US operations in the Philippines threaten war with China

John Malvar

On Tuesday, the United States and the Philippines launched the largest joint war games ever staged by the two countries, involving over 17,500 troops, including approximately 12,000 Americans, 5,000 Filipinos, and 111 Australians. The military operations, which will last for 18 days, make clear that Washington is preparing to go to war with China in the near future.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has, since his election last year, dramatically reoriented Philippine foreign policy back toward Washington, restoring ties damaged by the six-year presidency of Rodrigo Duterte who had sought friendlier relations with China. Marcos Jr. is the son of the country’s brutal dictator, who ruled for a decade and a half, and is himself guilty of carrying out many of the same crimes as his father’s regime. He faces a $353 million contempt order in US courts for human rights abuses, but the Biden administration is all too willing to cover this up in pursuit of Washington’s war aims.

The war games follow on the heels of the provocative visit to the United States by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen. Beijing has long made clear that China’s territorial claim to the island of Taiwan constituted a redline whose violation would not be tolerated. Tsai’s visit to the US, where she was treated in a manner akin to the representative of sovereign nation and where US military training for Taiwanese troops was openly discussed, came perilously close to rendering the US long-standing One China policy a dead letter.

Beijing responded with militarist bluster, ratcheting up the danger of war. The People’s Liberation Army staged air and naval drills around Taiwan and simulated strikes on the island, releasing a video of missiles arcing from China and exploding on Taiwan.

The Asia Pacific region has been turned into a powder keg by the unstinting provocations of Washington and the fuse is short.

Over the last two years, Washington has conducted war games around the world of unprecedented scope, each designed to deal with the outbreak of global conflict with Russia and China. Just last month, Washington staged the longest continuous military exercises on record in South Korea that drew on the experiences of the war in Ukraine to prepare for war with China.

The joint war games in the Philippines are annual exercises known as Balikatan (Tagalog for shoulder-to-shoulder), now in their 38th year. Like Washington’s war games elsewhere, the character of Balikatan has fundamentally changed and the Philippine Daily Inquirer noted that the exercises were “applying lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war.”

In decades past the exercises focused largely on internal suppression. Balikatan’s operations were tailored to the suppression of the Communist insurgency, the armed Moro secessionist movement in the southern Philippines and domestic unrest generally.

This year’s Balikatan exercises are the stuff of world war. US and Philippine military spokespersons highlighted the fact that Washington was supplying the Philippines with the same hardware that it was sending to Ukraine. HIMARS artillery, Patriot and Javelin missiles, Avenger air defense systems and Reaper drones were all deployed in exercises explicitly targeting China.

The exercises prepared for a war with China that would break out in either the South China Sea or over Taiwan. Retired Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Emmanuel Bautista, laid out the stakes when he told the press that “it was impossible for the Philippines not to get drawn in a Taiwan or South China Sea conflict … if you cannot deter war, prepare for war.”

Over the next two weeks, US and Philippine military forces will stage live fire drills in the South China Sea, sinking a military vessel in waters near the Scarborough (Panatag) Shoal, which has been a flashpoint of immense contention in the past. They will stage littoral exercises designed to simulate the retaking of islands from hostile military forces.

The transformed war games take place in the wake of the announcement that Manila would be providing Washington with four additional basing locations in the Philippines under the auspices of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). This brings the total number of US basing facilities in the country to nine.

The four new bases were selected for war with China. Three are in the northernmost provinces of Cagayan and Isabela, just across the Bashi Channel from Taiwan, and the fourth is on the westernmost fringes of Palawan, as close as possible to the disputed Spratly Islands.

These will be military bases controlled entirely by the United States. Washington presents the facilities as servicing a “rotational presence” for “enhanced interoperability.” The terms of EDCA reveal, however, that these are rent-free facilities controlled exclusively by Americans and subject to American extraterritorial sovereignty. They are neo-colonial assets in Washington’s war drive.

Monday marked the commemoration of the Fall of Bataan to Japanese forces in 1942. The Japanese Occupation, and the subsequent “Liberation” by the returning US Army, ravaged the country. Manila was one of the most devastated capital cities of the war, along with Berlin and Warsaw.

There is a great deal of concern and fear in the country that the Philippines is being dragged into another world war. As US troops arrived in the country, the Manila police rounded up peacefully protesting youths outside the US embassy and dragged them off to jail.

In a speech delivered at a commemoration event, Marcos declared, “We will not let our bases be used for whatever offensive actions.” History gives the lie to this claim. The US bases in the Philippines—Clark Airbase and Subic Naval Base—were the nerve center of US empire. They repaired and refueled the planes that carpet bombed Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, raining death on hundreds of thousands.

