German big business continues its new scramble for Africa

Peter Schwarz

German imperialism is continuing its renewed efforts to exert its power in Africa. The German government organised its second Africa conference in Berlin on Tuesday, which had the goal of ensuring a significant increase in German investment on the African continent. The first Africa conference was held two years ago.

Heads of state traveled from a total of 12 African countries, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Morocco, and Tunisia. Germany was represented by Chancellor Angela Merkel, the ministers for development, the economy and the environment, and a representative from the Finance Ministry. To give the event a smattering of European representation, the Prime Ministers of Norway and Italy were also invited.

Confronting trade war measures from the United States and growing competition from China, German big business is on the hunt for new markets, raw materials, investment opportunities, and cheap labour. Africa is seen as a promising destination, with its young and rapidly expanding population.

According to estimates by the federal German Raw Materials Agency, Africa possesses relatively large deposits of unexplored raw materials compared to other continents. It possesses significant deposits of nine out of the 14 so-called critical raw materials.

In some African countries, a middle class with buying power has emerged that could serve as customers for German products. According to the World Bank, average per capita income in North Africa has increased almost four-fold since 2000. However, it is distributed extremely unequally and is still only the equivalent of one-sixth of per capita income in Germany.

Furthermore, Africa also possesses an almost unlimited supply of young workers.

“Anyone who wants to do business can’t ignore Africa,” commented the Tagesschau on the Africa Conference. It continued, “Egypt has 100 million residents, many of whom are young and very mobile people. Anyone who wants to do business can’t ignore al-Sisi’s Egypt.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commented, “It is in our own interests for Germany, and Europe as a whole to turn more towards Africa and engage there. Politically as well as economically.”

The task of the conference was to pave the way to Africa for major German corporations. The representatives of government and big business repeatedly noted that this required more transparency, the elimination of bureaucracy, legal guarantees, and the resolution of security challenges.

What this means in practice was shown by the prominent role played at the conference by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was the main speaker alongside Merkel.

The representatives of German capital are demanding that their investments and profits are not endangered by strikes, protests, or rebellions. Al-Sisi, who seized power in a bloody military coup in 2013, is notorious for his brutality towards political opponents and social protests. Thousands were forced to pay for their criticism of his regime with their lives, while many more are herded into overcrowded prisons. Several other heads of government in attendance are notorious for their authoritarian forms of rule.

To ease access to Africa for German corporations, the first Africa Conference established an investment fund worth around €1 billion. According to the Economy Ministry, German investments in Africa have risen substantially since then, reaching €2 billion last year.

But German big business has a long way to go to catch up. They are competing against strong rivals. According to 2017 figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Germany, with total direct investments in Africa of just over $10 billion, is far behind the leading investors, which include France ($64 billion), the Netherlands ($63 billion), the United States ($50 billion), Britain ($44 billion), and China ($43 billion). China in particular is planning major investments. At last year’s China-Africa Conference (FOCAC), Beijing pledged to invest $60 billion over the coming three years.

With a trade volume of $204 billion, China is already Africa’s largest trading partner. By contrast, German trade with the continent amounts to around $50 billion, just one quarter of the Chinese total.

Other countries are also seeking to join in a new scramble for Africa. With direct investments of $13 billion and a trade volume of $62 billion, India is currently ahead of Germany. Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf states are also pursuing their own economic interests in Africa.

In the final analysis, the struggle over Africa will be determined primarily by military rather than economic factors. The economic expansion is inseparably bound up with the military incursion. The German army’s deployment in Mali is now its largest operation, and it is to be expanded still further. Senegal’s Prime Minister Macky Sall recently demanded a “more aggressive” mandate for the United Nations to bring the situation under control.

Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer undoubtedly had this mission in mind when she said during a keynote address to the Bundeswehr University in Munich, “A country of our size, our technological and economic power, a country with our geostrategic location and global interests cannot just stand on the sidelines and watch, and wait for others to act.”

Germany is consolidating its military position in central Africa so as to be able to secure its imperialist interests across the entire continent and challenge its rivals.

On the occasion of the Africa Conference, public broadcaster RBB recalled another conference held in Berlin in 1884. Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck invited representatives from 13 European countries, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States to a Congo Conference to finally carve up Africa among the great powers. Germany also secured its share.

The result was disastrous. Hundreds of thousands of Africans fell victim to genocide, such as in German-occupied Namibia, and massacres in Belgian-occupied Congo. The struggle among the imperialist powers ultimately culminated in the First World War, with 10 million deaths. Today, the struggle for markets, raw materials and global hegemony once again threatens to culminate in a world war, only this time one fought with nuclear weapons.

New Zealand military’s unexploded bombs killed Afghan civilians

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s military was responsible for 17 civilian deaths and injuries, including the deaths of 7 children, caused by unexploded bombs left behind at firing ranges in Bamyan province, Afghanistan. The deaths, reported by Stuff Circuit on November 17, had been kept secret for years by the NZ Defence Force (NZDF) and successive governments led by the National Party and the Labour Party.

More than 100 New Zealand troops were stationed in Bamyan from 2003 to 2013 in a so-called Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). Successive NZ governments also deployed elite Special Air Service (SAS) forces to assist the US occupation. NZ SAS troops have been implicated in war crimes, including the killing of civilians in a 2010 raid.

The PRT was falsely presented as a “peacekeeping” mission aimed at winning “hearts and minds” by building infrastructure such as roads and schools. Very little information was ever made public about the PRT’s operations, while the SAS actions were completely shrouded in secrecy.

Journalist Nicky Hager revealed in 2011 that the Bamyan PRT was fully integrated into US military operations aimed at suppressing Afghan resistance to the puppet regime of Hamid Karzai. It served as a base for the CIA to coordinate its activities, guarded by NZ troops.

The failure to clear unexploded bombs reflects the NZDF’s callous disregard for the impoverished local population, who the occupying forces viewed with hostility. The multitude of war crimes by the US and its allies, including Britain, Australia, Germany and NZ, stem from the predatory, imperialist character of the war. Using the false pretext of fighting terrorism, Washington aimed to dominate the strategic and resource-rich region, at the expense of its main rivals Russia and China.

