How Many Ukrainian Refugees Will Return Home?

John P. Ruehl

Millions of Ukrainians have fled the country since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. The longer the war continues, the less likely they are to return, with dire consequences for Ukraine.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has created the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. While millions of Ukrainian refugees have since returned home, almost 2.9 million moved to Russia, according to October 2022 figures, and roughly 7.9 million were registered across Europe between February and December 27, 2022. Besides Russia, Poland (1.5 million), Germany (1 million), and the Czech Republic (474,731) have welcomed the largest numbers of Ukrainian refugees, while Italy, Spain, France, Romania, and the UK have also accepted more than 100,000 each.

There is little reason to suggest many Ukrainian refugees will return home soon. A June survey by polling group Rating, for example, found that 24 percent of Ukrainian refugees wanted to return but were waiting for a certain time, 48 percent said they would return after the end of the war, and 8 percent said they would not go back to Ukraine. A German government-backed survey from December 2022, meanwhile, found that around 37 percent of Ukrainian refugees wanted to settle in the country permanently or at least for the next few years.

As part of the Temporary Protection Directive that was invoked by the EU in March 2022, Ukrainians can now live, work, and study in EU countries for a period of three years. Many Ukrainian refugees have already found employment in host countries and may—like the temporary guest workers invited to Europe in the 1960s—choose to permanently settle in those countries eventually. Millions of Ukrainians also left their country before the 2022 Russian invasion, with 1.4 million Ukrainians having lived and worked in Poland in 2020 (most of whom came after the initial round of unrest in 2014) and another 250,000 having lived in Italy before the war alone.

The incentive for Ukrainian foreign workers and refugees to return home has been significantly reduced following the widespread destruction across the country since the war began in February 2022. Much of the country’s population has been suffering from limited and sporadic access to electricity, heat, and water, and Ukraine’s economy “shrank by 30 percent in 2022.” Ukraine is now Europe’s poorest country, and its entry into the EU will likely take years. Instability in the country’s Donbas region since 2014 coupled with almost a year of open conflict with Russia means that peace will likely continue to elude Ukraine.

While some Ukrainian refugees have returned, “‘unliveable’ conditions” during winters and the crumbling basic infrastructure will drive more Ukrainians to seek refuge in Europe, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. Additionally, it is estimated that 90 percent of Ukrainian refugees are women and children, as conscription prevented most Ukrainian men from leaving the country. The men that remained in Ukraine may try to reunite with their families abroad, while those men that managed to leave may face the risk of being recruited into military service or being punished for evading it if they do return to Ukraine.

Other countries that have suffered from conflicts in recent decades demonstrate that the longer violence continues, the less likely refugees are to return home. “In the Kosovo war of 1999, when NATO bombed Yugoslavia to prevent the brutalization of ethnic Albanians who make up Kosovo’s majority, hundreds of thousands fled, or were forcibly moved, to neighboring Albania and Macedonia.” These refugees eventually returned to Kosovo since the war lasted only 78 days, explained an article in the Economist. During the war in nearby Bosnia, which took place from 1992 to 1995, however, many Bosnians left “and far fewer returned.”

More recently, the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, resulted in 6.8 million Syrian refugees fleeing mostly to neighboring states as well as to Europe until 2021. The conflict, soon to enter its 12th year, has reinforced the perception that both the desire of refugees to return, as well as the ability of host countries to deport them, is limited as long as violence is ongoing.

Between 2016 and 2022, for instance, just 336,496 Syrians returned to the country from neighboring host countries according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). And a UNHCR poll from June 2022 showed that more than 92.8 percent of Syrian refugees in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq do not plan to return to their country within the next year. As a new generation of Syrian children born outside the country emerges, the likelihood of Syrian families returning will continue to decline.

The Turkish government stated in May 2022 that it intends to relocate up to 1 million Syrian refugees back to northern Syria in regions controlled by Turkish-backed forces, and is increasingly using force to move them back across the border, even at gunpoint.

But the failed efforts by Turkey to return Syrian refugees suggest that European countries will struggle to do the same with Ukrainian refugees who refuse to turn home. Additionally, Ukrainian refugees have received a relatively warm welcome across Europe. While poorer EU countries bordering Ukraine, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, may seek to curtail future refugee intake, Ukrainian refugees may instead head further west into the continent.

The creation of millions of Ukrainian refugees has compounded the demographic crisis that Ukraine has faced since the 1990s. Falling birth rates, rising death rates, an aging population, and high emigration even before 2014 saw Ukraine’s population decline from 52 million in 1991 to about 42 million in 2020.

