Maritime Digital Trends in 2018

Vijay Sakhuja

At the beginning of the year, industries announce trends in their respective domains. Manufacturers publicise major products that will be available in the market; car-makers showcase new models that will be launched during the year; manufacturers of smart phones and mobile devices provide teasers of new models; and digital developers proclaim cutting edge or futuristic software.

Although not as exciting as the above, the maritime industry predicts its annual shipping and cargo outlook, shipbuilding trends, and port infrastructure developments. However, this is about to change given that the maritime industry is under rapid technological transformation. It is now characterised by increased use of digital systems, smart sensors, networks for data transfer among stakeholders, unmanned and remote controlled systems/devices. These are led by a number of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and deep machine learning. There are at least four digital technologies related to the maritime domain that could make headlines in 2018.

First, digital twinning, which is being referred to as the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 that offers a new way to design and undertake maintenance during the full life cycle of a product. In this process, a physical asset is digitally mapped and continuously monitored using data from sensors fitted in the equipment and seen on the ‘digital twin’ offshore to obtain real-time performance reports. This facilitates analyses and helps predict breakdowns before the equipment fails, and enables remedial measures through replacements and repair, thereby enhancing operational efficiency. For instance, at the global quality assurance company DNV GL, 'digital twins' are connected to control system software on ships and offshore units, and help in monitoring machinery, equipment and systems on these platforms. The company claims that it has successfully "twinned" over 150 vessels and the "technology can easily be adapted to any ship or asset type." According to a study, up to 85 per cent of Internet of things (IoT) platforms will contain some form of digital twinning by 2020.

Second, the exponential growth in usage of cloud computing. The shipping industry, including supply chain managers, were initially hesitant but have slowly started using cloud computing services to securely store data, which allows industry executives to understand and address market and operational risks effectively. For instance, the United Arab Shipping Co. started using a cloud-based fuel management system to meet the fuel needs of its fleet of 70 vessels. This saved the company bunker fuel costs by 3 to 5 per cent by using real-time  pricing data, ship location, and other related information.

Similarly, cloud-based management helps in monitoring the progress of a shipbuilding project. The owners can watch over the construction of a ship and exchange "comments and replies" by simply using a single drawing of the ship which could be over gigabytes of data, and cloud computing can handle thousands of such drawings.

At the operational level, cloud computing is being put to use in autonomous ships that use enormous amounts of data from numerous sources including on-board systems such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and radar. For instance, Rolls-Royce is partnering with Google for its Cloud Machine Learning Engine to train Rolls-Royce's AI-based object classification system. This software can detect, identify and track objects that a vessel may run into at sea.

The third technology is the ‘Chatbot’. With rapid advancement in digital technologies it has become easy for companies to interact with customers and shoppers through messaging applications. However, it is now time to say 'goodbye, apps' and instead use ‘hello, bots’, despite the fact that Facebook’s Messenger already has 900 million users and WhatsApp has one billion users.

Chatbot is a conversation tool and is built on “machine learning and evolutionary algorithms" that facilitate interactions with humans. AI whizzes are developing Chatbots that can closely replicate general human conversations. Google is developing a speech synthesis programme that will be able to "generate human-like speech and even its own music compositions." Chatbots work as virtual assistants and are capable of accessing data and answering questions, which can support maritime operations. It is useful to mention that Chatbots can soon become "pervasive in day-to-day company-to-customer and online communications" and explode in popularity.

Fourth, blockchain technology used in cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin has found application in the maritime domain. One of the early users of blockchain technology is the marine insurance sector which confronts a number of challenges in terms of transparency of goods being transported, regulatory compliance of the shipment, etc. These affect the business of marine insurers, shipping companies, and law enforcement agencies alike. The latter must verify the legitimacy of the goods being transported, truthfulness of bills of lading, cargo manifests, and port documents. Distributed ledger, the technology behind blockchain, will ensure transparency across an interconnected network of clients, brokers, insurers and other third parties.

Finally, technology has historically been in a state of continuous mutability and some technology trends can be transitory and easily become obsolescent and forgotten. However, the ongoing digital transformation, unlike any other technological revolution, is highly disruptive and is preordained to dominate the maritime industry for many decades into the future.

Who Will Pay The $250+ Billion Reconstruction Cost In Syria?

Eric Zuesse

The United States Government says that Syria’s Government caused the U.N.-estimated “at least $250 billion” cost to restore Syria from the destruction that Syria’s war produced, and so Syria’s Government should pay those reconstruction costs. That link is to a New York Times article, which explicitly blames Syrian “President Bashar al-Assad’s ruthless triumph” — which was won against all of the jihadist groups (which the U.S. and its allies had brought into Syria to overthrow and replace Assad’s Government) — for having caused the devastation in Syria; the U.S. and its allies say they aren’t to blame for it, at all, by their having organized and armed and trained and manned that 6-year invasion of Syria; and, so (they say, and the NYT article implicitly assumes it to be true), if the invaders-occupiers of Syria might ultimately agree to pay some portion of these $250B+ reconstruction costs, then this would be sheer generosity by the U.S. and its allies — nothing that these governments are obligated to pay to the surviving residents in Syria. It would be charity — not restitution — according to them. The way that this NYT news-report presents this case is, first, to ask rhetorically, regarding the U.S. and its allies in the invasion of Syria, “Can they afford to pour money into a regime that has starved, bombed and occasionally gassed its own people?” and then promptly to proceed by ignoring this very question that they have asked, and instead to provide a case (relying heavily on innuendos) for the immorality of the U.S. and its allies to provide restitution to Syria’s Government to restore Syria. That’s how this Times’s news-report argues for the U.S. Government, against Syria’s Government, regarding Syria’s postwar reconstruction: The Times news-report repeatedly simply assumes that Syria’s Government is evil and corrupt, and is to blame for the destruction of Syria, and thus shouldn’t receive any money from good and honest governments such as ours. It implicitly accepts the viewpoint of the U.S. Government — a viewpoint which blatantly contradicts the actual history of the case, as will here be documented by the facts:

