Dispatch From Kathmandu

Barbara Nimri Aziz

Revisiting a school I know well in Kathmandu city, I meet Tilok just as he and his wife, a school teacher, and their baby are about to depart for Darjeeling, Northeast India where her parents live. This young family is among hundreds of thousands of mainly Kathmandu Valley residents leaving the city to be near loved ones, to be assured that their home villages and uncultivated lands are intact and perhaps to recognize that those fields they abandoned for salaried work in the city and beyond now offer a newly discovered security. As a part-time journalist Pilok has been working overtime filing stories about the quake. But it’s not the quake he’s so eager to speak about. It’s his new magazine “Siti Miti; he proudly gives me a signed copy of the very first issue. It will be monthly, he explains, the first of its kind for the Chamling Rai language, one of Nepal’s 124 recognized languages. Only 10,200 Nepalis speak Chamling Rai and it’s never had a script. Tilok and his group consider this project essential to their ethnic survival and identity; they’ve been hard at work for years to develop the written form and prepare materials for their children’s education. A magazine like this pamphlet in my hand is a political symbol for the Rai people and will, they believe, secure a political place for them in the new democratic mix here. Tilok is thinking well beyond the quake, you see.

We went to visit linguistics professor Subadra. At 80 she prefers to live alone in her longtime residence near Kirtipur Campus. On Saturday at 11:50 am, when the quake struck she rushed out of her bungalow seeking safety. She tripped and now lies in a cot with a broken pelvic bone. Friends gather around her bed today sharing anecdotes from each of their neighborhoods—not only cracked walls and impassable lanes but the absence of any government visitors seeing to their needs. They report conditions of villages whose names I once knew well.

The assembly courtyard and playgrounds of Sukanya’s school, Amrit, have become a tent city for the entire MehPin neighborhood sleeping under tarpaulins, cooking communal meals. The school luckily had a diesel generator and retrieved it from in storage to furnish light for the area, so essential during those first two scary nights. Like elsewhere across the country, schools will remain closed for some weeks. Amrit’s teachers and students have joined the exodus to natal villages. But Mokta, Sukanya’s granddaughter of 18 months is ill with an unknown ailment and that’s taking her attention away from the quake. She’s been rocking her all though our visit; it’s her first grandchild.

By night four, here and elsewhere, even families who continue to sleep in a garden spend a final hour inside their parlors to watch the latest episode of “Udaan” (flight), the Indian serial drama they have been following for six months. It’s the story of a young girl, 7, Chakour, whose story as a bonded laborer has gripped the entire subcontinent. I wonder if this too is proving a sense of security for families– some continuity (or escape) at a time they so desperately need a sense of connection and routine.

I’m not very good as a deadline journalist reporting from the field; I found out that in Iraq in the 1990s. While dozens of international journalists were busily typing away at the Baghdad Press Center—(pre-cell phone) where we had to go to get satellite access– I took days to mull over what I’d seen, cross check facts, and absorb the personal testimonials I’d gathered before I could write. It’s the same here in Kathmandu where a week ago, the 7.8 scale earthquake struck as I was packing to leave home for Newark International airport.

I gave no thought at all about cancelling, even though my visit was not urgent; I had neither a news assignment nor a humanitarian mission. I thought, “I’ll go as far as the plane will get me”. To be sure, there were inconveniences and delays, but any facing me were eclipsed by those of the Nepalese. Suffice to say the second attempt from Abu Dhabi was successful. My fellow passengers were about 20 journalists and another 20 or so humanitarian aid reps, from Christian evangelicals to Medicine Sans Frontiers. The remaining 200 or so passengers were young Nepalese men (20-30 in age, from among 3 million migrant laborers outside) who’ve taken leave from their unhappy jobs in Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia to get home and offer succor to their families.

A larger aircraft had been assigned to carry those of us from yesterday’s two flights unable to land at Tribhuvan Airport in Kathmandu (turned back to UAE), plus a new load of passengers. Somehow the mood seemed more upbeat than yesterday’s; passengers were loquacious, gaily taking photos of themselves in this more upscale aircraft. Tonight after crossing the Indian Ocean and India we’d again join a fleet of planes circling over Kathmandu Valley. But this time our pilot shared some wonderful optimism, announcing at least 3 times, that he expected to get into Nepal: “We have dropped from 28,000 to 24,000 feet;” then later to 18,000 feet, repeating “I expect we will land. I know how to manage”. Many of us in the cabin erupted in laughter and peered through windows looking for the lights of the Nepalese capital.

Within an hour of getting into the terminal I was pleasantly surprised to locate the suitcase I’d surrendered in New Jersey 58 hours earlier, found the sole taxi sitting outside Arrivals and directed its driver –the cost was irrelevant- to Tamel quarter where I was confident I’d find a room. At 10:30pm it was too late to contact Padma and Nirmal with whom I’d planned to stay, or even Dawa Sherpa who I knew would respond to my call at anytime, anywhere. Anyway, I thought, if their houses are intact, they would surely be occupied by crowds of people from their large families. Indeed, as I’d learn in 2 days, Padma and Nirmal were among the hundreds of thousands sleeping outdoors sharing blankets heaped under tarpaulins, in this case in their own garden. Nirmal was also among perhaps millions who by day 2, had lost all the charge from his phone.

My taxi sped through dark, empty streets; we encountered no roadblocks, not even police checkpoints –perhaps all security personnel were seconded to damaged high value areas. The only traffic I saw was a convoy of 4 small trucks loaded with what was probably humanitarian relief. I frankly expected to encounter chasms and fissures in the road, but the driver zipped along as if he knew where was safe and passable. Two hotels –Northfield and Mandep– were in darkness but I knocked anyway; at both places sleepy security guards shooed me away unsympathetically saying: “no beds, no water”. Finally I persuaded the watchman at nearby Dalai Hotel to take me in—he originally apologized that the rooms were dirty and without sheets; I didn’t care (in fact, it was very clean and in the morning, when I awoke at 1 pm, I even found hot water flowing in the shower pipe.)

I emerged into the street at 2, warned by the hotel receptionist to watch for bricks falling! I was only concerned by a sudden feeling of unsteadiness on my feet, a little woozy, like vertigo. It didn’t last long but would recur at odd times for the next several days. I recall Dr. Ammash, a cellular microbiologist in Baghdad in 1995 explaining how the depleted uranium from US munitions and all the dust of war and refuse, alters the molecules in the air—something to do with ions. It would have deep affects on health, she explained. So I wonder if an earthquake too can cause this air molecule destabilization.

