The Trillion Dollar Question

Lawrence Wittner

Isn’t it rather odd that America’s largest single public expenditure scheduled for the coming decades has received no attention in the 2015-2016 presidential debates?

The expenditure is for a 30-year program to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal and production facilities.  Although President Obama began his administration with a dramatic public commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world, that commitment has long ago dwindled and died.  It has been replaced by an administration plan to build a new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities to last the nation well into the second half of the twenty-first century.  This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs, and production plants.  The estimated cost?  $1,000,000,000,000.00—or, for those readers unfamiliar with such lofty figures, $1 trillion.

Critics charge that the expenditure of this staggering sum will either bankrupt the country or, at the least, require massive cutbacks in funding for other federal government programs.  “We’re . . . wondering how the heck we’re going to pay for it,” admitted Brian McKeon, an undersecretary of defense.  And we’re “probably thanking our stars we won’t be here to have to have to answer the question,” he added with a chuckle.

Of course, this nuclear “modernization” plan violates the terms of the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires the nuclear powers to engage in nuclear disarmament.  The plan is also moving forward despite the fact that the U.S. government already possesses roughly 7,000 nuclear weapons that can easily destroy the world.  Although climate change might end up accomplishing much the same thing, a nuclear war does have the advantage of terminating life on earth more rapidly.

This trillion dollar nuclear weapons buildup has yet to inspire any questions about it by the moderators during the numerous presidential debates.  Even so, in the course of the campaign, the presidential candidates have begun to reveal their attitudes toward it.

On the Republican side, the candidates—despite their professed distaste for federal expenditures and “big government”—have been enthusiastic supporters of this great leap forward in the nuclear arms race.  Donald Trump, the frontrunner, contended in his presidential announcement speech that “our nuclear arsenal doesn’t work,” insisting that it is out of date.  Although he didn’t mention the $1 trillion price tag for “modernization,” the program is clearly something he favors, especially given his campaign’s focus on building a U.S. military machine “so big, powerful, and strong that no one will mess with us.”

His Republican rivals have adopted a similar approach.  Marco Rubio, asked while campaigning in Iowa about whether he supported the trillion dollar investment in new nuclear weapons, replied that “we have to have them.  No country in the world faces the threats America faces.”  When a peace activist questioned Ted Cruz on the campaign trail about whether he agreed with Ronald Reagan on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons, the Texas senator replied:  “I think we’re a long way from that and, in the meantime, we need to be prepared to defend ourselves.  The best way to avoid war is to be strong enough that no one wants to mess with the United States.”  Apparently, Republican candidates are particularly worried about being “messed with.”

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has been more ambiguous about her stance toward a dramatic expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  Asked by a peace activist about the trillion dollar nuclear plan, she replied that she would “look into that,” adding:  “It doesn’t make sense to me.”  Even so, like other issues that the former secretary of defense has promised to “look into,” this one remains unresolved.  Moreover, the “National Security” section of her campaign website promises that she will maintain the “strongest military the world has ever known”—not a propitious sign for critics of nuclear weapons.

Only Bernie Sanders has adopted a position of outright rejection.  In May 2015, shortly after declaring his candidacy, Sanders was asked at a public meeting about the trillion dollar nuclear weapons program.  He replied:  “What all of this is about is our national priorities.  Who are we as a people?  Does Congress listen to the military-industrial complex” that “has never seen a war that they didn’t like?  Or do we listen to the people of this country who are hurting?”  In fact, Sanders is one of only three U.S. Senators who support the SANE Act, legislation that would significantly reduce U.S. government spending on nuclear weapons.  In addition, on the campaign trail, Sanders has not only called for cuts in spending on nuclear weapons, but has affirmed his support for their total abolition.

Nevertheless, given the failure of the presidential debate moderators to raise the issue of nuclear weapons “modernization,” the American people have been left largely uninformed about the candidates’ opinions on this subject.  So, if Americans would like more light shed on their future president’s response to this enormously expensive surge in the nuclear arms race, it looks like they are the ones who are going to have to ask the candidates the trillion dollar question.

Russia’s Military Aims Achieved, Putin Switches To Diplomacy

Paul Craig Roberts

American presstitutes, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, expressed surprise at Russia’s support for the Syrian ceasefire, which Russia has been seeking, by Putin’s halt to attacks on the Islamic State and a partial withdrawal of Russian forces. The American presstitutes are captives of their own propaganda and are now surprised at the failure of their propagandistic predictions.

Having stripped the Islamic State of offensive capability and liberated Syria from the Washington-supported terrorists, Putin has now shifted to diplomacy. If peace fails in Syria, the failure cannot be blamed on Russia.

It is a big risk for Putin to trust the neocon-infested US government, but if ISIS renews the conflict with support from Washington, Putin’s retention of air and naval bases in Syria will allow Russia to resume military operations. Astute observers such as Professor Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research, Stephen Cohen, and The Saker have noted that the Russian withdrawal is really a time-out during which Putin’s diplomacy takes the place of Russian military capability.

With ISIS beat down, there is less danger of Washington using a peace-seeking ceasefire to resurrect the Islamic State’s military capability. Therefore, the risk Putin is taking by trusting Washington is worth the payoff if the result is to enhance Russian diplomacy and elevate it above Washington’s reliance on threats, coercion, and violence. What Putin is really aiming for is to make Europeans realize that by serving as Washington’s vassals European governments are supporting violence over peace and may themselves be swept by the neoconservatives into a deadly conflict with Russia that would ensure Europe’s destruction.

Putin has also demonstrated that, unlike Washington, Russia is able to achieve decisive military results in a short time without Russian casualties and to withdraw without becoming a permanent occupying force. This very impressive performance is causing the world to rethink which country is really the superpower.

The appearance of American decline is reinforced by the absence of capable leaders among the candidates for the Republican and Democratic party nominations for president. America is no longer capable of producing political leadership as successive presidents become progressively worse. The rest of the world must be puzzled how a country unable to produce a fit candidate for president can be a superpower.

The Global Refugee Crisis: Humanity's Last Call For A Culture Of Sharing And Cooperation

Rajesh Makwana

Razor-wire fences, detention centres, xenophobic rhetoric and political disarray; nothing illustrates the tendency of governments to aggressively pursue nationalistic interests more starkly than their inhumane response to refugees fleeing conflict and war. With record numbers of asylum seekers predicted to reach Europe this year and a morally acceptable humanitarian response nowhere in sight, the immediate problem is more apparent than ever: the abject failure of the international community to share the responsibility, burden and resources needed to safeguard the basic rights of asylum seekers in accordance with international law.

