German government steps up its army recruitment campaign in schools

Tino Jacobson

A central component of Germany’s return to an aggressive foreign and great power policy is the militarisation of society as a whole. Against the backdrop of the Ukraine war and the recently announced tripling of the German military budget, the militarisation of society is taking new, unprecedented forms.

On March 7, Germany’s Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Free Democratic Party) demanded the increased presence of Bundeswehr (German army) officers in schools.

She justified her demand as follows: “It is important that the Russian attack on Ukraine and the consequences for Germany and Europe are addressed in school lessons in an appropriate way, bearing in mind the age of pupils. Especially in times of social media and disinformation, there has to be an appropriate response that addresses the concerns and fears of the pupils.”

The aim of the campaign is clear. It is not about the “concerns and fears of schoolchildren,” but rather indoctrinating young people with official propaganda and obtaining their consent for militarism and war. For years, the Bundeswehr has been pumping millions into advertising and recruitment campaigns, in addition to sending its officers into schools—so far without success. The vast majority of young people want nothing to do with war and militarism.

Stark-Watzinger’s plans have met with angry opposition in social media. “The Bundeswehr has absolutely no business in schools. If someone comes, I will keep my children at home that day,” Sonja comments. John Klapper thinks that “promoting the trade in murder has no place in schools.” And RicoTV writes: “Do they hate children that much? First the children are to be contaminated in schools and then you allow them to be press-ganged into the armed forces. You are really becoming the second (far-right) AfD.”

Other comments on the Education Minister’s statement denounce the one-sided reporting and unrelenting war propaganda on the part of the official media and politicians.

“Why don’t you tell the children that we have been starving children in Yemen for years!!!!!,” writes elfox. Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab region, has been bombed by Saudi Arabia—with the active or tacit support of the imperialist powers—for years. This criminal war will result in leaving 1.3 million pregnant mothers and 2.2 million children severely malnourished by the end of this year. Already, 17.4 million people in Yemen are suffering from hunger.

With regard to the war in Ukraine, a user by the name of Vita15 raises the question of “how it could come to this” and “what role NATO, the US and Europe have played and are playing here.”

In fact, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not an “unprovoked war of aggression,” as official propaganda maintains, but rather a reactionary and nationalist response by the Putin regime to the systematic offensive by NATO powers. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, NATO has systematically encircled Russia and in 2014 orchestrated a right-wing coup in Ukraine to bring a pro-Western regime to power.

Now the imperialist powers are using the Russian invasion to bring about regime change in Russia itself and advance their own plans for rearmament and war. The Special Fund of the German Armed Forces (Sondervermögen Bundeswehr) of 100 billion euros launched by the German government is the biggest program for the rearmament of the German military since the days of Adolf Hitler. The deployment of Bundeswehr youth officers to schools is being intensified as part of this program.

A Bundeswehr youth officer in action (picture: “Communication is her job” by Wir. Serve. Germany, CC BY-ND 2.0)

The last annual report on youth officers published by the Bundeswehr in 2020 noted with satisfaction: “The diverse efforts to improve staffing among full-time youth officers bore fruit.” For example, “of the 94 posts for full-time youth officers nationwide, an average of 77 posts had been filled,” corresponding to a staffing level of 82 percent. Since 2010, the amount spent on recruiting youth officers has risen from 12 million to 33.6 million euros.

The report leaves no doubt that it is about recruiting youth for wartime missions. The youth officers had “the task of talking to pupils and students and other interested parties at schools and educational institutions about the role and tasks of the Bundeswehr.” Youth officers “with deployment experience are particularly in demand.” After all, “they can describe their personal experiences, classify and assess the conflict” and “make sense of the conflict.”

Officially, youth officers in schools and universities are not allowed to recruit directly for the Bundeswehr, but this is precisely what is increasingly taking place. In 2021, 1,239 minors were recruited for the Bundeswehr, according to the annual report by Eva Högl (SPD), the Bundestag’s Commissioner for the Armed Forces. This is 91 more (or about 8 percent) than the previous year, when 1,148 minors were recruited.

The German Teachers’ Association (DL) supports the use of youth officers in schools. It is “part of the educational mandate of schools to inform about the work of the Bundeswehr—and to do so through first-hand experts. In this respect, the deployment of youth officers should be a matter of course,” explained DL President Heinz-Peter Meidinger. He dismissed widespread criticism with the provocative remark: “I firmly reject such demonisation of the Bundeswehr.”

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) strongly condemns the militarisation of schools—especially given Germany’s history. In the 20th century, Germany twice tried to impose its political and economic interests on Europe and the world with military force. The terrible consequences are well known. In the Second World War alone, Germany was responsible for the industrial murder of 6 million Jews and the killing of 27 million victims in the Soviet Union through the Nazi campaign of mass extermination.

In both world wars, pro-war propaganda in schools played a huge role. Pupils were indoctrinated and instrumentalised in the fight for the “German Fatherland.” Millions were used as cannon fodder to advance the imperialist interests of the rich and big business. This cannot be allowed to happen a third time.