I was also reminded of Iraq where, unable to make phone contact in April 1991, after the massive US bombing there, I determinedly directed my taxi to the homes and businesses of Iraqis who I needed news of; now, I find myself walking the familiar streets Kathmandu to confront the calamity engulfing this nation but also to locate the shops of friends. Jamling and Lhakpa’s trekking outfitters shop was shuttered, but I did find the bookseller Bidur behind his counter. Normally I can depend on Bidur to advise me what anthropologists are in town or what new book on Tibet has appeared. This time the mission would be different.

Curbing the New Corporate Power

Dean Baker

Sabeel Rahman raises many important issues in his discussion of Internet-based companies such as Amazon, Uber, and Airbnb. Unfortunately, he looks in the wrong direction for answers.

His basic point is that these companies are developing substantial market power and using it to put downward pressure on the incomes of producers in the relevant sectors. Rahman’s proposed solution is to apply utility-type regulation to these companies, which would presumably mean government regulatory boards setting prices and standards.

While these companies provide considerable grounds for complaint, as I have frequently written, declaring them monopolies in need of government regulation is misguided on both economic and political grounds.

First, it should be recognized that these companies do not necessarily belong in the same basket. Uber and Airbnb both appear to be highly profitable upstarts that have made a great deal of money in their very short lifetimes. By contrast, Amazon is a marginally profitable company that has made more from avoiding state sales taxes than from the services it provides to consumers.

This point is central to any claim about Amazon’s market power. A company that doesn’t cover the sales tax that its mom-and-pop competitors must pay hardly sounds like a market behemoth. It is true that the company has a huge market capitalization, but so did AOL. Amazon is far from an overwhelming presence in most of the retail markets in which it competes. Arguably it is dominant in the book market, but is Rahman confident that it would retain this dominance if it raised its prices by 10 to 15 percent to make a normal profit? Is it that hard for book buyers to go to a different Website?

I also don’t have much sympathy for the publishers and authors who fear declining incomes due to Amazon’s pressure. They have been more or less idle while millions of small businesses went under in the last three decades because they couldn’t compete with bigger, more efficient companies. Tens of millions of factory workers lost their jobs or saw big pay cuts because the government deliberately placed them in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. Now it is a profound crisis that a tiny group of intellectuals feels similar market pressure? Sorry, I have more sympathy for the family farmers and textile workers.

Playing hardball with publishers does not get Amazon on my shit list. Avoiding sales tax and engaging in illegal labor practices does. To my mind, the best place to start with Amazon is to apply the existing laws. Level the playing field. There is no economic argument for Amazon’s preferential treatment, so make the company responsible for collecting the same sales tax its smaller competitors everywhere it operates.

This same logic should apply to other companies Rahman cites. Uber drivers should be protected by the same minimum wage and hour regulations as other workers. They should also be covered by workers’ compensation. And the company should be required to provide insurance for its drivers and ensure passengers’ safety in the same way as incumbent taxi companies. They should bear the same responsibility for serving the handicapped and elderly that existing cab companies do.

Ditto for Airbnb. Ordering over the Internet should not be a basis for evading fire safety laws, apartment or condo building rules, nondiscrimination statutes, and rent-control ordinances, where they exist.

I also hesitate to embrace Rahman’s solution because the history of utility regulation has hardly been exemplary. The problem of industry capture is real. Comcast is interested in what the Federal Communications Commission does, the general public much less so. We can’t just wish this problem away.

Pressing for utility regulation also makes little sense in the current political climate. If progressives lack the political influence to make Amazon liable for the same sales tax as a mom-and-pop grocery store, how can they induce the government to set Amazon’s prices?

Leveling the playing field seems the best first approach, coupled with some innovation. Is there any reason city governments can’t cut out the middleman by establishing their own taxi fleets or setting up their own bed and breakfast services, which could be linked nationally?

The reforms of the Progressive Era led to many beneficial changes, but we might try thinking forward for once instead of looking back a hundred years.

Co-director Wim Wenders’ The Salt of the Earth: The photographs of Sebastião Salgado

David Walsh

Directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado; written by Wenders, Salgado and David Rosier

Veteran German director Wim Wenders (The American Friend, Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, Buena Vista Social Club, Land of Plenty, Pina and many others) and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado have teamed up to make a film about the 40-year career of the latter’s father, the well-known Brazilian-born photographer Sebastião Salgado.

The Salt of the Earth

Salgado (born 1944) is perhaps most renowned for his photographs of workers and the poor, sometimes the starving and dying, in impoverished regions, along with his pictures taken amid various terrible social disasters, especially those in Ethiopia, Rwanda and the Congo in the 1980s and 1990s.

His work has been published in various collections, including Other Americas, 1986; An Uncertain Grace, 1990; Workers: Archaeology of the Industrial Age, 1993; Migrations, 2000; Sahel: The End of the Road, 2004; Africa, 2007; andGenesis, 2013. Each of these volumes represented years of photo-taking and often involved travel to far-flung parts of the earth.

Wenders, in a voiceover, introduces The Salt of the Earth. The first of Salgado’s images the filmmakers present is of the Serra Pelada open-cast gold mine in Brazil (now closed), and it is an astonishing one. From one side of a giant crater we see the opposite wall of this vast hole in the earth, filled from its bottom to its top with a mass of mud-caked humanity, some 50,000 workers, according to the commentary. Each worker, carrying a sack of ore weighing between 60 and one 100 pounds, climbs up a series of ladders 50 or 60 times a day.

The Salt of the Earth

The film then discusses Salgado’s early life. Having grown up on a cattle ranch, Salgado attended the University of São Paulo and studied economics during the period of the Brazilian military dictatorship (which lasted from 1964 to 1985). He participated in the opposition to the dictatorship and eventually moved to Europe, first London, and worked for the International Coffee Organization, often traveling to Africa for the World Bank.

In 1973, now living in Paris, Salgado forsook economics for photography. Among his first photos was a series done in Niger in 1973 during a severe drought. He traveled throughout Latin America during the years 1977-84, visiting, as was his wont, the most remote regions.