Of immediate concern across the European Union, however, is the mounting pressure that policymakers are under from the far-right and anti-immigration groups, whose influence is skewing the public debate on the divisive issue of how governments should deal with refugees and immigrants. With racial intolerance steadily growing among citizens, the traditionally liberal attitude of European states is fast diminishing and governments are increasingly adopting a cynical interpretation of international refugee law that lacks any sense of justice or compassion.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, which was implemented in response to Europe’s last major refugee crisis during World War II, states that governments need only safeguard the human rights of asylum seekers when they are inside their territory. In violation of the spirit of this landmark human rights legislation, the response from most European governments has been to prevent rather than facilitate the arrival of refugees in order to minimise their legal responsibility towards them. In order to achieve their aim, the EU has even gone so far as making a flawed and legally questionable deal with President Erdogan to intercept migrant families crossing the Aegean Sea and return them to Turkey against their will.

Instead of providing ‘safe and legal routes’ to refugees, a growing number of countries on the migration path from Greece to Western Europe are adopting the Donald Trump solution of building walls, militarising boarders and constructing barbed wire barriers to stop people entering their country. Undocumented refugees (a majority of them women and children) who are trying to pass through Europe’s no-longer borderless Schengen area are at times subjected to humiliation and violence or are detained in rudimentary camps with minimal access to the essentials they need to survive. Unable to travel to their desired destination, tens of thousands of refugees have been bottlenecked in Greece which has become a warehouse for abandoned souls in a country on the brink of its own humanitarian crisis.

Ostensibly, the extreme reaction of many EU member states to those risking their lives to escape armed conflict is tantamount to officially sanctioned racial discrimination. Unsurprisingly, this unwarranted government response has been welcomed by nationalist parties who are now polling favourably among voters in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland. The same is true in Hungary, where the government has even agreed Nazi-era demands to confiscate cash and jewellery from refugees to fund their anti-humanitarian efforts.

There can be little doubt that the European response to refugees has been discriminatory, morally objectionable and politically dangerous. It’s also self-defeating since curtailing civil liberties and discarding long-held social values has the potential to destabilise Europe far more than simply providing the assistance guaranteed to refugees under the UN convention. Albeit unwittingly, the reactionary attitude of governments also plays directly into the hands of Islamic State and other jihadi groups whose broader intentions include inciting Islamophobia, provoking instability and conflict within western countries, and recruiting support for terrorism in the Middle East and across Europe.

Dispelling nationalist myths of the far-right

With the public increasingly divided about how governments should respond to the influx of people escaping violent conflict, it’s crucial that the pervasive myths peddled by right-wing extremists are exposed for what they are: bigotry, hyperbole and outright lies designed to exacerbate fear and discord within society.

Forced migration is a global phenomenon and, compared with other continents, Europe is not being subjected to the ‘invasion of refugees’ widely portrayed in the mainstream media. Of the world’s 60 million refugees, nine out of ten are not seeking asylum in the EU, and the vast majority remain displaced within their own countries. Most of those that do settle in Europe will return to their country of origin when they are no longer at risk (as happened at the end of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s when 70% of refugees who had fled to Germany returned to Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Albania and Slovenia).

The real emergency is taking place outside of Europe, where there is a desperate need for more assistance from the international community. For example, Turkey is now home to over 3 million refugees; Jordan hosts 2.7 million refugees – a staggering 41 percent of its population; and Lebanon has 1.5 million Syrian refugees who make up a third of its population. Unsurprisingly, social and economic systems are under severe strain in these and the other countries that host the majority of global refugees – especially since they are mainly based in developing countries with soaring unemployment rates, inadequate welfare systems and high levels of social unrest. In stark comparison (and with the notable exception of Germany), the 28 relatively prosperous EU member states have collectively pledged to resettle a mere 160,000 of the one million refugees that entered Europe in 2015. Not only does this amount to less than 0.25% of their combined population, governments have only relocated a few hundred have so far.

The spurious claim that there are insufficient resources available to share with those seeking asylum in the EU or that asylum seekers will ‘take our homes, our jobs and our welfare services’ is little more than a justification for racial discrimination. Aside from the overriding moral and legal obligation for states to provide emergency assistance to anyone fleeing war or persecution, the economic rationale for resettling asylum seekers throughout Europe (and globally) is sound: in countries experiencing declining birth rates and ageing populations – as is the case across the EU as a whole – migration levels need to be significantly increased in order to continue financing systems of state welfare.

The facts are incontrovertible: evidence from OECD countries demonstrates that immigrant households contribute $2,800 more to the economy in taxes alone than they receive in public provision. In the UK, non-European immigrants contributed £5 billion ($7.15 billion) in taxes between 2000 and 2011. They are also less likely to receive state benefits than the rest of the population, more likely to start businesses, and less likely to commit serious crimes than natives. Overall, economists at the European Commission calculate that the influx of people from conflict zones will have a positive effect on employment rates and long-term public finances in the most affected countries.

A common agenda to end austerity

If migrant families contribute significantly to society and many European countries with low birth rates actually need them in greater numbers, why are governments and a growing sector of the population so reluctant to honour international commitments and assist refugees in need? The widely held belief that public resources are too scarce to share with asylum seekers is most likely born of fear and insecurity in an age of economic austerity, when many European citizens are struggling to make ends meet.

Just as the number of people forcibly displaced from developing countries begins to surge, economic conditions in most European countries have made it politically unfeasible to provide incoming refugees with shelter and basic welfare. Voluntary and compulsory austerity measures adopted by governments after spending trillions of dollars bailing out the banks in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis have resulted in deep spending cuts to essential public services such as healthcare, education and pensions schemes. The resulting economic crisis has led to rising unemployment, social discontent, growing levels of inequality and public services that are being stretched to breaking point.

The same neoliberal ideology that underpins austerity in Europe is also responsible for creating widespread economic insecurity across the Global South and facilitating an exodus of so-called ‘economic migrants’, many of who are also making their way to Europe. Economic austerity has been central to the ‘development’ policies foisted onto low-income countries for decades by the IMF and World Bank in exchange for loans and international aid. They constitute a modern form of economic colonialism that in many cases has decimated essential public services, thwarted poverty reduction programmes and increased the likelihood of social unrest, sectarian violence and civil war. By prioritising international loan repayments over the basic welfare of citizens, these neoliberal policies are directly responsible for creating a steady flow of ‘refugees from globalisation’ who are in search of basic economic security in an increasingly unequal world.

Instead of pointing the finger of blame at governments for mismanaging the economy, public anger across Europe is being wrongly directed at a far easier target: refugees from foreign lands who have become society’s collective scapegoats at a time of grinding austerity. It's high time that people in both ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ countries recognise that their hardship stems from a parallel set of neoliberal policies that have prioritised market forces above social needs. By emphasising this mutual cause and promoting solidarity between people and nations, citizens can begin overturning prejudiced attitudes and supporting progressive agendas geared towards safeguarding the common good of all humanity.