While other Eastern European countries, as well as Russia, have faced similar predicaments, Ukraine’s population decline has been far more acute. Due to low wages and high unemployment, Ukraine has been unable to attract immigrants, while the possible accession of Ukraine into the EU risks further emigration in the future. Furthermore, the large number of casualties of prime-aged men because of the conflict will also undermine Ukraine’s demographic position for decades.

French philosopher Auguste Comte is attributed with stating “Demography is destiny,” noting a link between a country’s future and the youthfulness of its population. A UN report from 2022 predicts that Ukraine’s population will likely never recover from the ongoing conflict and will continue to experience a significant population decline this century. A less populated Ukraine may be part of the Kremlin’s strategy of weakening the country, ominously hinted at by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2022, who declared “If they continue to do what they are doing, they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood.”

Russia has of course played an active part in depopulating Ukraine. In addition to launching its destabilizing military operations, since 2014 it has facilitated the migration of Ukrainian refugees into Russia, policies that seem to have continued with additional Ukrainian refugees making their way to Russia since the invasion in February 2022. And in May 2022, Putin signed a decree easing constraints on Russians seeking to adopt Ukrainian children in war-torn regions, while making it harder for relatives of these children in Ukraine to have them returned.

Many Ukrainians in Europe may never come back, including those who traveled to Russia. Thus, without enough Ukrainians to repopulate the country, the ability of the Ukrainian government to reestablish a strong state and national identity in some regions risks becoming increasingly limited as the war drags on.

UK students face severe housing shortage amid cost-of-living crisis

Sanya Perera

University students face an unprecedented housing crisis, with more than three students for every bed available in purpose-built student accommodation. The shortage and soaring rents have forced students into poor-quality accommodation, couch-surfing, or commuting to university from parents’ homes and nearby cities.

Last September, hundreds of first-year students across Britain were denied any accommodation on campus due to lack of space. This includes 127 students at the University of West England (UWE) in Bristol, told they had to find accommodation in Newport, Wales, over an hour away from their university. For the immense cost in travel expenses, lost time, and isolation from their peers, the UWE only offered a refund of a £70 rail card.

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In the months since, hordes of students have been seen queueing outside estate agents, with some in Durham waiting overnight, for the release of rental homes for the next academic year.

Student news web site The Tab reported last August that “one in seven students are scared of being homeless.” Their concerns are justified. A survey by the National Union of Students (NUS) found that 12 percent have actually experienced homelessness since starting their studies.

Universities have responded pathetically, offering “support” which in reality amounts to nothing more than keeping libraries open and offering free tea and coffee to help students stay warm this winter. Student union services, including advice about money and accommodation, are overburdened and for the most part only handing out automated replies.

The crisis has been building for years, caused by universities farming students as cash cows without providing adequate infrastructure, private owners slowing down the building of new residences, and the worsening cost-of-living crisis.

While the rate of admissions to higher education has reached record highs, increasing by nearly two thirds since 2000, provision of accommodation and all other services has not kept pace. A process of marketising higher education that began with the Labour government introducing tuition fees in 1998 has produced a system of competition for student numbers, while cutting the resources available to staff and students, to make up for government funding shortfalls and to fund exorbitant executive salaries.

Encapsulating both the financial pressures on universities and the greed of university vice chancellors, who view their student bodies with contempt, the Times reported last year that “University bosses are calling for tuition fees to be raised closer to the £24,000 a year average that foreign students pay,” nearly treble the current £9,250 rate.

Vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland Sir David Bell, with a salary of £260,000, described the “financial imperative” to “recruit” foreign students, adding, “If you want to keep running universities even at the level we have now, you have to increase the tuition fee at some point.”

Higher education providers have increasingly washed their hands of any responsibility to maintain accommodation, outsourcing university residences to private companies. Out of the 700,000 student beds available nationally, more than half were built by other providers like Unite. Their profits are reaching new heights, with Unite predicting growth of 5 percent in 2023. The number of beds in university-built student halls decreased by 5 percent from 2018 to 2021.

Unite Students student accommodation (left) in Selly Oak, England [Photo by Elliott Brown / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

The supply of accommodation is therefore increasingly at the whim of the market and has been falling in recent years. According to industry magazine The PIE News, “Analysts predict that growth will continue to stagnate given rising inflation, escalating building costs and land availability, among other factors.” Even the inadequate existing stock is being reduced, with 11,000 student spaces converted to more profitable uses in the past year.