As the war games were launched, the Philippine secretary of foreign affairs and defense secretary traveled to Washington to meet with their counterparts to stage a 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, the first in seven years. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo and Defense Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr.

They issued a joint statement which insisted that China “fully comply” with the 2016 ruling of the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, which the four secretaries declared was “final and legally binding.”  Washington’s hypocrisy is staggering. It is not even a signatory to the international law that it insists China must honor. The 2+2 meeting announced that the US and the Philippines would be conducting joint patrols in the disputed South China Sea with the intent of enforcing this ruling, possibly beginning during Balikatan.

At Washington’s instigation, Manila is in discussion with Tokyo regarding the deployment of Japanese troops to the Philippines, and there are Japanese forces present at Balikatan as observers. The Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration is negotiating a possible basing arrangement with the Japanese. Japanese fighter jets visited the Philippines for the first time since World War II on December 7, 2022—a stunning provocation, returning to the country on the very anniversary of the invasion.

The advanced preparations for world war, with Ukraine in flames and sabres rattling throughout the Asia Pacific region, express the crisis of world capitalism. Like their class brothers and sisters around the globe, workers in the Philippines confront dire poverty. Over 10 percent of the population have been compelled to seek work overseas, leaving behind spouses and children, in order to provide for their families. The government squanders the country’s social resources preparing for war with China, while vast wealth accrues to a narrow layer of corrupt and powerful family dynasties.

The working class throughout the world is increasingly coming into open struggle against their exploitation and the apparatus of the state that enforces it. Capitalism has nothing to offer them. Confronting an increasingly militant working class, with crises threatening the volatile world financial system, US imperialism seeks to secure its profits through the forcible redivision of the world.

Washington is set on war and, as it does in Ukraine and Taiwan, it presents itself as defending the sovereignty of the Filipino people.

China has never taken a square foot of Philippine soil. It has never been an imperialist power.

The United States, in contrast, conquered the Philippines in a bloody colonial war that killed hundreds of thousands and crushed the democratic aspirations of the Filipino people underfoot. Japan, now remilitarizing with the aid of the United States, brutally subjected the Filipino people to three years of terror.

How the War in Ukraine Is Shaking up the Global Arms Industry

John P. Ruehl

The struggles of Russian weapons manufacturers have added to historic shifts in the global arms market.

On March 21, 2023, India’s air force confirmed that a major Russian arms delivery would not occur, citing Russia’s logistical challenges stemming from its war in Ukraine. It has served as the latest example of Russia’s inability to complete weapons deals with India since the conflict began in February 2022.

India is the world’s largest arms importer, and as the country’s largest supplier, Russia plays an outsized role in India’s defense. But Russia’s ongoing military challenges in Ukraine will naturally increase India’s push to develop homegrown defense alternatives and diversify foreign suppliers.

Strong growth in Russian defense spending since the start of the war indicates that the country’s domestic weapons manufacturers can rely on stable demand from the Russian state. But sanctions have meant they are already having difficulty completing these orders, and risk losing further international market share as their products increasingly flow to the Russian military.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that six countries—the U.S., Russia, France, China, Germany, and Italy—were responsible for 80 percent of global weapons exports from 2018 to 2022. The U.S. alone counted for 40 percent, while Russia was a distant second at 16 percent.

It is difficult to place an exact value on the global arms industry. What exactly constitutes “arms” is debated, while the same products can be sold for different prices. Weapons may also be shipped discreetly or on the black market. Nonetheless, SIPRI uses a “trend-indicator value” that allocates a specific value to individual weapons or weapons systems based on their capabilities.

Maintaining and growing their market share is a prerogative for countries that export weapons. For Russia, weapons deals are a key method to gain access to hard currency. But weapons exporters also gain leverage over recipient countries by shaping their security situation, helping to lock in long-term constructive relations with other countries.

The strength of national weapons industries can often fluctuate. After the Soviet collapse, for example, state funding for Russia’s arms industry declined markedly, while much of the weapons manufacturing infrastructure formerly under Moscow’s control was spread across the former Soviet Union.

But even Eastern European countries seeking to make their armed forces more interoperable with NATO and Western weapons struggled to wean themselves off Russian weapons. Increasing exports to China and India meanwhile helped sustain Russia’s arms industry in the 1990s. And after Putin came to power in 2000, Russia’s weapons industry managed to flourish by rebuilding part of its former client base and expanding across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Despite remaining the world’s second-largest arms exporter, Russia’s industry has faced significant headwinds in recent years. Sales had already declined following the imposition of the first round of sanctions in 2014, which limited technology imports to Russia and punished countries for purchasing Russian weapons.