America’s Government (including its press, such as the NYT) simply refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Syria’s Government (even after the first internationally monitored democratic election in all of Syria’s history, which was held in 2014, and which the incumbent candidate Bashar al-Assad (whom the U.S. alliance has been trying to overthrow) won, by 89%), and the U.S. Government has, itself, evilly been trying to conquer Syria (a country that never threatened the U.S.), ever since at least 1949, when the CIA perpetrated a coup there (the new CIA’s 2nd coup, the first one having been 1948 in Thailand — and here is the rest of that shocking history) and ousted Syria’s democratically elected President; but, then, in 1955, Syria’s army threw out the U.S.-imposed dictator, and restored to power that democratically elected Syrian President, who in 1958 accepted Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s offer to unify the two countries (Syria and Egypt) into the United Arab Republic (UAR), in order to protect Syria against a then-imminent invasion and attempted take-over by NATO member Turkey (which has traditionally been hostile toward Syria). It was a peaceful and voluntary transfer of power, to Nasser. However, Nasser became an unpopular President in Syria, as the nation’s economy performed poorly during the UAR; and, so, on 28 September 1961, Syria’s army declared Syria’s secession from the UAR; and it then installed-and-replaced seven Presidents over the next decade, until 22 February 1971, when General Hafez al-Assad resigned from Syria’s military and was promptly endorsed by the Army for the Presidency; and, soon thereafter, on 12 March 1971, a yes-no national referendum on whether Assad should become President won a 99.2%”Yes” vote of the Syrian people. President Assad initiated today’s Syria, by assigning a majority of political posts to secular Sunnis, and a majority of military posts to secular Shiites. All of the Sunnis that he allowed into the Government were seculars, so as to prevent fundamentalist-Sunni foreign governments — mainly the Sauds — from being able to work successfully with America’s CIA to again take over Syria’s Government. Assad’s Ba’athist democratic socialist Party chose his son Bashar, to succeed Hafez as President, upon Hafez’s death on 10 June 2000; and, when Barack Obama became U.S. President in 2009, Obama carried forward the CIA’s plan to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and to install a Saud-allied fundamentalist-Sunni Syrian government to replace the existing non-secular, but Iran-allied, Ba’athist Government. However, since Bashar had built upon Hafez’s secular, non-sectarian, governmental system, the old CIA plan, to apply fundamentalist Sunnis to destroy the basically non-sectarian state (which is the basis of the Assads’ political support), ultimately failed; and, so, America’s Government and media are trying to deal with the consequences of their own evil, as best they can, so as to have only Syria and its allies suffer the Syrian war’s aftermath. U.S. President Donald Trump has been continuing President Obama’s policy, and he loaded his Administration with rabidly anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian people.

In the American Government’s view, the least that Syria’s Government should now do is to pay all the costs for the consequences of America’s lengthiest-ever effort against Syria — or, if Syria’s Government won’t do that, then the U.S. Government will continue its occupation of Syria, and won’t help the Syrian people at all, to recover from the devastation, which they blame entirely on Assad (who never threatened the U.S.).

However, the Syrian Government says that the countries which invaded it with their weapons and their jihadists and their organization — not only the United States and its weapons-supplies to the jihadists, but also Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Turkey, UK, France, and other U.S. allies, the entire U.S. coalition who organized and supplied the six-year international jihadist invasion against Syria — are to blame for the destruction of Syria; and, “If you break it, you own it, and need to replace it.” So, Syrians think that the invaders — and not the people of Syria — must pay the reconstruction cost.

The U.S. Government blames Syrian President Bashar Assad for everything. That charge is, however, quite problematic, given the facts in the case. The U.S. CIA was behind the “Arab Spring” movements to overthrow and replace Assad and other Arab leaders who dissatisfied the U.S. regime, and it then fed into Syria the ‘rebels’ until now. Few of them are still remaining under U.S. protection — which is mostly east of the Euphrates River, where America’s Kurdish proxy-forces are in control, after having finally defeated, with American air power, Syria’s ISIS.

That NYT article used the word “rebel” six times to refer to the jihadists who were fighting against Syria’s Government, and didn’t even once use the word “jihadist” or “terrorist” or anything like that, to refer to even a single one of them. However, almost all of the anti-Assad fighters were, in fact, jihadists (or, some people call them, instead, “radical Islamic terrorists”).

Western-sponsored opinion polls have been taken of the residents of Syria, throughout the war, and they have consistently shown that Bashar al-Assad would easily win re-election there in any free and internationally monitored election, and that the Syrian people overwhelmingly (by 82%) blame the United States for having brought the tens of thousands of foreign fighters into Syria to overthrow and replace their nation’s Government. Consequently, if Syrians will end up bearing the estimated $250B+ reconstruction cost of a war that 82% of them blame on the U.S., then the Syrian people will become even angrier against the U.S. Government than they are now. But, of course, the U.S. Government doesn’t care about the people of Syria, and won’t even allow in any of them as refugees to America; so, Syrians know whom their friends and enemies are. America’s absconding on its $250+B reparations-debt to them wouldn’t surprise them, at all. It’s probably what they’re expecting.

Some U.S. propaganda-media, such as Britain’s Financial Times, have field-tested an alternative, a blame-Russia approach, in case the U.S. team can’t get the blame-Syria story-line to gain sufficient international acceptance. For example, that newspaper’s Roula Khalaf headlined on 1 March 2017,  “The west to Russia: you broke Syria, now you fix it”, but most of the reader-comments were extremely hostile to that designation of villain in the case.

Although some readers, such as “Airman48,” seemed eager to blame anything on Russia, most of the readers, even at that rabidly anti-Russian, neoconservative-neoliberal (or, to use old terminology, pro-imperialist) publication, seemed to be somehow uncomfortable with that view. Perhaps that view would have been popular in 1900 (America and UK were proudly imperialistic at that time), but it seems to be unpopular today. It’s not as easy to fool the American and British people into an invasion as it was, for example, when we invaded and destroyed Iraq on the basis of lies, in 2003. Barack Obama managed to win public support for a repeat of that performance in Libya in 2011, and, of course, for the anti-Syria campaign, and also for a very bloody coup overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014 — a trifecta of U.S. invasions on the basis of lies (and all of which were invasions of countries that never endangered U.S. national security) — but the bipartisanship of that U.S. hyper-aggressiveness (first with the Republican Bush, and then with the Democratic Obama) has made clear to many Americans, that the U.S. Government itself is the problem, that this is not a partisan problem; it is a problem with the Government itself, by both Parties, which is evil in what it is bipartisan about (such as supporting invasions by lies, against countries that never threatened us).