Prices, however, have continued to increase—by 61 percent in the last decade according to the National Union of Students (NUS).

Older students renting in the open private market are at the mercy of exploitative landlords. Renters describe being locked into tenancy agreements, paying extortionate prices for uninhabitable living conditions. It is common to live in cold, cramped, and damp-ridden houses.

Structural and fire hazards are rife. Just two months ago, the ceiling fell through into the living room of seven students in Cardiff, after them having voiced their concerns about the cracks in the ceiling. One of the students explained that the letting agent, CPS homes, took no notice since “this was a big job which would have cost a lot of money.”

Real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield estimates that student private rents have nonetheless increased 19.3 percent since 2016-17.

Students have to pay these rates with maintenance loans of up to a maximum £9,706 a year, well below annual living costs. The loan, which is meant to cover rent, bills and food, has rapidly declined in real value, with the government granting a 2.3 percent increase as inflation topped 14 percent last year. As a result, students have had to make do with a shortage of £439 a month on average according to Save the Student, up from £340 in 2021.

The NUS found that 96 percent are restricting spending, including on basics like food, heating and sanitary products. But even these cutbacks are sometimes not enough, with more than one student in every 10, relying on food banks.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the mental health and wellbeing of nearly half of all students has worsened since the start of the academic year. A quarter are taking on additional debts and three in 10 are skipping lessons to save money. Many are working close to full-time hours to pay their way.

More than 100 students have reportedly signed up to a rent strike at the University of Manchester in protest against these conditions.

Neither the Conservative government nor opposition Labour Party will address this crisis. One of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s first major policy moves was to lower the salary threshold at which students begin repaying their loans, saving the Treasury £35 billion in the next 5 years and costing poorer students between £10-28,000 over their lifetimes.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has put the party’s pledge to abolish tuition fees under review, saying last week, “I have to be honest about it, the damage that has been done to our economy means that… we will cost everything as we go into that election and we will do that with discipline.”

Both parties have worked seamlessly together in and out of government to commodify and marketise higher education, turning it into a playground for private investors.

The trade union bureaucracy has helped pave the way, with the University and College Union (UCU) sabotaging years of struggles by tens of thousands of staff against cuts to pay and pensions and allowing insecure work to spread throughout the sector. The NUS long ago abandoned the fight against tuition fees. In its latest cost-of-living campaign, it offers a worthless petition.

Thames Water online map confirms appalling sewage pollution in UK

Paul Mitchell

Last week’s publication of an online interactive map by Thames Water confirms that water companies are responsible for huge and continuing levels of raw sewage pollution across the UK.

Screenshot of Thames Water of online CSO Event map, January 9, 2023 [Photo: screenshot/thameswater.co.uk]

It has taken decades of campaigning by environmental groups such as The Rivers Trust, Fish Legal and Surfers Against Sewage to force even this limited admission from the UK’s largest water company.

What to do about the pollution, though, is still being kicked into the long grass. At the current rates of underinvestment, it will take hundreds of years to upgrade the sewerage system to anything like the requirements of a modern civilised society.

Thames Water’s map shows information about its Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs), which are supposed to act as emergency valves during periods of “intense rainfall”. They enable water companies to discharge millions of litres of untreated sewage and wastewater into rivers and onto beaches, which they claim would otherwise overwhelm the sewerage system and flood people’s houses.

A typical Combined Sewer Overflow [Photo by Courtesy of The Rivers Trust]

The map is startling. At the time of writing around one third of Thames Water’s CSOs (identified by an exclamation mark) had polluted the environment within the last 48 hours and another third (double exclamation mark) were still discharging. Even among the remaining third of CSOs that have a green light, a substantial number reveal a history of pollution on further scrutiny.

For continuous pollution of a watercourse the current record goes to the storm overflow in the village of Marsh Gibbon, close to the city of Oxford. Raw sewage has been discharging from it for over 500 hours since December 19.

Local Windrush Against Sewage Pollution campaigner Ashley Smith told reporters, “It shows the extent to which Thames Water is reliant on being able to use our rivers and streams as toilets to deal with problems caused largely by underinvestment and profiteering.”

Pollution from Marsh Gibbon is not a recent anomaly. As far back as 1990 the National Rivers Authority (forerunner of today’s Environment Agency-EA) identified the CSO as responsible for the poor quality of local streams and one of a swathe of sites requiring investment.