During the 1980s, he spent several years in the Sahel, the region across Africa between the Sahara Desert to the north and the Sudanian Savanna to the south. He saw immense suffering here too. He covered the famine in Ethiopia in 1984, which caused more than 400,000 deaths in the northern part of the country. Some of his dying subjects look like concentration camp victims, little more than skin and bones.

From 1986-91, he took photos all over the world for Workers, paying homage to those who labor. The voiceover comments that he was “driven by the same empathy for the human condition.” No doubt Salgado took the assignment and the subject matter seriously.

The famine in Ethiopia, which was worsened by political considerations, and his coverage of the massacres in Rwanda and the Congo in the mid-1990s “changed” Salgado, we are told. Certainly, the images are horrific, both of roads lined with corpses and of innocent civilians driven into the jungle and then massacred or left to die. On top of that, he traveled to the former Yugoslavia and photographed atrocities committed by both Croat and Serb forces.

The Salt of the Earth

What conclusions did Salgado draw from this? In any case, they didn’t come out of the blue. His conclusions were prepared by his social background, his conditions of life and his world outlook. He determined, he tells us, that the fault lay with humanity itself. “We are a ferocious animal,” he tells the camera. “We are violent … our history is a history of wars. It’s an endless story.” Everybody should see the images from the Congo, he says, “to see how terrible our species is.”

This is to draw very false and superficial lessons from the events. Many others did too, of course, with varying degrees of self-interest. The horrors in Ethiopia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia did not flow from any innate characteristic in humanity, its supposed propensity for savagery, but, above all, from the specific policies pursued by the Great Powers (plus the history of brutal imperialist rule in the case of Africa) and the rottenness of the national ruling elites. Global capitalism created the conditions for the disasters and consciously instigated ethnic and communal conflicts for its own selfish, geopolitical purposes. Then, it made use of the horrors it had created to justify the attempt to recolonize large portions of the globe.

In any case, Salgado returned to Brazil after deciding that there was “no salvation for the human race.” Along with his wife, he found “healing” in the replanting of the subtropical rainforest in and around his family’s land in Aimorés, Brazil and the establishment in 1998 of the Instituto Terra, dedicated to sustainable development. After treating a couple of expeditions that Salgado made for his newest work, Genesis, about relatively untouched areas of the planet, the film ends on that note—that “the destruction of nature can be reversed.”

The political views articulated here, seconded by Wenders, are very weak. Salgado began as a representative of the International Coffee Organization and the World Bank, presumably working on economic development, and never broke fundamentally from this standpoint, the effort to create a more workable, humane global capitalism. Ideologically, he inhabited for decades the world of NGOs, United Nations organizations, Doctors Without Borders, etc. The notion that by reclaiming 17,000 acres of land in a remote part of Brazil the Salgados are pointing the way forward for humanity to save itself is indicative of a very narrow outlook and very swelled heads.

The Salt of the Earth

Salgado no doubt sincerely sympathized with the suffering people he photographed, but the possibility that these people needed to organize themselves and overthrow their conditions of life, and that they were capable of it, clearly never entered his head. The period in which he worked certainly played a role in this.

The Brazilian photographer has been sharply criticized from a number of quarters for “aestheticizing” the wretched of the earth. One widely circulated critique, by Ingrid Sischy, “Good Intentions,” published in the New Yorkermagazine in 1991, took Salgado to task for his “beautification of tragedy.” His pictures, Sischy argued, comparing the Brazilian unfavorably to such figures as Lewis Hine and Walker Evans, merely “reinforce our passivity.”

She complained, moreover, about the religious strand in Salgado’s photos, for his “coupling human suffering and God’s will.” About one well-known picture of a sightless woman, Sischy asserted that Salgado makes the blindness “holy—in other words, that it needn’t be seen as something to cure.” She claimed, moreover, that “the people in his pictures remain strangers.” His “sentimentalism … isn’t any kind of breakthrough.”

Some of the points are legitimate, but others seem unfair. Many of Salgado’s photos are deeply moving and effective. His sincerity and his intrepid efforts to record the human situation cannot be called into question. At any rate, the criticisms are not really criticisms of Salgado as an individual, but of a social outlook and atmosphere born of a definite historical moment.

The defeats of the working class in Latin America in the 1970s, the collapse of the Eastern European Stalinist regimes and ultimately the Soviet Union, the protracted decline of every labor organization, the apparent triumph of the “market” and “free enterprise,” all had an impact. Various artists and filmmakers, losing confidence—or never having had much confidence—in the ability of the mass of the population to mobilize itself and create a better world, began to discover means by which “beauty” and “joy,” or even “holiness,” could and should be found within existing conditions.

The Salt of the Earth

Abbas Kiarostami’s 2001 documentary ABC Africa, about Uganda’s AIDS orphans, was one prominent example of this trend. As the WSWS commented at the time, “Moreover, by avoiding a larger framework and excluding the possibility of radical change, the film veers dangerously close to making a virtue out of necessity, suggesting at times, ‘Well, life is beautiful and people are happy, even under these conditions!’ Left for all intents and purposes out of the picture is any systematic questioning of a social order that produces such a human catastrophe.”

Salgado has zigzagged from placing a curse on the world’s populace to acting as though, with a little help, the planet will heal itself, without ever seriously considering the root cause of humanity’s problems, its social and economic organization and the dominance of a tiny handful that control vast wealth and power.

The artist’s responsibility is neither to ignore the way things are nor to become overwhelmed by it. “When I say that we must be satisfied with the reality of what exists,” wrote Trotsky in 1908, “you, of course, will not think that I mean that we must be satisfied with what exists. Just the absolute opposite: a great and persistent protest against what exists only becomes possible when we accept the world unconditionally, in its incontrovertible reality.” (“On Death and Eros”)

Unhappily, The Salt of the Earth contains neither a genuine coming to terms with the world’s incontrovertible reality nor a great and persistent protest against its conditions.

Australian central bank cuts interest rate to record low

Nick Beams

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) yesterday cut its base interest rate for the tenth time in the past three and a half years, taking it to a record low of 2 percent. The rate is now a full percentage point below that set in 2009, amid the global financial crisis, described then as an “emergency” setting.

The decision was taken to try to counter deepening recessionary tendencies, chiefly the fall in investment following the end of the mining boom, and lower the value of the Australian dollar to boost export revenues. It will have little or no effect on either.

