Fighting For America’s Soul

John Scales Avery

Democratic institutions are in danger

Today there is a deep split in public opinion in the United States. Democratic institutions are in danger from racism and neo-fascism. Progressives are fighting to save the values and institutions on which their country was founded. They are fighting to save America’s soul.

Racism, discrimination and xenophobia

Progressives today would like to eliminate all forms of discrimination, whether based on race, religion, ethnicity, or gender. They are opposed by white nationalist groups, especially in rural areas and among white industrial workers and evangelicals, who fear that their own groups will soon be outnumbered by those who differ from them in ethnicity, race or religion.

Donald Trump has appealed to these fears using rhetoric similar to that of Hitler. According to the testimony of his first wife, he kept a book Hitler’s speeches beside his bedside and studied it diligently. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany probably would not have occurred had it not been for the terrible economic stress produced by the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Working-class white Americans are similarly stressed, and they have chosen a similar leader.

Excessive economic inequality

The United States today is characterized by excessive economic inequality. As Senator Bernie Sanders said, “There is no justice, and I want you to hear this clearly, when the top one-tenth of 1 percent – not 1 percent, the top one-tenth of 1 percent – today in America owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.”

Such exaggerated inequality is bad in itself, but it also leads to governmental corruption. Since Citizens United, corporations have been able to make enormous donations to the campaigns of politicians, essentially buying their support. Studies have shown that at present, the wishes of voters matter little in comparison to the wishes of the corporate sponsors of politicians. Because of this, the United States is not a democracy but an oligarchy. Progressives are fighting to change this. They are fighting to save “government of the people, by the people and for the people”. They are fighting for America’s soul.

The military-industrial complex

In his famous farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the power of the military-industrial complex. He said “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

In another speech, Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Today the United States has bases in almost every country of the world, and spends almost a trillion dollars every year on armaments, or more than a trillion, depending on what is included. Aggressive foreign wars, and regime change coups have produced untold suffering, as well as a refugee crisis.

Progressives are fighting to change this. They are fighting for a more  peaceful America. They are fighting for America’s soul.

Secrecy and democracy are incomparable

John Adams wrote: “The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”

According to the Nuremberg Principles, the citizens of a country have a responsibility for the crimes that their governments commit. But to prevent these crimes, the people need to have some knowledge of what is going on. Indeed, democracy cannot function at all without this knowledge.

What are we to think when governments make every effort to keep their actions secret from their own citizens? We can only conclude that although they may call themselves democracies, such governments are in fact oligarchies or dictatorships.

We do not know what will happen to Julian Assange. If he dies in the hands of his captors he will not be history’s first martyr to the truth. The ageing Galileo was threatened with torture and forced to recant his heresy, that the Earth moves around the Sun. Galileo spent the remainder of his days in house arrest.

Giordano Bruno was less lucky. He was burned at the stake for maintaining that the universe is larger than it was then believed to be. If Julian Assange becomes a martyr to the truth like Galileo or Bruno, his name will be honored in the future, and the shame of his captors will be remembered too.

Edward Snowden’s revelations showed us the extent of government spying, and the extent of the deep state. Progressives are fighting to make the American government more truthful and open. They are fighting for America’s soul.

A new freely downloadable book

I would like to announce the publication of a book entitled “FIGHTING FOR AMERICA’S SOUL” It describes the efforts of US progressives to save the values and institutions on which their country was founded. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:

Fighting-for-Americas-Soul-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf

Rising seas threaten US Pacific nuclear dump

John Braddock

According to reports from the Marshall Islands, plutonium is leaking into the Pacific Ocean from a massive concrete bunker the United States built in the 1950s to dispose of nuclear waste. A potential disaster is looming.

Situated mid-way between Hawaii and Australia, the Marshall Islands has a population of 53,000 people. The island chain was occupied by Allied forces in 1944 and placed under US administration in 1947. It achieved nominal independence in 1986 under a so-called Compact of Free Association.

Between 1946-1958, Washington carried out 67 atmospheric and underwater nuclear explosions and a series of biological weapons tests in the Marshall Islands. Irradiated soil from the Enewetak and Bikini atolls, used as “ground zero” for the tests, was poured into a crater left from the detonations, mixed with concrete and covered with a shallow concrete dome.