And it is not just Thames Water at fault. Last year The Rivers Trust published another map which includes the location of tens of thousands of CSOs across the country, advising people they should “Avoid entering the water immediately downstream of these discharges and avoid the overflows... especially after it has been raining.”

Large Combined Sewer Overflow. [Photo by Courtesy of Fish Legal]

Campaign group Surfers against Sewage has gone further, exposing how water companies resort to “dry spills” during which they “dump” untreated sewage “even when there hasn’t been any rain.” Forced to carry out its own research last year, the group discovered that companies failed to report a “staggering” 103 sewage overflows onto beaches for a period of more than two weeks during last summer, and that 44 sewage overflows were left completely unmonitored.

The revelations led the EA to warn people not to swim at numerous bathing sites because of high bacteria levels. At the same time Emma Howard Boyd, head of the EA’s Performance department, declared that there had been “no sustained trend for improvement for several years in total incident numbers”, lamenting that “only 56 percent of serious incidents were self-reported by the water companies which is concerning given their impact on the environment”, and that most of their environmental performance ratings had been “downgraded.”

That the UK’s CSO-based sewerage system is “unfit for purpose” is made clear by Boyd and countless official reports by regulators and parliamentary committees, including a recent report of the Environmental Audit Committee headed, “Chemical cocktail of sewage, slurry and plastic polluting English rivers puts public health and nature at risk.”

Map which includes the location of Combined Sewer Overflows [Photo by Courtesy of The Rivers Trust]

Yet none address the fundamental issue. Private ownership and the profit system’s domination of the basic right to water and a clean environment has been a social, environmental and economic catastrophe for millions, while the companies and their shareholders have profited.

When the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher privatised the water industry in 1989 it wrote off all its debts and granted indemnity for CSO discharges, in order to satisfy the financial markets which were reluctant to invest, fearing potential criminal liabilities.

The Tories claimed that bureaucratism and inefficiency would be done away with through the introduction of competition, which would provide a massive injection of cash for investment.

The exact opposite happened. A Wild West-style rampage took place in which the previously state-owned water assets fell into the hands of bank consortiums, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds committed to extracting every last penny from customers and workers, while splashing out on dividends.

Professor David Hall, an expert on England’s water industry from Greenwich University, recently explained how the companies “have borrowed large amounts of money, building up a large pile of debt and large annual bill for interest. This debt has not been taken on to finance investment, but to finance the payment of dividends.”

Since privatisation dividends worth £65 billion have been paid out, while debt has risen from zero to £54 billion.

At the same time, according to The Rivers Trust, “Since 1991 water companies have failed to treat sewage ‘effectually’ as required by the Water Industry Act 1991 and the [financial] regulator OFWAT has singularly failed to use the powers granted to them to enforce that duty over the last 30 years. The Environment Agency has also been systematically defunded and disempowered to act.”

Since the UK left the European Union the government has attempted to scrap hundreds of environment laws. It introduced an amendment to the 2021 Environment Bill in opposition to a clause that sought progressive reductions in the harm caused by discharges of untreated sewage.

Screenshot of report of a paper on water quality in rivers by Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee [Photo: UK Parliament]

After decades of services run by private water companies, England and Wales have some of the worst water quality in Europe, with only 14 percent of rivers rated in good ecological health. A major part of the responsibility lies with the Labour Party and the trade unions.

The Labour government of Tony Blair (1997-2007) denounced opposition to Tory privatisation as “rigid dogma” and hailed “global finance, communication and the media” as “liberating” and “modernising” forces. “After a century of antagonism, economic efficiency and social justice are finally working in partnership together,” Blair told the 1999 Labour Party conference.

Last year, current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer ditched plans to nationalise the water sector.

Since privatisation, the unions have pursued a “partnership” agreement with the employers, claiming it was the best way to achieve job security, better wages and conditions. Instead workers have faced constant reorganisations, job cuts, declining wages, outsourcing and downgrading.

Mass unrest continues in Peru following police massacres

Don Knowland

Mass unrest continued in Peru this week following the massacre of 17 persons on Monday by Peruvian police in the southeastern Andean City of Juliaca. Police opened fire in response to demonstrators attempting to take over the Juliaca international airport.

An informal nationwide strike originally broke out in mid-December, when former president Pedro Castillo was deposed and jailed, and his vice president Dina Boluarte installed in his stead.

In response, the government declared a nationwide “state of emergency,” deploying 140,000 soldiers to the streets, in an attempt to crush the protests. The death toll now stands at upwards of 50.

