Forecast 2016: Opportunities and Challenges for Southeast Asia

Preet Malik

Southeast Asia has always been of considerable geo-strategic importance with its sea frontiers straddling important sea-lanes connecting the oil rich Indian Ocean region to the strategically important Asia Pacific region. Of considerable significance in this context are the Malacca and the Sunda Straits. The region is of increasing importance in today’s globalised world both on account of the significant position that it occupies in international trade and in terms of climate change and biodiversity. Its openness to trade and investment has made it a major contributor to the growth trends of the world economy. Its economy averaging over 5 per cent in GDP per annum has resulted in a rapidly expanding middle class with a rising consumption pattern of interest to the global manufacturers and exporters of consumption goods and services.

The important aspect is Southeast Asia being seen as China’s backyard - a definition that has gained greater significance in the post-Cold War world. This is largely due to the fact that China has come to dominate the region both in political and economic terms, creating in the process an environment of competing interests that involve not only the US but also Japan and increasingly India.

The US that during the Cold War period was seen as the main source of political and security comfort remains the strategic alternative to the expanding regional influence of China but creditability issues have from time to time created doubts over the sustainability of American commitment. The Asia Pacific ‘re-balancing’ policy of the US has not removed these doubts even though this policy emphasis has provided some relief to the ASEAN nations.

It would be worth recalling the historical and civilisational influence that India wielded in the region in contrast to its current presence in Southeast Asia that saw India as a peripheral player, which only recently has started gaining some importance and traction in the affairs of the region. Trade built on the maritime prowess of the Indian states of that time was the main driving force that ensured the expansion of Indian influence in the region. It remains to be seen if in today’s context India can regain its historical influence on the region.

ASEAN-China: Dependent Economic Relations and the Indian Alternative

With the ending of the Cold War there was a realisation that China was the country that would come to wield influence, particularly as its economy was increasingly developing the potential of becoming a major driver for the growth of the international economy. Hitherto the economic power that had made a contribution to the strengthening of the Southeast Asia’s Tiger economies was Japan, but China was becoming of greater interest as it could provide a larger market for the goods and services that the ASEAN region as a whole had on offer. However, unlike Japan, China also posed a potential security threat as it was expending large resources on the build-up of its military prowess, and there was the impact of the territorial disputes over island territories in the South and East China Seas.

In the eighties, ASEAN leaders like Mahathir Mohammed, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, coined the term ‘constructive engagement’ as the platform for engaging China and granting it a stake in the economic growth of the economies of the expanded ASEAN region that would make China a partner whose involvement would ensure that a stable Southeast Asia was of strategic importance to it.

This policy, till recently, has paid off as it ensured that China’s economic growth would involve the ASEAN region becoming an extremely important vendor, supplying key elements to the manufacturing hubs of China, and enabling it to increase its competitive outreach to global markets. The fact that a very large presence of the Chinese diaspora in these countries that held positions controlling large segments of the national economies contributed to the expansion of China’s economic presence, involving trade and investment,  which played a role in the growth of the economies of these countries.

However, the recessionary trends that have impacted global growth prospects and the negative impact these have had on the Chinese economy has created severe problems for the main ASEAN economies. According to many independent sources China’s economy has slowed down, with its GDP expanding only around 5 to 5.5 per cent in 2015. The slow-down has contributed to a dramatic reduction in commodity prices with countries like Indonesia and Malaysia being the ones in the region that have been seriously impacted. Interestingly, Myanmar is one of the ASEAN countries that may be benefitting the most from the changes that are taking place in the Chinese economy, with its low wages attracting labour-intensive manufacturing units that are being discarded by China and taken up in Myanmar, resulting in its GDP growing far above that of most other ASEAN countries.

Given the increasing fears over the Chinese economy suffering a ‘hard landing’ and that the global economy would continue to grow at a less than optimal rate of growth - where the Chinese economy accounts for approximately 15 per cent of global economic output - there are concerns over the economic growth prospects of the region unless it is able to find an alternative economy or economies to latch on to. For the region as a whole, the Indian economy therefore becomes an attractive alternative where both investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and trade-in-goods in the role of vendors to the 'make in India' programmes could become a major source for continuing rates of reasonable economic growth. They could also ride on the coattails of the investments that are being made by Japan and now by China in the Indian economy. In addition, Malaysia and Indonesia could see a greater rise in commodity imports by India as its economy grows at rates close to 8 per cent to 8.5 per cent per annum, which could help sustain these economies.

India too shall have to improve its capacity to absorb greater investment flows and to ensure that the actions it has taken to expand its relations with the ASEAN region with key nodes being offered in that context by countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore are fully exploited to mutual benefit. This should be in keeping with the target-setting in that regard that should form a principal part of the Act East policy of the Narendra Modi dispensation. The examples so far of the contributions and participation by India have failed to meet either time lines or targets; these failures would have to be acted upon based on a more secure implementational basis.

Political Issues

This area has both external and domestic dimensions. The internal dimension in the ASEAN region comprises of democratic forms of governance, a monarchy, and communist regimes in Laos and Vietnam, with military rule existing in one form or the other in Myanmar and Thailand. Even the democratic structures have limitations imposed on them. For these countries, democracy of the open type prevailing in India is described as too much democracy that tends to put limitations on governance. ASEAN however does reflect unity in diversity and till recently it could be said that the entente built on constructive engagement had held. This has since come under pressure with the rise of China and the aggressive stance that it has adopted on not only territorial claims but also on the imposition that it is trying to place on freedom of navigation and on over-flights. The rise of China and the security threat that this is seen to pose to regional interests and the Asia Pacific region as a whole has brought about a greater involvement of the US in the region, resulting in a shifting of the balance that had held to some degree since the end of the Vietnam War.

The main issues that confront the ASEAN countries are worth recalling as they define the region and the challenges that it faces. The ambition of developing as a single market as the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) that would permit a boost to the flow of goods, services and investments as also serve to attract greater external investments has yet to really take off. This is mainly because of non-tariff barriers to protect domestic industries. The protectionist barriers put up by Indonesia, the largest regional economy, being a case in point. Non-compliance rather than compliance remains the main stumbling block to achieving the single market as defined under the AEC.

Another dominant factor pertains to the maritime domain. South China Sea and the territorial disputes are a major problem where China’s attitude and aggressive postures present a significant threat to a peaceful and fair resolution, with the added complications pertaining to freedom of navigation and freedom of the airways. ASEAN has had a problems in condemning China’s aggressive stance and has only been able to express "serious concerns over the on-going developments in the South China Sea, which has increased tensions in the area." They have been pushing for the "early conclusion of the Code of Conduct." The major development has been the endorsement of the Permanent Court of Arbitration of the right of the Philippines to file a case under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), "challenging the legality of the China claims in the South China Sea." However, China continues to refuse the jurisdiction of the Court. The stalemate in this case continues and a peaceful resolution seems to be out of reach. The challenge that the US poses to China’s claims appears to be the only factor that places some restraint on China and continues to throw up the element of vulnerability that Southeast Asia faces at it hands, where China is willing to pressurise its way to gaining its ends.