What is needed is not army youth officers, but teachers! Higher investment in education instead of billions for the military are necessary! The coronavirus pandemic has increased the burden on teachers and pupils enormously.

According to calculations by the renowned education researcher Klaus Klemm, the shortage of teachers in the next few years will be much greater than the figure predicted by the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK). According to Klemm, there will be a shortage of 45,000 teachers by 2025, i.e., more than double the total cited by the KMK. For the German ruling class, however, the priority is preparing for war.

Inflation slashes living standards and pushes millions of workers in the US to the brink

Patrick Martin

The rising cost of living will force the average American household to spend $5,200 more a year just to buy the same goods and services as last year, according to a report released Thursday by Bloomberg Economics. This comes to an average of $433 a month robbed from the pockets of workers and their families, under conditions where 60 percent of the US population cannot afford an unexpected expense of $500.

The gasoline price board is shown at a gas station in Menlo Park, Calif., March 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

This staggering fact demonstrates the human cost of the rise in the rate of inflation, which hit a 40-year record of 7.9 percent in December. The rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index slipped slightly to 7.5 percent in January and 6.4 percent in February, but it is still well above the forecast of both the Federal Reserve and the Biden administration.

The core inflation rate, not counting food and energy prices, which fluctuate more from month to month, stood at 6 percent in January and 5.4 percent in February, according to figures released by the federal Department of Commerce Thursday. This means that regardless of efforts by the Biden administration to manipulate temporarily the price of gasoline at the pump, the reduction in the living standards of the working class will continue.

Bloomberg Economics—part of the publishing empire of billionaire Michael Bloomberg—pointed out the benefits for capitalist employers of the inflation “tax” on workers. “Accelerated depletion of savings will increase the urgency for those staying on the sidelines to join the labor force, and the resulting increase in labor supply will likely dampen wage growth,” the authors of the report said.

The American capitalist class as a whole is preoccupied with the problem of a “labor shortage,” which means the refusal of workers to take jobs at the starvation-level wages being offered, particularly to entry-level workers. Retail, restaurant, nursing home and other low-wage employers continually report being unable to hire enough workers.

The New York Times cited this issue in a worried article on its business pages Thursday, headlined, “Rising Wages Could Complicate America’s Inflation Cool-Down.” It cited the hopes of economists that the ending of pandemic-related restrictions—itself entirely unjustified from a public health standpoint—would help shift consumer spending from goods to services, “betting the transition would take pressure off supply chains and help inflation to moderate.”

The article continues: “Rapid wage growth could make that story more complicated. Demand for services is rising just as many employers are struggling to find workers, which could force them to continue raising wages. While positive for workers, that could keep overall inflation brisk as companies try to cover their labor costs, speeding up price increases for services even as they begin to moderate for goods.”

The language here is remarkable. The Times admits that wage growth is “positive for workers”—who happen to comprise the vast majority of the American population. But it is more worried about the downside, i.e., the interests of the employers, especially big corporations and their wealthy shareholders.

The article continues in this vein, citing the concerns of economists that wages might be permanently reset at a higher level, although this is only the abysmal pay offered by Amazon and other giant exploiters of labor. It reports the observation of one employer of low-wage labor, noting that “executives had expected the labor crunch to ease when enhanced unemployment benefits from the federal government ended in September. But while there was some increase in willing workers, there was no sudden flood.”

In other words, despite the best efforts of the Biden administration to force millions of workers back to jobs despite low wages and the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic, including through the slashing of federal support for the unemployed, workers are still resisting.

That resistance is expressed most powerfully in the mounting wave of strike action that developed in 2021 and continues in the first months of this year. A major feature of this class movement has been a series of rebellions by workers against the pro-corporate trade unions, which have been relied upon by the Biden administration to suppress the class struggle and help the corporations impose brutal conditions of low-wage exploitation on workers.

This is the context in which President Biden announced an executive order Thursday to release a substantial amount of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. About 1 million barrels a day will be put on the market for the next six months, for a total of 180 million barrels, nearly one-third of the total reserve. The announcement led to a drop in oil prices, but the effect will only be temporary, since 1 million barrels is less than 5 percent of US daily consumption.

The president claimed that the purpose of his action was to cut the price of gas at the pump for American consumers, and media coverage generally focused on the transparent political motivation of the timing and duration of the move. It is seven months until the US midterm congressional elections, where Biden’s Democratic Party is trailing in the polls, with inflation and the runaway cost of living cited by those polled as the top issue.

Within the constraints of the American two-party system, which offers voters only the choice between two right-wing capitalist parties, the Republican Party is expected to make gains. It is a measure of the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party that it could well lose control of Congress to the Republicans, despite the popular hostility to the previous administration of Donald Trump and the revulsion against his attempted coup of January 6, 2021.

Biden used the announcement of the oil release to beat the drums for his war policy directed against Russia, calling the rise in the cost of gasoline “Putin’s price hike.” He claimed that inflation had two causes, the pandemic and the Russian president. He said nothing about the main driving force of rising prices, the trillions of dollars pumped into the financial system by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury to bail out Wall Street and corporate America, beginning in March 2020 and continuing to this day.