Voice of America is no more propagandistic than all of America’s major media are, even though it’s openly a U.S. Government medium; and it headlined on 30 December 2017, “Pentagon Preparing for Shift in Syrian Strategy” and reported the latest variant of the U.S. regime’s plan to dump all the costs of the invasion of Syria, onto the Syrian people. Secretary of ‘Defense’ James Mattis said, “What we will be doing is shifting from what I call an offensive, terrain-seizing approach. … You’ll see more U.S. diplomats on the ground.” The article continued, “‘When you bring in more diplomats, they’re working that initial restoration of services. They bring in the contractors. That sort of thing,’ the defense secretary said. ‘There’s international money that’s got to be administered so it actually does something and doesn’t go into the wrong people’s [the Syrian Government’s] pockets.’” He wants U.S. international corporations to be placed into position to skim off some of that reconstruction-money. (Some of this cash might then become recycled into Republican political campaign donations, which would please the Republican U.S. President, and Republicans in Congress. But the Democrats in Congress are ‘patriotic’, and so will not resist Republicans’ effort to continue crushing Syria.)

Mattis was threatening Syrians with America’s absconding with all the damages it left behind, unless Syria’s Government will give America’s Government at least some of what it wants (but never earned). This VOA article said, “There are questions about how the initial recovery efforts will work, given that much of Syria is now under the control of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” The implication there is that America has a right to overthrow Syria’s Government; and, that, unless Syria’s Government will bend at least part-way in recognizing this right, the U.S. Government will abscond totally from this matter. The U.S. regime is blaming everything on Assad, and expects him to be grateful for any financial assistance that the U.S. Government, in its kindness and generosity, provides, to his land, which it has destroyed. (Of course, Syria’s Government has also bombed targets in Syria, but the only alternative that was available for President Assad would have been to surrender Syria to the jihadists whom the U.S. team had brought into and armed there.) However, VOA’s presumption that Syria’s Government is to blame and that the invading jihadists aren’t, isn’t likely to be accepted by any nations except some of America’s allies. For example, Poland might back it, in order to retain the U.S. regime’s support, which is especially important to the Polish regime, because their support from some of the other European regimes has been fraying recently, and because beggars (such as Poland is, when it becomes widely criticized by the rest of the EU) can’t be choosers. Apparently, the Trump regime believes it can assemble a sufficient number of such regimes, so as to win its way.

Trump has the support of the entire U.S. aristocracy on this. A leading voice of the U.S. aristocracy (and funder of its agents — such as U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — when they are in the revolving door between government-service and Wall Street or other private agencies of the aristocracy) is America’s Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes Foreign Affairs magazine, which is perhaps the chief public voice of America’s billionaires, concerning international relations. On 4 October 2017, it published an article, “Don’t Fund Syria’s Reconstruction: The West Has Little Leverage and Little to Gain”, which presumed that “The West” is democratic and its governments represent their publics, and that Syria’s Government isn’t and doesn’t; so, “The West” has a supposed right to ignore the plight it caused in Syria (and which “The West” constantly lies to deny that it caused, and to blame Syria’s Government for the devastation that “The West”s hirees actually produced there).

Here are key excerpts from this CFR Foreign Affairs article, showing the position that America’s billionaires collectively argue for, on this matter — displaying their guidance on this issue, for their vassal aristocracies, in America’s allied countries:

Now that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has successfully defeated or neutralized much of the insurgency in his country, domestic and international attention has begun to turn toward stabilization and reconstruction. …

Yet large sections of the international community — including, critically, key donor countries — continue to reject the legitimacy of Assad and his regime. …

There is a less complicated solution: Do not fund the reconstruction of Assad’s Syria. …

Syria’s reconstruction cannot be dictated or meaningfully shaped by Western donors — at least not to any satisfactory political ends. …

The cost of Syria’s reconstruction will be immense — between $200 billion and $350 billion, depending on the estimate. These sums are far beyond the capacity of Syria, or the willingness of its Iranian and Russian allies, to pay. The burden of reconstruction, then, is expected to fall on the United States, members of the EU, and Japan, as well as on multilateral institutions that are likely to take cues from their major Western donors, such as the World Bank. …

On September 21, a meeting of “like-minded” actors (including Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the EU) announced that “recovery and reconstruction support for Syria hinges on a credible political process leading to a genuine political transition that can be supported by a majority of the Syrian people.” Reconstruction funding is “the biggest lever” the United States and its allies have to push for a credible political process, said David Satterfield, a U.S. State Department official, after the meeting. And according to British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, “We have one big card left to play in a pretty poor hand and that is the cash we can provide for the reconstruction of Syria.”. …

The country, in other words, cannot be put back together by working around the regime that tore it apart. …

Some analysts believe that the West can use funding to win concessions short of regime change. …

The regime will end up trading away “things that don’t matter,” said one European diplomat. “But it will hold out for so long, they’ll seem like concessions when you get them. If there’s something that Damascus has that most others don’t, it’s time.”

Donors will not be permitted to do an end run around Assad. …

Westerners who want to drive a hard bargain will find that they have less leverage than they thought. To begin with, the international community — and the universe of possible donors and investors — is not limited to the West. Syrian officials are keen to advertise the country’s nascent economic recovery and attract investment, but they have also said that they will give priority to investors from countries that stood by Damascus. …

Western donors should not finance the regime-led reconstruction effort. …

The West does not get unlimited tries to remove Assad or to dictate Syria’s politics. Thinking otherwise will be an expensive delusion.

Or, in short: America’s billionaires view the entire question as a business deal between themselves and the ‘regime’ that they have hired the U.S. Government since 1949 to overthrow and control; and the advice that they are giving to their vassal aristocracies is: “The West does not get unlimited tries to remove Assad or to dictate Syria’s politics”; and, so, “The West” should just walk away from the matter: there shouldn’t be any deal — Syria should just become a failed state, such as Libya, or Afghanistan.

Another prominent institutional voice of America’s billionaires is the similarly solidly neoconservative-neoliberal (or pro-imperialistic) Brookings Institution, whose Steven Heydemann headlined on 24 August 2017, “Rules for reconstruction in Syria”, and he wrote:

For the Assad regime, however, reconstruction is not seen as a means for economic recovery and social repair, but as an opportunity for self-enrichment, a way to reward loyalists and punish opponents, and as central to its efforts to fix in place the social and demographic shifts caused by six years of violent conflict. Assad himself affirmed this intent in a speech he delivered to mark the inauguration of the Damascus Exhibition. Thanking Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, Assad said that Syria had “lost its best youth and its infrastructure,” but had “won a healthier and more homogenous society.” The prominent Arab [Qatari-Palestinian-Israeli] political analyst Azmi Bishara described Assad’s claim as “Hitlerian” and as confirmation of the “genocidal” intent of the regime’s policies of displacement.