Finally, another factor that stands out is that the ASEAN Way is unlikely to find a path out of the impasse that the military poses to real democratic functioning in Myanmar, where even though the people have overwhelmingly voted in favour of Suu Kyi, the armed forces are staunchly standing in the way of her becoming the Chief Executive. The army is also unwilling to move away from controlling the real sinews of power as reflected in its constitutionally-backed control over Home, Defence and Border Security affairs. Again, whatever change does come about in the future by amending the military-imposed 2008 Constitution could only happen because of Western pressures and the degree to which the military would like to continue to balance Myanmar’s dependence on China.

All these factors only go to show that Southeast Asia has problems that would continue to leave it vulnerable to China and the countries of the region have to remain dependent on the US for solutions. India, Japan and Australia have a role to play but to a very large extent this would be in tandem with the positions and strategies adopted by the American administration.

To Steer the Stream of Time: The Crisis of Verge Powers

Vijay Shankar

The Crisis of Verge Powers 

A quarter of a century after the demise of the Soviet Union brought an end to the bi-polar confrontation of the Cold War, what is emerging today is a fluctuating plurality of on-the-verge-great powers. These powers are counselled at times and coerced at others, by one super power, the US. In this milieu, the US retains dominant influence over its European and Pacific allies, but finds itself in confrontation with China and Russia. Japan, Australia and India, also verge powers, politically find an intuitive affinity towards the democratic covey led by the US.

Superimposed on this emerging global construct is the crumbling of order in West Asia where interminable warfare and the stunning spread of radical Islam have exasperated the prospects of stability. Whether motivation for conflict lies in the quest for power or piety is a moot question, but how it affects the international system and how the verge powers respond is the crisis of our times. 

Tensions in the Maritime Domain 

The maritime domain has not been sequestered from the turmoil in West Asia, tumbling of oil prices, global contraction of economies (barring India and China) or the emergence of ‘verge powers’. A growing disregard for conventions and an urge towards establishing proprietary markets and trade routes appear to be the norm.

And, in what must be seen as a historical paradox, is the return of a new form of colonialism, engineered through favours, money, the creation of local elites, control of national resources of the lesser developed powers - which has sought to be imposed through the agency of manikin dispensations. Every verge power (whether it be China, Japan, Russia, Germany, Australia or indeed India) has, in varying degree, indulged in this practice with the difference that China not only seeks proprietary control over the instruments of growth, but also pursues change on its terms; while Russia’s militaristic involvement in simmering West Asia and Ukraine runs the hazard of sparking off a larger conflict. 

To get a deeper sense of the transformations that are occurring in contemporary global affairs one notes four tectonic shifts. First, the diminishing sheen in what was the dazzling two and a half decades of double digit growth that provided global impetus to economic activity and the military sway of China; as it shrinks, the danger it faces is a fractious populace that may not suffer an authoritarian dispensation without the enticement of unparalleled growth. 

Second, the fall and rise of Russia from a one time super power to that of ‘verge’ status attempting to salvage a little of its past with neither the economic clout nor the ideological resolve. This poses a prickly predicament, for within a period of a quarter of a century, to have been reduced to pariah status and then rise amongst the verge powers with little to bolster state power other than its creaking arms industry, vast resources of primary produce in its icy wastes and a rapidly ageing demography; can hardly make for impact on the international system. 

Third, the breaking out of Japan from its post World War II enforced pacifism as it finds out today that commercial dynamism and financial clout do not constitute a security shield in the contemporary anarchic world. After all, the deepest anxieties of Japan is of an over-extended US weakening in its resolve to uphold its Asian commitments at a time when China has announced its intentions to dominate the West Pacific and the trade routes of the Indian Ocean. All the while, looming to the north and west of Japan across the Sea of Okhotsk is a nervous Russia and a trigger happy North Korea. It is equally clear that for the US to bring about strategic rebalance in the region it cannot do so with a fettered Japan. 

And lastly, the sole super power, US, veering its strategic pivot in the wake of the centre of gravity of world economics shifting into the Indo-Pacific. This has underscored the importance to build a strategic entente in the region to counter-balance a possible revisionist thrust by a Sino-Russian combine. Mutuality in security matters will be the rule as it is clear that the cost of security will stretch the resources of the US. 

Transformatory Dynamic 

The four ‘tectonic shifts’ that have been noted are a part of a larger transformatory dynamic which has today become palpable as technological and economic changes collide with political systems, social structures and military power. In this setting the only certainty is that change will be increasingly more disruptive and unerringly more self-sustaining. While most of the verge powers have sought resolution and correctives within the framework of the existing international order, China, and to some extent, Russia, emerge as anomalies that have angled for and conspired to re-write the rule book. The primary challenge, however, emanates from China. 

A Period of Shengshi 

In the 18th century, China under the Qing dynasty enjoyed a golden age. It was a period ofshengshi. Currently, some Chinese nationalists say that thanks to the Communist Party, its economic prowess and energetic policies, another shengshi has arrived. 

China released its most recent Defence White Paper in May 2015. When read as a sequel to its earlier white papers, it announced the arrival of a self-confident China recognising its own growing economic and military muscle. The paper places a premium on wide area maritime combat preparedness, manoeuvre and a thrust to attain a first-rate cyber warfare capability. At the same time, criticality of containment of various internal fissures is on top of the agenda. The paper significantly points out that struggles for cornering strategic resources, dominating geographically vital areas and tenanting strategic locations have, in fact, intensified. In this context, West Asia’s oil reserves, critical location and economic opportunities provide the strategic canvas for the ‘one belt one road’ initiative. Control of  proprietary maritime routes backed by vast continental economic investments furnishes the framework within which resources of the region could be cornered. China has to satisfy its growing internal demands and eroding markets at a time of declining growth if it is to keep the illusion of shengshi alive among its increasingly edgy populace. 

The consequences of China activising artifices such as the Anti-Access Area Denial Strategy and geo-political manoeuvres to constitute proprietary sources of raw materials, their ports of dispatch and controlled routes, all euphemistically called the maritime silk route, and establishing the String of Pearls in the Indian Ocean Region evokes increasing strategic anxieties among players in the same strategic locale. Progressively, China appears to be challenging not just today’s economic orthodoxy and order, but the world’s political and security framework as well without bringing about a change within her own political morphology. China’s claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea; territorial aggressiveness; her handling of dissent within Tibet and Xinxiang; her proliferatory carousing with rogue states such as North Korea and Pakistan, does not inspire confidence in change occurring within without turbulence. The paradoxical effects of China’s actions are to undermine its own strategic standing, hasten counter-balancing alignments and catalyse a global logic of cooperative politics over imperial strategies.