Instead, he engaged in a bit of anti-corporate demagogy, criticizing oil companies which “sit on record profits” but refuse to increase production “for the good of your country.” This was combined with the reiteration of his loyalty to the profit system: “I’m a capitalist. I have no problem with corporations turning a good profit.”

In a briefing to the media, a “senior administration official” said that US oil companies had pledged to bring a million more barrels a day on line by the fall. He described the release of oil from the government reserve as “a wartime bridge to additional US production.”

The effort to link the crisis at the pump with the war in Ukraine has an unmistakable and ominous meaning. Biden is seeking to use Russia as a scapegoat for the attack on working class living standards being waged by the capitalist class in the United States. This has already led to suggestions that American workers should be willing to make sacrifices for the war in Ukraine, sacrifices that will be imposed by the Democratic Party and the trade union apparatus in the name of “national unity.”

Wealth bonanza for Australia’s billionaires continues as the pandemic rages

Max Boddy

The obscene wealth of Australia’s richest 250 people is being glorified in the pages of the Murdoch-owned Australian, with the release last week of its annual Rich List. The total combined wealth of Australia’s richest now exceeds $520 billion, a $50 billion increase in just 12 months.

This bonanza is amid a meteoric rise of the pandemic and as all basic health measures have been scrapped in the interests of corporate profit.

Led by the New South Wales (NSW) Liberal government of Premier Dominic Perrottet and his Victorian Labor counterpart, Daniel Andrews, all of the state, territory and federal governments have openly embraced the “let it rip” pandemic policies, creating a mass of infection, illness and growing deaths.

In just four months, since the “reopening” of December 2021, more than 4.2 million COVID cases have been detected, nearly 20 times the number of infections recorded in Australia over the previous two years. In the same period deaths have nearly doubled, rising from 2,006 at the beginning of December, to 5,951 as of March 30.

The chronically-underfunded public hospitals have been overwhelmed, with health workers placed under unbearable pressure. The schools have been transformed into petri dishes with the forced return of face-to-face learning. Children are unwittingly bringing the virus home to their families.

The reality of the continued spread of this virus is completely covered over in the media, which largely presents the pandemic as a thing of the past. This year’s Rich List is no exception with COVID barely getting a mention.

Instead, the glossy pages are devoted to a worship of wealth. The Australian hailed the nine new billionaires added to the list, bringing this super-wealthy cohort to 131 in total. They have an average wealth of $2.08 billion. The barrier for entry on the list now exceeds $500 million.

The $520 billion is sharply concentrated in the upper echelons of the list. With the top ten billionaires combined wealth exceeding $224 billion, they represent 43 percent of the total wealth. The top 20, whose wealth exceeds $284 billion, account for more than 54 percent of the total.

Gina Rinehart [Image: Wikimedia]

The two richest individuals remain iron ore magnates Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest, who have retained last year’s first and second positions respectively. In 2020–21, both of them more than doubled their wealth as iron ore prices skyrocketed.

While iron ore prices have fluctuated over the past year, the wealth of the mining barons remains at stratospheric heights. Rinehart’s personal fortune is $32.64 billion, down slightly from $36.28 billion last year. Forrest had a $2.6 billion increase in his wealth to $31.77 billion.

Fellow mining magnate Clive Palmer almost doubled his holdings, from $9.76 billion last year to $18.35 billion this year, due to the massive surge in price for nickel. This placed him at number seven on the list.

Four places on this year’s Rich List are occupied by the heads of tech companies. Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, co-founders of Atlassian, increased their combined wealth by $8.25 billion, placing fourth and fifth.

However, by far the largest increase in fortunes is that of husband-and-wife Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins, who are co-founders of the graphic design platform Canva. Their combined wealth increase was nearly $27 billion, launching them to the number 9 and 10 spots, with more than $31 billion together.

The rise of these tech companies is the direct product of unbridled financial speculation. Investors looking for the next Google gamble incessantly on the potential future profits of these tech start-ups, pushing their shares exponentially higher than the net profits of the business.

This makes the companies highly vulnerable to rises in interest rates as their valuation is based on potential profits at existing interest rates. The tech boom exerts considerable pressure on central banks to keep interest rates at record lows, further fueling inflation.

The Rich List is silent on the plight of workers and the poor. But the astronomical wealth at the top of society is the direct product of mounting poverty and social hardship afflicting millions of ordinary people. The tale of two cities is only becoming more pronounced.

Australia’s official inflation rate increased to 3.5 percent in 2021, in addition to the 21 percent rise over the prior decade. The costs of essential goods far outstrips the official rate, however, with non-discretionary goods increasing by 4.5 percent according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Housing costs, most of which are not covered by the CPI, have hit record highs. Average house prices in Sydney and other capitals are in excess of a million dollars. Any increase in interest rates could push hundreds of thousands, or even millions of mortgage holders over the financial cliff.