In a turbulent day on financial markets, the Australian dollar rose in value following the RBA move, in the belief that this would be the bank’s last interest rate cut.

Financial analysts voiced concern, fearing the rate cut will inflate the property bubble in the country’s largest market, Sydney, where the median price for a house is on the way to a million dollars, and destabilise the banks in the future as families take on unsustainable debt.

Fitch, the ratings agency, said the Australian banking system “could be undermined by further increases in property prices and household debt” and warned of growing risks in the housing market unless further “macroprudential scrutiny”—tighter controls on banking lending—was forthcoming. Barclays Bank economist Kieran Davies said debt levels could rise further and, while the decision would boost consumer spending, it “also increases the risk of further instability in the economy.”

An Australian Financial Review editorial warned that the RBA, which it described as the most “credible financial institution” in the country, “risks embroiling itself in the currency wars and asset bubbles that have been the result of ever-loose monetary policy elsewhere in the world.”

In the face of these concerns, the Abbott Liberal government’s Treasurer Joe Hockey, was out spruiking like a dodgy used-car salesman after the decision was announced. “Now is the time to borrow and invest, whether you be a household or small business—now is the time to have a go,” he said.

Hockey said there were “many green shoots” in the Australian economy and the decision was like “spreading fertiliser.”

In fact, the Reserve Bank made the cut because the economic outlook is worsening. The fall-off in investment in mining has not been countered by increases in other areas of the economy, contrary to the scenario for a “recovery” outlined by the RBA and the Treasury. Unemployment is on the rise, officially at more than 6 percent, and youth unemployment is now at its highest level since the recession of the early 1990s.

The RBA is entrapped in the global vortex created by the deepening financial crisis and an international currency war. Its strategy has been based on the assumption that rate cuts in Australia, coupled with an expected upward movement of US interest rates starting later this year, would lift the American dollar, and lower the Australian currency. This would help counter the precipitous fall in commodity export prices, in particular iron ore, which has hit the Australian budget and the economy at large.

After falling to 75 cents to the US dollar—around the level considered suitable by Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens—the Australian dollar has risen in recent weeks and is now near 80 cents.

This is largely due to the fact that the first US interest rate rise since the onset of the global financial crisis, pencilled in for June, has been delayed to later in the year, and possibly not until next year, because of fears that a rising US dollar will hit the American economy.

The most recent US Federal Reserve statements on monetary policy have pointed to the impact of the US dollar’s rise on exports and profits. While trade makes up only 13 percent of the US economy, export sales comprise around 25 percent of the profits of major US companies in hi-tech, computers and pharmaceuticals.

Well-known economist Nouriel Roubini noted in a syndicated column that until recently US policy-makers were not overly concerned about the rise of the US dollar because America’s growth prospects were better than either Europe or Japan and domestic demand would be strong enough to support growth of 3 percent.

However, the rise in the value of the US dollar was faster than predicted and “strong domestic demand had failed to materialise” [US growth was flat in the first quarter, increasing by only 0.2 percent].

“As a result,” Roubini wrote, “the US has effectively joined the ‘currency war’ to prevent further dollar appreciation. Fed officials have started to speak explicitly about the dollar as a factor that affects net exports, inflation and growth. And US authorities have been increasingly critical of Germany and the euro zone for adopting policies that will weaken the euro while avoiding those—for example, temporary fiscal stimulus and wage growth—that boost domestic demand.”

The RBA’s impotence in the mounting global turbulence has seen renewed pressure from financial markets for the Australian government to carry out major spending cuts, accompanied by warnings that unless it does so the country’s AAA credit rating in international markets will be threatened.

Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs said the government was running out of time to start cutting the budget deficit and that the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s could put Australia on a negative outlook within months.

That prospect has come closer with the latest budget predictions. Issuing his budget forecast on Monday, Chris Richardson of Deloitte Access Economics said that, while the iron ore price fall had been the focus of attention in determining the government’s fiscal position, another factor was looming large.

Lower tax revenues as a result of slow wage growth—pay rises have flatlined over the past year—would “tear a new hole in the heart of the budget,” he warned. The underlying cash deficit could be $45.3 billion for 2015–16, representing a $14.1 billion fall from the deficit forecast last December.

“We still see deficits as far as the eye can see, with the repair task getting harder both because of economics—commodity prices and wages—and because of politics,” he said. “Politics” refers to the government’s inability to secure the passage through the Senate of key spending cuts introduced in last May’s budget, due to opposition from the Labor Party and the crossbenches, made up of Greens and independents.

The Labor Party is not opposed to cuts. Rather it is making an appeal to the financial elites that it is more able to secure their passage than the Liberals.

Labor’s shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, has insisted Labor is not averse to unpopular measures but will ensure that they are seen as “fair.” In other words, Labor will make a better instrument for carrying through the attacks on the working class now being demanded.

That was the orientation of an address by Labor leader Bill Shorten to the McKell Institute at Sydney University on Monday.

Shorten ignored the clear signs of the deepening recessionary trends in the global economy—faltering growth in the US economy, Europe still not back to where it was in 2007, ongoing deflation in Japan, despite Abenomics, and slowing growth in China. He claimed that with the right policies, Australia was “uniquely placed” to take “the opportunities of the moment” because it was situated in the fastest growing region of the world.

Before indulging in windy rhetoric about those opportunities, Shorten gave a firm commitment to the finance houses.

“We hold a hard-won AAA credit rating from the three major ratings agencies, giving confidence and certainty to business and investors—and we must preserve it,” he said.

Shorten criticised the Liberals’ measures for not producing a “sustainable trajectory for improving the budget balance.” He said the lesson of the Liberals’ budget debacle was not to give up on “reform”—the code word for major cuts—but to “do reform right, make it fair.”

In other words, the problem was not spending cuts as such, but the fact they provoked such hostility that Labor felt constrained to oppose some of the more egregious measures in the Senate.

Labor’s strategy has been unveiled in recent weeks. It has proposed relatively minor measures to make multinational corporations pay higher taxes and force high-income earners to pay more tax on superannuation.

These measures are aimed at providing a cover for deep cuts in spending directed against the working class, in line with Labor’s commitment, if returned to office, to ensure indefinite austerity by keeping spending below revenue for at least the next decade.

