The Logic of Rebellion

Austin McCoy

My eyes were glued to my television set as I watched civil unrest unfold in Baltimore. Yet, as a historian who has studied urban rebellions, I was not surprised. Since last August, the question for me has not been why, but when.

I watched CNN’s and MSNBC’s coverage. What I noticed was not surprising, but vexing, nonetheless. Commentators like Al Sharpton, Dr. Jamal Bryant, and others resorted to condemning and condescending participants and denying the uprising’s political significance. The assumption that violence is senseless and apolitical was embedded in their sanctimony.

Now, I do not aim to advocate for the use of collective violence, but I believe it is imperative that we analyze its political significance. In yesterday’s press conference, President Obama argued that the “riot” distracted us from the pursuit of reform. I argue otherwise, the Baltimore rebellion not only highlights the problem of policing, it opens a space for analysis and conversation of all of the structural problems that President Obama mentioned in his reactions yesterday. Rebellions historically have also created political opportunities for reform. Dismissing collective violence as senseless, criminal, and apolitical narrows our frame for understanding the history of interconnected problems plaguing cities and municipalities like Baltimore and Ferguson such as racial and economic segregation and redlining, deindustrialization, overpolicing, the emergence of mass incarceration, and even criminal activity. I argue that collective violence is protest politics. Violent protest does contain a logic, even if it appears chaotic.

The pressing question underlying live analyses of the Baltimore uprising was: Why do African Americans rebel?

The mainstream explanation: The Baltimore uprising was a product of criminal opportunism, youthful energy, boredom, and, mostly notably, family breakdown. These explanations allow for political officials and commentators to demonize rebels with racially coded language. Baltimore’s Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, and President Obama led the chorus of critics, calling violent protesters “lawless gangs…,”“thugs” and, “criminals.”

State officials demonize those who engage in violent protests for several reasons: to deter further participation, to maintain order, and to retain the state’s monopoly over “legitimate” collective violence. State actors (loosely defined here as those who work in the military, police, elected governance, or even social services) risk threatening America’s social order if they publicly validate the participation in collective violence of those who find themselves at the bottom of the nation’s social, economic, and racial hierarchy.

Maintaining the state’s control over who gets to participate in “legitimate” violence also explains local, state, and national political leaders’ desperation to untangle a historical relationship between violence, politics and protest, and social change. This is why political leaders were hyperventilating about how Baltimoreans need to be nonviolent and why violence does not constitute a form of protest. As Ta-Nehisi Coates eloquently reasoned, appeals to nonviolence allow public officials to avoid accountability. Conjuring the mythical spirits of nonviolent protest in America’s recent past enables public officials and other Americans to evade discussions about the deep causes for rebellion. What is missing from analyses of the rhetoric of nonviolence is that these exhortations may serve as an implicit admission of the crisis of legitimacy that police departments, post-1970s municipal governments, and black elected officials are confronting in the wake of police killings and rising inequality. Mayor Rawlings-Blake, Governor Hagan, and President Obama cannot promise to employ all of the participants or to fully rebuild their neighborhoods. The only tools many executives have left are the police and, in the case of Baltimore, appeals to nonviolence.

Of course, the irony surrounding their efforts to appeal to nonviolent political change lay in denying this America’s history of political violence. Historian Paul Gilje argues “The United State of America was born amid a wave of rioting in his book, Rioting in America. He proceeds to point to the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party as prominent examples. I should expand that observation: The U.S. was founded in not just violent protest against persons and property, but also in plunder and looting — enslavement, land dispossession, and violent rebellion against the British Empire. We will always remember the Boston Tea Party fondly while we erase any traces of black and brown rebellion.

The problem with the mainstream view of rebellion is that it relies on pathological, behavioral, and individual explanations. These explanations are often superficial and they appear simple and commonsensical. Senator Rand Paul and potential presidential candidate, Ben Carson, for example, echo Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s explanation for black poverty. They point to weak parenting and the lack of “strong fathers” in black homes as the fundamental causes for participation. These analyses elide the persistence of structural racism, economic exploitation, and violent oppression in potentially rebellious spaces. Does this mean that there are not opportunists who seek to take advantage of the revolt? No. But focusing on “opportunists” undermines efforts to understand thoroughly the necessary and sufficient causes for rebellion. And, if we do not consider the conditions fully, we foreclose the chance of constructing just policies that could address structural racism, economic exploitation, police oppression, or even inner-city violence.

As a Master’s student, my advisor and I often discussed what constituted necessary and sufficient causes for urban rebellion. They are the key to comprehending the generation of insurgency. Necessary conditions are factors needed to generate discontent, frustration, and opportunity among potential rebels. Necessary causes are often simultaneously contemporaneous and historical in nature — residential segregation, the flight of industry and high paying jobs, decline in education system and social services, draining of tax base, gentrification, persistent racialized poverty, lack of adequate transportation, exploitation of local consumers, overpolicing, inner city violence and the emergence of underground economies. Of course, this does not make Ferguson and Baltimore identical. These developments affect particular areas differently. But, for social scientists especially, it is possible to identify the deadly mix of disinvestment, inequality, exploitation, and oppression that ignites rebellion.

Sufficient conditions constitute the spark for rebellion. And according to most social science literature and official reports, most rebellions stem from police brutality.

Enter Freddie Gray.

On April 12, Baltimore police approached, pursued, and arrested 25-year-old Freddie Gray for mostly unknown reasons. The police dragged him before placing him in the van. The police likely took him for a“rough ride” where officers would place suspects into vehicles unsecured with the intent to harm and subdue them. He sustained a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody. The department suspended the six officers involved. Yet, the authorities could not explained how Gray sustained his fatal injury. They have yet to provide an answer.

Gray’s killing reflects the continued degradation of black life. The spate of black deaths over the last several years animates troubling political trends such as conservatives’ assault on voting rights, welfare and other social services, and even the reproductive freedoms of women of color. Decades of job loss and disinvestment of social services have left black bodies vulnerable. Social rights often serve to protect one’s personal liberty. People of color who live in areas characterized by chronic poverty are subject to stigmatization and expulsion. What historian Khalil Gilbran Muhammad calls the condemnation of blackness justifies the killing and jailing of black and brown bodies. The absence of civil and economic rights and the presence of oppressive policing and surveillance leaves black and brown bodies vulnerable.

So people rebel.

Rebellions contain physical battles between police and protesters and rhetorical clashes in the media. Rebellions contain two offensives — one by the people, another by the authorities and elected officials. While we have not seen the type of militarized offensive akin to Ferguson, we watched as Rawlings-Blake, Hagan, and Batts launched a rhetorical offensive, referring to participants as thugs and criminals. Participants and allies continue to utilize social media to frame the unrest.