Many protests have been centered in the Puno region, which borders on Lake Titicaca, and has a largely indigenous population. Repression from security forces in Puno City, the most important commercial city of the Southern Andes, has been the most violent.

Reportedly, 25,000 indigenous Aymaras have arrived at Puno City to protest. On Wednesday, a three-day curfew was ordered in Puno City.

In an effort to defuse the protests, the regional government of Puno has declared Boluarte and her prime minister Alberto Otárola “personas non grata,” as well as the Ministers of the Interior, Víctor Rojas; Defense, Jose Luis Chavez; the general of the Puno National Police, Pablo Villanueva Yana; and the general of the Army Brigade in Puno, Manuel Alarcón.

The Cusco daily newspaper El Sol reported this week that a mobilization of 20,000 Quechua-speaking locals is expected to take over this Andean city in the province to the north of Puno, which is a major tourism center. Protesters from the provinces of Canchis, Canas, Acompayo and Quispicanchi also have gathered in Cusco to demand the resignation of Boluarte.

Overall, mobilizations intensified in 31 provinces of 12 regions in response to the Juliaca massacre and prior repression. Protests and highway blockades against Boluarte and in support of Castillo have now extended to 41 provinces.

Thousands also protested in the capital Lima on Wednesday, resulting in dozens of arrests. There have been widespread calls among many groups leading protests to stage a mass march on the capital.

On Wednesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner in Peru called upon security forces “to comply with human rights standards and guarantee that force is only used when strictly necessary and, in such case, fully respecting the principles of legality, precaution and proportionality.” The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) announced that it will visit Peru this week to investigate the military and police violence.

Also on Wednesday, Peru’s Attorney General Patricia Benavides opened an investigation against Boluarte and her closest circle of power: Prime Minster Otárola, Minister of the Interior Rojas, Defense Minister Chavez, and Minister of Justice and Human Rights, José Tello, for “the alleged crimes of genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries” in relation to the 46 deaths and hundreds of injuries suffered thus far in the December and January protests.

Brushing this off, late at night on Wednesday, the plenary session of the Congress, dominated by the far right, approved Boluarte’s cabinet chaired by Otárola. This can only fuel the indignation of the population.

Foreign investors, including the giant mining enterprises that dominate the Peruvian economy, are increasingly nervous that the protests can get out of hand and shut down production. On Wednesday, The Guardian warned that “Peru’s broken political system will inevitably drive down foreign investment—which the economy is heavily reliant on—and the situation could get even worse.”

Growing support for far right and targeting of Trudeau within Canada’s military

James Clayton & Keith Jones

Two recent events expose the growing threat to the working class posed by far-right elements within the Canadian Armed Forces: a fascistic rant given by one of Canada’s top generals, and threats made by disgruntled military veterans against the life of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Both incidents reflect the increasing self confidence of fascistic forces in Canada, which lack a broad base of popular support, but enjoy backing from powerful elements within the ruling elite and state apparatus.

On November 9, at arguably the most important military social event of the year, retired Lt. General Michel Maisonneuve received the “Vimy Award,” which the Conference of Defence Industries Institute bestows annually on a “Canadian who has made a significant and outstanding contribution to the defence and security of Canada and the preservation of (its) democratic values.”

In the form of his acceptance speech—and before Trudeau’s national security adviser, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and much of the top ranks of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the arms industry—General Maisonneuve delivered a fascistic “Make Canada Great Again” diatribe.

Even more significant was the audience reaction. Maisonneuve’s denunciations of the elected government and the working class, were, from all reports, greeted with a standing ovation by the assembled CAF officer corps.

Protest in support of the far-right “Freedom” Convoy, which menacingly occupied downtown Ottawa for almost a month in Jan.-Feb. 2022. [AP Photo/Arthur Mola/Invision/AP]

Maisonneuve denounced the social elements which allegedly stand in the way of Canada’s renewed “greatness”—“first-year graduates of woke journalism schools” and workers relying on “endless subsidies and handouts,” who are not “taking personal responsibility for” their “actions.”

The General decried “the toppling of statues,” referring to the removal of statues of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, who directed a genocidal campaign to dispossess First Nations people of their lands so as to open them up for capitalist development.