From a culture of war to conflict resolution

It’s also clear that any significant change in the substance and direction of economic policy must go hand-in-hand with a dramatic shift away from aggressive foreign policy agendas that are overtly based on securing national interests at all costs – such as appropriating the planet’s increasingly scarce natural resources. Indeed, it will remain impossible to address the root causes of the refugee crisis until the UK, US, France and other NATO countries fully accept that their misguided foreign policies are largely responsible for the current predicament.

Not only are many western powers responsible for selling arms to abusive regimes in the Middle East, their wider foreign policy objectives and military ambitions have displaced large swathes of the world’s population, particularly as a consequence of the illegal occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the ill-conceived invasion of Libya. The connection between the military interventions of recent years, the perpetuation of terrorism and the plight of refugees across the Middle East and North Africa has been succinctly explained by Professor Noam Chomsky:

“the US-UK invasion of Iraq … dealt a nearly lethal blow to a country that had already been devastated by a massive military attack twenty years earlier followed by virtually genocidal US-UK sanctions. The invasion displaced millions of people, many of whom fled and were absorbed in the neighboring countries, poor countries that are left to deal somehow with the detritus of our crimes. One outgrowth of the invasion is the ISIS/Daesh monstrosity, which is contributing to the horrifying Syrian catastrophe. Again, the neighboring countries have been absorbing the flow of refugees. The second sledgehammer blow destroyed Libya, now a chaos of warring groups, an ISIS base, a rich source of jihadis and weapons from West Africa to the Middle East, and a funnel for flow of refugees from Africa.”

After this series of blundered invasions by the US and NATO forces, which continue to destabilise an entire region, one might think that militarily powerful nations would finally accept the need for a very different foreign policy framework. No longer can governments ignore the imperative to engender trust between nations and replace the prevailing culture of war with one of peace and nonviolent means of conflict resolution. In the immediate future, the priority for states must be to deescalate emerging cold war tensions and diffuse what is essentially a proxy war in the Middle East being played out in Syria. Yet this remains a huge challenge at a time when military intervention is still favoured over compromise and diplomacy, even when common sense and experience tells us that this outdated approach only exacerbates violent conflict and causes further geopolitical instability.

Sharing the burden, responsibility and resources

Given the deplorably inadequate response from most EU governments to the global exodus of refugees thus far, the stage is set for a rapid escalation of the crisis in 2016 and beyond. Some ten million refugees are expected to make their way to Europe in 2016 alone, and this figure is likely to rise substantially with population growth in developing countries over the coming decades. But it's climate change that will bring the real emergency, with far higher migration levels accompanied by floods, droughts and sudden hikes in global food prices.

Although largely overlooked by politicians and the mainstream media, the number of people fleeing conflict is already dwarfed by ‘environmental refugees’ displaced by severe ecological conditions – whose numbers could rise to 200 million by 2050. It’s clear that unless nations collectively pursue a radically different approach to managing forced displacement, international discord and social tensions will continue to mount and millions of additional refugees will be condemned to oversized and inhumane camps on the outer edges of civilisation.

The fundamentals of an effective and morally acceptable response to the crisis are already articulated in the Refugee Convention, which sets out the core responsibilities that states have towards those seeking asylum – even though governments have interpreted the treaty erroneously and failed to implement it effectively. In the short term, it’s evident that governments must mobilise the resources needed to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to those escaping war, regardless of where in the world they have been displaced. Like the Marshall Plan that was initiated after the Second World War, a globally coordinated emergency response to the refugee crisis will require a significant redistribution of finance from the world’s richest countries to those most in need – which should be provided on the basis of ‘enlightened self-interest’ if not from a genuine sense of compassion and altruism.

Immediate humanitarian interventions would have to be accompanied by a new and more effective system for administrating the protection of refugees in a way that is commensurate with international refugee law. In simple terms, such a mechanism could be coordinated by a reformed and revitalised UN Refugee Agency (the UNHCR) which would ensure that both the responsibility and resources needed to protect refugees is shared fairly among nations. A mechanism for sharing global responsibility would also mean that states only provide assistance in accordance with their individual capacity and circumstances, which would prevent less developed nations from shouldering the greatest burden of refugees as is currently the case.

Even though the UN’s refugee convention has already been agreed by 145 nations, policymakers in the EU seem incapable and unwilling to demonstrate any real leadership in tackling this or indeed any other pressing transnational issue. Not only does the resulting refugee fiasco demonstrate the extent to which self-interest dominates the political status quo across the European Union, it confirms the suspicion that the union as a whole is increasingly devoid of social conscience and in urgent need of reform.

Thankfully, ordinary citizens are leading the way on this critical issue and putting elected representatives to shame by providing urgent support to refugee families in immediate need of help. In their thousands, volunteers stationed along Europe’s boarders have been welcoming asylum seekers by providing much needed food, shelter and clothing, and have even provided search and rescue services for those who have risked their lives being trafficked into Europe in rubber dinghies. Nowhere is this spirit of compassion and generosity more apparent than on Lesbos and other Geek islands, where residents have been collectively nominated for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for their humanitarian efforts.

The selfless actions of these dedicated volunteers should remind the world that people have a responsibility and a natural inclination to serve one another in times of need – regardless of differences in race, religion and nationality. Instead of building militarised borders and ignoring popular calls for a just and humanitarian response to the refugee crisis, governments should take the lead from these people of goodwill and prioritise the needs of the world’s most vulnerable above all other concerns. For European leaders and policymakers in all countries, it’s this instinctively humane response to the refugee crisis – which is based firmly on the principle of sharing – that holds the key to addressing the whole spectrum of interconnected social, economic and environmental challenges in the critical period ahead.

Budget 2016-17: As If Children Matter

Joseph Anthony Gathia

Earlier the Economic Survey 2015-16 and now the Budget 2016-17 gave impression that deprived sections of our country are going to get fair treatment but a careful analysis shows that there is crafty shift in resource mobilisation and the onus of the development funding has been shifted to the state governments , especially for health, nutrition, and education, which is likely to impact children who are 36.6 per cent of India’s total population .

Let us examine two important sectors: health and education in relation to the Economic Survey 2015-16 and the Budget 2016-17.

Education

Education plays pivotal role in social change and early childhood education is the key for overall well-being of a child. The biggest investment that is needed to ensure equitable and quality learning for all age groups must begin with investment in care and early childhood development services. The budget for Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) has declined marginally since last year and this will definitely impact plans to add quality to crèche and pre-school component of ICDS and turn Anganwadi Centres into ‘vibrant learning centres’

The one clear message of the Economic Survey 2015-2016 is that the quality of public provisioning of basic services, such as health and education, is declining and people are opting for services provided by the private sector. Government schools’ enrolment in rural areas dipped from 72.9 per cent in 2007 to 63.1 per cent in 2014, (Annual Status of Education Report or ASER, 2014).