Average daily petrol prices are surging, reaching as high as $A2.25 a litre in some areas. Wage stagnation is continuing, with a rise of less than 3 percent predicted for this year as governments, the employers and the trade unions seek to slash business costs. Families and workers are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, with any unexpected costs spelling potential disaster.

In contrast the rich live in a different world. Typical of the Rich List is the worship of the obscene spending habits of the super wealthy. In one article the Australian writes of the “Gulfstream buying spree,” referring to the purchase of multi-million-dollar private jets used by the billionaires to get around in.

Paul Little, worth $1.53 billion and 78th on the list, is pictured with his “pride and joy,” an $85 million Gulfstream G650 private jet. This was the “gold standard” of private jet five years ago, but alas has now been outstripped by the Global Express 7500, the world’s largest business jet.

Only property developer John Gandel, worth $5.05 billion and ranked 16th, has the $100 million aircraft in Australia. Not to be outdone, Andrew Forrest, Kerry Stokes, worth $7.43 billion placed 13th, and Laurence Escalante, placed 33rd with a worth $2.99 billion, all have one on order.

Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest [Image: Wikimedia]

In one of the few mentions of the pandemic, a Rich List article hails the fact that the health crisis, which has killed an estimated 20 million people, has seen an “explosion” in private jet purchase and travel globally. While workers are funneled into cramped airports, in which they risk spreading and catching COVID-19, the billionaires jet off privately.

The Liberal-National Coalition government, supported by the Labor opposition, claims there is no money to address bushfires, floods or to increase the below-poverty unemployment payment. Public health, vitally needed during the pandemic, is to be further reduced by $10 billion or ten percent in real terms under the 2022 budget.

The obscene wealth at one pole of society, and the growing poverty and social crisis at the other, is setting the stage for major social explosions.

China’s Evolving Energy Policies in Africa

John Feffer

Photograph Source: NINTENPUG – CC BY-SA 3.0

China has been issuing a number of new policies on its approach to climate and energy. In 2021, the Chinese government announced that it would end the financing of coal-fired power plants overseas. In early 2022, it issued new environmental guidelines on its overseas investments.

Toward Africa in particular, Beijing has signaled equally significant shifts. At the December 2021 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation ministerial, China substantially reduced its infrastructure investments in Africa for the next three years. It also cut its assistance in agriculture, climate, health, peace and security, and trade promotion by 80 percent and in capacity-building by 90 percent. At the same time, the Vision 2035 document released in conjunction with the ministerial promised “a new green growth model for common eco-development of China and Africa.”

At an off-the-record meeting with representatives of African NGOs, three experts on Chinese law, investment strategies, and energy transition connected to Africa shared their insights on this evolving relationship. They offered different ways of interpreting the new Chinese policies and provided recommendations for how African civil society could advance their agendas with respect to various Chinese entities: the state, multilateral financing institutions, and enterprises.

The Pattern of Chinese Overseas Investments

It’s no longer boom time for Chinese investments overseas. Chinese overseas lending has dropped considerably since a peak in 2016. Lending to Africa in general, as well as specific investments in energy projects in Africa, follow the same downward trend line.

The rise and fall of Chinese overseas investments follows developments within China itself. Beginning in 2008, five years before the official launch of the Belt-and-Road Initiative, there was a huge outflow of investment as Chinese firms and contractors were looking everywhere for opportunities to build infrastructure projects. African governments in particular had large construction wish lists, and Chinese banks entered the picture to provide the financing.

But then came the slowing down of the Chinese economy—from double digit increases in the early 2000s to around 6 percent growth just before the pandemic hit—as well as a tumble in global commodity prices after 2015. The outbreak of COVID-19 precipitated a period of negative growth. Coming out of COVID, the era of “hot money” going into railroad investments, ports, and roads is not likely to return. “Chinese banks are a lot more cautious and more strategic,” noted Gao Qi (pseudonym), an energy expert. “There’s been a bit of a shift away within the Belt-and-Road Initiative away from hard infrastructure and more toward digital connectivity through e-commerce and newer technologies.”

The composition of those investments has also changed dramatically over the years. In the early 2000s, much of the investment went into natural gas. In any given year, coal might also represent a significant portion of the overall investments, but that reflects the fact that a single coal project might involve a disproportionate amount of Chinese funds. At the same time, hydropower has increasingly attracted much of the Chinese energy investments, with solar and wind investments also rising in recent years. “In official discourse, the Chinese government has been quite positive about low-carbon cooperation,” Qi concluded.

The type of energy investments depends a great deal on local conditions. Chinese energy funding in Africa tends to follow local resources: coal in the south, hydropower in the east, and gas in the west.

The Coal Announcement

Against the backdrop of these investments, Chinese President Xi Jinping surprised the world by announcing at the UN General Assembly in November 2021 the end of financing for overseas coal-powered plants. On the one hand, Xi wanted to promote China as a responsible player in the climate sphere.