Thus, a statement by Assad expressing satisfaction that Syria has even a smaller percentage of its citizens who support jihadists today than it had prior to the U.S.-Saudi-UAE-Qatari-Turkish importation of the world’s jihadists into Syria, was there being called “Hitlerian.” America’s billionaires (or at least their policy-propagandists) view Assad’s loathing of jihadists as bigotry, just like Hitler’s loathing of Jews was.

Furthermore, Bishara, who was being cited there by Brookings as an authority about Assad, was a big supporter of the U.S. coalition against Syria: for example, he said about Assad’s Government, at 2:17 in this 20 May 2013 telecast on Syria’s enemy Qatar’s Al Jazeera television in Arabic (Al Jazeera is pro-jihadist in its Arabic broadcasts, but anti-jihadist in its English ones), “Now, it’s shelling its own people, ferociously, an ongoing massacre, and yet the people resist. They haven’t stopped.” He didn’t mention “jihadists” or “terrorists” at all (because he represents their backers). There is no available evidence as to whether Bishara is being paid by the CIA, or perhaps by the Thani family who own Qatar, but Brookings’s failure to disclose information like that (Bishara’s statement’s falsely implying that Assad is anti-Syrian instead of anti-jihadist), in such a context as this passage by Heydemann, indicates the extent to which Brookings should be presumed to be merely an extension of the same international aristocratic group that ultimately controls the CIA, CFR, etc. (Bishara then went on there to use the phrase “we, the Israelis”; so, maybe he instead represents Israel’s Mossad. But that’s just as bad, and maybe even the same thing as the rest of them.)

The argument by America’s billionaires (via their agents), regarding restitution to the Syrian people, for the catastrophe that those billionaires (via their political contributions) spearheaded against Syrians, is: If anyone should pay it, then Syria’s Government should.

Apparently, “The West” intends simply to keep on destroying nations and leaving behind more and more failed states.

Of course, that long war to get rid of Russia’s allies might be a profitable policy for the owners of corporations such as Lockheed Martin, but there are big downsides to this policy, for the billions of people whom “The West” seems to care nothing about, such as in Syria, and in Libya, and in Ukraine. And this evil policy is also bad even for the American people, who are increasingly coming to loathe the Government that America’s billionaires have increasingly bought and impose upon us.

America’s corruption deserves a Nobel Prize, like was won by Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama; but, this one should be called the “Hypocrisy Prize” and awarded directly to the U.S. Government — an invoice, “amount due,” totaling the damages done by this Government to all of the governments that had posed no threat to U.S. national security but that the U.S. Government nonetheless overthrew, starting with Thailand in 1948. Of course, the rogue U.S. Government would not pay it, but the bill should still be presented, because that bill would be the first Hypocrisy Prize, and it would show what hypocrisy can amount to.

Australia: Ex-general agitates for stepped-up war preparations

James Cogan

Retired Major General Jim Molan is currently being promoted by the Murdoch media, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and other media outlets in order to emphasise the purported “need” for a massive increase in military spending and in the combat readiness of the armed forces and their supply chains.

Molan spent 40 years in the Australian Army. In 2004, a particularly bloody year in the US occupation of Iraq, he served as a commander in the main military operational command centre in Baghdad, working to integrate the Australian and US armed forces ever more closely. Since retiring, he has established himself as one of the most prominent media advocates for the US-Australia military alliance.

In the 2016 federal elections. Molan stood as part of the Liberal Party Senate slate, but was too far down on the list to be elected. He is now entering parliament as the replacement for Senator Fiona Nash, who was ousted by the High Court due to her dual citizenship with the United Kingdom.

In an opinion piece published by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Australian on January 3, the ex-general gave one over-riding justification for his call for a military build-up: the decline of “American power.” Molan catalogued what he labelled the deficiencies of the US Army, Navy and Air Force, and raised doubts as to the ability of the United States to win a war with North Korea or Iran, let alone with Russia or China.

Australian imperialism, he insisted, therefore had “strong grounds to question” its “expectation” that the US would, or could, come to its assistance in the event of an “extreme scenario”—that is, a major war. Australia, while “remaining the staunchest of US allies,” had to be able to “defend its national interests independently.”

Molan concluded: “The best allies are highly self-reliant and Australia is one of the best of America’s plethora of allies.”

The ex-general did not name what country or countries he believed could threaten Australia with an “extreme scenario.” This is, in no small part, due to the fact that what is being prepared is not the “defence” of Australia, but its involvement in offensive, US-led wars, far from the country’s shores. The necessity for developing a “self-reliant” Australia is the pretext for expanding the military, and making a greater contribution to the operations of its American ally.

The Australian made this clear in its January 5 editorial, which endorsed Molan’s views. It named “China’s unrelenting militarism in the South China Sea and tension on the Korean peninsula” as the two most immediate potential triggers for drawing Australia into war.

It is now more than six years since Australia, under the Labor government of Julia Gillard, extended unconditional support to the anti-China “pivot to Asia,” initiated by the Obama administration in November 2011. At the diplomatic level, both the Labor government and the Liberal-National Coalition government that replaced it in 2013, have sided with Washington at every point as it ratchets up tensions with Beijing over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and through US threats to attack North Korea if its regime fails to abandon its weapons programs.

US military use of Australian air bases, ports and training facilities has been dramatically increased, as have joint exercises between American and Australian forces. The Australian military operates as the adjunct of its far larger American partner. The Australian continent—and particularly a string of bases in the country’s north—is openly described in US strategic documents as an American military “sanctuary” in the event of a major war in the Asia-Pacific region.

Canberra’s alignment with the US against China, Australia’s largest export market and trading partner, is the source of continuous friction and conflict within the Australian ruling class and its political establishment. However, the layer most preoccupied with the potential losses that Australian business interests could suffer, has been largely marginalised. The US is the guarantor of Australian strategic influence in Asia and around the world. Moreover, American corporations dominate the domestic economy and are the largest source of foreign investment, while Australian companies and the ultra-rich have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into US assets and stocks.

