Auto manufacturers in UK cut production, threaten jobs as Brexit crisis deepens

Margot Miller 

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is to move around 1,000 workers at its Castle Bromwich plant in Birmingham—almost half—onto a three-day week from October until Christmas due to uncertainties over Brexit.

JLR, which is owned by India Tata and employs 40,000 workers in the UK, is considered the principal force behind what is described as a “resurgent” British auto industry. In 2016, car production in the UK was at its highest this century and JLR its biggest manufacturer, turning out one-third of the 1.7 million vehicles produced in total.

JLR’s decision speaks to the acute concerns of the majority faction of the UK bourgeoisie, which is opposed to a hard Brexit and loss of access to the European Union (EU) Single Market and Custom’s Union in a situation of burgeoning international trade war.

The UK car industry faces massive disruption if the government fails to agree unfettered access to the EU. Over half of UK car exports are destined for the EU and two-thirds of car imports come from the EU.

Speaking recently at the Conservative government’s electric vehicle summit in Birmingham, JLR boss Ralph Speth warned Prime Minister Theresa May that tens of thousands of jobs are under threat and that a “no deal” Brexit undermines the interests of the auto industry.

“Like many British companies our supply chains reach deep into Europe,” he said, adding, “[W]e will not be able to build cars, if the motorway to and from Dover becomes a car park, where the vehicle carrying parts—vital to our processes—is stationary”.

Speth said that unfettered access to the European Union’s single market “is as important a part to our business, as wheels are to our cars.” Without access, he threatened that JLR would reconsider its proposed £80 billion investment and pull out of the UK. He warned that other companies would also take measures “that cannot be reversed”.

Before the summit, JLR had already announced that the Land Rover Discovery sport utility vehicle would be totally produced at its new plant in Slovakia, rather than in both the UK and Slovakia as previously planned.

Speth has warned elsewhere about the impact of a hard Brexit in apocalyptic tones. The 1,000 JLR jobs already lost due to falling sales of diesel vehicles in the UK, he has previously said, “will be counted in the tens of thousands if we do not get the right Brexit deal”.

Production could be halted entirely on March 30, 2019. “Brexit is due to happen on the 29th of March next year. Currently, I do not even know, if any of our manufacturing facilities in the UK will be able to function on the 30th”, said Speth.

On behalf of the pro-Brexit faction, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkins accused Speth of hyperbole, saying he was “scaremongering” and “making it up.”

However, JLR’s moves are not simply propaganda. They are borne of major concerns that Brexit will decimate the car industry, with untold consequences for the profitability or even continued existence for many firms that rely on unfettered access to the single market.

German carmaker BMW, which employs 8,000 workers at four plants in the UK, is also taking aggressive action. It announced just days after JLR’s decision, “As a responsible organisation, we have scheduled next year’s annual maintenance period at Mini Plant Oxford to start on April 1, when the UK exits the EU, to minimise the risk of any possible short-term parts-supply disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit”.

BMW previously warned that it would not be able to function without the free movement of car components from the continent. With the globalisation and international integration of production, components may cross national borders several times before final assembly.

Honda UK Manufacturing, which employs 8,000, has also said that the import of components could be delayed for up to nine days if the UK leaves the customs union, while Aston Martin fears the delays could stop its assembly lines.

The UK auto industry employs 186,000 with 856,000 linked jobs and its business executives and directors were among the most prominent advocates of the Remain camp in the 2016 referendum on leaving the EU. Japanese multinational Nissan urged its workforce to vote to stay.

Following the JLR decision, Labour MP Jack Dromey, whose constituency includes the Castle Bromwich JLR plant, declared that, “Brexit now threatens the jewel in the crown of British manufacturing excellence. Ministers must get it right or the future is bleak”.

Dromey, married to leading Blairite and ex-Labour deputy leader Harriet Harmen, was a former top trade union bureaucrat in the Transport and General Workers Union trade union—the forerunner of Unite.

The Unite union echoed Dromey’s condemnation of May’s handling of the Brexit negotiations and the way it was creating uncertainty for big business and “our automotive industry”.

Assistant general secretary Tony Burke declared, “This is the continuing effect of the chaotic mismanagement of the Brexit negotiations by the government, which has created uncertainty across the UK’s automotive industry and the manufacturing sector generally”.

He added, “It is also the result of the mishandling of how the UK makes a just transition from diesel and combustion engines to electric vehicles. Both issues have damaged the ‘jewel in the crown’ of UK manufacturing—our automotive industry”.

The Blairite wing of the Labour Party and the trade unions represent the concerns of these corporations and are working to reverse Brexit or for a deal that continues to guarantee access to the customs union. Both are committed to making the corporations competitive in the global market, which can only mean greater exploitation of the working class.

The wrangling between the UK government and EU over exit terms takes place within the context of burgeoning trade war internationally. During a joint press conference on September 18 with Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, US President Donald Trump threatened the world’s nations with more tariff barriers than the onerous ones placed on China. “We’ve been ripped off by China”, he said, “We’ve been ripped off by the European Union and we’ve been ripped off by everybody. We’re not being ripped off anymore”. Trump has already threatened EU automobile exports to America.

In a sign of how the developing global trade war has exacerbated the Brexit crisis, last year marked the first decrease in vehicle production in the UK for eight years. Investment fell by half in the first six months of 2018 compared to last year. Car production fell 11 per cent in July and the number of vehicles built for the UK market dropped by more than a third year on year.

The auto conglomerates now raising concerns over jobs are not concerned about the livelihoods of workers but only their own profitability. These same corporations have slashed hundreds of thousands throughout the industry in prior decades in the name of competitiveness. The unions have entirely collaborated in the job cutting and concessions.

Earlier this year Nissan announced hundreds of job losses at its Sunderland plant. As is standard, the unions have not lifted a finger to oppose this. Last week, Nissan announced hundreds more job losses at its plants in Europe, including at its Sunderland operation, saying, “These plans are designed to drive future growth and competitiveness for Nissan”.

The working class must oppose all factions of the ruling elite and reject their nationalist programmes. What is needed is a unified struggle by car workers internationally to defend jobs, wages and conditions. The World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter calls on workers to build rank-and-file committees, independent of the trade unions, to link their struggles against the global corporations.

US sells arms to Taiwan, confronts China

Peter Symonds

The US announced on Monday that it has approved another large arms sale to Taiwan in a move that will further inflame tensions between Washington and Beijing. The arms sale worth $330 million comes as the Trump administration is intensifying the US confrontation with China on all fronts—diplomatic and military, as well as a battery of trade war measures.

