NATO and Its Assimilation of Europe

Ron Jacobs

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949. According to its website, NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. Its original intent was to maintain a military line of defense against the USSR, which Washington considered the primary threat to its newfound dominance of Europe and much of the rest of the world, including many former colonies of European nations. Seen from another perspective, Washington wanted to expand its imperial reach. Given the physical and economic destruction suffered by most European nations during World War Two—and the relative lack of much of either in the United States—it made sense to a growing empire to take advantage of the moment and impose its will on the world.

NATO was one part of a plan by Washington to assimilate the countries of Europe into its imperial sphere. The other big part of this plan was known as the Marshall Plan, after then-Secretary of State George Marshall, an Army General. This plan focused on the economic integration of Europe into the expanding imperial sphere of Washington—a situation that was largely a result of the United States not only surviving the war mostly unscathed, but profiting greatly from it. In the beginning, this “integration” was much closer to subjugation, as Washington imposed its designs on the mostly destroyed European economy.

The Marshall Plan was simple in design. It provided grants and loans to seventeen nations in Europe to rebuild infrastructure, create capitalist-oriented economies, and insure those economies allegiance to Wall Street and Washington. Although the offer to join was also made to the USSR and other countries in so-called eastern Europe, Moscow and its allies considered the terms to be untenable with their desires for independence from the capitalist nations. Given the rabid anti-communism of Washington and other western governments, Moscow was certainly correct in its analysis and wise to reject the “invitation.”

Regarding that anti-communism. In 1947, the struggle against the monarchy and for a democratic republic in Greece was being led by the non-monarchist elements of the partisan resistance to the Nazis. During the Nazi occupation, the leftist, monarchist and religious resistance to the occupiers formed a tenuous alliance that disintegrated once the Nazis were defeated. The rightist elements, with the assistance of the West (especially Britain), decided they would take advantage of the vacuum and reinstall the monarchy. They were joined by many Greeks who had collaborated with the Nazis. The leftist resistance—which was the bulk of the resistance—opposed this and fought on for the monarchy’s end and the institution of a democratic and popular government. This brought on the immediate wrath of Great Britain, who sent in their troops to fight with the collaborationist and monarchist forces against the Left. President Truman sent assistance to the same forces.

Meanwhile, in Italy the Left including the communists looked like they would gain enough seats in the 1948 election to pass legislation ensuring Italy’s neutrality in the growing conflict between Washington and Moscow. Washington sent in the CIA, which had been created only a few months earlier with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. The CIA operatives changed the course of the Italian election that year. As CIA agent F. Mark Wyatt described it, “We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets….”(NYT 7/6/2006) Those politicians were mostly members of the conservative pro-US Christian Democracy party. Besides CIA monies, millions of dollars were taken from Marshall Plan funds to tilt the elections against the Left.

Concurrently, in Berlin the Soviet-aligned government blockaded goods from entering the British-US-French-occupied western sector of the city. Washington responded by airlifting goods into that sector and an end to the blockade was eventually negotiated. Washington became concerned that European governments might negotiate their own agreements with Moscow regarding trade, freedom of movement and other interstate activities. This possibility would destroy their plans for final say in European affairs, so the idea of a military alliance was put into motion. The genesis of NATO is found in the 1948 Treaty of Brussels between Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The treaty was a collective defense pact wherein each nation pledged to jump to the defense of any other nation in the pact if they were attacked.

Back in the United States, Truman had instituted a peacetime draft. Together with various other members of the government—elected, appointed and military—the idea of a military alliance with nations in Europe began to form. Euphemistically called a mutual defense agreement, the concept was introduced to the Senate by Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenburg. One of its essential elements was that the treaty would exist outside of the United Nations, thereby avoiding a potential Soviet veto and giving Washington control over any military decisions it made in the pact’s name. The Vandenberg resolution passed and work began on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The agreement was signed in 1949. The signatories were the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. The treaty applied only to attacks on member nations and not on their colonies. In addition, it insured that member nations would be required to build their own defenses; a decision generously facilitated by the US arms industry and its servants in Congress. The first manifestation of this occurred in October 1949, when Congress approved $1.4 billion dollars for military assistance to NATO members. (16.2 billion in 2022 dollars) This would be the beginning of decades of guaranteed US arms sales to NATO members.

In 1952, Greece and Turkey were assimilated into NATO and in 1955 what was then called West Germany (BRD) was signed on. The core of NATO was complete. Once the BRD became part of the alliance, the USSR responded by forming the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance between Moscow, Albania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Romania, Hungary and Poland.

NATO would become a means for the buildup of US military bases throughout Europe, especially in the BRD, Britain and Italy. As David Vine points out in his books on US military reach around the world, these bases are essentially points of occupation. They have their own laws and exist as sovereign US regions in most of the countries where they exist. Furthermore, they serve as forwarding bases for US military actions around the world. During the US war on Vietnam, US bases in Europe often served as training centers. In addition, these bases sited intelligence-gathering equipment, missiles and other armaments that were pointed towards the USSR and nations where left-leaning liberation struggles were occurring. As US support for Israel grew in the 1970s and afterwards, NATO bases were training and intelligence gathering sites for the Israeli military, as well.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its fellow Warsaw Pact member nations in the late 1980s and 1990s, voices were raised in the popular media to dissolve NATO. It was then that it became clear to many more US residents that NATO was never just a defense agreement. As it added members in eastern Europe and elsewhere, it became more apparent than ever that NATO’s role was to project an maintain an armed force whose task was defending and expanding the interests of US capital in Europe and beyond. The first military manifestation of this was in 1999, when after a peace agreement which was tantamount to surrender was rejected by the Serbian government, NATO interjected itself into the Yugoslavian civil war with aerial bombing and some ground forces against the Serbs. Ultimately, this military action, which was primarily a US military action, helped destroy the territorial integrity of not only Yugoslavia, but Serbia itself by carving out a client state in the Kosovo region. Kosovo is now the site of one of the largest US/NATO bases in the world. Since that initial military mission under NATO, NATO forces have been deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Mediterranean, off the Horn of Africa and in Somalia. They have filled both logistical and combat roles.