Strategic Imperatives for IndiaThe first imperative for India is to bring about policy coherence between strategic sea space, growth and security interests. It begins by defining the geographical contours within which a strategy can be developed. The parameters of this definition must factor in the regions from where trade originates, energy lines run, sea lines of communication pass, the narrows contained therein which an inimical force would endeavour to secure and the geographic location of potential allies. In this context the sea space covered by the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific provides the theatre within which Indian maritime strategy will have to function. It accounts for over 70 per cent of global trade, 60 per cent of energy flow and is home to more than 50 per cent of the world’s population.                                                                                      

Indian strategy must seek to Contest, Discredit and Deny, the ability of regional or extra regional countries to unilaterally intervene. To ‘Contest and Discredit’ would suggest a clear understanding of where the centre of gravity of power projection lies. In China’s case, it is the triumvirate of the Aircraft Carrier; security of the narrows and of its ‘string of pearls’. The narrows provide strategic opportunity while the ‘Pearls’ that assure sustenance of forces and safety of hulls, characterise vulnerability. To achieve denial is by convincingly raising the cost of military intervention through the use or threat of use of methods that leverage opportunities while targeting vulnerabilities. ‘The cost of military intervention’ is a matter that resides in the mind of political leadership, yet there will always be a threshold, the edge of which is marked by diminishing benefits of intervention. 

India’s relationship with the US and her allies is robust. It upholds the status quo, yet invites change through democratic forces. India’s rise is not only welcomed but is seen as a harmonising happening that could counter-poise China. The next step would logically be to establish an Indo-US-Japan-Australia strategic framework if the challenges that obtain are to be contended with. 

To Steer the Stream of Time

Bismarck suggested that great powers travel on the “Stream of Time” which they can neither create nor direct but upon which they can “steer with more or less skill and experience.” How they emerge from that voyage depends to a large degree upon the wisdom of leadership. Bismarck’s pithy thoughts go back to the fundamental question: whether motivation for conflict lies in the turbulences of the Stream of Time or in the quest for power or piety is moot; but how they affect the international system and how verge powers respond is the crisis of this time. 

The international system over the last century has been a persistent history of warfare or at least preparation for conflict; and so it is with the current convulsions in West Asia and the emergence of verge powers. Whether China’s revisionist thrust, grandiose scheme to establish proprietary trade routes while seeking sovereignty over vast sea spaces; or a Russia, perceiving in an anarchic global system, strategic opportunity to regain some of its battered national prestige will lead to war is not at all certain. The presence of nuclear weapons with their intrinsic threat of mutually assured destruction may give strategic nuclear forces a restraining role to define and demarcate the limits within which conventional forces operate. Or, it may leave proxy wars as the future of conflicts as in West Asia today. Each of today’s ‘verge-powers’ are therefore left grappling with the crisis of reconciling their respective rise with the four ‘tectonic shifts’. 

Will China see its future in a militaristic surge aimed at securing survival of dispensation and the instruments of growth and at a time when change collides with politics? Will Russia accept its fall from great power status without militarily seeking opportunities to anaemically re-stake its claim? Will a Japan unleashed from the strictures of its post world war status transform from a successful Pacific trading state to that of a militarily strong partner that provides strategic balance in the West Pacific Ocean? And how successful will the US be in forging a strategic entente to enable an Indo-Pacific equilibrium? 

Or will the sagacity of leadership steer the ‘Stream of Time’ with skill?      

Manitoba aboriginal youth suicides exemplify systemic crisis

Carl Bronski

Leaders of the Pimicikamak Cree First Nation in Northern Manitoba declared a state of emergency on their Cross Lake reserve last week after the suicide of fourteen-year-old Finola Muswaggon.

Muswaggon was the sixth person in the community of 6,000 to kill themselves since December 12. Five of those who took their lives were teenagers. The sixth was a young mother of three children.

The community is in a state of shock, said Band Councilor Donnie McKay. In the previous weeks alone, the local nursing station had recorded 140 attempted suicides said McKay. Acting Chief Shirley Robinson told reporters that of the 1,200 students at the local high school, 170 are currently on suicide watch. “Our front-line workers that we have in our nation are all burnt out,” said Robinson. “The teachers are exhausted. The school counsellors are exhausted. The ministers are tired. The leadership is tired.”

The ongoing tragedy at Cross Lake follows on the heels of a much publicized school shooting at a Dene nation reserve at La Loche, Saskatchewan where a seventeen-year-old student killed his two cousins at home and then entered his high school, shot dead a teacher and a teachers’ assistant and wounded seven students before being apprehended. La Loche, a community of 3,000, and the surrounding region has the highest suicide rate in Saskatchewan—a rate five times the provincial average.

“This is the La Loche of northern Manitoba”, said Cree Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson, “except the shooter (at Cross Lake) is society.”

In point of fact, the “shooter” in the centuries-long string of tragedies that have afflicted aboriginal communities across the entire country is Canadian capitalism. The Canadian nation-state was consolidated through the subjugation and systematic dispossession of the native people. Those who survived were reduced to abject poverty, shunted onto reservations, and until 1960 denied basis citizenship rights, including the right to vote.

The statistics concerning mental health and suicide amongst Canada’s aboriginal people are a horrific tragedy and a searing indictment of the country’s economic and political elite.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for indigenous youth and adults up to 44 years of age. Aboriginal youth take their lives at a rate five or six times greater than their non-aboriginal counterparts, with suicides amongst First Nations children as young as ten-years-old not uncommon. Suicide rates amongst Inuit youth are among the highest in the world, at eleven times the national average. The scourge is not limited to populations on the economically isolated native reserves. More than one of every five natives living off-reserve has reported contemplating suicide.

Manitoba’s New Democratic Party (NDP) government has now dispatched several emergency mental health-care workers and counsellors to Cross Lake and the federal Liberal government has pledged to cover the costs for this intervention, but only for eight weeks. Prior to this temporary deployment, which was prompted by last week’s declaration of a state of emergency, Cross Lake had only one part-time federally funded mental health therapist.

In addition to emergency assistance, Pimicikamak band leaders have reiterated longstanding demands for funds to build a hospital and recreational facilities in the community and for assistance in creating ongoing employment opportunities.

Currently, eighty percent of the Cross Lake population is unemployed. There is a serious housing shortage and no community or recreational center. Many children are in the care of child welfare services.

Many of the social ills afflicting the community stem from a massive hydro-electric project that was initiated under a previous NDP government in the 1970s and implemented by its Conservative successor. As a result of changes to water-levels, flooding and diversions perpetrated by government-owned Manitoba Hydro, transportation routes and wild-life habitats in the Cross Lake area have been disrupted and often destroyed. Even now, decades after the project was completed, flooding routinely displaces people from their homes.

“The hydro project has contributed to mass unemployment and mass poverty for our people,” said Chief Catherine Merrick. “It has piled on top of the other difficulties we have faced.”