Although the government funding for education in 2016-17 is Rs. 71,139 crore an increase of seven per cent since last year, but the allocation for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has seen a meagre hike. Though the decision to invest in building 62 new Navodaya Vidyalayas and plans for ten public and ten private institutions to emerge as world-class Teaching and Research Institutions is welcome, but this intervention cannot meet the current challenge of ensuring ‘quality with access and equity’ across 1445807 elementary (Grades I-VIII) schools in the country out of which 74.47 per cent are government schools catering to 118,973,934 children (DISE 2014-15). Investment in primary grades in capacity building of teachers, particularly to ensure that children learn to read and write is essential.

Disaggregated data shows that per student expenditure can be as low as Rs 37 and Rs 40 in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, respectively. The survey states that “an increase in expenditure per se may not guarantee appropriate outcomes and achievements” and efficiency of expenditure is equally important. However, without adequate investments, quality suffers. In rural government schools, the percentage of children who could do division in standard V halved from 41 per cent in 2007 to 20.7 per cent in 2014 (ASER 2014). In private schools also, the percentage of children who could do division in standard V declined from 49.4 per cent in 2007 to 39.3 per cent in 2014 in private schools. The survey admits that the ‘decline in enrolment in government schools and shift to private schools might be related to poor quality education in government schools’. Alarmingly, it surmises that the poor quality is because ‘it is free or offered for a nominal fee.’ Is the survey blaming the poor for availing of free education for the government providing bad quality education? Is it preparing the ground for ‘user fees’ by regarding free education as a ‘subsidy’? Therefore, while declaring that greater investments are needed in education, is it really questioning the need for universal free education?

Health

Like education, the expenditure on health as a proportion of GDP has remained less than 2 per cent. The survey acknowledges that in the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) index developed by the World Bank, India ranks 157th according to per capita government spending on health and 25th among leading countries with a serious hunger situation .

The survey admits that India has the second highest number of undernourished people at 194.6 million persons (FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2015,). In India, 37 per cent of children under five in 15 states were stunted (NFHS-4), showing a fall of just five percentage points in a decade. Bihar and Madhya Pradesh are the worst off, with 48 and 42 per cent respectively of children stunted. Unless children are provided the necessary micronutrients they need, they are unlikely to develop to the best of their potential. The fact that mid-day meal allocation has been increased by only Rs. 463.6 crore, or five per cent, and ICDS supplementary programme finds no mention in the budget, is a cause for concern.

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages is still far behind the target. For India to achieve this goal, it will have to reach the value of around 0.9 for its Health Index, which includes health status of population, quality of healthcare institutions and financial instruments for access to healthcare (insurance, etc.). Public expenditure on health in India has hovered around one per cent of the country’s GDP, and accounts for less than one third (33 per cent) of total health expenditure.

Though the budget has given a health cover of Rs 1,00,000 for each family which is welcome, this budget has not enhanced spending on health sector and both young children and adolescents are likely to be negatively impacted when it comes to out-of-pocket expenditure that the poorest families cannot afford.

Writing on the wall

Notwithstanding the dismal indicators of the well-being of the children, the survey limits the central government’s role to ‘policy making’, leaving the ‘gargantuan challenge’ of service delivery to the states.

Children’s wellbeing cannot be measured through ‘social infrastructure’ as the Modi Government seems to think, but by basic ‘human entitlements’. This requires a multi-pronged effort to counter multi-dimensional poverty by budgeting and providing for water, energy, food security, livelihood creation for the households, reducing vulnerabilities, ensuring equity and assuring a just governance framework.

The conclusion reached based on the Economic Survey and the Budget 2016-17 gives ample indication that Modi Government could not keep promises made to India’s largest segment of population.

Clinton, Trump take major steps toward US presidential nominations

Patrick Martin

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump greatly increased their leads in the contests for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations in primary voting in five states Tuesday: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio.

Clinton swept all five states, winning by sizable margins over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, narrowly in Illinois and Missouri.

Sanders’ failure to win a single state, after his upset victory in Michigan last Tuesday, was a significant blow, and his campaign did not even hold a rally with the candidate to watch the vote results come in.

While Sanders continues to attract widespread support among young people, with his calls for a “political revolution” and his claim to advocate “democratic socialism,” his campaign is an attempt to give a “left” gloss to a right-wing corporate-controlled political machine. From the beginning he has pledged to back Clinton in the event that she wins the nomination, which is now likely.

The Democratic Party cannot serve as the instrument of a progressive transformation of American society. On the contrary, its reactionary corruption and complacency only provokes the anger that helps fuel the campaigns of ultra-right demagogues like Trump.

Trump won four of the five states, losing only Ohio to the state’s incumbent governor, John Kasich. Texas Senator Ted Cruz finished a close second in Missouri and North Carolina, and a distant second in Illinois. Florida Senator Marco Rubio finished a distant second in his home state and announced he was suspending his campaign.

Kasich had campaigned in Ohio on the basis of the supposed economic revival of the heavily industrial state. He touted the creation of 400,000 jobs over the past five years, although median family income has plunged 16.1 percent since 2000. His comfortable margin over Trump came in part from a sizable crossover vote, as Democrats voted in the Republican primary, mainly to oppose Trump.

In terms of convention delegates required for nomination, each frontrunner has now passed the halfway mark. Clinton’s advantage is substantial, because under the rules of the Democratic Party more than 700 party officials hold automatic positions as convention delegates, and the vast majority have pledged their support to her.

Trump’s lead is more precarious, as he currently has less than 50 percent of the delegates selected, and he could well fall short of the 1,237 required for nomination. Cruz is unlikely to overtake Trump, and Kasich cannot do so, mathematically, making a contested convention with multiple ballots a real possibility.

It is increasingly likely that in the November presidential election the corporate-controlled two-party system will present the alternatives of Hillary Clinton, who as the wife of a president, senator and secretary of state embodies the American political establishment, and Donald Trump, a billionaire who personifies the criminality and viciousness of the financial aristocracy.

These repulsive alternatives only underscore the completely undemocratic and manipulated character of the US political system, where only candidates approved by or directly recruited from the Wall Street oligarchy need apply.

Trump would be the first candidate with a distinctly fascistic and authoritarian program to win the nomination of one of the two major big business parties. His vote is driven largely by economic and social despair. As the Washington Post noted in a recent report, Trump’s support tracks closely with those areas with the highest death rates and unemployment rates among middle-aged whites.

A profile in the New York Times Sunday of volunteers at a Trump campaign office in Tampa, Florida found a wide range of backgrounds, but one thing in common: all had faced economic ruin from the 2008 financial crash, either losing jobs, homes or businesses.

