Economic Growth is the Cause of Climate Change, Not the Solution to It

Rob Urie

Through 2019, the last year for which data is available, greenhouse gas emissions and global GDP growth remained as highly correlated as they have been for the last half century. What this means is that despite the rhetorical back-and-forth over technological innovation and government policies as potential solutions to climate change, the role of economic production as its cause is unchanged from prior years. To date, the outsourcing of greenhouse gas emissions to China and India accounts for most or all of the alleged progress being claimed by rich nations.

This relationship between GDP and greenhouse gas emissions is more than a statistical anomaly. It is evidence of the causal relationship between them. And because GDP can be stated in terms of income, responsibility for climate change is approximated through the distribution of income. Those with higher incomes are responsible for a greater quantity of climate change than those with lower incomes. This assignment of responsibility works at the level of nations and economic class. Rich nations are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than poor. And the global rich bear more responsibility than the global poor.

Graph: the level of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere has risen in close proportion to economic production as measured by GDP. While correlation doesn’t prove causation, several decades of examining the sources of greenhouse gas emissions does. And while theoretical analyses suggest that green technologies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the relationship of GDP levels (above) and rates of change (below) show no evidence of this promise to date. As has been demonstrated accidentally through the economic failures of neoliberalism, slowing the rate of economic growth is the only proven way of lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Source: World Bank, Github / Climate Watch.

In a world where capital is both fungible and mobile, the framing of greenhouse gas emissions within national geographical boundaries— as the Paris Climate Accord and other environmental agreements do, substantively misrepresents the political economy that produces them. Additionally, while technological innovation is both welcomed and encouraged here, the declining rate of economic growth since the neoliberal epoch began explains the declining rate of growth in greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, bottom-up theorizing about the impact of green technologies isn’t yet showing up in this top-down data.

For those unfamiliar with the history, the U.S. emerged from WWII with the only industrial infrastructure left intact. From about 1948 through the early 1970s, this produced a high level of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP growth coincident with high greenhouse gas emissions from within U.S. borders. As industrial infrastructure was built overseas, economic production became more widely distributed. Both China and India implemented export-led economic growth strategies, meaning that they took over greenhouse gas emitting economic production from the U.S. and Europe. The result: goods bound for U.S. and European markets are increasingly produced overseas.

In economic and environmental terms, globalization means that national geographical boundaries are of less value in identifying the sources of economic production. Most complex products like automobiles or computers now incorporate parts, resources, and labor from multiple countries. In environmental terms, this produces opportunistic mobility, a disconnect between legal jurisdiction and physical economic production. With China and India having taken over dirty economic production for the benefit of corporate interests and ‘consumers’ in rich countries, the question of who should bear the environmental costs is complicated.

Graph: this represents the ten-year rate of change in greenhouse gas emissions relative to the ten-year rate of change in global GDP using the same data from the top graph above. As the rate of growth in global GDP has fallen since the 1970s, so has the rate of growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Were ‘green growth’ a factor, greenhouse gas emissions would have fallen at a faster rate than global GDP. This has not happened. To date, cutting economic growth is the only demonstrated way of cutting the emissions that are causing climate change. Source: World Bank, Github / Climate Watch.

In terms of grabbing environmental headlines, the U.S. rejoining the Paris Climate Accord is good news. However, the framework of the accord as an agreement amongst nations plays into this disconnect between discrete national borders and the relocation of greenhouse gas emitting industries to China and India. Another way to consider the question is to ask: who benefits from economic production? The answer from mainstream economists illustrates the intellectual poverty of their premises: everyone. Markets didn’t ‘misprice’ carbon emissions for two centuries. Markets didn’t even know that they existed until climate scientists pointed them out.

One of the central points of the 2018 IPCC Climate Report on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is that the problem is global. There is no practical way to limit its impact to those who are creating it. The ‘steady state’ with respect to greenhouse gas emissions is a relative rate of growth. Irrespective of which party occupies the White House, every minute, hour, day, week, year, and decade environmental decline is getting worse in close proportion to economic production— GDP. The collective ‘we’ can either radically transform Western political economy starting three years ago or the future of humanity is an open question.

The longstanding use of marketing in the U.S. to quiet political disputes has resulted in a proneness to conflating symbolism with policy success. A quick perusal of environmental reporting found years of claims of success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that disappear once the national environmental ledgers are adjusted for outsourced emissions. Imports into the U.S. from China and India are assigned carbon footprints based of the pollution that is released in their production. Because these products are made for export to the U.S. and Europe, the political argument can be made that this is where the environmental costs should be borne.

The question for environmental negotiators is how this disconnect between national boundaries and outsourced emissions will be rectified? The national economic goals of the Chinese and Indian political leadership in building-out dirty, export-based industrial infrastructure is development economics 101. It is how Chinese and Indian economists educated at Harvard or Yale would have been taught to do economic development. The problem of differing stages of economic development is well understood in environmental negotiations. The question of how eight billion people can drive Escalades and live in McMansions has not been answered yet.

The problem is complicated by the economic decision making whereby the types of economic production that have been exported aren’t clearly distinct from methods. Not only have the U.S. and Europe outsourced dirty economic production, but the U.S. has been exporting the U.S. coal ‘saved’ through EPA restrictions on its domestic use to India, Brazil, China, etc. That is, if the political leadership in the U.S. were held to account for greenhouse gas emissions, the dirty coal it sold to China— much of it mined from Federal lands, would have been left in the ground. While Trump! is guilty of environmental crimes, it was Barack Obama who did this.

To date, Joe Biden has followed the American practice of making symbolic environmental changes, such as canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and restricting the licensing process for new oil and gas exploration on Federal lands. These are welcomed as symbols. But they will have little environmental impact unless further action is taken. The Keystone XL pipeline was to carry particularly dirty tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, other pipelines are already built, and the capacity exists, such that canceling the Keystone XL pipeline won’t limit the distribution of tar sands oil.

The restrictions placed on the licensing process for oil and gas extraction from Federal lands is temporary, and it won’t have an impact on the volume of oil and gas extracted for a decade or more due to the licenses that were left in place. While these moves are welcomed, and they represent a departure from the Trump administration in terms of signaled interests, prior administrations made similar moves only to cynically undermine them once they had served their political purpose. The political challenge is to support the moves made by Mr. Biden without confusing symbolism with substantive action.

The larger problem, and the purpose of relating GDP to greenhouse gas emissions above, is that ‘better than Trump’ isn’t good enough. The political question of how ‘we’ get from current circumstances to meeting the IPCC timeline for reducing greenhouse gas emissions— already considered conservative by many environmentalists, won’t be answered by adding together a host of small-bore initiatives, no matter how substantive they may feel after decades of neglect. To use a mechanical metaphor, fixing a tractor isn’t a theoretical question. Intentions don’t matter— the tractor either works or it doesn’t. This becomes a life-and-death matter when applied to the environment.