Sales to China, Russia’s other major weapons market have declined substantially since the 2000s, despite a slight rebound in 2018. And while China has developed its own domestic industry, it has also begun to export overseas to traditional Russian markets.

The struggles of Russia’s defense industry since the start of the war in Ukraine have also forced the Kremlin to reach out to recipient countries. In March 2022, U.S. intelligence indicated that Russia asked China for military assistance, a claim denied by both Russia and China. Russia has also reportedly turned to India in search of spare parts, sought artillery shells from North Korea, and purchased drones and missiles from Iran.

Contrastingly, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with $30 billion worth of both excess weapons and vehicles and some of its latest weaponry. Doing so has weakened Russian military capabilities significantly without having to involve U.S. forces directly. U.S. weapons exports surged in 2022, spurred by deliveries to Ukraine and other allies increasingly wary of Russia and China.

Other countries have also sought to take advantage of the struggles facing Russia’s defense industry. French weapons exports had already increased from 7 percent of the global total from 2013 to 2017 to 11 percent from 2018 to 2022. France has also looked to rejuvenate its image as a leading arms exporter after the 2021 AUKUS deal between Australia, the U.S., and the UK terminated a high-profile French-Australian submarine program, humiliating Paris.

As India’s second-largest arms source, France is a frontrunner in a deal to deliver 27 Rafale fighter jets to the Indian Navy, having already delivered 36 to India since a deal was signed in 2016. And as sanctions have hindered Russia’s ability to provide essential parts, Serbia, another Russian weapons customer, declared it was in talks to place an order for French jets as well.

Germany’s arms industry has also exported significant quantities in recent years, with 2022 being the second-largest year for arms exports in German history. Germany’s ruling coalition initially wanted to scale back the country’s arms exports to avoid sending weapons to countries deemed human rights offenders, before the war in Ukraine saw exports surge.

However, the difficulties many European countries faced when they attempted to send German-built Leopard tanks to Ukraine demonstrated some of the underlying issues affecting Western weapons industries. Many Leopard tanks did not function properly and required significant refurbishment and additional parts, while other countries were unwilling to part with the few working tanks in their possession. Despite the hundreds of Leopards that Ukraine requested, only a few dozen have been delivered.

Western weapons stockpiles have also been significantly reduced in an effort to bolster the Ukrainian military. The focus on high-tech “luxury” weapons has meanwhile meant that European countries have struggled to transition to mass production industries. Russia’s focus on using artillery and relying on its ammunition stockpile have undercut the West’s technological and industrial advantages by forcing Ukraine to engage in artillery battles.

Both U.S. and Russian defense industries have also struggled to produce cheap drones, which have had a significant impact in recent conflicts, most notably during the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Turkey in particular has rapidly developed its homegrown drone industry, and Turkish drones have been used against Russian weapons to great effect during the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan war as well as in Libya and Syria.

Turkey has sold many drones to Ukraine, while Iran has sold its own arsenal to Russia. Both Turkey and Iran are aiming to pitch their products as low-cost alternatives to Western manufacturers. Turkey, however, is still in talks to buy Russia’s S-400 missile defense system. Its provision of weapons to Ukraine, while it continues to negotiate weapons deals with Russia, demonstrates the complicated nature of the global arms industry.

The war in Ukraine continues to underline how integral the arms industry is to geopolitics and the importance of being able to manufacture weapons domestically and cheaply. China, for example, has not provided weapons to either Ukraine or Russia, but its largest civilian drone maker, DJI, is one of the most important suppliers for their militaries.

Weapons manufacturers must also be wary of their exports one day being used against them. China’s supply of weapons to Vietnam to fight U.S. forces in the 1960s and 1970s saw them used against the Chinese military during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. Additionally, many of the U.S. weapons given to Afghanistan and Iraq ended up in the hands of the Taliban and the Islamic State.

In the court of public opinion, weapons exporters are also increasingly seen as partly responsible for how recipients use their products. The U.S. has been criticized in recent years for its weapons exports to Saudi Arabia, which is under fire for human rights abuses and for its conflict in Yemen. And though claims of Western weapons being smuggled out of Ukraine have often been dismissed, there is concern that many of the weapons sent to the Ukrainian military have or will end up on the black market.

Above all, the ongoing massive weapons deliveries that continue to shape the conflict in Ukraine have elevated the profiles of major multinational weapons corporations, reinforcing one of the most uncomfortable aspects of war—profiteering.

US students walk out of classrooms nationwide protesting gun violence

Renae Cassimeda

Last Wednesday thousands of students across the US walked out of classrooms to demand an end to school shootings and gun violence.  The walkouts took place just over one week after the March 27 massacre of three nine-year-old school children and three education workers at The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.