Called the Runit Dome, the 18-inch thick structure holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet of radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium. The Los Angeles Times reported on November 10 that climate change is breaking open the aging and weathered dome as it “bobs up and down with the tide,” threatening to spill nuclear waste into the ocean.

Throughout the Pacific, rising sea levels pose an existential threat as they inundate low-lying islands. The Marshall Islands is likely to see many of its 29 atolls under water within 10 to 20 years. On Enewetak atoll, tides are creeping up the sides of the US nuclear dump, advancing higher every year, while cracks are appearing in the dome.

According to Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, debris from the dome is already seeping into the nearby lagoon. Following a visit to the White House in May, accompanied by the presidents of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia, Heine told Reuters she “saved her breath” rather than futilely try to persuade US President Trump of their concerns about climate change.

According to the LA Times, the Marshall Islands government lobbied Washington for help, but American officials declared the dome is the responsibility of the Marshallese government.

Based on documents and interviews with US and Marshallese officials, the LA Times found that the American government withheld key pieces of information about the dome’s contents and its weapons testing program before the countries signed the 1986 Compact which released the US from liability.

The US did not reveal that in 1958 it shipped 130 tons of soil from atomic testing grounds in Nevada to the islands. Washington also did not inform the Marshall Islands authorities that a dozen biological weapons tests had been conducted on Enewetak, including experiments with an aerosolized bacteria designed to kill enemy troops. Over 600 people currently live on parts of the atoll.

Over a period of five visits to the Marshall Islands, LA Times reporters documented extensive coral bleaching, fish kills and algae blooms, as well as major disease outbreaks such as dengue fever. Michael Gerrard from Columbia University’s law school told the paper that “the Marshall Islands is a victim of the two greatest threats facing humanity—nuclear weapons and climate change,” for which the “United States is entirely responsible.”

Scientists from Columbia University released a report in July concluding that radiation levels across the islands were “significantly” higher than at Fukushima and Chernobyl. On Bikini atoll, plutonium concentrations were “up to 15–1,000 times higher than in samples from areas affected by the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters.”

The report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), said soil samples from four uninhabited islands had concentrations of gamma radiation “well above” the legal exposure limit established in agreements between the US and the Marshall Islands.

The team examined contamination levels in food sources, as well as the levels and composition of radioactive isotopes. The food study showed a mix of high and variable levels of contamination on fruit tested on Bikini, Naen and Rongelap islands. The fruit contained radiation higher than the safety levels established by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Japan, which have more stringent standards for limiting ingestion of radioactive particles than the US.

The nuclear tests left widespread contamination. Although six percent of US nuclear-bomb testing occurred there, the detonations and mushroom clouds generated more than half the total energy from all US testing. The largest, the Castle Bravo bomb detonated in March 1954, was 1,000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki in Japan.

US authorities relocated people living on Enewetak and Bikini in the late 1940s. Those in Rongelap and Utirik, more than a 100 miles from the testing sites, were removed three days after they were showered by fallout from Castle Bravo. The fallout caused skin burns, hair loss, nausea and, eventually, cancer in many of the people exposed.

Washington has repeatedly asserted that locals now face little risk from radioactivity. However, Marshallese continue to distrust US assurances. At Bikini and Rongelap, residents initially returned to their islands after the US told them it was safe. The resettlement was a disaster. Cancer cases, miscarriages and deformities multiplied. By 1967, 10 years after the test, 17 of the 19 children who were younger than 10 and on the island the day Bravo exploded had developed thyroid disorders and growths. One child died of leukaemia.

Several imperialist powers occupied large tracts of the Pacific and used it for nuclear testing after World War II. The United Kingdom exploded atomic and hydrogen bombs at Malden Island and Kiritimati (Christmas Island) in 1957-1958. A total of 193 tests were carried out by France on Fangataufa and Mururoa Atolls in French Polynesia from 1966-1996, including one thermonuclear device in 1968.