While some of these tensions are tangential for present purposes, they illustrate how thinly considered ‘political’ environmental plans can be. If the Biden plan is to replace gas-burning vehicles with EVs, some effort should have been made to assure that the resources needed to do so are available. However, this doesn’t appear to be the case. And while EVs are expected to reduce the environmental footprint of transportation, this didn’t happen when fuel efficiency standards were applied to cars. While the emissions per mile driven were reduced, both the number of miles driven and the number of cars on the road increased dramatically.

But the real problem is the quantity of pollution that will be produced acquiring resources and manufacturing EVs. What is being proposed is a massive increase in environmental destruction under the theory that the long term payoff will offset the expenditure— and more, in environmental terms. To compound metaphors here, when one finds one’s self in a hole, stop digging. The plan with EVs is to get a better shovel. Again, the purpose of the graphs relating greenhouse gas emissions to GDP (above) is that as of 2021, any increase in GDP means an equivalent increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

The half-baked Trump administration plan to lead a coup in Bolivia was thankfully averted by the Bolivian people. However, the subtext of the coup was lithium, the as-of-now necessary ingredient for EVs to be built. According to Ilargi, as posted on nakedcapitalism.com, EV automaker Tesla alone needed 165% of the available lithium supply in 2020. How precisely is a program to replace the existing stock of gas-burners with EVs going to work without enough lithium? More to the point, if meeting the IPCC timeline is possible, increasing greenhouse gas emissions to do so would have been risky and implausible thirty years ago. But that time has run out.

More than five million people were killed in the 2010s in a resource war in Democratic Republic of Congo to acquire coltan needed in the manufacture of cell phones. While Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report did some good reporting on the conflict, it was otherwise invisible to Americans. Economists exclude the human costs of these wars from cost estimates of technological solutions to climate change. But all of them imply resource wars. Given how climate change will decimate agricultural production, these wars are destined to become more frequent and vicious.

If the supply of resources hasn’t been thought through, then the environmental accounting relative to EVs most certainly hasn’t been thought through. Lithium mining is profoundly environmentally destructive. And the U.S, military is the largest user of fossil fuels in the world. Paradoxically, much of this use goes toward securing supplies of natural resources. The point: the broader political context in which economic production takes place makes narrow environmental accounting more obfuscatory than illuminating.

More broadly still, a paradox of capitalism, or whichever term you prefer for Western political economy, is that profits are earned in proportion to the ability of polluting industries to dump their costs onto others. This provides the rationale for the proverbial ‘race to the bottom’ where no single industrialist or industrial organization can stop aggregate industrial pollution, but they all benefit from their ability to shift the costs of production to others. These profits produce favorable financing terms from Wall Street, broadly considered, further lowering costs— and enhancing corporate profits. Whomever is best at this game gains the economic power to control political outcomes.

While this reads as a morality play, and on a certain level it is, these intentions are built into the corporate form as well as the logic of capitalism. Corporate managers along multiple lines of responsibility are employed to game whatever regulatory regime exists to govern corporate behavior. This practice is well understood with taxation, where the lawyers and accountants of multinational corporations exploit discrete legal structures through ‘regulatory arbitrage.’ They use international mobility and the power of coercion to seek out and control locales and governments through which taxes can be avoided.

The legal limitation of the Paris Accord, the question of which bodies have the jurisdiction to midwife and enforce environmental agreements, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) clauses embedded in the original NAFTA were removed from the re-negotiated NAFTA, but residual lawsuits remain. Had ‘free-trade’ proponents had their way, the ISDS clauses in the original NAFTA and the TPP would have made the enforcement of environmental regulations by national governments virtually impossible.

Of current relevance is that the legal structures created through ISDS clauses can be used to preclude environmental regulation without in any way identifying them as ‘environmental.’ While those who pay attention to trade issues might know them as such, political opportunists who publicly identify as environmentalists have become particularly adept at undermining their own well-publicized environmental programs. Joe Biden has left the door open to negotiating trade agreements with the promise to ‘give labor a seat at the table.’ However, if ‘the table’ isn’t where binding decisions are made, the offer is worse than useless because it is deceptive.

The point here isn’t to cast aspersions, but to consider how environmental agreements are conceived, negotiated, and enforced. Readers are invited to further consider how the income measure of GDP works as a framework for understanding the political economy of climate change. The logic, again, is that GDP and greenhouse gas emission levels and rates of change are causally related. At the levels of nations and class, rich nations and the global rich bear quanta of responsibility for these emissions approximated by their income-shares of GDP. The relationship isn’t perfect, but it fundamentally reframes environmental politics in the class terms from which the problems emanate.

The prospective benefit of a robust Green New Deal with a Job Guarantee is that it would shift social resources down the class distribution in a way that reflects the class basis of environmental problems. This isn’t what is being proposed and it is important to understand the difference. The rich made themselves rich by trashing the planet that the rest of us depend on for existence. Leaving it to the rich to voluntarily clean up the mess they created would look a lot like making nice-sounding but unenforceable agreements between nations while subsidizing corporations to further trash the planet through ‘green’ capitalism. This will not work, and we’re out of time for marketing b.s. and green capitalist experiments.

Soil Is Gold

Bharat Dogra

Gold has long been considered the most important form of wealth. Diamonds are another. When oil became the most widely used source of energy, then people started referring to oil as the black gold. At various times since then, different  important minerals have been highlighted as being very valuable.

But the more these minerals are extracted  in any country, the lesser their value that remains with the country. What is more, the very process of their extraction often involves so much damage to the environment of the region. The profit from the mining of these minerals and their trade is often concentrated in the hands of a few rich persons and entities. The wealth of these minerals is often concentrated in a few regions, but  there is no assurance at all that the people of these regions will benefit from this. In fact extraction of the more valuable minerals has frequently involved much violence, displacement and hazards, often directed at local people, hence the use of expressions like ‘blood diamonds.’

On the other   hand there is another form of wealth available in abundance. The more care with which it is used, the more its value can increase and people can go on using with proper care without reducing its worth.  For all who recognize its true worth and  use it properly and with due caution  benefits will come not just for today but for future as well.  This most abundant wealth accessible to all is soil ( known more commonly by local names of mitti or maati in India).

Till about a century ago there was widespread appreciation of the great worth of soil. A reflection of this was that whenever one had to take a pledge of honor and self-respect, this was  frequently in the name of soil ( mitti ki saugandh). A pinch of soil would be taken in hand to signify honor and commitment. This was no empty talk—this  was matched by the reality of a lot of care and commitment to  maintaining and protecting the quality of soil. But as people started giving less attention to care of soil , the references to soil in daily talk also suffered a degradation.

The most precious contribution of soil is of course associated with providing the most essential need of food. The more care we take of soil and protect its natural fertility the more assured we can be of getting healthy , safe and nutritious food on sustainable basis. The less care we give the lesser will be the ability of soil to provide this most valuable service to humanity and all forms of life.

