Political hostilities have erupted once again between Britain and the European Union over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Agreed as part of the Brexit deal done in early 2020, the protocol governs the passage of goods between the UK and EU economic areas, where a hard border, or extensive border infrastructure, between Northern Ireland and EU member state the Republic of Ireland would jeopardise the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the decades-long armed conflict in the north.
Vehicles at the port of Larne, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Under the agreement, Northern Ireland remains within the EU’s single market for goods which the rest of the UK has withdrawn from. EU product inspections and customs checks on goods travelling from the UK are conducted at ports in Northern Ireland immediately after crossing the Irish Sea and can then move freely through the entire island of Ireland. This prompted opposition from large sections of the Conservative party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Northern Ireland, who complained that a border was effectively set up in the Irish Sea.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson endorsed the 2019 agreement in that year’s general election as a means of “getting Brexit done.” But antagonisms have rumbled on ever since, with the agreement threatened by both sides in the early part of this year and the EU briefly invoking Article 16, which allows one party to unilaterally suspend elements of the deal.
Talks to defuse the situation ever since have only highlighted the national tensions driving apart Britain and the EU, at a time of rising tensions within the European Union itself.
The UK Brexit Minister, Lord Frost, has called for the protocol to be scrapped and the elimination of all customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, allowing goods to circulate freely if they conform to either UK or EU regulations. He also wants the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be removed from the arbitration of future disputes over the agreement, demanding “international arbitration instead of a system of EU law ultimately policed in the court of one of the parties, the European Court of Justice”.
On Wednesday, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Maroš Šefčovič offered a series of concessions to the UK’s position, including measures to reduce checks on British retail goods by 80 percent, halve customs paperwork, waive the requirement for medical manufacturers to move out of Northern Ireland into Britain, and streamline the certification process for road freight. He declared that the EU had “completely turned our rules upside down and inside out” to find agreement. He insisted, “It’s very clear that we cannot have access to the single market without the supervision of the ECJ.”
Talks on the EU’s proposals will take place for a maximum of three weeks. Commentators have raised the adoption of a Swiss style treaty as a possible final compromise. Disputes between Switzerland and the EU are dealt with by an independent arbitration panel, although it must take into account the ECJ’s view on matters of EU law. But comments suggest that Britain will demand “the moon”, in the words of one EU diplomat speaking to the Financial Times (FT).
On Wednesday, the day Šefčovič announced his proposals, Johnson’s former senior adviser and current political enemy Dominic Cummings tweeted that the government had signed the Brexit deal planning to “ditch bits we didn’t like after whacking [then Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn [in the 2019 general election].” He continued, “Our priorities meant e.g getting Brexit done is 10000x more important than lawyers yapping re international law in negotiations with people who break [international] law all the time.”
Cummings’s account was then confirmed by leading DUP MP Ian Paisley. He told BBC Newsnight, “Boris Johnson did tell me personally that he would, after agreeing to the protocol, he would sign up to changing that protocol and indeed tearing it up, that this was just for the semantics”.
Frost has admitted, cryptically, that the UK only agreed to the ECJ’s oversight of the protocol “because of the very specific circumstances of that negotiation”.
Preparations are already being made in Europe for a trade war should Britain reject the EU’s proposals and trigger Article 16. According to the FT, representatives from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain met with Šefčovič Monday to demand contingency plans including tariffs on British exports, restricting the UK’s access to Europe’s energy supplies and ending the trade agreement between the two parties.
An EU diplomat told the FT, “Frost knows he’s playing with fire. But when you play with fire, you get burnt. The EU has a broad palette of options for hitting back at the UK”.
Britain’s rationale for pushing a conflict with the EU is most openly expressed in the Daily Telegraph. Columnist Nick Timothy accuses the EU of “playing with fire on the Northern Ireland Protocol”. He writes, “The issue is… sovereignty. The Government cannot allow the continued jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over the NI Protocol.”
The UK government feels “sovereignty” is a stick it can successfully beat the EU with, in light of the ruling last week by Poland’s Constitutional Court that parts of EU law are “incompatible” with the Polish constitution, overturning the fundamental primacy of EU law within the union. Poland has been backed by Hungary, which has also been engaged in a long-running legal dispute with the EU over legislation linking European subsidies to respect for the rule of law.
The Brexiteer press in the UK has also made much of recent statements by Michel Barnier, the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator. Barnier is now running in the French Presidential race on a fiercely anti-migrant platform, calling for France to regain its “legal sovereignty” by casting off the threat of a “ruling or a condemnation at the level of the European Court of Justice or the European Convention on Human Rights”.
Johnson gloated at last week’s Tory Party conference, “That is what happens if you spend a year trying to argue with Lord Frost.”
These events are proof of the analysis made by the Socialist Equality Party of Brexit as “the most advanced expression of an escalating breakdown of the EU, under the pressure of mounting centrifugal forces that are intensifying conflicts not only with the US but between the European states.”
The Johnson government identifies itself with this development. It hopes to use Brexit to place itself in pole position among European nations pursuing increasingly independent policies, either within or having broken loose from a paralysed EU. Leading Tory Brexiteer Sir Ian Duncan Smith MP cited Lord Palmerston in the Telegraph Thursday: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”.
Central to this policy is the UK’s pitch to the United States as its most slavishly dependable ally. But this course is fraught with uncertainty. The Brexit policy in the British ruling class was spurred by the presidency of Donald Trump, who made his hostility to the major European powers, Germany and France, plain. Under President Joe Biden, the US has adopted a subtler approach.
September’s AUKUS military alliance between the UK, US and Australia, involving the repudiation of a submarine deal between Canberra and Paris, boosted Johnson’s standing in Washington. But Biden has consistently stated that his administration would respond severely over any move the UK makes jeopardising the Good Friday Agreement. He is also more determined than Trump to win the support of Europe in the escalating conflict with China.