Trump’s main remaining rival in the Republican Party, Cruz, is an equally reactionary figure. His speech to supporters in Texas Tuesday night was a hysterical rant, denouncing Trump exclusively from the right, claiming he was soft on Iran, on support for Israel and on the appointment of ultra-right nominees to the Supreme Court.

In her remarks to campaign supporters Tuesday night, Clinton offered no alternative to the deepening social and economic crisis of American capitalism or the threat of these ultra-right demagogues. She paid lip service to the ongoing campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, but spoke as though the general election campaign had already begun, using the generalities that characterize the Democratic Party’s posturing as the vaguely “progressive” alternative to the Republicans.

Except for a pledge to “expand Social Security, not cut or privatize it,” Clinton made no specific statement on social policy. Significantly, this followed the declaration by Trump, at last week’s Republican debate, that he opposed any cuts in the federal retirement program.

Likewise on foreign and security policy, Clinton made only one specific statement, criticizing Trump for his open support for torture. Otherwise, she embraced the record of the Obama administration, with which she, as secretary of state for four years, is completely identified.

As soon as the Sanders challenge can be dispatched, the Clinton campaign will execute its long-planned pivot, shifting even further to the right, and seeking to win the favor of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus as the “responsible” alternative to the erratic and potentially explosive character of Trump.

Overcrowding in New York City Housing Authority fueled by lack of jobs and affordable apartments

Fred Mazelis

Amidst growing homelessness and soaring rent burdens facing millions of working class New Yorkers, the 400,000 tenants in the city’s public housing developments would seem to have an advantage.

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) administers more than 325 separate complexes, totaling about 175,000 apartments. Rents are no more than 30 percent of household monthly income. The population in public housing, about 90 percent African-American and Hispanic, comprises many of the most oppressed sections of the working class.

While it beats living on the street or in the city’s notorious homeless shelters, New York’s housing projects have their own serious challenges. Tenants try for months and sometimes years to obtain basic repairs in buildings that are decades old, in most cases dating from the 1950s and 1960s. After many years of state and federal budget cuts, NYCHA has a massive $17 billion in unmet capital needs. The housing projects in which many of the city’s working people and working poor live are being allowed to crumble.

Despite all of this, such is the crisis of affordable housing in this city of billionaires and multimillionaires that an additional estimated 100,000 to 200,000 “off the books” tenants have squeezed into the approximately 175,000 units administered by NYCHA.

These people, in many cases the children or other relatives of existing tenants, must tread very carefully lest they be discovered and face eviction or other penalties. Most of them are working, and trying to save up for an apartment of their own, where a single bathroom does not have to be shared between four or five people and where they are not forced to sleep in the living room or on a folding cot. In many cases, however, weeks stretch into months and even into years, as the city’s housing becomes more and more unaffordable, even for those making $40,000 or even $50,000 annually.

The situation is even worse for these tenants who have a poor credit rating, and especially for the many who have criminal records after having been caught up in the notorious “war on drugs” and the consequent mass imprisonment, which disproportionately affected African-American and other minority youth.

In a recent feature on this situation, the online magazine Slate explains that the “illegal” tenants are often called “ghost tenants.” As one commenter onSlate ’s website observes, this is a term that applies more logically to the billionaires who have bought high rise apartments in midtown Manhattan as investments or as prestige pieds -a-tierre which they visit perhaps once or twice a year. The most expensive sale for an individual apartment was for more than $100 million, for a penthouse on West 57th Street.

The NYCHA’s Amsterdam Houses, where a young woman interviewed for theSl ate article lives, is less than half a mile away, next to the Lincoln Center performing arts complex. The image—of the actual “ghost” apartments barely a 10-minute walk from the deteriorating conditions facing low-paid workers—aptly sums up the irrationality and oppression of capitalism in the 21st century.

City authorities dispute the suggestion that as many as 200,000 additional tenants, 50 percent over the official total, are living in NYCHA buildings. There is little argument, however, that, as one official stated, “We acknowledge that there are likely more people residing in our developments than accounted for by our official tally.”

The phenomenon of people crowding into these apartments is not new, and has to some extent tracked the state of the economy. Today, eight years after the 2008 crash and amidst the virtual disappearance of decent-paying jobs even for many college graduates, it is probably higher than it has ever been. Observers who have studied housing in New York consider 100,000 additional residents to be a low estimate.

How does the city government under Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio intend to deal with the housing crisis and the problems of the city public housing in particular? According to a column last month by Ginia Bellafante in the New York Times, the mayor’s office suggests, in the columnist’s words, that public housing “could become an attractive beneficiary of charitable money.” The city government has created a nonprofit “Fund for Public Housing,” with the aim of raising $200 million over the next three years.

This scheme follows earlier proposals by de Blasio to deal with NYCHA’s enormous fiscal shortfall. These include plans to lease some ground-floor space to retailers, cut staff, offer parking spaces to nonresidents at market rates, and carve out sections of public housing property (Bellafante calls this “poorly used land”) for development by the real estate industry.

These plans to partially privatize public housing are only part of what the de Blasio administration has in mind. It promises a very inadequate total of 200,000 new or renovated housing units over the next decade, and much of this hinges on a forthcoming proposal, being discussed by the City Council, that would rezone a large area of Brooklyn for the benefit of the real estate industry, as long as it promises a meager percentage of “affordable housing” in return.

As for NYCHA, the authorities are well aware that wealthy would-be philanthropists—multimillionaires who put their names on new hospital wings and university buildings—may not be enthusiastic about public housing. “… [D]onors are often prompted to give when there is an emotional narrative to which they can respond,” writes Bellafante, “and drab, monolithic buildings don’t easily move people.”

NYCHA chairwoman Shola Olatoye even declared—in answer to the idea “that buildings might be renamed to honor the most magnanimous donors”—that “all options are on the table.” The idea is one of appealing to the top 1 percent in their own self-interest. The pitch that de Blasio and his administration intend to make includes the warning that they are sitting on a powder keg, and an explosion will put the vast fortunes of the super-rich at risk.

The actual conditions of life of millions of workers in the wealthiest city of the world, almost a decade after the Wall Street Crash of 2008, are finding expression in a growing political awareness among workers and youth.

De Blasio was put in office precisely to appease the anger of the working class without challenging the dictates of the ruling elite. The deep crisis of the capitalist system that he represents means that he has no genuine reforms to offer; on the contrary. The mayor can only come up with proposals that amount to chipping away at public housing itself, either in the form of direct handouts to private developers, or appeals for philanthropic donations that will wind up making the families in public housing even more directly beholden to the super-rich.