Living in the “Box”

While I have not been impressed with Dr. Jamal Bryant’s analysis of the rebellion, he offered a great metaphor for what it means to live as a black person in unequal cities during Gray’s funeral service:

“At 8:40, your son began running from the police. He began running. At 8:41, according to the timeline, he stopped. He stopped not because he was out of breath…He stopped because somewhere within the inner recesses of his own mind. He made up in his own mind ‘I’m tired of living in a box.’ And so he stopped running…”

Freddie Gray was not the only one who was frustrated with containment. I surmise that man black Baltimoreans revolted against this condition. This is why African Americans “burn down their own neighborhood.”

The question — Why are black people destroying their own communities? — implies irrationality on the part of violent protesters and the absence of logic of this form of collective action. There is a logic to rebellion. Participants often strike at symbols of authority and exploitation and spaces of consumption — police, liquor stores, and check-cashing establishments. Historian Gerald Horne reports how rebels in Watts burned credit receipts before ransacking particular stores in Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s. Two days ago, we watched scores of Baltimoreans rush a check cashing establishment. Even the looting of luxury goods is representative of America’s obsession with the possession of plenty.

I also argue that many of these spaces are not necessarily ones of community. Impoverished spaces often serve to contain undesirables. I may not agree with much of what Dr. Bryant says, but his “box” metaphor is apt. Prison authorities may put you in the box if they view you as a problem. So, think of it this way: If you were a prisoner, would you not burn down the cell and the whole jail if you had the chance? This may not be the case for all, but many certainly would.

The unfolding of urban rebellion generates further questions and observations about community. Are you a part of a community in the U.S. if you do not own any valuable property? What kind of community contains few affordable stores, few jobs, declining wages, and few social services in a consumer-based society? You need to be mobile, but you cannot get around. People are trapped. Now African Americans are confronted with the constant violation of personal liberty due to private and state surveillance, overpolicing, and the threat of death. Many live in a space that may be best described as a jail cell. This is the case even if one lives in the midst of vacant lots. The resident’s mobility remains restricted and their life chances remain low. And the police, of course, serve as guards to protect the haves from the have nots.

Someone living in Baltimore’s depressed areas may feel the historical weight of politicians, land developers, urban planners, real estate agents, business and corporate leaders manipulating law, space, wages, and policy for their benefit. Meanwhile a politician tells a Black Baltimorean to vote knowing that civil rights does not always ensure economic security. She watches police shoot and kill other black folks with little consequence. He wakes up every morning wondering whether or not they will be the next hashtag. Her march to protest Gray’s death does not garner attention while The Baltimore Sun plasters her friend’s face on the front page if the police suspects him of criminal activity.

Eventually the police kills a black person and then someone lights that spark — whether or not the person participates in criminal mischief is beside the point. We ignore the numerous studies illustrating how rebellions are the products of inequality and exploitation. In response to rebellion, many Americans seek to attack the rock thrower with the desperate hope of obscuring the underlying message — this country must finally reckon with its legacy of segregation, the effects of urban disinvestment, and the construction of a criminal justice system that“disappears” African American men and stigmatizes and violates black women and trans folks.

There is a logic to urban rebellion, but many of us remain unaware because of our lack of familiarity with the feeling and condition of entrapment. Of course, not everyone would respond to these circumstances the same way. If all we did, then either we would toil in poverty in perpetuity or we would have burned the country down to the ground a long time ago. All of us have to get to know that feeling and acquire a better sense of the history of racism and rebellion in this country before throwing our metaphorical stones. Rebellions are a product of a long train of abuses against the poor and people of color.

James Baldwin knew it. He warned us at the end of The Fire Next Time.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew it as well. Dr. King reflected upon his move to Chicago in 1966:

“Riots grow out of intolerable conditions. Violent revolts are generated by revolting conditions and there is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people who feel they have no stake in it, who feel they have nothing to lose. To the young victims of the slums, this society has so limited the alternatives of his life that the expression of his manhood is reduced to the ability to defend himself physically. No wonder it appears logical to him to strike out, resorting to violence against oppression.”

The Toxic Myth of Anzac

Eamonn McCann

Derry, Northern Ireland.

Scott McIntyre was sacked last week as a sports presenter on the Australian TV network Special Broadcasting Service for having tweeted acerbic comments about Anzac Day – the annual commemoration on April 25th of the role of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli in 1915. “The cultification of an imperialist invasion of a foreign nation that Australia had no quarrel with is against all ideals of modern society,” was McIntyre’s opening salvo. Australians should rather be “Remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these ‘brave’ Anzacs.” The anger has been phenomenal. An online petition calling for McIntyre’s sacking attracted a reported 180,000 signatures in a day. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull denounced him as “despicable…difficult to think of more offensive or inappropriate comments.” Twenty four hours after the messages were sent, SBS announced that it had “taken decisive action to terminate Mr McIntyre’s position with immediate effect.” Anzac Day is of huge significance in Australia and New Zealand. Australia had become independent 13 years before the outbreak of the first world war, New Zealand six years later. The white section of the population regarded itself still as empire-loyalist, but now with this difference: that in joining the conflict as independent entities, they could see themselves as having taken their place among the nations of the world. I

The writer of “Waltzing Matilda”, Banjo Paterson, caught the note perfectly:

The mettle that a race can show
Is proved with shot and steel
And now we know what nations know
And feel what nations feel.

McIntyre had trashed the foundation myth. More generally, he had drawn attention to the way soft-lit Remembrance is used slyly to promote wars of the present and future. On a visit to New Zealand on the eve of Anzac Day, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot referred to soldiers fighting in the Middle East today as “Sons of Anzac.”

There are no exact parallels with Ireland’s experience, except in this: that the sentimentalisation of slaughter which McIntyre lost his job for exposing is evident, too,  in the memorialising of the Irish misled into following England’s flag. Like the Kiwis and the Aussies, they, too, were flung to their deaths like fistfuls of chaff.

The attack on Turkey was intended to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and clear the path for Tsarist Russia through to Constantinople. In the longer term, it can be seen as the moment when Britain and France stepped decisively into the Middle East to replace the Ottomans as imperial rulers, then to draw the boundaries of invented nations, the better to divvy up the resources of the region between them. (A glance at today’s news pages will tell how that one worked out)

It is right and proper that all those killed in World War One should be remembered. But they should be remembered with rage against the obviously predictable futility of the enterprise and of the crime which it represented against humanity, not with reverence for a sacrifice well made.