Journalist Paula Penfold and others from Stuff Circuit interviewed survivors and relatives of those killed and wounded at New Zealand’s firing ranges for an online documentary, “Life and Limb.” They also spoke with Afghan officials, doctors and Patrick Fruchet, head of the United Nations Mine Action Service in Afghanistan.

The UN documented nine incidents in which people were injured or killed at the Bamyan firing ranges used by the PRT. These cover a vast area of 39 square kilometres, which local villagers must cross on foot to herd goats and gather firewood for heating and cooking.

In the most horrific explosion on April 1, 2014, seven children aged between 5 and 12 were killed by an unexploded bomb used by the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Fruchet stated: “In Bamyan, what that means is New Zealand [is responsible].”

An eighth child, Mohammad, who narrowly escaped dying in the blast, fled the scene in terror and spent three days hiding in a cave. When he was found he was so traumatised he did not recognise his family.

The three mothers of the children killed, Baskul, Tohina and Raina, told Stuff that no one from the NZ military or the government had contacted them or offered any compensation.

An earlier blast in February 2013, two months before the PRT left Afghanistan, injured Khaliq and his brother Sajad, aged 15 and 18, leaving them unable to do heavy farm work. Their mother Kubra went to the PRT and said: “My sons have been injured and the accident happened on the area that you are firing on.” The NZDF denied responsibility.

The NZDF has repeatedly sought to wash its hands of any responsibility. In 2017, NZDF told Stuff that there had only ever been one death on its firing ranges. A NZDF document leaked to Stuff this year said the firing range linked to the children’s deaths in 2014 was “cleared” in October 2013 and there was “no evidence” the deaths were caused by a device used by NZ troops.

In fact, a certificate from the Afghan government showed only 2 percent of the firing range was cleared. Seven village elders wrote to authorities last year asking NZ to properly clear the area and supplied evidence of unexploded devices.

In response to NZDF claims that the ordnance might have been left behind by another country, Fruchet told Stuff that while it was “a mathematical possibility,” given the NZ PRT used the Bamyan ranges for 10 years, it was not “a reasonable likelihood.”

Penfold said in the documentary: “There’s a saying in Afghanistan: that Afghan blood is cheap.” He added that this was “hard to argue with,” given the denials from NZDF, no compensation and no proper cleanup of the ranges nearly six years after soldiers left Bamyan.

Responding to the revelations, Chief of Army John Boswell told Radio NZ that, more than five years after leaving Afghanistan, the NZDF has now set aside funds to pay a contractor to clear the firing ranges. While stating that “we of course regret any deaths,” he refused to admit that the NZDF was responsible.

Neither the military leadership nor Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern explained why the deaths had been kept secret from the public, even after Human Rights Watch raised the issue of New Zealand’s responsibility in a letter to NZDF in June 2018.

Ardern criticised NZDF’s delay in clearing the firing ranges and ordered the work to be done “in earnest.” Due to winter snows, however, this may not be until April next year.

Seeking to cover for Labour’s responsibility, former Labour Party Prime Minister Helen Clark hypocritically told Stuff the failure to clean up the Bamyan site was “reprehensible.” It was the Clark government, which included the pseudo-left Alliance Party, which first sent the SAS to Afghanistan in 2001.

While no one is being held accountable for the 17 deaths and injuries caused by NZDF ordnance, New Zealand’s involvement in criminal US-led wars continues. In June, the Ardern government extended New Zealand’s troop deployments to Iraq, where about 100 NZ soldiers are stationed, and Afghanistan, where there are still about a dozen. The Labour-NZ First-Greens coalition has significantly strengthened New Zealand’s alliance with the US over the past two years and supports its militarisation of the Pacific region as part of war preparations against China.

UK covered up war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq

Jean Shaoul

BBC TV’s flagship “Panorama” programme has broadcast interviews and evidence revealing that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) repeatedly covered up war crimes committed by Britain’s armed forces during the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Panorama” cited evidence surrounding the killing by UK troops of innocent and unarmed civilians that could in no way be described as “accidental” or “collateral damage.” The International Criminal Court (ICC) said it took the findings very seriously and would “independently assess” the evidence provided by “Panorama.”

The ICC has already concluded from a previous review in 2014 that there is credible evidence that British troops committed war crimes in Iraq, particularly surrounding the abuse of detainees, including murders by a soldier from the SAS special forces, as well as deaths in custody, beatings, torture and sexual abuse by members of the Black Watch. It was the first time the ICC had opened an inquiry into a Western state, with almost all ICC indictees being African heads of state or officials, while the United States—not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC in 2002—and the other imperialist powers get off scot-free.

British Army soldier in Afghanistan [Photo: British Army]

Allegations of mistreatment by British troops emerged in the years after the invasion of Iraq, including videos of soldiers carrying out wanton acts of cruelty. The case of Baha Mousa, a hotel worker in Basra who died after being tortured and beaten by troops while in custody in a British base in 2003, is the most well known. After six years of public campaigning, six soldiers finally appeared before a court martial, before being acquitted of wrongdoing. One soldier pleaded guilty and served just one year in jail. Most of the cases of alleged abuse and torture, which continue to mount, have never even reached a court hearing.

The Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) was set up to investigate 3,405 war crimes allegedly committed by British troops during the occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2009. Operation Northmoor, a smaller scale inquiry, received 675 allegations relating to Afghanistan. Both found evidence of widespread abuse and mistreatment at the hands of British forces. This included the killing of unarmed civilians and children.

The corporate media immediately went into action, branding the investigations as “witch-hunts.” Theresa May’s government closed down both investigations in 2017 without any prosecutions, using the excuse that Phil Shiner, a lawyer who had taken more than 1,000 cases to IHAT, had paid fixers in Iraq to find clients. May pledged, “We will never again—in any future conflict—let those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave.”