In 2014, after decades of appeals to provincial and federal officials for action to address the devastating impacts on the local economy caused by the hydro-electric project, members of the reserve occupied the Jenpeg generating station that sits at the edge of the reserve. Only after six weeks of occupation did NDP Premier Greg Selinger agree to come and offer a personal “apology” for the provincial government’s role in destroying the community’s traditional economic base. Government promises of revenue-sharing of Jenpeg profits, environmental cleanup, and relief from massive winter electricity bills have yet to be fulfilled.

In addition, many of the older people in Cross Lake are products of the Canadian state’s residential school program—a horrific, century-long practice of forcibly removing native children from their homes and incarcerating them in religious run schools cum work-camps, often hundreds of miles from their parents. Cross Lake was itself the site of one such school until 1969.

The Canadian government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the removal of one-third of all native children to these schools over generations met the definition of “cultural genocide” and is responsible for continued family dysfunction in many native communities.

Between 5,000 and 7,000 children died whilst in the custody of the residential schools from disease, malnutrition, fires, suicide and physical abuse. In some cases, healthy children were consciously placed in dormitories with children suffering from tuberculosis.

Discipline was harsh, with children systematically humiliated and physically abused by teachers who would berate them as “stupid Indians.” Children were often corporally punished for speaking their native language. Many were also sexually abused.

The social crisis engulfing Cross Lake arises from conditions common to aboriginal populations across the country. Life spans for native people fall far below the national average. Diseases such as tuberculosis are rampant in some communities. HIV and AIDS rates are higher on some western Canadian native reserves than in the most vulnerable of African countries.

More than half of all native children live in poverty. Education opportunities are deplorable—fewer than 50 percent of students on reserves graduate from high school. The federally-funded- schools on native reserves receive on average 30 percent less funding than other Canadian schools.

Numerous native communities don’t have access to potable water, with boil water advisories in effect, on average, at over a hundred of the 631 native reserves at any given time.

Overcrowding in dilapidated homes is endemic. Almost half of all residences on native reserves require urgent, major repairs.

Incarceration rates for aboriginals are nine times the national average. A native youth is more likely to go to prison than get a high school diploma. Although they make up just 4 percent of Canada’s population, 25 percent of those held in federal prisons are aboriginal.

Poverty conditions are not restricted to those living on reserves. Natives in urban centers, which comprise about half of the rapidly growing 1.2 million native population, have the country’s highest unemployment rates, second only to the rates for native reserves. Nationwide, about 50 percent of First Nations people and Inuit are unemployed.

The vast mineral deposits in the Canadian North and the drive to further expand oil and gas extraction, pipeline construction, and hydro-electric mega-projects continue to place aboriginal communities directly in the firing line of exploitation by governments and the giant corporations they represent. It has been estimated that over the next decade exploitation of these resources on or near First Nations’ lands will generate at least $600 billion for oil, mining, construction, and drilling corporations. Already, commodity extraction earns the provincial and federal governments some $30 billion annually in taxes and royalties alone. What little revenues that are distributed to First Nations seldom reach the general population.

Many native youth mobilized by the 2013 Idle No More protest movement have begun to investigate the full gamut of questions surrounding the endemic poverty and exploitation of the aboriginal peoples. But what is required is not a retreat into the dead-end of a native nationalism that seeks a “new deal” with the Canadian bourgeoisie, through expanding “native” political structures within the Canadian capitalist state and the development of small pockets of native entrepreneurs. Rather, a mass political movement of the working class, uniting native and non-native people, must be developed so as to challenge the very foundations of the profit system and bring about the socialist reorganization of economic life so as to provide the resources for decent jobs, living standards and social facilities—including education, health, and housing—to all, regardless of ethnic or national origin.

Anti-protest laws attack democratic rights in Australia

Mike Head

Facing a worsening economic slump, governments in three Australian states have brought forward sweeping laws that criminalise protests or any other activities that are alleged to disrupt business operations.

The laws impose draconian punishments and boost police powers that can be used to suppress opposition, including industrial action by workers, to the deepening assault by governments and the corporate elite on jobs, living standards and social and environmental conditions.

In New South Wales (NSW), the most populous state, legislation was pushed through parliament this week that imposes fines of up to $5,500 for entering a property with the “intent” of interfering with the conduct of a business, and jail terms of up to seven years for hindering the operation of a mining-related project. The bill was passed on Wednesday, despite a protest by hundreds of people outside parliament on Tuesday.

On the other side of the country, in the former “mining boom” state of Western Australia, laws are being pushed through parliament that outlaw the possession of “things” or the erection of “barriers,” including picket lines, that could prevent “lawful activity.” In the island state of Tasmania, arrests have already been made under laws, first introduced in 2014, that prohibit protests that hinder business operations.

These laws blatantly attack fundamental democratic rights, including free speech, free movement and freedom to associate. Governments are pursuing the measures despite legal challenges being mounted on the grounds that they infringe the implied right to freedom of political communication that the courts previously found to exist in the Australian Constitution.

The NSW legislation delivers on undertakings by Premier Mike Baird, like those he made at a mining industry dinner in late 2014, where he said his Liberal-National government would “crack down” on civil disobedience and “throw the book” at people who “unlawfully enter mining sites.”

There have been numerous protests in recent years against mining projects, particularly coal seam gas operations. However, the Inclosed Lands, Crimes and Law Enforcement Amendment (Interference) Bill 2016 goes well beyond outlawing demonstrations at mining-related sites.

The new “aggravated offence” of “unlawful entry on inclosed lands,” with a maximum penalty of $5,500, will apply to any land on which a business or business-like undertaking is being conducted and where an individual allegedly interferes, attempts or intends to interfere with the business or undertaking. The inclusion of “intends to” amounts to the creation of a thought crime—a crime of thinking of interfering with a business.

Likewise, the police will have new powers of search and seizure where they suspect a person possesses “anything intended” to lock onto equipment or a structure for the purpose of interfering with a business. Police will also have wider powers to issue “move on” and other directions to people participating in demonstrations, protests, processions or organised assemblies if the police allege obstruction of people or traffic, or intimidation of other people.

The existing offence of intentionally or recklessly interfering with a mine, which carries up to seven years’ imprisonment, will be extended to cover mining exploration and construction sites. Almost simultaneously, the state government promulgated regulations to reduce the penalties that could be issued against mining companies that explore or mine illegally from a maximum of $1.1 million to just $5,000.

Introducing the anti-protest bill last week, NSW Industry Minister Anthony Roberts claimed that the provisions only sought to ensure the safety of businesses, the public and protesters, and to “balance” the democratic right to protest with the rights and interests of “the community as a whole.” In reality, the bill directly attacks the right to protest in order to protect the interests of the financial elite.

The Tasmanian laws are even more explicit in targeting basic democratic rights. A protestor is defined as someone who engages in an activity “for the purposes of promoting awareness of or support for an opinion, or belief, in respect of a political, environmental, social, cultural or economic issue.”