How can it be that crowds gather today with heads bowed for the wilderness of victims but no show of anger against those responsible nor firm resolution of Never Again. How can there be commemorations of the ’14-’18 war which are not also anti-war demonstrations?

Herein, of course, lies the reason rouge is freshly applied every year to the skeletons of the fallen. In repose now, still beautiful, all worth it.

There is a positive size. After McIntyre had been battered for a couple of days, a different response began to emerge. A number of commentators spoke up, some to endorse what he’d said, others to defend his right to have said it. “It took four months for the defenders of free speech to move from #JeSuisCharlie to #SackScottMcIntyre” wrote one correspondent in the Sydney Morning Herald.

After apparent hesitation, the Australian journalists’ union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, came out strongly in McIntyre’s defence.

Perhaps some who are sick in their souls at the drenching of Ireland in toxic Remembrance will be encouraged to disrupt the displays of consensus.

In the 1970s, the Scots-Australian song-writer Eric Bogle adapted Banjo Paterson’s anthem:

“They gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed, and they shipped us back home to Australia/The legless, the armless, the blind, the insane, those proud wounded heroes of Suvla/And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay, I looked at the place where me legs used to be/And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me, to grieve, to mourn, and to pity./ And the band played Waltzing Matilda…”

Very many of us who have no time for the nationalist falsifications of the history of the Easter Rising are nevertheless content that it was far better to die ‘neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sedd el Bahr. We should be saying that out more  loudly.

Canada hikes military spending

Keith Jones

Canada’s Conservative government announced a major increase in military spending in last week’s federal budget.

Starting in 2017, base military spending will be increased by three percent, rather than the current two percent. This will result in an additional $11.8 billion in Canadian Armed Forces’ expenditures over a decade. As the increases are compounded, the military budget in 2026 will be a whopping $2.3 billion higher than hitherto budgeted.

Last week’s budget also announced $390 million in additional military spending in the current fiscal year, which began April 1. This is above and beyond the $18.941 billion in expenditures outlined in the spending estimates the Conservative government presented to parliament in early March.

Of this $390 million, fully $360 million is to fund the extension and expansion of Canada’s role in the new US-led war in the Middle East. At the end of March, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the Canadian Armed Forces’ intervention in Iraq is being extended for a further 12 months, till April 2016, and that Canadian war planes will now bomb targets in Syria as well as Iraq.

According to Defence Minister Jason Kenney, by April 2016, Canada will have spent $520 million on waging war in Iraq and Syria.

The budget also gave the Canadian Armed Forces $7.1 million in additional money to fund the deployment of 200 military trainers to the Ukraine, where they will train forces loyal to the pro-western government that was installed in Kiev as a result of the US-engineered, fascist-spearheaded February 2014 coup.

The Conservatives’ latest military spending increases have elicited little comment from the corporate media. But significantly, what comment there has been has taken the government to task for doing too little, too late—that is for not dramatically raising spending so as to quickly reach NATO’s target of military expenditure equivalent to at least two percent of GDP.

The Ottawa Citizen, for example, published an article titled “Federal budget: Despite annual funding boost, defence faces uncertain times.” It cited a series of military analysts complaining that the Conservative increases are back-loaded to 2017 and are insufficient to counteract the cuts the government imposed as part of its drive to balance the budget, while continuing to lower taxes on big business and the rich. What the article conveniently omits is that these cuts were only levelled after the Conservatives, continuing on the trajectory of the Martin Liberal government, had hiked Canada’s military spending to the point that, in 2011, it was in real—i.e. inflation adjusted terms—the highest it had been since the end of the Second World War.

There is little doubt the Harper government views the military spending increases announced in its recent budget as a mere down-payment. On its drawing boards are massive plans for rearmament, including the purchase of a new generation of jet-fighters, most likely the US F-35, and a whole fleet of war ships. But, with an election slated for this October, the government found itself boxed in by the combination of a rapidly deteriorating economic situation—which compelled it to resort to all sorts of accounting tricks and improvised one-time measures to fulfill its long-touted deficit elimination pledge—and popular opposition to the Canadian elite’s aggressive militarist agenda.

Last September, when Harper was questioned by reporters about the discrepancy between his push for NATO to ratchet up pressure on Russia and his soft-peddling of its call for member states to pledge two percent of GDP on military expenditures, the prime minister frankly admitted that the Canadian people would not “understand” such a dramatic hike in military spending.

The opposition parties have said even less than the media about the government’s plans to divert still more resources to the military, even as it ravages public and social services. This silence bespeaks their consent and support.

The entire political elite—from the Conservatives to the trade union-based NDP and the pro-Quebec independence Parti Quebecois and Bloc Quebecois—has supported the reorientation of Canada’s foreign policy since the turn of the century. This reorientation has seen Canada play a leading role in a series of US-led wars and military interventions, including the 1999 NATO war on Yugoslavia, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the 2004 ouster of Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the 2011 NATO war “for regime” change in Libya.

The role of the NDP, which as late as 2003 still claimed to oppose Canada’s participation in NATO, has been especially significant. Time and again it has given its imprimatur to the attempts of the Canadian elite and its US partners to cloak their predatory actions in claims of humanitarian intervention and the “responsibility to protect.”

The claim that Canada, a major belligerent in both world wars of the last century, was a “peacekeeper” nation was always a fraud. It was part of an effort to promote a “left” Canadian nationalism during the 1950s and 1970s, the better to politically tame the working class. Throughout the Cold War, Canada was a staunch US military ally, a founder-member of NATO and its partner in NORAD. For close to half-a-century, Canada’s military resources were overwhelmingly devoted to planning for World War III with the Soviet Union. Such UN peace-keeping operations Canada led or joined were, it should be added, always mounted with Washington’s approval and support.

That said, Canada’s ruling class is eagerly participating in a resurgence of imperialism. Led by the US, the major capitalist powers have revived war as an instrument of policy, are rearming, and routinely trammel on international law and state sovereignty.

In keeping with Canada’s new aggressive foreign policy, the ruling elite has put paid to the notion of Canada as a “peacekeeper.” The media celebrates Canada’s military prowess in past and current combat, while Harper routinely proclaims Canada a “warrior nation.”

Whilst the Canadian Armed Forces did not wage war for four decades, stretching from the end of the Korean War till its participation in the 1991 Gulf War, it has been almost perpetually at war in this century, in Afghanistan (2001-2011), Libya (2011), and since last fall in Iraq and now Syria.