Ingersoll Houses in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood

WSWS reporters spoke to residents at the Ingersoll Houses in Brooklyn. Leona, who lives in this development along with her mother, explained that it wasn’t until this past year that the building they live in was brought up to code. Still, many repairs are badly needed. “They could spend money on fixing up the outside, the doors, the intercom system which never worked. Sometimes the buildings won’t get cleaned very often as they should be. It can get really messy out here. There’s trash all around on the grass outside the building. Meanwhile I see they put up these security floodlights at night while everything else is falling apart. I have no idea what the hell is going on.”

On the issue of overcrowding, Leona said that while she had no direct information, it is the norm for large families of three generations to all live in one apartment. She also pointed to the lack of alternatives for the working class in the neighborhood, where one bedroom apartments go for an average of $3,001 per month, according to the real estate firm MNS. “They keep making these luxury apartments for people moving from Manhattan, but it’s the same thing here now,” Leona stated. “Everyone is moving out because they can’t afford it. Right now me and my mom are actually making plans to move to New Jersey. My mom would like to stay close because she works by the [adjacent] Navy Yard, but I want to get out of the city.”

Leona at Ingersoll Houses in Brooklyn

On the report of de Blasio appealing for private funds to help public housing, Leona responded, “It shouldn’t be voluntary. Politicians always talk about how America is great but we’re screwing up with so many things: health care, infrastructure, housing. But for the rich it’s all about money. They don’t give a crap as long as they make money. Public health should be the number one concern.

“Countries and governments that did not take care of their people did not last very long,” she added. “That was the whole point of the French Revolution. The government didn’t take care of the people. It should be a national law to have the rich pay their fair share of taxes. End of story. They complain that they don’t want to lose money but they have more money then they know what to do with it anyway. Put it towards something that counts.”

Two youth, Darren and Jay, listed many upkeep problems in their buildings at Ingersoll. “It’s terrible. We’ve had no hot water,” Jay said. “Sometimes no heat when it’s cold outside. The elevator would be broken for a long time. They only come to fix things when they feel like it.”

Darren remarked, “The walls need repainting. When we take a shower sometimes there’s no hot water.”

Ronald, a long time NYCHA resident

Ronald, a long-time resident, offered his thoughts on de Blasio’s plan to raise funds from wealthy donors. “It won’t work. Look at how NYCHA was created. It was the federal, state and city government. The private sector wanted no part of it. Why would people donate money if they’re not going to make a profit off it? It’s the same with the transit system, the infrastructure, the post office.” He added that if de Blasio is successful in soliciting donations, it will be because he is promising something in return.

As for overcrowding and doubling up in apartments, he said, “I do know it goes on. People don’t want to live in shelters. What do you expect them to do? Live on the street? Many people can’t find jobs. Others may have other types of problems.

“The working class is being eliminated. Health care is being taken away from minorities. Abortion clinics are being closed down. Look at the last 10 years. People in the middle income have been wiped out. …They don’t care about where all the poor people go. They don’t care about people who have been here 50 or 60 years.”

Australian media whips up fear campaign against African youth

Richard Phillips

The Australian media and political establishment has seized on clashes between police and immigrant youth in the Victorian state capital of Melbourne last Saturday night, during the annual “Moomba” festival, to whip up a frenzied fear campaign about “riots” by “gangs” and “hoodlums” in the city centre, laced with a heavy dose of racism.

None of the accounts should be accepted as good coin. The initial police reports claimed that there had been a riot in the city’s Federation Square between two rival gangs—Apex and Islander 23, comprising African and Pacific Islander youth respectively. Later it turned out, according to revised police accounts, that the Islander 23 group was not there at all.

The “riot” occurred when police waded into a group of African youth—allegedly members of the Apex gang—using pepper spray to break them up. According to police, some young people fled down Swanston Street and began engaging in “riotous behavior,” including throwing metal chairs and “confronting” bystanders.

The number of “rioters” and “gang members” ranges widely in media accounts. While there are claims that up to 200 were involved, only four people were arrested—two for being drunk and another for allegedly carrying a stun gun. The fourth was the only one detained for violent behavior (assaulting a police officer).

Police claim that an examination of CCTV footage will produce more arrests. On Tuesday, the media provided more lurid coverage of heavily-armed Special Operations Group police arresting two alleged Apex gang members. The arrests, however, had no connection whatsoever to the alleged incidents on Saturday night.

In a statement yesterday, the South Sudanese Community Association declared: “We do not accept police or media exaggeration of the Apex gang comprising of as many as 150 youth of Sudanese origin. This is not true. The preliminary investigation from our end, at the community-leadership level, puts the offenders in this group at around six to 10 teenagers in the age group of around 14 and above. The rest of the youths were people who attended as spectators of the event, like many other people who attended the Moomba event on the night of March 12, 2016.”

Even more questions are raised by the initial police accounts of a brawl between rival gangs. On Sunday, the Age reported that Victoria Police had been tipped off by a Channel 7 reporter about a gang clash that had been organised on social media for Saturday night. Not only did senior police officers fail to take it seriously, but police numbers in Federation Square were unusually low. According to the Age, just six officers were present at one stage during the “violent rampage.”

Federation Square in central Melbourne, located opposite the city’s main rail station, is where many young people gather to meet on Saturday nights. With a scheduled Moomba fireworks display, the numbers would have been even higher. The obvious question is: were the police deliberately stood down in the expectation of a gang fight that could then be used as the pretext for a police crackdown and the ramping up of police numbers and powers?

Certainly the police media unit initially advanced the position that a major conflict between gangs had occurred. And police spokesmen have subsequently declared that the Saturday night rioting was “a line in the sand” moment and that resources would be re-prioritised to “tackle the problem.”

The state Labor government has backed the police to the hilt over the so-called “riot.” Premier Daniel Andrews held a press conference on Monday declaring that state authorities would be given the necessary resources to “smash” gang violence in Victoria. Those involved in the rioting had made an “evil choice,” he said, and “we will come after you.”

Under conditions where successive state governments, Labor and Liberal, have boosted police numbers, Andrews’ comments amount to a declaration of war against working class youth. Immigrant youth, in particular, from oppressed suburbs such as Dandenong, where the Apex gang allegedly originated, are already subject to routine police harassment and worse.

Andrews went on to declare that he would ignore anyone raising the issues of poverty and social disadvantage. “Let’s not have this as some sort of excuse,” he said. “It does not matter who you are, your circumstances, your background. If you break the law you feel the full force of the law… I’m not interested, and neither are Victorians, in these ‘poor me’ stories.”

These remarks reveal the contempt of the political establishment as a whole towards the working class, and particularly to young people. Suburbs like Dandenong have been savaged by decades of plant closures and job losses, and the gutting of essential social services, including youth workers, sports facilities and accessible entertainment, for which state governments are directly responsible. The official unemployment rate for adults in the area is 9.2 percent, and for 15-19 year olds, it was almost 26 percent in 2011.