The proposed arms deal, which is yet to be finalised, covers parts for Taiwan’s F-16, C-130, F-5, Indigenous Defence Fighter and other military aircraft. A Pentagon statement declared that the sale would contribute to US national security by boosting Taiwan’s military capacities. It hailed Taiwan as “an important force for political stability, military balance and economic progress in the region.”

In fact, the reverse is the case. Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, has always been one of the world’s most volatile flashpoints. The Trump administration is provocatively strengthening diplomatic and military ties with Taiwan as part of its broader efforts to undermine and encircle China and prepare for war.

The arms deal is the second since Trump took office last year. In June 2017, the US agreed to the sale of $1.4 billion worth of arms, including MK-48 torpedoes, high-speed anti-radiation missiles and early-warning radar surveillance technical support, which will significantly enhance Taiwan’s military.

The US is also providing assistance to Taiwan as it seeks to develop its own diesel-powered submarines. In April, the US granted military contractors licences to sell submarine technology to Taiwan, including a submarine combat management system. A separate technical assistance agreement provides for the sale of sonar, modern periscopes, and weapon systems.

As he assumed office last year, Trump threatened to abrogate the so-called One China policy that has formed the basis of US diplomatic relations with China for three decades. Under the arrangement, Washington effectively recognises Beijing as the government of all China including Taiwan, while opposing any attempt by China to forcibly take control of the island.

The US has also boosted ties with Taiwan through the passage of the Taiwan Travel Act in March that authorises visits and contact between top level Taiwanese and US diplomatic and military officials. It also opened a new building and compound this year for the American Institute in Taiwan, which functions as a de-facto embassy in Taipei.

On Monday, Taiwan backed away from a suggestion that it would send its defence minister to attend the annual US-Taiwan Defence Industry Conference in Maryland, amid concerns that upgrading its presence at the meeting could further raise tensions with China.

China criticised the latest arms sale, declaring that it undermined Chinese sovereignty and security. Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang urged the US to “immediately withdraw the arms sales plan and stop military to military relations between the United States and Taiwan so as to avoid further damage to Chinese-US relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

The Trump administration, however, has no intention of backing off. Trump used his speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday to denounce China and to hail the tariffs imposed by his administration on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods. Washington has already foreshadowed a further escalation of the economic war on China with threats to not only raise existing tariffs but extend them to the remaining $267 billion of Chinese exports.

Yesterday Trump against lashed out at China, accusing it of interfering in the US mid-term elections in November. The outburst was all the more remarkable as it was while he was chairing a session of the UN Security Council that was meant to be addressing weapons proliferation.

Referring to China, Trump declared: “They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade and we are winning on trade, we are winning at every level. We don’t want them to meddle or interfere in our upcoming election.”

Trump has been under siege himself from the Democrats and sections of the US military/intelligence apparatus over unsubstantiated allegation of collusion with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election campaign. Yet he had no qualms about using the same deceitful methods, providing no evidence for any of the allegations in his 10-minute address.

Later Trump tweeted: “China is actually placing propaganda ads in the Des Moines Register and other papers, made to look like news.” China, however, is far from being the only government that buys advertisements in the media in the US and other countries in order to promote their wares. Like the allegations of “Russian meddling,” the evidence of “Chinese interference” is threadbare.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi told the UN Security Council: “We did not and will not interfere in any country’s domestic affairs. We refuse to accept any unwarranted accusations against China.”

Nevertheless, Trump’s remarks are no accident, but rather signal the start of a propaganda offensive to poison relations with China as the US instigates trade war and prepares for military conflict. A senior Trump official told the media that Vice President Mike Pence plans to make a speech next week detailing allegations that China uses political, economic, military and other means to influence US public opinion.

At the same time, the US is ramping up its military provocations against China in the South China Sea. According to the Business Insider, the Pentagon flew four nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers across the contested waters on Monday. “The United States military will continue to fly sail and operate wherever international law allows at a times and places of our choosing,” Pentagon spokesman Dave Eastburn declared.

While the US military claims that such operations are routine, the presence of US warplanes and warships close to the Chinese mainland is part of the US military build-up in the Indo-Pacific region, begun under the Obama administration and continued under Trump.

Separately Pentagon spokesman Eastman told the media that US B-52s had also flown over the East China Sea on Tuesday as part of a “regularly scheduled, combined operation.” Japan and China have a longstanding and tense territorial dispute over uninhabited rocky outcrops in the East China Sea, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Amid rising tensions with the US, China recently denied a request for a US warship to visit Hong Kong. China also summoned the US ambassador to Beijing last weekend to protest a US decision to sanction a Chinese military agency for its purchase of Russian fighters and surface-to-air missiles.

The US decision to authorise another arms sale to Taiwan can only further fuel a dangerous confrontation with China that has the potential to escalate from trade war to war.

Federal Reserve lifts interest rates and indicates further hikes

Nick Beams

The US Federal Reserve has lifted its base interest rate for the third time this year and indicated that it plans a further increase in December.

The base rate was set at a range between 2 and 2.25 percent, the first time it has gone above 2 percent since 2008. The rise was the eighth in the current cycle after the Fed began to lift its rates in 2015.

In its statement accompanying the announcement, the Fed dropped the word “accommodative” from its outlook, a move which Chairman Jerome Powell said did not signal a change in the policy path but that the term had lost its usefulness as the US economy strengthened.

The decision brought criticism from President Trump who told a press conference in New York he was “not happy” about the decision. Trump, who criticised an earlier decision to raise rates, said he would rather see the paying down of debt.

Asked about the criticism at his press conference, Powell brushed it aside. “We don’t consider political factors or things like that,” he said.

Outlining the decision, Powell said the economy was “strong.” Unemployment was down, wages were up, while inflation remained low.

For the first time since the Fed began its low-interest rate regime following the financial crisis of 2008, its base rate is now above the level of inflation.

The Fed’s statement made no reference to the growing tensions with China and the impact of Trump’s tariff measures. Powell said that while there had been a “rising chorus” from companies concerned over trade and it was possible tariffs could be passed on through increased prices there was no evidence of that so far in the data.

However, he did express concerns over the growth of tariffs and the shift to a more protectionist world, saying it would be “bad” for the American economy and the Fed was “watching it very closely.”

The Fed’s forward projections of interest rate rises indicated that in addition to a likely rise at the end of the year there would be three increases in 2019. This is despite the fact that inflation continues to remain below 2 percent and there is no sign that it will increase in the immediate future.

In the past the Fed has indicated that the inflation rate is its main indicator in determining rate rise. But in conditions of low price rises its main concern is the increase in wages and the fall in the official unemployment rate. Wages have risen by the highest levels in nine years but the year-on-year growth of 2.9 percent is still well below levels experienced in previous “recoveries.”