On the other hand, the announcement was “conveniently vague,” noted Yunnan Chen, a senior research officer in the Development and Public Finance program at the Overseas Development Institute in London. The announcement seems to over any new state financing from August 2021 on. However, projects that were already under construction before this date will likely continue. Also, “whether this applies to Chinese state-owned enterprises involved in the construction of coal plants is less clear and whether it applies to financing from Chinese commercial banks yet to be seen.”

On this last point, she continued, “commercial lenders will probably incorporate this policy signal into their own strategic decisions going forward, but whether it will be legally binding on them remains to be seen.” Because the public perception of coal-fired plants has turned quite negative, Xi’s announcement, however vague, might be sufficient in persuading commercial lenders to reconsider their investments in this field. The same applies to Chinese contractors, who are not covered by the new directive, as they consider involvement in overseas coal-fired plants going forward.

China’s domestic use of coal increased significantly last year, as part of an overall rise in energy demand. It remains unclear, however, whether the policy push to secure access to coal will have any impact on coal policies abroad beyond possible increases in coal imports.

New Environmental Guidelines

In January 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment along with the Ministry of Commerce released new “Guidelines for Ecological Environmental Protection of Foreign Investment Cooperation and Construction Projects.”

These are guidelines, however, not laws. “So, it’s still perfectly legal under Chinese law to build a coal-fired plant,” pointed out Jingjing Zhang, a Chinese environmental lawyer, a lecturer in law at University of Maryland Law School, and director of the Center for Transnational Environmental Accountability. “There are no legal consequences.” There is still some conflict within the Chinese government over which authority can regulate overseas investments. “The Ministry of Ecology and Environment does not have the mandate to regulate overseas projects.”

So, the wording of the new guidelines is very important. The document uses verbs like “promoting,” “urging,” and “improving.” It talks of “should” and “shall.” But none of these words has legal consequences.

In fact, China’s environmental laws only apply within China. “When you see a very positive signal, like this new set of guidelines covering overseas projects, you can be cautiously optimistic about them,” Zhang continued. “These are not the first set of guidelines. Some guidelines appeared in 2013, almost 10 years ago, and there have been various guidelines from various government bodies since. But we are still seeing a lot of projects approved by China causing environmental problems and having a human rights impact. We can just hope that Chinese companies voluntarily comply. If they don’t comply, maybe there can be internal political pressure, but there are no legal consequences.”

On the other hand, the environmental impact system outlined in the new guidelines has been designed by very professional experts. This makes the new document stronger than previous guidelines. “This is a promising signal,” she added. “This could lead to stronger regulations. But it will take time. Another good signal is that in our most recent Five Year Plan, the Chinese government indicated that it will design legislation to manage overseas investments.” Such legislation could give the Ministry of Environment and Ecology power to regulate and manage Chinese overseas investment as to their climate impact.

“Until that happens, we cannot use Chinese environmental law to request Chinese companies to conform to environmental standards,” she concluded.

China’s energy law has also been under revision for two years. A chapter of the law will cover overseas cooperation. It may also enumerate different requirements around coal than those specified in Xi Jinping’s pledge.

The Chinese System

The Chinese political system is not a monolith. For any energy project to move forward, it needs the approval of all three key actors: guardian ministries, the Export-Import Bank and the China Development Bank (plus the insurance company Sino Sure), and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the energy sector. Nearly all of these actors have veto power. So, for instance, the Ministry of Finance can nix a project all by itself. Tellingly, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment is not one of the guardian ministries, so it can’t stop a project even if it has serious reservations about it.

The four big SOEs—Power China, Energy China, China Three Gorges Corporation, China Industrial Machinery Corporation—are just contractors not project developers. As contractors, they do what the owner says. So, it is not easy to assess accountability in the case of a violation such as land appropriation. Responsibility for violations depend on the legal relationship between owner, contractor, and funder. These four SOEs are also involved in both conventional energy and renewable energy projects.

As “state-owned” enterprises, SOEs have state shareholders. The state also makes appointments to the leadership of the SOE. High-level appointees to management positions are tied to politics and thus more susceptible to political pressure than private entrepreneurs. They can thus be made more accountable through pressure on the Chinese government, particularly by host countries.

Nevertheless, China’s state-owned enterprises are, to a significant extent, independent actors rather than “barnacles on the huge ship” of China. They undertake overseas projects at their own initiative, not at the behest of the government, and they can operate autonomously overseas. If they get involved in energy and hard infrastructure projects, that’s “primarily where the commercial opportunities are for contractors,” Gao Qi noted. These are profit-seeking projects financed by Chinese credit, which comes from the Export-Import Bank or the China Development Bank. “The involvement of the state raises the political profile of the project,” and makes it easier to get the green light for the project both in China and in the host country.

“The state-owned enterprise needs policy entrepreneurs from both sides to facilitate the deal,” Qi continued. “The DFIs are so important. They are the gatekeepers that determine whether these projects are bankable. The ministries don’t have the information or the financial sector expertise. So, project screening rests on the policy banks.” Also, there is evidence that the Chinese government is “shifting away from the mercantilist, profit-driven ideology that has dominated overseas loans.”