If looked after properly, soil is easily the most abundant provider of sustainable and highly creative, satisfying livelihoods. If soil is eroded and its quality, fertility decline, then its ability to provide sustainable livelihoods declines, and the livelihoods which still depend on it start getting less creative and more precarious.

Soil is home to billions of creatures such as earthworms and micro-organisms, very welcome and useful inhabitants of this planet who contribute to its welfare without asking for anything in turn by indulging all the time in activities which contribute to the fertility , porosity and overall well-being of soil. They demand no feed or fodder from human beings, they merely ask for a right to living in the soil undisturbed to  make their own arrangements. But human beings have denied even this basic right to their best friends, their most  undemanding friends. By indiscriminate use of agro-chemicals and in other ways, human beings have been killing and destroying billions and billions of these humble and sincere friends.

Good care of soil is also very important for ensuring adequate availability of that other most basic need—water. If porosity and stability of soil can be maintained by proper care—earthworms can again be very helpful in this—then rainwater and moisture can be much better conserved.

Care and protection of soil was always very important, but in times of climate change this importance has increased further. It has always been known that the key to maintaining the natural fertility of soil is its organic content, obtained by decomposition of various biological materials including fallen leaves, other plant residues and excreta of various life forms particularly those which dwell in soil itself. But now in times of climate change the importance of this organic content of soil is also enhanced in other important ways in terms of absorbing carbon and hence contributing to checking climate change. Since soil is spread all over, with its better care and increase of organic content over a number of  years, we can not only contribute much to improving prospects of healthy food and satisfying sustainable livelihoods, this can also contribute much more to checking climate change.

This protection of soil should be confined not just to rural areas but should extend to urban areas where the craze for indiscriminate concretization of land should be given up and there should be many more green spaces and gardens created not by chemical fertilizers and pesticides but in natural ways.

Soil is thus  clearly the most important wealth of any  country. While millions of people are willing to slog,  cheat, rob or even kill for gold, diamonds and cash, unfortunately the realization of the importance of soil does not get adequate attention and instead of increasing care of soil recent decades have witnessed  not just increasing neglect but also increasing , relentless destruction of soil and soil-organisms. The decreasing number of farmers and gardeners who still continue to take care of soil are being scorned and neglected. The family farms and farming communities which alone are capable of taking care of soil are being pushed aside by big corporate interests  with their heavy machines and bagfuls of agro-chemicals,  mounting nothing less than an assault on soil health and on soil organisms who create this soil health.

Clearly  big efforts have to be made to protect soil, the most precious wealth of all nations and of world, and for this farmers, gardeners, scientists and citizens who care should all raise their voice before it is too late.

The Greater Green Revolution

Bharat Dogra

The green revolution has been widely discussed and its different aspects have been highlighted by various observers according to their own understanding of emphasis and priorities. To this writer the essence of the green revolution seems to be in the following tendencies, all the more significant because these seem to be shared by technological changes in other sectors of rural development spread by the same forces.

Firstly, the green revolution seeks to draw, for better or for worse may be debated later, the peasantry of even very remote rural areas into the pressures and influences of the international market. As long as the farmer continued to grow his traditional varieties with very meager or even nil quantities of agrochemicals, diesel or machinery, he was least affected by what happened in the oil, fertilizer and other related industries of the world, or by the relation of the domestic industry producing these inputs to the industry of other countries, but with the advent of the green revolution all this suddenly became quite important for millions of farmers in the form of the price and availability of fertilizers, pesticides, diesel, tractors etc.

Secondly the propaganda on behalf of the green revolution emphasizes its suitability for small farmers and in a technological sense there is nothing to stop a farmer from growing the new seeds. Seen in the reality of Indian rural conditions and indeed in the conditions of many other countries, the new seeds requiring expensive inputs in large amounts are most likely to trap the low-resource, poor farmer in a debt trap, while those endowed with the largest resource base in rural areas are able to take advantage of the several new opportunities, not necessarily in agricultural production but even more in trade of produce as well as inputs or ‘agro business’ which the green  revolution seeds and their related inputs bring.

A related issue is the very narrow way in which the green revolution concerns itself with the basic problem of hunger. In Indian conditions it was evident that to effectively tackle the problem of hunger food production should not just grow but grow specifically on the fields of the poorer farmers in backward areas. On the other hand by emphasizing concentration of resources in the already well endowed regions and at least initially on the better-off farmers the green revolution follows an opposite pattern. By so doing it makes it possible to collect  ‘marketable surplus’ of grain from a relatively small area to enhance the government’s stocks of grain which, however, by itself cannot ensure that this food reaches the hungry. Thus the green revolution takes a cynical view of the pain of hunger – flaunting grain stocks and asking where is the problem, while doing nothing effective by itself to really increase the ability of the hungry people to eat better.

Lastly it should be pointed out that the green revolution strategy has been promoted and supported at various levels by the foundations and aid organizations based in western countries, as also the multilateral aid, finance and research organizations in which these countries are dominant. These interests have been generally very supportive of big agribusiness corporations.

If these are accepted as some of the most important features of the green revolution, however, the technological changes in other areas of rural development-dairy-development, fisheries and forestry for instance can be seen as exhibiting much the same tendencies. Hence these overall changes can be described as the greater green revolution.

In the case of dairy development the foreign aid based Operation Flood project strengthened for all time to come the trend of big infra-structure, big city-supply centered path of dairy development, denying a more imaginative and pioneering path more suited to the needs of India. The dairy development strategy of this project put more emphasis on the technology of crossbreed cows which is less suited for small, low resource farmer and for hot weather conditions ( likely to be even less suitable for times of climate change, and for meeting bullock needs of agriculture).  By emphasizing the availability of plenty of milk and milk products in cities for those who have the purchasing power for this, the ‘white revolution’ also adopts a cynical attitude towards the problem of malnutrition, being concerned with only the product and not with who gets it. As milk processing moves away from villages, the cheapest by product of chaach, also the cheapest source of protein, is likely to become much less available to poorer households, compared to its much more abundant and more or less free availability earlier. As more emphasis shifts to supplying milk to big cities with large-scale urban milk processing plants, crucial aspects such as improving pastures, equal deal for weaker sections in dairy development get less importance. With oilseed processing also shifting to huge city processing, oilcakes and other nutritive feed do not go to local farm and dairy animals, these go instead to those who can pay more and in practice this often means the export market. Operation Flood established the trend of mixing fresh milk arbitrarily with cheaper stored milk powder and butter oil from any part of world, and using this, the organized dairy sector can price out the independent small dairy producer any day. The independent small dairy producer keeps complaining that her costs are more than her price in a system dominated by the organized sector which can mix milk powder and butter oil etc. with fresh milk to always have a competitive edge over the unorganized sector and the independent small farmer.