Rupert Murdoch, the ex-Australian billionaire, now US citizen and American-based media magnate, personifies this corporate relationship. For its part, the military relationship is constantly being reinforced through the virtual integration of the Australian armed forces, intelligence services and strategic think tanks with their American counterparts.

US politicians and military commanders have repeatedly implored Australian imperialism—considered in Washington to be one of its most reliable and compliant partners—to contribute far more to the joint preparations for a confrontation with China.

To that end, Molan is calling for greater military spending, and the stockpiling of fuel and “high-end weapons,” such as missiles for aircraft and ships, to enable the armed forces to fight a protracted war. He also advocates that Australia should seek “more stable security guarantees”—an implicit call for military alliances with countries other than the United States, so they can also be drawn into any conflict with China.

The Australian backs such a policy. It praised the steps toward the formation of a “Quadrilateral” military relationship between the US, Japan, India and Australia, and advocated the forging of formal anti-China security alliances with “other regional democracies such as India, Japan and South Korea.”

As part of its commitment to stand with the US in a conflict with China, Australian imperialism is already undertaking a multi-billion dollar spending spree to acquire state-of-the-art ships, aircraft, and other military materiel. These include F-35 fighters, sophisticated naval frigates, and a $50 billion project to construct 12 conventional attack submarines.

Some $495 billion is slated to be squandered on defence between 2016 and 2026. To fulfill Molan’s agenda of “self-reliance”—which, concretely, means a huge expansion in both the size and capability of the armed forces—would require this sum to be vastly increased.

The Australian editorial supported such an increase, unfavourably comparing the level of Australian military spending, at 2 percent of GDP, with the 3.5 percent being spent in the US. It also implied that increasing the current defence outlay of some $30 billion would require cuts to the $164 billion spent each year on social security, involving slashing the retirement pension and welfare benefits.

Under conditions where every national state is competing to attract investment by slashing taxes on corporations and the ultra-wealthy, the parallel preparations for war can only be financed through the further destruction of the living standards and social conditions of the working class.

Moreover, while neither Molan nor the Australian editorial raised the question, enlisting the required personnel for a major expansion of the armed forces would, more than likely, lead to the re-introduction of some form of compulsory military service, which was last introduced in Australia between 1964 and 1971 to conscript young men to fight and die in the Vietnam War.

The entire political establishment, which uniformly supports the war preparations, is nevertheless aware of the lack of any popular support for increased military spending at the expense of social services. That is why such concerted efforts are being made to develop a constituency for militarism, through the stoking of nationalism, patriotism and, above all, paranoia about alleged Chinese “influence” over Australian politics, universities and corporations.

Molan’s comments and the Australian editorial represent yet another component of the whipping up of anti-China propaganda. Like the “Red Peril” hysteria in the 1960s, aimed at justifying the US alliance at the time and Canberra’s complicity in the Vietnam War, the allocation of further social resources to the military will be increasingly justified on the basis that “sacrifices” on the part of “every citizen” are necessary to avoid a “foreign” invasion and even conquest.

December US jobs report reveals weaker than expected growth

Trévon Austin

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index continues to soar, the latest report on job growth and unemployment from the Department of Labor for December makes clear that workers continue to see little of the “recovery” from the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

According to the report, 148,000 jobs were added to the market in December, below an expected growth of 190,000 jobs, making a three-month average of 204,000 new jobs. The December total was depressed by the retail sector, which continued to hemorrhage jobs through the holiday sales period, cutting more than 20,000 jobs.

The additional jobs were enough to hold the unemployment rate steady at 4.1 percent, the same as in November, the lowest official figure since 2000. Finally, average hourly wages rose by nine cents to $26.63, a 2.5 percent increase from 2016.

Despite the weaker than expected jobs report, stock prices shot up, with the Dow Jones ending the day up more than 220 points, the S&P 500 up by nearly 20 points and the Nasdaq up more than 58 points.

The New York Times suggested that the latest jobs report indicates “a year of increasing opportunities for American workers.” Construction jobs increased by 210,000 last year, and manufacturing added 196,000 jobs. This trend is being used to herald a potential “blue-collar boom.”

However, the decline in the official unemployment rate and the number of jobs added over the last year do not reflect improved conditions for the working class. The reality for millions of workers is austerity, underemployment, and wages that are not keeping up with the rising cost of living.

The slight rise in the average wage is essentially meaningless, as the median wage in the United States has remained virtually unchanged since the 1970s, only rising by 0.2 percent per year when adjusted for inflation.

According to a report released by the Department of Labor last month, when accounting for inflation and other factors, the real average hourly wage was just $10.72. This figure accounts for employees in industries that include approximately four-fifths of total employment, such as manufacturing, construction and service industries.

Furthermore, the underemployment rate, which encompasses unemployed workers looking for work and part-time workers looking for full-time jobs, rose to 8.1 percent in December. Approximately 4.9 million American workers remain stuck in part time positions despite their desire for better work.

A study by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University revealed that the proportion of American workers engaged in “alternative work” increased from 10.7 percent to 15.9 percent from 2005 to 2015. Alternative work is described as temporary or unsteady employment, such as contract work. A staggering 94 percent of job growth during that period was in alternative work.

In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created in the 10-year period were temporary, and the trend likely continues today. The same policies used to promote economic/job growth in the Obama era, pumping surreal amounts of money into Wall Street, are being continued under Trump with trillions in tax cuts for corporations and the rich.

With the ever-increasing cost of living and stagnant wages, those stuck in part-time work must often work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Such jobs are typically low-wage, and offer no benefits such as health care or a retirement plan. Having to work more than one job is mentally and physically exhausting for these workers and leaves little time for family, leisure, education, or the ability to look for a better job.

The real conditions facing millions of workers is further reflected by the continuing wave of retail store closures and a decline in auto sales.

Economists predict that thousands of retail stores will close in 2018, continuing the trend from last year when a host of retail chains closed 8,000 stores nationwide. Sears Holding announced on Thursday that it would be closing 64 Kmart locations and 39 Sears stores following weaker than expected in-store holiday sales. The wave of closures is mostly due to the rise of e-commerce, particularly giants such as Amazon, which heavily exploits its workforce.

According to Business Insider, large department stores, known as “anchor stores,” are particularly at risk. Macy’s announced that it will be closing 11 stores, bringing the total closed in recent years to 81 out of an announced planned total of 100.