Although Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it is part of what NATO calls the enhanced opportunity partner interoperability program. In short, this means that Ukraine gets what NATO calls “enhanced access to interoperability programmes and exercises, and more sharing of information, including lessons learned.” (NATO website) This relationship was further enhanced in November 2021, when Washington (NATO’s primary beneficiary) and Kyiv signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership. Key elements of this charter include joint military exercises, easier access to US weapons purchases, a commitment to oppose Moscow, including refusal to accept any other designation but Ukraine’s current designation for eastern Ukraine and Crimea, a minimization of the fascist atrocities in Ukraine, and to “promote liberalization of trade conditions and facilitate access to markets for goods and services” for US goods and financial instruments.

It bears repeating here that Kyiv amended its constitution to not only allow its assimilation into NATO, but to make it a political goal. For a country whose government claims it wants to be independent, this state of affairs seems to be cancel that claim. It also leads to questions of what types of rewards were promised the current ruling elites in Ukraine for that declaration. One wonders if those promises are worth the wrath of the invading Russian military.

It is the phrase “promote liberalization of trade conditions and facilitate access to markets for goods and services” which defines the true role of NATO, especially in the post-USSR era. As noted above, NATO was always the military wing of US capitalism in Europe. That has not changed. However, as the national economies of Europe grew in the last three decades of the twentieth century, some of those economies began to rival the US economy. An elemental factor in this was the transition to what is known as neoliberalism. This latest phase of monopoly capitalism liberalized trading between nations, allowed for ever-greater investments in speculative financial instruments, and encouraged the accumulation of obscene amounts of wealth by a very small number of individuals and banks. US manufacturing interests moved overseas—mostly to Asian nations—to lower their labor costs and reach newly open markets. Of course, the continued exploitation of resources by the global north in other nations continued. Furthermore, the frequency of economic fluctuations increased along with their severity. After the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1990, US political and economic rulers moved forward with what can best be characterized as capitalism in its rawest form. In other words, it was more akin to organized crime, with syndicates fighting it out in a battle to gain control of former state-owned enterprises, land and political power. When all was said and done, it was Vladimir Putin and his cabal at the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, NATO dismissed efforts from some politicians, civil society and others hopeful for a more peaceful world to dismantle it. Instead, it stepped up its game, wheeling and dealing with US taxpayers’ money, capital investment, and promises of weaponry. While financial interests in the US and the west wheeled and dealt in an attempted hostile takeover of Russia’s economy, NATO played its role—to surround Russia with nations bound to the NATO imperial alliance. Nothing was below NATO in its mission; lies about not expanding, questionable arms deals, threats of cutting off needed funds, promises of money and arms—you name a game in politics and Washington and NATO used (and uses) it. Their success in reaching their goal of getting closer to Russia is cartographically obvious. If one looks at a map of NATO in 1989 and NATO in 2022, this becomes quite clear. Despite protests over the past three decades against NATO in Europe and the US, opposition from Moscow and other capitals not invited into NATO’s axis, and recent challenges from some in the Trumpist movement in the United States, NATO is more firmly in control of Europe’s military destiny than ever before.

As the war in Ukraine rages and some call for NATO involvement beyond that of individual members sending military and humanitarian aid, the possibility of a wider war looms. This situation has not only revealed the role NATO played in provoking this war, it also makes one wonder how things would have played out if those calling for NATO’s dismantling had succeeded.

Russia on the brink of debt default

Nick Beams

A Russian default on its international debt has come a big step closer with warnings from the IMF and the World Bank that it is very much on the cards because of the decision by the United States and the European Union to freeze the foreign currency assets of the Russian central bank they hold.

In an interview with the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said that a Russian default was no longer “improbable.”

The impact of the US-led sanctions was “quite severe for the Russian economy,” Georgieva said, adding she expected a “deep recession” with the “abrupt contraction” already increasing the “heat” on the Russian population.

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, in Munich, Germany, February 14, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Jens Meyer]

“In terms of debt service obligations, I can say no longer we think of Russian default as [an] improbable event. Russia has the money to service its debt but cannot access it. What I’m more concerned is that there are consequences that go far beyond Ukraine and Russia,” she said.

Last week, World Bank chief economist Carmen Reinhart, said Russia and Belarus were “mightily close to default.”

Asked if a Russian default could set off a global financial crisis, Georgieva said, “for now, no.” The total exposure of banks to Russia was about $120 billion, an amount that while not negligible, was “definitely not systemically relevant.”

That may be the case “for now,” but financial events have a way of moving very rapidly. As recently as February 25, the three main international credit rating agencies had Russian debt at investment grade status. Now one of those agencies, Fitch, has said a default is “imminent.”

The events of 1998 are being recalled when the $3 billion hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management went under following Russia’s last default and had to be bailed out by the New York Fed lest its demise spark a broader financial crisis.

Warnings of a default have come from Russia itself. On Sunday, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov threatened to pay international bond holders in roubles rather than dollars when interest rate payments become due.

He said Russia needed to pay for critical imports such as food and medicines, but because of the limitations on foreign currency reserves “we will pay off our debt to those countries in the rouble equivalent.”