But now the BBC, working with the Sunday Times, has uncovered new information about alleged killings in British custody and their coverup. It cited the case, investigated by IHAT, of the shooting of Raid al-Mosawi, an Iraqi policeman, in an alleyway as he left the family home by a British soldier on patrol in Basra in 2003. Within 24 hours, the soldier’s commanding officer, Major Christopher Suss-Francksen, citing the evidence of an eyewitness, concluded that the shooting was lawful because the Iraqi police officer had fired first and the soldier had acted in self-defence.

After two years of inquiries that included interviewing 80 British soldiers, including the soldier who had supposedly witnessed the shooting, IHAT stated that the soldier flatly contradicted Suss-Francken’s report. The soldier said he was not an eyewitness but had heard one shot and one shot only, suggesting that al-Mosawi had not fired at all. Other soldiers confirmed this.

The detectives concluded the soldier who shot al-Mosawi should be prosecuted for killing him and that Suss-Francksen should be charged with covering up what happened. No such prosecutions have taken place.

“Panorama” reported one investigator as saying that there had been dozens of allegations concerning the killing of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan, including by UK soldiers. While he conceded that civilians are killed in war, he said, “Yes, there are accidents. But killing in cold blood is not part of normal warfare.”

The two media organisations focused on the civilian police investigations—overseen by the MoD—opened after allegations of abuses emerged in civil court proceedings in London, where victims’ families were demanding redress. Their interviews with several unnamed former civilian police officers led the BBC and Sunday Times to conclude that government ministers and the MoD exerted political pressure to end the investigations to protect Britain’s reputation.

The investigators said, “There was more and more pressure coming from the Ministry of Defence to get cases closed as quickly as possible.” Another said that what happened was “disgusting” and that the families of victims were not getting justice. He asked, “How can you hold your head up as a British person?” Another said, “The Ministry of Defence had no intention of prosecuting any soldier of whatever rank he was unless it was absolutely necessary, and they couldn’t wriggle their way out of it.”

The MoD also lodged a series of complaints against the lawyers bringing the civil suits against it. Commenting in the Sunday Times, Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said “it is as though ministers feared the effects of justice.” He added, “All this may come home to roost. Now, as the ICC,” set up to prosecute “where individual nations too cowardly, incompetent or unwilling to bring their own citizens to justice … turns its eyes towards us, we are forced to confront the unnerving possibility that one of those derelict nations might be our own.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman dismissed the BBC’s allegations of a coverup by the MoD of the armed forces’ crimes as “untrue,” while the MoD described them as “unsubstantiated.” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that “all of the allegations that had evidence have been looked at.” Despite the lack of prosecutions, the government had “got the right balance” in ensuring “spurious claims” were not pursued.

The British generals and the MoD will fight tooth and nail against any attempt to be held to account.

Last May, Penny Mordaunt, defence secretary in May’s government, announced that the Tories would introduce legislation protecting British troops and veterans from investigation over actions on the battlefield abroad after 10 years, except in “exceptional circumstances” to prevent the “repeated or unfair investigations” that had followed operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is nothing but a carte blanche for future war crimes, including the mass murder of harmless and unarmed civilians. Freedom from prosecution for soldiers is a key plank in Johnson’s general election manifesto.

The “Panorama” revelations make clear that the rampant abuse by the armed forces was not the result of a few “bad apples.” But the program had nothing to say about the broader implications of the MoD’s coverup of criminality, other than pointing out that it was the soldiers on the ground “who were not trained to maintain law and order,” that were likely to carry the can for the senior staff that gave the orders.

The truth is that the criminality and abuse flow inexorably from the filthy and criminal nature of the operations led by British imperialism over the past decade and must inevitably start from the very top.

The illegal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq have been based on the slaughter, maiming and terrorising of their populations and the destruction of their infrastructure for the geopolitical interests of the imperialist powers. UK forces, no less than their US counterparts, have played a full and bloody part in these despicable operations.

National strike shakes Colombia’s right-wing government

Evan Blake

With the launching of a national strike Thursday, hundreds of thousands of Colombian workers joined the eruption of class struggle that has shaken Latin America over the past several months. Following the mass demonstrations and strikes in Chile, the eruption of social protest in Ecuador and the resistance of Bolivian workers and peasants to the US-backed right-wing military coup, Colombian workers have shut down the fourth largest economy in Latin America.

While exact crowd sizes are hard to determine, estimates have ranged from 200,000 to over 1,000,000 people participating nationwide. Over 100,000 marched in the rain through the capital of Bogotá, filling the streets and closing 130 Transmilenio bus stations. At least 20,000 marched in Cali, and tens of thousands more participated in over 100 cities and towns across Colombia. Solidarity protests were held in numerous cities internationally, including Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Munich, New York, Sydney, Madrid, Miami and San Francisco.

Thousands protest in Bogotá (credit: Dylan Baddour via Twitter)

Dozens of organizations took part in the strike, primarily the various trade unions, indigenous rights groups and student organizations. In every major city, protesters blocked public transportation to varying degrees, shutting down large sections of transportation throughout the country.

Thousands of protesters filled Plaza Bolívar in Bogotá, the main square of the capital. Referencing the state violence unleashed against protesters in Chile, where hundreds have lost their eyes after being shot by rubber bullets, a large banner draped across a side of the square read, “How many eyes will it cost us to open theirs?”

Underscoring the significance of the strike, Oren Barack of Alliance Global Partners in New York, which holds Colombian sovereign and corporate debt, told Bloomberg, “I’m following it pretty closely. The government has something to be nervous about.”

While the protests remained overwhelmingly peaceful, minor clashes between protesters and units of the Mobile Anti-Disturbances Squadron (ESMAD) took place in some major cities during the day, leading to the arrest of ten protesters by mid-day. Altercations in Bogotá and the western city of Cali injured seven protesters and 28 policemen, prompting the imposition of a 7pm curfew in Cali. As of this writing, some clashes have broken out between police and protesters defying the curfew.