Stagnant and even declining wage rates, a result of the restructuring of the US economy in the years following 2008, have been a key factor in sustaining the growth of corporate profits and the stock market surge and the Fed is clearly determined that downward pressure on wages needs to be maintained. As Financial Times commentator John Authers noted in a recent article, “[W]age inflation is central to the Fed’s reaction function.”

While the interest rate increase is unlikely to have an immediate significant impact on the US economy, it has implications for the world economy as a whole, particularly in so-called emerging markets with high levels of dollar-denominated loans. The rise in US rates and the consequent upward movement of the US dollar increases the debt and interest payment burdens in these countries, with Argentina and Turkey experiencing significant currency turmoil in the past months.

The International Monetary Fund yesterday increased its lending to Argentina by $7.1 billion on top of the $50 billion bailout program previously announced. IMF director Christine Lagarde said the revised plan would be “instrumental” in seeking to restore market confidence in Argentina as it goes ahead with “reform” plans involving cuts to its budget.

The growing problems in emerging markets was the main theme of a press briefing by Claudio Borio, the Head of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements, as he released its latest quarterly review on Sunday.

Divergence, he said, is the “name of the game” and that while “US financial markets powered ahead, emerging markets faced mounting pressures.” While “on average” financial markets continued to improve that average was not particularly meaningful, likening it to a person whose temperature on average was fine, “except that their head was on fire and their feet freezing.”

He noted that since the global financial crisis US dollar lending to non-bank emerging market entities had more than doubled, rising to some $3.7 trillion and this figure did not include dollar borrowings through foreign exchange swaps which could be of a similar order.

He said the growing turbulence in emerging markets, recalling the so-called “taper tantrum” of 2013, when the Fed first indicated it was going to start to pull back on its “quantitative easing” program, and the disturbances caused by the fall in the Chinese currency in 2015, could be attributed to three factors.

The first was the combination of a tightening US monetary policy and US dollar appreciation. The second was the escalation of trade tensions which have hit equity markets in emerging economies. The third was signs that the Chinese economy could be weakening, with China having become “critically important” for commodity producers and emerging market economies.

According to Borio, the volatility in emerging markets is the symptom of a “broader malaise.” The “highly unbalanced” post financial crisis recovery had overburdened central banks. While the “powerful medicine” of unusually and persistently low interest rates had boosted economic activity, side effects were inevitable and the “financial vulnerabilities that we now see are… an example.”

He warned that financial markets in advanced countries were “overstretched” and, above all, there was too much debt in the world economy with its overall level in relation to gross domestic product “considerably higher” than before the financial crisis.

With central bank balance sheets “still bloated as never before”—as a result of their asset purchasing programs—there was “little medicine left in the chest” in case of a relapse.

Chilean president praises armed forces amid new convictions of military assassins

Cesar Uco

Chile’s right-wing President Sebastián Piñera hailed the role of the country’s armed forces in a speech delivered to some 9,000 massed troops and Carabinero military police on September 18, the country’s independence day.

The speech came just one week after thousands marched through Santiago, the Chilean capital, to mark the 45th anniversary of the US-backed coup that brought the fascist military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power, leading to the murder, disappearance, torture, imprisonment and exile of tens of thousands of Chilean workers, students and leftists.

As in previous years, the march wound its way through central Santiago to the city’s General Cemetery, ending a at the foot of a memorial inscribed with the names of the dictatorship’s victims.

The crowds carried photographs of the murdered and disappeared and chanted “No to impunity!” The demand has taken on renewed force after the Supreme Court last July approved a request for the provisional release of seven former officials of the dictatorship convicted of crimes against humanity, including a former colonel convicted for the murder of three Uruguayan leftists.

Piñera subsequently welcomed the Supreme Court justices who granted the release of the military assassins to the La Moneda palace, signaling his support for those convicted of the dictatorship’s crimes.

This followed the pardon granted in April by President Piñera to former colonel René Cardemil, who was serving a 10-year sentence for the murder of six people in 1973, one of them an IMF official. Cardemil died of cancer shortly after the pardon was issued.

The September 11 demonstration saw clashes in which riot police attacked protesters with tear gas and batons.

Chile is still sharply polarized, including along class lines, in relation to the coup of 45 years ago. A poll by the Cadem agency found that 95 percent of the population believes that the country is still divided by the coup that overthrew and killed the elected Socialist Party president, Salvador Allende.

The same poll found that 85 percent of those polled believed that the military maintained vows of silence to cover up evidence of those involved in the crimes of the dictatorship, while 66 percent said that justice has still not been done in relation to these crimes.

There are still more than 1,300 human rights violation cases before the Chilean courts stemming from the dictatorship.

Just two months ago, nine soldiers were convicted in connection with the brutal murder and torture of the popular singer-songwriter—the leading representative of Chile’s “Nueva Canción” movement and member of the Chilean Communist Party (PCCh in Spanish)—Victor Jara, and the director of prisons under the Allende government, Littré Quiroga, in September of 1973.

Eight soldiers were given 15-year prison sentences for the murders, and their officer more than five years, for covering up the abduction and murder of the two men.

Soldiers first smashed Jara’s fingers with their rifle butts and then shot him 44 times, while Quiroga received 23 bullet wounds. Afterwards, their bodies were taken from the Chile Stadium and dumped on a public highway, along with the bodies of others executed there.

In his September 18 speech to the massed troops, Piñera glossed over this hideous record, declaring: “These are your Armed Forces, of each and every one of our compatriots, whatever your political ideas, your religious beliefs, your social condition and your ethnic origin. Chileans, these are your soldiers.”

Piñera, a multimillionaire who made his fortune during the 1970s as the dictatorship plunged the working class and the Chilean people into poverty and terror for almost two decades, has gone further, attempting to justify the bloody 1973 coup.

In a September 11 speech at La Moneda, which had been bombed by the military exactly 45 years earlier, Piñera declared that Chilean democracy had been “very sick and for a long time” before the coup, adding that it “did not die suddenly.” He pointedly referred to Pinochet’s junta as a “government” and “regime”—not as a dictatorship.

According to Piñera, “democratic values” had begun to “erode” in the late 1960s under the impact of “intolerant, dogmatic and confrontational attitudes” and “ideological projects.”

His historical reference was to the rise of a militant mass movement of the Chilean working class, which led to the election in 1970 of the Popular Unity (UP or Unidad Popular) government, a coalition that included Allende’s Socialist Party, the Stalinist PCCh and the Christian Democrats.

Washington responded to the limited reforms and nationalizations enacted by Allende with a CIA campaign to destabilize his government and a series of measures designed, as then President Richard Nixon put it, to “make the economy scream.”