Shopping malls rely on anchor stores such as Macy’s to attract the majority of their customers, and attract commerce to smaller businesses nearby. The report indicates 310 out of 1,300 malls are at risk of losing an anchor tenant. The loss in traffic to smaller businesses also spells more job losses in retail.

In another indication of the dismal state of the real economy, US car sales fell in 2017 for the first time since 2009. Annual sales fell 1.8 percent to 17.2 million vehicles according to figures from Autodata. The decline is attributable to the rise in average car prices and the stagnation of wages. The average amount paid for a car was $35,082, up 2.5 percent from last year.

In 2009, annual auto sales declined by 21 percent to 10.3 million cars amid the financial crisis, marking a 27-year low. The fall in sales drove automakers GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and they received a massive bailout from the Obama administration on the condition they slash auto workers’ wages and increase the number of part-time and temporary workers.

Trump threatens Palestinian aid cut-off

Jean Shaoul 

US President Donald Trump has repeated his threats to end Washington’s financial support to the Palestinians. His actions undermine the Palestinian Authority (PA), undercutting the role it plays on behalf of the US, the European powers and Israel in policing the Palestinian people.

Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations (UN), amplified Trump’s tweet, stating that Washington might halt its contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) until the Palestinians agreed to engage in US-led peace talks with Israel again.

Trump tweeted that the US “gives them hundreds of millions of dollars,” but gets “no respect. … They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel.”

Trump presented his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as a positive gift to the Palestinians, denouncing them for opposing the move in the UN and making identical threats of financial sanctions to those he made to other countries protesting the action.

“We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more,” Trump claimed. “But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”

The shape of the “ultimate deal” that Trump promised on taking office, to be brokered by his son-in-law Jared Kushner and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, ardent supporters of an expansionist Israel, is clear. The Palestinian Authority must accept its role as security guard for Israel and US imperialism in the region, and settle the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel’s terms: the abandonment of Jerusalem as the capital of any Palestinian statelet made up of non-contiguous towns and villages, and no right of return for the Palestinians who became refugees in 1947-48 and 1967.

Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move its embassy there from Tel Aviv marked the definitive end of the decades-long US policy, which formally upheld the position that the status of Jerusalem could only be determined through a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Washington’s European allies opposed Trump’s decision, as it cut across their own geo-strategic interests in the region by exposing the fraud of a two-state solution. They supported the overwhelming vote in favour of a nonbinding resolution at the UN General Assembly last month affirming that the status of Jerusalem—claimed as a capital by both Israel and the Palestinians—can only be settled as an agreed final issue in a peace deal.

After the vote, Haley threatened that Washington would “remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.” The US then announced that its contribution to the UN budget would be slashed by over $285 million this year.

To make sure that the PA falls in line with Washington’s demands, Trump has now threatened to cut off its very limited funds. US funding for the Palestinians is made up of two elements.

It gives UNRWA about $368 million a year, about a quarter of the agency’s $1.25 billion budget. UNRWA supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and provides essential health and educational services.

A cut to UNRWA’s budget would have a devastating impact on the humanitarian crisis, particularly in Gaza where UNRWA funds are a major source of income for the besieged entity. With an unemployment rate of 40 percent, around 1 million of Gaza’s 2 million population depend on emergency food assistance from UNRWA. This number has risen sharply from 80,000 in 2000 as a result of Israel’s 10-year-long blockade and repeated military attacks that have destroyed Gaza’s economy.

Bereft of financial support from UNRWA, the host governments in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon would be unable to control their restive and destitute populations and would face collapse, further destabilising the region.

The second part of US aid includes direct funds to the Palestinians in the West Bank, following the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Accords. According to a Congressional report published in December 2016, Washington has provided about $400 million a year for the last 10 years. US aid increased after the factional split between Mahmud Abbas’ Fatah-led PA in the West Bank and the Hamas-led Gaza Strip in 2007.

The report makes clear that funding that goes to the PA in the West Bank, less than half the total, is channelled largely to the PA’s security forces, the largest per capita in the world, which act as Israel’s subcontractor to suppress the impoverished Palestinian working class—thereby protecting both Israel and the Palestinian bourgeoisie.

The funding was “primarily in direct support of the PA’s security, governance, development and reform programs in the West Bank under Abbas” and intended “in part to counter Hamas.” The report adds that the US may also have provided “covert” funding—meaning the CIA.

Most aid is channelled via the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as “investments” in the West Bank and in Gaza, whose ultimate beneficiaries are again the Palestinian bourgeoisie.

Much of this was already under threat from the proposed Taylor Force Act, seeking to make funding conditional on the PA ending financial support for Palestinians in Israeli jails convicted of terrorist offences.

While the US is the largest single contributor to UNRWA, the European states provide far more, both via the European Union ($160 million) and their own country budgets ($330 million). The EU provides an additional $218 million in aid to the Palestinians, about half of which defrays the costs of the PA’s salaries, with the rest going towards social and economic projects in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This is channelled via Palestinian businesses, with individual European states also granting aid from their own domestic budgets.

The European powers are concerned that any further cuts in funding, which has almost been halved since 2013, would threaten the collapse of the PA and the further destabilisation of the Middle East region. Moreover, Trump’s aggressive measures against the Palestinians are bound up with Washington’s efforts to assert its control and dominance against its imperialist competitors through an anti-Iranian alliance in which Israel and Saudi Arabia are to play a key role, with the aim of preparing for possible war with Tehran.

Trump’s attack on UNRWA is also an attack on the EU. Last July, the EU issued a statement describing the organisation as “one of the pillars of its Middle East peace policy.”

Trump’s threats highlight the growing dangers to the Palestinians and the working class and oppressed masses throughout a region who face being plunged into war. They also underscore the impossibility of opposing these dangers without breaking free of the strangulating grip of the PA and waging a political struggle independent of the venal Palestinian bourgeoisie. Its perspective of establishing another small state in the Middle East with the help of one or other imperialist and regional powers has proved to be a disaster.

The only way to resolve the economic, social and political problems of the region and end the drive to war is the development of a political movement to unite workers and peasants, of all ethnicities and religions, in a common struggle against imperialism and its local agents, Arab and Israeli, for the building of a United Socialist States of the Middle East.