The outcome of the dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol is therefore bound up with calculations made in the increasingly frenzied war drive in the Asia-Pacific. Combined, these geopolitical tensions threaten an explosion of trade and military conflicts.
Spain’s High Court has convicted Alberto Rodríguez, Podemos lawmaker and former organization secretary of the party, on fraudulent charges of abuse of a police officer, sentenced him to a month and 15 days in jail and a €540 fine. The conviction also disqualifies him from public office, threatening him with the loss of his parliamentary seat. A decision must be made in the coming days by Spain’s Central Electoral Board.
Alberto Rodríguez [Wikimedia Commons]
Rodríguez was convicted without a single piece of evidence of kicking a police officer in a protest in La Laguna, the Canary Islands, in 2014. This comes after Madrid regional lawmaker for Podemos, Isabel Serra, was convicted of insulting a police officer and throwing objects at police and sentenced to 19 months in jail. Both convictions were based solely on police testimony and medical reports.
In Rodríguez’s case, the High Court judges state in their ruling that the officer “did not express any doubt” when identifying him, something they claimed was reinforced by the “absence of animosity” towards the lawmaker by the policeman and his persistence. The principal evidence is the medical report after the police officer went to the doctor to register his knee ailment as an attack.
In March, Serra’s appeal of her 19-month sentence was rejected. Like Rodríguez, she was convicted of throwing objects and insulting an officer. While it was not even proven that she was there, the judges ruled: “We have no doubt about the certainty of the recognition of the accused.” They also cited medical reports, claiming that “The reality of the injuries suffered and the damages caused” are proven.
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) opposes the persecution of Rodríguez and Serra. It has unbridgeable political differences with Podemos, which is sitting in government in Spain, prioritizing profits over human lives amid the COVID-19 pandemic which has left over 100,000 dead in Spain. Podemos is also responsible for deepening social attacks on the working class, supporting imperialist wars and carrying out mass police repression.
However, the sentences against Serra and Rodríguez—six years and seven years, respectively after the alleged events took place—amount to an attempt by the Spanish bourgeoisie to install a police-state climate to intimidate any form of political opposition.
A dangerous precedent is being created, threatening to de facto eliminate the presumption of innocence. A police officer can accuse a lawmaker, striker or protester. Then, simply on the say-so of the officer and a medical report, the judge imposes a jail sentence and a fine.
Police agencies are not neutral arbiters, as routinely presented by the bourgeois media. As Frederick Engels wrote, they are the “special bodies of armed men” created to defend capitalist property, inequality and class rule. Many policemen and judges are unabashed supporters of the neo-fascist Vox party.
It is well known that local police, National Police and Civil Guard are among Vox’s main constituencies. The National Police’s main union, Justicia Salarial Policial (Jusapol) , was created in 2017 amid the hysterical state campaign against the Catalan independence referendum. Vox’s leadership regularly participates in Jusapol protests calling for higher wages for policemen.
As for the judiciary, it has repeatedly aligned itself with Vox and passed rulings to rehabilitate Francoism. In the past year alone, courts have issued a spate of reactionary rulings, such as siding with Vox’ appeal to stop any restrictions on the spread of COVID-19, absolving a fascist leader’s anti-Semitic statements and opposing the changing of street names honoring fascist military units and leaders.
The Supreme Court, the court that has sentenced Rodríguez to jail, endorsed Franco’s 1936 coup, while the Constitutional Court ruled that Franco did not commit crimes against humanity during the war or his 40-year dictatorship.
If these forces, which represent an insignificant section of the population, can determine national politics, its due to the role of Podemos. It is sitting in government supporting police state measures, while acquiescing to the persecution of its members and lawmakers.
When Isabel Serra was condemned by Madrid’s Higher Court last year, before her appeal was rejected earlier this year, the WSWS noted: “The party leadership has acquiesced to the verdict and done everything it can to signal that it will organise no opposition to the emerging police state in Spain—over which it rules, in fact, in coalition with the Spanish Socialist party (PSOE).” We quoted Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, who said: “Sentences must be accepted (and in this case appealed), but a huge sense of injustice invades me.”
A year later, Iglesias’ successor, Yolanda Díaz, who is also deputy prime minister of the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, stated that Rodríguez had all her “solidarity,” adding: “In the first place, we respect all judicial rulings as always. I know that the lawmaker is going to file an appeal and, therefore, we are waiting for final resolution.”
Such statements further align Podemos with the police state. In reality, Podemos is under no obligation to accept a reactionary sentence. It could call on its 3 million voters and 18,000 members to mobilize against the reactionary ruling. Instead, it accepts a reactionary sentence without any significant opposition. Such a reaction only serves to embolden Vox and its allies in the army and security forces to escalate their attacks.
Podemos’ incapacity to oppose the persecution of its members flows directly from its class character. Speaking for layers of the upper middle class, it employs democratic phraseology to attract popular support and then channel it towards the Socialist Party (PSOE), the bourgeoisie’s main party of government since the fascist Francoite regime fell in 1978. The PSOE has a decades-long record as a party of imperialist war and European Union (EU) austerity.
Once in power, it plays the same role, claiming that any measure passed by the PSOE-Podemos government is radical and progressive. In fact, its agenda is socially reactionary. It claims to be pursuing a scientific policy on the COVID-19 pandemic, while allowing the virus to spread; endorses EU bailouts of the financial aristocracy as measures to improve workers’ lives; and claims that raising the retirement age will preserve the pension system.
In reality, mass anger is building against the PSOE-Podemos government and the disastrous impact of its policies on the working class. Over the past year, nurses, doctors, railway workers, educators, bus drivers, autoworkers, metalworkers, and many other sectors have been involved in strikes and protests. Virtually every layer of the working class is involved in a broader upsurge of the class struggle that is proceeding in Spain and internationally.