It was “absolutely fair” that such action be taken until the sanctions, which have hit around $300 billion of Russia’s total of foreign reserves of $630 billion, were lifted, he added.

An indication of whether Russia will default will come on Wednesday when it is due to make $117 million in interest payments on two dollar-denominated bonds, neither of which has an option for payment in roubles.

Russia is looking to China to try to work around the sanctions. However, China is under threat of sanctions itself if it takes such action.

The Biden administration’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that China would face consequences if it tried to assist Moscow.

“We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion or support for Russia to backfill them,” he told CNN.

“We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world.”

The impact of war and the imposition of sanctions is going far beyond the financial system. In her Sunday interview, Georgieva repeated earlier remarks that the crisis in the Ukraine could cause famine in Africa because of the escalation in food prices, particularly wheat, as Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers.

War in the Ukraine, she said, “means hunger in Africa.” However, it also had social implications for many, many countries because of the rise in commodity prices for energy, grains, fertilisers and metals, leading to higher inflation not only in emerging markets but also in major economies like the US.

In a clear warning of future recession trends, she said: “What do we do when we have to fight inflation? We tighten financial conditions.”

Speaking on the same program, financial analyst Mohamed El-Erian said the US Federal Reserve, which meets later this week to decide on its monetary policy, had “no good policy options anymore.” If it hit the brakes, it risked a recession or if it decided to just tap them “we have an inflation problem going into next year.”

El-Erian predicted that the US inflation rate, now at 7.9 percent, would probably get close to or even above 10 percent. At the end of the interview he articulated the fear in ruling financial circles—that under those conditions American workers will demand compensation for price hikes and if that happened “then we have that awful price-wage-price cycle.”

However, as workers are hit by savage cuts in their living standards and the people of Africa and in other poorer regions of the world face a hunger crisis, there are profits to be made, just as there have been during the pandemic with the rise of the COVID billionaires.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported at the weekend that hedge funds that had made “bullish bets on commodities are notching sizable returns from the biggest rally in decades following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Citing a “person familiar with the matter,” the WSJ said Soroban Capital Partners, a $10 billion hedge fund, was one of the biggest winners “making at least several hundred million dollars since February.”

Commodities-focused funds that made similar bets were posting “outsize returns—about 30 percent in the first two months of the year in some cases.”

Even before the Ukraine crisis erupted, as inflation was taking off around the world, it was clear there were big profits to be made from increased hardship and misery. In the annual letter to investors on January 20, Soroban founder Eric Mandlebatt wrote: “We are in the early innings of a generational opportunity.”

Arson attack on Berlin’s Lomonosov International School—a result of anti-Russian agitation

Markus Salzmann

On Friday, an arson attack was carried out on the International Lomonosov School (ILS) in the Marzahn district of Berlin. According to initial investigations, the attack was motivated by anti-Russian sentiment. “We assume a premeditated act and a connection to the war in Ukraine,” a police spokesman said on Friday.

According to broadcaster rbb, the public broadcaster for the city of Berlin, a passer-by noticed smoke rising from the fire at around 3 a.m. Friday and alerted the police and fire brigade, who were able to prevent the flames from spreading further. There was considerable damage to the building, but no one was injured. According to the authorities, a Molotov cocktail was used. Only one perpetrator could be seen on surveillance camera footage.

Lomonosov International School (Credit: Gordon Lemm/Facebook)

The school is named after the outstanding Russian natural scientist Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711-1765). The school, which has existed for about 15 years, is attended by pupils from 20 nations and offers lessons in German and Russian. The school has set itself the goal of promoting and integrating children and families from the former Soviet Union.

There is no doubt that this was a politically motivated act with an anti-Russian background; this is also the stated assumption of the State Security Service at Berlin’s State Criminal Police Office. Alexander Ott, the school coordinator, announced on Friday that a fire had already been set in a tool shed at the school two days earlier. “We were and are proud of the fact that there have never been any ethnic or language-based clashes at the Lomonosov schools.”

Parents expressed horror at the attack. “We assume that no child, no youth, no member of staff at this or any other Berlin school wants this war,” said Norman Heise, chairman of the state parents’ committee, according to Tagesspiegel. “Moreover, nothing at all justifies an attack on a school!”

The attack is a result of the hysterical and chauvinistic anti-Russian campaign, which is being waged uninterrupted by all parties and the media. It is part of the war propaganda and aims at preparing a war against Russia. In the process, the fact right-wing extremist or politically disoriented elements will use violence against institutions or persons who have any connection with Russia is tacitly accepted.

Against this background, the crocodile tears shed by Berlin politicians following the attack are pure hypocrisy. Berlin’s Mayor Franziska Giffey (Social Democratic Party, SPD) condemned the arson attack. Any form of attack, agitation and violence against the Russian community and Russian institutions was unacceptable, Giffey said on Friday.

The war waged by Vladimir Putin should not be blamed on the Russian people, she declared. Her party colleague, the district mayor of Marzahn-Hellersdorf Gordon Lemm, also called the attack despicable and worrying. “We must not allow hatred of the war in Ukraine to be directed against people with supposed or actual Russian roots,” Lemm said.

Education Senator (state minister) Astrid-Sabine Busse (SPD), who is currently imposing sanctions and drastic cuts on Berlin schools, condemned the “cowardly attack” on peaceful coexistence. Social Senator Katja Kipping (Left Party) declared her “great concern that all the revulsion, all the anger we have towards Putin and his government is also hitting Russian-speaking people here in Berlin.”

In fact, Berlin’s governing parties, the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party, as well as all the other establishment parties, are foully spreading hatred of everything Russian. For them, it does not matter at all whether this concerns politics, economics, sports or culture.

