Moscow’s Leverage in the Balkans

John P. Ruehl

Photograph Source: Generic Mapping Tools – CC BY-SA 3.0

Since September, Kosovo’s fragile stability that has endured since 1999, following intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has grown progressively precarious. Clashes between ethnic Serbians and Kosovo security forces saw Serbia’s military placed on high alert in November. Several high-profile Serbian officials, including President Aleksandar Vučić, announced that the Serbian military could be deployed to northern Kosovo to protect the ethnic Serbs, who make up the majority of the population in the region.

Moscow has natural incentives to provoke the crisis. An unraveling of regional security would create more obstacles for Serbia’s EU aspirations, optimistically slated for 2025. The West’s support for Kosovo has historically undermined Serbia’s European integration effort, and 51 percent of Serbs polled by Belgrade-based pollster Demostat in June 2022 said they would vote against EU membership in a national referendum.

But by escalating tensions, Russia can also prevent further EU and NATO expansion in the region, and potentially reduce Western pressure on Russian forces in Ukraine by diverging resources from Kyiv to the Balkans.

Throughout the 1990s, NATO took a leading role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, perceived to be dominated by Serbia. While the West supported Bosnian and Croatian independence initiatives and Kosovan autonomy, Serbia was supported by Russia. These policies led to considerable tension between NATO and Russia, with the Kremlin’s occupation of Kosovo’s Slatina airport in 1999 leading to “one of the most tense standoffs between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.”

However, Russia was too weak to adequately support Serbia in the 1990s. And after then-Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević was overthrown in 2000 and Russian forces withdrew from Kosovo in 2003, Serbian political elites instead pursued cautious integration with Europe while keeping the U.S. at arm’s length. At the same time, Serbia and Russia forged closer relations through growing economic ties, embracing their common Slavic Orthodox heritage, and sharing resentment toward NATO’s role in their affairs.

Territories under Serbian control continued to secede in the 2000s, with Montenegro peacefully voting for independence in 2006 and Kosovo in 2008. Yet unlike other secession initiatives in the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo’s failed to gain universal recognition. Almost half of the UN General Assembly refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence, with NATO/EU members Spain, Greece, Slovakia, and Romania among them.

Moscow was firmly against Kosovo’s independence, and prior to the February 2008 declaration of independence, the Kremlin warned of geopolitical consequences if it were to move forward. Six months later, Russia invoked the “Kosovo Precedent” to invade Georgia and recognized the separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. The Kremlin is now using the same paradigm to justify its support for Russian-backed separatist territories in Ukraine.

Currently bogged down in Ukraine, the Kremlin is exploring fomenting additional unrest in the Balkans by exploiting Serbian nationalist sentiment. Doing so will undoubtedly redirect some Western political, economic, and military efforts away from Ukraine.

Russia’s influence over Serbia has grown in recent years, and Serbian politicians have become more assertive regarding northern Kosovo. Though overall trade between Russia and Serbia is negligible in comparison to the EU, Russia provides one-quarter of the oil imported to Serbia, while Gazprom finalized 51 percent share in Serbia’s major oil and gas company, Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), in 2009.

Russia’s veto power at the UN Security Council has prevented greater international recognition of Kosovo, demonstrating Moscow’s usefulness as a diplomatic ally. Putin has, meanwhile, become Serbians’ most admired international leader, with pro-Putin and pro-Russia rallies having been held in Serbia since the invasion of Ukraine. According to recent polling, almost 70 percent of Serbians hold NATO responsible for the conflict.

Balancing Putin’s popularity and Serbia’s relations with Europe has been a delicate task for Serbian President Vučić. Though he condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he refused to implement sanctions against the Kremlin, prompting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to signal that Vučić had to make a choice between Europe and Russia in June.

But the Serbian leader had already signed a three-year gas deal with Russia in May, and in September agreed to “consult” with Moscow on foreign policy issues. Other ventures, such as doubling flights from Moscow to Belgrade, have demonstrated Serbia’s willingness to assist Russia in undermining Western sanctions.

More concerning to Western officials is Russia’s attempts over the last decade to alter the military balance between Serbia and Kosovo. A Russian humanitarian center located in the Serbian city of Niš, which is close to the Kosovo border and opened in 2012, is suspected of being a secret Russian military base “set up by the Kremlin to spy on U.S. interests in the Balkans.” Additionally, Serbia has increased imports of Russian weaponry, while joint military exercises between Russia, Belarus, and Serbia (labeled “Slavic Brotherhood”) have been held annually since 2015.