In the US, thousands of workers are on strike. These include Deere workers, auto workers, Kellogg’s cereal workers, nurses and health care workers, distillery workers, coal miners and carpenters. In South Africa, 155,000 metalworkers launched an indefinite strike last week.
Terrified that defending its lawmakers could encourage broader opposition, Podemos prefers giving a green light to its own persecution, aware that it relies on state security forces against the workers. In government, Podemos has already attacked steelworkers striking for better COVID-19 protection measures, sent the police to attack Airbus workers, deployed the army against fleeing refugees and migrants, and incarcerated Catalan nationalists over peaceful protests.
Spain’s coalition government of the social-democratic Socialist Party (PSOE) and “left populist” Podemos has approved the outlines of its 2022 budget. The draft received the green light from the Cabinet last Thursday, and is going to the Congress for further debate.
María Jesús Montero [Wikimedia Commons]
Described in the Spanish media as “the largest public spending effort in Spain’s history,” it proposes €40 billion of investment. Around €27 billion of the planned financing is expected to come from the European Union’s (EU) Next Generation EU and React-EU coronavirus bailouts.
Over 100,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Spain, hundreds of thousands have suffered long-lasting illness, and nearly 5 million have been infected—over 10 percent of the population. Millions of workers have had their livelihoods destroyed: 2020 saw record job losses and the largest fall in Spain’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War.
Poverty has skyrocketed in Spain, severe material deprivation rates spiking from 4.7 percent in 2019 to 7 percent last year, according to a July National Statistics Institute (INE) survey. This means 3.3 million people face a severe lack of basic necessities like heating, nutritious food and a phone, INE reported.
“This budget was made so that the recovery will reach everyone and expand the middle class,” Finance Minister María Jesús Montero claimed after last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting. “We need to make progress and be in a better place than we were before,” she said. “Six out of every 10 euros of this budget are earmarked for social policies.”
Despite the rhetoric of the PSOE, Podemos and allied media, the budget will not resolve the rapidly worsening social crisis caused by the pandemic. The draft plan is a list of half-measures and empty promises, which will primarily benefit the financial aristocracy and affluent layers of the upper-middle class, while leaving millions of workers in a desperate situation.
Among the measures is a proposal to raise the salaries of civil servants by 2 percent. However, INE data show Spain’s 12-month inflation rate hitting a 13-year high of 4 percent, meaning the proposed “raise” is in fact a pay cut. Private-sector workers will not even get this.
The budget also includes an agreement for a minimum corporate tax rate of 15 percent. The tax change will affect around 1,070 businesses in Spain (less than 1 percent of the total). While in theory, Spain’s corporate tax rate is 25 percent, many companies pay far less thanks to tax deductions and exemptions. Speaking recently to the Financial Times, Finance Minister Montero admitted that many big businesses currently pay as little as 6 percent in tax, while many smaller companies pay 19 percent, adding, “you can’t have this regressive fiscal engineering.”
The budget’s tax proposal is not introducing anything new. In reality, it brings Spain in line with an agreement by the financial chiefs of the G20 countries in July to impose a global minimum corporate tax of 15 percent, so as to prevent multinational companies shifting profits to low-tax havens. Many companies will continue to pay far less than Spain’s nominal corporate tax rate.
The budget was held up by two weeks, allegedly due to disagreements between the PSOE and Podemos that were resolved after the coalition partners agreed to include the 15 percent tax floor, as well as a new housing law.
The budget’s flagship measure is a proposed housing bill, which has variously been touted as a “controversial” or even “radical” plan. This is a fraud. The new law—which would introduce minor rent controls and provide minimal investment in social housing, all while giving tax handouts to landlords—could do next to nothing to ensure access to good quality, affordable housing in Spain.
Landlords would face a cap on the amount they can increase rent each year, but only if they own more than 10 properties, leaving many tenants with no protection against rising rental costs. Property owners with nine or fewer rental homes would meanwhile be offered tax breaks of up to 90 percent if they voluntarily decided to lower rents.
Taxes would also be increased by an unspecified amount on vacant properties, and property developers obliged to set aside 30 percent of public housing stocks for rent, rather than making them available for purchase at a reduced cost. With an estimated 1.5 million affordable rental homes for low-income households needed in Spain, this is vastly insufficient to meet the country’s housing requirements.
A key measure in the housing bill is a proposal to give monthly grants of €250 to young people aged 18-34 who earn less than €23,725 per year, to help them move out of parental homes and cover rental costs. The monthly payment would be available for at most two years, with total financial aid limited to €6,000. There are almost 600,000 low-income tenants in that age bracket in Spain. Due to high costs of living and low wages, the average age at which Spanish people leave their family home is 30—nearly four years above the European average.
With the average pay for a young person in Spain just €970 a month, and monthly rental costs in major cities such as Barcelona averaging nearly €1,000, this meagre payment will still leave many young people unable to afford rent. Young people in Spain are one of the most precarious and exploited sections of the working class: the youth unemployment rate is around 33 percent, the highest in the euro zone. Meanwhile, half of employed Spanish youth are on temporary contracts; 26 percent have part-time contracts.
The main points of the draft housing legislation cannot legally be implemented by the national government, and would be implemented by regional authorities. The opposition People’s Party (PP) has already refused to apply the law, dismissing it as “suicidal interventionism.”
PP leader Pablo Casado said his party would challenge the legislation in the Constitutional Court, should it get parliamentary approval. The PP governs five of Spain’s 17 regions (Andalusia, Madrid region, Galicia, Castilla y León and Murcia), as well as four major cities (including Madrid), meaning the legislation, if passed, would be neutered at birth.
It is far from guaranteed that the budget will be approved. The government together only holds 155 seats in the 350-member parliament, 20 short of the required majority. It relies on the support of regional parties such as the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), with 13 seats, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV—six seats), the Basque separatist EH-Bildu (five seats) and the pro-independence Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCat—four seats).
