial pointed out that the Obama administration had been engaged in cyber and electronic warfare against the North Korean missile systems, then continued: “Other options include some kind of military action, presumably against missile launch sites, and continuing to press China to cut off support. The Trump administration has also discussed reintroducing nuclear weapons into South Korea, an extremely dangerous idea.”

The Chinese government is acutely concerned at the prospect of war on its doorstep involving its ally, North Korea. In unusually blunt language, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, warned that the United States and North Korea were like “accelerating trains coming toward each other with neither side willing to give way.” The Trump administration flatly rejected China’s proposal for a “dual suspension”—of North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs and massive US war games underway in South Korea—as the basis for renewed negotiations.

By ruling out talks, the White House is setting course for confrontation, not only with North Korea, but also with China. By preparing for military action against North Korea, the US is also menacing China, which it has identified as the most immediate challenge to American global hegemony.

The Trump administration has already threatened trade war measures against China and military action against Chinese islets in the South China Sea. The US deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-ballistic-missile battery in South Korea, which began last week, is part of a network of integrated anti-missile systems designed to facilitate nuclear war with China or Russia.

A pre-emptive US attack on North Korea would be an act of war with incalculable consequences. While no match for the military power of US imperialism and its allies, North Korea has a huge army, estimated at more than a million soldiers, and a large array of conventional missiles and artillery, much of it entrenched along the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone and able to strike the densely populated South Korean capital of Seoul.

In the event of war, the scale of devastation would be immense just on the Korean Peninsula alone, even without the use of nuclear weapons. In 1994, the Clinton administration was on the brink of attacking North Korea’s nuclear facilities but pulled back at the last minute after the Pentagon gave a sober assessment of the likely outcome—300,000 to 500,000 South Korean and American military casualties.

A war now is unlikely to be conventional or limited to the Korean Peninsula. The Pentagon has been actively planning for a far broader conflict. In December 2015, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said any conflict with North Korea would inevitably be “trans-regional, multi-domain and multifunctional”—in other words, a world war involving other powers and the use of all weapons, including nuclear bombs.

The immediate danger of war is compounded by the acute political, economic and social crises of all the governments involved, as epitomised by last Friday’s impeachment and removal of South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Faced with an early election and the prospect of defeat, the ruling right-wing Liberty Korea Party has a definite incentive to whip up war tensions with North Korea to divert attention from the political crisis at home.

Moreover, the current US-South Korean military exercises, involving more than 320,000 military personnel backed by the most sophisticated US air and naval power, provide an ideal opportunity for striking North Korea. As of last year, the annual drills, which amount to a rehearsal for war with Pyongyang, have been conducted on the basis of aggressive new operational plans, which include pre-emptive strikes on North Korean military sites and “decapitation raids” to assassinate the country’s leadership.

The response of both the Chinese and North Korean governments to US threats is utterly reactionary: on the one hand looking for a deal with Washington, on the other, engaging in an arms race that only heightens the danger of war. Neither regime has anything to do with socialism or represents the interests of the working class. Their whipping up of nationalism acts as a barrier to the development of unity among workers in Asia and the US in opposition to imperialist war.

The most destabilising factor in this extremely tense situation is the United States, where the political establishment and state apparatus are embroiled in factional warfare over foreign policy and hacking allegations. There is a real danger that the Trump administration will turn to war with North Korea in an attempt to project internal social and political tensions outward against the common “enemy.”

The prospect of a catastrophic war stems not from particular individuals or parties. It is being driven by the deepening crisis of international capitalism and the insoluble contradiction between world economy and the division of the globe into rival nation states. The same crisis of the profit system, however, creates the objective conditions and political necessity for the working class to fight for its own revolutionary solution—a unified anti-war movement of the international working class based on a socialist perspective to put an end to capitalism before it plunges humanity into barbarism.