When Chinese firms get involved in social projects, and it’s not that often, it’s usually under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility. “These firms want to improve their reputation,” Yunnan Chen explained. “They adopt more international practices and norms to demonstrate that they are benevolent social actors. Sometimes we’ll see a construction company build a school near a project or make a donation or consult with the community. In some cases, this is corporate greenwashing.

The Chinese government created an international development agency (China International Development Cooperation Agency) in 2018. It remains small and separate from other overseas activities. “But it does have potential, and it has co-promoted some new environmental regulations,” Qi concluded.

International Human Rights and Transparency Standards

China has a provision of its criminal law that makes it a crime to bribe the officials of foreign governments and international organizations. “This article has never been used to prosecute a Chinese corporation or a person,” Jingjing Zhang pointed out. “Potentially, it could be used. But there’s no opportunity for individuals or civil society to initiate such a procedure. The Chinese prosecutor office has to initiate the procedure.”

There’s a diversity in behavior even in a single company across different countries. “There are definitely bad actors from certain enterprises,” Yunnan Chen noted. “They go to Africa to make money. They don’t have a strong stake or incentive to care about the impact on the local economy or local people. But other companies care about their public image in African countries and care about long-term investments. They want to be seen as responsible stakeholders and can more easily be held accountable in their activities.”

China has signed and ratified international human rights and environment treaties. “Under those treaties, the state has a legal obligation to comply with those international treaties,” Zhang pointed out. “These treaty obligations include the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which requires the Chinese state to protect human rights beyond its borders. “This is a legal instrument that civil society could use.”

Chinese contractors have engaged in human rights violations, illegal mining, and bribery. “But not all the conflicts originate from China,” Chen added. “You have to look at your own legal and governance issues. Different subsidiaries act very differently in different countries, depending on the governance of that country. Applying your country’s regulations: that is the first and foremost line for a community group or NGO to use. The bar needs to be raised from both sides.”

Debt

China has provided a lot of loans to Africa, approximately $150 billion. As the largest bilateral creditor, China holds about 21 percent of the continent’s debt, while 30 percent of all debt service goes to Beijing. China has also engaged in considerable debt restructuring, including debt service suspensions for 16 African countries during the pandemic period.

The loans do not follow a single template. Deals are tailored to the country, to the kind of project, to the different partners involved. Some are linked to access to particular commodities. With Guinea-Bissau, for instance, China extended $20 billion of loans over a nearly 20-year period for bauxite concessions.

There is a widespread fear that China will take over assets in the case of a default on loans. “But there is no evidence of a Chinese company taking over an asset if the government can’t pay,” Yunnan Chen argued. “If there are problems with repayment, banks allow for delayed repayment, a moratorium on the principle as long as the interest is paid. Seizing an asset is a more complicated and politically destructive move, which is not in the interest of the Chinese government or Chinese contractors. The asset might not be profitable. And the potential public relations fallout makes it an unattractive option, even if the countries could work out a debt-equity swap.”

“That doesn’t mean that indebtedness to China is harmless,” she continued. “Debt is still a huge issue for fiscally strained governments. And renegotiating debt with China is not easy. What we’ve seen through the G20 framework is that China can be an assertive and bureaucratically stubborn actor to deal with. But China is not going to seize ports or airports.”

Supporting Renewables

Between 2007 and 2020, the lion’s share of China’s public sector development funding for infrastructure projects in Africa went to renewable energy: $23.5 billion versus $19 billion for transport, $13.5 billion for fossil fuel projects, and $4.6 billion for telecommunications. .

But even these figures don’t cover all of China’s involvement in renewable energy on the continent. For instance, 80 percent of the solar panels used in projects in Africa are provided by Chinese companies. “So, it might not be a Chinese project, it could be a World Bank or USAID project, but there’s still some Chinese involvement,” Gao Qi noted. “This could be scaled up if China’s development agency becomes more powerful.”

Another development that could spur more investments in renewable energy is the Green Panda bond, an instrument introduced in 2016 by the BRICS bank. It remains unclear, however, whether natural gas projects, ordinarily not considered “green” under China’s definitions, will be eligible for such bonds.

Blinken moves to bring Middle East allies behind US/NATO war on Russia

Jean Shaoul

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to the Middle East at the weekend to hold an extraordinary meeting with Middle East leaders.

His ostensible purpose was to discuss the region’s relations with Iran, but his overarching mission was to secure full backing for the US/NATO war drive against Russia.

Blinken (third right) at the Negev Summit (Source: Secretary Antony Blinken Twitter)

The hastily arranged meeting, attended by leaders from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco, all of whom signed the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020, and Egypt, was hosted by Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. It was held in Sde Boker, a town in Israel’s Negev desert. Jerusalem would have been too contentious a location for Israel’s newfound allies, still supposedly committed to a “two-state solution” to the decades-long Israel/Palestine conflict.