This was made clear by the sacking of the world-famous conductor Valery Gergiev as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, for which the SPD mayor of Munich Dieter Reiter was responsible. He justified this by saying that Gergiev had not spoken out against the war in Ukraine. Shortly afterwards, the contract of star soprano Anna Netrebko, who had spoken out explicitly against the war in Ukraine, was terminated by the Bavarian State Opera. Her only “offence” was her Russian citizenship.

The list could be continued endlessly. Russian athletes are being banned from major events and Russian companies from trading. Russian films are banned from film festivals. In coordination with the German government, research institutions and universities have broken off all relations with Russian partner organisations and announced that all ongoing research projects will be put on hold.

By such actions, the federal and state governments, and the hysterical warmongers from the upper middle class, want to abolish freedom of expression and introduce a form of collective liability. This has not happened in Germany since the anti-Semitic vitriol of the Nazis.

In Germany, all the establishment parties have thrown their weight behind the government of Olaf Scholz (SPD) to increase arms spending and prepare for military intervention in Russia. The Left Party, a member of the state government in Berlin and in other federal states, is no exception. Its representatives like Gregor Gysi or Dietmar Bartsch even attack the federal government from the right and demand tougher sanctions that hit the Russian population hard.

The attack on the Lomonosov International School is the immediate result of the attacks on Russian institutions but is by no means an isolated case. Ethnic Russians and Russian institutions in Germany have experienced hostility and open attacks on an unprecedented scale since the beginning of the war.

According to police data, around 100 attacks have been registered in the capital alone since February 24. Nationwide, there have been such 318 criminal incidents. Often it is damage to property, insults, and threats. Several Russian associations have been attacked, as have private individuals and even embassy staff. On March 8, the Russian House of Science and Culture was daubed with the words “Murderer.”

Iran’s attack on Irbil confirms widening of US/Russia conflict to the Middle East

Jean Shaoul

As the war between Russia and Ukraine spirals out of control, with a Russian missile strike on a military training base just 15 miles from the Polish border with Poland, a NATO ally, geo-political fault lines in the Middle East threaten to open another front and destabilise the entire region.

On Sunday morning, Iran launched a dozen ballistic missiles that landed near the new US consulate compound eight miles north of the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The attack resulted in minor damage to the nearby satellite broadcasting channel Kurdistan24 but no casualties, although an Iranian official claimed that two Israeli officials had been killed. Israel has refused to comment on the attack.

Damage to the Kurdistan 24 Satellite Channel studios is seen Irbil, Iraq on Sunday, March 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Salar Salim)

Iran’s attack on Irbil marks a significant escalation in the ongoing tensions between Tehran and Israel, and by extension the US. It follows years of covert warfare between the two countries both in Iran, where Israel has carried out assassinations, blown up installations, launched cyber-attacks on vital Iranian computer systems, including nuclear facilities, and attacked sea-going vessels, and in Syria, where Israel has attacked Lebanese Shia Hezbollah fighters, their weapons dumps and Iranian-linked facilities.

It was initially thought that the target in Irbil was the American compound, where US forces provide air and other military and intelligence support for its puppet regime in Baghdad. Once complete, the compound will be one of the largest US diplomatic compounds in the world.

The relocation to the KRG follows Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s demand that they leave the al-Asad airbase and other bases where US troops were stationed. He demanded this in the aftermath of the US assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander General Qassem Suleimani in January 2020 that led to several attacks on US forces and facilities in Iraq.

However, Washington has insisted the missiles were not aimed at its compound. Tehran said the attack was in retaliation for an Israeli strike on an Iranian base near the Syrian capital of Damascus. That attack on March 7 killed four people, including two Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who play a key role in supporting the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah fighters with military expertise and supplies.

The Revolutionary Guards pledged to “make the Zionist regime pay for this crime.” The IRGC said the attack was a warning to the US and Israel and was aimed at “the strategic center of the Zionist conspiracies in Erbil.” A foreign ministry spokesperson said Iran had warned the Iraqi authorities on numerous occasions that its territory should not be used by third parties to conduct attacks against Iran.

Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen, which is close to Hezbollah and Iran, said that an Israeli drone attack in mid-February had been launched from Iraqi Kurdistan, causing substantial damage. The Middle East Eye reported that Iranian and Iraqi officials had said it was a response to a previous Israeli attack that targeted an Iranian drone factory in the city of Tabriz, one of Iran’s most important airbases hosting an army aviation headquarters, F-5 squadrons and a radar station. Tabriz had witnessed two explosions since the beginning of February. Sabereen News, an Iraqi news outlet affiliated with an Iranian-backed network of Shiite militias, claimed the target was two secret Israeli intelligence bases in Irbil, with Iranian state television saying the targets were “under the supervision of the Zionist regime in Irbil.”

That the KRG hosts a secret Israeli base in Irbil is an open secret. Israel’s relations with Iraq’s Kurds go back decades when it supported their rebellion against Baghdad in the 1960s. Under its Periphery Doctrine, it has long viewed the Kurds, who live in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, as a source of vital intelligence and a counterweight to its regional adversaries.

Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in 2004, cited CIA and military sources claiming that Israeli military and intelligence operatives, including members of Mossad, were providing training for Kurdish commando units and running covert operations, working as businessmen, inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria.

It was Israel’s support for the KRG, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses of supporting Turkey’s Kurdish separatists, that led to Tel Aviv’s increasingly hostile relations with Ankara, as it gave “humanitarian aid” to Syria’s Kurds, claiming they faced possible “ethnic cleansing” by Turkey and its armed proxies in Syria.