Report highlights growing social distress in Australia

John Harris

Australian workers, retirees, single parents and young people face mounting job insecurity, poverty and financial stress, as well as a growing social divide. This is the picture painted by the Household Financial Comfort Report, released last month by industry superfund ME Bank, based on a survey of 1,500 households.

Participants rated their financial situation, expectations and confidence across 11 different fields from 0 to 10 (worst to best). The report recorded the lowest rate of “financial comfort and stability” since the survey was first conducted in October 2011.

The report provided a glimpse into the divergence of the incomes of the wealthiest and poorest layers in society. Last year, 46 percent of households earning over $100,000 per year reported income gains and only 13 percent reported a decrease. By contrast, 41 percent of households earning under $40,000 a year experienced a fall in income and just 17 percent registered an increase.

ME consulting economist and report co-author Jeff Oughton told Fairfax Media: “The rich appear to be getting richer, while the rest of Australia is struggling—there’s a divide across households.”

Oughton noted that with the collapse of the mining boom and the crisis of manufacturing, many workers were being pushed into part-time employment. He commented: “ABS data shows wage growth at historical lows over the past two years to the September quarter. ME’s report highlights low wage growth continued in the whole of 2016 and is causing financial discomfort for many households, exacerbated by job insecurity and underemployment.”

Underlining the precarious jobs situation, 56 percent of households were concerned they would struggle to find a new job within two months if they became unemployed. Around one in three felt insecure in their current job, up 9 percentage points from the previous year’s survey.

Some 70 percent of casual workers indicated they wanted to find full-time work and 60 percent of part-time employees said they would like to increase the hours they work.

Official figures are a pale reflection of the fall in full-time jobs. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, full-time employment has fallen by around 40,100 jobs over the past year. Over that time, the number of workers in part-time employment has increased by 129,800.

Roy Morgan Research reported that as of January 2017, real unemployment stood at 9.7 percent, with another 8.2 percent underemployed. That means 2.4 million people were either looking for a job or more hours.

As a result, millions are living on a knife-edge. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents said they could not “easily raise $3,000 in an emergency.” In other words, any unexpected expense, from a car breakdown to a medical emergency, could push many into economic ruin.

Numbers of those surveyed had far less than $3,000 at hand—27 percent of households registered cash savings of less than $1,000. A further 27 percent reported cash savings of between $1,000 and $10,000.

During 2016, “debt increased faster than income,” with 28 percent of households reporting an increase in debt. In June, approximately 10 percent of survey participants said they could not meet minimum required payments on debt.

Although the report does not spell it out, broad layers of the population have negative wealth, with working-class families drowning in debt.

In another indication that many are struggling just to get by, 43 percent of households said the cost of necessities (groceries, utilities, rent, transport, medical costs plus additional costs) was their biggest concern. Nearly half (49 percent), indicated they were either “unable to afford essentials” or had “no money left over after payments.”

At the other end of society, 2 percent, comprising the wealthiest layers of society, reported cash holdings of more than half a million dollars. The cash holdings did not include other forms of wealth such as shares and property.

This disparity is in line with other indications of a sharp rise in social polarisation. A Wealth of the Nation report last year found that the richest 10 percent of society own more than half of Australia’s household wealth, with the top 1 percent holding up to 20 percent. The poorest 40 percent own virtually nothing.

The most vulnerable layers of the working class have been hit hardest by the redistribution of wealth up the income scale, and the assault on healthcare, education and social spending prosecuted by successive governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike.

Some 40 percent of single parents reported declining incomes, up 3 percent in six months. Over recent years governments have targeted sole parent households.

In 2006 the Liberal-National government of John Howard axed the single parenting payment when the youngest child turned eight, for all new applicants. The Labor government of Julia Gillard extended the policy to all recipients in 2012, pushing 130,000 parents straight onto the below poverty-level Newstart Allowance. Households lost up to $140 a week.

Those close to retirement confront significant financial uncertainty, as a result of the small returns yielded on the compulsory superannuation payments workers make throughout their working life, and the inadequacy of the poverty-line government aged pension.