The Workplaces (Protection from Protest) Act imposes on-the-spot fines and escalating penalties—up to five years’ jail—for protestors who hinder access to premises, disrupt or damage the operations of a wide range of businesses, including manufacturing, construction, retail, forestry and mining.

The Act gives police extraordinary pre-emptive powers to “move on” a person they believe is about to commit an offence. These powers extend to entire organisations, such as environmental groups, trade unions or rank and file workers’ committees. It is then an offence for an individual or organisation to return to the area within four days.

Tasmanian Greens leader Cassey O’Connor said the legislation was driven by an anti-environmentalist ideology. But in introducing the bill, then Tasmanian Resources Minister Paul Harriss spelled out its wider pro-business and anti-democratic purposes. He said: “The central objective of the government is to ensure wealth-creating businesses can develop and grow free from disruptive protest action that prevents them from operating on a normal commercial basis.”

The Western Australian legislation overturns another democratic right—the onus on the police to prove guilt. The police need only suspect that a “thing” possessed or a “physical barrier” erected may be used “for the purpose of preventing a lawful activity” and the accused person must prove otherwise. If they cannot, they face up to two years in prison or a $24,000 fine.

Picket lines and other forms of industrial action are clearly covered by the legislation, because they can involve creating a physical barrier to prevent a “lawful activity.”

Former Greens federal leader Bob Brown last week issued a High Court constitutional challenge to the Tasmanian laws after being arrested in January, along with others, for protesting against the logging of a forest. The Act “impermissibly burdens the implied freedom of communication on government and political matters,” according to a writ filed by Brown’s solicitor. In NSW, Unions NSW, the state’s trade union federation, has threatened to mount a similar challenge.

However, the High Court, Australia’s supreme court, has in recent years eviscerated the so-called implied freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution. The constitution contains no bill of rights, or any other guarantee of basic democratic rights. During the 1990s, the court declared that the document implicitly prohibited laws that blocked political discussion, provided it occurred within the framework of the current parliamentary order, unless the legislation served a “legitimate end” of government.

Even that limited freedom has since been substantially nullified. In 2013, the High Court handed down two decisions that permitted governments to impose laws that override free speech if the measures sought to protect the public from “offensive material” or ensure that people could “go about their business unimpeded and undistracted.”

No section of the ruling establishment, including the courts, can be relied upon to defend even the most essential democratic rights. The anti-protest laws add to the vast framework of police state-style measures—such as detention without trial, mass surveillance and the outlawing of organisations—that has been erected by successive governments since 2001 on the pretext of combatting terrorism.

None of these measures is aimed at protecting the public, whether from terrorism or “unsafe” protests. Rather they are preparations to suppress the growing disaffection and unrest being produced by the assault on jobs and social conditions, and the accompanying US-led drive to war in the Middle East and against China.

Australia: Fairfax journalists strike over job cuts

Richard Phillips

Over 500 journalists at Fairfax Media’s Sydney Morning Herald, Age and Australian Financial Review walked out on strike yesterday after the company suddenly announced it would axe the equivalent of up to 120 editorial jobs, or about a quarter of the journalist positions at the newspapers.

The newsroom staff, who will remain on strike until Monday, were informed about the job destruction via email from the company’s editorial director Sean Aylmer at 11 a.m. on Thursday. He foreshadowed “redundancies, tightening contributor budgets and reducing travel costs and expenses.”

Striking Fairfax journalists in Sydney

Outraged by the cuts, Fairfax Media workers decided to defy Australia’s industrial relations laws, introduced by the last federal Labor government, which declare stoppages “unlawful” except during enterprise bargaining periods. Today, journalists at other Fairfax mastheads, the Canberra Times,Brisbane Times, Newcastle Herald and the Illawarra Mercury, decided to strike for 24 hours in solidarity with their Sydney and Melbourne colleagues.

Fairfax Media CEO Greg Hywood said the company, one of Australia’s largest media corporations, faced an “an ever-changing highly competitive media environment which involves rapid evolution of our publishing model.” The job cuts, he said, were “necessary to sustain high quality journalism.”

The job cuts have nothing whatsoever to do with “quality journalism.” Their purpose is to drive down costs, eliminate hard-won working conditions and increase the exploitation of the remaining workforce. They are part of a decade-long process of ruthless restructuring and job destruction to drive up profits. Fairfax recently announced a $24.7 million profit for the first half of the financial year, despite falling advertising revenue and declining newspaper circulation.

More than 2,500 journalist and printing industry jobs have been axed by Fairfax Media in the past eight years. In 2008, it cut 500 editorial positions, including journalists, editors, sub-editors and proofreaders; in 2011, 90 jobs; in 2012, 1,900 editorial and print positions; and in 2014, over 80 editorial jobs, including 30 photographers. The company shut down its print facilities at Chullora in Sydney and Tullamarine in Melbourne in 2014. In 2015–16, it destroyed over 160 editorial jobs at its regional newspapers in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.

Like the unions in the car, steel, engineering and mining industries, which have rubber-stamped the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has not opposed the job destruction, but instead assisted the company to achieve its cost-cutting requirements.

The MEAA has also helped the Murdoch-owned News Corp axe hundreds of jobs during the same period. This has included the elimination of over 1,500 editorial and printing jobs at the Australian, Daily Telegraph and Herald Sunin 2012 and the destruction of 55 journalists’ positions in 2015.

Rather than oppose the media corporations, the MEAA has diverted journalists’ anger into limited strikes and other harmless protests. This action has not been aimed at defending jobs but appealing to media management to involve the union in negotiating redundancies, new work schedules and various cost-cutting “alternatives.”

Addressing a rally of about 100 journalists outside Fairfax’s Sydney office today, MEAA chief executive officer Paul Murphy urged those in attendance to sign a union petition. The petition appeals to Hywood to “reconsider” the job cuts and “engage with your staff to find smarter, alternative ways to stay competitive and reduce costs without undermining these [newspaper] mastheads.”

In other words, management should work with the union, which will produce the required cost-savings.

Others addressing the rally included state Labor Party leader Luke Foley, state Greens MP David Shoebridge and UnionsNSW secretary Mark Morey. All feigned support for the striking journalists while appealing to the media corporation to “reassess” the job cuts because it was damaging its newspapers’ reputations. Shoebridge hailed the striking journalists for “standing up for the best interests of your employer.”

Despite the defiant stand of the journalists, underscored by those who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site, the struggle to defend jobs cannot advance if it remains under the grip of the MEAA, which will do whatever is necessary to impose the company’s requirements as has been repeatedly demonstrated over the past decade.

The defence of jobs and conditions requires the establishment of genuine rank-and-file committees, completely independent of the MEAA, and a turn to all the journalists, media workers and other sections of the working class in Australia and internationally facing similar attacks. Such a fight can only succeed if it is guided by a socialist perspective aimed at the complete reorganisation of society in the interests of all, not the profits of the media proprietors and other wealthy elites.