In 2015, it was reported that Israel was importing as much as three-quarters of its oil from the KRG in Iraq, helping to finance Peshmerga soldiers fighting the Islamic State group. In September 2017, Israel was the only country to publicly endorse the KRG’s independence referendum staged by KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. Last year, Iranian media reported that Iran had launched drones and missiles near the Irbil airport, wounding Mossad agents.

That Sunday’s strikes near Irbil caused little material damage suggests that they were meant as a signal to Washington and Tel Aviv that Tehran would not tolerate attacks on its forces in Syria. Neither would it tolerate Moscow’s collusion with Israel over its airstrikes.

Iran’s attack on Irbil takes place amid the stalling last week of the months-long talks in Vienna, aimed at restarting the 2015 nuclear accords the Trump administration unilaterally abandoned in 2018. Washington has rejected demands on March 5 from Russia, one of the signatories to the deal, for written guarantees that if Tehran signed the nuclear deal, Russian trade, investment and military-technical cooperation with Iran would be able to continue despite sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Russian “interference” in the final stages of talks has drawn criticism from Tehran as “not constructive.”

Iran had abstained in the UN General Assembly vote condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was supported by 141 countries, amid calls for Tehran to refrain from supporting Russia and show that it was not dependent upon Moscow. This has become a key political issue in Iran under conditions where Russia has repeatedly allowed Israel to attack Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria.

With oil and gas prices soaring following the war in Ukraine and US/NATO powers sanctions on Russian energy sectors, the prospect of relief from sanctions and re-entry into the world’s energy markets is an opportunity not to be missed by Iran’s bourgeois clerical regime.

Iran reportedly has 80 million barrels of oil stored in tankers and other Asian countries available for sale. This, plus its ability to produce a further 1.2 million barrels a day, would increase world supplies, lower oil prices and bring much needed revenue to Tehran. It could also provide new sources of investment from international corporations that have had to pull out of Russia.

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian is set to visit Russia today, after France, Britain, and Germany warned that the talks might collapse because of Russia’s demands.

Further ramping up tensions, Iran has suspended talks with Saudi Arabia, Washington’s other main ally in the region, due to restart this week. It follows Tehran’s condemnation of Riyadh’s executions of 81 activists, the biggest mass execution in decades. Those killed included 41 Shia Muslims from the impoverished oil producing eastern Qatif region, who the Saudi monarchy accuses of loyalty to Iran.

The two countries are involved in open conflicts, having backed opposing sides in regional wars and political conflicts in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq for years, while Saudi Arabia has headed an Arab coalition waging war against the Houthi movement it claims toppled Riyadh’s hated puppet in Yemen, President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, with Iranian support, since 2015.

Ford Motor Company severs EVs from traditional business, threatening massive job cuts and poverty wages

Tim Rivers

Ford Motor Company will sever electrical vehicle (EV) manufacturing from its business selling traditional gas-powered vehicles, the auto giant announced at the beginning of the month. The official announcement came with a pledge to invest huge sums in the global scramble for electric vehicle sales. Ford will invest $30 billion in EVs, a massive infusion which will likely not result in profits for years. To pay for this, the company plans to cut its internal combustion business to the bone in order to squeeze as much profit as possible.

The automaker expects EVs to comprise 30 percent of global sales within 5 years and half by 2030. The new EV unit will be called Ford Model e, while the combustion side will be known henceforth as Ford Blue. Both units, along with the recently created Ford Pro that focuses on commercial and government fleet buyers, will collaborate in some areas but operate substantially independently from one another, measuring profits and losses as separate entities.

Ford Motor Company World Headquarters (WSWS Media)

Ford has set the bar to cut structural expenditure by a whopping $3 billion before 2026, by “streamlining” its legacy plants. Ford expects to produce 2 million electric vehicles in 2026, far beyond the 600,000 EVs projected next year.

“We’re literally splitting the business in half,” said CEO Jim Farley. His strategy is “sharpening our effectiveness … by making the most of existing capabilities, adding new skills wherever they’re needed, simplifying processes and lowering costs.”

Hedge fund managers and corporate investors, who had been holding Ford stock at bargain basement levels for more than a decade while they demanded profit margins on a par with Tesla and Amazon, applauded Farley’s announcement, boosting Ford shares over 8 percent the very same day.

When Farley became CEO at the end of 2020, he referred to himself as a “change agent” within the company. Since becoming CEO 16 months ago, Farley, 59, has accelerated Ford’s EV plans, tripling output of the Mustang Mach-E and doubling production for the F-150 Lightning which is due out this spring.

Last September, Farley poached Doug Field, the head of the Apple’s electric car project and a former top executive at Tesla. As president of the Model e division, Field’s task will be making the legacy automaker “more nimble.” “Cost-cutting, streamlining, disrupting” are all buzzwords for massive attacks on production workers’ jobs and whatever is left of their wages and working conditions.

To hammer the point home, the new president for the internal combustion sector Kumar Galhotra added, “We are going to be hyper-competitive on costs and make quality a reason to choose Ford. And by doing all that, Ford Blue will be an engine of cash and profitability for the whole company.”

Compared to the traditional internal combustion vehicle, an electric vehicle requires far fewer moving parts and a smaller workforce to manufacture. Widespread job destruction is on the agenda, while the company plans to add an even lower fourth tier of ultralow-paid production workers, starting with its new battery factories.

Cutting jobs and slashing wages to the bone is the reality behind President Biden’s remarks in the State of the Union speech focused on promoting American competitiveness in the emerging electric vehicle market, in which Chinese manufacturers have taken an early lead. Biden cited Ford’s $11 billion investment in a joint venture with South Korea’s SK Innovation to build 3 battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky and General Motors’ $7 billion investment in EV facilities in Michigan as examples of companies that “are choosing to build new factories here, when just a few years ago, they would have built them overseas.”