Russian-backed non-state actors have in turn become increasingly present in Serbia. In 2009, Russian private military and security companies, as well as organizations composed of Russian military veterans, began conducting, in coordination with Serbian counterparts, military youth camps in Zlatibor, Serbia. These were seen as attempts to develop the next generation of fighters and were eventually shut down by the local police in 2018.

Russia’s Night Wolves biker gang, which has played a pivotal role in the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the unrest that has followed in Ukraine since, also opened a Serbian chapter and conducted road trips in the region for years. And in December, a cultural center was opened by the Russian private military company Wagner—which is similarly fighting in Ukraine—in Serbia, “to strengthen and develop friendly relations between Russia and Serbia with the help of ‘soft power.’”

Using these forces to threaten a low-level insurgency in Kosovo would cause enormous alarm in NATO and the EU. But Russia’s efforts to fan the flames of Serbian nationalism will also be directed toward Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country’s Serb-dominated territory, Republika Srpska, accepted power-sharing stipulations as part of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, and Russian forces similarly withdrew from the country in 2003.

Nonetheless, Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska (who was also the president from 2010-2018), has increasingly allied himself with the Kremlin and has taken greater steps toward declaring his region’s independence from the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina over the last decade. Republika Srpska security forces are now well-equipped with Russian weaponry, while Moscow has given subtle approval to supporting and developing Republika Srpska paramilitary groups. A Bosnian-Serb militia group called Serbian Honor is believed to have received training at the humanitarian center in Niš and the Night Wolves have also repeatedly held rallies in the territory.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Dodik has expressed his support for Russia, raising alarm over his ability to instigate unrest in Bosnia and Herzegovina with limited Russian state and non-state support. In response, the EU’s peacekeeping mission in the country, EUFOR or Operation Althea, almost doubled its presence from 600 to 1,100 since the invasion in February.

Yet this still pales compared to the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), which has roughly 3,700 troops in a country with a smaller population and less territory than Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is further aided by the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX). Pushing Republika Srpska’s independence initiative to a point where Russia can officially recognize and support it may in turn rapidly overwhelm the smaller international force there. It would also provoke calls for independence among Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ethnic Croatian minority, whose leaders have close relations with Moscow.

Disagreements in the Western alliance over the collective approach to the Balkans have been revealed in recent months. While the UK and the U.S. placed sanctions on “various Bosnian politicians who are threatening the country’s territorial integrity,” the EU chose not to, notably due to opposition by Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary. And while Croatia was accepted into the Schengen area in December, Romania, and Bulgaria, already EU members since 2007, were denied entry by Austria, while the Netherlands similarly opposed Bulgaria being part of the Schengen area.

Effectively managing potential violence in the former Yugoslavia while continuing the integration efforts of other Balkan EU/NATO members would prove to be a difficult procedure for the Western alliance. Billions of dollars in aid and assistance have already been provided to Ukraine in 2022. Confronting additional instability in the Balkans would also highlight the flaws of NATO policy in the region since the 1990s and the lack of a viable, long-term solution to confront the issues plaguing the Balkans.

Yet regional integration efforts have picked up in recent months. In July, the EU restarted membership talks of bringing Albania and North Macedonia into the organization, Bosnia and Herzegovina was officially accepted as a candidate on December 15, and Kosovo applied for EU membership on December 14. NATO membership for both Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina remains largely on hold, however, and is currently out of the question for Serbia, which considers NATO its “enemy.”

Considerable work will be required to integrate these divided states into the Western alliance, and recent attempts to speed up this process have been largely unsuccessful. The scheme by former President Donald Trump’s administration to change the Serbia-Kosovo border amounted to little, while the proposed Association of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo has been criticized for outlining the creation of another Republika Srpska.

The role of Russian intelligence and Serbian nationalists in the attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016, which sought to derail the country’s NATO accession, reveals the lengths to which Moscow will go to achieve its aims. Western officials must, therefore, remain wary of Russia’s potential in the region. Escalating unresolved Balkan conflicts is now a major part of the Kremlin’s attempts to stall Western integration in Europe and take pressure off its war with Ukraine.