While these parties helped the PSOE-Podemos government pass its 2021 budget last December, the largest, the ERC has indicated that it may not vote in favour of the budget this year. ERC spokesperson Marta Vilalta stated on Monday that the ERC is “very far” from being able to support the budget, adding: “Just because the ERC enabled the approval of the budget last year, does not mean that we will do so again this year.”
As the Biden administration ramps up its aggressive confrontation with China, Taiwan is rapidly becoming the most immediate and dangerous flashpoint for war between the world’s two largest economies—both armed with nuclear weapons.
The status of Taiwan has long been highly contentious and potentially explosive. However, for four decades, after the US and China established diplomatic relations in 1979, tensions over Taiwan were largely managed and contained within the framework of delicately balanced arrangements.
Beginning with the Trump administration, those agreements, diplomatic protocols and tacit understandings increasingly have been torn up—a process that Biden is accelerating. The most egregious step, so far, has been the provocative leak this month via the Wall Street Journal that US special forces have been on Taiwan training troops for more than a year.
In 1979, the US, as part of its arrangements with China, withdrew all of its military forces from Taiwan, broke off diplomatic relations and ended its military treaty with Taipei. The stationing of US troops on Taiwan is a flagrant breach of what has been the status quo for decades and calls into question the basis for US-China diplomatic ties.
To understand the great dangers posed by the Biden administration’s deliberately inflammatory actions it is necessary to examine the historical background. To justify its menacing military build-up in the region and the inflaming of this sensitive flashpoint, the US portrays Taiwan as a thriving democracy confronted with a growing Chinese threat of aggression.
In reality, US imperialism has never had the slightest concern for democracy on Taiwan or anywhere else in the region. Following Japan’s World War II defeat in 1945, the US helped install the dictatorial Kuomintang (KMT) regime of Chiang Kai-shek as the government of China. In October 1945, the US Navy transported KMT troops to Taiwan, which had been a Japanese colony following China’s defeat in the 1895 Sino-Japanese war.
The brutal US-backed Kuomintang regime
The KMT administration under the governorship of General Chen Yi was brutal from the outset as a worsening economic crisis strained relations between local Taiwanese and newly-arrived Chinese from the mainland. The shooting of a civilian protestor on February 28, 1947 provoked island-wide unrest that was violently suppressed by the KMT military. Estimates of the number killed range from 18,000 to 30,000.
The savage repression in Taiwan was part of the broader crisis of the Chiang Kai-shek regime, which was riddled with corruption. It used police-state measures against rising opposition that included a strike movement in the working class and from 1947 reignited a civil war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In the wake of the CCP’s victory in 1949 and the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China, the KMT and its supporters fled to Taiwan.
Chiang Kai-shek reviewing troops in 1966 [Source: Wikimedia Commons]
The mass exodus of some two million people included the KMT leadership, soldiers, officials and the wealthy business elites. China’s gold and foreign currency reserves, as well as many national cultural treasures, were carted off to Taiwan. The KMT government proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China (ROC) and declared that its aim was to retake the mainland.
Taiwan today, separate from China, is the creation of American imperialism. Following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, then President Truman placed the island under the protection of the US Seventh Fleet. The KMT could only posture as a government-in-exile of all China with the backing of the United States. With Washington’s backing, China’s seat on the UN Security Council was handed to the ROC and Taipei, not Beijing, was recognised as the capital of China.
Just as it backed dictatorial and autocratic regimes throughout Asia, the US gave its full support to the KMT dictatorship, which imposed martial rule in May 1949 that continued for nearly four decades, until 1987. The KMT ruthlessly suppressed all political opposition, in what was known as the White Terror. According to one estimate, that involved the imprisonment or execution of 140,000 people for alleged anti-KMT or pro-Communist sentiments.
KMT provocations against Beijing, with US backing, including an air and naval blockade of the Chinese coast, were a constant source of tension. Taipei controlled, and continues to control, a number of fortified islets just kilometres off the Chinese mainland and close to major Chinese cities.
Two major crises erupted in the 1950s. In August 1954, the KMT put tens of thousands of troops onto the islets of Matsu and Kinmen and began building military installations, to which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) responded by shelling Kinmen. At the height of the crisis, the US Congress authorised the use of military force against China and the Pentagon advocated nuclear strikes.
A second Taiwan Strait crisis erupted in August 1958 after the shelling of Matsu and Kinmen and clashes between KMT and PLA forces near Dongding Island. Air and sea engagements and artillery exchanges continued for three months, with losses amounting to hundreds dead on both sides. The US reinforced the KMT military, escorted KMT naval vessels to the beleaguered islets and the Pentagon again raised the necessity of using nuclear weapons.
The hostile standoff between China and the KMT regime on Taiwan, backed militarily by the US continued throughout the 1960s.
Washington’s rapprochement with Beijing
US President Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972 marked a major shift in geo-political relations. The trip had been announced the previous year, based on secret talks that Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had held with senior CCP leaders. Nixon and Kissinger calculated that the US could exploit the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s and the sharp tensions between Moscow and Beijing, which included border clashes, to forge a quasi-alliance with China against the Soviet Union.
Nixon’s meeting with Chinese leader Mao Zedong and the release of the joint Shanghai Communiqué paved the way for the establishment of diplomatic relations. It was a reactionary partnership in which the CCP regime backed right-wing US allies such as the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and the repressive Iranian regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The pact also opened the door for the reintegration of China into the world capitalist market as a cheap labour platform.
Mao Zedong with US President Richard Nixon in 1972 [Source: Wikimedia]
Washington’s abrupt about-face had far-reaching consequences for the KMT dictatorship on Taiwan. The status of Taiwan was a central issue in the protracted negotiations that eventually led to formal diplomatic ties between the US and China in 1979. The CCP insisted that the US recognise “One China” with Taiwan as part of China and end its military and diplomatic ties with Taipei.