He claimed falsely in his address that this would lead to “good-paying union jobs at Ford and GM,” but in fact, Biden is seeking to use the corrupt United Auto Workers union to slash wages much as he did during the bailout of the auto industry in 2009 as Obama’s vice president.

To get a sense of what is in store, autoworkers should take a close look at what happened at GM’s Assembly plant in Lake Orion, Michigan, which produces the Chevy Bolt EV and the Chevy Cruise, an experimental autonomous vehicle (AV).

In 2018, then UAW Vice President GM Cindy Estrada signed a secret Memorandum of Understanding allowing the company to get rid of full-time workers and run the plant using contractors from GM Subsystems, a dummy company founded in 2009 right before GM’s bankruptcy. These workers made far less than regular employees but still had to pay union dues. GM has since announced a $4 billion investment in the Lake Orion plant, as part of its own plans to ramp up EV production.

In response to Ford’s reorganization, the union offered up absurd lies to cover up its role in both the past and the future. “As has always been the case,” UAW VP for Ford Chuck Browning claimed, “the best interests of our members remain at the forefront of discussions with Ford in order to assure job security and shared prosperity as Ford emerges as a leader in the manufacturing of electric vehicles.”

This is an insult to autoworkers’ intelligence. They all know perfectly well that the UAW has colluded with the auto companies for decades, to carry out endless rounds of jobs and wage cuts, cynically justified in the name of “job security.” As for “shared prosperity,” this is only true for the UAW bureaucracy itself. Through illegal bribes of the type which have led to the indictments of more than a dozen top UAW officials in a recent probe, as well as even more lucrative legal bribes including corporate stock, control of investment funds and billions funneled into “joint training centers” and other labor-management schemes, the UAW has been totally integrated into management.

The company’s announcement is part of a bitter international struggle between the major automakers over the market share and profit margins in the rapidly emerging electric vehicle market. During the same week as the Ford announcement, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares promised to spend $36 billion for electrification and software within 8 years and deliver the company’s first electric vehicle by 2025. Stellantis plans to sell 5 million EVs by 2030, including 100 percent of its sales in Europe and half of its sales in North America.

In 2019, during the nationwide strike at General Motors, WSWS explained the vast transformations in the global auto industry which were already underway:

For the financial aristocracy the defeat of the strike is a strategic, not a short-term, question. In the face of growing signs of a global economic downturn and vast technological changes, Wall Street is seeking a broader restructuring of the global auto industry and a shift of capital towards electric and autonomous vehicles. Though not profitable yet, these technologies promise immense returns to investors from whatever global automaker dominates the market.

This will require, however, the destruction of whatever is left of the social rights of autoworkers. The auto industry must impose the conditions that prevail at tech giants like Tesla, Amazon and Google. Rather than having any expectation of long-term employment, annual raises, medical coverage and a pension after retirement, autoworkers will face the same hyper-exploitation as workers in the so-called Gig Economy.

The “Amazonization” of the global auto industry means future workers will be nothing but low-paid contract workers or “perma-temps” who can be hired and fired at will, depending on which way the economic winds blow.

Wall Street is gearing up for a fight that will have vast implications for the future of workers at Ford and Fiat Chrysler, in every auto and auto parts factory in the US and across the planet and for workers in every economic sector.

The attack on autoworkers also proceeds along international lines. In Europe, the unions and union-dominated works councils have pitted Ford workers in Saarlouis, Germany, and Valencia, Spain, against each other in a bidding war to secure production of a new electric vehicle. The location of the investment will be based on which plant can offer the most concessions, with the losers losing their jobs.

There is also a bitter struggle not only over market share but for government support. Biden’s proposed tax credits for EV purchase would extend only to vehicles produced with union labor— that is, at companies where the exploitation of the workforce takes place with the collaboration of the pro-corporate union bureaucracy.

This would favor the heavily unionized Detroit automakers over their nonunion rivals, including both foreign-owned auto companies which produce vehicles at nonunion plants in the American South, as well as the EV startup Tesla owned by billionaire libertarian blowhard Elon Musk. Musk reacted with a series of sarcastic tweets recently, “hereby inviting” the UAW to organize an election at his plant in Fremont, California, while making clear his opposition to the UAW.

However, the UAW would function as no less a company union at Tesla than it already does at the Detroit Three. Indeed, one of the purposes of Biden’s tax credit is to encourage companies to bring in the unions as a bulwark against rank-and-file opposition from below.

Biden’s worst fear is that this opposition, which will grow tremendously in response to attacks on workers’ living standards being pushed alongside the transition to EVs, will find an independent outlet.

Survey reveals mental health crisis among Canada’s international students during pandemic

Jake Silver

The COVID-19 pandemic has now claimed over 37,000 lives across Canada and millions worldwide. The more infectious Omicron sub-variant BA.2 threatens to unleash a catastrophic sixth wave as governments in every province and territory remove the few remaining mitigation measures left across the country.

The capitalist imperative of prioritizing profits over the protection of human life, on top of record-setting inflation, and years of savage austerity and privatization for health care, education and other public services have taken a terrible toll on the living conditions, physical wellbeing and mental health of workers and young people. 

In addition to hospitalizations and deaths associated with COVID-19 and the debilitating symptoms of Long COVID, there are alarming signs of increased mental illness in the population, especially among young people.

A study of 1,000 international students in Canada from 84 countries conducted by researchers at Carlton University and published on The Conversation found that 55 percent of respondents were at risk of depression and about 50 percent were at risk of an anxiety disorder.