Tell-all book on Trump White House intensifies US political crisis

Barry Grey

The release Friday of the damning book on Donald Trump and his inner circle, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, has brought the political crisis in Washington to a new pitch of intensity. The devastating picture by journalist Michael Wolff, based largely on interviews with Trump’s former top aide Stephen Bannon, of chaos, incompetence and ignorance, centered in the figure of the president himself, has escalated the fracturing of the US political establishment.

The publisher, Henry Holt & Co., moved up the date of release to Friday after Trump’s attorneys sent cease-and-desist letters to Holt, Wolff and Bannon in an attempt to block the book’s release, following the publication of excerpts in the press beginning on Wednesday. Bookstores sold out within minutes of opening, and the book immediately reached the top of national best-seller lists.

The book quotes Bannon and cites other top White House officials who describe Trump as infantile, erratic, barely literate, an “idiot” and a “moron.” In a particularly revealing passage, Wolff writes: “He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.”

The book has received nonstop media coverage and provided new ammunition for those factions within the ruling class and the state that are pushing for Trump’s removal from office, either by forcing him to resign, invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for the removal of a president who can no longer serve, or by means of impeachment.

There are two main prongs to this offensive: the claim that Trump is mentally unfit to serve as president and charges that he colluded with Russia in its alleged meddling in the 2016 election and is guilty of obstruction of justice in connection with the Justice Department’s Russia investigation.

Fueling the latter charge, Bannon is quoted in the Wolff book as calling the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials, including Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and then-campaign head Paul Manafort, and various Russians “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” Bannon adds that there is “no chance” Trump did not know of the meeting.

Trump has fiercely denounced Wolff and, above all, Bannon, effectively severing relations with his former top aide, at least for the present, and rallying support from within the Republican establishment, including among former backers of Bannon.

NBC News’ “Today Show” featured a friendly interview with Wolff Friday morning, in which the author made the case that Trump is unfit for his office. “I will tell you,” he said, “the one description that everyone gave, everyone had in common: They all say he is like a child. And what they mean by that is, he has a need for immediate gratification. It is all about him.”

Wolff added that “100 percent of the people around” Trump, “senior advisors, family members, every single one of them, questions his intelligence and fitness for office.” He singled out as a sign of mental decline that Trump’s habit of repeating statements and phrases has grown noticeably more pronounced in the course of his year in office.

This followed a half-hour interview with former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday evening’s PBS nightly news program, in which Biden was asked directly of Trump: “It’s been a year. Is he fit to be president?”

Biden avoided a direct answer, but said that Trump “undermines the office” and “our place in the world.”

Asked if he agreed with the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, who said on Sunday that the United States under Trump was closer than ever before to nuclear war, Biden replied, “Yes, I do.”

On Friday, the New York Times ran as its front-page lead story a report making the case for an obstruction of justice charge against Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s supposed intervention into the 2016 elections in opposition to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and possible collusion by the Trump campaign.

Featuring the sub-headline, “Obstruction of Justice Is Viewed as Central to Mueller’s Scrutiny,” the article cites unnamed sources, evidently from within the Mueller investigation, who say Trump ordered his White House counsel to pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself in the Justice Department’s Russia probe. When Sessions recused himself in March, Trump reacted with fury and threatened to fire him.

The article, also citing the Mueller investigation, claims that former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus turned over handwritten notes of conversations with Trump that corroborate the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey about improper efforts by Trump to pressure him into publicly declaring that Trump was not a target of his investigation. Trump fired Comey last May after he refused to end his investigation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The deputy attorney general then appointed former FBI Director Mueller as special counsel to head up the investigation.

The pro-Trump camp, for its part, has launched its own counteroffensive. On Thursday night, Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of hedge fund billionaire and long-time Bannon backer Robert Mercer, released a statement backing Trump and disavowing Bannon. She added, “I have a minority interest in Breitbart News and I remain committed to my support for them”—suggesting she might move to push Bannon out. Questioned Thursday at her White House news briefing on the matter, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “I certainly think that’s something they should look at and consider.”

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial Friday praising Trump for breaking with Bannon. Alluding to last month’s passage of a multitrillion-dollar tax cut for the rich, the newspaper wrote: “The Trump-Bannon divorce is therefore a political relief … The president’s successes have come when he has bursts of discipline while pursuing the more conventional conservative agenda on judges, tax reform, regulation and foreign policy.”

Also on Friday, press reports emerged that the FBI has for months been investigating the Clinton Foundation, in accordance with repeated accusations by Trump and some Republicans that Hillary Clinton, while secretary of state, granted favors to foreign donors to the foundation.

And two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham, sent a referral to the Justice Department requesting that it open up a criminal investigation of Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the dossier on alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Steele’s dossier was cited in last January’s intelligence report claiming, without providing any real evidence, that Russia had hacked Democratic Party emails and otherwise meddled in the election in order to tip the campaign in favor of Trump.

Despite the intensity of the conflict within the political establishment and the state, it has not arisen because of disagreements with the reactionary political agenda of the Trump administration. Rather, it is rooted in a loss of confidence within sections of the ruling class that Trump is capable of carrying the agenda out.

Trump himself is not some alien aberration of an otherwise healthy social and political system. He is the ugly product of American bourgeois politics, the embodiment of all that is corrupt and backward after decades of political reaction, unending war and social counterrevolution. In his narcissism and single-minded concern for his own wealth and power, he personifies the American financial oligarchy, which, along with the military and the CIA, dominates his administration.

The United States in 2018 faces major geopolitical challenges, an extremely unstable financial situation and the prospect of growing opposition in the working class. Under these conditions, there is a sense in significant sections of the ruling class that Trump is neither intellectually nor politically up to the task of defending its interests. Hence the accelerating drive for a palace coup to replace him with a more effective and no less ruthless head of state.

US suspends security aid to Pakistan as part of Afghan War push

Jordan Shilton

The US State Department announced Thursday that it is suspending virtually all security aid to Pakistan. The move will impact an estimated $1 billion annually, including hundreds of millions of dollars in Afghan War Coalition payments.

The decision will exacerbate geopolitical tensions throughout the already highly volatile South Asian region, which has become increasingly polarized between the rival India-US and China-Pakistan military-strategic alliances.