In the Shanghai Communiqué, the US acknowledged: “[A]ll Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” Furthermore, it affirmed “the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all US forces and military installations from Taiwan.”
In 1979, when diplomatic ties were established, Washington broke diplomatic relations with Taipei, withdrew its forces and abrogated its military treaty—effectively, though not formally, acknowledging “One China” with the CCP regime in Beijing as the legitimate government. Taipei had already lost its seat in the UN in 1971 when Beijing took China’s position as a permanent member of the Security Council—a move that the US did not block.
At the same time, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which opposed any attempt by Beijing to reunify Taiwan by force, authorised the sale of “defensive” military weapons to Taiwan and established the American Institute in Taiwan, through which unofficial ties could be maintained. Washington adopted a stance of “strategic ambiguity” toward a conflict between China and Taiwan—that is, it did not give a guarantee as to whether it would intervene. This was aimed at curbing both Chinese aggression and provocative actions by Taiwan.
The end of the KMT dictatorship
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the US assisted Taiwan economically with financial assistance, investment and access to the American market that assisted in its state-supported industrialisation. During the 1970s, Taiwan was the fastest growing economy in Asia after Japan. With the turn to globalised production from the late 1970s, Taiwan became one of the major cheap labour platforms in Asia. Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore—the four Asian Tigers—were held up as a new model for economic development.
The KMT dictatorship was based on a nationally-regulated economy that was associated with corruption involving KMT cronies—“mainlanders”—at the expense of the indigenous Taiwanese elites. Under pressure from the US, the regime began to open up its economy in the 1980s, privatising state-owned corporations and eliminating state economic regulation—moves that led to a weakening of the KMT’s political base of support.
Political opposition remained illegal under martial law but was increasingly voiced through protests against the regime’s anti-democratic measures. Taiwan’s rapid economic expansion also led to a huge growth of the working class that was increasingly militant and conducted a wave of strikes demanding improved wages and conditions.
In response, the KMT conceded a series of limited democratic reforms. The bourgeois political opposition led by indigenous Taiwanese elites was able to form the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986 and the following year martial law was lifted on the main island of Taiwan. The main legislative bodies—the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly—had been stacked with unelected KMT representatives for provinces in mainland China on the basis of the fiction that the government still represented all of China. A full election for a reformed National Assembly was held in 1991 and a reformed Legislative Yuan in 1992. The first direct election for the president and vice-president was held in 1996.
The status of Taiwan, which is inextricably intertwined with relations with mainland China, has increasingly dominated Taiwanese politics. President Lee Teng-hui, who initiated the limited democratic reforms, became the first Taiwanese-born president. Although a member of the KMT, he sought to promote a Taiwanese identity to counter the influence of the DPP and to project Taiwan on the international stage.
Lee challenged longstanding US diplomatic protocols against high-level visits by Taiwanese officials to the US by accepting an invitation in 1995 from Cornell University to deliver a speech on “Taiwan’s Democratisation Experience.” While the Clinton administration turned down his request for a visa, Congress supported the visit. It went ahead, provoking an angry reaction from Beijing, which denounced Lee as a “traitor” who was attempting to split China.
For its part, the CCP regime under Deng Xiaoping pushed the reunification of Taiwan on the basis of the formula “One Country, Two Systems”—that is, Taiwan would retain a significant degree of autonomy in politics, state structures and economy. Beijing was hostile to any suggestion that Taiwan could declare formal independence and regarded Lee’s visit to the US as a breach of undertakings given by Washington in 1979.
The visit provoked the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995–96, underscoring the dangers of the current deliberate breaches by the US of its arrangements with China. Beijing announced missile tests and a build-up of military forces in Fujian—the Chinese province adjacent to Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait. The Clinton administration responded with the largest show of military might in Asia since the Vietnam War, dispatching two aircraft carrier battle groups to waters near Taiwan and sending one through the narrow Taiwan Strait. Beijing backed down.
The polarisation of Taiwanese politics between a pro-independence DPP and a KMT oriented toward China is rooted in the island’s economy. On the one hand, the lack of diplomatic recognition is a barrier to Taiwan’s entry into international bodies, including economic institutions, and makes economic and trade relations more difficult. The 2000 election of the first DPP President Chen Shui-bian, who promoted greater Taiwanese autonomy, heightened tensions with Beijing, which warned it would respond to any formal declaration of Taiwanese independence with force.
On the other, capitalist restoration in China from 1978 onward opened up huge economic opportunities for Taiwanese corporations. Taiwanese businesses invested $US118 billion in China between 1991 and early 2020 and the value of cross-strait trade in 2019 was $149.2 billion. The KMT has sought to facilitate relations with China. Under KMT President Ma Ying-jeou, who was elected in 2008, a trade agreement opened up direct flights and cargo shipments between Taiwan and China, and economic relations strengthened.
In 2015, the first-ever meeting between Taiwanese and Chinese presidents—Ma and Xi Jinping took place in Singapore. They carefully stepped around any suggestion of two presidents of two countries by addressing each other as “Mr” and referring to “two coasts” rather than the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China. Both adhered to what is known as the 1992 consensus whereby the CCP and KMT agree that there is One China but still disagree as to who rules it.
US heightens tensions over Taiwan
The installation of Obama as president in 2009 marked a sharp turn toward confrontation with China, reflecting Democrat criticism of the previous Bush administration for ignoring Asia while prosecuting wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East. While the “pivot to Asia” was formally announced in 2011, the Obama administration initiated a wide-ranging offensive aimed at boosting the US position in Asia, undermining China economically and strengthening the US military presence and alliances throughout the region. By 2020, 60 percent of US naval and air assets were to be positioned in the Indo-Pacific, in line with the Pentagon’s AirSea Battle strategy for war with China.