Students protest gun violence in schools at the legislative plaza and state Capitol Monday, April 3, 2023, in Nashville [AP Photo/Mark Humphrey]

The recent Covenant school shooting last month is just one of at least 146 mass shootings in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA). The data show at least 464 children ages 0-17 have been shot to death in all gun violence incidents so far this year—nearly five a day—with over 1,100 injured. The GVA also recorded a staggering 6,154 children shot and killed in 2022. 

On Monday, six people were killed and nine injured in a shooting at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky. The string of mass shootings this year includes an ongoing wave of school shootings in the US. 

According to data compiled by EdWeek, there have been 14 school shootings that have resulted in injury or death in 2023 thus far. Ten people have been killed and 24 injured. EdWeek also notes a staggering 51 school shootings which took place last year that killed 40 people—32 students and 8 staff—injuring 100 others. 

From the east to west coast, over 300 schools in 42 states and Washington D.C. participated in last Wednesday's school walkouts, according to a statement by Students Demand Action, the organization that coordinated the walkouts. Significant participation in Wednesday’s school walkouts included university level, high school, as well as elementary school students as young as five years old. 

Among the hundreds of students across Texas who walked out were high school students in the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD), where nearly one year ago 19 children and two teachers were shot to death at Robb Elementary School. 

A group of about 50 students from Uvalde High School participated in the walkout, some of whom had relatives killed in the Uvalde massacre. In a local media video posted on Twitter, one student said, “We should not be worried about being in our schools where we would be shot... I should not have to be an unidentifiable body in a casket only recognized by something on my shoes!”

Another student shared, “My older sister told me to fight for what is right and I want people to hear my niece’s voice because it was silenced on May 24…She’s not here to speak for herself so that is what we are going to do as her tias [aunts].” 

Trevor, a Uvalde High School student who participated in Wednesday’s walkout, shared with the World Socialist Web Site that the protest itself was limited by the school administration from going outside. He said, “On Monday, the staff at UCISD emailed the parents saying that Wednesday is national walkout day so they would allow us to voice our opinions in the courtyard or the gym. About 50 high schoolers did so but the administration put us in the gym where no one could hear us.”

“The purpose of a walkout is to get eyes on the reason why you’re walking out but administration wouldn’t even allow us to be with our fellow students during this. After about 30 minutes, someone just said ‘walkout’ and so we followed suit because we were fed up with the administration not allowing us to even have our opinions heard,” he said.  

On the issue of the increase in school shootings, Trevor said, “The increase of mass shootings in America I think has affected everyone in our nation. My generation hasn’t known a time where we wouldn’t fear a mass shooter in our schools. Kids are more worried about being killed in school and not about a big test coming up. The US needs some kind of change because kids shouldn’t be worrying about dying in class.”

Students marched to the town square to the site of a memorial for the Robb Elementary school shooting victims. Students yelled, “No More!” and “Our Blood, Your Hands” while marching.  

Pointing to the delay and inaction of the Uvalde police during the Robb Elementary school shooting last year, one student shouted, “They took an oath to protect and serve us but all they did was let us die!”

The Uvalde police department has systematically sought to cover up the fact that police waited over 1 hour after shooter Salvador Ramos opened fire on children in multiple classrooms before entering into the school. 

Multiple schools in Portland, Oregon, walked out of class Wednesday and marched through downtown gathering at Terry Schrunk Plaza and City Hall. Five Portland high school students have been shot in four incidents near school buildings since last October outside Jefferson, Cleveland, and Franklin high schools.

An estimated two dozen Colorado schools across the state participated in the national walkouts. Last month, two school administrators were shot and wounded as a result of a school shooting by a student at East High School in Denver.

Wednesday’s walkouts also took place after protests by students at the state capitol in Nashville, Tennessee, which began on April 3 also in response to the Covenant massacre. An estimated 7,000 students, parents, and teachers gathered to demand the legislature take action to restrict access to guns, including military grade weaponry such as the AR-15 which was used in both the Covenant and Robb Elementary shootings. 

Indicative of much broader political crisis in the US and of broad-based attacks on the democratic rights of all workers and students, two Democratic state representatives who helped lead the protest were undemocratically expelled by the Republican supermajority in the lower Tennessee House.

The walkouts last week in Tennessee and across the US demonstrated genuine anger and opposition among youth in the US to the prevalence of mass shootings at schools. However, the walkouts were organized by the Democratic Party-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety. The group, originally named Mayors Against Illegal Guns, was founded in 2006 by then New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with 13 other mayors. In 2013 the group merged with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Since its founding the group has sought to direct mass social anger over gun violence toward appeals to the Democratic Party for legislative reform.  