Germany: Siemens cuts another 2,500 jobs

Elisabeth Zimmermann

Siemens announced its latest round of job cuts on March 9. A total of 2,500 job cuts, including 2,000 in Germany, will take place globally in its engine division (process industries and engines). The greatest impact will be on workers at production sites for motors in Bavaria.

In Nuremberg, 700 jobs will be cut and in Ruhstorf, near Passau, half of the 1,300 jobs will go. In Bad Neustadt, 350 jobs will be cut and 150 are threatened in Erlangen. Between 20 and 30 jobs in this division will be cut in Berlin.

The destruction of these jobs comes on top of the 13,000 job cuts already announced by Chairman of the Board Joe Kaeser within the framework of the company’s restructuring last year. In addition to administration, the energy sector has been the main victim of this programme of cost-cutting and job losses.

Like last year, the reasons given for the measures were the “decline in oil prices,” “deepening global crisis,” “decreased demand for equipment and engines in the oil and gas industry” and “increased international competitiveness.”

Under these conditions, shareholders are demanding drastic cost-cutting measures, an intensification of exploitation, as well as the outsourcing of jobs to cheap labour countries in Eastern Europe and Asia.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung cited Jürgen Brandes, the head of the process industry and engine division: “As a result, we have to optimise our production network and reduce the number of production locations for products which are similar or the same.” Currently, with a turnover of €9 billion, Siemens employs 46,000 workers globally in this sector, 16,000 of whom work in Germany. Overall, Siemens employs 348,000 workers globally, 114,000 in Germany as of October 30, 2015.

When the massive job cuts were announced at factory meetings in the affected locations last Thursday, workers responded with outrage and anger. Many of them have worked in Siemens factories for decades, sometimes including entire families.

Many workers suspect that behind the announcing of new job cuts in stages lies divide-and-rule tactics. The fear is widespread that the factories in Nuremberg and Ruhstorf, which are heavily impacted by the latest cuts, could soon be shut down completely.

In Nuremberg and Bad Neustadt, protests were held in front of the factories. According to a report in the Passauer Neue Presse, booing, whistling and angry shouts could be heard through the closed doors of the Lower Bavaria hall in Ruhstorf, where security guards guarded the door.

Representatives of the IG Metall trade union and works council responded as they always do. They acted as if they were surprised and outraged, claimed not to have been informed about the latest measures and assumed a combative pose. According to the online edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Siemens Central Works Council Chairwoman Birgit Steinborn had announced her intention to fight for every single job.

Steinborn is deputy chair on the supervisory board and it is well known what she means by “defence of jobs in Germany.” Early last summer, the works council and IG Metall organised a day of action under the reactionary slogan “Strengthen our Germany location.” The entire action served to divide the workers of the global company and mobilise them against each other.

IG Metall wants at all costs to prevent a joint international struggle by all Siemens employees. Steinborn now declares again, “Outsourcing puts the industrial and innovation location Germany at risk. Siemens has a special responsibility here.”

At many levels, IG Metall and the works council are part of Siemens’ leadership and management. In the name of competitiveness, they call for rationalisation measures and propose their own cuts.

The deceitful character of Steinborn’s statement that she intends to fight for every single job is made clear by a report on the web site of Bavarian state radio (BR). On the basis of information from works council sources, the report details problems with the production of large motors. “The 28 global locations of the process industry and engine division are, according to BR information, only working at half capacity.”

The report continued by noting that the division was “the company’s second weakest,” which was “with a margin of almost 6 percent far from the stipulated 12 percent.” In justification of the job cuts, BR cited Works Council Chair Steinborn, “Even Siemens central works council chairwoman Birgit Steinborn acknowledges that the business area is ‘in a very challenging position.’”

With reference to the situation in Bad Neustadt, BR reported, “Last year, the atmosphere was already tense and IG Metall expected that the next wave of personnel cuts could hit Bad Neustadt.”

IG Metall and the works council function as co-managers and a factory police force in order to force through the job cuts and attacks against the workforce. They intend to smother all resistance to this as quickly as possible.

An internationalist, socialist perspective is thus even more urgently needed to defend jobs, whether at Siemens, VW or Bombardier, to name only a handful of the global firms that have announced massive job cuts recently.

Living standards fall and discontent rises in Russia

Vladimir Volkov

Both official statistics and recent public opinion polls in Russia show a sharp fall in income levels and living standards.

In 2015, for the first time in many years, Russian citizens spent more money than they earned. The difference between the population’s incomes and expenditures amounted to 420 billion rubles ($5.5 billion), the first deficit in 18 years. Experts with the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis told the newspaper Kommersant, “the results of 2015 were really extraordinary for the overwhelming majority of the fifty million Russian households.” In an article entitled, “Citizens lose their liquidity,” the newspaper described a “shocking restructuring of household economic strategy.”

The last time the economy experienced something similar was in 1998, when Russia defaulted on its debt and its currency collapsed to one fourth of its previous level. When account is taken of the fact that over the past two decades much of what remained of the Soviet-era infrastructure and social services has been eradicated, the situation facing the population is now much bleaker.

According to the figures of the state agency Rosstat, the population’s real incomes have decreased by 4 percent compared to a year ago, and pensions have fallen by 3.8 percent.

The Russian Ministry of the Economy recently reported that in 2015 the volume of retail trade in the country fell by 10 percent compared to the previous year. It is now lower than it was in 1970. The “depth of decline of foodstuff purchases in 2015 is unprecedented. It did not fall as much even during the crisis of 1998-1999, when the average income fell much more precipitously. This tells us that the present crisis, because of the Russian government’s retaliatory sanctions, has hit particularly the poorest layers of population, those, whose share of food expenditures is the highest,” it observed.

The portion of the Russian population with incomes below the “official minimum” has increased to 13 percent. Citizens have stopped consuming and “are passive observers of the process of trade,” says the Ministry. They save their money and spend it only for absolute necessities.

An investigation by the Higher School of Economics has shown that 12 percent of the population lives at or below the level of extreme poverty. Only a quarter of Russia’s citizens earn more than twice the subsistence minimum.

In a February article, the online publication Gazeta.ru pointed to a sharp increase in outstanding debt. During the past year, 40 million people—more than half the economically active population—have borrowed 11 trillion rubles ($142 million) in new debt. Only 8 million of them are able to pay their interest in a timely manner.

International rating agencies have again cut their economic outlook for Russia. According to a new assessment by Moody’s, in 2016 the country’s economy will contract by 2.5 percent, instead of an earlier forecast of 0.5-1 percent.

Standard & Poor’s has continued to keep the rating of Russian long-term foreign currency obligations at BB+ level. Reaffirming its “negative” outlook for the economy, the agency expects the situation to worsen.

For its part, the Russian government does not anticipate any significant improvement in the next few years. According to an estimate prepared by the Ministry of Finance, the economy will be growing at an annual rate of 1-1.3 percent from now until 2030. Overall, between 2014 and 2030 the Russian economy will grow by just 13 percent. This is the same increase it experienced during the three year period from 2011-2013.