Despite efforts by demonstrators to keep the protest peaceful, a confrontation took place in the afternoon between protesters and the ESMAD on Plaza Bolívar in Bogotá, prompting the militarized riot police to fire tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Clashes in Bogotá at night (credit: Dylan Baddour via Twitter)

In the evening, thousands of people took to the streets in cacerolazos —banging pots and pans—in Medellín and Bogotá, protesting the police violence.

In the days leading up to the strike, the Colombian state mobilized its vast police and military apparatus, the second largest in the region after Brazil. The commander of the Colombian armed forces, General Luis Fernando Navarro, ordered the quartering of all of the country’s 293,200 soldiers beginning Monday and lasting through the national strike, commanding them to be on “maximum alert status.” 8,000 soldiers were deployed to Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Bucaramanga, Pereira and Pasto.

In addition, 10,000 local police were deployed in Bogotá and 7,000 in Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, with thousands more in other cities. President Iván Duque issued a decree enabling local authorities to impose curfews and ban the carrying of arms and consumption of alcohol.

In an effort to whip up xenophobia, the government deported 24 Venezuelan nationals, as well as Spanish and Chilean nationals, whom they accused of “affecting public order and national security.” In addition, Duque ordered the closing of Colombia’s borders from midnight Wednesday until 5:00am Friday.

Twenty-seven raids were conducted by the National Police in Bogotá on Tuesday morning, searching the offices and homes of leaders of organizations involved with the strike. In a nationally televised public address on Wednesday, Duque warned that his government “will guarantee order and defend you with all the tools the constitution grants us.”

"We need a government that fights poverty, not the poor" (credit: Dylan Baddour via Twitter)

The underlying objective impulse for the national strike is the deep economic inequality that pervades Colombian society. With three billionaires owning more wealth than the bottom ten percent of the population, Colombia ranks among the most unequal countries in Latin America, the most unequal region in the world. Unemployment has risen under the Duque administration, as more than 600,000 people lost their jobs last year alone.

The right-wing policies of the Duque administration, which has been a dutiful servant to the Colombian bourgeoisie and foreign capital since coming to power in August 2018, have exacerbated this situation and created immense hostility to the existing political setup. The most recent opinion polls before the strike showed Duque’s approval ratings at a dismal 26 percent.

Duque has violated nearly every statute of the fraudulent 2016 peace accords negotiated with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla movement and has branded anyone who supports the peace accords as a guerrilla sympathizer. Duque has waged this campaign in alliance with his mentor, former president Álvaro Uribe, who during his reign from 2002-2010 vastly expanded the military and relied upon paramilitary death squads to wage war against FARC.

Under Duque, hundreds of innocent civilians, and in particular indigenous people, have been murdered. In October alone, five indigenous leaders were killed in Cauca, while more than 700 indigenous leaders and community organizers have been killed in Colombia since 2016.

The repeated treaty violations led a section of the FARC to resume the bloody, decades-long civil war with the government at the end of August. Since it began in 1964, the Colombian conflict has led to the killing of over 177,000 civilians by both the military and the guerrilla fighters, and is the longest armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere.

In late September, student protests erupted in response to revelations of corruption within the District University administration involving the embezzlement of over COP$10,400 million (roughly US$3 million). When the ESMAD violently suppressed the protests, students began organizing weekly protests and marches throughout Colombia, repeatedly clashing with police.

Also in September, the Supreme Court began hearing witnesses in the trial of Uribe, who has been accused of fraud and bribery to cover up his family’s past crimes. With Uribe’s record largely destroyed by this testimony, his far-right Democratic Center (CD) party lost significant ground in local elections held on October 27.

Protester with sign that reads "South America woke up" with Chilean and Ecuadorian flags (credit: Dylan Baddour via Twitter)

First announced by the country’s main trade unions on October 4, the national strike was initially ignored by the corporate media. The protests first centered on opposition to government plans for an austerity package to undermine the state-run pension program Colpensiones, reduce the minimum wage for minors, decrease education spending and cut taxes for the rich.

A tipping point occurred on November 5, when it was revealed that the state had covered up the fact that an August 29 military bombing had killed at least eight children in Caquetá, which it claimed was a FARC stronghold, leading to the resignation of Colombian Defense Minister Guillermo Botero. The revelation that the Colombian military had committed yet another war crime against its own population prompted students and indigenous groups to join the call for a national strike, shifting the central demand to the ouster of Duque. Since then, reports have surfaced that up to 18 children were killed, more than double the government’s count, further fueling social tensions.

The massive participation in the national strike in Colombia has exposed the determination of the Colombia working class to mount a struggle against the government and the capitalist interests it defends. For the trade unions and the “left” bourgeois opponents of Duque, however, the action is a means to let off steam, with the strike limited to a one-day protest.

Moreover, the nationalist policies of these forces inevitably lead the working class into a political blind alley, while paving the way to bloody defeats.

The national bourgeoisie, which Duque and all the existing political parties in Colombia represent, are tied to American and world imperialism by a thousand threads. Capitalism is in a state of crisis globally, and the bourgeois politicians are incapable of offering any reforms whatsoever.

NATO riven by tensions between major powers

Alex Lantier

At their summit Wednesday in Brussels, NATO foreign ministers tried to close ranks, despite growing divisions in the alliance as it escalates plans for war with Russia, a nuclear-armed power.

The central item on the agenda was the state of the alliance, after French President Emmanuel Macron gave an interview to the Economist earlier this month declaring NATO to be “brain dead.” He also called for closer European relations with Russia and a more independent military policy from America, criticizing US policy on Russia as “governmental, political and historical hysteria.”

This statement threw into question the December 3–4 NATO heads of state summit in London, and the massive Operation Defender 2020 war games planned next year. In addition to naval maneuvers in the South China Sea, it includes NATO’s largest land exercises in Europe in a quarter century, with 37,000 troops—including 20,000 US troops transported across the Atlantic to Europe. It simulates coordinated, all-out mobilization for war with Russia.

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo holds a press conference, in Brussels, Belgium on November 20, 2019. [State Department Photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain]

NATO officials repeatedly stressed their unity around an aggressive policy of targeting Russia and China and boosting European military spending to be closer to America’s. “Reports of NATO’s death are greatly exaggerated,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius told Reuters as the summit began Wednesday.