Green Party calls for modernisation of British armed forces

Jordan Shilton

In a debate last week among the main bourgeois parties running in the UK general election, focused on the issue of military policy, the Green Party indicated its support for the modernisation of Britain’s armed forces.

On the BBC’s “Daily Politics” show, Green defence spokeswoman Rebecca Johnson complained that the British army was no longer equipped to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century:

“Our naval forces are very much about the nineteenth and twentieth century. Fighter planes by and large also. They are [from] a different era. Large warships or nuclear weapons in the wrong place are worse than useless.”

Johnson’s comments reveal the dishonest character of the Greens’ attempt to present themselves to voters as a left alternative to the major parties, which intends to use savings on military spending and a fairer distribution of wealth to expand public services and social programmes.

A key lie being fostered for this purpose is the assertion that the Greens, along with the Scottish National Party, are an anti-war party due to their opposition to Trident nuclear weapons. This ignores the fact that even within military circles, there are those who reject the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent—advancing instead proposals to spend the money on a broader range of conventional weaponry. As Financial Times commentator Gideon Rachman wrote in a recent piece, “Buying Trident would weaken British defence”:

“(T)he Tories’ commitment to spend upwards of £30bn on renewing the Trident submarine-based missile system is not a demonstration that they are serious about defence. It is actually a frivolous decision to waste billions on a symbol of strength—rather than to spend the money on the conventional military muscle Britain needs.”

The Green Party’s opposition to Trident is in line with such considerations. The party fully upholds the interests of British imperialism, concluding that these can best be served by modernised armed forces with a wider variety of conventional weaponry.

This is illustrated by the party’s commitment in its manifesto to maintain defence spending at its current level. Commenting in March on the reasons behind this, Darren Hall, a Green candidate in Bristol and a former Royal Air Force engineer, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme, “Defence is a primary role of government and it’s incredibly important that we’re able to play a full and proper role in a Europe-wide capability that can resist attacks here and abroad.”

In the current election campaign, the Greens have presented themselves as a potential ally for a Labour minority government. This would mean backing a party that oversaw British involvement in one military conflict after another, from the NATO-led war in Yugoslavia in 1999, to the Afghan invasion of 2001 and the illegal Iraq war in 2003.

In this context, it is noteworthy that the Greens’ manifesto drops all reference to NATO, a shift from previous claims of opposition.

The abandonment of any criticism of the US-led alliance follows the Greens’ full backing for its aggressive policy towards Russia. In a motion adopted at its spring conference in 2014, just two weeks after the fascist-led coup orchestrated by the US and Germany in Kiev that toppled the elected president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, the Greens, ignoring all of this, instead criticised Russia for violating international law and demanded that sanctions be imposed if it failed to comply with Western demands.

“The Russian Federation must be put under pressure to abide by international law and respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and independence. If it fails to respect international law it must expect diplomatic and economic consequences, and the international community needs to unite in agreeing and implementing those consequences,” party leader Natalie Bennett said following discussion of the motion.

At a time when the involvement of extreme right-wing forces in the newly-established coup regime in Kiev was clear for all to see, the Green motion urged, “support for the constitutional majority formed in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament),” which offered the basis for “a national dialogue involving all the democratic components of Ukrainian society.”

The document went on to call on “the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the OSCE/ODIHR to provide immediate support to the Ukrainian Parliament during the current crisis to support dialogue with the Russian Federation and to ensure that new elections can be held according to the highest standards to produce a fully legitimate result.”

This was essentially the policy that Europe’s rulers adopted, with the European institutions in alliance with Germany and the US giving their unwavering support to ultra-nationalist and fascist forces like Svoboda and the Right Sector. The “legitimate result” of the subsequent election saw the coming to power of the oligarch Petro Poroshenko, who established a right-wing regime that has fully committed itself to waging a brutal civil war against the population of eastern Ukraine, rehabilitated Nazi collaborators from the Second World War like Stepan Bandera, and decisively suppressed all internal opposition to its reactionary, nationalist policies.

The Green Party’s stance on Ukraine was fully in line with its co-thinkers in Germany, who have been among the most vocal supporters of the Western-led drive to strengthen US and German influence in the region at Russia’s expense. The Heinrich Böll Foundation, aligned with the German Greens, has even held discussions in which military confrontation with Russia was promoted.

This is not an isolated episode, but reflects the social basis of the Green Party in a privileged section of the middle class. While making use of left-sounding human rights rhetoric, this social layer has increasingly been drawn into the aggressive drive of the imperialist powers to assert their geostrategic and economic interests around the globe, and defend the capitalist system against all opposition from the working class.

The Greens’ defence of British imperialism’s interests is exposed further by their recent record on the Middle East. In September 2013, the sole Green MP, Caroline Lucas, voted not to sanction a military intervention against Syria, along with the opposition Labour Party. The defeat of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government on this issue, which was partially responsible for the US decision not to proceed against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, reflected divisions within the ruling elite over whether an open confrontation with Syria could destabilise the entire region and throw Britain and its allies into a costly war.

The opposition of the Greens to this mission, like that of Labour and even some Conservative MPs, in no sense represented a principled rejection of military operations in the region to advance British and US imperialist goals.

This is proved by an interview last November, in which Bennett gave her support for Western-supplied weapons to be used by regional allies to take military action to tackle Islamic State (ISIS) forces in Syria and Iraq. Bennett told the International Business Times, “We’ve given places like Saudi some very hi-tech, very expensive weapons. It’s not that the region doesn’t have weapons to match [the Islamic State]. Whenever you keep coming in as the outside force, we know what happens.... So I think there is quite enough military hardware in the region for the region to act.”

Subsequent months have seen what Bennett terms “the region” participate in the US-led bombardment of ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria, in a mission that has the ultimate goal of toppling the Assad regime in Damascus. Her desired policy of allowing the regional proxies of US imperialism to act to tackle security threats has also been implemented elsewhere. In Yemen, a Saudi-led coalition is currently raining death and destruction down on the Middle East’s poorest country with US-supplied bombs in a bid to displace Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

French soldiers sexually abused children in Central African Republic

Antoine Lerougetel & Kumaran Ira

On April 29, Britain’s Guardian newspaper revealed the sexual abuse of children aged between 8 and 15 by French soldiers in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR). The deeply impoverished country has experienced escalating sectarian fighting between Christian Anti-balaka and Muslims Seleka militias. Thousands of civilians had fled Bangui neighborhoods to seek shelter in nearby M’Poko airport.