Furthermore, Canada is deeply involved in all three of the major military-strategic offensives the US is mounting on the world stage.

#It has joined the war against the Islamic State—a war that arises out of the series of wars the US has waged in the Middle East and has the same objective as they did, to secure US hegemony in the world’s most important oil-exporting region.

#Canada has long assisted the US in its effort to transform Ukraine into a western satellite and its drive to expand NATO to Russia’s borders. With the full support of the opposition parties, the Harper government has deployed Canadian warplanes to Eastern Europe and battleships to the Black Sea so as to bolster NATO’s threats against Russia.

#In 2013, Canada signed a secret military agreement with the US integrating Canada into the “Pivot to Asia,” Washington’s drive to strategically encircle and isolate China. It is also participating in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), through which Washington aims to establish a vast US-led economic bloc at China’s expense.

Canada’s Communication Security Establishment (CSE), it should be added, is one of the key partners of the US National Security Agency. The CSE is an integral part of both components of the NSA’s global operations: spying on the world’s governments and citizens, and assisting the Pentagon and CIA in waging war and eliminating “security threats.”

Like the US ruling class, Canada’s is rattled by the decline in the relative economic power of the US, its long-time strategic and economic partner, and the rise of new powers. It calculates it can best defend and assert its own predatory and increasingly significant economic and strategic global interests by supporting US imperialism in its drive to shore up its world position through the deployment of its military might, the one area where the US continues to enjoy massive superiority over all its rivals.

Imperialist aggression abroad goes hand in hand with the Canadian bourgeoisie’s ever-widening assault on the democratic and social rights of the working class at home—the criminalization of strikes, the expansion of the national-security apparatus and the systematic dismantling of public and social services.

Only through the systematic mobilization of the international working class on a socialist program against war, social inequality and in defence of worker and democratic rights can this imperialist resurgence and social counter-revolution be countered, and crisis-ridden capitalism prevented from sucking humanity down the vortex of escalating military conflict leading ultimately to global conflagration.

European Union steps up repressive measures against refugees

Martin Kreickenbaum

A special summit of European heads of state and government held in Brussels on April 23 agreed a packet of measures to further repel the flow of refugees. The meeting was in response to the disasters in the Mediterranean, where within a week at least 1,200 refugees were drowned. The implementation of the decisions began immediately following the summit.

The European Commission is due to present a roadmap later this week for the period up to June. At the diplomatic level, Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief, has begun to call for a European military intervention in Libya.

Since the detection and destruction of smugglers’ boats off the Libyan coast, as decided by the summit, runs contrary to international law, Mogherini tried to gain support in the Security Council this week for a resolution agreeing to military intervention in North Africa. She also met with US Secretary of State John Kerry to agree further action.

French President François Hollande has said he would introduce a resolution in the Security Council authorizing the destruction of ships by military means, and would talk about it with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hollande and Putin met the day after the EU summit in Yerevan, at the commemoration of the massacre of Armenians a century ago.

Since the approval of the Russian and Chinese governments is uncertain regarding a UN Security Council resolution, Mogherini is working on several fronts. In addition to a Security Council resolution, a request by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the EU would also be an option. It was in this way that the Atalanta mission was legitimized by the United Nations in 2008, through which European warships hunt down pirate boats off the Horn of Africa.

On Monday, Mogherini and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi met with Ban Ki-moon on the helicopter carrier San Giusto off Sicily to demonstrate to him the need for military intervention.

But the UN general secretary seemed unimpressed. Ban described the Mediterranean as a “sea of tears and misery”, but did not support the planned hunt for smugglers’ boats. “The destruction of boats is not an appropriate measure. There is no military solution to the tragedy in the Mediterranean,” he told the newspaper La Stampa.

If the efforts at the UN fail, a third option remains for Mogherini. “If the UN approach doesn’t work, we need to find something else,” an EU diplomat told online magazine Euobserver. “All it takes is a little time.”

This refers to direct collaboration with the Libyan government. Such action is difficult, however, as the country is beset by feuding among two rival governments and dozens of militias following the NATO military intervention. The EU is therefore seeking to install a compliant national unity government that will give the green light for a military intervention.

The Libyan Dawn government in Tripoli, which is not recognized by the EU, announced that it would take any military intervention to destroy boats as a declaration of war and would not tolerate it. Even General Khalifa Haftar, the army chief from the government in Tobruk, recognized by the EU, told US cable network CNN last weekend that he would “never cooperate” with an EU military operation. This would be an “unwise decision”, he said, as “legitimate Libyan representation” had “not been consulted”.

The “international police operation” plan, as Matteo Renzi likes to call it, to deploy warships on the Libyan coast carries the risk of a bloody colonial war.

The militarization of the anti-refugee measures of the European Union does not stop at the Libyan coast. The EU summit has significantly extended the 10-point plan prepared earlier by the interior and foreign ministers.

Under the heading “Preventing irregular migration flows”, it says the EU is pledged “among other things, to step up support for Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Mali and Niger in monitoring and controlling their land borders”. According to the plan, this should be done using the existing European military operations in the region. European soldiers should therefore intercept migrants in the interior of Africa. The mass deaths of refugees are being exploited to pursue geo-strategic objectives.

Two employees of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik think tank underlined this in an article for Zeit Online, which also calls for an intervention in Syria. It was a humanitarian imperative that the EU and its member states “do not shy away from also intervening in conflicts, such as in Syria”, they write. “A military operation in the Mediterranean may reduce migratory pressure on the EU’s external borders. However, only a comprehensive foreign policy commitment in Europe can help refugees.”

In Africa, the EU is also planning the construction of detention centres for refugees. The Italian government has already begun this in Niger, an important transit country on the way to the Mediterranean coast. Who gets the opportunity to travel on to Europe will be determined at the camps. For all others there is just a return ticket to their country of origin.

Another camp is planned in Tunisia, where in 2012, with UNHCR support, a camp was built near Choucha for several thousand refugees who were stranded there for more than 18 months under inhumane conditions, without adequate food and sanitation. The German government finally accepted 195 migrants, while the rest were left to fend for themselves.

Such detention camps are now supported by the German government’s immigration commissioner, Aydan Özuguz (Social Democratic Party), who cynically praised the camps as “welcome centres” in North Africa.

In order to make the measures to repel refugees more effective locally, the European Union wants to send more “liaison officers” to North Africa in the future. “Liaison officers” is a code word for direct police and intelligence collaboration. The European Union pays its neighbouring countries hundreds of millions of euros for the construction of prisons and simultaneously takes on the training and supervision of the local security forces. For example, thousands of refugees sit in prisons in Libya that have been funded by the EU. It is no different in Ukraine and Tunisia.