Other than “our troops,” the only recent figures for whom Maisonneuve had praise were Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth II, and Ukraine’s President and NATO puppet war leader Volodymyr Zelensky. Canada, bemoaned Maisonneuve, lacks a “great leader” such as Zelensky. To him, Maisonneuve offered up the fascist salute, “Slava Ukraini!” or “Glory to Ukraine,” crafted and championed by the Nazi collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

In the manner of a typical fascist “stab in the back” speech, Maisonneuve accused the Trudeau government, if not the civilian population as a whole, of betraying the military. He declared that the Canadian Armed Forces are under-resourced and lack “state-of-the-art tools” for “taking to the world stage” and “seeking alliances.” This is coded language for providing military support to US imperialism’s wars and strategic offensives around the world, which are raising an ever growing danger of a global conflagration with Russia and China.

Maisonneuve’s claim that civilian authorities are letting down the military and thereby putting the country at risk is one of the most notorious leitmotifs of far-right and fascist movements throughout history, including Hitler’s Nazis.

Intimating that the public fails to properly appreciate the “sacrifices” the military makes on its behalf, Maisonneuve lamented, “The idea of serving in our armed forces is getting little traction.”

The officer corps’ enthusiastic response to Maisonneuve’s speech underscores that he articulated the sentiments of broad sections of the military-security establishment.

Much of the military top brass regard the Trudeau government’s domestic, military and foreign policies with disdain. They believe it is insufficiently politically and financially committed to the projection of imperialist power abroad; view its identity-politics based “diversity” agenda and promotion of the myth of Canada as a “peacekeeping” nation as threats to military discipline and morale; and are angered by its pursuit of sexual assault and misconduct allegations against more than a dozen top-rank officers. They would like to see the establishment of a more explicitly right-wing and authoritarian regime to more ruthlessly defend Canadian imperialist interests against its geopolitical rivals abroad and the working class at home.

The support broad sections of the political elite, state security services and corporate media gave the far-right “Freedom” Convoy as it menacingly occupied downtown Ottawa last year underscored that Canada’s ruling class, like its counterparts internationally, is breaking with traditional democratic forms of rule. If the Convoy, which was instigated and led by far-right and fascist activists, many of them “independent” truckers and other small business people or military veterans and retired police, could come to play such a prominent role in national political life, it was because it was built up and incited by the official opposition Conservatives, the hard-right premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, and right-wing media outlets like the National Post and Toronto Sun. They used the Convoy as a battering ram to overcome the widespread public support for anti-COVID-19 public health measures. By whipping up a far-right extra-parliamentary movement they also sought to push the Trudeau government further right, destabilize and if possible precipitate its collapse.

Ultimately, under mounting pressure from the Biden administration, international investors and big business to end the Convoy supporters’ blockading of critical cross-border trade routes, the Trudeau government invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act, thereby granting the state and its police and security agencies sweeping powers of repression. While these powers were initially turned against the far-right occupiers of downtown Ottawa, they can and will be used in the future against working class opposition to the ruling elite’s class-war agenda of military aggression abroad and attacks on wages and public spending at home.

In his acceptance speech, Maisonneuve gave vent to his outrage over the Trudeau government’s dispersal of the Convoy. Saying perhaps more than he intended, Maisonneuve commented, “Can you imagine a military leader labelling half of his command as deplorables, fringe radicals or less-thans and then expect them to fight as one?” The insinuation is that large parts of the Canadian military supported the Convoy.

The Trudeau government, which relies on backing from the social democrats of the New Democratic Party to retain power, responded to Maisonneuve’s tirade with an embarrassed silence. Defence Minister Anita Anand offered only a single critical comment, which was buried in the press.

Under Operation Unifier, the Canadian Armed Forces played a major role in training and reorganizing Ukraine’s military to prepare for war with Russia. This included helping integrate fascist militia like the Azov battalion. [Photo: Canadian Department of Defence]

The fact that the fascistic filth spewed forth by Maisonneuve has a growing constituency within Canada’s military, including its officers corps, is a damning indictment of the policies pursued by successive governments, the Trudeau Liberals included, in support of Canadian imperialism’s global predatory ambitions. Three decades of wars and military interventions, including in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, Syria, Iraq and now Ukraine, have created a substantial pool of bloodied, battle-hardened and disgruntled soldiers and officers. In the regular performance of their duties many of these will have participated in war crimes, including torture and civilian killings. The most disoriented have been primed to throw in their lot with a fascist movement.

More significantly, as the entire political establishment rallies behind the US-NATO war with Russia, there is a growing recognition throughout the ruling elite that more authoritarian forms of rule will be required to squeeze the financial resources out of the working class that Canadian imperialism needs to fund its war machine. Already, the Liberal government has committed to spending over half a trillion dollars over the next two decades to fund new weapons and weapons systems, including new fleets of F-35 fighter jets, warships and armed drones. Meanwhile, health care is collapsing across the country, as a growing number of patients die while waiting for care in overwhelmed emergency rooms, and public education is subject to brutal austerity.