Libyan citizen kidnapped and flown to US to face Lockerbie charges

Steve James

A 71-year-old Libyan, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, appeared in a US federal court in Washington DC this month to face charges related to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, December 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The bombing killed 270 people (259 on the flight and 11 ground fatalities).

The remains of the forward section from Clipper Maid of the Seas on Tundergarth Hill [Photo by Air Accident Investigation Branch - Air Accident Investigation BranchReport No: 2/1990 - Report on the accident to Boeing 747-121, N739PA, at Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, Scotland on 21 December 1988Report name: 2/1990 Boeing 747-121, N739PAhttp://www.aaib.gov.uk/publications/formal_reports/2_1990_n739pa.cfmAppendix B, Image B-9 "Photograph of nose and flight deck"http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/2-1990%20N739PA%20Append.pdf, OGL 2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30369951]

Mas'ud is accused of two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and one of destruction of a vehicle used in foreign commerce, resulting in death. Mas'ud, who followed proceedings in court on December 12 through an interpreter, made no plea. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) will return to court later this month to detain Mas'ud pending trial.

The DoJ allege that Mas'ud worked from 1973 until 2011 for the intelligence agencies of murdered former Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, including as a “technical expert in building explosive devices”. In late 1988 Mas'ud was allegedly instructed to fly to Malta with a “prepared suitcase” where he was instructed by the only man found guilty of the Lockerbie attack, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, to “set the timer on the device for the following morning”. The DoJ also accuse the only man acquitted of any involvement in the bombing, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, of placing the suitcase on an aircraft luggage conveyor belt in Malta's Luqa airport.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland hailed Mas'ud's appearance as “an important step forward in our mission to honor the victims and pursue justice on behalf of their loved ones.” Garland’s predecessor, William Barr, informed the BBC that in his view the original 2001 trial at which Megrahi was convicted should have been held in the US because the death penalty would have been available.

Barr, in a previous stint in office, was directly responsible for the shift in focus of the Lockerbie investigation towards Libya, at the same time as he was whitewashing all those involved in the Iran/Contra scandal of the late 1980s. The Lockerbie attack took place after the 1987 murder by the USS Vincennes of 290 innocent passengers and crew in IranAir Flight 655 and, prior to charges laid against Libyans, was assumed to be an Iranian sponsored revenge attack.

The DoJ case against Mas'ud, like the case against Megrahi and Fhimah, is a concoction. He has effectively been kidnapped and subjected to extraordinary rendition. The DoJ's purpose is to maintain the official line, upheld on both sides of the Atlantic, regarding the origins and perpetrators of the atrocity.

Whatever misdeeds Mas'ud may have on his conscience, the Lockerbie attack is not one of them. The DoJ charges seek to place Mas'ud in Malta at the same time as Megrahi. But this only proves Mas’ud had nothing to do with Lockerbie because the suitcase bomb in PA103's hold was placed there in London's Heathrow Airport long before the feeder flight from Frankfurt—which would have been carrying Mas'ud, Megrahi and Fhimah's alleged Malta casehad even landed. This is detailed in the book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies by Dr. Morag Kerr of the Justice for Megrahi campaign, a work which has never been refuted.

Megrahi was tried in a non-jury show trial, held under Scots law in a disused army base at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands in 2000. Its purpose was to allow the then Gaddafi government to be brought in from the cold of international isolation in which it had been languishing for years by taking the rap for Lockerbie. In 2004, Gaddafi and then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, concluded their “deal in the desert” allowing Libyan oil fields to open up to the operations of US and European oil companies.

The politically motivated verdict, delivered in 2001, ignored countless inconsistencies, evidence having been tampered with, CIA witness coaching and found Megrahi guilty while his alleged accomplice, Fhimah, walked free.

In 2009, renowned UK human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, whose clients have included the Birmingham Six, and Guildford Four—falsely accused of IRA bombings—and Moazam Begg, who was held for years in Guantánamo Bay, described the verdict as “profoundly shocking”. She wrote in the London Review of Books, “Al-Megrahi’s trial constituted a unique legal construct, engineered to achieve a political rapprochement, but its content was so manipulated that in reality there was only ever an illusion of a trial.”