The Obama administration deliberately stoked up tensions in the South China Sea by declaring that it had a “national interest” in the low-key territorial disputes between China and its neighbours. It made no attempt to end festering tensions on the Korean Peninsula over North Korea’s nuclear programs. At the same time, however, Obama steered clear of de-stabilising the status quo over Taiwan, in recognition of its centrality to US relations with China and the potentially explosive consequences.
Trump had no such qualms. Even before his formal inauguration, Trump provocatively took a phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen from the DPP who had taken office in mid-2016. While the phone call was nominally to congratulate Trump on winning the election, it breached established protocols.
Tsai Ing-wen speaking on the phone with US President Trump in December 2016 [Source: Wikimedia]
Trump also put Beijing on notice by publicly declaring in an interview with Fox News in December 2016: “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.” The statement effectively transformed the “One China” policy from the basis for US-China relations to a bargaining chip in the trade and economic warfare Trump was to unleash.
The Trump administration included a number of top officials who had longstanding ties to Taiwan and who were deeply hostile to China, including his initial chief of staff Reince Priebus and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Under Trump, the US ramped up arms sales to Taiwan, increased the number of US warships passing through the Taiwan Strait, backed Taiwanese President Tsai’s anti-China stance and boosted contact between US and Taiwanese officials—all despite Chinese objections. In August 2020, Secretary of Health Alex Azar became the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan since 1979.
Trump’s deliberate and provocative stoking of the issue of Taiwan greatly heightened the danger of war. While the American propaganda incessantly warns of potential “Chinese aggression,” a new book, Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa published earlier this year revealed that General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was compelled to take extraordinary steps to counter Trump’s efforts to instigate a war with China as part of Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat.
Far from attempting to mend relations with China, the Biden administration has further heightened tensions, including over Taiwan. Biden signaled his intentions to develop close relations with Taiwan by being the first president to invite the de facto Taiwanese ambassador to Washington Hsiao Bi-Khim to attend his inauguration. In the dying days of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had announced he was ending all limitations on contact between US and Taiwanese officials, civilian and military, at every level. With minor modifications, the Biden administration has continued that policy. In June, with Biden’s blessing, a group of US senators visited Taiwan nominally to announce a donation of COVID-19 vaccines.
US military and economic threats
The dispute between China and the US over Taiwan is not simply about diplomatic protocols. The strengthening of US ties with Taiwan poses definite threats to China—strategically and economically. The secret deployment of US special forces trainers to Taiwan coincides with a more sinister possibility, revealed in the Japanese Nikkei news agency, that the US was considering the stationing of medium-range offensive missiles in Asia, including on Taiwan.
The island of Taiwan is not only strategically located close to the Chinese mainland but forms part of the first island chain, stretching from Japan through to the Philippines, that US strategic planners regard as vital to hemming in Chinese naval forces in the event of war. During the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur stated that Taiwan was “an unsinkable aircraft carrier” able to project American power along China’s coast in a containment strategy.
Economically, Taiwan is home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which accounts for a 55 percent of international chip production and a massive 90 percent of the most advanced chips required both for industrial and military use. Trump has already dealt Chinese tech giant Huawei a huge blow by pressuring TSMC to stop supplying it chips.
In US military circles an intense discussion is underway over the danger of war with China over Taiwan. In March, Admiral Phil Davidson—the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command which would be on the frontline of any conflict with China—warned that the US could be at war with China in less than six years and called for a huge increase in his command’s budget. Pointing to Chinese advances in military technology, Davidson and others have called for the accelerated development of new weapons systems for use in a conflict with China.
Behind the war drive by US imperialism against China is both the fear in Washington it is being overtaken economically and the profound political and social crisis at home. Amid huge social tensions and mounting struggles of the American working class, the ruling class could resort to war as a means of turning social tensions outward against an external enemy and at the same time reversing its historic decline and reasserting the regional and global hegemony it obtained after World War II.
For all the claims that China is considering an invasion of Taiwan, the US—by undermining the One China policy, step-by-step strengthening ties with Taipei and integrating it into US war plans—is goading Beijing toward making military moves. Any war between the world’s two largest economies, both nuclear-armed, would be catastrophic for the working class in China, Taiwan, the United States and the world.
On October 8, a terrible blast struck the worshippers attending Friday noon prayers at the Gozar-e-Sayed Abad Mosque in the Khan Abad district of Bandar, the capital of Kunduz, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities in its northern belt. This is a mosque frequented by Shia Muslims, who were referred to as “our compatriots” by Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid. Forty-six people died immediately in the blast, and local officials said that many more people were injured in the incident. Not long afterward, the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), took credit for the attack on its Telegram channel. The suicide bomber was identified as Mohammed al-Uyguri by ISIS-K.
The name of the attacker raised red flags across the region. It indicated that he belonged to the Uyghur community and had a relationship with the Xinjiang region of western China, which is home to most of the world’s Uyghur population. That a Chinese extremist attacked a Shia mosque raised eyebrows in Beijing and in Tehran.
Foreign Terrorists
In June 2021, the United Nations reported on the presence of between 8,000 and 10,000 “foreign terrorist fighters” in Afghanistan. The report further stated that these fighters were mainly “from Central Asia, the north Caucasus region of the Russian Federation, Pakistan and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China.” Although most of the fighters had reported an affiliation with the Taliban, “many also support Al-Qaida” and “[o]thers are allied with ISIL or have ISIL sympathies,” said the report. ISIL refers to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, whose Afghan franchise is ISIS-K.
In 2019, in Turkey, I encountered a group of Uyghur fighters from various terrorist organizations, including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which is now called the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP). These were hardened fighters, whose main goal was to fight “infidels”; they did not seem interested in anything other than that. The United Nations placed the ETIM on their terrorist list in 2002.