Around 43 percent of households feared that their superannuation would not be enough to support them in retirement, forcing them to rely on private savings and the government pension. Some 19 percent said they would have to rely on the government pension because they would have inadequate private savings.

Amid ever more strident demands from the corporate and financial elite for the imposition of sweeping austerity cuts to social spending, the social crisis afflicting layers of the working class will only deepen.

Fire in Guatemalan “safe home” for youth kills dozens of locked-in girls

Andrea Lobo

A fire killing dozens at an overcrowded residential facility for youth on the outskirts of Guatemala City has provoked broad outrage. Health authorities have reported 35 girls dead and 23 hospitalized as a result of the blaze in the female section of the facility. Nine of the survivors are reportedly connected to respirators and “can die at any moment.”

A survivor at one of the hospitals reported that some of the at-risk youth being supposedly sheltered from domestic violence, homelessness, and abandonment were seeking to escape due to widespread abuse and poor conditions within the facility itself.

On Tuesday, about 60 of them managed to flee but were detained by the National Police, returned to the Virgen de la Asunción shelter and locked inside of a 4-meter by 4-meter room. Some of the 52 girls inside reportedly set mattresses on fire, which quickly consumed the room with flames and smoke.

This calamity was not only the result of the immediate abuse and conditions at the shelter, but more fundamentally of the desperate situations that youth face after decades of imperialist exploitation and right-wing measures that have ruined social conditions and fueled violence in Guatemala.

Thousands of youth and young workers have taken the dangerous journey to the United States to escape these same conditions that await them once again if they are deported under the mass roundup and deportation of immigrants begun by the Trump administration.

The Guatemalan fire department and police authorities who responded to the incident referred to the youth as “rebelling inmates” and blamed each other for a 40-minute delay in attending to the fire. The attorney general blamed the entire incident on “the staff, the director and the secretary” of Social Welfare, while the Guatemalan president, Jimmy Morales, cynically claimed that “all Guatemalans bear part of the responsibility, which is that of the nation, the republic we have built.”

At a press conference on Thursday, Morales announced that the shelter will be closed and the youth sent to other facilities. Then, he scorned those protesting, including the families of the victims, while confessing that not much will be done to prevent future disasters. “We can do a lot, from protesting to even proposing and acting; this last word is the hardest,” he concluded, not staying for questions.

That evening, hundreds gathered outside of the National Palace to protest the fire. Millions in Guatemala are disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Morales government, which has continued to cut spending on youth and social programs while militarizing the country to terrorize poor communities. “The people are present, and have no president,” chanted the protesters on Thursday.

The Guatemalan daily La Hora reported last November that the conditions at the Virgen de la Asunción center were truly horrendous. The 748 internees, crowded into a facility built for 400, lacked hygiene products like toothbrushes and toilet paper, while several children were sleeping on the floor.

The Public Ministry was reportedly investigating one murder case and several lawsuits regarding beatings, psychological and sexual abuse against girls and boys, and reports of sexual slavery administered by the guards at the facility. La Hora writes that there had been 73 disappearances since the beginning of 2016 until October, when a state prosecutor recommended shutting down the center.

Surrounded by tall prison-like walls with barbed wire and security cameras, the “safe houses,” like many other overcrowded shelters, prisons, schools and even hospitals, with one or few gates, are deadly disasters waiting to happen from fires, landslides and earthquakes.

In its 2016 operative program, the Social Welfare Secretariat (SBS) writes that the state serves, though in mostly inadequate ways, 8 percent of the 300,000 children and adolescents suffering from “discrimination, marginalization, mistreatment.” They also write that 6.25 million or two-thirds of all children and adolescents live in “total poverty,” making them vulnerable to such abuses.

The social conditions for a majority of youth and workers in Guatemala and the region are disastrous. Eighty percent of chronically undernourished children in Latin America live in Central America and Mexico, a condition that affects 45 percent of children under five in Guatemala, according to UNICEF figures.