The ministry also expects real wages to decline during 2015-2016 by 13 percent, and will not recover to the level of 2014 until the year 2025.

The rapid decline in the situation facing the majority of the population is accompanied by a further growth of social inequality. Every member of the governing board of the Rosneft oil corporation averaged a salary in 2015 of 336 million rubles ($4.3 million). At the same time, the average wage in Russia stood at 33,000 rubles ($425), or 1/850th of the income of the oligarchs running the state-controlled energy giant.

An ever growing number of the country’s inhabitants views the Soviet period positively. According to a recent survey by the Levada Center, when indicating their preferred economic model, 52 percent of respondents chose “state planning.” Only 26 percent chose a market economy based on private property, while 22 percent could not make up their minds.

Levada Center Director Lev Gudkov observed, “The guaranteed modest prosperity of the Soviet system has taken on a function of a past ‘normal.’ The contemporary situation is evaluated in comparison with the popular impressions of that memory.”

Another notable feature is a growth of moods of protest, which, while not yet taking on a political character, are attracting wider layers of the population and “gathering strength in the provinces,” according to a leading expert of social and economic programs of the Center of Social and Labor rights, Petr Biziukov.

“The two capitals [Moscow and Petersburg],” he notes, “account for just 15 percent of all protest actions. Regional centers [account for] another 40 percent. Oblast centers [account for] 27 percent, and small towns and villages [account for] 13 percent. This means that labor conflict is moving from the center to the periphery. In the past, strikes in the provinces were unusual. People in small towns were afraid to get the reputation of a scandal-monger or lose their jobs. The fact that they have begun to act tells us that they have overcome a certain amount of restraint.”

Biziukov went on to note that strikes are no longer just local. “The movement is changing form. In the past, the protests were very isolated. But last year we recorded a number of inter-regional actions. The most notable such action [was] the protests of long distance haulers. According to our data, 45 regions were affected by it. In May, there were the teachers’ strikes in 20 regions. Inter-regional protests are gaining ground. Whereas before, they involved at most 9 regions. Now, the number of simultaneously protesting regions is growing.”

US drug prices doubled since 2011

Brad Dixon

According to a new report by the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, the average price of brand-name drugs increased by 16.2 percent last year. Between 2011 and 2015, branded prescription drug prices have nearly doubled, rising 98.2 percent. Since 2008, the prices have increased by a whopping 164 percent.

Drug spending rose by 5.2 percent in 2015. This was about half the increase seen in 2014, the year of the largest hike since 2003.

The report is based upon prescription use data for members with drug coverage provided by Express Scripts plan sponsors. In assessing changes in plan costs, the report distinguishes between the relative contributions from changes in patient utilization (e.g. more patients being prescribed the drug) and changes in the unit price of the drug (e.g., price hikes).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most drug spending was on traditional drugs (small-molecule, solid drugs) to treat conditions such as heartburn, depression and diabetes. The recent trend has been a shift to specialty drugs. Still, within traditional therapy categories there were significant increases in spending on medications to treat diabetes, heartburn and ulcers, and skin conditions.

Diabetes medications remain the most expensive of the traditional drug categories. Drug spending in this category increased by 14 percent, with the hike being equally influenced by increased utilization of the drugs and rise in unit cost. Three diabetes treatments—Lantus, Januvia and Humalog—were among the top five drugs in terms of spending across all traditional therapy classes.

Although not discussed in the report, an investigation by Bloomberg News last year found evidence of “shadow pricing” by drug manufacturers, where companies raise their prices immediately after their competitors do so. The investigation found that the prices of diabetes drugs Lantus and Lemivir had increased in tandem 13 times since 2009, and evidence of similar shadow pricing for the drugs Humalog and Novolog.

Heartburn and ulcer drugs saw a 35.6 percent increase in spending, almost solely due to the rise in unit cost. Although 92.3 percent of the medications filled in this category were generic, the price unit trend was heavily influenced by the increase in prices of branded drugs such as Nexium, Dexilant and Prevacid.

Treatments for skin conditions also saw a significant increase of 27.8 percent in spending, again due almost completely to rises in the unit costs of the medications. The report notes that these increases occurred for both generic and branded therapies, largely due to industry consolidation through mergers and acquisitions leading to less competition in the market. While 86.3 percent of the drugs filled were generic, many of the generic versions saw sharp increases in unit cost, including the two most widely used corticosteroids, clobetasol (96.2 percent) and triamcinolone (28 percent).

While the overall spending increase for traditional therapy classes was nominal (0.6 percent), the primary factor for the increase in spending came from specialty medications. Specialty medications require special education and close patient monitoring, such as drugs to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis or cystic fibrosis. Spending on specialty drugs rose by 17.8 percent in 2015. The report found that 37.7 percent of drug spending was for specialty drugs in 2015, and the figure is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2018.

Spending in this category was topped by inflammatory conditions—such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases and psoriasis—which rose by 25 percent, driven by a 10.3 percent increase in utilization and 14.7 percent rise in unit cost. The average cost per prescription in 2015 was $3,035.95. The medications Humira Pen and Enbrel, which captured more than 66 percent of the market share for this class, saw unit cost increases of more than 17 percent.

Spending on oncology therapies increased by 23.7 percent, due to both increased use (9.3 percent) and increased unit cost (14.4 percent). New cancer therapies average $8,000 per prescription and the average cancer regimen is around $150,000 per patient. Between 2005 and 2015, the anti-cancer drug Gleevec, manufactured exclusively by Novartis, has seen its price more than triple, with an annual cost of $92,000. In 2015, the year prior to the drug’s patent expiration, Novartis increased the unit cost of the drug by 19.3 percent. This is a common practice for companies facing patent expiration.

Drug spending on cystic fibrosis treatments rose by a significant 53.4 percent, largely based on increases in unit cost (40.9 percent vs. 13.3 percent from patient utilization). This rise was largely due to use of the new oral combination therapy, Orkambi, which became available in mid-2015. The drug costs more than $20,000 per month.

The report forecasts that between 2016 and 2018 spending will increase annually by 7-8 percent for traditional drugs and around 17 percent for specialty drugs.

The prices of generic drugs have on average decreased, although there are notable exceptions. Pharmaceutical companies like Horizon Pharma, Turing Pharmaceuticals, and Valeant Pharmaceuticals have purchased generic drugs and then significantly hiked their prices.

The report notes the emergence of “captive pharmacies” in 2015 as another factor responsible for higher drug spending. Captive pharmacies are owned or operated by pharmaceutical manufacturers and tend to promote their manufacturer’s drugs, rather than generic or other low-cost alternatives. The report gives as examples the arrangements between Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Philidor Rx Services, and between Horizon Pharma and Linden Care Pharmacy.

The Express Scripts data matches the findings released earlier this year by the Truveris OneRx National Drug Index, which found that branded drugs rose by 14.8 percent in 2015.