The Negev summit comes amid US concern that its longstanding Middle East allies are not firmly on board the Biden administration’s war drive against Russia in a bid to assert US hegemony.

On Tuesday, Blinken met Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and the UAE’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in Rabat. The UAE hosts numerous Russian oligarchs, has bought weapons from Russia, initially refused to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abstaining from a resolution at the United Nations Security Council, and declined calls from US President Joe Biden. Its welcoming of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who survived US imperialism’s covert war for regime change with Russian help, for a state visit to Abu Dhabi has infuriated Washington.

Tel Aviv has desperately sought to balance between the US and Russia, despite having acted for years as the custodian of US imperialism’s interests.

Israel is home to many immigrants from both Russia and Ukraine on whom it is reliant as a source of cheap labour for its high-tech industries. It has formally supported the US/NATO war drive in Ukraine, but has been very reticent in public, with Bennett ordering his cabinet to remain silent on the issue and refusing to publicly mention “Russia” or “Putin” or criticize Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Senior US politicians and officials have criticised Israel for “sitting on the fence.”

Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, called on Bennett to come out of his “comfort zone” and provide Ukraine with military aid while joining the sanctions against Putin, adding that the US did not want Israel “to become the last haven for dirty money that’s fueling Putin's wars.”

While Israel has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine, it has refused Kiev’s requests to send arms, including US-made anti-aircraft Stinger missiles or drones, or supply it with Israeli arms company NSO’s Pegasus spyware. Bennett has sought to avoid antagonising Russia, even paying a flying visit to Moscow as the first Western leader to meet Putin after the invasion of Ukraine. He has refused to impose sanctions on Russia or Russian oligarchs, despite Nuland’s insistence that joining the financial sanctions was more important than Israel providing military aid to Ukraine.

A Ukrainian official accused Bennett of using his role as mediator “to justify the fact that Israel is avoiding transferring military aid to Ukraine or joining the sanction slapped on Russia,” while also pressuring Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conditions for ending the war—a claim Bennett denied.

Some 30 to 40 Russian oligarchs reside in Israel, where many hold Israeli citizenship. As new immigrants, they do not have to report on their source of income for a 10-year period, while charitable donations to academic, cultural, and other public institutions serve to protect their interests in the public arena. Indeed, Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, was forced to turn down tens of millions of dollars from the Israeli-Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, after its appeal to the US not to include him in sanctions failed.

At least five cabinet ministers in the present coalition government, including Minister of Defence Benny Gantz, the Speaker of Israel’s parliament and a former political prisoner in the Soviet Union Yuli Edelstein, Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin and Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, have links to Israel’s Russian oligarchs.

Israel relies heavily on its trade and investment links with Russia, importing about $1 billion of Russian coal, wheat, diamonds and other goods annually, and exporting about $718 million in agricultural products to Russia in 2020.

Crucially, Israel coordinates its hundreds of airstrikes on Syria with Russia, attacking government positions and fighters and facilities belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian forces, which have played a key role in defending the Assad regime against the oppositionists armed and trained by the Sunni Gulf states, Turkey and the CIA.

Tel Aviv’s too open public opposition to Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine would contradict its own diplomatic campaigns against the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement that opposes Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and the International Criminal Court that is investigating suspected crimes committed during Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza in 2014, its 15-year blockade of the enclave and military occupation of the West Bank. It was for this very reason that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned for support and trade with far right and authoritarian governments including Brazil, Hungary, Ukraine, India, China, the Philippines and Russia.

The petro-monarchs in the Gulf have also been less than enthusiastic about the Biden administration’s war drive. They have been angered by:

• Washington’s lack of support for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during the Egyptian revolution in 2011.
• Its failure to openly prosecute the proxy war for regime change in Syria.
• Its lack of overt support for the Saudi-led war against the Houthis who toppled Riyadh’s hated puppet in Yemen, President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, that has turned the country into the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster.
• Its distancing from the Gulf nations’ public split in 2017 with Qatar, which they accused of supporting Iran and extremism.
• Its treatment of Saudi de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a pariah for ordering the murder of insider turned dissident Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate in 2018.

And above all:

• President Joe Biden’s apparent political withdrawal from the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have backed opposing sides in regional wars and political conflicts in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria for years, in favour of its “great power rivalry” policy with China and Russia; and
• His efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which is accused of supporting their own restive Shia populations.

The Gulf rulers have sought to end their overwhelming reliance on the US and turned to Russia and China for trade and investment. They have refused US demands to increase oil production to lower prices on the world market.

The US has sought to reassure them that Washington will not agree to Iran’s demand for the US to lift its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation. Neither would the US allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.

The growing distance between the US and its allies takes place amid the disastrous economic impact of the war in Ukraine, threatening shortages of wheat and other products from Ukraine and Russia in a region already seething with discontent, poverty and inequality.

Blinken, who also met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, later flew on to Rabat where he discussed the contentious issue of the Western Sahara. There, in his meeting on Tuesday with the UAE’s de facto ruler, he sought to reassure the Gulf monarchs of Washington’s determination to help them fend off attacks from the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen.