According to the Guardian, the alleged abuse took place between December 2013 and June 2014 in a refugee camp in Bangui.

Reuters cited French judicial sources saying that a number of French soldiers had been identified. Chadian peacekeepers were also allegedly involved in the sexual abuse. On Thursday, Le Monde reported that more than 14 soldiers are under investigation.

The Guardian revelation was based on a leaked report by a senior UN aid worker, Anders Kompass, who disclosed the abuse allegation to French prosecutors last July, after the UN failed to take action to stop the abuse. Kompass is under investigation for breaching confidential information and was suspended after leaking the report.

According to many witnesses, young boys accused French soldiers of having raped and abused them “in exchange for food” or money. The incidents took place before and after the establishment of the UN-led peacekeeping mission in CAR.

The leaked report contains interviews with six children, who were sexually abused by French soldiers. Some indicated that several of their friends were also sexually assaulted. According to the Guardian, “The interviews were carried out by an official from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights justice section and a member of Unicef between May and June last year.”

One interview describes how two nine-year-old children were sexually assaulted together by two French soldiers who demanded oral sex in exchange for food.

The Guardian continues, “Another nine-year-old child describes how he went to ask for food from the French military at the IDP camp at M’Poko airport. He says the soldier told him to carry out a sex act on him first … He [the child] had friends who had done it already, he knew what he had to do. Once done the military gave a military food portion and some food. X said the military had forbidden him to tell anything about him to anybody, and that if he would do so he would beat him.”

The sexual abuse committed by French soldiers exposes the utterly fraudulent character of the “humanitarian” pretensions of French imperialism’s intervention in CAR, a former French colony.

Paris launched its military intervention in CAR in December 2013 under the guise of halting sectarian violence between majority Christian and minority Muslims. Paris initially backed Muslim Seleka forces in an attempt to topple President François Bozizé, aiming to seize the strategically located country in the centre of the African continent, and destroying China’s growing economic influence in the country. China had made several key deals with the CAR under Bozizé, including on oil contracts and military cooperation.

Paris initially deployed 1,600 troops in the CAR and around 2,000 troops are being deployed under the peacekeeping mission, codenamed Operation Sangaris. Since Paris intervened militarily, the humanitarian crisis has deepened and sectarian conflict has escalated.

Although the report on the sexual abuse emerged last July, the PS government kept total silence on the matter and avoided taking any legal action. Since the Guardian ’s revelation, the government has made hypocritical comments, and is seeking to whitewash the case.

When informed on the affair last July, in an interview to Le Journal du Dimanche on May 3, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian claimed to have felt “disgust and a form of betrayal of the mission that was given to Operation Sangaris,” adding: “I immediately transmitted the report to the judiciary. It was our wish that the full truth rapidly come to light in this affair.”

After the report was passed to the French prosecutor, an internal army investigation into the matter reportedly was carried out, ending in August.

Le Drian claimed that the investigation has been “made available to the justice system.” With the case still in its preliminary stages after it was opened nine months ago, Le Drian downplayed it, saying, “I believe it is a complex inquiry. Since the crimes allegedly took place, most of the soldiers involved have left this theater of operations, but this should not prevent the judiciary from rapidly doing its work.”

In a cynical attempt to give a positive, “humanitarian” face to more imperialist crimes, President François Hollande said, “If some soldiers have behaved badly, I will show no mercy … You know the trust I have in our army, [and] the role the French military play in the world.”

Thailand’s draft constitution enshrines dictatorship

Tom Peters

A draft constitution drawn up by Thailand’s military junta, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), was released to the media last month. It confirms that the US-backed regime, which seized power in a coup in May 2014, intends to stay in control indefinitely, despite proposing to hold elections next year.

Since the coup, the NCPO has imprisoned or detained hundreds of political opponents, censored media outlets and banned all political gatherings and protests. The dictator, former general Prayuth Chan-ocha, has assumed unlimited powers to suspend and alter the country’s laws.

The aim of the new constitution is to strip elected politicians of any power. In the words of the Constitution Drafting Committee, it seeks to “end the parliamentary dictatorship.” The draft expands the anti-democratic provisions of the 2007 constitution, drawn up after the earlier coup that ousted prime minister and telecommunications billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra.

The Bangkok-based ruling elites—the military, the monarchy and their supporters in the state bureaucracy—want to ensure that the Pheu Thai Party, led by Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra, never regains office. Yingluck was removed in last year’s coup and faces trumped-up charges of “negligence” relating to her government’s loss-making price subsidy scheme for rice farmers.

Parties linked to the Shinawatras have won every election since 2001. Their populist policies—limited reforms such as cheap loans, a higher minimum wage and various subsidies—gained them support from the country’s rural poor and the enmity of the monarchist and military establishment. Thaksin further alienated these elites by opening up the economy to more foreign investment, cutting across existing networks of patronage.

Under the draft constitution, 123 of the 200 Senate seats would be filled by appointees close to the military and the bureaucracy. The remaining 77 seats would be elected, but all candidates would be vetted in advance to exclude opponents of the junta.

The lower house of parliament would be policed by a new National Ethics Assembly, authorised to remove MPs from office for “moral” or “ethical” reasons. According to the Financial Times, politicians would be “banned from passing laws that ‘establish political popularity’ that could prove ‘detrimental to national economic [interests] or the public in the long run’.”

The junta aims to prevent any challenge to its agenda of austerity and pro-market restructuring, which is designed to force the working class and rural poor to pay for the worsening economic crisis.

The generals will continue to wield power through a National Reform Steering Committee, which will set the legislative agenda for parliament to rubber-stamp. The committee will have 120 members, mostly drawn from the current National Legislative Assembly and National Reform Council, which were appointed by the NCPO after the coup and are stacked with military figures.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, wrote in the Bangkok Post that the judiciary and the bureaucracy would also gain more powers. The Constitutional Court, which paved the way for last year’s coup by removing Yingluck from office, will become “the final arbiter of issues and claims made by other relevant state agencies” in the event of renewed street protests or other “extenuating circumstances that lead to political paralysis.”

The blatantly anti-democratic character of the draft constitution has prompted warnings from the media, academics and politicians of a public backlash. A Bangkok Post columnist wrote on April 28 that “opposing sentiment has become so strong there are fears the draft could trigger another round of conflict in a society still jittery by recent clashes.”