In the area of forestry, massive aid for forestry projects has been accompanied by increased orientation of forestry officials towards forestry practices and policies to predominantly satisfy the need of industries. Emphasis on supporting the growth of mainly those species which industry finds useful, at the expense of the trees needed by tribals and other villagers, has played havoc with their lives and specially with their access to free food available in forests (which was specially useful in lean agricultural season and in drought years).Forestry projects have emphasized monocultures of commercially and industrially  useful species of trees with adverse impacts on environment and availability of food, fodder, medicinal plants  as well as other useful forest based products to local communities, particularly tribal communities. This trend is very harmful also for wild life and biodiversity. India’s fifth five-year plan stated its priority is to shift “ to a dynamic program of production forestry aiming at clear-felling and creating large-scale man-made forests with the help of institutional financing.” A little after this the National Commission of Agriculture went to the extent of saying, “ Production of industrial wood will have to be the raison d’étre for the existence of forests”.

In the area of marine fisheries also the traditional fisher folk communities of coastal areas have suffered with the growing linkages of coastal fisheries to the export-led growth and to the subsequent domination of big business interests and increasing mechanization, promoted by international projects and agencies, .In some places rising exports of fish have been accompanied by declining local per capita availability of this staple protein. In many places original fishers, have faced increasing difficulties while late entrants to marine fisheries have made fortunes.. Aquaculture  projects promoted by big business interests  have faced increasing criticism for  ecological ruin and adverse impacts on  coastal communities.

The extension of several important features of the green revolution , as also the same thinking underlying the technological change in agriculture, (as well promotion by similar powerful interests) to other areas of rural development may be called the greater green revolution. This writer had written a booklet using the title of the greater green revolution for this clear trend , and as there was much approval and appreciation of this by discerning readers, the use of this phrase for this phenomenon has persisted on his part. It is a common and important part of all aspects of the green revolution and the greater green revolution that strong attempts are made to break the self-reliance of rural communities and to increase their dependence on outer forces, which in course of time leads to the indebtedness and often even the displacement of rural communities from their land or other resource base—this is particularly the fate of the weaker and more vulnerable members of these communities but not entirely confined to them.

Hence following the commonly used description of green revolution in the context of agriculture, the greater green revolution may be defined as the extension of similar thinking and technology in animal husbandry and dairying, fisheries, forestry and other related activities which lead to a disruption of traditional practices and the related wisdom of many , many generations, accompanied by the imposition of technologies and inputs which break self-reliance and impose exploitative linkages which are harmful for sustainable development, nutrition, environment protection and animal welfare, while leading to increased business for industrial interests.

Unionists aim to break Northern Ireland protocol of Brexit agreement

Steve James

Northern Ireland’s right-wing unionist parties and hardline Tory Brexiteers, with the support of loyalist paramilitary groups, are intent on breaking the Northern Ireland Protocol component of Britain’s European Union (EU) withdrawal agreement.

The protocol is a ramshackle and fragile compromise devised to avoid any return to a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It became necessary because Northern Ireland, which remains part of the UK, has left the EU. But neither the UK, the EU or the Irish government want to be seen to re-impose politically and economically ruinous border checks on the island of Ireland.

Vehicles at the port of Larne, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

A “hard border” risks fatally undermining the 1998 Good Friday, or Belfast Agreement, which brought Northern Ireland’s decades long “Troubles” to an end. Over the years since the agreement established the power-sharing arrangement between the pro-British Unionist and Irish Republican parties, led by Sinn Fein, in the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont, the border has been transformed. The heavily militarised frontier has become near invisible, crossed thousands of times each day without impediment, reflecting the high level of integration of the economy and working population across the island.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the largest unionist party, under leader and First Minister Arlene Foster, supported and campaigned for a hard Brexit and propped up Theresa May’s Conservative government in return for cash and concessions. Boris Johnson attended the DUP conference of 2018, denouncing May’s “backstop” compromise with the EU, which Johnson said turned Northern Ireland into a “semi-colony of the EU.”

After the 2019 UK general election returned Johnson as prime minister with an increased majority, he had no need to rely on the DUP, who were unceremoniously dumped. In October 2019, Johnson made an agreement with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar behind the back of his unionist allies, to allow the minimal Brexit deal, including the protocol, a variant on May’s backstop, to be struck.

The protocol displaces external EU customs checks on trade from the North/South border into the Irish Sea, with ports in Northern Ireland and the UK functioning as the EU’s external trade boundary. Johnson and Varadkar ignored the Northern Ireland Assembly, only allowing Stormont the opportunity to reverse the protocol after four years. Even this would be dependent on a simple majority, rather than the cross-community vote that would have guaranteed a DUP veto. Unionists lost their absolute majority in the assembly in 2017.

Immediately on introduction, January 1 this year, the new arrangements required complex, time consuming and expensive checks on commerce, particularly goods vehicles, between Britain and Northern Ireland. Moreover, the checks are now the norm, rather than merely teething troubles, and impact many aspects of the Northern economy, threatening thousands of businesses and jobs.

Late January, the vaccine wars between the UK and EU prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, centred on a conflict over which contracts took precedence, saw Brussels invoke the protocol’s Article 16 allowing either party to bar trade in the face of “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist”. The EU briefly blocked vaccine exports from the continent to Northern Ireland, enraging the British and Irish governments and underscoring Northern Ireland’s vulnerability under the new arrangements.

The unionist parties were apoplectic. Ian Paisley Jnr, DUP member of parliament for North Antrim, wailed at British government minister Michael Gove in Westminster, “What did we do, to members of the benches over there, to be screwed over by this protocol?”

In a letter, late last month, to Johnson, leaders of the DUP, the pro-Remain (in the EU) Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), and the Traditional Unionist Voice warned, “Our unified and unalterable position is that the protocol is incapable of being reformed and must be repudiated and superseded by arrangements which fully respect Northern Ireland’s position as a constituent and integral part of the United Kingdom.”

The unionists warned Johnson that his government would face a legal challenge unless he took “immediate action to settle a new arrangement... consistent with the Act of Union 1800, the Northern Ireland Act of 1998 and the Belfast Agreement”.

That the 1800 Act of Union, still in force in Northern Ireland, should be invoked reveals the extent to which the contradictions between the modern world economy and the outmoded nation state system are tearing at the foundations of even the most longstanding political arrangements.

The Act of Union was the British government’s response to the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion, inspired by the American and French revolutions, led by Wolfe Tone. The rebellion, seeking civil, political, and religious liberty and an end to the British domination of Ireland, suffered from poor organisation and the absence of promised support from revolutionary France. It was brutally put down by British forces.

The Act of Union abolished Ireland’s existing parliament and cemented the rule of the wealthy Protestant Ascendancy, of which today’s vastly weakened unionists are the heirs. It created the political framework for Ireland to be forcibly economically retarded over the next century, its nascent industry destroyed and the country reduced to colonial status as a source of agriculture, cheap labour, and cannon fodder for British imperialism.