Megrahi died in 2012, protesting his innocence. A second posthumous appeal against his conviction was thrown out last year by Scottish judges who upheld Maltese shop owner Tony Gauci's identification of Megrahi despite evidence of coaching and $2 million changing hands.

In 2011, eight months of continuous bombing by the US-NATO laid waste to whole swathes of Libya, while the US and the European powers utilized Al Qaeda-linked militias as their proxy ground troops in a war for regime-change that ended in the torture and murder of Gaddafi.

The formerly relatively advanced country collapsed into a fractured and hellish civil war landscape of competing heavily armed militias, both equally committed to torturing and enslaving large numbers of people in pursuit of the patronage of one or other major power. Despite various peace efforts, there are currently two governments, one in Tripoli, the other in Sirte and Tobruk.

Meanwhile, the US and Scottish authorities have sought to maintain the threadbare and collapsing case against Megrahi by pursuing his supposed accomplices. Part of the evidence against Mas'ud appears to be a confession extracted in 2012 under unknown conditions when he was in the brutal hands of one of the militias.

An official told AP that the US government had been pressing the Tripoli government for Mas'ud for months. “Every time they communicated, Abu Agila [Mas'ud] was on the agenda”. According to the Guardian, the government, led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, offered up Mas'ud shortly after he was released from a 10-year prison sentence. Mas'ud was held without charge or any pretence of a legal extradition process until he was handed over to the US.

Masud’s nephew told the Observer, “We have filed a complaint with the attorney general’s office and demanded an investigation of the people who kidnapped him and those who handed him over. We want them to face justice. This is an assault on a citizen in his home.”

The kidnapping is reported to have been carried out by a local militia, led by Abdel Ghani al-Kikli, accused by Amnesty International of administering beatings, denying medical care, and starving and enslaving people caught at a migrant detention centre outside Tripoli.

Libya does not have an extradition treaty with the US, nor is any Libyan court known to have examined an extradition request.

None of this caused the Scottish legal authorities to bat an eyelid. Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC welcomed the DoJ “progress towards a legal breakthrough”, endorsing Mas'ud's illegal kidnapping and rendition.

Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy and who subsequently came to view Megrahi as another innocent victim, warned of any trial taking place in the US or Scotland.

“There are so many loose ends that hang from this dreadful case, largely emanating from America, that I think we should... seek a court that is free of being beholden to any nation directly involved in the atrocity itself.” Swire continued “in view of what we now know about how Scotland handled the case, it should not take place in Scotland.”

There are signs of an unraveling as earlier lies come into conflict with current ones. Aamer Anwar, the lawyer for the family of Megrahi, noted that one aspect of the US case against Mas'ud claims that he had confessed to buying clothes which Megrahi had previously been identified by Tony Gauci as buying. Anwar asked, “How can both Megrahi and Mas'ud both be held responsible?”

German ambulance services overwhelmed by calls, short staffing

Tino Jacobson & Markus Salzmann

For weeks, emergency medical services (EMS) across Germany have been on the verge of collapse. Extremely high rates of deployments and scant staffing are pushing ambulance crews to their limits daily, at mortal risk to patients.

Ambulances on assignment [Photo by Frank Schwichtenberg / CC BY 3.0]

For months now in Hamburg, EMS teams have responded to more than 1,000 calls per day. Many of the city’s 80-plus ambulances have exceeded 20 daily deployments. So many rescue missions once occurred only on New Years Eve. According to the Komba trade union, there are near daily resignations of ambulance staff who have been taxed beyond their means.

The situation is particularly dramatic in the capital. In Berlin’s Marzahn district, a patient had to wait over three hours for an ambulance on the night of December 10. On that Saturday night, as on so many others, “exceptional circumstances in emergency medical services” prevailed. This state of emergency is declared as soon as 80 percent of the ambulances are on assignment and the prescribed 10 minute response time can no longer be met. These exceptional circumstances have all but become the rule.

As a result, fire truck crews have been reassigned to ambulances. As a result, the fire department is understaffed, a recipe for disaster in the case of simultaneous and serious fires.

One firefighter said of the Marzahn case, “I suspect our colleagues in dispatch were overwhelmed and this somehow slipped by them.” He continued, “The tools they have are not meant to permanently maintain a state of emergency.”

On that same Saturday night, a serious accident in the Lankwitz neighborhood killed a 15-year-old and seriously injured a 14-year-old. The two teenagers had been hit by a Berlin city bus, pinning both of them. An emergency doctor was at the scene of the accident in nine minutes, but the ambulance required fully 20 minutes to arrive.