The SBS requested about $33 million for yearly operations, but the Guatemalan Congress has approved only about two-thirds of this for several years. On the other hand, the military budget has increased almost 40 percent since 2011 to $280 million, mainly for the creation of a Mountain Operations Brigade, Marine Infantry Brigade, Jungle Operations Special Brigade and a Central Regional Command.

Moreover, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Guatemalan government has one of the lowest overall rates of social spending, and spends the least in the region as a percentage of GDP in the provision of education (0.51 percent) and health care (0.49 percent) for its youth.

The agency also reports that the government has the highest level of uncollected income taxes in the region, amounting to 70 percent of its potential tax revenue. Social polarization has been the overriding factor behind the social conditions for workers and youth. Oxfam calculates that the wealth of 260 multimillionaires in Guatemala is equivalent to 60 percent of the country’s GDP.

While the City of Guatemala sees 65 percent of violent crimes and most gang activity that threaten to ensnare youth, the rural areas are affected by 86 percent poverty and rampant drug trafficking and production. At the root of these desperate conditions, like those that produced the disastrous events in the Virgen de la Asunción home, is an economic system based on the pursuit of profit and personal wealth by capitalist corporations.

The current levels of inequality and violence are the result of a long history of US and European imperialist exploitation in collusion with a rent-seeking and corrupt national bourgeoisie. The polarization of wealth was greatly accelerated with the implementation of IMF austerity diktats, like regressive taxes in 1983, social cuts, and widespread privatizations starting in 1986 under the “civilian” government of Vinicio Cerezo, after a decade of brutal military dictatorships.

These right-wing measures were intensified after the formulation of the Washington Consensus in 1989 and amid mounting interest payments to the international credit agencies. Throughout the previous decade, the ruling class enforced social cuts to finance an escalation of the counterrevolutionary civil war against left nationalist guerrillas that had raged since the 1950s as a result of the US-orchestrated military overthrow of the bourgeois reformist government of Jacobo Árbenz in 1954.

Between 1970 and 1975, there were about 15,000 political assassinations against radicalized youth, workers and peasants. Entire Mayan villages were destroyed during the 1980s, resulting in the genocidal killing of 200,000 people by the US-backed armed forces as part of “counterinsurgency” military operations.

The protracted state violence since the Civil War and the expansion of gang activity, along with the growing social inequality, have set the stage for the mass migrations of families and unaccompanied children into the United States.

The fire in Guatemala City underscores the criminality and disastrous consequences of the White House drive to detain and deport millions of immigrant workers and youth back to these social conditions that they escaped by fleeing from in Guatemala and the region.

Mexican government to vote on law expanding domestic military operations, authorizing mass spying

Alex Gonzalez

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies is preparing to pass a law that provides the legal framework for the military to intervene in matters that “endanger stability, safety or public peace.” The proposed law would also grant the armed forces the authority to “make use of any method of data collection” and would force non-governmental institutions, as well as private entities, to hand over users’ private information. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies is expected to vote on the proposed law by April 20.

The Internal Security Law ( Ley de Seguridad Interior ), proposed in Congress last November, marks a milestone in the ruling class’s efforts to defend its rule against mass mobilization of the Mexican working class. Widely discredited and deeply unpopular, the Peña Nieto administration is taking steps to ensure that any future social unrest is met with police state measures.

Under the proposed law, the Mexican Army, Marines and Air Force can be formally deployed for wide-reaching operations that include fighting organized crime, investigating corruption, combatting terrorism and “restoring order” after national disasters. In addition, the armed forces will be permanently tasked with “internal security,” vaguely characterized as preventive actions “fundamental to anticipating the State’s actions against phenomena that seek to violate internal order.”

While the military has already been informally carrying out these operations without a legal framework under the guise of the decade-long “war on drugs,” the Internal Security Law aims to legalize and make permanent the use of the military in conducting anti-drug operations, a move that is sure to produce further human rights violations from a force already notorious for its acts of torture and abuse.