That the act is still in force today points to the character of the six county Ulster statelet that emerged from Ireland’s partition by Britain in 1921, after the 1916 Easter Rising and the Anglo-Irish war. Ulster, based on the six most Protestant dominated counties, was founded to maintain British control of the island and defend the interests of the Ulster capitalist class, whose then powerful industry was closely to tied to Britain. British imperialism went to war again in 1969, fighting a decades-long “dirty war” against Irish republicans, on behalf of the unionist bourgeoisie, before arriving at the power-sharing Belfast Agreement, designed to create sufficient stability and cross border connections to attract investment.

Both acts, bookending nearly two centuries of British domination of Ireland, are unraveling, a fact that is dawning belatedly on the unionists.

Other actions to follow include steps to “actively oppose at every opportunity” measures “which undermine Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market.” A petition demanding the removal of “barriers to unfettered trade within the United Kingdom” drew 140,000 signatures and resulted in a Westminster debate. The letter warned that the DUP would withdraw from bodies such as the North South Ministerial Council, the main body organising cross border co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The unionists have been supported by the European Research Group of 50 hardline Tory Brexiteer MPs in Westminster. ERG members all voted for Johnson’s withdrawal agreement, but now see the EU decision to invoke Article 16 as a “unique political opportunity”. The ERG are calling for Johnson to trigger Article 16 and prepare legislation to “ensure free trade within the UK”.

An article in the Irish Times by former UUP First Minister, and one of the Belfast Agreement’s architects, David Trimble, stressed that, rather than protect the Belfast Agreement, the protocol, with its petty rules “enforced by European Union inspectors who oversee the work of UK officials at Northern Ireland ports” was pulling it apart. Trimble threatened that if the “genuine grievances and resentments caused by the protocol are not addressed politically, then there is real potential for those who have engaged in past violence to take action again into their own hands.”

Trimble’s euphemism to “past violence” was a reference to the state infiltrated loyalist paramilitary groups, responsible for hundreds of murders during the “Troubles” and who retain a controlling influence in some of the most oppressed working class Protestant areas. According to the most recent Independent Reporting Commission, set up in 2017, paramilitarism on both sides of Northern Ireland’s political and religious divide retains thousands of signed up members, although only a relatively small proportion of those were active.

The Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), a legal face for the banned Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association, and the Red Hand Commandos, has told the Johnson government that its affiliates were temporarily withdrawing their backing for the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

First Minister Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds played the same card as Trimble. The pair met with the Loyalist Communities Council before its announcement, with Foster describing the fascistic gangs, mostly involved in drug sales and thuggery against each other and working class youth, as part of the “loyalist and unionist community”.

Last week, the DUP’s Brexit spokesperson, Sammy Wilson, Westminster MP for East Antrim, threatened “guerrilla warfare” against the protocol, “until the big battle opportunity comes”. Northern Ireland agriculture minister, the DUP’s Gordon Lyons, ordered a halt to the construction of permanent customs checking posts in Northern Ireland’s ports, stopped recruiting customs staff and refused to levy charges on traders bringing goods into Northern Ireland.

The Irish bourgeois parties of Sinn Fein, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, and the Irish government have promoted the business opportunities, exploiting easy access to the EU and Britain, that the Northern Ireland Protocol offers potential investors. Neither side proposes anything to the working class other than vicious austerity and the consequence of the pandemic, equally badly handled North and South.

Loyalism and Unionism are much reduced forces today. An entire generation has grown up in Northern Ireland used to free movement across the island, and across Europe. Ireland itself is riven with class divisions and with a large and cosmopolitan working population. Nevertheless, sectarian conflicts threaten to re-emerge until the working class, seeking the dismantling of British imperialism’s remaining apparatus in the North and the abolition of capitalist rule across the island, as part of the struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe, comes forward to prevent it.

Plummeting currency fuels poverty and protests in Lebanon

Jean Shaoul

Workers took to the streets across Lebanon and set up roadblocks with barrels and burning tyres for the second day as the Lebanese pound fell on Monday to an all-time low, trading at nearly 10,000 to the US dollar on the black market.

The economic and financial crisis, intensified by the coronavirus pandemic and Lebanon’s default on its sovereign debt to international lenders, has thrown more than half of the country’s six million population into poverty. The falling currency has led to soaring food prices, while the minimum wage has fallen in real terms to just $67 a month, down from about $450 a month two years ago, making it impossible to put food on the table. Last December, the World Bank forecast that Lebanon’s GDP would fall by nearly 20 percent, warning that the country faced an “arduous and prolonged depression.”

A Lebanese protester holds an Arabic placard that reads: “Down with the rule of the bank,” in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Feb. 26, 2021.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The desperate shortage of hard currency has also led to delays in importing fuel oil and diesel to generate electricity, resulting in long power outages across the country lasting more than 12 hours a day.

The suffering extends into neighbouring Syria, whose economy is closely linked with that of Lebanon, once part of Syria before the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Syria—whose economy has been ravaged by Western sanctions and the 10-year proxy war waged by the US, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad—saw its currency fall to 3,900 Syrian pounds against the dollar. Many Syrians, who use Lebanese banks that offered consumers savings and checking accounts in US dollars with interest rates of up to 30 percent, found their money blocked as Lebanon’s central bank implemented tighter capital controls.

Many basic commodities are expensive and in short supply, with long queues forming outside bakeries and fuel stations, and frequent power cuts adversely affecting local businesses and exacerbating unemployment. Once a grain exporter, Syria has seen its wheat production fall by half in the wake of several years of drought and then the war that has wreaked havoc on the country’s agriculture. It has now become a wheat importer. The price of bread has shot up in the wake of US-imposed sectoral sanctions and Russia’s restrictions on the export of wheat to maintain its own supplies during the pandemic.

Similarly, once self-sufficient in oil, Syria’s fuel supply has been curtailed via US sanctions on its oil trade and its military support for Kurdish control over the eastern oil fields.

Such is Lebanon’s political impasse—symptomatic of the wider collapse of bourgeois governments around the world—that no new government has been sworn in since the resignation of Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government in the wake of the catastrophic blast in the Beirut port. Last August’s explosion, widely blamed on years of official negligence and corruption by successive governments, killed 211 people, injured more than 6,000 and destroyed much of the northern part of the city.

Last October, President Michel Aoun called on former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a billionaire client of Saudi Arabia and France who was forced to resign in the face of months-long mass demonstrations that started in October 2019. The protests erupted over rising poverty, social inequality and rampant government corruption, and raised the demands for an end to the sectarian political system and elections to form a new government.

But the two men have been unable to agree the membership of a new cabinet that would encompass their different patronage networks.

Protests that started in northern Lebanon soon spread to southern Lebanon, the capital Beirut, its southern suburbs that are home to Hezbollah supporters, and the eastern Bekaa regions, encompassing supporters of all the main political groups.