Young people can place no faith in the capitalist parties, the Democrats or Republicans, to stop violence in schools and society at large as their policies are incapable of addressing the real cause of mass violence and school shootings in the US: capitalism and the immense levels of social inequality which it has produced. Both bourgeois parties preside over a deeply rotten and dysfunctional society. 

Many of the young people protesting have expressed outrage at the fact that the government has done nothing after two decades of regular mass shootings. Major social problems in US society, above all war and militarism, mass inequality, and the total indifference of the ruling class to human life, have only deepened in the nearly 24 years since the Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado. 

Both parties have overseen 30 years of US imperialist wars abroad which have killed more than 1 million people and destroyed entire societies. The Biden administration has funneled more than $100 billion in funds and advanced weaponry to the war in Ukraine, which every day threatens direct nuclear-armed confrontation between the US and Russia. And an even greater conflict with China is being actively prepared.

Meanwhile so-called “progressive” Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are moving further to the right as shown in her recent intervention at a school in the Bronx to recruit school youth into the military, and her vote last year to block a strike by railroad workers.

As the ruling class prioritizes bailing out the banks to avert the complete collapse of the US financial system, the divide between the ultra-rich and the working class has grown to an obscene degree. The total wealth of the billionaires exploded by over $3.6 trillion in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic alone. And inflation, driven by the war in Ukraine and corporate profiteering, has left working class families heavily burdened with a cost-of-living crisis and devastating cuts to their income. 

The US government, in response to the ongoing pandemic, has imposed a policy of mass illness and death which has unnecessarily killed over one million people in the US alone, including over 2,000 children. Millions have been left to suffer with the debilitating effects of Long Covid.  The ruling class, whose interest lies in subordinating social need to capitalist profit, is as indifferent to life when it comes to gun violence in the US, as it is indifferent to life when it comes to mass infection, inequality and war.

Macron surges French military budget while slashing pensions

Kumaran Ira

French President Emmanuel Macron has triggered a political crisis by ramming through his deep pension cuts in the face of overwhelming popular opposition. He falsely claimed that there is not enough money for pensions. However, with his call to build a European “war economy,” it is evermore evident that Macron's pension cuts aim to fund a massive diversion of resources from workers and retirees to the military machine for a global war that is being prepared behind the backs of the people.

French President Emmanuel Macron, after proposing a substantial boost in defense spending, visits the Mont-de-Marsan Air Base in southwestern France on Friday, January 20, 2023. [AP Photo/Bob Edme]

Last week, Sébastien Lecornu, the Minister of the Armed Forces, presented to the Council of Ministers the Military Programming Law (LPM) for 2024-2030. The budget of the armed forces would increase by €3.1 billion in 2024, then by €3 billion per year from 2025 to 2027. It is expected to increase by €4 billion per year from 2028. As Macron announced in January, the future LPM raises the total budget for the armed forces to €413 billion over seven years. The military budget would reach €69 billion in 2030, compared to €32 billion in 2017.

Five billion euros would be invested in drones, €49 billion in equipment maintenance, €5 billion in intelligence and counter-intelligence, €13 billion for overseas operations, and €16 billion to build up ammunition stocks. Macron also wants to spend around €6 billion and €4 billion on the development of the space and cyber warfare, respectively.

The French Defense Ministry openly declares that it is preparing for large-scale war that would lead to massive casualties. It states, “the 2024-2030 Military Programming Law will allow us to adapt our armies’ capacities to be ready for a major, high-intensity conflict. It goes from modernizing our equipment to building a war economy.”

The army is to receive more Scorpion armored vehicles and Caesar heavy artillery, as well as several types of helicopters. The Air and Space Force will continue to buy more Rafale jets and also strengthen its strategic transport fleet.

The LPM also includes building a new aircraft carrier to replace the current Charles-de-Gaulle carrier. Lecornu told Le Parisien: “It is a cathedral of technology and human skill weighing 75,000 tons: a factory on water stuffed with steam, electronics and nuclear energy. A small airport on water of 2,000 sailors with fighter planes and installed atop two small nuclear power plants. There are only two countries in the world who know how to build and deploy nuclear aircraft carriers: the Americans and us.”

Fully 60 percent of the €413 billion military budget is reportedly bound up with the modernization of France’s nuclear arsenal: updating warheads and missiles, and Rafale jets and submarines to fire them.

This surge in the military budget is directly related to the war Washington and its European allies are waging against Russia in Ukraine. Since the NATO-Russia war began last year, the NATO powers have injected billions of euros and massive quantities of arms and ammunition into the war, sending tanks and fighter jets to back Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s right-wing regime.