“We are going to have an important foreign ministerial meeting,” NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said before the summit, saying it would “address strategic issues like Russia, arms control, but also the implications of the rise of China.”

Arriving in Brussels, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas stressed that Berlin still sees NATO as critical, despite growing US-German tensions and trade war tariffs. Warning against “breakaway tendencies in NATO,” he said the alliance with America is Europe’s “life insurance and we want it to remain so.” Maas proposed forming a group of “experts” to oversee changes to NATO, stating: “What is important is that the political arm of NATO is strengthened.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian made no public statement, though he had previously floated similar proposals for a “group of wise men” to reform NATO. Stoltenberg passed over Le Drian’s proposal in silence, however, and endorsed Maas: “I think that the German proposal is valuable.”

NATO officials pointed to growing rivalries between Berlin and Paris. A senior diplomat told Reuters: “This is about who the natural leader of Europe should be, Paris or Berlin, or possibly both together, and where NATO is heading.”

The only strategy the NATO powers found to deal with their escalating trade war and diplomatic tensions is military escalation, however. After the summit, NATO announced two new initiatives: spying on China, and forming a NATO space command, shortly after Washington launched its own military space command in August.

Pointing to China’s $175 billion military budget, and the addition over the last five years of 80 ships to its navy—more ships than the entire British navy—NATO announced it would officially begin military surveillance of China. “When there is a military build-up, you have to see what you need to defend against,” declared US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison.

NATO officials also said they were preparing to turn space into an “operational domain,” that is, a battle zone. Stoltenberg said that “this can allow NATO planners to make a request for allies to provide capabilities and services, such as satellite communications and data imagery.” He added, “Space is also essential to the alliance’s deterrence and defence, including the ability to navigate, to gather intelligence, and to detect missile launches. Around 2,000 satellites orbit the Earth. And around half of them are owned by NATO countries.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also gave a press conference afterwards, thanking Maas for his help. Denouncing Russia, China and Iran for having “very different value systems” from NATO, he demanded all NATO member states “confront” them, stressing in particular the “long-term threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.” He hailed the build-up launched by the European powers, who have pledged to increase military spending by $100 billion by 2020.

This summit confirmed again that there is no escape from the spiral of military escalation driven by the NATO imperialist powers inside the capitalist nation-state system. Macron’s criticisms of NATO reflected alarm in European ruling circles, as they conclude the imperialist wars launched since the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 have led to a dead end and a danger of nuclear war. However, they have no alternative policy.

“A pervasive conception developed in the 1990s and 2000s around the idea of the End of History, an endless expansion of democracy, that the Western camp had won,” Macron told the Economist. He added, “Sometimes we committed mistakes by trying to impose our values and change regimes without getting popular support. It is what we saw in Iraq and Libya… and maybe what was planned for Syria, but that failed. It is an element of the Western approach, I would say in generic terms, that has been an error since the beginning of this century, perhaps a fateful one.”

Macron left unsaid that France, Germany and other European powers participated in wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria that killed or wounded millions and that led to the highly dangerous military standoff that exists between the NATO powers, Russia and China.

While calling in the Economist for better relations with Russia “to prevent the world from going up in a conflagration,” Macron is at the same time waging bloody wars in former French colonies like Mali. Berlin has contributed 1,000 troops to the Mali war, and getting these troops is a key goal of Macron’s call for a separate European military policy.

Despite Europe’s growing trade war and strategic conflicts with America, Macron’s proposals have not won broader support, and for now the European NATO powers are backing a US-led escalation against Russia and China. “Paris is isolated,” the daily Ouest France concluded, citing a diplomat from a “country close to France’s position” who said: “Macron received no support inside NATO for his virulent criticisms.”

The paper also cited Ulrich Speck, an official at the German Marshall Fund think tank, who said: “Macron forced Germany to take a position, and for Berlin NATO is still the future of European defense... Most of the Eastern European states want to keep the United States in the game to keep Russia away, and they have little interest in the war on terror France is waging to the south.”

In particular, there are clearly growing tensions between Paris and both Berlin and Washington in Eastern Europe. Paris plans to host a conference with German, Russian and Ukrainian officials next month, excluding Washington, to try to broker a deal preventing renewed war in Ukraine after the US- and German-backed coup there in 2014 to oust a pro-Russian government. In October, Paris angered Berlin and Washington by vetoing the EU accession of the Balkan state of North Macedonia—a move Merkel publicly criticized yesterday, speaking in Croatia.

The Neue Zurcher Zeitung wrote that Macron’s Economist interview “greatly upset Berlin. The reply came back quickly: NATO is not brain-dead, but the cornerstone of European defense... Something is now in the open that was long known, but seemed to be without consequence: France and Germany have very different ideas of Europe’s strategic future.” Macron, it added, “wants to try to put himself and France in America’s place as the leading power. But the leadership he offers is no more multilateral and inclusive than the leadership the United States offered earlier.”

Amid US-led campaigns targeting Russia and China, the re-emergence of strategic conflict between Germany and France is a dangerous sign. The conflict between the two traditional leading EU powers twice in the 20th century exploded into world war in Europe. The European countries are not moderating policies or slowing the drive to war, but are centrally involved in pushing a war drive that can be stopped only by mobilizing the working class internationally in opposition to imperialism and war.

US, EU gave over $20 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine since 2014

Patrick Martin

Testimony by two high-ranking US national security officials, on the final day of the public hearings on the impeachment of President Trump, has shed new light on the central issue in the impeachment crisis: the enormous and protracted effort by American and European imperialism to use Ukraine as a base of operations against Russia.

David Holmes, the chief political counselor at the US embassy in Kiev, testified alongside former National Security Council official Fiona Hill, who had the main responsibility for US policy towards Russia and Ukraine from March 2017 to July 2019.