Pegged to the dollar at 1,500 since 1997, the pound had fallen precipitously on the black market as the economic crisis deepened, stabilising at 8,000-8,500 to the dollar in recent weeks, after falling to 9,900 pounds in July. The central bank subsidised the difference between the two rates, as well as the import of many staple goods, including fuel and flour. The exchange houses and commercial banks are mandated by the government to trade at 3,900 pounds to the dollar, an order uniformly ignored.

This latest fall followed the central bank’s review of Lebanon’s lenders, some of the country’s richest businessmen and politicians, and Sunday’s deadline to the banks to increase their capital by 20 percent. The bank’s review was in response to international pressure for financial reforms as the precondition for releasing loans to the heavily indebted country. According to al-Akhbar, the currency collapse was partly due to the commercial banks withdrawing dollars out of the market to meet the central bank’s demands.

Lebanon—caught in the crosshairs of the escalating conflict between, on the one hand, the US, Israel and the Gulf petro-monarchs, and on the other hand, Iran and its allies, including Syria—has been hung out to dry as US President Joe Biden steps up the pressure on Iran.

The Gulf states have refused to help, despite Hariri’s recent tour with a begging bowl, unless he forms a government that is not dependent upon Hezbollah, the militant Shia group that is backed by Iran and has the largest bloc in Lebanon’s parliament. Western banks and institutions have refused to stump up $11billion pledged at a 2018 conference until the government implements free market reforms, while talks with the International Monetary Fund last spring stalled for similar reasons.

These latest protests follow others in recent weeks against the ruling elite and deteriorating living conditions. Last month, angry clashes broke out between protesters and the security services outside a military court in Beirut after judges ruled that six demonstrators in Tripoli, Lebanon’s poorest city, had committed “terrorism and theft” during anti-poverty riots in January that were broken up by lethal force.

There have been protests against the delays and corruption marking the farcical official inquiry into the port blast. Judge Fadi Sawan, who was leading the investigation, was dismissed by the Court of Cessation, who questioned his objectivity given that his own house was one of those damaged by the explosion. His dismissal came after he had charged caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab, who had sought to investigate the unsafe storage of ammonium nitrate cache at the port for years as soon as he was notified, and three former ministers with negligence over the blast, not his predecessors who had done nothing about it.

There were also protests against the banks that have reportedly delayed implementing the so-called “Student Dollar Law” that allows students to receive up to $10,000 while studying at a university abroad.

Lebanon, whose health care system has collapsed, has some of the world’s highest rates of new COVID-19 infections and deaths, with the total number of infections nearing 400,000 and deaths approaching 5,000.

Further fueling popular anger against the ruling elite is the politicians’ brazen queue-jumping as they sought to get some of the fewer than 30,000 vaccines made available as part of the World Bank’s $34 million grant, the first to be made available to any country, to purchase the BioNTech/Pfizer jab.

President Aoun, his wife and 10 members of his entourage, followed by 16 legislators and a handful of staffers got their shots ahead of some 730,000 people who were registered, prompting outrage and the resignation in disgust of Thalia Arawi, ethics officer for the national vaccination programme. The World Bank has threatened to suspend financing for the vaccines and pandemic support for Lebanon if the violations are confirmed.

This follows the efforts by Lebanon’s leaders to use a $204 million loan by the World Bank to provide cash transfers to 147,000 poor Lebanese families for the next year to their own advantage by distributing the cash to recipients in pounds at a below-market rate, with the banks pocketing the difference.

The divisions and splits within the ruling elite are evidenced by the increased scrutiny of Riad Salameh, governor of Lebanon’s central bank since 1993, who has long been close to Washington and Paris, for his mismanagement of the economy. He, along with two exchange brokers, is reportedly under investigation by a judge over charges related to the disbursement of US dollars to currency exchange brokers. Salameh is also due to be questioned by Swiss officials over money-laundering, allegations he described as “fabrications and fake news.”

UK Labour Party outlines its agenda for nuclear warfare targeting Russia

Chris Marsden

Shadow Secretary of State for Defence John Healey used a February 26 speech to Britain’s premier military think-tank to reposition the Labour Party as an unwavering advocate for the NATO alliance and nuclear weapons.

Healey spoke to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) regarding Labour’s response to the Conservative government’s Integrated Review of the UK’s Defence and Security Policy.

Announced last February by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the repeatedly delayed review is to set out a post-Brexit foreign and defence policy for the next five years. Its delays point to the difficulties facing British imperialism in fashioning a military strategy, when its use value for US imperialism was its position within the European Union (EU), as a counter to Germany and France’s plans for a European military policy more independent from NATO.

When the review was first announced, Professor Malcolm Chalmers from RUSI said of the UK’s dilemma, “What they have to deal with is an increased uncertainty about our long-term relationship with Europe on one hand, and whether we can rely on Donald Trump’s United States on the other.”

The election of the Democrats under President Joe Biden has done nothing to lessen this dilemma, given that they are far less keen than Trump for the UK to pursue a go-it-alone strategy and thereby lose a pro-NATO US ally within Europe.

Healey was tasked with advancing a strategic arc to bridge the gulf between the US and Europe. But before doing so he had to put to bed the false accusations that Labour’s loyalty to NATO, nuclear weapons and the strategic interests of British imperialism had been brought into question by the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn had come to lead the party in September 2015 due to a dramatic leftward shift within the working class, which led hundreds of thousands to join the party and vote for him based on his long record as a “left”. This included his declared opposition to NATO, support for nuclear disarmament, criticism of British military interventions, his striking an anti-imperialist pose through relations with nationalist movements on Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Ireland, and his refusal to commit to launching a nuclear strike against Russia.

The campaign to oust Corbyn waged by the Blairite right-wing, the Conservatives, Zionists and the media centred on the claim that he could not be trusted on questions of national security, more even than his advocacy of minimal social reforms. The most sinister element of the anti-Corbyn campaign was when, in November 2015, the then head of the UK’s armed forces, Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghton, when asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr about Corbyn’s statement that he would never authorise the use of nuclear weapons, replied, “Well, it would worry me if that thought was translated into power.”

A spokeswoman for then Prime Minister David Cameron stated that “as the principal military adviser to the Government,” it was “reasonable” for Houghton “to talk about how we maintain the credibility of one of the most important tools in our armoury.”

In September, within days of Corbyn taking the leadership, the Sunday Times had carried comments from a “senior serving general” that, in the event of Corbyn becoming prime minister, there would be “the very real prospect” of “a mutiny.” Elements within the military would be prepared to use “whatever means possible, fair or foul,” the officer declared. He went on to say: “You would see a major break in convention with senior generals directly and publicly challenging Corbyn over vital important policy decisions such as Trident, pulling out of NATO and any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.”

In February 2017, RUSI reported that it was “delighted to announce the appointment of His Grace the Duke of Wellington OBE DL and General Sir Nicholas Houghton GCB CBE ADC as new trustees.”