The movement of the Chilean working class had assumed revolutionary proportions, with workers seizing factories and seeking to arm themselves. Their leadership, however, particularly the Stalinist Communist Party, aided by Pabloite revisionist groups, worked to keep the working class subordinated to the UP government of Allende. It, in turn, sought, in close collaboration with the Chilean officer corps, to create “social peace,” restoring the factories to their capitalist owners and forcibly disarming the workers.

Allende went so far as to bring Pinochet into his cabinet to better coordinate the suppression of the workers, thereby creating conditions for the horrific defeat of 1973 and the 17 years of killing and repression that followed.

If Piñera is now seeking to refurbish the image of Chile’s bloodstained military and justify the coup of 1973 and Pinochet’s dictatorship, it is out of fear within the Chilean ruling class that the global economic crisis is creating the conditions for a resurgence of revolutionary struggle in which the armed forces may be called out once again.

Despite the much-touted Chilean “economic miracle,” the country’s economy remains dependent upon a single mineral, copper, which makes up 52 percent of its exports, leaving it dependent upon the increasingly volatile fluctuations of the commodities markets.

There have been continuous mass protests over what Chileans refer to as a form of social “apartheid” in the country’s education system, as well as the failure of the country’s private pension funds (AFPs), developed as the main engine of domestic private investment, to provide a livable income for retirees—60 percent of them receive monthly payments of $292 or less, that is, less than the minimum wage.

The return to power of Piñera and the Chilean right was prepared by the reactionary policies pursued by the former ruling coalition, the “Nueva Mayoría,” led by Michelle Bachelet of Chile’s Socialist Party, who defended the interests of domestic and foreign capital, and left office in the midst of a family corruption scandal involving millions of dollars and a dismal 23 percent approval rating.

The attempt by Piñera to rehabilitate and cultivate the Chilean military is of a piece with developments across Latin America. In Argentina, the armed forces have been given the power to carry out domestic law enforcement for the first time since the dictatorship, while in Brazil, the generals are advancing the military as the arbiter of political and social stability in the run-up to next month’s crisis-ridden national elections.

In each case, the return of Latin America’s military to the center of political life, with its record of mass killings, torture and criminality, is a harbinger of an eruption of class struggle throughout the continent.

Wave of strikes, protests in Dutch public sector

Harm Zonderland & Dietmar Henning 

Anger is building in the Netherlands over the anti-social policies of the major political parties and the trade unions. More strikes have taken place since the beginning of the year than throughout the whole of 2017, which, with 32 walkouts, recorded the highest number of work stoppages since 1989. Primary school teachers have led the protests.

Thousands of teachers have repeatedly gone on strike over the past year to protest low wages and increased workloads. The largest protest took place on October 5 last year, when 60,000 teachers demonstrated in Den Haag, the seat of the government and parliament.

Next Tuesday, October 2, teachers plan to protest in Den Haag once again, but this time together with other public-sector workers.

In the Netherlands, primary schools account for the first eight years of schooling. Children go to school from the age of four and attend a so-called “basis” school until the age of 12. According to a national study carried out by the central statistics agency (CBS), between 2011 and 2015, 20 percent of all primary school teachers suffer from symptoms of burnout. No other professional group has such a high level of chronically overworked workers.

Pay for primary school teachers is well below average. With a monthly wage of €2,346, they earn 30 percent less than an average academic. This has resulted in a decline in the number of new teachers. It is predicted that in 10 years there will be a shortfall of 11,000 primary school teachers.

The sustained protests have failed to bring about any improvement in the situation. The trade unions negotiated a new collective agreement for teachers that took effect this month, which includes a mere 2.5 percent pay increase and a one-time payment of €750. The Dutch government indicated that it will invest a further €270 million in teachers’ pay. However, primary school teachers had demanded an additional €1.4 billion.

The strikes and protests gained momentum once again after the government revealed a plan to abolish the dividend tax for financial firms and large corporations. This will result in between €1.4 billion and €2 billion being handed over to big business annually. This in a country that is already considered a tax haven.

At the same time, the sales tax rate, which applies to items such as medicines and groceries, will be increased by six percent to nine percent. The general rate of sales tax already stands at 22 percent.

The government coalition ruling the country of 17 million is composed of four parties—the neo-liberal VVD of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Christian Democrats (CDA), the formerly left liberal party D66, and the small Christian Conservatives (CU).

Social inequality has been rising for years. Of the 4.8 million households with two or more people, 112,000 are millionaire families. The richest 10 percent of the population controls 68 percent of the social wealth, or €726 billion, while the poorest 10 percent is €65 billion in debt.

More than 1 million people officially live in poverty. In 2017, the Food Bank, a social programme for the most impoverished sections of the population, distributed almost 40,000 food parcels to needy individuals per week. Around 113,500 people were dependent on this programme.

Real wages are either stagnant or in decline. Almost one in five people (19 percent) is employed in a sector where the average purchasing power was lower in 2017 than it was in the year 2000.

This year, consumer prices will more than consume most nominal wage increases—by 2.1 percent according to a recent projection by the Central Statistics Agency. A major reason, as in other countries, is the sharp rise in housing and rent prices in large cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht. House prices rose in the second quarter of this year in these cities as compared to last year by between 11.9 percent and 14.4 percent.

In addition, 80,000 too few apartments have been built annually over the past decade. Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren of D66 has pledged to build 70,000 apartments per year over the next decade, but this will not resolve the fundamental problem.

In the meantime, large providers of social housing are selling big chunks of their housing stock to finance investments in the stock market or the high salaries of their top managers and board members.

Young adults and workers in part-time or temporary jobs find it increasingly difficult to obtain a property loan. The number of temporary contracts via job agencies has risen sharply, with an ever-growing percentage of the workforce holding down two or three part-time jobs. No other country has seen such a dramatic rise in the number of low-paid, temporary jobs as the Netherlands.

These trends, which accelerated following the 2008 global financial crisis, resulted in the collapse of the social democratic PVDA and the trade unions. These organisations, which for decades preached the social compromise laid down in the Wassenaar agreement of 1982 and the so-called Polder Model, and led the way in decimating social services, have almost completely collapsed. Whereas in 1960 nearly four out of ten workers were trade union members, only two in ten were union members in 2017.

In the Dutch elections in March 2017, the PVDA lost 29 of its 38 parliamentary representatives, leaving it with only nine deputies in the current parliament. In municipal elections held a week later, the PVDA received around 7 percent of the vote.

While the working class is searching for a way out of the protracted social decline, the ruling elite is moving ever further to the right. This includes the ex-Maoists of the Socialist Party (SP), which embraced nationalist and xenophobic policies during the election.