Andrews’ comments are an open admission that the only answer the Labor government has to the immense social problems confronting working class youth is to flood these areas with more police to “smash” anything regarded as anti-social behaviour.

To back up his threats, the premier has also given the cue for the media to whip up a racist witch-hunt of immigrant youth. A flood of stories has appeared since Saturday about the “wild Moomba riot,” with hyperbolic claims that the city is now under siege from gangland “terror.” The events during Melbourne’s Moomba festival have been likened to gang activity in South Central Los Angeles. Editorial writers have gone into overdrive with demands for greater police powers and more equipment.

The Age—the pillar of what passes for the Melbourne liberal establishment—has joined the right-wing radio shock jocks and the hacks at Murdoch’s Herald-Sun tabloid in complaining that police have been reluctant to stop young Africans on the street because they could be “subjected to racism complaints.”

A disgusting editorial in yesterday’s edition declared: “Victoria Police have swung too far in the direction of appeasement, especially after the force was sued over racial profiling in the Flemington and North Melbourne areas… We also believe government authorities and some agencies have been over-indulgent towards some communities, without those same communities taking up the responsibility that rightly belongs with them.”

One thing is certain: the Victorian police force is not guilty of “appeasing” immigrant youth. On the contrary, it is notorious for racism, directed in particular against young Africans. In 2013, six Afro-Australian men sued the police for racial profiling and received a $3 million out of court settlement. In 2014, three police were sacked and other high-ranking officers, including an inspector, faced disciplinary proceedings over their production of blatantly racist items mocking African immigrants.

The Age editorial writer demanded that the government take a tough “law and order” stand: “Police must act swiftly to bring the offenders to court. Ultimately, for those on visas who are found guilty, the government must consider if the circumstances warrant deportation.”

The federal government, supported by the Labor opposition, has already amended the country’s immigration laws to allow the immigration minister to deport foreign-born residents who have “an association” with individuals or groups involved in criminal conduct and those deemed to be at risk of inciting “discord in the Australian community”.

The vilification of immigrant youth over “gang activity” goes hand-in-hand with the “war on terror” and the scapegoating of Muslims. Its purpose is to stoke racial hostilities, to divide workers—young people in particular—and to justify police state measures that will be directed against all those workers and youth who begin to enter into political struggle against the rapidly deepening economic and social crisis that they confront.

Rough-sleeping on the rise in England

Alice Summers

The number of people sleeping rough on the streets in England has risen by 30 percent in a single year, according to a new report from Crisis, a national charity for single homeless people.

The numbers of people making presentations as homeless across the UK has risen by 4 percent in the last year, with annual acceptances by local authority housing departments standing at 54,000. Since 2009/2010 this equates to an increase of 36 percent. The Homeless Monitor concludes that homelessness has worsened considerably in the last five years they have been producing reports.

The numbers of people that are included as part of informal homeless prevention and relief—including statutory homelessness acceptances dealt with by local authority case actions—stands at 275,000 for 2014/2015, a rise of 34 percent since 2009/2010. A third of all local authorities in England have reported an overall service demand for 2014/2015.

According to figures released at the end of February by the Department for Communities and Local Government, there were an estimated 3,569 rough-sleepers on any given night in autumn 2015. This is an increase of 825 people per night since the same period in 2014.

London is particularly affected, with rough-sleepers in the capital constituting 26 percent of the country’s total. Although this is down 1 percent as a proportion of the overall figure for England, in real terms London has seen a 27 percent rise in rough-sleeping, rising from 742 people per night in autumn 2014 to 940 per night in autumn 2015. The London Borough of Westminster is the area with the highest rough-sleeping count of the whole country, at an estimated 265 people. According to the figures, London had 0.27 rough-sleepers for every 1,000 households, compared with a rate of 0.14 per 1,000 in the rest of England.

It is likely that these figures severely underestimate the total number of homeless people sleeping in the streets. The figures are disputed, with the UK Statistics Authority concluding that the official Homelessness Prevention and Relief and Rough-sleeping statistics do not currently meet the required standards of trustworthiness, quality and value to be designated as National Statistics.

In its report, Crisis recognised stagnant real wages, soaring housing prices—particularly in the capital—and government welfare cuts as the principal causes of this dramatic upsurge in numbers of rough-sleepers.

Citing cuts to in-work and housing benefits, the Conservative government’s much-hated “Bedroom Tax” policy and welfare benefit sanctions as the main factors pushing vulnerable people onto the streets, the report is an indictment of years of relentless, vicious austerity measures carried out by successive Labour and Tory governments.

Crisis noted that with the reduction of the total welfare benefit cap introduced in the 2015 budget—to £23,000 a year in London and to £20,000 in the rest of the country—many families will find that “affordable” housing, both privately rented and social, is far beyond their means.

The new Universal Credit benefit system to be rolled out across the UK is expected to further increase homelessness, affecting those tenants in the private sector who have their rent benefits paid directly to them.

The problem of finding affordable accommodation is further aggravated by the government’s social housing privatisation policy. This has set into motion the forced sale of many high-value council properties, the long-term loss of properties via the government’s “Right to Buy” scheme and the reduced investment in new social housing. As indicated in the report, “While the Government has stated ambitions for this diminished stock to be targeted on those in greatest need, the interaction of their rent-setting and welfare policies runs directly counter to this aspiration.”

Labour’s shadow housing minister, John Healey, posturing as an opponent of the government’s housing policy and the homelessness crisis, said of the figures, “People will find it extraordinary that in England in the 21st century the number of people forced to sleep rough is going up.”

This is pure hypocrisy. Labour has been entirely complicit in imposing the Tory government’s austerity measures across the country, with the Labour-dominated local councils in Bristol, Brighton and Hove and Manchester reporting the second, third and fourth highest rough-sleeping counts after Westminster, at 97, 78 and 70 rough-sleepers per night respectively.

Even these shockingly high figures are a gross underestimation of the number of people actually affected by homelessness. Many people have been forced out of their own homes due to skyrocketing living costs and welfare cuts, but have so far avoided being driven onto the streets. According to Crisis, the vast majority of homeless people do not fall within the government’s narrow classification of being homeless. Many exist out of sight in bed and breakfasts and squats, or are concealed in the households of friends and family members, on the floors or sofas of these often overcrowded homes. Crisis calculates that approximately 2.35 million households in England contain concealed single persons in this way, and that an estimated 3.1 percent of households are overcrowded.

Many other homeless people can fall under the radar and not be included in official estimates, as it is common for rough-sleepers to conceal themselves as a matter of personal security. Rough-sleepers often fall victim to physical, verbal and sexual abuse if they spend the night in visible and exposed locations and so many choose to shelter themselves in places such as commercial recycling bins.

The number of homeless people found spending the night in commercial bins has risen dramatically, according to waste management firm Biffa. In the 12-month period between March 2014 and March 2015, the company found people sleeping in their bins on 93 separate occasions, up from 31 in the previous year. In the current year, which runs to the end of March, the figure already stands at 175.