Corbyn’s retreat in the face of this offensive was total and saw him give a free vote to Labour MPs on the bombing of Syria in December 2015 and reaffirming Labour’s commitment to NATO and the Trident nuclear submarine missile system, telling Labour’s conference, “We’re not going to divide and ruin ourselves as a party over this”. He mounted the 2017 general election campaign on a manifesto committed to spending at least two percent of GDP on the military, NATO membership, and maintaining the UK’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

Having refused to wage any struggle against the right-wing during his five years in office, Corbyn gifted leadership of the party to Sir Keir Starmer last April. He left Labour as he found it, a pro-capitalist, anti-working class and anti-socialist representative of British imperialism.

Nevertheless, Starmer is now expected to reassure the British ruling class, including the military, that Labour can be trusted to do as it is told without hesitation.

On June 27 last year, RUSI commissioned Mike Gapes, a former MP and anti-Corbyn plotter who quit the party in 2019 to write, “The UK’s Labour Party: The Long March to Regaining Trust and Electability on Security Policy.”

Gapes instructed Starmer to end his “muted beginnings” to “repositioning the party.”

He complained that “many people who supported Corbyn’s so-called ‘anti-imperialist’, ‘pro-peace’ approach are still active in the Labour Party at all levels, including some on Starmer’s front bench”. In Labour’s policy review consultation document, “Championing internationalism in a Post-Coronavirus World”, he added, “There is, incredibly, no mention of NATO at all, no reference to levels of defence spending, no reference to Trident or nuclear deterrence, and no direct reference to the defence industry or to arms exports, apart from: ‘we must find a way to better utilise... the expertise of our worker forces (sic), trades unions, and British defence manufacturers for the benefit of partners around the world’.”

Starmer must remedy these failings, including managing a “transition to a more nuanced and balanced view of the world,” i.e., withdrawing support from the Palestinians, supporting Israel, a continued military presence in Iraq and Bahrain, arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and support for hostilities against Iran led by the US.

Gapes told Starmer to recognise, “Throughout its history, Labour always had tension between its trade union affiliates and left-wing anti-military activists. But the Attlee government established NATO and introduced nuclear weapons, which were maintained and updated under the governments of Labour prime ministers Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown… So, the new leadership will be expected to answer the question of the role of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, as well as what should be the UK’s stance towards the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] Review and in any future arms control process.”

Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (left) with Attlee in 1945 (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

He demanded to know “how Labour will react to the Integrated [defence] Review,” to “maintaining a commitment to the two-percent of GDP NATO spending target”, and the “thorny questions about Labour’s support for the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy and defence and security cooperation with the EU… It was relatively easy for Labour to take an anti-Trump position on foreign policy and to criticise Theresa May and Boris Johnson, but a Biden presidency could pose challenges for both government and opposition.”

Gapes’ message to Starmer on behalf of the Generals provided the model for Healey’s address to RUSI.

If further proof were needed of the impact of Corbyn’s political cowardice, this is provided by the choice of Healey as Starmer’s messenger. Healey, an adviser to former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was brought into Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, from which he then resigned in June 2016 as part of the Blairite plot to remove Corbyn.

The shadow defence secretary gave a brief preamble citing the “proliferating” threats to national security, before restating “Labour’s core principles on national defence and security, so that voters, service personnel and the defence industry can see where we, the new leadership of the Labour Party, are coming from.”

These were:

• “Labour’s commitment to NATO is unshakeable. And mutual defence through Article V is the cornerstone of Labour’s commitment on Britain’s security, which Attlee’s foreign secretary Ernest Bevin fought for at NATO’s foundation.”
  
  
• “Labour’s support for nuclear deterrence is non-negotiable. The matter is settled. From Kinnock to Corbyn—with Blair, Brown and Miliband in between—this has been, and will remain, Labour policy.”
  
  
• “Labour’s commitment to international law, to universal human rights and to the multilateral treaties and organisations that uphold them is total.”
  
  
• “Labour’s determination to see British investment directed first to British industry is fundamental, not just to our thinking on defence, but to our vision of the kind of society we want to build.”

John Healey, Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary, tells RUSI, “Labour’s support for nuclear deterrence is non-negotiable. The matter is settled. From Kinnock to Corbyn – with Blair, Brown and Miliband in between – this has been, and will remain, Labour policy.” (Credit: John Healey-Facebook)

A “non-negotiable” commitment to a “nuclear deterrence” marks a break with the pretence of “multilateral” disarmament strategies, and a profession that nuclear weapons are here to stay and there to be used. But Healey did not stop there. He positioned Labour to the right of the Tories on military aggression against China and especially Russia, saying the party had a more viable strategy for addressing potentially conflicting relations with the US and EU, and above all as a more consistent defender of imperialist national interests.

The COVID-19 pandemic, he insisted, “has exposed a lack of homeland resilience, as well as the changing nature of the threats we’re facing,” followed by the obligatory claim that Russian “disinformation” was responsible for sowing “division into our communities.”

Healey urged a strategy of “full spectrum society resilience,” a blueprint for the militarisation of all aspects of social life with the government working with “private industry, local agencies and the public.”

Russia represents the premier “menace of state-based threats,” but the threat from China had been ignored by the Tories who were busy “glowing about economic collaboration with China, lauding Chinese investment in Hinkley Point [nuclear power plant] as part of the Government’s new ‘golden era’. What was published said nothing about the national security risk arising from China’s involvement in our 5G infrastructure and when it mentioned Xinjiang it spoke of Islamist terror, not the threat of mass persecution against the Uighur population.”

The too heavy focus on “economic ties to other countries” must end, he said. National defence planning must in future be based 'on the threats we’re facing, not the economic interests we’re trying to pursue.”

“Global Britain” was “a beguiling phrase” behind which the government “opened our 5G infrastructure to Huawei, while the Chinese state was challenging maritime freedoms in the South China Seas.”

Within a general escalation of militarism, Labour would focus attention on “Europe, the North Atlantic and the high North—our NATO area—where Russia’s growing arsenal of longer-range missiles, together with modernised land and sea forces and intensified greyzone activity, pose the greatest threats to our vital national interests.”

This was a necessary division of labour, as the US focused on China, its “principal strategic competitor” in a “big powers contest” involving “trade war, espionage, cyber operations and soft power being deployed with increasing intensity.”

“As the USA pivots to meet the long-term challenge of China, Britain’s military leadership in Europe will become more essential,” Healey argued, even claiming that a central role of Russian “disinformation” was “to undermine the political and public will to have British troops deployed in Estonia doing their duty in defence of our allies.”

Healey reiterates complaints that Brexit has undermined not only relations with the EU, but the basis for Britain’s political and military alliance with Washington that depended on London’s ability to thwart the development of a European military capability independent of NATO.

“Britain’s never been signed up to the more ambitious aims some allies have set for the EU’s common security and defence policy but Brexit has also now ended our British veto over its development,” he complained. His answer was to act as a “partner—not a part”, i.e., to police, “the EU drive for greater defence cooperation, especially if we aim to remain the major bridge between Europe and the US.”