Since December 2017, the 32-year-old daughter of long-standing SP leader Jan Marijnssen has led the party’s parliamentary group. Lilian Marijnssen explicitly declared that she wants to win back voters of Geerd Wilders’ far-right PVV with a right-wing campaign. Addressing herself to immigrants, Marijnssen wrote, “If you live here, you have to respect Dutch cultural norms. We make no compromises on that.” SP leader Ron Meyer stated that the party would become more activist, more oppositional and more national.

Under these conditions, action committees to organise the strikes and protests have emerged.

The first initiative was “PO in Actie,” which is now made up of some 44,000 primary school teachers. Teachers in secondary schools have formed “VO in Actie,” those in middle and technical schools have established “MBO in Actie,” college teachers have founded “HBO in Actie,” and university professors have set up “WO in Actie.” They are all demanding more staff, a reduction in workloads and higher pay.

However, the means to achieve these demands is the subject of intense debate on social media. The primary school teachers’ “PO in Actie” recently announced a united front—“PO Front”—with the Christian Democratic and social democratic trade union associations CNV and FNV, the teachers’ union Aob, and the schoolmasters’ organization.

For the protest on October 2, a coalition of 21 organisations, including action committees and trade unions, has called for the participation of members and other public-sector workers, including health care workers, police officers and soldiers.

The police have no intention of taking part. They will be on the other side on October 2. Nor are members of the military the allies of teachers. While teachers have been handed a miserly 2.5 percent wage increase, military personnel will receive a 4 percent pay increase from the beginning of the year. The military is to receive further funding of €1.5 billion, which will be primarily invested in modernising equipment and expanding the size of the force. Some 2,500 new positions are to be created.

No party has yet supported the protests. However, at protests in Den Haag last June, the widely despised political parties were invited to participate. This not only gave the social democratic PVDA the opportunity to posture with its dishonest demands, but also the far-right PVV of Wilders.

To achieve the demands of teachers and all workers in the Netherlands for decent pay, pensions and social benefits, action committees that are entirely independent of the establishment parties and trade unions must be founded. They must discuss the necessary political and social orientation to wage their struggle. The entirely justified demands can be realised only if the control over society exercised by big business and the capitalist state is challenged by means of a socialist programme.

France refuses to let Aquarius dock as EU seeks to block refugees

Alex Lantier

The French government refused to let the migrant vessel ship Aquarius dock in French ports on Tuesday, as it carried 58 desperate refugees fleeing war-torn Libya. This came as the European Union (EU) sought to block all rescue operations for refugees in the Mediterranean, where thousands have drowned, and Rome successfully put pressure on Panama to de-register the Aquarius, which was flying a Panamanian flag.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that Paris would refuse the Aquarius permission to dock in the port of Marseille. “For the moment it’s ‘no’,” Le Maire told BFM-TV, claiming that EU rules mandate rescue vessels must dock at the nearest European port. “On matters of migration, the issue must be handled firmly and clearly, and European rules respected.”

Speaking to AFP, a source at the Elysée presidential palace also denied permission to the Aquarius to dock: “We are clear on the fact that it shouldn’t spend four to five days at sea going towards France or Spain or anywhere. It needs to dock soon and it is close to Malta at the moment.”

The passengers of the Aquarius were reportedly mostly better-off Libyans, trying to flee the city of Tripoli amidst escalating clashes between tribal or Islamist militias and abductions for ransom in the city, conditions that are the product of the civil war, which followed the 2011 NATO war that destroyed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s government. A recent surge in fighting in Tripoli since August, which has killed at least 100 people, is driving people to flee in ever larger numbers.

One passenger on board the Aquarius, Malak, reported that her husband was kidnapped “a month ago in Tripoli. … He was working in food sales and so he had money.” She took the decision to flee at that point with her children, but as it was “impossible to obtain a passport with a visa,” she decided to risk crossing the Mediterranean by boat.

Ibtissem said that her family initially fled Tripoli to Zawiya for safety, but decided they had to move after their son was abducted by kidnappers armed with Kalashnikovs at a roadblock. They had to sell their two cars to raise the €8,750 ransom the kidnappers demanded to release their son, who had to spend two days in the hospital after the kidnappers beat him. “In Libya, we are dead people who are still breathing,” Ibtissem said. “We had to leave, there was no other solution.”

Yesterday, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal reached an agreement to divide up the refugees aboard the Aquarius. The Aquarius, they insisted, would not be allowed to dock. However, they decided that each country would take in 18, 15, 15 and 10 refugees, respectively.

Maltese authorities indicated that they would not allow the vessel to dock in their ports either, and that the refugees would be transferred to Maltese ships in international waters, at which point the Maltese ships would transport them ashore.

The EU powers are illegally trampling upon the fundamental right to asylum, moving aggressively to block the flow of refugees from North Africa across the Mediterranean to Europe. Only 38,140 people have attempted the Mediterranean crossing to Europe so far this year, compared to 121,000 last year, but already at least 1,260 have died. Under these conditions, the EU is stepping up attempts to end all rescue efforts for refugees in distress in the Mediterranean, financing the Libyan coast guard so they will forcibly return refugees to Libya, even though the country is in a state of civil war.

It has been widely reported that Libyan coast guard vessels regularly return refugees to EU-funded concentration camps in Libya, where they are subjected to horrific treatment. UN and Amnesty International officials have reported that inmates in these camps are subjected to assault, sexual assault, being sold into slavery, and even murder.

Last week, the Aquarius—the last remaining private rescue ship in the Mediterranean—was caught in a bitter conflict with Libyan coast guard vessels. The crew of the Aquarius told Le Monde that the commanders of a Libyan ship had threatened to take them all prisoner: “Do you know Tripoli? Do you want to go for a little visit? You’re not following our instructions! We told you not to intervene and not to get too close to the refugees. Now you will have major problems. You are encouraging migrants to come to Europe. Now we will approach and tell you what to do.”

The bullying and intimidation of the Aquarius is the product of the neo-fascistic turn and the contempt for the right to asylum shared by European bourgeois politicians of all stripes. Over a quarter century of NATO imperialist wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq and beyond, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, have forced 60 million refugees to flee their homes. Yet now, with more refugees than at any time since World War II, the EU powers are vindictively seeking to deny the right to asylum.

On the one hand, they are rapidly building a vast network of EU concentration camps, not only in Libya, but also in EU states such as Greece and beyond. For now, at least, they are being used to house tens of thousands of refugees under horrific conditions. Under pressure from the far-right Italian government, this apparatus of police terror directed against refugees and the entire working population is soon to massively escalate its activities.

The stage is being set for police raids and ethnic cleansing on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II and fascist rule. On Monday, the Italian council of ministers adopted a decree, dubbed the “Salvini decree” after Italy’s neo-fascist interior minister who drafted it, blocking Italian authorities from issuing or re-issuing humanitarian visas to refugees in Italy.