The Trump administration has justified the aid cut by citing Islamabad’s alleged continued ties to elements of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. The latter is a militant Islamist group that is allied with the Taliban, reportedly enjoys a safe haven in parts of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and has carried out some of the most deadly attacks on US-led coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

In a tweet three days prior to the announcement, Trump wrote, “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

Thursday’s decision is part of the implementation of the strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia that Trump announced in August. In a speech delivered to a military audience, the US president vowed to maintain an indefinite, i.e., permanent, US occupation of Afghanistan and untie the hands of the military to wage an even more brutal neocolonial war against the Taliban and other resistance groups.

Trump also put Pakistan on notice that if it didn’t fall into line with the US strategy, Washington would move to curtail ties between the two countries. In background briefings, aides said Pakistan could lose its status as a Major Non-NATO partner of the US and even be labeled a state sponsor of terrorism.

The 16-year-old Afghan war has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians and forced millions to flee their homes.

The August strategy shift played a major part in tripling the number of bombs dropped by the US Air Force on the country last year. Trump gave military commanders a free hand to escalate the conflict, with air strikes no longer having to be approved by the White House.

In 2002, in the immediate aftermath of the launching of the Afghan war, US security aid to Pakistan amounted to $1.6 billion annually, but this has since dropped. The State Department has said that monies the US pays to fund Pakistan’s participation in military operations in Afghanistan will be reinstated if Islamabad takes steps to clamp down on terrorist groups. Reports suggest that the US could continue to transfer some aid on a conditions-based approach for identifiable purposes.

The provocative character of the State Department’s announcement was underscored by comments made by Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, on Wednesday. US-Pakistan relations can “no longer bear the weight of contradictions,” declared McMaster, adding that Trump was “frustrated with Pakistan’s behavior” of supporting terrorist groups.

In a barely disguised threat that Washington is ready to dramatically ratchet up tensions with Islamabad and even confront it militarily, McMaster continued, “Pakistan could be on a path to increased security and prosperity, or it could be on a path to replicating North Korea. I think that’s an easy choice for Pakistani leaders.”

The accusation of support for terrorist groups is particularly hypocritical coming from Washington. It was the US that enlisted Pakistani intelligence to help organize the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s to overthrow the Soviet-backed government in Kabul, and it did so while providing staunch support to Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq and his reactionary “Islamization” drive. Moreover, Washington has time and again used Islamist militia as shock troops in its regime-change drives in the Middle East, including in Libya and Syria.

Pakistan’s maintenance of covert relations with the Taliban and the Haqqani Network is above all the result of US imperialism’s aggressive moves to reorder the entire South Asian region, as it seeks to build new alliances capable of economically and militarily confronting its chief rival, China. To this end, over the course of the past decade and a half, Washington drastically downgraded Pakistan’s status as its main ally in the region and instead partnered with India, Islamabad’s arch-nemesis.

First under George W. Bush and then under Barack Obama and his “pivot to Asia,” which aimed to strategically, economically and militarily isolate and encircle China, Washington singled out India for special attention.

New Delhi has been the recipient of numerous military and strategic favors from the US. In return, India has thrown open its ports and military bases to US warplanes and battleships; shares intelligence with the Pentagon about Chinese ship and submarine movements in the Indian Ocean; and parrots the provocative US stances on the South China Sea dispute and North Korea.

Under Trump, the US has pledged to take strategic ties with India to a new level. As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson put it in October during a visit to Afghanistan, “Our view of the relationship with India is one that’s of strategic importance, not just for this specific region,” but for “a free and open Indo-Pacific region stretching all the way from Japan to India.”

The Trump administration has now declared it a priority to integrate India into the so-called Quad, a US-led military and strategic partnership aimed at combating rising Chinese influence, which, in addition to New Delhi, includes US imperialism’s foremost Indo-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

This has not only inflamed tensions between China and India, who fought an undeclared war in 1962 and faced off over the remote Doklam Plateau for two and a half months in 2017. It is also encouraging India in its belligerence against Pakistan.

The two nuclear rivals, who have engaged in four wars and numerous lower-intensity conflicts since the ethnic partition of the subcontinent in 1947, confront each other with ever greater hostility as their regional rivalry becomes entangled with US imperialism’s aggressive war drive against China.

Pakistan has reacted to the cooling of relations with Washington by developing closer ties with its longtime ally China. Beijing has pledged to invest $57 billion in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a major project aimed at building transportation infrastructure between the two countries to establish Chinese access to the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar.

From Beijing’s standpoint, the CPEC is critical to enabling the Chinese regime to counteract US plans to economically strangle the country in the event of war by seizing chokepoints in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea so as to impose an economic blockade.

The CPEC is part of China’s more comprehensive One Belt, One Road (OBOR) strategy, which seeks to expand Chinese economic ties with Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This represents a direct challenge to US global hegemony and is viewed as intolerable by the US ruling elite, which has increasingly resorted to military force over the past quarter-century in a desperate bid to offset its protracted economic decline. In recent months, the US has joined India and Japan in publicly opposing the OBOR.

The Pakistani ruling elite has denounced the Trump administration’s move to suspend security aid. “Arbitrary deadlines, unilateral pronouncements and shifting goal posts are counterproductive in addressing common threats,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif declared in a Thursday interview that the US is no longer a friend or ally, but “a friend who always betrays.”

Opposition leader Imran Khan took a harder line, urging Pakistan to cut supply lines used by the US to transport equipment to its 14,000 troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan blocked the supply lines during 2011 and 2012 for several months, following the secret US operation to kill Osama Bin Laden on Pakistani soil and the bombing by the US of a Pakistani army post, killing over 20 soldiers.

China’s Foreign Ministry reacted to the stepped-up criticism of Pakistan by the Trump administration in a statement by spokesman Geng Shuang, who said Pakistan had “made great efforts and sacrifices in combating terrorism.” The government-aligned Global Times described the China-Pakistan relationship as an “all-weather strategic partnership of cooperation.”

The deepening of US-Pakistan tensions thus has major regional and global implications. It will further inflame Pakistan-India and India-China antagonisms, and, in so doing, those between China and the US. All are nuclear powers.

The shaky ceasefire between India and Pakistan in the disputed Kashmir region collapsed after the Indian military staged “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan in September 2016. Ever since there have been regular exchanges of cross-border fire, including in the last days of December, when four Indian and three Pakistani soldiers were killed.

India has applauded Washington’s denunciations of Pakistani support for “terrorism,” which provide grist for its mill in the escalation of border clashes with its neighbor and the whipping up of nationalism to divert mounting social tensions at home.