Tahitians and other Pacific islanders, as well as British, New Zealand, and Fijian servicemen suffered radiation exposure. Widespread opposition developed to the horrific activities of the arrogant major powers. In a brutal attempt to forestall protests at the Mururoa test site in 1985, French secret service agents blew up the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, killing a crewman.

Hundreds of Marshall Islanders were meanwhile exiled across the Pacific, impoverished, their homes devastated and health imperiled. An international tribunal concluded in 1988 the US should pay $2.3 billion in claims, but Congress and US courts refused. Documents cited by the LA Times show the US has paid just $4 million.

Today, the Marshall Islands is again assuming geo-strategic importance as part of Washington’s intensifying confrontation with China. In August Mike Pompeo became the first secretary of state to visit Micronesia, to negotiate an extension to a security agreement that gives the US military exclusive access to the vast airspace and territorial waters of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. This was necessary, he declared, to face off “Chinese efforts to redraw the Pacific.”

Historically low number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits due to increasing restrictions

Jacob Crosse

Seemingly every week a new report is released extolling the strength of the US economy and the recovery since the Great Recession, which took place from 2007 through 2009. Those who seek to uphold the current social order invariably point to historically low job unemployment numbers and inflated earnings reports and valuations from various Wall Street firms and banks as proof of their assertions.

At the height of the Great Recession the unemployment rate in the US reached double digits for the first time in a generation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with over 13.52 million workers or 10 percent of the labor force unable to find adequate full-time work.

A decade later bourgeois economists from the New York Times to the Washington Post agree that the recovery is complete, pointing to the same department’s current unemployment statistics; as of October 2019 the BLS reports that the unemployment rate in the United States is at 3.6 percent, with approximately 5.85 million workers in the US currently searching for full-time work.

However, the official percentage of unemployed workers is misleading, as workers who have ceased to regularly look for work are not counted, nor does the rate reflect workers who are forced to accept part-time work instead of full-time work. As is the case with millions of workers in the US, many are forced to work multiple jobs to scrape together enough earnings to survive, inflating the jobs total, devaluing the number of unemployed workers calculated searching for work and decrease the unemployment rate.

Unemployment insurance varies from state to state, but generally the employer contributes approximately six percent in payroll taxes to fund the insurance should a business decide it is in their interests to layoff employees or shut down without notice. These funds guarantee if a layoff or shutdown occurs, an employee, through no fault of their own, is not left without any income as they search for a new job or seek to get rehired.

Until recently, those eligible would expect to receive weekly paychecks for up to twenty-six weeks. These weekly checks, much less than what an employee could expect to make if they worked a regular full-time shift, would help pay for living expenses as a worker searched for a new job.

This “safety net” is woefully inadequate to survive on, with weekly payouts in almost every US state on average being less than $400 per week, or 20 to 25 percent of a worker’s typical take-home pay. During and after the Great Recession, millions of Americans were forced to rely on unemployment insurance as their only source of income for months at a time.

Due to chronic under-funding, several states, including North Carolina, Michigan and Alabama were obliged to borrow money from the federal government to pay out unemployment insurance to eligible workers. In order to pay back these borrowed funds, several states enacted tougher regulations to prevent future eligible workers from receiving benefits, instead of properly funding the program or raising taxes on businesses.

While state and federal legislatures allowed Wall Street criminals to collect exorbitant bonuses as millions of Americans lost their homes and jobs, state legislatures, no matter what party, and the Obama administration proceeded to pass tougher rules and restrictions, not on the ones responsible for the recession, but instead on those who were suffering the brunt of the ruling class’ criminal financial chicanery. These new rules included passing stringent drug testing procedures meant to prevent laid-off workers from accessing much needed benefits.

While the CEOs of hedge funds, banks, and corporations have yet to submit a urine sample in connection with their theft of billions of dollars, workers across multiple states are having to submit to invasive and unconstitutional drug testing in order to be eligible to receive meager financial assistance.

The first of these new rules were codified in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, which also included amendments to the Social Security Act. On October 4, 2019, after being directed by the Trump administration, the Department of Labor enacted the Final Rule change, which in the department’s own words, “allows states and employers a more flexible” approach in deciding how drug testing procedures would be implemented.