Sleeping in recycling bins can have grave consequences. Spending the night in a commercial bin can lead to serious injuries and fatalities when the bins are emptied into collection trucks and the waste is crushed. According to the Environmental Services Association, there have been at least 11 fatalities since October 2010 as a result of rough-sleepers sheltering in commercial bins. Such gruesome deaths, allied with prolonged period of sleeping in the cold and damp and enduring a poor diet, are central factors in the average age of death for rough-sleepers being just 47.

Extra precautions have been implemented by many waste management companies in an attempt to prevent these tragic deaths. Most collection lorries now contain cameras inside their compactors that allow the driver to see what is being tipped into them; waste collectors are instructed to bang on the side of recycling bins to alert any rough-sleepers inside and to double-check the contents before allowing the bin to be emptied. Businesses and shops have a responsibility to lock their bins overnight and could be taken to court if they do not. Despite the terrible risks, the relative warmth and security of recycling bins can still be attractive to many rough-sleepers.

The Homeless Monitor report can be accessed here.

Russia announces partial withdrawal from Syria

Bill Van Auken

Some of the warplanes deployed in the nearly six-month-long Russian intervention in Syria arrived back on Russian soil Tuesday, the day after President Vladimir Putin announced that the “main part” of his country’s forces were being withdrawn from the conflict.

The central task undertaken by the Russian armed forces had “on the whole, been fulfilled,” Putin stated. “With the participation of the Russian military… the Syrian armed forces have been able to achieve a fundamental turnaround in the fight against international terrorism and have taken the initiative,” he added.

The Russian president said his country’s intervention had created the conditions for the initiation of the “peace process,” and that the withdrawal of its forces would send a “good signal” to both sides: the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and the so-called rebels who have been backed and armed by the US and its regional allies.

Putin’s announcement came nearly three weeks into a US-Russian brokered “cessation of hostilities” that has substantially reduced the level of armed conflict in the country.

Russia is maintaining its two main bases in Syria, its Hmeimim command center and air base in the northwestern province of Latakia, and its naval base, inherited from the Soviet Union, in the Mediterranean port of Tartous. It was reported in Russia that 1,000 Russian troops would remain in the country out of the roughly 4,000 that had been deployed there. Also remaining behind is Russia’s advanced S-400 air defense system.

Putin cast the Russian intervention as a struggle against “terrorism,” and Russian Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov, speaking Tuesday at a ceremony at the Russian airbase in Syria, said that those forces remaining in Syria “have the task of continuing to strike terrorist targets.”

It was reported Tuesday that Russian warplanes carried out airstrikes in support of Syrian troops advancing on Palmyra. The city, famous for its Roman ruins, fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) last May.

While both Moscow and Washington claimed that their respective interventions in Syria were aimed at combating terrorism, they were pursuing different and diametrically opposed aims. In the case of the Obama administration, the goal was regime-change. It sought the ouster of the Assad government and the imposition of a more pliant Western puppet regime in its place. In pursuit of this aim, it, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, funneled billions of dollars worth of aid and armaments to a “rebel” force that was dominated by the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, and related Islamist militias.

As for Moscow, its aim was to preserve its one remaining Arab ally in the Middle East. Of no small importance was the prospect that a Western puppet regime in Syria would bow to Qatari demands—rejected by Assad—to lend its territory for a gas pipeline directed toward Western Europe. Such a development would undercut the profit interests of Gazprom, Russia’s largest corporation, and the ruling class of capitalist oligarchs that Putin represents.

Also of concern to the Russian government was the participation in the ranks of al-Nusra and similar groups of thousands of Islamist fighters drawn from Russia’s Caucasus region. Moscow fears that a US-backed client regime in Damascus will help funnel such separatist forces back into Russia to serve as Western proxies in a campaign to destabilize and ultimately dismember the Russian Federation.

While there was a defensive element to Moscow’s intervention, which was directed at countering a concerted campaign by the US and its NATO allies to militarily encircle and subjugate Russia, there was nothing progressive about it in terms of resolving the Syrian crisis in the interests of the Syrian working class and oppressed.

Even in terms of Russia itself, Putin’s oscillation between military adventures and diplomatic entreaties to Washington has done nothing to impede US imperialism’s march toward global war.

Putin’s announcement of the staged withdrawal combined with his assertion that it was meant as a “signal” to both sides has prompted speculation that the military drawdown was directed at compelling the Assad government to subordinate itself to the “peace process” brokered by Washington and Moscow.

Talks have resumed in Geneva, with UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura shuttling between meetings with Syrian government representatives and a “rebel” negotiating council cobbled together by the Saudi monarchy.

Differences between the Putin and Assad governments have begun to emerge in relation to the talks in Geneva. While Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, declared on the eve of the talks that Assad’s position as president was a “red line” for the government, and the president would not negotiate his status, it is far from clear that Moscow agrees. As long as a new regime in Damascus is amendable to upholding Russia’s regional interests, the Putin government is evidently prepared to accept Assad’s departure.

Friction was already evident over last month’s declaration by Assad that, regardless of a ceasefire, his forces would continue combating “terrorists” and that retaking all Syrian territory was “a goal we are seeking to achieve without any hesitation.”

That statement prompted something of a rebuke from Russia’s United Nations envoy, Vitaly Churkin, who declared in an interview with a Russian newspaper that Assad’s statement “obviously contradicts Russia’s diplomatic efforts.” Churkin warned that if Damascus failed to align its policies with these efforts “there will be a difficult situation, one that will also involve them.”

The Syrian government was anxious to dispel any notion that Putin’s decision to withdraw Russian forces was carried out unilaterally or as part of an attempt to pressure Damascus to compromise with the Western-backed forces. The state news agency SANA published multiple articles asserting that the drawdown had been “coordinated” between Putin and Assad.

Another potential factor in Putin’s decision to order a military drawdown is the increasingly tense situation created by Turkey’s intervention in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged Tuesday in a television interview that “Turkey has started to declare it has a sovereign right to create some safety zones on Syrian territory.” He said that Turkish troops are “digging in a few hundred meters from the border inside Syria” in what amounts to “a sort of creeping expansion.”

A longstanding supporter of the Al Qaeda-linked militias that form the backbone of the insurgency against Assad, Turkey has intervened with the aim of preventing Syrian Kurdish forces from consolidating their grip over an autonomous territory just south of the Turkish border.

Last November, Ankara organized the deliberate ambush of a Russian warplane carrying out airstrikes against Islamist militias south of the Turkish border, leading to the death of one pilot and posing the immediate threat of an armed conflict between the Russian military and a member of NATO. The incursion of Turkish forces into Syria only heightens that danger.