The impact of the Salvini decree would be to create large numbers of undocumented migrants and then prepare large-scale police raids in order to deport them all. The number of refugees deported each year from Italy could surge from 5,000-7,000 to as many as 50,000. At the same time, Salvini has said that he is in talks with municipal authorities in cities across Italy to prepare the destruction of Roma camps and mass expulsions of Roma people.

Christopher Hein, a professor of law and immigration policies at Luiss University in Rome, told the Guardian: “The ultimate aim is to have no refugees at all in Italy through a combination of efforts: closure of seaports, criminalising migrant rescue NGOs, enhancing collaboration with the coastguard and now, with this decree, they target those who are already here, or who may come in future and not get any kind of protection—it is a deterrent measure.”

At the same time, EU and allied authorities are continuing to attack and terrorize ships in the Mediterranean who obey maritime law and seek to rescue refugees in distress that they encounter on the high seas. Yesterday, after close coordination of EU and Moroccan anti-migrant operations, a Moroccan warship fired on a refugee vessel, killing a 22-year-old woman and wounding three other refugees.

Georg Forster Research Award for Developing and Transition Countries 2019 – Germany

Application Deadline: 31st October 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries (excluding People’s Republic of China and India). See List below

To be taken at (country): Germany

Eligible Fields: Research programmes offered by the university

About Scholarship: The Georg Forster Research Award is granted in recognition of a researcher’s entire achievements to date to academics of all disciplines whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and beyond and who are expected to continue developing research-based solutions to the specific challenges facing transition and developing countries.

Type: Research/Grants

Selection Criteria: 

• The Selection Committee makes its decision solely on the basis of the nominees’ academic qualifications and the relevance of their research to the development of their own countries.
• The applicants must have had their main residence and place of work in one of these countries for at least five years at the time of their nomination.

Eligible

• -Nominees must be nationals of a developing or transition country (excluding People’s Republic of China and India; cf. detailed list of countries).
• -Furthermore, at the time of nomination, they must have had their main residence and place of work in one of these countries for at least five years.
• -The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation particularly encourages the nomination of qualified female researchers.

Number of Scholarships: up to six Georg Forster Research Awards annually.

Value of Scholarship: The award amount totals €60,000. In Germany, research awards are generally exempt from income tax under German tax law.

Duration of Scholarship: The project duration of about six to twelve months may be divided into segments.

Eligible Countries: Afghanistan, Ecuador, Macedonia, Samoa Albania, Egypt, Madagascar, Sao Tomé, Príncipe Algeria, El Salvador, Malawi, Senegal, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Malaysia, Serbia, Antigua and Barbuda, Eritrea, Maldives, Seychelles, Argentina, Ethiopia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Armenia, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Azerbaijan, Fiji, Mauritania, Somalia, Mauritius, South Africa, Mexico, South Sudan, Bangladesh, Gabon, Micronesia, Fed. States, Sri Lanka, Belarus, Gambia, Moldova, Rep. St. Kitts and Nevis, Belize, Georgia, Montenegro, St. Lucia, Benin, Ghana, Morocco, St. Vincent, Bhutan, Grenada Mongolia, the Grenadines, Bolivia, Guatemala, Mozambique, Sudan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Guinea, Myanmar, Suriname, Botswana, Guinea-Bissau, Swaziland, Brazil, Guyana, Syria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Namibia, Tajikistan, Haiti, Nauru, Tanzania, Honduras, Nepal, Thailand, Nicaragua, Timor-Leste Cambodia, Indonesia, Niger, Togo, Cameroon, Iran, Nigeria, Tonga, Cape Verde, Iraq Niue Tunisia, Central African Republic, Turkey, Chad, Jamaica, Turkmenistan, Chile , Jordan, Tuvalu, Colombia, Pakistan, Comoros, Kazakhstan, Palestinian territories, Congo, Dem. Rep. of Kenya, Palau, Uganda, Congo, Rep. of the Kiribati, Panama, Ukraine, Cook Islands, Korea, Dem. PR of Papua New Guinea, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Kosovo, Paraguay, Uzbekistan, Cote d’Ivoire, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, Cuba, Philippines, Vanuatu, Laos, Venezuela, Lesotho, Rwanda, Vietnam, Dominica, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Liberia, Djibouti, Libya, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

How to Apply

• To apply, please register and create an online nomination for a Georg Forster Research Award.
• Please visit the Guidelines for completing the nomination on the Humboldt Foundation’s website for further information on the selection procedure.

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Sponsors: Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany

Important Notes: The Humboldt Foundation has changed its nomination procedure in the Georg Forster Research Award Programme. As of now, you can only nominate and upload your nomination documents online.

Bombing Libya: the Origins of Europe’s Immigration Crisis

William Blum

The world will long remember the present immigrant crisis in Europe, which has negatively affected countless people there, and almost all countries. History will certainly record it as a major tragedy. Could it have been averted? Or kept within much more reasonable humane bounds?

After the United States and NATO began to bomb Libya in March 2011 – almost daily for more than six months! – to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi (with the completely phoney excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States and NATO were thus saving the people of that city from a massacre}, the Libyan leader declared: “Now listen you people of Nato. You’re bombing a wall, which stood in the way of African migration to Europe and in the way of al Qaeda terrorists. This wall was Libya. You’re breaking it. You’re idiots, and you will burn in Hell for thousands of migrants from Africa.”

Remember also that Libya was a secular society, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, all destroyed by America while supporting Saudi Arabia and various factions of al Qaeda. It’s these countries that have principally overrun Europe with refugees.

Gaddafi, like Saddam Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in important ways be benevolent and do very valuable things. He, for example, founded the African Union and gave the Libyan people the highest standard of living in all of Africa; they had not only free education and health care but all kinds of other benefits that other Africans could only dream about. But Moammar Gaddafi was never a properly obedient client of Washington. Amongst other shortcomings, the man threatened to replace the US dollar with gold for payment of oil transactions and create a common African currency. He was, moreover, a strong supporter of the Palestinians and foe of Israel.

In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the prime moving force behind the United States and NATO turning Libya into a failed state, where it remains today. The attack against Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton had “championed”, convincing President Obama in “what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as Secretary of State.”

The American people and the American media of course swallowed the phoney story fed to them, though no evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been presented. The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter – a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period – makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre.   Keep this in mind when reading the latest accusations against Russia.

The US/NATO heavy bombing of Libya led also to the widespread dispersal throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of weaponry that Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists.

Burma: Complicity With Evil?