The Internal Security Law also lays the foundation for mass spying on the Mexican population. Telecommunications service providers will be forced to deliver “private communications, real-time geographical location or delivery of retained data on mobile communication equipment” without any form of judicial overview or accountability. According to the Digital Rights Defense Network, a Mexican privacy rights organization, the law’s broad language leaves open the possibility for the government to ask application and content providers to “establish vulnerabilities, deliver encryption keys or establish another type of back door to facilitate surveillance.”

The military, as stated in the proposed legislation, can be mobilized by the president at any time, as well as by Congressional actions. Last year, Mexico amended its constitution to grant the president the authority to establish a state of emergency and declare martial law in instances that “place society in grave danger or conflict.” As with the Constitutional amendment, the Internal Security Law is a carte blanche for the State to suspend civil rights and suspend basic democratic rights under the pretext of fighting organized crime and preventing terrorist attacks.

The law is being sponsored by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN). Both parties have been in power during and have played a role in escalating the bloody war on drugs, which has killed over 166,000 and disappeared 28,000 over the last decade.

The National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and the Party for Democratic Revolution (PRD), the nominal “left” Mexican bourgeois parties, have opposed the legislation from the standpoint of Mexican nationalism. “The drafting of the law does not express clearly that the Mexican Army is the only one that can perform interior security functions,” stated PRD congressman Alejandro Ojelda. Similarly, Morena congressman Paulo César Martínez López has noted the proposed law “opens the door to military operations by foreign armies.” In other words, the PRD and Morena want to ensure that the Mexican state will have the exclusive power to crack down on social opposition from the working class using military force.

Human rights groups and academics have widely denounced the proposed law, warning its adoption would gravely endanger human rights in the country. Over the past decade, the armed forces have been repeatedly found guilty of torture, extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances. The Mexican Federal Police and the armed forces have been implicated in the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, while in Tlatlaya, 22 civilians were executed by the 102nd Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army.

The Interior Security Law is being proposed in the context of an outbreak of social opposition against the policies of the Trump administration and the inability of the Mexican government to provide any defense for workers, youth and peasants on either side of the border.

Since the election of Trump, the Mexican government has been in crisis over how to balance its role as a junior partner of American imperialism and subdue mounting social anger at home over Trump’s bullying threats to deport millions of immigrants to Mexico, renegotiate NAFTA, build a border wall with Mexico, halt remittances to the country and send US troops to Mexico to take over the war on drugs.

The law also comes in the wake of mass demonstrations against the policies of the Peña Nieto administration, including the gazolinazo protests at the beginning of the year, when thousands of workers mobilized across the country to block roads and highways, taking over processing and distribution centers, and shutting down transit services in many parts of the country.

In July of last year, teachers went on strike in Oaxaca against the regressive education policies of Peña Nieto’s “Pact for Mexico” in defense of public education. After 13 were killed and dozens wounded when the Mexican federal police fired at striking teachers, 200,000 doctors and nurses struck in solidarity with the protesting teachers, and students at major universities boycotted classes to show their support.

In response, the Mexican ruling elite is building up the military to prepare for open class conflict. Mexico’s weapons imports have more than tripled in the last five years, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Mexico is now the region’s second largest importer of weapons, buying $7.9 billion in military equipment in 2015 alone.

Through the government’s military sales program, the Obama administration sold over $2.5 billion in military equipment to Mexico from 2008 to 2016. Weapons purchased directly from US companies—another way the Mexican government can acquire US weapons—tripled to $2 billion from 2011 to 2012.

Aude Felurant, an SIPRI analyst specializing in Latin American affairs, characterized the weaponry being brought into Mexico, including thousands of Humvees, dozens of Blackhawks, and millions of rounds of ammunition, as “the type of equipment that is imported to carry out counterinsurgency measures.”