An “exceptional circumstance” had likewise prevailed in Berlin just the day before. Of 94 available ambulances, at times every last one was in use. In the Reinickendorf neighborhood that evening, an elderly man required emergency assistance. First responders from the fire department arrived about eight minutes after the emergency call, but the ambulance had to drive from the Friedrichshagen district, that is, from the east across the city to northwest Berlin, taking 42 minutes. All ambulances in the vicinity were already on assignment.

The shortage of ambulances and personnel is long known. In Berlin, EMS deployments increased by nearly 40 percent between 2013 and 2021, from 305,000 to 425,000 per year.

Since the abolition of protective measures against the coronavirus, cities and counties have seen massive increases in EMS deployment counts. In the city of Dortmund, the fire department was called to 13,378 more emergencies between January and November of this year than in the same period last year. This represents an increase of around 20 percent. At the same time, 115 positions in the city’s fire department are vacant.

Understaffing in emergency services is commonplace across the country. In Frankfurt, there is an official shortage of 26 paramedics and 33 emergency doctors. In addition, there are acute absences due to infections with the coronavirus or influenza. This is a consequence of an intentional policy of mass infection. At the onset of the winter wave, the last remaining protective measures have been repealed.

Frank Flake of the German Professional Association of Emergency Medical Services (DBRD) said of the drastic situation, 'The pressure to act is enormous. It’s five past 12, the system is collapsing. It is happening evermore often so that no one can drive out to an emergency.' The reasons for this, he said, are a lack of specialized personnel as well as overburdened emergency rooms.

“Just a few years ago, it was unthinkable that you would treat a patient for an hour in an ambulance outside an emergency room because hospitals were so overloaded. And now there are downright traffic jams there sometimes,” Flake added.

He assessed the consequences for the medical staff: “It can’t be that in a 24-hour shift you drive to 15, sometimes 20 calls with an average duration of one hour per call. There's no time to eat or sleep.” That’s the cause of the current “occupational exodus,” he said.

Emergency rooms have been hopelessly overloaded for months. Several emergency rooms, such as the one at Leipzig University Hospital, have appealed in recent days for patients to come only in urgent cases. Cancellations of emergency services are the order of the day nationwide. Emergency rooms can deregister from emergency care for a short time in extreme situations, but this is being done more and more frequently as care can no longer be assured. In some cases, patients must be driven to far distant clinics.

The city of Hamburg recently reacted to the catastrophic situation by summarily prohibiting the clinics from deregistering. The obvious consequence is that the patients admitted are not adequately cared for and the staff is even further overburdened.

The dramatic situation in emergency rooms was long foreseeable. In 2019, even before the coronavirus pandemic, a study found that 94 percent of Germans consider emergency rooms at German hospitals to be overloaded. Among those over 60, who have had more frequent experiences with emergency rooms, the figure was as high as 98 percent. The main reason identified was the shortage of staff in emergency care.

It is obvious that the miserable and dangerous situation in emergency care is deliberately accepted. It is therefore not surprising that federal and state governments have done nothing despite the tense situation. The Berlin Senate, consisting of the Social Democrats, Greens and the Left Party, now means to pass a new rescue service law. It has long been the case that Berlin's rescue service has been unable to meet the prescribed quality criteria generally to be at the scene of an accident within 10 minutes.

It would be necessary to invest massively in personnel and equipment, yet the state coalition government has instead decided to extend an existing exemption until 2029. It allows less-intensively trained assistant paramedics to be deployed in emergency vehicles instead of the fully trained emergency paramedics required by law. Moreover, vehicles from patient transport companies are to be more frequently permitted in emergency situations. In short, the response of the government to its self-inflicted situation is to permanently lower the quality of emergency care.

The indifference of the established parties to human life can be seen in the state of the entire health care system. Hospitals, especially pediatric hospitals, are in dire straits due to a wave of respiratory infections from this year’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) surge and the coronavirus.

Intensive care beds in children's hospitals across Germany are at full occupancy, resulting in some critically ill children having to travel far and wide to find an intensive care bed. Meanwhile, doctors and hospital staff must to resort to triage, forcing them to choose which patients to treat, or not.