Guy Horton

The United Nations has finally alleged Genocide, Crimes against humanity and War Crimes have been inflicted in Burma. Wider questions now need to be asked: Who has known what has been going on?  What have they known? What have they chosen not to know? What role have UN agencies, NGO’s and Face book played in this man- made disaster? Why have so few challenged what has been going on? When do disregard, silence and understatement amount to passive complicity? When does passive complicity become active complicity?

Let us acknowledge a dilemma of AID. It seeks to reduce suffering but all too often aid workers have to ignore, or work through, or with, or round the perpetrators of suffering. They have to compromise in other words. This is normal, but at what point does compromise become complicity? Arguably, many of the international NGO’s have crossed that line in Burma.

A preliminary clarification should be made at the outset: there is a distinction between natural disasters and man- made ones. For decades the Burman (as opposed to Burmese) army has been subjugating, assimilating and destroying other ethnic groups. Burma is thus a man made human rights disaster, not a natural one. The violations inflicted by the State have been identified and, implicitly or explicitly, condemned as crimes against humanity by UN Special Rapporteurs for human rights and UN General Assembly Resolutions since 1992.

Most international organisations, with notable exceptions such as Human Rights Watch and the UN Office of Human Rights and Fortify Rights, have, however,  downplayed or disregarded the gravity and extent of the violations for years. They have been aided by journalists and academics who usually view the ethnic minority areas through the distorted lens of Yangon and their own conscious and unconscious  self-censorship. As a result Burma’s decades long , slow motion genocide has often been misrepresented or understated as “underdevelopment” or peripheral “tribal conflict.” A paramedic, for example, working in Karen state without rubber gloves torn up by the Burma army, fails to deliver babies hygienically not because of  poverty, isolation or backwardness, but because her gloves have been intentionally destroyed. That’s policy, or as The Genocide Convention states in article 2c: deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part.

Moreover, collaboration and complicity has been institutionalised in Burma. Let us examine a specific example. In January 2013 I was in Ma Ja Yang, Kachin State in the far north. Thousands of Burmese troops had been massed for human wave attacks on Kachin positions. Mortar bombs rained down. Babies were taken over the Chinese border for safety and tens of thousands of civilians were, and are, incarcerated into camps with little food or medicines largely cut off from AID. Two boys suffocated to death in a collapsed earth bank next me as Russian fighter bombers flew over head. Meanwhile the NGO’s were dutifully assembled to sign their memoranda of understanding with the new “civilian” “democratic” government in the capital. On the BBC World service the Secretary General of the UN welcomed the ceasefire. In Britain dfid was funding a program for the Burma army. In the Western media Burma’s brave new world of peace and democracy had been triumphantly lauded and misrepresented on the front cover of Time as “Burma unbound”. Meanwhile the mortar bombs – the big Chinese variety at 7000 dollars apiece- continued to rain down round me. By signing memoranda of understanding with the military controlled government, while remaining silent about  its policy of genocidal violence, the NGO’s have been, and are, guilty of  passive complicity and collective collaboration.

The media fixation with Aung San Suu Kyi has helped facilitate misrepresentation. Far from being released into freedom as the media presented it to a fawning world, Suu Kyi has been co-opted by the military and is now its most effective complicit apologist. The global media and diplomatic community misinterpreted and misrepresented the reconsolidation and refiguration of Bamar military power in the last election as a democratic transition. The final act of self-delusion was the UK Parliament’s naive beatification of Aung San Suu Kyi in a State address to both houses of Parliament, an unconscionable endorsement of the Bamar dictatorship, even while crimes against humanity were being inflicted.

Complicity and appeasement of criminal regimes by prestigious international organisations is nothing new. The Red Cross’s deliberate misrepresentation of conditions in Aushwitz as “harsh but fair” in 1942 may be one of the most infamous examples of NGO complicity, but so too were the Norwegian Prime Minister and EU’s  External Affairs Commissioner’s dismissals of the genocidal persecution of the Rohingya as “an internal Myanmar matter.”

Complicity in Burma can also be unobtrusive and individual. A UN researcher in 2002 was investigating a massacre of Karen women and children on the Thai/Burma border. By chance I happened to be in the same area. He was shocked and angry to meet me, not because of the atrocity we were confronting, but because I might reveal his identity and thus jeopardise his career prospects in Burma. Self-interest has all too often trumps telling truth to power in Burma.

In addition to many NGOs, some UN organisations and national governments have also generally maintained a collaborative silence for years in Burma. The UN, with its “neutral” mediators and collaborative country “team”, has reportedly acknowledged that it is itself “dysfunctional.”  Most of the organisation’s agencies have apparently been indifferent to its own human rights reports. The UN, being a government club is pre- programmed to fail because its” neutrality”  backs the legitimacy of States rather than their citizen victims. The current UN Rohingya return initiative is only the last of a long line of failed “neutral” mediation exercises in Burma and is likely to be as effective as its response to the Rwanda genocide fax. It will however obfuscate, delay and buy time till the Rohingya genocide becomes as forgotten as the Naqba.

After denial comes the collective amnesia of mass tourism, itself a form of passive complicity. In “Booming,” “Burma unbound,” as the Wall Street journal and Time magazine infamously and respectively described the “liberated” country, that complicit disregard is complemented by myopic ignorance. In the eastern mountains on the Thai border, long necked women, marketable freaks burnt out of their homes, dutifully pose and smile for selfies, while on the plains the vast, slave built pagoda complex of  Pagan, “cleansed” of indigenous local villagers, beguile tourists with the mirage of eastern exoticism  in “The land that time forgot.”

National governments are also guilty of active complicity. The US DEA provided the Burma army with Bell helicopters which were used to massacre Delta Karen in Operation Storm in September 1991. Israel has supported Myanmar with military equipment and is now reportedly helping it to rewrite history expunging the Rohingya from memory. The UK’s dfid funded the 2014 population census to the tune of 15 million pounds. It was flawed, to put it mildly, partly  because it excluded the Rohingya, many Kachin and other groups subjected to systematic persecution. Moreover, its result, coming in at about 5 million below what was expected, indicates something truly alarming; that the cost of Burma’s violent persecution over decades can indeed  be estimated, in what former SLORC General Saw Maung stated, as “millions” of dead.  Why did the UK government generously fund a census for a military government inflicting crimes against humanity against its own citizens?