The collaboration of the European border agency Frontex with the Moroccan and Spanish security forces on the border of the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla is particularly brutal. Refugees who try to get over the metres-high fences bristling with razor sharp blades are beaten by thugs. Illegal refugee camps are regularly bulldozed and the few belongings of the refugees burned.

The decision adopted by the EU summit tripling the resources for the Triton and Poseidon missions is not about rescuing refugees, but stopping them getting anywhere near Europe. Both missions will continue to work under the mandate of Frontex. They do not actively look for ships in distress and have no means of saving hundreds of refugees. Rescue measures are still left to merchant ships, which are not equipped to carry them out.

An initial list of resources EU members are providing for Frontex includes thermal imaging surveillance vehicles, liaison officers, coast guard boats, helicopters, surveillance aircraft and warships—all means of stopping refugees coming, not rescuing them.

Secretly, the EU summit also dropped the decision to take on 5,000 refugees as part of a resettlement programme. There was no readiness to accept even this ridiculously small number.

At the same time, the EU is further sealing off its land borders in Southeast Europe. In Bulgaria, the existing 33 kilometre-long border fence will be extended by 82 kilometres. Cameras that see up to 15 kilometres deep into Turkish territory can already register every move. Bulgarian border guards act with extreme ruthlessness against refugees. In early March, Iraqi refugees were mistreated so badly that they died shortly afterwards from hypothermia.

Collaboration with Turkey, which currently hosts more than 1.8 million refugees from Syria and Iraq, will be expanded, according to the EU leaders. The country should prevent refugees coming to Europe, they said, even though the conditions in the Turkish refugee camps are intolerable.

Anger mounts among Greek retirees as Syriza threatens to withhold pensions

Kumaran Ira

Anger is rising among two million Greek pensioners who fear they will lose their pensions, as the Syriza-led government faces a cash crunch before making a €700 million payment to the IMF on May 12.

On Thursday, pension recipients, almost one fifth of Greek’s 11 million population, waited at branches of the National Bank of Greece, which pays most of the pension money, after the Greek state delayed pension payments due to a cash shortfall last week.

Pensioners reportedly broke into a board meeting of the state pension fund, demanding that it stop transferring its cash reserves to the government under an emergency law recently passed by Syriza.

While preparing sweeping social cuts, Syriza is also looting money from public entities that fund key social services as it negotiates the next tranche of €7.2 billion in loans from Greece’s eurozone partners. Recently, the government ordered 1,500 state entities, including pension funds, local authorities, hospitals and universities, to hand over their cash reserves to the central bank in order to pay off the EU.

The Financial Times of London cited 75-year-old former civil servant Sotiria Zlatini: “Normally I only withdraw half the money at the end of the month, but today I’m taking it all. There are so many rumours going round because of the government’s problems and what happened two days ago.”

Socrates Kambitoglou, a retired civil engineer, said, “I went to the ATM in the morning before going to the supermarket, but the money wasn’t there. … I went back at eight in the evening feeling quite anxious, but it had arrived.”

The government claimed the delay in the pension payment was only due to a “technical hitch.” Deputy Minister for Social Security Dimitris Stratoulis said a technical problem with the interbank payment system had caused the delay.

An anonymous official familiar with the Greek state’s cash position refuted claims that a technical problem caused the delay. He told the Financial Timesthat the payments were held up because the state pension funds “were still missing several hundred million euros on Tuesday morning”.

The looting of Greek pension funds is an indictment of the pseudo-left Syriza party, which came to power in January, falsely claiming it would end austerity. After winning the January 25 election, Syriza capitulated to the EU’s austerity agenda and pledged to work closely with the EU to impose new attacks on the working class.

While cutting pension and public sector wages, Syriza is pushing ahead with privatization of ports, including the main port in the Athens region, Piraeus, and 14 regional airports. Before coming to power, Syriza claimed that it would oppose privatizations.

Yesterday, Bloomberg cited anonymous sources to report: “The Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, which sells real estate, infrastructure and other government holdings, will send on Wednesday a revised tender offer to investors, including China Cosco Holding Co., to solicit bids for a stake in the Piraeus Port Authority SA.”

According to these sources, “The fund is satisfied with an offer of €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) for the lease of 14 regional airports in Greece from Germany’s Fraport AG, and expects to conclude the sale within a month.”

On Thursday, markets stepped up pressure on the Greek state to intensify austerity and structural reforms. On Wednesday, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded ratings on Greek bonds further into junk status, from CAA1 to CAA2, assigning the rating a negative outlook.

Moody warned that should negotiations with the EU fail, “the outcome is likely to be a disorganised default”.

This occurs as Syriza begins talks with the IMF and EU on the bailout deals. To obtain a further €7.2 billion loan from the troika—the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund—Syriza is preparing to propose detailed social cuts, including to pensions and health care, and structural reforms. These reforms include reactionary changes to labour laws, layoffs in the public sector, and the privatisation of state-owned companies.

“The Greek government is ready to accept an honest solution with its creditors that will allow financial aid to be unblocked, and to end the financial asphyxia caused by the memoranda,” Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told radio station Sto Kokkino.

After the failure of previous talks with the troika to strike a bailout deal, Tsipras appointed a new Greek negotiator team, replacing Varoufakis with Deputy Foreign Minister Euclid Tsakalotos.

Tsakalotos made clear that Syriza hopes to implement policies dictated by the EU. “When you have a political plan, you can find solutions and make some compromises,” he said.

As the ongoing looting of pension funds shows, such compromises would signify Syriza and the EU working together to rob the working masses.

Sentencing phase of Boston Marathon bombing trial underway

Tom Hall

The sentencing phase of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial over his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing is currently underway, with the defense calling witnesses beginning this past Monday. The chief issue in dispute is whether or not Tsarnaev will be spared the death penalty after he was found guilty in April of 30 counts related to the attack, 17 of which carry potential death sentences.

Prosecutors spent only three days out of more than three weeks of testimony making their case for the death penalty, which mainly consisted of testimony from victims and their family members.

During their opening remarks, lead prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini displayed a provocative, hitherto unreleased photograph of Tsarnaev thrusting his middle finger at a surveillance camera in his jail cell the day of his arraignment, three months after the bombing, in an attempt to paint Tsarnaev as “unconcerned, unrepentant and unchanged.”