David Holmes, a U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, leaves after testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

The key passage in Holmes’ testimony came in response to a question about the comparative scale of US and European security and economic assistance to Ukraine, and the significance of the $391 million in military aid Trump held back for 55 days. Holmes explained that this was only a fraction of the $1.5 billion in US military aid to Ukraine since 2014. He continued:

The United States has provided combined civilian and military assistance to Ukraine since 2014 of about $3 billion plus … three $1 billion loan guarantees—those get paid back, largely… The Europeans, at the level of the European Union plus the member states combined since 2014, my understanding have provided a combined $12 billion to Ukraine.

This would bring to $18 billion the combined imperialist backing for Ukraine since the ultra-right CIA-backed coup in 2014 (absurdly dubbed the “Revolution of Dignity” in official parlance). Other reports suggest that Holmes somewhat underestimated the EU contribution.

According to Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the EU and its members states and related financial institutions have provided over 15 billion euros, or about $16.4 billion since 2014. An EU spokesperson told the press that this total “covers grants and loans from different sources/instruments within the EU budget and European Financial institutions.”

The $16.4 billion from the EU, combined with the $6 billion in loans and grants from Washington, would bring the combined total to some $22.4 billion over the past five years, for an annual average of nearly $4.5 billion—comparable to the US annual aid to Israel or Afghanistan.

Ukraine shares a 2,000-kilometer border with Russia, which once was an internal border between constituent republics of the Soviet Union. Providing tens of billions to build up Ukraine as a base of operations against Russia is a blatant provocation. How would Washington react if China or Russia poured billions into arming a hostile anti-American government in Canada or Mexico, one installed, moreover, by a political coup backed by Beijing or Moscow?

What are the imperialist powers—the United States, Germany, France, Britain, etc.—getting for their money? Ukraine is being transformed into a front-line state against Russia, the spearhead of plans for an eventual NATO war against that country, for which advance forces have already been stationed in the Baltic states and Poland.

From a comparatively ragtag military force in 2014, the Ukrainian army has become, according to the testimony of Holmes, “arguably the most capable and battle-hardened land force in Europe.” Ukraine numbers 250,000 men and women in its regular armed forces, plus 80,000 in the reserves: larger than Germany or France, second only to Russia on the European continent.

The Ukraine government spends 5.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product on the military—a far higher proportion than the countries of western Europe—and its state-owned arms production company, Ukroboronprom, has made Ukraine the world’s 12th largest arms exporter from 2014 to 2018, more than NATO countries like Canada and Turkey.

Last week, the Ukrainian Navy took possession of two former US Coast Guard cutters, with more ships coming, leading one naval official, Andrii Ryzhenko, to boast that “we may patrol over all the Black Sea.”

Impeachment witnesses from the State Department, National Security Council and Pentagon have made repeated references to the ongoing “hot war” in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian military forces confront Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

This conflict has been carefully studied by US military planners, strategists and tacticians, as an invaluable arena for observing the Russian tactics and learning how to combat them.

An unclassified report by the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group says: “U.S. Forces should now begin contemplating how our formations should best prepare themselves for the threats that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) face and identify gaps within our own doctrine … America has not encountered this type of conflict for nearly a generation and needs to transform to fight and win in complex maneuver warfare.”

In other words, the imperialist-backed military buildup has qualitative as well as quantitative significance.

David Holmes is not a minor figure. His past postings include Moscow; New Delhi, India; Kabul, Afghanistan; Bogotá, Colombia; and Pristina, Kosovo. He served in Washington as the Director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council, suggesting he is a highly influential official. His current position, political counselor at the US embassy in Kiev, is frequently the one used as a cover by the CIA station chief in foreign capitals.

And despite the title of “political counselor,” Holmes has personally reviewed the military operations of Ukraine. He told the House Intelligence Committee, “I have had the honor of visiting the main training facility in Western Ukraine with members of Congress and this very Committee, where we witnessed first-hand U.S. National Guard troops, along with allies, conducting training for Ukrainian soldiers. Since 2014, National Guard units from California, Oklahoma, New York, Tennessee and Wisconsin have trained shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukrainian counterparts.”

It is this massive imperialist military build-up that underlies the political crisis in Washington that has produced the impeachment inquiry. The military-intelligence apparatus and its Democratic Party attorneys have not targeted Trump merely because of his demands on Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

They are responding because Trump’s actions in withholding military aid disrupted one of the most critical ongoing imperialist operations. That is what is meant by the constant Democratic and media refrain that Trump is guilty of endangering US “national security.”

In Washington terminology, “national security” means pursuing the worldwide objectives of American imperialism. It has nothing to with defending the American people from some threat, nor, for that matter, defending the population of Ukraine. Rather, this operation is part of the preparations for future wars that would bring the two largest nuclear powers into direct conflict, with incalculable consequences for humanity.

Every member of the House Intelligence Committee bows down before this political objective. Republican members sought to defend Trump by pointing to his greater willingness to send “lethal aid” to Ukraine, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, although he insisted on selling them to the Ukrainians for a profit.

Similarly, at the Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday night, every Democratic candidate endorsed the impeachment narrative, in which Trump is to be removed, not for his real crimes against immigrants and democratic rights, or his efforts to build a racist and fascist movement, but because he has come into conflict with powerful elements of the national-security apparatus.

Russia’s Gazprom offers Ukraine short-term gas deal

Jason Melanovski

Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom has officially offered Ukraine’s Naftogaz a one-year deal to continue the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine on its way to Europe.

The offer signals a potential weakening of the US-backed Ukrainian government’s bargaining position, as President Volodomyr Zelensky readies to enter negotiations with French, German and Russian officials under the so-called “Normandy Format” on December 9 in Paris. The talks are to discuss a possible peace deal to end a five-year long civil war in eastern Ukraine that has claimed the lives of 13,000 Ukrainians, displaced 1.4 million and left 3.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

The current agreement between Naftogaz and Gazprom is set to expire at the end of the year, and without a new deal in place both Ukraine and Europe could experience significant disruptions to gas supplies as cold winter temperatures set in.