Desperate to cling to its privileges and wealth, the Mexican ruling class will act quickly and violently to institute martial law and prevent social revolt from threatening its rule. In response, the working class must arm itself with revolutionary politics in a struggle for socialism and the unity of the international working class.

RadioShack closing 187 more stores

James Brewer

RadioShack announced that it is closing 187 stores this month, after filing its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Wednesday. Once one of the largest consumer electronics retail outlets in the US, the company had already dropped the number of locations to less than 2,000.

In 2015, RadioShack filed its first bankruptcy reorganization petition. At the time, it ran 5,200 stores across the country. The company, based in Fort Worth, Texas, closed some 2,400 stores that year. Later, a joint venture of Sprint Wireless and hedge fund Standard General acquired RadioShack and operated over three-quarters of its remaining stores.

Some 1,850 employees will lose their jobs when the stores shut down on March 13.

Founded in 1921, Radio Shack was acquired by Tandy Corporation in 1963. In 1977, the TRS-80 microcomputer was marketed by RadioShack and became one of the first personal computers on the market—years before the IBM PC.

The announcement this week by RadioShack coincides with the release by Sears of its fourth quarter financials, revealing a loss of $607 million. According to Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence, the retail firm, which owns Kmart, posted losses in all but two of the last 24 quarters. Over the last year, its revenues fell to $6.1 billion from $7.3 billion a year earlier. In January, the company announced the planned closure of 150 stores in February and March.

The office supply retailer Staples announced Thursday that will be closing 70 more stores, reporting a $548 million loss and a 3 percent drop in sales over the fourth quarter.

Over the last month, other retailers have announced store closures as well—Macy’s closing 68 stores with 10,000 layoffs and JC Penney closing 140 stores. Women’s clothier The Limited announced the immediate closing of all 250 of its retail stores in January, though it will continue online sales. Even more profitable retailers like Neiman Marcus are facing financial crisis. It is restructuring its $5 billion of debt.

Electronics retailer HHGregg is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, announcing last week that it will close 88 of its 220 stores and three distribution centers, costing 1,500 jobs.

Among mall retailers, Abercrombie and Fitch announced plans to close 60 stores in 2017 and shoe outlet Crocs will shut 160 by 2018.

So-called brick-and-mortar retailers are under what some financial analysts see as a terminal crisis. Wolf Richter of Business Insider described the crisis this way: “Brick-and-mortar retailers, many of them subject to leveraged buyouts during the LBO boom before the Financial Crisis and now burdened with way too much debt, are keeling over one after the other, in a dense wave of debt restructurings and bankruptcies. And creditors are getting skinned.”

In addition to the protracted economic decline, another aspect of the closing of retail stores is the predominance of online marketing. More generally, the continued erosion of workers’ living standards placed unrelenting economic pressure on the retail markets.

In the automobile industry, GM has shut down the second shift at its Detroit Hamtramck Assembly plant, shedding 1,300 jobs, and has announced this week that it will close the third shift at its Lansing, Michigan Delta Township plant, costing 1,100 jobs.

The February jobs report released Friday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the national unemployment rate is slightly lower than one year ago, but these figures don’t reflect the character of the jobs being created. The trend to replace relatively good-paying jobs with low-wage jobs has been driven by the Obama administration since the 2008 financial crash.

EU Summit backs trade war and militarism

Johannes Stern

The European Union is responding to the deepest crisis since its founding by further militarizing the continent and preparing for an economic showdown with the United States.

In a statement issued Friday at the end of the two-day EU summit in Brussels, the 27 remaining member states declared their intention to press ahead with “greater determination and speed” with the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The European Council welcomed the “holding of a high-level conference on security and defence in Prague on 9 June.” Just days prior to the conference, the EU foreign and defence ministers agreed on Monday to the creation of a joint headquarters for military interventions.

The EU referred to the “need to implement the ‘common set of proposals’ for enhanced cooperation with NATO.” But it is clear that the offensive rearmament is increasingly directed against the United States. The statement does not mention US President Donald Trump by name, but spoke out explicitly against “protectionist tendencies” in world trade and called for the development of “tools to tackle unfair trade practices and market distortions.”