Speaking in advance of his trip to neighbouring Algiers, the Algerian capital, the following day, he said he would discuss how “to alleviate some of the burden that this [the war] is placing on people, including throughout the Middle East.” This was code for trying to persuade Algeria to become an alternative gas supplier to Russia, thereby reducing his allies’ dependency on Moscow for its energy needs and reducing gas prices.

German government plans missile defence system for war against Russia

Johannes Stern

Four weeks ago, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced tripling of the military budget, Germany's biggest rearmament offensive since the end of the Second World War. Since then, things have proceeded rapidly. The decision to procure dozens of nuclear-capable F-35 stealth bombers is now being followed by a plan to establish a national missile defence system.

Launch of an “Arrow 3” missile (United States Missile Defense Agency, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

On Tuesday, a parliamentary delegation from the Bundestag's defence committee travelled to Israel to explore the purchase of the US-Israeli “Arrow 3” system, which has been in operation in Israel since 2017. It is designed to destroy enemy long-range missiles in the upper atmosphere or even in space. The range of the approximately seven-metre-long missiles is put at about 2,400 kilometres.

Plans for the installation of the multi-billion-dollar system are already well advanced, apparently. The missile radar systems would be “set up at three locations in Germany” and “report their surveillance data to the National Command Post in Uedem (Lower Rhine),” Bild am Sonntag reported on 27 March. The radars are “so powerful that the protective screen could also cover Poland, Romania or the Baltic states.”

The procurement of the system is part of the NATO war offensive against Russia and the assertion of German imperialism aiming to organise Europe under its leadership. Bild am Sonntag quotes the main spokesman on the defence budget committee, Andreas Schwarz (Social Democratic Party, SPD), saying, “We must protect ourselves better against the threat from Russia. To do this, we need a Germany-wide missile defence shield quickly. The Israeli Arrow 3 system is a good solution. We can also stretch the Iron Dome over our neighbouring countries. This would give us a key role in Europe's security.”

On Sunday evening, Scholz also confirmed the plans. He had “resolved not to divulge the details of a plan that has not yet been finalised,” but he explained on the ARD television channel that the missile defence system was “certainly one of the things we are discussing.” It was “urgently necessary that we provide the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces] with more resources, with more tanks, more air defence capabilities, and enable it in many other ways so that it can perform the task it has to perform.”

As in his war speech to the Bundestag on February 27, the chancellor justified the planned arms build-up by the supposed threat from Russia. “We must all prepare ourselves for the fact that we currently have a neighbour who is prepared to use force to assert its interests,” he stressed. “And that’s why we have to join forces to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

This is the familiar propaganda. In fact, the imperialist powers use “force” all the time to advance their economic and geostrategic interests. The wars of aggression and regime change operations in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria in the last 30 years alone, which violated international law, have destroyed entire countries and cost millions of lives.

The “turning point” in foreign policy proclaimed by Scholz was prepared for a long time. The systematic military encirclement of Russia by NATO and the imperialist powers—above all Germany and the USA—has deliberately provoked Putin’s reactionary attack on Ukraine. Now, the German ruling class is using the situation to reassert itself as the dominant power in Europe and organise the continent under German leadership.

Germany was “the country with the largest military expenditure in the European Union,” Scholz said. He went on to cite the NATO target of each member state’s spending two percent of its GDP on the military. “If we now meet the two percent, we will be the country in the European NATO alliance with the highest military expenditure and with the strongest defence infrastructure,” Scholz boasted on television. The Bundeswehr would play “a central role for alliance and national defence, especially with our capabilities on the ground.” Along with the USA, only Germany would have “the force that is necessary for the entire alliance. And we will have to organise it accordingly.”

Scholz repeatedly threatened Russia. Germany would “make itself so strong that no one will dare to attack us. And that is the message we are also sending to the Russian president: Don’t you dare!” He said he had repeatedly emphasised what President Joe Biden “has now also said in Poland: NATO's mutual assistance commitment applies to us.” We will “defend every inch of NATO territory. An attack on the Baltic states, on Poland, on Slovakia or other countries would be like an attack on ourselves.”

Neither his interviewer nor Scholz explained to the television audience what these statements meant. The so-called “mutual assistance obligation,” governed by Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, states “that an armed attack against one or more” parties “shall be considered as an attack against them all” and “that in the event of such an armed attack each of them ... shall render assistance to the party or parties under attack ... including the use of armed force.”

In other words, if the Ukraine war, which is being systematically fueled by the imperialist powers through arms deliveries and the massive build-up of NATO troops in Eastern Europe, spreads to an Eastern European NATO country, Scholz and the German government are committing themselves to going to war against Russia. The consequence would be a devastating third world war.

Unlike during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, which cost between 30 and 40 million lives, Russia today has nuclear weapons. These could be used in the event of a “threat to Russia’s existence,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, currently deputy head of the Russian Security Council, warned a few days ago. Influential circles in the NATO powers openly regard the use of nuclear weapons as a legitimate option.