Difficulties accessing community and campus supports, online educational resources, culture shock, language barriers and being great distances from family and familiar surroundings, often in conditions of isolation, were cited by respondents as the main problems they faced. Many students said they suffered from loneliness, mental exhaustion, panic attacks and social isolation. International students found it hard to reach school counselling centres, with attempts to make appointments failing due to the high volume of students seeking these services.

The survey found that academic and financial stresses were among the greatest challenges students faced. Many students said they had difficulty adjusting to online instruction. At the start of the pandemic, as universities shut down campuses and residences and moved to online learning in order to prevent community transmission of COVID-19, border restrictions prevented international students from returning to their home countries.

 This stressful situation was compounded by the combined effects of loss of parental or spousal income and loss of wages from off-campus employment. Almost 80 percent of respondents reported that they were either “concerned” or “very concerned” about their ability to pay for education.

Surveyed students also pointed to the steep tuition costs as well as the reduction in quality of education, student services and access to campus amenities. As one respondent put it, “…now it feels like I’m paying $10,000 per semester to teach myself.”

The precarious economic situation facing international students in Canada is being exacerbated by increases in the cost of living, including a 6.5 percent rise in food prices, forcing many to turn to food banks. Food Banks Canada recorded a 20 percent rise in food bank visits during the pandemic, including 1.3 million visits in the month of March 2021 alone—the largest increase since 2008. Guru Nanak Food Bank, which operates in Surrey, British Columbia, recently told CBC News that 1,500 of their 2,200 food bank members are students.

International students comprise a highly exploited section of the labour force, with many being paid below minimum wage, often in the service industry. They are often at the mercy of their employers, since they must obtain a letter from them if they wish to apply for permanent residency after completing their studies. This dependence makes it all but impossible for international students to challenge the brutal conditions of exploitation they often face.

The number of international students enrolled in Canadian universities and colleges has grown rapidly over recent years, from 142,170 in fall 2010 to 338,782 in fall 2019, according to Statistics Canada.

University managements and governments alike have seen them as a lucrative form of revenue for the increasingly corporatized post-secondary institutions. In Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, international students pay three to four times the tuition of domestic students. The average cost of tuition for undergraduate students in arts or sciences is $23,510 compared to only $6,327 for domestic students.

In 2015-16, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the tuition fees from international students accounted for $1.28 billion in revenue, up from $620 million in 2011-12. The federal government estimates the economic impact of international students in Canada at $11 billion a year, and $5.4 billion a year just in Ontario.

This revenue stream has become all the more crucial for university budgets as governments of all political stripes have taken the axe to public funding for post-secondary institutions since the 1990s.

After forking out tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of attending a university or college, international students are frequently exposed to unscrupulous employers only too eager to take advantage of their plight.

Brampton, Ontario resident Statinder Grewal originally came to Canada as a student. She was recently awarded just over $16,000 after she filed an employment standards claim alleging $18,000 in unpaid wages. The unpaid wages were accrued during a six-month period between June and December 2020, when she worked as a server, cook, cleaner, and cashier. Initially, she worked 12-hour shifts for $60 a day, which increased to $100 a day after six weeks.

She said she had agreed to the low wage because the offer included the provision of a letter to help secure her permanent residency. The situation became so unbearable that she contemplated suicide at one point. She told CTV News Ontario in a recent interview, “I went through a lot of things, because it’s very sad. … I gave my whole life for six months to them.”

Ekam Sandhu, a recent graduate from Hanson College in New Westminster, British Columbia, had his work permit application denied, despite his classmates being approved, on the grounds that graduates from his college are not eligible. He told Global News, “After studying so hard for 16 months and paying $32,000 in fees, and now I’m not even allowed to work or stay in this country—it seems unfair to me.”

Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), a federal government agency, sent a statement to Global News claiming that the BC campus in question was exempt from the program. However, according to Subbalakshmi Arunachalam Pillai, a regulated Canadian immigration consultant, that is not the case.

Pillai explained to Global News that although his denial seems to be an error due to inconsistencies in handling applications and pandemic-driven back-logs at IRCC, Sandhu’s precarious situation is far from unique. Moreover, the application process can take months and hundreds of dollars and he no longer has status in Canada, which means he has no medical coverage or right to legally work. Explaining his situation, Sandhu added, “There is my mental health, there is my financial situation, I feel disturbed when I see how I am going to survive the next five, six months of my life without having any income and so many bills.”

Pillai explained to Global News, “The processing time has been extended so much that some students are in the stage they are becoming suicidal.”

Migrant workers on temporary work visas face the same indifference to their plight by government authorities and the same ruthlessness from unscrupulous employers that are permitted to house workers in unsafe conditions, which led to at least three deaths at the start of the pandemic. The plight of highly exploited migrant workers came to public attention once again in January, when a Jamaican agricultural worker was found dead in a hotel room during his compulsory two-week COVID-19 quarantine upon arrival in Canada.

UK cost of living crisis worsens

Barry Mason

The cost-of-living crisis facing workers after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and over a decade of crushing austerity will be made much worse by the war in Ukraine.

A Centre for Economics and Business Research report forecasts the biggest fall in living standards in nearly 70 years, with households suffering a £2,500 cut in spending power.

The economic consultancy stated, “We estimate that disposable incomes will fall in 2022 by 4.8% with a further fall of 1.4% in 2023. The forecast fall in living standards this year is an estimated £71bn – which amounts to £2,553 per household… the largest since records started in 1955.”

Sanctions against Russia are fueling the surge in the cost of everyday items of food and fuel to their highest rate in 30 years. The UK is only dependent on Russia for a small percentage of its gas and oil imports, but the Brent crude benchmark international price for oil recently reached a high of $139.13 per barrel before dropping back.