In Ukraine, Canada and the Trudeau government have been openly allied with fascists for years. As part of its Ukraine military training mission, “Operation UNIFIER,” the CAF helped supervise the integration of the Azov battalion and other fascist paramilitary units into the Ukrainian Armed Forces and National Guard. This campaign to create a powerful Ukrainian army, based on celebrating the fascist political tradition of the OUN, which participated in the Nazi Holocaust in Ukraine, was crucial to preparing NATO’s war against Russia.

Canadian imperialism has long been instrumental in promoting the Ukrainian far-right. It provided a safe haven for thousands of OUN fighters following World War II, whitewashed their crimes and assisted them in disseminating their nationalist-fascist ideology. The alliance between the Ukrainian far-right and the Canadian state is documented in last year’s WSWS series “Canadian imperialism’s fascist friends.”

These imperialist operations have fostered growing support within the military for far-right politics. One group expressing this development is the misnamed “Veterans for Freedom” (V4F), which agitated against anti-COVID public health measures. Last month it hosted a “Veterans’ Round-Table: Coping Strategies for a Canadian Commie Christmas” in which participants chatted about the need to “take-out” Trudeau.

In the YouTube video, Retired Naval Officer Andrew MaGillivray described secret insubordination by members of Canadian Armed Forces’ elite Special Forces unit JTF2, who are assigned to protect Trudeau. They allegedly keep an enlarged photo of themselves posing with Trudeau in their ready room, which shows Trudeau smiling and the two soldiers with “shitty looks.” This prompted Afghan veteran Shaun Arntsen to muse: “Makes me wonder what’s going through their heads. I mean, why aren’t they fucking doing anything? They see everything through the back door, They’re the ‘Praetorian Guard’… it’s how Caesar got taken out.” Arntsen’s suggestion that the troops should either assassinate Trudeau or carry out a military coup was met with approval by other round-table participants.

There is ample precedent and reason to fear an attempt on the prime minister’s life from the military. On July 2, 2020, CAF reservist Corey Hurren crashed a truck laden with heavy weapons through the gates of Rideau Hall, where Trudeau was temporarily residing, in an assassination attempt. The Liberal government and Canadian state covered up the attack. They refused to even characterize it as a failed attack on Trudeau’s life, dismissing it as an “isolated incident” perpetrated by a disoriented individual. In fact, Hurren was a long-standing proponent of far-right conspiracy theories and was on active duty when he was detained.

The Ontario Provincial Police has alleged that Daniel Bulford, an RCMP sniper and intelligence officer who served on Trudeau’s security detail, leaked the Prime Minister’s schedule to his far-right allies, before resigning from the force in late 2021 to protest the federal government’s COVID vaccine mandate. Bulford was subsequently a leading figure in the “Freedom” Convoy’s security operations.

The increasing assertiveness of fascistic elements within the military and state apparatus in Canada is part of an international phenomenon rooted in the global capitalist crisis. In the United States, ex-President Donald Trump and key collaborators within the Republican Party and state apparatus remain free more than two years after attempting a fascist coup on January 6, 2021, to prevent president-elect Biden from assuming office. Last week, a copycat operation was attempted by the supporters of far-right Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro in Brasilia. Military generals in France and Spain have openly speculated about launching military coups and massacring large portions of the population, while in Germany numerous far-right terrorist networks have intimate ties with the armed forces and state intelligence agencies.

US and Japan accelerate war drive against China

Peter Symonds

US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held talks at the White House yesterday, capping off meetings this week between top-level US and Japanese officials all with one overriding aim: to strengthen closer military collaboration and accelerate joint preparations for war against China.

President Joe Biden meets Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the White House, Friday, Jan. 13, 2023, in Washington. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

A joint statement released after the White House talks declared that cooperation between the two countries was “unprecedented” in the face of “growing challenges,” then proceeded to denounce China for “actions inconsistent with the rules-based international order,” along with Russia for the war in Ukraine and North Korea for its “provocations.”

Kishida thanked the US for its involvement in regional security in the Indo-Pacific amid “the most challenging and complex security environment in recent history.” Biden hailed what he called a “remarkable moment” in the US-Japan alliance and praised the Kishida government’s decision last month to double its military budget and boost its offensive capacity. He declared that the US was “fully, thoroughly, completely committed” to the defence of Japan using all means, including nuclear weapons.