In 2010, thousands of people protested in Bangkok and throughout the country, demanding a return to democracy and an end to social inequality. These “Red Shirt” protests, made up of rural and urban poor people, were violently suppressed by the army, which killed almost 100 people and injured 2,000.

Both the Shinawatras’ Pheu Thai Party and the Democrat Party, which supported the coup, have called for a referendum on the draft, in order to give it a veneer of legitimacy. Pheu Thai and its protest wing, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD, also known as the Red Shirts) have reconciled themselves to the NCPO. All sections of the capitalist class, including those represented by Pheu Thai and the UDD, share an organic hostility to any independent movement of the working class and rural poor.

At a “reconciliation” forum organised by the army on April 23, Democrat and Pheu Thai leaders, as well as UDD leader Jatuporn Prompan, all recommended delaying elections for two to three years while a constitutional referendum is held. Jatuporn told Reuters that two more years of military rule was “better than moving forward to where problems will be waiting.”

Washington has so far made no public comment on the draft constitution and continues to support the coup leaders.

US deputy assistant state secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, Scot Marciel, visited Bangkok last month as part of a three-country trip that included the Philippines and Indonesia. According to the Nation, he assured the NCPO that the annual Cobra Gold military exercises involving Thailand and the US will go ahead next year. The US Pacific Command previously postponed planning discussions for the exercises, which are the largest annual US-led war games in the region.

The Obama administration supported the 2006 putsch against Thaksin and was undoubtedly informed in advance of the 2014 coup. The Thai military remains a key ally in the US “pivot to Asia”—a strategy to militarily encircle and prepare for war against China.

Kerry visits Somalia as US prepares expanded intervention in East Africa

Thomas Gaist

US Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu for discussions with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and other officials Tuesday. The visit, celebrated in the corporate media as the first ever to Somalia by the highest-ranking US diplomatic official, was conducted entirely within the blast walls and barbed wire that ring Mogadishu’s airport.

During his three-hour stay in the country, Kerry met with Somali leaders inside a small building surrounded by walls of sandbags. Discussions centered on the expansion of Somalia’s fledgling police-military apparatus and its incorporation into the US-led militarization of the region being carried out in the name of fighting “terrorism,” as well as on upcoming Somali elections, which experts suggest will be carefully managed by Washington.

In brief public remarks during the visit, Kerry signaled that the US is escalating its economic, political and military intervention in Somalia. “The US is prepared to do whatever we can to get you the prosperity and the security you deserve,” Kerry said.

“More than 20 years ago the United States was forced to pull back from your country,” Kerry said. “Now we are returning in collaboration with the international community.”

“The next time I come, we have to be able to just walk downtown,” Kerry joked, just moments after promising that Somalia can now look forward to a “bright future.”

In contradiction to Kerry’s assertion that the US “pulled back” from Somalia 20 years ago, US imperialism has continually intervened in Somali politics during the past two decades, sponsoring invasion forces and proxy occupation armies in an effort to maintain its grip over the desperately poor country, while raining down a steady stream of missiles and bombs.

In July 2006, faced with the collapse of the US-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG), installed in power in 2004 by Washington and Nairobi, the US sponsored an Ethiopian-led invasion against the Islamist Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

After the Ethiopian-led ground force retook the capital, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) was established to defend a re-established TFG, whose actual zone of control has not extended far beyond portions of Mogadishu. TFG President Mohamud boasted to Kerry Tuesday that small traffic jams have begun forming in parts of the capital city during the past year, illustrating a return to somewhat normal conditions.

AMISOM has continued to occupy the country since the US-backed 2006 invasion, serving as the backbone of the TFG rump state. AMISOM, which is headquartered inside the same Mogadishu airport where Kerry’s entire visit was staged, is nominally under the command of the African Union, and includes soldiers from the militaries of Burundi, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and Djibouti.

The multinational occupation force has received some $500 million from the US since 2007, and benefits from close collaboration with the US, including air support provided by US warplanes and drones.

Statements to the press by an unnamed US State Department official strongly suggest that Kerry’s visit was bound up with preparations a new US-orchestrated reorganization of the TFG regime, to be carried out through some type of stage =-managed “democratic transition” process.

During the upcoming 2016 Somali elections, the US government will help implement “some form of election or selection, different from what they’ve done before,” a US State Department official told Middle East Eye .

As underscored by the content of Kerry’s previous stop in Kenya, US intervention in Somalia is part of a regional agenda aimed at militarizing East Africa and building US imperialism’s political and military ties to the region, under conditions of growing Chinese economic influence.

On Monday, Kerry announced a $100 million package for Kenya’s security and “counter-terrorism” forces during a visit to Nairobi. The announcement came as Kerry met with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta to discuss his government’s involvement in the AMISOM occupation and other US operations in the Horn of Africa. Kerry appealed to the Kenyan public to “be patient with their government’s troop presence in Somalia.”

Less than one year ago, when it remained unclear whether the newly elected Kenyatta would favor a strategic tilt toward the US or to its strategic rival in Beijing, the Obama administration and the International Criminal Court (ICC) brandished the threat of prosecution against the Kenyan president for his involvement in mass killings that erupted after the country’s 2007-2008 elections.

Since taking power, Kenyatta’s government has proven its counter-terror credentials and readiness to terrorize opposition by ordering security forces to carry out round-ups against ethnic Somalis. The Kenyatta government has launched attacks against Somali NGOs and civil society organizations, and frozen money transfers by Somali immigrant workers, all in the name of fighting Somali-based extremist groups.

Having demonstrated its commitment to the struggle against “terrorism,” Kenyatta is now being openly courted as an A-list regional partner of US imperialism. Kerry’s visit was arranged to signal “the importance of Kenya to the US’s counterterrorism strategy in Africa,” according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal .

With the dismissal of ICC charges against Kenyatta last December, the US government now considers Kenyatta’s government to be “a bulwark of stability in a restive East African region,” according to the Journal .

Kerry also announced $45 million for Kenya’s efforts to manage a growing refugee crisis Monday, funds which will supposedly be used to avert the looming closure of the largest refugee camp in the world, Kenya’s Dadaab facility, where some 350,000 Somali refugees are housed.