France has so far supplied Caesar truck-mounted howitzers and thousands of shells, dozens of MILAN anti-tank missiles, AMX-10 RC light tanks, multiple-launch rocket systems, and air defense equipment to the Ukrainian military to fight Russia. Last November, Macron announced the creation of a “special fund of €100 million” for Kyiv to “buy directly from our manufacturers the equipment it needs most to support its war effort.”

The French Defense Ministry argues that this massive increase in the military budget is justified by “the very rapid degradation of the geopolitical context,” around the war in Ukraine.

The French military budget must be taken as a warning to workers in struggle against Macron in France and similar reactionary capitalist governments around the world. The NATO-Russia conflict threatens to escalate into full-scale nuclear third world war, threatening the survival of humanity. The French ruling class, like its counterparts, is responding to deepening economic and political crises by pursuing its imperialist ambitions through military means.

In his introductory remarks presenting the LPM, Lecornu said that raising military spending should allow France “to face the new threats facing it and to maintain its place among the leading powers in the world.”

The Defense Ministry declared, “The passage to a war economy must allow us to prepare our military machine for future conflicts and to hold in the long term. The LPM will allow us to modernize and adapt our system of requisitioning in times of peace and war. The bill also allows the possibility of constituting strategic stocks or raw materials or components of strategic interest to benefit the army. The LPM will also establish that the delivery of goods and services will go in priority to the military.”

The looting of the working class to divert massive resources into the armed forces and preparations for catastrophic wars is taking place not only in France, but across all of Europe.

Early this year, Poland announced that it would spend 4 percent of its GDP on defense, including massive purchases of fighter jets and tanks from the United States and South Korea, and drones from Turkey. Germany announced a €100 billion increase in its military budget for 2022 to modernize its armed forces. The Baltic States, Italy, the United Kingdom and Sweden have also announced major increases in their defense spending.

The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) bureaucracy has endorsed the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, calling for a pro-NATO regime change in Russia. As for Mélenchon, he has accused Putin of bearing “the entire responsibility” for the war, covering up NATO’s longstanding political and military intervention in Ukraine to build up its forces directly on Russia’s borders.

Leaked Pentagon documents expose role of British imperialism in provocations and war against Russia

Robert Stevens

Among the dozens of secret documents from the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies now in circulation are reports detailing some of the nefarious operations of British imperialism.

One document in particular gives a glimpse of the provocative role played by London in the war in Ukraine against Russia, detailing a September 29, 2022 incident that could have triggered NATO’s Article 5 requiring member states to come to the aid of any member state under attack.

The Washington Post reported Sunday, “Russia nearly shot down British spy plane near Ukraine, leaked document says.”

A US military document reveals an “incident more significant than was previously disclosed and that could have drawn the United States and its NATO allies directly into the Ukraine war,” the article reports. “The near miss occurred on Sept. 29 [2022] off the coast of Crimea, the heavily fortified Ukrainian peninsula that Russia seized in 2014 and has used to base its Black Sea naval fleet and launch attacks elsewhere in Ukraine,” the Post said.

The classified Pentagon document, reports the newspaper, “refers to the incident as a ‘near-shoot down of UK RJ,’ a reference to the ‘Rivet Joint’ moniker common for RC-135 reconnaissance planes. The aircraft is used to collect radio transmissions and other electronic messages.”

The newspaper reported that the “document was printed with headers for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, and details surveillance flights over the Black Sea from the day of the reported near-shootdown up to Feb. 26 [2023].”

A British RC-135W in 2018 [Photo by Alan Wilson / CC BY-SA 2.0]

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told Parliament the following month, “One of the Russian jets ‘released a missile’ at a distance”, the Post notes, “but he did not describe the incident as a near-shootdown.” He instead “attributed the missile launch to a ‘technical malfunction’ and said he had spoken with senior Russian defense officials about it.”

Last October 20, almost a month after the incident, Wallace told parliament that “an unarmed RAF RC-135W Rivet Joint, a civilian ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—aircraft on routine patrol over the Black sea was interacted with by two Russian armed Su-27 fighter aircraft.”

He stated that “During that interaction… it transpired that one of the Su-27 aircraft released a missile in the vicinity of the RAF Rivet Joint aircraft beyond visual range. The total time of the interaction between the Russian aircraft and the Rivet Joint was approximately 90 minutes.”

Wallace declared then, “In the light of this potentially dangerous engagement,” he had raised concerns with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who replied on October 10 “that it has conducted an investigation into the circumstances of the incident and that it was a technical malfunction of the Su-27 fighter.”

This explanation was accepted by the Tory government and “We do not consider this a deliberate escalation by the Russians. Our analysts would concur it was a malfunction,” said Wallace.