This was revealed as a simple scare tactic on cross-examination, however, when the defense team showed the full video recording of the incident, indicating that it was fairly typical spontaneous juvenile behavior.

Tsarnaev’s defense attorneys are mainly presenting a potted family drama at the center of their defense, attempting to portray him as an innocent, otherwise normal teenager caught up in a toxic family environment stoked with psychological trauma and religious fanaticism. They are arguing that the young Tsarnaev brother under the spell of his older, more aggressive brother Tamerlan.

For example, in their opening arguments delivered on Monday, they accused Tsarnaev’s mother of being a “destructive force in the lives of everyone around her” who was “desperate for praise and validation,” while arguing that she was the ultimate source of his brother Tamerlan’s turn towards Islamic fundamentalism.

The defense’s witnesses are thus far comprised primarily of Dzhokhar’s childhood friends, classmates and teachers, all of whom have testified to his character as “quiet,” “loyal,” and a good friend and student. Witnesses have also attested to Tamerlan’s “aggressiveness” and domineering relationship with his younger brother.

At no point thus far in the proceedings has the defense raised the really substantive issues of the case, namely, the implicit or explicit implication of the federal government in the Boston bombing. As revealed last year by court filings by Dzhokhar’s defense attorneys, the FBI had attempted to recruit Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an informant.

There are strong indications that US intelligence was attempting to use Tamerlan to further its anti-Russian operations among Chechnyan insurgents. Tamerlan was also separately investigated by the FBI in 2011 for his Islamist fundamentalist sympathies and placed on at least two separate terrorist watch lists.

Nevertheless, Tamerlan was allowed to travel to Dagestan for six months in 2012 in an attempt to link up with Chechnyan rebels, and to return to the United States unmolested, even though the US government had been warned in a detailed letter by Russian intelligence of his Islamic fundamentalist views. While there, Tamerlan repeatedly expressed interest to a cousin in joining Islamic fundamentalist fighters in Syria, where they are acting as US proxy forces in a war to topple president Bashar Al-Assad. The militias in Syria include many veteran Chechen fighters.

There are also connections between the American intelligence community and the brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni. In the 1990s, Tsarni headed the Congress of Chechen International Organizations, which was registered at the home of Graham Fuller, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA under President Reagan, and who was forced to resign because of his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. Tsarni was also once married to Fuller’s daughter.

Then there is the murder of Ibragim Todashev, a key witness and friend of Tamerlan, by the FBI after being detained for four hours in his Florida apartment. Several different, mutually contradictory media reports to the effect that Todashev was killed after he suddenly attacked the officers were exploded when it was revealed that Todashev was unarmed and had been shot three times in the back and once in the head. Even though the official autopsy completely contradicted the officer’s story, and despite the fact that the FBI agent in charge had a history of violence during his brief stint as an Oakland cop, no charges were ever filed.

Finally, there is the lockdown of the city of Boston carried out after the bombing. As the World Socialist Web Site explained at the time, the police-military occupation of a major metropolitan area, in the course of which military vehicles and helicopters patrolled the city while SWAT teams conducted warrantless house-to-house searches, was a “dress rehearsal for mass repression and the imposition of military rule.” This analysis has been completely confirmed in the past nine months alone, which have seen the deployment of paramilitary forces against protesters on two separate occasions, in Ferguson, Missouri last fall and in Baltimore, Maryland this past week.

If these burning questions are not raised in the course of the sentencing phase, the only really substantial portion of the trial given the defense’s admission of Dzhokhar’s involvement, it is precisely because of their politically explosive character. This is in spite of the fact that limits imposed by the judge on the defense’s ability to probe Tamerlan’s planning and execution of the attack, which would obviously raise serious questions about government complicity, no longer apply during the sentencing phase.

There is broad opposition to executing Tsarnaev in Massachusetts. According to a poll commissioned by the Boston Globe, only 19 percent of the state’s population favors the death penalty in Tsarnaev’s case, with 63 percent favoring life in prison. Even shortly after the bombing itself, a similarGlobe poll only found 33 percent of those who responded favoring the death penalty.

Russia, China announce joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean

Alex Lantier

Russian and Chinese warships will hold joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea later this month, according to Chinese military sources. This unprecedented decision reveals the sharp tensions between the major world powers arising from the US-led “pivot to Asia” against China and the NATO war drive against Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

The exercises will mark the first time that Chinese warships carry out military operations in the Mediterranean. Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said the Chinese navy would contribute warships currently on anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia, in the Indian Ocean. The nine-ship Russo-Chinese fleet in the Mediterranean will practice refueling, escort and live-fire missions.

“The aim is to deepen both countries’ friendly and practical cooperation, and increase our navies’ ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats,” Geng said at a monthly briefing on Thursday.

Chinese officials implausibly downplayed any suggestion that the exercises were aimed at the United States and its European allies. “What needs saying is that these exercises are not aimed at any third party and have nothing to do with the regional situation,” Geng declared.

A glance at the “regional situation” shows, in fact, that military tensions are escalating between the NATO imperialist powers, Russia, and China—a situation for which NATO’s aggressive policies are mainly responsible. While NATO stages military drills aimed at Russia across Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, war is spreading in the Mediterranean. A US-led proxy war is burning in Syria, as is the civil war that erupted in Libya after the 2011 NATO war destroyed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

Russian and Chinese warships already had appeared in the Mediterranean during the Libyan and Syrian wars. Chinese vessels evacuated 30,000 Chinese workers from Libya during the 2011 war, while Russian warships patrolled the Syrian coast in 2013 to dissuade NATO from launching missile strikes on Syria, a Russian ally.

If Moscow and Beijing have taken the extraordinary step of organizing live-fire exercises off the coast of Europe, however, this is to send Washington and its European allies a political signal. US-led policies of strangling Russia’s economy with financial sanctions and seeking to topple Russian President Vladimir Putin, or isolating China through the US “pivot to Asia,” pose the threat of all-out war.

Chinese commentators indicated the Mediterranean exercises were also Chinese President Xi Jinping’s response to US-Japanese military deals in the Asia-Pacific, agreed between Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during Abe’s visit to Washington this week.

“Russia wants to show the United States it is not isolated and can launch exercises near Eastern Europe. And as a result of Abe’s visit to the United States and the upgraded Japan-American military relationship, Xi wants to show the United States he has good relations with Russia,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.

James Hardy, Asia-Pacific editor of IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly, said the exercises marked a new stage in the development of the Chinese navy’s fighting capabilities and would be seen as a challenge by ruling elites in the NATO countries.