Study finds that COVID was the leading cause of death globally in 2021

Benjamin Mateus

The scale of human devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is emerging more clearly as scientists and epidemiologists pore over the available data and draw inferences where data are lacking. A major study released last week found that COVID-19 was one of the leading causes of death in 2020 and the leading cause of death in 2021 globally, ahead of even ischemic heart disease which killed 8.9 million in 2019 and cancer which killed 9.5 million in 2018. 

The study was a follow-up on the World Health Organization (WHO) Technical Advisory Group’s May 2022 report on excess deaths associated with COVID-19. They estimate that global excess deaths had reached 14.83 million by the end of 2021, a figure 2.74 times higher that the 5.42 million reported deaths due to COVID-19 for the period. 

Global excess and reported COVID-19 deaths and death rates per 100,000 population. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

Excess death is defined as the difference in the total number of deaths in a crisis compared to those expected under normal conditions. As the authors note:

Excess mortality accounts for both the total number of deaths directly attributed to the virus and those resulting from the indirect impact, such as disruption to essential health services or travel disruptions. Excess mortality is a well-established concept dating back centuries and has been used extensively to estimate the toll of past health crises and pandemics such as the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’.

When the two years—2020 and 2021—are compared to each other, what is striking is that deaths sustained in the first year paled in comparison to the second year, despite the initiation of mass vaccination campaigns in many countries. The profit-driven promotion of vaccine nationalism led to a vastly unequal distribution of vaccines globally, causing millions of needless deaths in predominantly lower income countries. While in 2020 approximately 4.47 million excess deaths were estimated, in 2021 the figure surged to 10.36 million.

One of the study’s authors, Ariel Karlinsky, the creator and maintainer of the World Mortality Dataset, told the World Socialist Web Site that the current study attempts to develop and improve on the models to estimate excess deaths for countries which did not provide all-cause-mortality data. He added that the current study includes more data from more countries from more time periods during the pandemic. It also includes sub-national data to aide in estimating national level mortality from countries where reporting is lagging or unavailable for an assortment of reasons.

Mapping the ratio of total excess deaths to total reported COVID-19 deaths. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

To appreciate the scale of death wrought by the policies that allowed SARS-CoV-2 to spread unchecked globally, one would have to reach back to World Wars I and II. Indeed, the massive death toll that is being witnessed first-hand isn’t just a byproduct of the coronavirus’ particular virulent characteristics, but the international policy of finance capital that decided the cost of eliminating the virus was too onerous on their financial calculations and therefore not worth the saving of millions of lives. 

More than at any other point in human history, the technical capacity and scientific comprehension of how to rapidly eliminate the coronavirus and quickly end the pandemic was within the grasp of world leaders. The principle guiding their decisions has aptly been defined by the WSWS as “malign neglect,” which continues into the third winter of the pandemic.

As the authors note, lack of accurate standardized definitions of COVID-19 deaths and access to requisite all-cause mortality data through civil registration and vital statistics systems posed tremendous challenges to quantifying these estimates across every country and WHO world regions. Only 100 countries (52 percent) could provide monthly national data on excess deaths. The study notes:

In the two years within which the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted humanity, important lessons remain to be fully documented and harnessed as part of the global public health surveillance capacity. First, the urgent need to improve data and health information systems and the way data are collected, analyzed, shared and reported. Second, the required alignments of communicable disease surveillance with the continuous strengthening of health information systems and their integration with other existing routine surveillance systems, and with demographic and geographic monitoring systems to facilitate timely and targeted interventions. COVID-19 surveillance must also be combined with Universal Health Coverage and the International Health Regulations monitoring and related indicators for health-system preparedness, including vaccine coverage and water, sanitation, and hygiene services.

Without a doubt, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are fully aware of every country’s complete financial health, having extensive and meticulous historical data on nearly every transaction and payment ever made. But to ask how many have died and the cause of these deaths remains in the realm of speculation throughout much of the world.

A rational response to the current pandemic and the outbreaks and epidemics of the future will require internationally-coordinated databases and infrastructure that can meet these challenges in real-time, allocating resources and manpower efficiently and effectively.

The report provides important analysis on the countries worst impacted by the pandemic, both in absolute terms of excess deaths and relative to their population size and age structure. It notes:

The 20 countries with the highest excess estimates represent approximately half the global population and account for over 80 percent of the estimated global excess deaths … Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, the Russian Federation, South Africa, The United Kingdom, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States of America. 