Drug testing procedures went into effect on November 4, 2019 and give states and the corporations that operate within them broad discretion in determining who gets tested and for what. These new rules further incentivize employers, who might not have previously drug tested employees to begin such procedures.

In addition to drug testing recipients, ten states passed laws limiting the twenty six week period during which one could collect benefits. A new law passed by the Alabama state legislature and taking effect in 2020 will reduce the term period a worker could receive insurance by 12 weeks, from 26 to only 14. In rare circumstances, a worker may be eligible for an additional week of benefits if they complete certain job training requirements or programs. These programs can take hours to complete, and are generally unpaid.

Five more states adopted stricter work-search requirements, forcing applicants to apply for jobs, even if they had no intention of working there or were unqualified, in order to still receive benefits. Job searchers are forced to keep logs, in many cases physical and digital, which must be updated or the benefits will be terminated. Finally, several states also trimmed the percentage employers would be obliged to contribute while also adopting measures forcing employees to contribute to their own insurance if they wanted to remain eligible.

The aim of these initiatives is not to root out “fraud” as is claimed. Dozens of studies and investigations have proven that unemployment insurance fraud is extremely hard to perpetrate and the benefits are obviously minimal.

Instead these new regulations were implemented to deter those that were eligible from even applying in the first place. Last year only 28 percent of those that applied for unemployment benefits were accepted, down from 37 percent in 2000. Unemployment insurance claims hit a 49 year low in April 2019 of this year. Only 192,000 applications were received, the lowest in a single week since September 1969.

The state of North Carolina has seen a drastic decrease in percentage of benefits paid out following the passage of stricter laws in 2012 and 2013. While nearly twenty-five percent of eligible Carolina workers received benefits in 2012, only 10 percent received benefits in 2018.

While North Carolina is one of the worst states as far as percentage of eligible workers receiving benefits, several other southern states also rank near the bottom regarding weekly payout of benefits and percentage of workers receiving any form of assistance. According to 2018 statistics compiled by the Department of Labor, Tennessee has the lowest weekly payout of any state, with the average worker only receiving $144 a week in benefits, or roughly $576 a month. Mississippi and Louisiana are the second and third lowest weekly payout respectively, with Mississippi paying out $206 on average a week and Louisiana not far behind with only $210 paid out per week.

The decline in workers receiving unemployment pay is not a sign of a “strong economy, humming along,” but instead a warning signal that millions of workers are not receiving the resources they need in order to survive or find a new job.

Another indicator of a “strong economy” which capitalist economists frequently cite is the strength of the “job market.” This strength, we are told, is expressed in the US economy adding jobs every month for 109 straight months. This “growth” coupled with an increase in employees quitting their jobs voluntarily, from a low of 1.3 percent in 2009, to nearly 2.3 percent in 2019, is further “proof” that workers are so secure in their living situation, compared to a decade ago, that they are able to freely quit and find new rewarding work.

Neither of these, however, are an accurate portrayal of the economic reality facing the vast majority of the US working population, or that the economic “recovery” has left millions worse off than they were ten, fifteen or twenty years ago.

Wealth inequality in the United States has continued to grow while the corporations that control the political system and both parties have continued to wage a counterrevolution against any and all economic and social gains made in previous generations including the bipartisan assault on unemployment insurance benefits.

OECD cuts global growth forecast

Nick Beams

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has cut its forecast for global growth for both this year and next year, warning that a low-growth trend could set in unless governments take urgent action to lift their economies.

The 36-member organisation of the world’s major economies made the warning in its latest update on the state of the global economy issued on Thursday. It said companies were holding back on investment in buildings and machinery as well as new technology due to economic uncertainty and trade tensions and that growth was at its lowest level since the global financial crisis.

A man walks by an electronic stock board of a securities firm in Tokyo [Credit: AP Photo/Koji Sasahara]

Speaking on the report, OECD chief economist Laurence Boone said, “Things are not really moving. What we are seeing is investment stalling, paving the way for growth to stay at this very low level.” She warned that if the “sluggish performance” continued there was a danger it could become “entrenched.”