“The geopolitical significance of its exercising along Russia will not be lost on the US and NATO, although it would be churlish of anyone in the West to complain about it, given the number of joint drills the US and its allies conduct in China’s near seas,” he told the New York Times .

The greatest danger facing the world’s population is that the risk of world war is largely hidden from the working class internationally. However, military standoffs such as the US threat to arm the far-right regime in Kiev against pro-Russian forces in east Ukraine, or the Japanese standoff with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islets, could erupt into all-out wars threatening the very survival of humanity.

In an interview in March, Putin confirmed that the Russian military prepared for possible nuclear war with NATO in the initial weeks of the conflict in Ukraine triggered by a NATO-backed, coup in Kiev last year.

The only progressive basis for struggle against the danger of world war is the political mobilization of the working class internationally against war. This struggle cannot be left to an alliance between the reactionary regimes in Moscow and Beijing.

Oscillating between maneuvers designed to warn off NATO policymakers and attempts to work out deals with them, the policies of the capitalist oligarchies that emerged from the restoration of capitalism in China and the USSR only deepen the danger of war. It is safe to predict that the imperialist powers will respond to this exercise by stepping up military pressure on Moscow and Beijing, and any other regime that they see as a potential obstacle to their interests.

Reckless imperialist policies are clearly pushing the Russian and Chinese towards a strategic alliance. Last year, Russia and China signed a $400 billion pipeline deal allowing Russia to export its oil and gas towards China, bypassing a cut-off of Russian energy exports to Europe, should this arise. At the same time, Moscow and Beijing held joint naval exercises off China’s Pacific coast. As US and European sanctions hit Russia and the Russian ruble plunged on the currency markets last December, top Chinese officials said Beijing would offer Russia financial backing.

Beijing is now offering symbolic support to Moscow in the Ukraine crisis, by preparing to send an official delegation to May 9 celebrations in Moscow of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Officials from US, the leading European powers, and the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime have announced that they will boycott the ceremony.

A defensive Russo-Chinese alliance aimed at the US, Europe and Japan all too obviously draws potential battle lines of a Third World War. However, it is hardly clear that such a war could only emerge in the form of a conflict between unstable alliances of the imperialist powers, on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other.

Divergences are rapidly emerging between the major imperialist powers themselves over what policy to pursue towards Russia and China. In March, in a stunning rebuke to Washington, the European powers bucked US appeals not to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Several European governments are openly opposed to financial sanctions against Russia.

Moreover, the Sino-Russian relationship is itself deeply fraught. Powerful tensions exist between Beijing, flush with export revenues from cheap-labor Chinese export industries, and Moscow, which has never recovered from the industrial collapse that followed the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

China’s Global Times newspaper pointed to the distrust between the rival capitalist cliques in Russia and China in an article discussing why Chinese financial aid would not suffice to overcome US-European economic sanctions.

It wrote, “Due to Russia’s large population of 140 million people, its modernity and strong currency cannot be solely supported by oil, gas and timber … China is capable of offering sufficient capital, technologies and markets to Russia, but these efforts can only take limited effect if Russia’s economy still relies heavily on oil exports and lacks structural diversity. If Chinese investment in Russia shoots up under these circumstances, Moscow might suspect China has ulterior motives. Russia does not want to be a vassal of the Chinese economy.”

US “Grand Strategy” for war against China laid out

Nick Beams

The advanced stage of discussions in US foreign policy circles over the pursuit of an ever-more aggressive policy toward China has been revealed by the recent release of a chilling report under the auspices of the influential Council on Foreign Relations.

Entitled “Revising US Grand Strategy Toward China,” the report is nothing less than an agenda for war. It is authored by Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis, both of whom have close connections to the US State Department and various American foreign policy think tanks.

The report cites a publication produced during World War II defining “grand strategy” as one that “so integrates the policies and armaments of a nation that the resort to war is either rendered unnecessary or is undertaken with the maximum chance of victory.” This is not merely a concept of war but “an inherent element of statecraft at all times.”

The report’s central theme is that US global dominance is threatened by the rise of China and this process must be reversed by economic, diplomatic and military means.

Significantly, at the beginning of the report, its authors cite the Pentagon’s Defence Planning Guidance document of 1992, produced in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which insisted that US strategy had to “refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor.”

While asserting that China has a “grand strategy” for regional and ultimately global domination, the authors make clear they regard the threat to the US position as arising from China’s economic growth within the present international order.

This analysis recalls that advanced at the beginning of 1907 by the senior British Foreign Office official Eyre Crowe about the impact on Britain of the rise of Germany. Crowe concluded that, whatever the intentions of its leaders, Germany’s economic expansion, in and of itself, constituted a threat to the British Empire. Seven years later, the two major powers were at war.

China is not an imperialist power as Germany was, but its very economic rise is undermining the US position.

According to the report: “Because the American effort to ‘integrate’ China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to US primacy in Asia—and could eventually result in a consequential challenge to American power globally—Washington needs a grand strategy toward China that centres on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy.”

A repeat of the Cold War policy based on “containment” is not possible because that was grounded on the autarkic policies of the Soviet Union, whereas China’s economic growth is bound up with economic globalisation and China’s integration into world markets.

In its own way, this assertion is a direct confirmation of the Marxist analysis that the origins of war lie in the very modus operandi of the capitalist system itself. China has operated within the framework of the global market, established not least by the United States, but this integration has itself undermined US primacy.

In the report’s words: “US support for China’s entry into the global trading system has thus created the awkward situation in which Washington has contributed towards hastening Beijing’s economic growth and, by extension, accelerated its rise as a geopolitical rival.”

Accordingly, in advancing the core elements of an American “grand strategy,” the authors place considerable importance on economic issues. As part of a plan to “vitalize” the economy, the US should “construct a new set of trading relationships in Asia that exclude China, fashion effective tools to deal with China’s pervasive use of geo-economic tools in Asia and beyond, and, in partnership with US allies and like-minded partners, create a new technology-control mechanism vis-a-vis China.”

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which currently excludes China and for which Obama is now seeking fast-track authority from the US Congress to negotiate, is regarded as essential. Failure to deliver it would “seriously weaken” the US grand strategy.

The report’s focus on the underlying economic issues by no means implies any downgrading of military means. On the contrary, the authors spell out detailed measures, both in terms of US policy and those it must secure from its allies in the region.

The relationship with Japan is regarded as occupying first place. The report’s proposals include an expansion of the US-Japan security relationship to encompass all of Asia, the upgrading of the Japanese military, aligning Japan with concepts such as Air-Sea battle—a massive attack on military facilities in mainland China—and intensifying Japanese cooperation with ballistic missile defence (BMD). Anti-missile systems are seen as vital for a first-strike strategy, which aims to render inoperable any retaliation.