Twenty-five countries with the highest total estimated excess deaths between January 2020 and December 2021. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

When excess deaths were analyzed in the context of each country’s population size and age structure, it became clear that impoverished countries took the brunt of the pandemic, with more than 50 percent of all deaths occurring in lower-middle economies.

Although India, the Russian Federation, Indonesia, the United States, and Brazil were the countries that suffered the highest total estimated excess deaths in descending order of magnitude, when these were adjusted for expected deaths considering a country’s population size and age structure, an appreciable shift to the pandemic’s deadly toll on low-income countries was seen. In particular, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, and Armenia were the five top countries with the highest excess deaths relative to expected deaths.

Twenty-five countries with the highest excess death relative to expected deaths. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

Though the report doesn’t directly take account for the first six months of the pandemic, in previous discussion with Karlinsky, he noted that the efforts to contain the virus and protect the population, especially in the South-East Asian Region, excess deaths relative to expected deaths (see below) went negative. In other words, there were many excess lives saved. This also raises the important question as to why expected deaths are the figure they are. What interventions or social changes can be made that protect lives over and beyond what is considered the pre-pandemic “normal”? 

Global and WHO region P-scores (excess deaths relative to expected deaths), showing a marked decline in excess deaths amid lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic, particularly in the South-East Asian region. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

Estimates by The Economist have correlated closely with those presented by the WHO’s COVID-19 mortality assessment technical group, with their central estimate at the end of December 2021 standing at around 15.9 million, a difference of around one million with that of the WHO’s 14.83 million excess deaths.

As 2022 draws to a close, The Economist’s central estimate has climbed to 20.9 million, meaning that the Omicron phase of the pandemic may well have contributed to approximately five million deaths, upending all the lies of the capitalist elites and their media that Omicron is “mild.” In fact, the death toll associated with COVID-19 in 2022 will likely be similar to that of 2020, meaning the virus will likely once again be among the top three killers in the world.

With the pandemic entering its fourth year, the reckless opening of China to mass infection is exposing one-sixth of the world’s population to COVID-19 for the first time. As a result, viral evolution may very well spawn a new variant of concern in the coming months, potentially more infectious, vaccine resistant, pathogenic, or any combination of the three.

Congress, Biden boost war spending at the expense of social programs

Patrick Martin

The massive omnibus budget bill passed by Congress and endorsed by President Joe Biden will cut social spending in real terms while increasing military spending and providing a further gusher of funds for the US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) talks with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) talks with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) (Erin Schaff/Pool via AP) [AP Photo]

The omnibus legislation passed the Senate Thursday afternoon by a 68–29 vote, with all 50 Democrats and 18 Republicans supporting it, and 29 Republicans opposed. The bill raises domestic spending by $42 billion, or 6 percent, and raises military spending by $76 billion, roughly 10 percent.

The legislation accounts only for discretionary federal spending, which is subject to congressional action each year. An even larger sum goes to automatic outlays, so-called entitlements, which include Social Security and Medicare payments, other small retirement and benefit plans, and interest on the federal debt, which will rise sharply next year as the Federal Reserve raises rates.

Besides the top-line numbers of $858 billion for the military and $772 billion for domestic programs, there is another $80 billion in emergency spending, more than half for Ukraine, and the remainder to fund responses to US natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and wildfires. The White House proposal of $9 billion to fund future responses to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic was dropped.

Since the US inflation rate is 7 percent, the 6 percent rise in domestic spending is a real-terms cut, meaning fewer real resources for health care, education, housing, mass transportation and what remains of social benefit programs like food stamps and home heating assistance.

By contrast, the budget raises military spending by 10 percent, to a record $858 billion. There is an additional $45 billion in aid to Ukraine, which combines financial support to the bankrupt regime in Kiev and direct military support. Total war spending is thus well over $900 billion. An increase next year of similar proportions would put the military budget above $1 trillion for the first time, a truly staggering sum.

The bipartisan budget deal between Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer and Republican leader Mitch McConnell established for the first time that domestic spending would increase at a significantly lower rate than military spending.