UK spying operations off Russia’s coast would continue and the Ministry of Defence “has shared this information with allies and, after consultation, I have restarted routine patrols, but this time escorted by fighter aircraft.”

None of what Wallace said in playing down the seriousness of what is now confirmed to have been a “near-shoot down” of a UK spy plane by Russia can be taken at face value.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) deploys three Rivet Joint planes which it describes as an “electronic surveillance aircraft that can be employed in all theatres on strategic and tactical missions. Its sensors ‘soak up’ electronic emissions from communications, radar and other systems.” The spy plane “has been deployed extensively for Operation Shader and on other operational taskings.”

Operation Shader is the code name for the almost decade-long military intervention by the US and Britain, ostensibly to target Islamic State, which consists of constant air strikes and hostile surveillance missions in a host of countries including Iraq, Syria, Libya, Tunisia and Lebanon.

Russia’s action against the RAF spy plane was clearly a warning to Britain and the NATO powers.

The near shooting down took place just three days after the September 26, 2022 bombings of the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. The Russian majority owned Nord Stream pipeline was built to deliver Russian gas directly to Germany. Two months after the bombings, Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that its defence ministry had concluded, “There is evidence that Britain is involved in sabotage, a terrorist act against vital energy infrastructure.”

In his detailed expose published February, “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline,” Pulitzer Prize journalist Seymour Hersh stated that the explosives that destroyed the pipelines were planted under the cover of NATO’s BALTOPS 22 manoeuvres in the Baltic Region.

The BALTOPS 22 exercise took place over June 5-17, 2022, involving 47 ships, 75 aircraft and around 7,000 military personnel from 16 nations. Among the Royal Navy vessels participating was HMS Defender, designed for anti-aircraft and anti-missile warfare. The Royal Navy later confirmed that during the NATO wargames Defender was “involved in anti-submarine warfare exercises but also operated in her main role in air defence, including leading Task Force Six Four (CTF 64) of the US Sixth Fleet, which deals in defending against attacks by missiles and fighter jets.”

The Royal Navy’s June 22, 2022 posting read, “The NATO ships and around 90 aircraft – the most ever on Baltops – pitted their wits against each-other in testing warfare scenarios, battling threats beneath, on and above the waves.”

The Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender leaves Portsmouth naval base on May 1, 2021 for exercises in Scotland, prior to deployment to the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Indo-Pacific region as part of NATO's UK-led Carrier Strike Group 21. Just over seven weeks later, on June 23, 2021, HMS Defender was involved in a major provocation with the Russian armed forces in the Black Sea. [Photo: WSWS]

HMS Defender played a critical role in NATO provocations against Moscow leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On June 23, 2021—almost exactly a year to the day prior to the Royal Navy statement on Defender’s role in BALTOPS 22—a Russian patrol ship fired a warning shot at Defender in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea. This was followed by the dropping of high-explosive fragmentation bombs in the path of the UK vessel. Russia’s defence ministry stated the warship had made a 3-kilometre incursion into Russia’s territorial waters off Cape Fiolent in the south of Crimea.

Britain is up to its neck in provoking and then waging NATO’s war against Russia, having supplied billions of pounds in advanced military hardware to Ukraine. Wallace boasted in his speech to parliament last October, “We have trained 7,000 [Ukrainian troops] so far. We are on target to complete 10,000, and then another 20,000-plus next year,” adding, “We are now looking at what we can do with larger units, by helping Ukraine to train at company and battalion level.”

This is only a glimpse of the real picture concerning the UK’s involvement. The leaked intelligence documents also confirm that UK special forces troops are operating on the ground, in the Ukrainian war zone. A classified document less than two weeks old—dated March 1, 2023—labelled “secret” and headed “US/NATO SOF in UKR”, appears by its markings to have been prepared for senior US defence officials. It lists Britain as supplying more than half of all 97 western special forces (50), followed by Latvia (17); France (15); USA (14); and Netherlands (1).

The Guardian noted, “The UK’s special forces include the SAS, the Special Boat Service, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, as well as several other secretive military units such as the 18 (UKSF) Signals Regiment.”

Britain’s special forces have been involved in the war against Russia from the get-go. As far back as April last year, only two months after Russia’s invasion, the Times published, “British special forces ‘are training local troops in Ukraine’: Serving UK soldiers ‘on ground’ for first time”. It reported, “Officers from two [Ukrainian] battalions stationed in and around the capital said they had undergone military training, one last week and the other the week before.”

The special forces are operating alongside conventional Royal Marine troops. Last December, a leading British army general, Lieutenant General Robert Magowan, admitted that Royal Marines have been deployed on “discreet operations” inside Ukraine.