Boone said the rise on financial markets suggested that investors believed the worst of the downturn was over. But buoyant markets “do not mean we are reversing the tide.”

The organisation forecast global growth of 2.9 percent this year and the same next year, with only a marginal pick-up to 3.1 percent in 2021. This represents a significant reduction from its forecast of 3.5 percent made just a year ago.

The OECD said investment had weakened as a result of the trade war between the US and China and the “erosion of a rules-based global trading system.”

In a separate report, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) indicated that this deterioration goes beyond the US and China. It found that members of the G20, comprising more than 80 percent of the world economy, had continued to impose restrictions on imports in the six months to October, with more than $460 billion worth of goods affected. This is the second highest figure for a six-month period on record.

The WTO’s director-general Roberto Azevedo said, “We need to see strong leadership from G20 economies if we want to avoid increased uncertainty, lower investment and even weaker trade growth.”

The OECD called for a priority to be placed on international cooperation, predictability in trade policy and an end to the “surge in trade-restricting measures” in order to revive growth. Boone said countries should develop national investment funds to promote more spending on new technology and the shift to green energy.

“The lack of policy direction to address climate change issues weighs down investment,” she said, and without the necessary public investment “businesses will put off investment decisions, with dire consequences for growth and employment.”

Boone told the Wall Street Journal that while an interim trade deal between the US and China would be welcome, it was just the “tip of the iceberg” and would not resolve the deeper problems—a reference to US demands for greater protection for intellectual property by Beijing and the cutting back of subsidies to state-owned enterprises, the issues at the heart of the conflict.

Former International Monetary Fund Director Christine Lagarde also addressed the issue of global growth in her first major speech as president of the European Central Bank (ECB). Speaking at a banking conference in Frankfurt on Friday, she called on European governments to boost public investment to shift the euro zone’s orientation away from exports towards domestic demand.

Continuing the commitment of her predecessor Mario Draghi to the financial markets, Lagarde said that the ECB would “continue to support the economy and respond to future risks,” but she repeated Draghi’s insistence that monetary policy “cannot and should not be the only game in town.”

She noted that euro zone public investment remained “some way below pre-crisis levels.” The share of what she called “productive investment,” which, in addition to infrastructure included spending on research and development and education, had fallen in nearly all euro zone economies since the financial crisis.

Lagarde began her remarks on the future of the euro economy by pointing to the “challenge” posed by the shifts in international trade. “Ongoing trade tensions and geopolitical uncertainties are contributing to a slowdown in world trade growth, which has more than halved since last year,” she said. “This has in turn depressed global growth to its lowest level since the great financial crisis.”

This had impacted the euro area, where growth is expected to be just 1.1 percent this year, some 0.7 percentage points below the level expected a year ago.

Besides the trade conflicts, there were structural changes at work, with emerging market economies shifting away from investment and manufacturing. This suggested that the “high rates of trade growth that we are used to seeing are no longer an absolute certainty.”

Another significant structural change was in the advanced economies, which “are in the midst of a long-term deceleration in growth rates, which have roughly halved since the late 1980s,” with labour productivity growth falling “by almost two-thirds in advanced economies since the early 1990s.”

The former chair of the US Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, speaking at the World Business Forum in New York on Thursday, described the US economy as in “excellent” shape, but then went on to note a number of developments that pointed in the opposite direction.

The US-China tariff war was having a detrimental impact on both businesses and consumers, she said. While she thought there would not be a recession in the coming year, she added that “the odds of a recession are higher than normal and at a level that I am not comfortable with.”

This was under conditions where, because of the Fed’s three interest rate cuts this year, there was “not as much scope as I would like to see for the Fed to be able to respond to that. So there is good reason to worry.”

In her remarks, Yellen pointed to the growing fears in ruling circles as to the social and political consequences—with or without a recession—of the growth of social inequality. She noted a “very worrisome long-term [trend] in which you have a very substantial share of the US workforce feeling like they’re not getting ahead. It’s true, they’re not getting ahead.”

This is a serious economic and social problem because it “leaves people with the feeling that the economy is not working for them, a sense of social discontent that is extremely disruptive.”

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.