The statement and comments are premised on a lie: that the US and its allies are simply responding to Russian and Chinese provocations and aggression. In reality, the US and Japan are basing themselves on the same modus operandi in Asia as the US and its NATO allies have carried out in Europe: goading Moscow into a war in Ukraine designed to weaken and dismember Russia.

Both Washington and Tokyo are deliberately undermining the basis for diplomatic ties with China—the One China policy under which the two countries have in the past de facto recognised Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan. By boosting ties with Taipei, and thereby encouraging it to declare formal independence from China, the US and Japan are goading Beijing to reassert its control of the strategic island militarily.

The US-led war on Russia in Ukraine is the opening phase and preparation for conflict against China, which American imperialism openly declares is the greatest threat to its global domination. The accusation incessantly repeated that China undermines the “international rules-based order” refers to the post-World War II order in which the US dictated the rules. The US is aiming to shore up its global position by securing control over the vast natural resources and labour reserves of the Eurasian land mass.

Biden alluded to the global sweep of US ambitions when he declared: “We also recognize that the challenges we face transcend geography. United across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, we have stood together in firm opposition to Russia’s unjust and brutal war of aggression against Ukraine…”

The significance of the US-Japanese talks has been underscored by other top American officials. Following 2+2 meeting between top US and Japanese defence and foreign affairs officials on Wednesday, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin declared that 2023 was “an inflection point for our national security and defense strategies aligning closer than ever.”

US ambassador to Japan, Rahn Emanuel, told the Washington Post that Biden and Kishida were working to “shrink the distance between the trans-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific into a single strategic sphere” in what is “probably one of the biggest developments that the two leaders have produced.”

Transforming Asia, Europe and North America into “a single strategic sphere” only has one possible meaning—it is the strategic preparation for world war and, moreover, a conflict that has already begun in Ukraine.

Details of the talks in Washington that have been released only confirm the rapid escalation of war planning in the Indo-Pacific. Biden, Austin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken were all full of praise for Japan’s aggressive remilitarisation announced last month, which blatantly breaches the so-called pacifist clause of its post-war constitution. “Japan is stepping up big time and doing so in lock step with the United States, partners in the Indo-Pacific, and in Europe,” Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, enthused.

Kishida’s right-wing, ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has been pushing for decades to remove the legal and constitutional constraints on the military, is exploiting the “threat” posed by China to undermine widespread anti-war opposition at home. Doubling the military budget ends the longstanding restriction on military spending to 1 percent of GDP. Acquiring 400 to 500 US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles worth $US38 billion over the next five years and other nakedly offensive weaponry overturns the pretence that Japan’s military might is purely defensive.

The US-Japan 2+2 talks this week opened the door for far closer military collaboration, planning and preparation. The joint statement declared that given “a severely contested environment,” US forces in Japan should be strengthened with “more versatile, resilient, and mobile forces with increased intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, anti-ship, and transportation capabilities.”

The build-up is focused on Japan’s southwestern islands that are close to Taiwan and adjacent to the Chinese mainland. The joint statement agreed to bolster bilateral training and exercises in these islands, on which the Japanese military has already been stationing missiles.

The large US bases on Okinawa, also part of Japan’s southern island chain, are to be restructured and boosted with the establishment of a Littoral Regiment of 2,000 troops, the Marine Corps’ most advanced unit, by 2025. Austin declared that the regiment, which has advanced intelligence and surveillance capacities as well as being armed with anti-ship missiles, would “contribute in a major way” to the joint military build-up. Currently there are 18,000 US Marines on Okinawa as part of the 54,000 American military personnel stationed on bases throughout Japan.

The US is to station MQ-9 Reaper drones, used for missile attacks on ground targets, at the Kanoya Air Base on the southern island of Kyushu. A US Army company of around 300 soldiers and 13 vessels will be deployed by mid-year to facilitate the rapid dispersal of US and Japanese troops and equipment in the event of conflict.

Significantly, the US has agreed to extend its security treaty to cover attacks in space. Any attack on Japanese satellites used by the military and for its global positioning system would be used as a pretext for the US to unleash the full force of its military, including nuclear weapons.

The US and Japan have also agreed to collaborate in military research, the development of critical and emerging technologies and the securing of supply chains essential to the military. At the same time, the two countries have undertaken to “sharpen our shared edge on economic security… including semiconductors.” This signifies that Japan will support US efforts to choke off the supply of advanced computer chips and the machinery needed for their manufacture to China.