During the war on Syria, large sections of the ETIM—as the TIP—moved to the Syria-Turkey border. The TIP is now largely based in Idlib, Syria, which is the hub of various global jihadi organizations. When it became clear that the Taliban was going to take power in Afghanistan, many jihadis from Central Asia—including from China and Tajikistan—left Idlib for Afghanistan. ETIM’s leader Abdul Haq remains in Syria, where he is also a member of the Shura Council of Al Qaeda.
Worries Abound in Iran…
On October 4, four days before the attack on the mosque in Afghanistan, an Iranian delegation arrived in Afghanistan to hold talks about cross-border trade and to seek assurances that the Taliban will not permit attacks on either Afghan Shia or on Iran. Meanwhile, in Kabul, governors of two neighboring border provinces of Iran’s Khorasan Razavi (Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian) and Afghanistan’s Herat (Maulvi Abdul Qayum Rohani) agreed on facilitating more cross-border trade and ensuring that there is no cross-border violence. In another meeting that took place on October 4 with Motamedian at the Iranian border town of Taybad, Rohani’s deputy Maulvi Sher Ahmad Ammar Mohajer said that the Afghan government will “never allow individuals or foreign groups such as ISIS to use Afghan territory against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” “We (Iran and Afghanistan) have defeated the common enemy,” Maulvi Rohani said in reference to the United States.
All signs indicate some sincerity on the part of the Taliban government. On October 7, the day before the ISIS-K attack on the Shia mosque in Kunduz, Maulvi Abdul Salam Hanafi—the deputy prime minister of Afghanistan—met with a group of Shia elders to assure them that the Taliban would not allow anti-Shia activity. Nevertheless, members of the Hazara community—who are the Shia community of Afghanistan—tell me that they fear a return to the previous rule of the Taliban; during that time, documented massacres by the Taliban against the Hazara Shia community provided evidence of the Taliban’s sectarianism. This is why Iran opposed the Taliban, and why Iran has not formally recognized the current government in Kabul. However, for the past few years, the Iranians have been working with the Taliban against ISIS and ISIS-K, with Iran’s Brigadier General Esmail Qaani as the liaison to the Taliban.
…And in China
In the 1990s, the Taliban government allowed the ETIM and other Uyghur groups to operate from Afghanistan. This time, there is already evidence that they will not officially permit such activity. Earlier this year, ETIM fighters had relocated from Syria to the Badakhshan province in Afghanistan; reports suggested that the fighters had gathered in the sparsely populated Wakhan Corridor in the province, which leads to China. But in recent weeks, the Taliban security has moved them from the towns surrounding the “Afghan-Chinese border” to other parts of Afghanistan (rumors have been flying about the Taliban’s intention to extradite the ETIM—if not all the 2,000 Uyghurs in Afghanistan—to China, but these rumors are unconfirmed).
In late August, Mattia Sorbi of Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper met with Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid. This was a significant interview for the Taliban because Italy is a key partner of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Mujahid told Sorbi that China is currently assisting Afghanistan with short-term funds (including $31 million in emergency funds) and that the Taliban see the BRI as their “passport to markets around the world.” China’s long-term concession of the Mes Aynak copper mine, south of Kabul, will allow it “to come back to life and be modernized,” said Mujahid. The Taliban is keen on the BRI, he said, “which will lead to reviving the ancient Silk Road.”
The BRI runs on both sides of Afghanistan, the northern route through Tajikistan to Iran and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor running southward. The mouth of the Wakhan Corridor would be the opening of a third route, running toward Kabul and to Iran (and linking Pakistan’s agricultural goods to markets in Central Asia and Russia).
Isolation from China and Iran is not a welcome thought in Kabul. The United States is prepared to reengage with the Taliban, which could alter the equations on the ground. If the U.S. allows Kabul to access the funds in its central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, (sitting in New York) or the IMF funds, these funds will help provide the Taliban with a lifeline. But they are not a solution for Afghanistan, which is caught as it is between China and Iran and the possibility of its connection to the new silk road.
In July 2018 the attention of The New York Times and then Esquire magazine was somehow drawn to a mountain town in southern Mexico and the truly remarkable amount of Coca-Cola drunk by its residents. The British Broadcasting Corporation has produced a documentary on the same topic.
The town is San Cristobal, in the Central Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest and southernmost state. A third of its quarter-million or so residents are of Mayan descent. Their average per capita daily consumption of ‘the friendliest drink on earth’ is a gallon – the whole of a two-liter bottle and most of a second, delivered to numerous local convenience stores from a bottling plant on the town’s outskirts.
Health impacts
Coca-Cola was first marketed in 1886. The name refers to two of the original ingredients – coca leaves, which are the source of cocaine, and kola nuts, which contain caffeine. Both are addictive. Since 1904 the coca leaves used have been not fresh but ‘spent’ – left over after the cocaine extraction process is complete. However, despite claims to the contrary, they still contain traces of cocaine.
This daily dose of Coca-Cola taken by residents of San Cristobal contains a whole pound of sugar. So it should be no surprise that each year over 3,000 of them die of diabetes. It’s an unpleasant way to die. Typical symptoms are frequent urination, hunger and thirst (despite eating and drinking), fatigue, blurred vision, slow-healing sores, recurrent infections, tingling, pain, or numbness in the hands or feet, sunken eyes, rapid breathing, headache, muscle aches, dehydration, nausea, stomach pain and cramping, vomiting, cerebral edema, and coma.
Besides diabetes, excessive sugar causes obesity, tooth decay, and fatty liver disease and increases the risk of strokes, heart disease, cancer, and dementia. Researchers who estimated the burden of disease associated with consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in 2010 found such consumption responsible for 184,000 deaths a year — 133,000 from diabetes, 45,000 from heart disease, 6,500 from cancer.