Despite the widespread media publicity of the notorious drug price hikes by companies like Turing and Valeant, pharmaceutical companies have continued to inflate prices in 2016, with Pfizer leading the way with an average price hike of 10.6 percent for 60 of its branded drugs.

Workers are rightly outraged at the skyrocketing price of drugs. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted last year found that 74 percent of respondents felt that the drug companies put profits before people.

The political establishment, however, has sought both to exploit this anger for electoral support and to direct it into safe channels that do not disrupt the status quo.

A congressional hearing held in January placed a spotlight on the price-gouging practices of HYPERLINK Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing Pharmaceuticals, whose dubious activities were highlighted in a pair of congressional memos. The purpose of the hearing, however, was not probe the underlying causes of the sharp rise in drug prices. Instead, legislators sought to safeguard the profits of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole through a verbal lambasting of the industry’s most notorious culprits.

Drug prices have also been a theme in the presidential campaign. The Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, for example, released a campaign advertisement earlier this month attacking the “predatory pricing” of Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Like the congressional hearing, this is all for show. Of all the presidential candidates, Clinton is the top recipient of donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industry, taking in $410,460 according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, who has stated that he will support Clinton if he loses the Democratic nomination, received $82,094 in donations from the industry. Sanders has proposed a series of minor reforms to address drug prices, such as the re-importation of drugs from Canada, allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers, and decreasing the patent life of branded drugs.

None of the candidates, including the “democratic socialist” Sanders, challenge the private ownership of the pharmaceutical industry in which everything from research and development and clinical testing to drug pricing and promotion are subordinated to the profit interests of corporations.

Syrian war enters sixth year with graver dangers still ahead

Bill Van Auken

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the war in Syria that has claimed well over a quarter of a million lives, and, between turning nearly five million into refugees and internally displacing another seven million, has driven more than half the country’s population from their homes.

The national economy has been shattered, with over half of Syrians unemployed and 85 percent living in poverty. Much of the country has been plunged into darkness after continuous attacks on power stations and other electricity infrastructure.

Perhaps most staggering of all, the unrelenting violence combined with the destruction of the country’s health care system and other social infrastructure as well as the plummeting of living standards has driven down life expectancy in Syria from 70.5 years in 2011 to just 55.4 years in 2015.

The rape of Syria, alongside the decimation of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, constitutes one of the great crimes of imperialism in the 21st century. What is commonly referred to by the media as the Syrian civil war or “uprising” has in fact constituted a massive “regime-change” operation carried out by Washington and its regional allies with complete contempt for the lives and well-being of the Syrian people.

This proxy war has been waged almost entirely by Al Qaeda-linked militias armed and funded by the CIA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, which all collaborated to funnel in tens of thousands of so-called foreign fighters.

The attempts to sell this war to the American people, as a “humanitarian” intervention by the Obama administration and its media accomplices, and even—by various pseudo-left organizations—to portray it as a “revolution” have fallen totally flat.

As the anniversary fell this week, the level of fighting had diminished significantly under a “cessation of hostilities agreement” brokered by Washington and Moscow. The United Nations has brought together representatives of the Syrian government together with the collection of Islamist fanatics and foreign intelligence assets united in the Riyadh opposition in a third attempt to negotiate a cease-fire and “political transition.”

Meanwhile, the government of Vladimir Putin announced on Monday that it was withdrawing the majority of its military forces from Syria, while maintaining its naval facility in Tartus and its air base in the western province of Latakia.

In less than six months, the Russian intervention enabled Syrian government troops to regain some 4,000 square miles of territory and 400 towns, solidifying their grip over the western part of the country which includes the major population centers, while cutting off the main supply routes from Turkey for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s Al Qaeda franchise.

The Russian intervention only underscored the phony character of the “war on ISIS” waged by the US, which was calibrated not to weaken the “rebels,” among whom ISIS and al-Nusra counted as the most potent contingents.

The recent turn of events prompted angry and sarcastic editorials from both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, both of which from the outset have reflected the views of those within the US ruling establishment and the Obama administration itself who have pressed for a more direct US military intervention. Both papers ridiculed Obama for suggesting that the Putin government’s Syrian intervention would lead it into a “quagmire.”

“As quagmires go, Mr. Putin will take it,” the Journal commented. “On Monday he announced that Russia will begin withdrawing the ‘main part’ of its forces in Syria having accomplished his strategic goals at little cost.”

Similarly, the Post editorialized that far from landing in the quagmire, “Mr. Putin has accomplished quite a lot, and his gains have come at the expense of US interests and of Mr. Obama’s stated goals in the region.”

It would be a serious mistake to interpret the immediate conjuncture and the bitter recriminations over Putin’s supposed victory as a signal that Washington has thrown in the towel over its Syrian intervention. US imperialism is not about to accept the consolidation of a regime in Syria allied to Moscow, any more than it will countenance the rise of Russia as a regional, much less global, rival.

For the moment, the Obama administration will seek to exploit the UN-brokered “peace talks” and any concessions that it can wring from Moscow, Tehran and the government of President Bashar al-Assad itself to pursue the regime change that it has been unable to bring about by force.

After the election in November, however, it may rapidly turn to new tactics. It is a longstanding practice of the US government to delay as much as possible the launching of new wars in election years until after the vote in order to prevent militarism from becoming a subject of popular political debate.

Within the Obama administration, there is a substantial faction that has consistently pressed for more direct US military intervention, as was highlighted by the recent article published in the Atlantic magazine, headlined “Obama’s doctrine.” It quoted figures like current Secretary of State John Kerry, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, former defense secretary Leon Panetta and others criticizing Obama for failing to launch missile strikes in September 2013 over the fabricated charges that the Syrian government had carried out chemical weapons attacks.

Current Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is quoted explaining that Obama’s view is that Asia “is the part of the world of greatest consequence to the American future.” He is therefore loathe to have another US war in the Middle East distract from preparations for a military confrontation with China.

Regime change in Syria was always for US imperialism a means to an end. It was aimed at preparing for confrontations with both Russia and Iran by depriving them of a key regional ally.

That the US military is preparing for such a wider conflict found fresh and ominous confirmation in testimony given this week by the uniformed commander of the US Army.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley warned the House Armed Services Committee that, while his troops were prepared to conduct “counterterrorism” and “counterinsurgency” missions, fighting “ISIS, Al Qaeda, al-Nusra and any other terrorist groups,” he had “grave concerns” about their readiness to engage in a “great-power war” with an enemy such as China, Russia or Iran.

“There is a high level of risk associated with those contingencies right now,” he added, arguing that failing to build up US troop strength would be to “roll the dice.” After testifying, General Milley and other service commanders gave the congressional committee “risk assessments” for another major war in a closed session.

For all of the immense carnage suffered by the Syrian people, the dangerous spread of the conflict regionally and the massive flow of refugees into Western Europe, it is becoming increasingly clear that the criminal war for regime change in Syria represents only the antechamber of far bloodier and indeed global military conflagrations.