Let us take a further example of failure of moral leadership from my own experience. A leading charity funded me to carry out human rights research and advocacy in eastern Burma from around 2002-2005 on condition that I did not reveal my sources, something I have honoured until now. Thus transparency and accountability was compromised at its outset. When my report, “Dying Alive” was published in 2005 it received world- wide attention. The charity, however, disregarded it and distanced itself from me. The regional director phoned me, not to offer congratulations, or provide support, but in alarm, because he heard that the BBC had covered it. I found myself in the bizarre position of having to protect my funder from the success of its own commissioned report. The latter had succeeded in doing precisely what it had been commissioned to do: alert the world to genocide. (As a result of the report Burma was placed on the UN  genocide watch list.) However, unlike most other s, it saw the full light of day and did not end up as a door stopper. All my attempts at communicating with the funder were rejected, however. Finally I went to its headquarters, a business park, on a wet Monday morning. Despite having exposed myself to mines, malaria and Burma army ambushes for years and wasted weeks trying to get an appointment, I was told by customer relations there was no one available to see me. Meanwhile the report, “Dying alive” received worldwide attention and substantially contributed to the 2007 UN Security Council Resolution “Burma: A Threat to the Peace.”

In conclusion, Burma is a human rights disaster sustained by decades long active and passive complicity. Passionate compassion, empathetic identification with victims, and desire for justice have been largely replaced by appeasement.

Burma, we should note, signed and ratified The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of Genocide in 1956. It is thus accountable for the crime from that date, irrespective of the Rome Statute which only came into force in 2002.  Moreover, the Convention outlaws not just the act of committing genocide but attempting it, conspiring to inflict it and being complicit with it. It also uniquely requires State parties to prevent it. Any future judicial mechanism should hold accountable all those directly and indirectly responsible for the crime.

How Putin Came Out on Top in Syria

Patrick Cockburn

A ceasefire seldom gets a good press. If it succeeds in ending violence or defusing a crisis, the media swiftly becomes bored and loses interest. But if the fighting goes on, then those who have called the ceasefire are condemned as heartless hypocrites who either never intended to bring the killing to an end or are culpably failing to do so.

Pundits are predictably sceptical about the agreement reached by Russian president Vladimir Putin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi on Monday to head off an imminent offensive by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces directed against rebels in Idlib province. This is the last enclave of the armed opposition in western Syria which has lost its strongholds in Aleppo, Damascus and Daraa over the past two years.

Doubts about the accord are understandable because, if it is implemented, the anti-Assad groups in Idlib will be defanged militarily. They will see a demilitarised zone policed by Russia and Turkey eat into their territory, “radical terrorist groups” removed, and heavy weapons ranging from tanks to mortars withdrawn. The rebels will lose their control of the two main highways crossing Idlib and linking the government held cities of Aleppo, Latakia and Hama.

There is a striking note of imperial self-confidence about the document in which all sides in the Syrian civil war are instructed to come to heel. This may not happen quite as intended because it is difficult to see why fighters of al-Qaeda-type groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham should voluntarily give up such military leverage as they still possess. The Syrian government has said that it will comply with the agreement but may calculate that, in the not so long term, it will be able to slice up Idlib bit by bit as it did with other rebel enclaves.

Missile defence system in Latakia, Syria fires into the sky

What is most interesting about the agreement is less its details than what it tells us about the balance of forces in Syria, the region and even the world as a whole. Fragile it may be, but then that is true of all treaties which general Charles de Gaulle famously compared to “young girls and roses – they last as long as they last”. Implementation of the Putin-Erdogan agreement may be ragged and its benefits temporary, but it will serve a purpose if a few less Syrians in Idlib are blown apart.

The Syrian civil war long ago ceased to be a struggle fought out by local participants. Syria has become an arena where foreign states confront each other, fight proxy wars and put their strength and influence to the test.The most important international outcome of war so far is that it has enabled Russia to re-establish itself as a great power. Moscow helped Assad secure his rule after the popular uprising in 2011 and later ensured his ultimate victory by direct military intervention in 2015. A senior diplomat from an Arab country recalls that early on in the Syrian war, he asked a US general with a command in the region what was the difference between the crisis in Syria and the one that had just ended with the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. The general responded with a single word: “Russia.”

It is difficult to remember now, when Russia is being portrayed in the west as an aggressive predatory power threatening everybody, the extent which it was marginalised seven years ago when Nato was carrying out regime change in Libya.

Russia was in reality always stronger than it looked because it remained a nuclear superpower capable of destroying the world after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 just as it was before. It should be difficult to forget this gigantically important fact, but politicians and commentators continue to blithely recommend isolating Russia and pretend that it can be safely ignored.

The return of Russia as a great power was always inevitable but was accelerated by successful opportunism and crass errors by rival states. Assad in Syria was always stronger than he looked. Even at the nadir of his fortunes in July 2011, the British embassy in Damascus estimated that he had the backing of 30 to 40 per cent of the population according to The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East by Christopher Phillips, which should be essential reading for anybody interested in Syria. Expert opinion failed to dent the conviction among international statesmen that Assad was bound to go. When the French ambassador Eric Chevallier expressed similar doubts about the imminence of regime change he received a stern rebuke from officials in Paris who told him: “Your information does not interest us. Bashar al-Assad must fall and will fall.”

Such wishful thinking and flight from reality continues to this day. Miscalculations by Washington, Paris and London have provided Putin with ideal political terrain on which to reassert the power of the Russian state. The agreement signed by Russia and Turkey last Monday deciding the future of Idlib province is a token of how far Russia has come out on top in Syria. Putin is able to sign a bilateral agreement with Turkey, the second largest military power in Nato, without any reference to the US or other Nato members.

The accord means that Turkey will increase its military stake in northern Syria, but it can only do so safely under license from Moscow. The priority for Turkey is to prevent the creation of a Kurdish statelet under US protection in Syria and for this it needs Russian cooperation. It was the withdrawal of the Russian air umbrella protecting the Kurdish enclave of Afrin earlier this year that enabled the Turkish army to invade and take it over.

As has happened with North Korea, President Trump’s instincts may be surer than vaunted expertise of the Washington foreign policy establishment and its foreign clones. They have not learned the most important lesson of the US-led intervention wars in Iraq and Syria which is that it is not in western interests to stir the pot in either country. Despite this, they argue for continued US military presence in northeast Syria on the grounds that this will weaken Assad and ensure that any victory he wins will be pyrrhic.

Everything that has happened since 2011 suggests the opposite: by trying to weaken Assad, western powers will force him to become more – not less – reliant on Moscow and Tehran. It ensures that more Syrians will die, be injured or become refugees and gives space for al-Qaeda clones to reemerge.

Russian dominance in the northern tier of the Middle East may be opportunistic but is being reinforced by another process. President Trump may not yet have started any wars, but the uncertainty of US policy means that many countries in the world now look for a reinsurance policy with Russia because they are no longer sure how far they can rely on the US. Putin may not always be able to juggle these different opportunities unexpectedly presented to him, but so far he has had surprising success.