These deaths were concentrated in high-income (24%) and especially medium-income (71%) countries. SSBs accounted for the highest proportion of all deaths – 12% — in Mexico, rising to 30% in Mexicans under the age of 45. In 2014 Mexico overtook the United States in per capita SSB consumption. In that year Mexicans drank on average 106 liters of Coca-Cola, Americans 99.5.
Sugar, moreover, is not the only harmful ingredient in Coca-Cola. There is also caffeine, which raises blood pressure and can cause dehydration as well as urinary and respiratory problems. There is phosphoric acid, which like sugar causes tooth decay, slows down digestion, may produce kidney failure or kidney stones, and impedes the absorption of calcium by the bones, leading to osteoporosis. Finally, the caramel used to color the drink is carcinogenic.
Why do they drink so much Coca-Cola?
Observers talk about ‘addiction’ to Coca-Cola, and it does contain three addictive substances – cocaine, caffeine, and sugar. It is also said that Coca-Cola has become an integral part of the local culture in Chiapas. Many indigenous people believe that Coca-Cola can heal the sick. The BBC documentary features a ‘healer’ sacrificing a chicken to ‘Goddess Maria’ together with an offering of Coca-Cola.
However, framing the problem in terms of addiction or ‘culture’ gives the impression that it might be solved with the aid of therapy and health education. This is not the case. The residents of San Cristobal have no real choice. Even those fully aware of the ham done to their health by imbibing huge quantities of Coca-Cola have no better alternative. After all, they need to drink water and Coca-Cola does at least contain clean water, drawn from a deep unpolluted aquifer.
Is clean water available from any other source? Consider possible alternatives.
The town has no wastewater treatment facilities. Untreated sewage goes straight into the waterways. This is the water that comes, now and then, from the faucet, contaminated by E. Coli and other pathogens:
Symptoms of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) infection vary for each person, but often include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea (often bloody), and vomiting. Some people may have a fever, which usually is not very high (less than 101˚F/38.5˚C). Most people get better within 5 to 7 days. Some infections are very mild, but others are severe or even life-threatening.
What about the water trucks that occasionally pass through your neighborhood? I have information specifically about trucked water in San Cristobal, but here is an assessment of trucked water in Mexico City:
Trucked water is often higher in quality than the city’s notorious tap water, but its quality does vary significantly. Many suppliers simply provide filtered tap water in steel trucks — and others may bring water of such poor quality that it is unsafe to drink.
The situation in poverty-stricken San Cristobal is presumably worse than in the capital.
If water from the faucet and trucked water are not safe options, then why not buy not Coca-Cola but bottled water drawn from the aquifer? And/or other drinks known to contain clean water — milk, fruit juice, beer?
This would indeed be a sensible thing to do. But Esquire remarks, without further explanation, that bottled water is ‘hard to find.’ So, perhaps, are other clean-water drinks. Perhaps Coca-Cola is the only clean-water drink that is at all widely available in this town?
In order to show why this may be so, I must go into the commercial aspect of the production and distribution of Coca-Cola in San Cristobal.
The commercial aspect
The Coca-Cola Company is a US-based multinational corporation. It produces not Coca-Cola but a syrup or paste concentrate that has to be diluted with water to make Coca-Cola. it sells the concentrate to bottling companies that make the Coca-Cola, bottle it, and sell it in various regions of the world to which they have bought exclusive rights. The bottling company that owns the rights to bottle and sell Coca-Cola in Mexico as well as nine other Latin American countries is FEMSA (a Spanish acronym for Mexican Economic Promotions). FEMSA is a Mexico-based multinational beverage and retail company. It is FEMSA that owns and operates the bottling plant in San Cristobal. It also owns retail chains, including OXXO, Mexico’s largest chain of convenience stores.
Here again I have no information specific to San Cristobal, but a plausible reason why bottled water is ‘hard to find’ would be FEMSA’s ownership of the town’s retail stores. If one and the same company were to own the retail stores and the Coca-Cola bottling plant, it would hardly allow its stores to display drinks that would compete with Coca-Cola.
In accordance with an old agreement between FEMSA and the Mexican federal government, the company pays for the water it takes from the aquifer at a very low rate – about 10 cents for every 260 gallons, which comes to $120 per day or $44,000 per year. Even this very modest payment goes to the federal not the local government and cannot be used for local needs. FEMSA offered to build a sewage treatment plant to provide 500 families with clean drinking water, but this token measure was abandoned when the company realized that it would not stop local protests.
Why would the Mexican government allow this situation to continue? It may be recalled that Vicente Fox, the president of Mexico in 2000—2006, was a former chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company in Mexico. This fact suggests the political clout of the Coca-Cola business in Mexico.
A clean-water monopoly
Propagandists for capitalism like to dwell on the wide choice that ‘the market economy’ gives consumers. They forget to mention that this is true only of a competitive market and that most markets are no longer competitive. They are either oligopolistic, with a few big companies that conspire to limit consumer choice, or monopolistic, with a single company in a position to dictate terms to its customers.
In a place like San Cristobal, a vital human need – clean water – has been turned into a commodity monopolized by a single supplier. This supplier exploits its monopoly position to compel residents to buy clean water from itself and mixed with other substances that destroy their health and doom many of them to an early and miserable death.
End of the story?
Climate change has brought a sharp and persistent reduction in rainfall to the Central Highlands of Chiapas State. Both surface and deep water sources are undergoing rapid depletion. If this continues for very long, the region will no longer be able to support a large population and most of the people of San Cristobal will join the swelling stream of environmental refugees. At a certain point, whether due to exhaustion of the aquifer or to the falling number of consumers, the making, bottling, and selling of Coca-Cola will cease to be a commercially viable operation. The managers of the plant will depart, well satisfied with the splendid job they have done for the shareholders of FEMSA.