The recent attack on Garissa University by alleged al Shabaab gunmen has been seized on by Kenyatta’s government to accelerate its turn to mass repression and police-state measures. In the wake of the April 2 attack, Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto proposed to evict some 500,000 Somali refugees from Kenyan emergency facilities, plans which included the complete closure of Dadaab.

Many children and teenagers have spent their entire lives inside the Dadaab camp, established in the early 1990s as Somali refugees fled the collapse of the US-backed Siad Barre dictatorship. Dadaab’s sudden closure by the Kenyan government would force hundreds of thousands to attempt a desperate return to their war-ravaged homelands.

Washington has devoted increasing attention to East Africa as the region has taken on greater strategic value under conditions of the global power struggle by US imperialism against China. Heavy Chinese investment has taken place in regional economic projects such as the Northern Transport Corridor, which links East Africa port facilities with Chinese economic projects, including substantial oil ventures, in Central and West Africa.

The new transport infrastructure will enable Chinese firms to transport raw materials and commodities from Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, and the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Indian Ocean ports such as Tanzania’s Bagamoyo, where Beijing has recently authorized plans for an $11 billion deepwater port facility.

In tandem with the similar $46 billion Chinese transport development project announced during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan last week, growing Chinese commercial dominance in East Africa enable Beijing to develop reliable commercial routes connecting to Africa via the Indian Ocean, where US forces are relatively less concentrated as a result of the “pivot to Asia.”

As the Center for International Maritime Security recently noted, China is increasingly turning to its “geographic back door” in response to US preparations to impose a naval blockade aimed at strangling the flow of essential resources to Chinese ports.

Kerry will also visit Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti later this week. The military camp is the largest US outpost on the continent, and coordinates US operations and drone wars in the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa.

NATO begins largest anti-submarine exercises ever in the North Sea

Niles Williamson

NATO launched its annual anti-submarine and anti-surface North Sea naval war games Monday. Approximately 5,000 sailors and other servicemen from 11 countries will take place in the exercise.

In a significant development, the North Sea exercise will incorporate forces from non-NATO ally Sweden for the first time, alongside naval vessels from 10 NATO countries. Norway, one of the founding members of the NATO alliance, is the only Nordic country that is a full member. Finland and Sweden, while officially remaining neutral, have developed strong ties to the military alliance, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The games, dubbed Dynamic Mongoose, are scheduled to take place over the next two weeks and will involve four submarines from Germany, Norway, Sweden and the United States that will practice avoiding underwater detection and simulating assaults on enemy ships.

Thirteen combat vessels from Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States will simulate hunting for the submarines in the waters off the Norwegian coast. The NATO research vessel Alliance, based in La Spezia, Italy, will also participate in the exercise for the first time in order to test new underwater drones and sensor buoys. France and Germany will contribute maritime patrol aircraft.

Simultaneously with the North Sea operations, Estonia and Latvia, which both border Russia, are holding their own military war games. Latvia will hold military exercises codenamed Zaibo Kiritis, involving 3,000 soldiers. More significantly, the Estonian war games, Siil-2015, will involve 13,000 military personnel, including members of the paramilitary Estonian Defense League; British, German, and Belgian jet fighters; and four Abrams battle tanks manned by American troops.

Last year US President Barack Obama traveled to Tallinn, Estonia, where he gave a speech in which he committed the United States to war with Russia over the Baltic States under the collective defense clause of NATO’s charter. “An attack on one is an attack on all. So if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, ‘who will come to help,’ you’ll know the answer—the NATO Alliance, including the Armed Forces of the United States of America, ‘right here, present, now!’ We’ll be here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania…,” the president pledged.

Rear Admiral Brad Williamson, the US commander overseeing the North Sea war games, told reporters that the operation was not a direct response to recent alleged activity of Russian ships in the Baltic Sea. He made clear, however, that Russia was the target. “This is not a response to that, but provides relevance to the exercise,” Williamson said. “Russia has a right to be at sea, just as we do, but the incidents we have seen are not in line with international regulations…and that’s been the cause of concern,” Williamson concluded.

The reported detection of unidentified objects in the Baltic and Nordic region in recent months has been used to whip up anti-Russian sentiment and justify the remilitarization of Eastern Europe.

The Latvian military reported on Monday that it had spotted two Russian warships and a submarine near its maritime border. The ships were detected within Latvia’s exclusive economic zone approximately five miles from the border. Russian warships routinely pass through the area, as Moscow maintains the Baltic Fleet at its naval base in Baltiysk in the enclave of Kaliningrad.

Last week, the Finnish navy dropped depth charges and launched a surveillance operation against a possible underwater object detected in the country’s territorial waters. While the Finnish armed forces have yet to confirm that the object was a foreign submarine, the media has presented it as a foregone conclusion that it was a Russian submarine.

Prior to this incident, Sweden’s incoming Centre Party Prime Minister Juha Sipilä indicated that his government, which shares an 833-mile border with Russia, will intensify its cooperation with the NATO alliance in the coming years.

The recent incidents follow similar activity last October, when the Swedish armed forces launched a weeklong hunt in the Baltic in response to the sighting of an unidentified object in Stockholm’s territorial waters which the media claimed was a Russian vessel. While what was initially spotted has yet to be confirmed, the Swedish military admitted last week that a second reported sighting of a Russian submarine was actually a civilian work boat.

While Sweden is not yet an official member of the NATO, its involvement in the alliance’s operations have grown over the last two decades. Sweden has participated in the so-called Partnership for Peace since 1994, and has deployed troops to Afghanistan since 2006 to assist in the American military occupation of that country. The Swedish Air Force also participated in the brutal US-NATO assault on Libya in 2011, flying reconnaissance and refueling missions and assisting in the enforcement of a no-fly zone over the country.

In the aftermath of the US- and German-backed right-wing coup in Ukraine and Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea last year, leading government officials, including former Liberal People’s Party Deputy Prime Minister Jan Björklund, have called for the country to follow in the footsteps of the nearby Baltic states and become a full member of the alliance.

The US government has encouraged every Eastern European country to significantly boost its military spending, justified by a supposed military threat from Russia. Lithuania will increase its arms purchasing budget this year by 50 percent, Poland by 20 percent, and Latvia by 15 percent. Defense spending by the Ukrainian government increased by 20 percent last year and is expected to double this year. Sweden plans to increase its military budget by 15 percent over the next five years.