Committing to NATO’s two percent spending threshold “is no longer enough”. Cuts to Britain’s armed forces of almost 45,000 full-time soldiers must be reversed, as well as the outsourcing of “our ability to monitor Russian submarines in our own coastal waters” and other cuts that leave the UK without a “minimum credible force” and with “new ships but no new sailors.”

“Size matters,” he exclaimed.

Healey then points to the necessity for the Integrated Review to focus on “growing our sovereign capacity to regenerate equipment and platforms if they are degraded in conflict,” through “a long-term plan to boost Britain’s foundation industries in steel, shipbuilding, aerospace and cyber security as national assets.”

In his appeal for acceptance at RUSI, Healey gave naked expression to Labour’s insane warmongering—outlining a de facto plan for military aggression against Russia and China, up to and including nuclear weapons. This is the true character of the party Corbyn led and the bureaucracy he shielded from a popular rebellion that should have swept them into the political gutter. His speech confirms the insistence of the Socialist Equality Party that Labour could never be refashioned as a vehicle for defending the working class, as was claimed by Corbyn and his cheerleaders in the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party and other pseudo-left groups.

The Socialist Equality Party warned on August 15, 2015, at the beginning of what some called the “Corbyn insurgency,” that no change of leader, nor even an influx of left-leaning members could change the historically and programmatically determined character of the Labour Party. We insisted that “Labour is a right-wing bourgeois party. It is complicit in all the crimes of British imperialism and has functioned as the principal political opponent of socialism for more than a century.”

When Starmer took over as leader last year, we wrote, on April 6, “Almost five years after Corbyn was elected party leader in 2015 promising to end Labour’s pro-business, pro-austerity, pro-war agenda, the Blairites are back in the saddle and contemplating moves that even Tony Blair would have considered political suicide… 

Airbus works council and IG-Metall demand German leadership in European rearmament

Christopher Lehmann

The German trade unions are playing a decisive role in the country’s return to an aggressive foreign policy and comprehensive social militarization. They act as corporate police and the extended arm of management, suppressing any independent movement on the part of workers. They openly support the rearmament of the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) and the European Union, while insisting that Germany lead and dominate the continent militarily.

This is shown by the recent statements of the works council of the Airbus Defence and Space and the IG Metall union on the development of the joint European air combat system FCAS (Future Combat Air System). The FCAS is among the largest European rearmament projects since World War II. In addition to drones, satellites and command-and-control aircraft, it will have a nuclear component and be able to integrate other weapons systems, including those of the Navy. The project is projected to consume at least €300 billion by the time it enters service in 2040. That is equivalent to about 75 percent of the current federal budget.

A model of the FCAS NGF fighter jet at the 2019 Paris Air and Space Show at Le Bourget (JohnNewton8 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

The union and the works council support this gigantic rearmament project. They demand, however, that Germany assert its national industrial and armaments interests over those of other European countries, above all, France. To the displeasure of IG Metall, only a French prototype has been planned so far for the air combat system. The model is to be developed and built by the French company Dassault, based on the French Rafale fighter.

“Having our own Eurofighter-based demonstrator certified in Germany is of key importance for the German defence industry,” stressed Thomas Pretzl, chairman of the general works council of the military division Airbus Defence and Space. If Germany were to forego its own national model, the “FCAS would become an industrial policy project primarily for France, financed to a considerable extent by Germany,” he said.

Pretzl’s alleged concern for jobs is pure hypocrisy as his arguments are explicitly militaristic. He says that a dedicated demonstrator would offer greater security not only “to German workers” but “also to the Federal Republic of Germany and the Bundeswehr.” In the event of a premature termination of cooperation on the FCAS—tensions have repeatedly arisen between Berlin and Paris in recent weeks—this would ensure that if necessary Germany could continue the project on its own.

Bernhard Stiedl, the primary representative of IG Metall Ingolstadt, struck the same nationalistic-militaristic tone. “Above all, the demonstrator is crucial for transferring the knowledge of the engineers who developed the Tornado and the Eurofighter to the younger generation of engineers,” he said. “If Germany does not build its own demonstrator, this know-how will be lost.”

The unions have supported the return of German militarism and the turn toward an aggressive foreign and great power policy from the beginning. Even before the belligerent speeches of then-Federal President Joachim Gauck and his successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democratic Party, SPD) at the 2014 Munich Security Conference, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) had been closing ranks with the Bundeswehr.

The WSWS commented on the infamous February 2013 meeting between then DGB leader Michael Sommer, the leaders of the eight DGB-affiliated unions and the Ministry of Defence, saying:

“The meeting made clear the central role played by the unions in every sphere of society to advance the interests of the ruling elite. Not only do they act as co-managers in the companies where they enforce cuts against workers in close cooperation with management in order to maintain the competitiveness of German businesses. They are also increasingly functioning as an extended arm of German foreign and military policy.”

This assessment has been subsequently confirmed. The unions play a key role in the elaboration of rearmament and war policies and their enforcement against the will of the population.

Here are just a few more examples: Reiner Hoffmann, the current president of the DGB, actively participated in the Foreign Ministry’s project “Review 2014—thinking further in foreign policy.” The initiative of then foreign minister and current Federal President Steinmeier was part of the propaganda campaign for a more aggressive role for German imperialism. Its website included an article with the programmatic title: “Germany’s destiny—to lead Europe in order to lead the world.”

Hoffmann’s own contribution also argued for Germany to take a stronger global stance. “Acute crises occurring in many parts of the world repeatedly confront German foreign policy with the need for short-term intervention,” the DGB leader wrote. “We therefore need a forward-looking foreign policy that recognizes crisis potential in time and intervenes preventively.”

Numerous other pronouncements by leading trade unionists leave no doubt that these comments refer specifically to military operations. As early as 2014, Stiedl described the combat drone program pursued by Germany and the EU as a “ray of light” and called for more funding for rearmament: “We feel abandoned by politics. ... During the crisis, there were aid programs for the car and banking industries. We note that these did not happen for the defence industry.”

The union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation produces its own strategy papers to advance German-European rearmament and war plans as quickly as possible. “Don’t just watch, help shape,” reads the foreword to “Perspectives of the Defence Technology Industry in Germany” from 2015, for example, adding that a common European foreign and security policy “is still a long way off and procurement is fragmented nationally. But politically, this is the right path, which the European industrial unions also support.”

Currently, the DGB and its individual unions are among the staunchest supporters of the grand coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the SPD, which in the last years has ramped up arms spending from about €32 billion (2014) to more than €50 billion. With the FCAS and other planned armament projects, additional billions will follow. The open warmongering of the trade unions underlines that the fight against militarism, just like the fight against social cuts and the government’s murderous pandemic policies, requires an organizational and political break with the trade unions.