Gazprom has made the deal conditional on Naftogaz dropping all legal claims against the Russian company, which currently total $22 billion. Last February a Stockholm court awarded Naftogaz $2.56 billion in two cases involving gas transit and supply, which Gazprom subsequently appealed.

Earlier in October, Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk asserted Kiev’s intention to avoid signing any short-term deal, stating: “We aim to obtain a long-term contract, because the continuation of the contract for one year... does not suit us.” Honcharuk also stated that Ukraine planned to store 20 billion cubic meters (Bcm) by the start of heating season in the case of a gas shut-off.

With Russia’s offer on the table, the Ukrainian oligarchy must now choose to either end its legal disputes with Gazprom and move forward with the limited one-year deal, or risk throwing Europe into an energy crisis that could erode Kiev’s support in Paris and Berlin.

In seeking a long-term contract Kiev had hoped to avoid being cut off from Europe as a major gas-transit country while Russia moves towards completing its Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is worth some $11 billion, by the spring of 2020. The pipeline will travel 765 miles under the Baltic Sea directly from St. Petersburg to Germany. The European Union as a whole already receives over 50 percent of its gas from Russia. Furthermore, European gas production is expected to fall by 50 percent over the next 20 years, while demand continues at the current pace.

In addition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Russia is also planning to complete a second new gas pipeline, known as Turkstream, through the Black Sea and Turkey and then potentially north via Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Turkstream’s completion and final route is unclear, but both pipelines were constructed to eliminate Ukraine’s status as a major gas transporter to Europe and ensure the status of Russia as Europe’s preeminent energy supplier for decades to come.

According to S+P Global, in the first 10 months of 2019 73.3 Bcm of Russian gas passed through Ukraine to Europe, or around 45 percent of total Russian sales in Europe and Turkey. Ukraine has the potential to transit 140 Bcm/year, but volumes have been lowered since the coup in 2014 that brought a right-wing, nationalist, United States-backed government to power in Kiev.

Any further reduction in gas flowing through the country to Europe would both materially and politically weaken the country. The Ukrainian state relies on gas-transit fees to fund its crippled economy and uses its status as a major transporter to gain political support from Germany and France in its confrontation with Moscow.

Naftogaz earns up to $3 billion per year in transit fees on Russian gas, or roughly 3 percent of the country’s GDP, and is a valuable source of much needed foreign exchange.

While the European Union is divided over the project, Ukraine’s major imperialist backers in Europe are eager to see the pipeline completed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has conspicuously protected the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from EU sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

France has also dramatically increased its gas imports from Russia, with Gazprom gas exports to the country increasing by 58 percent between 2013 and 2018. The Nord Stream 2 project involves two major German energy companies, Wintershall and Uniper, the French company Engie, as well as the Austrian OMV and British-Dutch Shell.

The United States, meanwhile, has backed Ukraine in its rabid opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline against Moscow. United States President Donald Trump claimed in June of 2019 that the completion of Nord Stream 2 would make Germany a “hostage” of Russia, and the United States has threatened sanctions against any companies involved in the project.

Apart from geostrategic military considerations in its confrontation with Moscow, the United States is also a major supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe and hopes to increase exports further as Europe’s gas supplies shrink.

The website of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which is known for its close ties to the CIA, warned in a recent article that although sanctions against Nord Stream 2 are backed by the overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans, internal conflict in Washington over the impeachment of Trump centered on US foreign policy in relation to Ukraine could facilitate the realization of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

In recent months, Ukrainian lawmakers have aggressively lobbied the US Congress to impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2. Now, RFE/RL wrote, “…U.S. lawmakers and Ukrainian officials are worried that Congress, with much of its attention focused on impeachment inquiry, will not come to an agreement on sanctions legislation before the completion of the pipeline project.”

John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine who now heads the Eurasia division of the aggressively anti-Russian Atlantic Council think tank, said it would be a “shame” if delays in legislation would enable the pipeline project to go ahead as planned.

The gas issue in Ukraine has also entered into the warfare within the American ruling class on a different level. Trump’s pressure on Zelensky first began over the appointment of Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, to the board of Burisma Holdings. Burisma Holdings is Ukraine’s largest natural gas producer and holds licenses to produce gas in regions of eastern Ukraine.

This week it was reported that federal prosecutors are seeking to question Rudy Giuliani over his contacts with both Naftogaz and Global Energy Producers, which sought to sell liquefied natural gas to Naftogaz in place of Russian gas. It is alleged that Giuliani pressured Naftogaz to replace its chief executive officer (CEO), Andriy Kobolyev, in order to benefit Giuliani’s associates at Global Energy Producers, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Fruman and Parnas have already been arrested on campaign finance charges of funneling foreign money to American political candidates.

While Ukraine is dependent on Russia for gas, it is estimated that the country has the third highest amount of gas shale deposits in Europe, most of which are located either within or close to separatist-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s significant coal reserves and mines are likewise situated almost entirely within the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic in the east. Any potential further development of Ukraine’s untapped energy reserves will require some sort of solution to the current stalemate in eastern Ukraine, either through negotiations, as favored by Paris and Berlin, or through war, as favored by Washington.

The Ukrainian government has also moved forward with steps to “unbundle” Naftogaz from the gas transit industry in order to comply with European energy regulations and create a new state-owned entity that would control gas transit within the country. The move, put into law last week by Zelensky, was required by both the IMF and the European Commission for Ukraine to continue receive IMF funds and remain part of the European energy market.

While Ukrainian officials--including Prime Minister Honcharuk--have claimed the resulting offshoot of Naftogaz will remain majority state-owned, CEO Kobolyev revealed in an interview with a Polish radio station in January of last year that both European and United States companies were interested in buying shares in any newly created gas transit company.

Both Kobolyev’s comments and the intervention of corrupt American bourgeois representatives from both major political parties into Ukraine’s gas politics demonstrates that there is a high-stakes competition taking place between the United States and the European imperialist powers over the control of Ukraine’s energy sector.