Brussels, and above all Berlin, are using the threats of the new US President to position the EU economy in opposition to that of the United States.

The EU will “continue to engage actively with international trading partners,” the statement says. This will include “resolutely advancing on all ongoing negotiations for ambitious and balanced free trade agreements, including with Mercosur and Mexico.” Negotiations with Japan “are closest to an early conclusion” and “relations with China should be strengthened on the basis of a shared understanding of reciprocal and mutual benefits.”

The EU is thereby seeking an expansion of its economic relations with countries that are in the crosshairs of American imperialism. Trump is threatening Mexico with trade war and the abandonment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). And Washington is ever more openly adopting a course towards war with China. As a result, transatlantic tensions will only deepen.

A guest comment in Friday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung warned of the “enormous potential for destruction” of the Trumpian “America first” policy. The countermeasures proposed by economics professor and former Finance Minister of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Karl-Heinz Paqué, in a piece entitled “Cool heads and a firm hand” are just as aggressive. Europe must “if necessary be ready to wage trade war against Trump’s America.”

Paqué writes, “If Trump goes against WTO regulations and imposes tariffs or quotas on cars from Europe, Europe could do the same with microprocessors and information technology from the US….” And “should all else fail,” Europe would have to “be ready with a firm hand for a controlled trade war and its economic victims.” The answer to “America first” is “global trade first.”

This theme was taken up by German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democrats, CDU) in her government statement prior to the beginning of the EU summit. Europe must “determinedly defend its interests […] whenever and wherever necessary.” Precisely “because the character of transatlantic relations” was changing, Europe had “decided to assume more responsibility in the future than it has in the past, and in our own neighbourhood as well as beyond.” Germany was “reliant not only on having access to the single market, but also to global markets.”

Berlin is striving for a core Europe under German leadership to enforce its geostrategic and economic interests by military means in opposition to the United States if necessary, and maintain control over the growing conflicts within the EU. “The tasks before us are too great,” Merkel said, “for us to continue working at the lowest common denominator.” It therefore must be “increasingly possible for some member states to move forward, while others do not wish to participate yet in certain steps.”

Merkel’s call for a “two-speed Europe” is reproduced almost word-for-word in the statement that the EU intends to adopt on 25 March to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which founded the European Economic Community, the EU’s predecessor. “An undivided and indivisible EU acts together wherever that is possible, and in different steps and intensities where that is necessary,” a draft cited by Handelsblatt stated.

Germany’s desire to rise to the position of Europe’s hegemon, and the mounting conflict with the United States, are intensifying the sharp tensions within the EU and the ruling class of each country.

“We will never accept a two-speed Europe,” stated Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło after the conference. In Brussels, the right-wing Polish PiS (Law and Justice Party) government vehemently opposed the reelection of EU Council President Donald Tusk, a former Polish Prime Minister. Tusk was “Germany’s candidate” and his reelection would “intensify the union’s crisis,” warned PiS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski prior to the beginning of the summit.

Due to the reelection of Tusk, a member of Poland’s largest opposition party PO (Citizens Platform), which is engaged in a major dispute with the government, above all due to its pro-EU stance, the Polish delegation blocked all of the summit’s decisions.

The ruling class in Germany is particularly concerned about the “erosion of the EU” as Handelsblatt put it. In the lead article of Saturday’s edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Kornelius bemoans the “existential crisis of the EU.” After Brexit and the election of Trump last year, “two events this year [could…] accelerate this dynamic,” if “in the Netherlands or more importantly France fate is on the side of the EU destroyers Wilders and Le Pen.”

The European working class confronts two scenarios, both of which would mean a relapse into barbarism and war: the transformation of the EU into a military union dominated by Germany and preparing for trade war against its international rivals, and Europe’s division into hostile nation states. The only way to successfully fight war and nationalism is to unite Europe on a socialist basis.