Natural gas prices have recently risen 10 to 15 times, meaning a therm of gas costing more than £6. According to a March 8 BBC News report, if the cost per therm averaged £3.20 up until June then households on dual domestic fuel supplies (gas and electric) would face annual bills of £3,000 (£250 a month) from October. One therm is equal to 100 cubic feet of natural gas.

A March 7 UK House of Commons briefing on the cost of living noted that in February the Bank of England forecast the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation to reach 7.25 percent in April before easing, but the Ukraine conflict will heighten and prolong inflationary trends. The briefing predicted CPI could reach 8.1 percent in the third quarter, with some economists predicting 10 percent. The CPI measure does not include housing costs whereas the Retail Prices Index does. RPI was already at 7.8 percent in the year to January, up from 7.5 percent the month before.

A Resolution Foundation report published March 8 said the Ukraine conflict would push inflation to a 40-year high. It noted, “Inflation could peak at 8.3 percent this spring or even exceed the 8.4 percent rate in April 1991 that is the highest seen since 1982. Inflation across 2022-23 as a whole could be 7.6 percent—significantly above the 6.2 percent forecast by the Bank of England just last month.” It would mean households seeing a £1,000 a year fall in real terms income, the sharpest since the mid-1970s.

Resolution Foundation principal economist Adam Corlett explained, “Britain has stepped out of a global pandemic, and straight into a cost-of-living crisis. The tragic conflict in Ukraine is likely to further drive up the price of energy and other goods and worsen the squeeze on incomes… Inflation may even exceed the peak seen during the early 1990s, and household incomes are set for falls not seen outside of recessions.”

The Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest foodbank charity, has teamed up with the Post Office to raise cash. The Post Office has pledged to give 1 penny for each cash withdrawal to raise money for the Trust’s 1,300 foodbanks. The campaign notes that 14 million people are already living in poverty in the UK, of which 4.5 million are children.

Footprints in the Community food bank in northern England receives donations (Image credit: Twitter/Footprints_UK)

Even prior to the Ukraine invasion, domestic energy prices were already set to surge in April as the price cap on charges by energy utility companies goes up by £693 with a further increase in the autumn. Conservative government Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a lump sum payable to council taxpayers of just £200 to partially cover the surging cost of energy this year. But this is in the form of a loan which must be paid back over five years.

Housing costs are rising, with rents up by an average 2 percent in 2021, the fastest rate in the last five years. According to the Big Issue homeless charity magazine, private renting is now unaffordable for the poorest, with only two areas remaining in England where the cost of rent amounts to less than 30 percent of incomes.

Council tax, payable by all households, is likely to increase in around 2 thirds of local authorities with many increasing it by 2.99 percent. This is the maximum increase local authorities can impose without holding a referendum.

More pain faces homeowners with a standard variable rate mortgage, who are expected to pay an average £15 a month more from April.

Food prices are skyrocketing, with market analysts Kantar recording a food price inflation rate in February of 4.3 percent, its steepest in nearly nine years.

Last week, food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe gave evidence to a House of Commons Works and Pensions Select Committee. She said, “millions of children living in poverty in Britain today” whose families’ financial situation have become “increasingly untenable” over the past decade. “The impact of the cost-of-living crisis on those households is going to be, in some cases, fatal and that’s not a term that I use lightly.”

Monroe said of the choices financially strapped families now face: “And that’s not people deciding not to go to the theatre or not have legs of lamb or bottles of champagne; that is people deciding: ‘We won’t eat on Tuesday or Thursday this week’ or ‘we’ll turn the heating off’ or ‘we’ll skip meals’… In my experience of 10 years on the coalface of anti-poverty work, I can tell you that people are just eating less or skipping meals or having less nutritious food.”

Workers also face a 1.25 percent increase in national insurance rates in April (a 10 percent rise) meaning a worker on £30,000 paying an extra £251 a year.

The cost of running a car is becoming prohibitive. The Independent March 11 reported that average petrol prices were greater than £1.60 a litre and that in some London services stations had reached £2 a litre. Rail fares are to rise by 3.8 percent in March.

The Sunday People March 6 published, “Inside district on frontline of cost-of-living crisis where a third live in fuel poverty.” Its report was based on the parliamentary constituency of Hodge Hill near Birmingham. With a population of around 120,000 it is classed as the worst affected area in the country for fuel poverty. Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy figures for 2019 indicated 18 percent of West Midlands households experienced fuel poverty.

Keith Crawford, a volunteer at the Aston and Nechells foodbank, explained, “Week in, week out we are seeing broken people come through our doors. We see the whole cross-section of society… we have had starving people coming through the doors who we have had to offer a biscuit and a drink to.

“It’s never been this bad. We had so many people through the doors one day over Christmas that we gave out 300 meals and stayed open longer.

“One man who came in had to choose between eating and showering. How can people live in dignity and how can people go to job interviews in an area of already high unemployment when they can’t afford to shower? It becomes a vicious circle of poverty.”

An Independent article March 6 was headlined, “Cost of living crisis: Snapshot of how biggest squeeze in 60 years is set to batter millions of Britons.” Sarah Coles, a senior personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said she expects by April millions will become desperate. “Over time, we’ll see the impact spread increasingly to people who have tended to think of themselves as relatively comfortable, as they start to find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.”

With the war in Ukraine just three weeks old, the UK has already sent hundreds of millions of pounds in military equipment to Kiev. UK defence spending is set to surge with Sunak’s expected to announce a substantial increase in his March 23 spring statement. Every single penny spent on the military will be clawed out of the backs of workers.