McConnell gloated after the terms were made public early Tuesday morning, citing the much larger rise in military spending in comparison to domestic spending. “This an impressive outcome for the Republican negotiators,” he noted, pointing to the “substantial, real-dollar increase” for the military, and the “substantial real-dollar cut” in non-military spending.

The top Republican on the Armed Service Committee, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, said, “While this is not the package Republicans would have written on our own,” the allocation to the Pentagon “gives our military the resources needed to take on China, Russia and other looming threats.”

Senator Bernie Sanders lamented, “The defense spending is outrageous—much too high. But at the end of the day, I don’t want to see the government shut down, and there are some very important provisions in it.”

It was not a matter, however, of the Democrats caving in to Republican threats to block the passage of the omnibus and force a partial government shutdown. In reality, the Democrats enthusiastically embraced the huge military increase, and no longer advocate even nominal parity between domestic and military spending.

With the war in Ukraine, the Democratic Party has openly emerged as a party of rabid militarism. So fervent is the Democratic embrace of the proxy war against Russia—demonstrated in the rapturous reception for President Volodymyr Zelensky in his address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night—that the fascistic right wing of the Republican Party has been able to posture as the only antiwar faction in official politics.

The Pentagon funding includes a 4.6 percent pay raise for uniformed military personnel, and increases in virtually every area of procurement of new weapons systems, for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, including 19 new warships and 69 new F-35 fighter jets (average cost $80 million). The Department of Defense will also spend the largest-ever amount on research and development, $140 billion, to devise and produce new weapons systems.

Much of what is classified as domestic spending is not for social needs like health, education and transportation, but for surveillance and repression, or operations in support of the military and US foreign policy. This includes $61 billion for the Department of Homeland Security (up 5 percent), $152 billion for “Military Construction and Veteran’s Affairs,” up a whopping 20 percent, $60 billion for the State Department (up 6 percent), and $39 billion for the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI and other federal police operations.

There are also sizeable sums that go directly into the coffers of major corporations and banks, including funds for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Treasury.

The proportion of the budget devoted to activities which could conceivably benefit working people is well under 20 percent.

Even this spending is largely offset by provisions that will lead to further reductions in social benefits. The omnibus legislation allows states to begin kicking people off Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance for the poor, as early as next April, when states can begin reviewing eligibility of recipients.

Eligibility has been frozen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Republican-run state governments have been demanding the restoration of their power to exclude recipients from benefits, based on more draconian eligibility requirements or direct funding cuts.

Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, from Sanders and others, the Democratic negotiators dropped a proposal to restore the child tax credit to the levels which prevailed in 2020–2021 as part of pandemic relief. This expired in January 2022, and will not be revived because of opposition by Republicans and some right-wing Democrats, such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

The bill would expand contributions to 401(k) plans (private retirement funds), by requiring most employers to enroll employees automatically and providing a 50 percent federal match for the first $2,000 in contributions. This will have the effect of directing even more of workers’ earnings into the Wall Street casino, providing a new source of funding for the financial markets.

As the only legislative vehicle assured of escaping a Republican filibuster, the omnibus bill included not only the appropriations for every federal department and agency through September 30, 2023, but many other bills on issues entirely unrelated to the financing of the federal government.

The most important was a revision of the 1887 Electoral Act, the law regulating the certification of electoral votes cast in a presidential election, which was distorted by lawyers for Donald Trump to provide a legal cover for overturning his 2020 defeat.

The bill states explicitly that the vice president has only a ceremonial role in the congressional certification of electoral votes, and may not interfere by rejecting the electoral votes of any state. It also raises the number of legislators required to force a vote on certifying a state’s electors from one senator and one member of the House of Representatives to one-fifth of the members of each chamber. It also specifies that only one slate of electors, certified by the governor, shall be submitted from each state.

In an expression of the anti-China frenzy in Washington, another provision bans the Chinese-made TikTok application from all government cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices.

There are countless other special provisions inserted by senators and congressmen in response to appeals from corporate lobbyists, lubricated by lavish campaign contributions. These are small only in comparison to the $1.7 trillion total, but highly valuable to the corporate interests that promoted them.

Boeing, for example, was reprieved from meeting a December 27 deadline to meet enhanced safety requirements on new models of its 737 MAX jets. The original model was grounded because of two disastrous crashes that killed 346 people.

Many more such provisions will be uncovered and made public as journalists and others investigate the 4,155 pages of the omnibus bill.