Germany’s federal and state governments end all remaining coronavirus protection measures

Tamino Dreisam

Last Friday, Germany’s last coronavirus protection measures by both state and federal governments ended with the dropping of the requirement to wear a mask for visitors in hospitals, nursing homes and doctors’ surgeries. The Infection Protection Act expired and was not replaced by new legislation, for the first time since the pandemic began.

Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrat, SPD) took this as an opportunity to declare the pandemic over. “Considering the latest findings of the Coronavirus Expert Council and evaluation of the development of the disease burden by new variants, we can say that the pandemic is also over for Germany,” he wrote on Twitter.

In various interviews and public statements, Lauterbach declared the handling of the pandemic a triumph: “We have successfully managed the pandemic in Germany and also with a good record,” he claimed in Berlin on Wednesday. This statement is not only cynical, it shows the criminal character of the ruling class, which has literally walked over corpses in the pandemic, subordinating human life and the health of the population to ensure the profits of the banks and large corporations. The consequences have been dramatic.

A COVID ward in Germany [AP Photo]

Here are some facts and figures:

• Over 170,000 deaths in Germany have been reported during the pandemic, including 124 children and young people. An average of about 100 deaths per day are still being recorded.
• The actual death toll is even higher. According to the ifo Institute, excess mortality from 2020 to 2022 was 180,000, and according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), it was 195,000 in 2020 and 2021 alone. Life expectancy in Germany has fallen by 5.7 months.
• At least 1 million people are estimated to be suffering from Long COVID. The actual numbers are not recorded. The consequences can affect almost all organs, make people unable to work and last a lifetime.
• The unchecked spread of the virus has allowed new variants to evolve that are more infectious and resistant than the original form of the virus. The variant currently spreading, XBB.1.16, has the potential to undermine the immune defences of both the vaccinated and those who have recovered from a previous infection.

When Lauterbach celebrates all this as a “success,” he does so as a culpable representative of German capitalism. While the pandemic has meant illness, death and massive social attacks for many workers and their families, it provided an orgy of enrichment for the ruling class. Thanks to the government’s “Coronavirus Emergency Packages” at the beginning of the pandemic, and keeping the factories open, the big corporations, banks and super-rich were able to rake in record profits.

When Lauterbach criticizes past pandemic policies, he does so from the right. He again stated that the long school closures had not been necessary, a view now held by all bourgeois parties. The Left Party, for example, calls the closure of schools and nurseries “incomprehensible,” and the Christian Democrats (CDU) rant about “devastating collateral damage.”

Leading politicians from the government and the opposition are also calling for a “Commission of Enquiry” to evaluate the measures taken and to “examine their proportionality.” It is obvious that such a commission will not examine the measures scientifically but will criminalize them retroactively.

This is made clear, among other things, by the statements of the parliamentary director of the Liberal Democrats (FDP) parliamentary group, Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus. It was “important that the hurdles for infringements on fundamental rights are set higher in the future and are subject to parliamentary control,” she declared.

This is the narrative of the far right. Presenting protective measures as infringements on fundamental rights was one of the main arguments of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and coronavirus deniers during the pandemic. The fact that members of the government are now adopting this argumentation word for word makes it clear that from the beginning, the ruling class would not take any protective measures at all in the event of another pandemic.

Yet the pandemic is far from “over.” The number of people in Germany infected with coronavirus is currently estimated by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) to be between 300,000 and 500,000. However, since these numbers are based mainly on voluntary PCR testing, the number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher.

“The reporting of coronavirus is over. But coronavirus itself is not over,” pharmacologist Thorsten Lehr told the Deutsche Presse Agentur, adding that he believes the incidence rate per hundred thousand inhabitants was currently in the four-digit range. This would mean that more than 1 percent of the population was being infected every week.

The available data already show how dramatic the situation really is. Active outbreaks have been reported in 102 medical treatment facilities and in 25 nursing homes and homes for the elderly in recent weeks. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people are also hospitalized with COVID each week. The number of coronavirus patients requiring intensive care is 932, and nearly 100 people still die from the virus every day.

In addition, new mutations are spreading. The previously highly infectious Omicron BA sublineages, to which recent vaccines have been adapted, have now been displaced by Omicron XBB.1. The XBB sublineages, which now account for 72 percent of the infection cases, are characterized by their high immune resistance in addition to their high infectivity.

The XBB.1.16 variant, which is also known as “Arcturus,” is extremely alarming. This is characterized by three additional mutations (compared to the “Krakken” variant XBB.1.5) in the spike protein. The technical director for COVID-19 at the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, already described it at the end of March as the most rapidly transmissible variant of the virus to date. In India, its spread is currently causing a massive increase in both infections and deaths.