The impeachment crisis and American imperialism

Patrick Martin

Wednesday’s public hearing on the impeachment of President Trump featured the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, who testified that, contrary to the White House narrative, there had been a “quid pro quo” in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

Trump, Sondland said, offered military aid and an invitation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to visit the White House in return for an announcement by Zelensky of an investigation into the activities of the Democratic National Committee in Ukraine in 2016 and the role of Hunter Biden. Biden was paid $50,000 a month by a large Ukrainian gas company while his father, then the vice president, was point man for Ukrainian policy in the Obama administration.

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, center, finishes a day of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019 (Anna Moneymaker/Pool Photo via AP)

Sondland’s appearance was trumpeted by the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee and most of the media as a “smoking gun” against Trump. Sondland was even compared to John Dean, the White House counsel whose testimony against Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal paved the way to Nixon’s resignation to avoid certain impeachment.

The testimony of John Dean, however, was part of the uncovering of a major attack on the democratic rights of the American people. The break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, carried out by ex-CIA agents working for Nixon, was the outcome of a protracted campaign of political spying and repression directed against Vietnam War protesters, the former military official Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and other political opponents.

There are no such issues of democratic rights in the conflict between Trump and the Democrats, who are acting as the political front men for the CIA and other sections of the national security apparatus. The significance of Sondland’s testimony lies not in what he revealed about Trump, but in his account of the everyday relationship between American imperialism and Ukraine, a small, dependent nation that has been turned into a vassal state by successive administrations in Washington.

The president of Ukraine is told by American diplomats exactly what words he must use and what promises he must make to appease his overlord in Washington. When President Zelensky offers to have his chief prosecutor make a statement along the lines demanded by Trump, he is told that he himself must make the statement, and it must be televised so that he is on the record. He is told to jump, and exactly how high.

In that respect, there is no difference whatsoever between Trump’s conduct in 2019 and the actions of his Democratic nemesis, Vice President Biden, in 2016. Biden traveled to Ukraine and told its government that Washington was withholding $1 billion in promised aid until certain actions were taken, including the firing of a corrupt national prosecutor. Biden even boasted in a US television interview that within six hours of his delivering that ultimatum the Ukrainian president had sacked the official.

Apologists for the Democrats and Biden will insist that Biden was carrying out official US government policy, in the interests of US “national security,” whereas Trump was looking out for his personal interests, seeking dirt on a potential election rival. This argument is questionable even on its own terms, since the prosecutor whose firing Biden demanded had control over the corruption investigation into the gas company Burisma, which was lavishly paying Biden’s son.

But there is a more fundamental issue: What was the “national security” interest that Biden was upholding? Why is the United States supplying vast quantities of military aid and weaponry to Ukraine? It is part of the effort by American imperialism, carried out over two decades, to turn Ukraine into an American puppet state directed against Russia.

For all the claims by the Democrats that they are shocked by Trump seeking “foreign interference” in the 2020 presidential election, every presidential election in Ukraine since 2004 has been characterized by massive foreign interference, particularly by the United States. One US official boasted in 2013 that Washington had expended more than $5 billion on its operations to install a pliable anti-Russian regime in Kiev.

Detaching Ukraine from Russia has been a key US foreign policy objective since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukraine and Russia were the two largest components of the USSR. They share a land border of more than 2,000 kilometers and economies that were once closely integrated. Thirty percent of the Ukrainian people speak Russian as their first language, including the vast majority of the population of Crimea and the eastern Ukrainian region now controlled by pro-Russian forces.

In both World War I and World War II, German imperialism made the seizure of Ukraine, with its rich soil and proximity to the oilfields of the Caucasus, a key strategic objective. The largest number of Soviet Jews massacred as part of the Holocaust were killed in Ukraine, in atrocities such as Babi Yar, the ravine outside Kiev where 34,000 Jews were machine-gunned, and Odessa, where 50,000 Jews were slaughtered.

American imperialism is seeking to do what German imperialism failed twice to accomplish: use Ukraine as a launching pad for political subversion and military violence against Russia. Behind the backs of the American people, with little or no public discussion, the US government has been shipping large quantities of arms and other war materiel to Ukraine, in an operation that brings with it the increasing danger of a direct US military collision with Russia, a conflict between the two powers that between them deploy most of the world’s nuclear weapons.

The impeachment hearings have focused on anti-Trump witnesses who are themselves key participants in this reactionary foreign policy, and who speak in the Orwellian language of American imperialism. They define “democracy” in Ukraine in terms of the degree to which Ukraine’s government agrees to serve as an instrument of American foreign policy. They hail the so-called “Revolution of Dignity” in which an elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown because he was viewed as an obstacle to the anti-Russia campaign. They salute fascistic figures like Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, sponsor of the notorious Azov Battalion, which marches under modified swastikas and celebrates the Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis in World War II.

Nothing of this political reality is so much as hinted at in the coverage of the impeachment hearings by either the pro-Trump or anti-Trump corporate media. On the contrary, the presumption is that the foreign policy of the United States government is aimed at the promotion of freedom and democracy and opposed to Russia because Russian President Vladimir Putin is a tyrant.

The role of US imperialism in Ukraine, however, is only one example of the depredations of American imperialism throughout the world, in which countless tyrants and fascists—like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro—are aligned with the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Nor is the cavalier attitude of the US government to Ukrainian sovereignty an exception. There is no difference between Washington’s role in Ukraine in 2014, its intervention against the Rajapakse government in Sri Lanka in 2015, its backing for the abortive military coup in Turkey in 2016, or its support for the overthrow of Evo Morales in Bolivia today.

Weaker nations whose rulers get in the way of American imperialism will pay the price, and in some cases, as in Iraq, Venezuela, Syria and Libya—all countries where oil wealth is a major consideration—the result can be invasion, occupation, military coup or a combination of all three.

Washington has its hands around the throats of the Ukrainian people. The issue is not whether this stranglehold is being used for improper “personal” ends by Trump, as the Democrats allege, rather than for the purposes laid down by the national security establishment. The issue is the intervention of the American and international working class to free the Ukrainian people, and the population of the world, from the deadly grip of Wall Street and the Pentagon.