With regard to South Korea, the report calls for increased BMD capacity, as well as a comprehensive strategy, developed with Japan, to bring about “regime change” in North Korea.

Australia is described as the “southern anchor” of US relationships in the Pacific. The report calls for the use of the Stirling naval base in Western Australia to support “US naval force structure in the region.” The US and Australia should deploy surveillance and unmanned aerial vehicles on Australia’s Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean and “the two countries should work together to more rapidly identify potential Australian contributions to ballistic missile defence.”

And the list goes on. Indian nuclear weapons must be seen as an “asset” in the current balance of power, and US-India military co-operation should increase. Indonesia’s role in joint military exercises must be expanded, naval exercises with Vietnam stepped up and the Philippines must develop a full range of defence capabilities.

On the political front, the report calls for the reinforcement of trusted strategic relationships and partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific region that include traditional US alliances but go beyond them. It advocates strengthening Asian states’ “ability to cope with China independently” and building new forms of intra-Asian co-operation—clearly directed to counter China—that do not always involve the US but are systematically supported by it.

After detailing these anti-China measures on the economic, military and political fronts, the report states that the US must energise “high-level diplomacy” with China to “mitigate the inherently profound tensions” and to “reassure US allies and friends in Asia and beyond that its objective is to avoid a confrontation with China.”

The source of this blatant contradiction lies in a no less significant component of the US war drive—the offensive on the ideological front. The purpose of the “high-level diplomacy” and even possible joint ventures with China on some issues, is to manufacture the propaganda lie that the cause of war is the fault of America’s enemy—in this case Chinese assertiveness and aggression. That lie has been central to the launching of US military activity ever since it became an imperialist power at the end of the 19th century.

In reality, the report itself specifically rules out any accommodation with China. In their conclusion, the authors state: “[T]here is no real prospect of building fundamental trust, ‘peaceful coexistence,’ ‘mutual understanding,’ a strategic partnership, or a ‘new type of major country relations’ between the United States and China.”

The release of this report and its clear elaboration of the US war drive underscore the necessity for the development of a socialist strategy against war by the international working class. This will be at the centre of tomorrow’s May Day Online International Rally called by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

US sends warships to Strait of Hormuz, claiming Iran threat

Thomas Gaist

The US Navy will deploy new forces to “accompany” US cargo ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, Pentagon officials announced Thursday. The strait is one of the most important commercial waterways in the world, controlling the entrance to the Persian Gulf and handling massive flows of seaborne commercial traffic, including one third of seaborne oil.

The US Navy “accompaniments” will proceed on a near daily basis, affecting at least 25 passages by US ships per month, a spokesperson for the 5th Fleet told Fox News. Elements of the US Air Force, including reconnaissance and other types of war planes, will assist the mission.

The Navy began the new buildup in response to orders from US Central Command (CENTCOM). The new deployments are being made for an indefinite length of time, a US Navy spokesman implied Friday, saying that the Pentagon “does not have an end date” for the patrols.

The further escalation of US deployments to the strait is being justified by the US government as a response to the seizure of the cargo ship Maersk Tigris last week by Iranian naval forces. In official statements this week, the Pentagon described the seizure of the Maersk and alleged harassment of another cargo ship on April 25 by Iranian forces in the language of war, denouncing the moves as “provocations.” US military officials described the Iranian move as “a provocative show of force by Tehran,” in comments to theWall Street Journal.

“The unpredictability of our Iranian friends,” has made it necessary to pre-position the additional naval forces at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and American naval units are being placed on high alert in case Tehran decides to “do something stupid,” US military sources told the Journal .

The US is also concerned to protect the large quantities of “munitions, equipment, hardware and food for the US military” that move through the strait, officials said.

The US naval escalation underscores the marked growth of tensions around the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf, and the further intensification of conditions for a region-wide war drawing in the US, Saudi Arabia, Iran and a handful of other states and non-state groups.

The naval deployments come in the context of significantly intensified tensions in the region and globally. The US military is conducting ever-growing military exercises on the doorsteps of both Russia and China, directly arming and training neo-fascist militants in Ukraine, inciting the Philippine and Vietnamese militaries against China, and backing the Saudi-led regional war coalition currently laying waste to Yemen.

Whatever the immediate impetus for the recent escalations around the Strait of Hormuz, there is no doubt that US forces deployed to the area will be utilized to ratchet up pressure against Tehran and prepare new US military interventions throughout the region.

Thus far, Iran’s leadership has denied any political motives behind the seizure of the Maersk cargo ship, presenting the incident as a strictly legal issue. Iranian officials claim the seizure was necessary to enforce a ruling by an Iranian court against the shipping line, stemming from the loss of some 10 containers of cargo in 2005.

The Maersk’s owners received notice Thursday that after an extended appeals process, an Iranian court had fined it $3.6 million in connection with the 2005 law suit. The company claims that it still has not received a full explanation for the sudden imposition of the large fine and takeover of its ship.

The takeover may have been initiated by elements within the Iranian military seeking to burnish Tehran’s anti-imperialist facade, even as direct negotiations between the representatives of the Iranian government and the US and European powers are thoroughly discrediting the radical pretensions of Iran’s clerical elite.

This line of reasoning gains credibility from the fact that the seizure of the Maersk was carried out in the immediate wake of the renewed Saudi bombardment of Yemen and fresh deployments of US aircraft carriers and other war ships to the region. Iranian officials may have green-lighted the sudden move, a somewhat reckless action which included the firing of live ammunition across the bow of the commercial vessel as it was sailing peacefully in international waters, as a political maneuver aimed to enhance Iran’s position in the ongoing P5+1 negotiations.

Should this prove true, it only demonstrates that powerful objective forces are pushing the region towards larger and larger wars, the wishes of the leaders for a political settlement and a return to “stability” notwithstanding. While Iran’s bourgeoisie is scrambling to secure a deal with US imperialism that could satisfy the Saudis and contain the growing chaos, a drumbeat of militarist conspiracies and provocations, arising out of the dynamics of imperialism and the nation state system, continuously reasserts the danger of a region-wide conflagration.

The seizure of the Maersk Tigris came just days after the US deployed the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt to the same area, supposedly on a mission to intercept a convoy of Iranian vessels sailing to Yemen. The Houthi rebels, which have received political support from Iran, and Yemen’s civilian population are currently facing a sustained and punishing air assault by a coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the US government.