The danger of nuclear war in North Korea and the return of German militarism

Peter Schwarz

President Donald Trump’s threats to destroy North Korea have brought the world closer to an atomic war than the Cuban missile crisis 55 years ago. But unlike then, the president sitting in the White House is not seeking to rein in the hotheads among his generals, but is continuing to inflame the conflict daily.

European politicians and media, especially in Germany and France, have responded to the escalating conflict mainly with calls for restraint, distancing themselves equally from their nominal ally in Washington and the regime in Pyongyang.

For example, the German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused the American president of using the same slogans and responding to North Korean threats with the same aggressive rhetoric as the North Korean leader. That “worried him and made him fearful,” Gabriel said, “as in the First World War, we are sleepwalking into a war, but in this case, a war that will be conducted with nuclear weapons.”

The official statements from Berlin hardly differ from those from Beijing, which likewise calls for both sides to exercise moderation and restraint. It would be naive to see this merely as an expression of concern over the devastating consequences of a nuclear war. For example, NATO also expressed its concern at the “incendiary and threatening rhetoric,” then it urged North Korea alone to “refrain from further provocations and give up its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner”, as a spokesman for the military alliance said.

The German media presentation of the conflict as being fuelled only by Trump, while “sensible” and “adult” US politicians like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urge moderation, does not hold up under closer scrutiny. For example, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who is usually counted among the “adults”, has threatened North Korea with the “destruction of its people”. Even newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which are close to the Democrats, regard a preemptive strike against North Korea as a legitimate option.

The distancing of the German government from Washington is to be explained by the fact that it increasingly regards the US as its most important imperialist rival and considers an open conflict with its previous ally inevitable in the long term. This applies not only to Europe and the surrounding regions, but also—and above all—to East Asia, whose importance for the global economy and thus also for Germany has increased massively over the last 25 years.

The US war threats against North Korea and the associated pressure on China are understood in Berlin as an attack on German economic and geopolitical interests. This becomes very clear when one studies the major publications of the relevant foreign policy think tanks.

Even before the last Bundestag (federal) election four years ago, the German Science and Policy Foundation (SWP) published the paper “New Power. New Responsibility.” More than 50 representatives from government, the media, universities, think tanks and all the parties represented in the Bundestag participated in preparing a change in course for Germany’s foreign policy. After the election, the new government then put into practice the proposed return to German militarism and a German great-power policy.

Now, the German Foreign Policy Society (DGAP) has presented a 40-page dossier entitled “Foreign policy challenges for the next federal government”, which will expand this course in entirely new dimensions. Twelve contributions deal with all important world regions, analyse the “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks” of German foreign policy and develop strategies for action.

The introduction, drafted by Daniela Schwarzer, the director, and Christian Mölling, the DGAP’s research director, begins with the words: “The new federal government will have to make important decisions about the national and European framework by the autumn of 2017.”

In what follows, the two authors leave no doubt that they regard the US as the most important “challenge” for German foreign policy. They refer to the previous international partner as a “political and economic risk factor”, which jeopardizes the “rule-based regulatory structures” upon which Germany is dependent “in terms of security policy as well as well as financial and economic issues”.

“Probably the most important change in the overall strategic position of Germany in 2017 is the policy of the United States under President Donald Trump,” they write. Since Trump took office, “the US has become a decisive factor of uncertainty”. The US president undoubtedly undermined the “consensus of Western-liberal values”. Under Trump, the US “no longer stands for a state that wants to further develop and defend the liberal world order”.

Around the world, US policy is viewed as a threat to German interests. “There is the danger that the US will leave the [world] order based on institutions and international law, and use its power for short-term advantages,” write Schwarzer and Mölling. “The undermining of the internal unity of the EU, such as Trump’s closing ranks with countries like Poland, Hungary or the United Kingdom against the broad European consensus, has also become a real risk.”

The DGAP also warns against the “strengthening of protectionism”, the “destabilization of the world trade system”, the “danger of an escalation in the relationship between China and the USA” and “further destabilization in the Gulf region” because of US policy.

The DGAP dossier depicts China as the main arena of German-American antagonisms. Under the heading, “Security and Economic Interdependence: Germany Between the USA and China”, Josef Braml and Henning Riecke argue that in the conflict between the USA and China, Germany is taking the side of America’s traditional allies. For Germany, “as a trading nation with extensive economic ties to both states and other actors in the Asia-Pacific area”, to defend its interests, it should function as an “honest broker” rather than “de-escalating tensions”.

Braml and Riecke show how German and American business interests collide in the region in several areas. They warn, for example, that Trump might be able to make capital out of America’s role as a protective power in relation to Japan, South Korea and other allies by forcing them to make concessions on trade and monetary policy to the detriment of Germany. In monetary policy too, where the dollar will have to share its lead role with the euro and the Chinese Yuan for the foreseeable future, they see a smouldering conflict.

Of China’s most important international economic project, the “One Belt, One Road” silk road initiative, they write that “it is perceived in Washington as an economic and political counterweight to the economic and political order dominated by the US”, while international, i.e. German and European, companies are interested in China’s global infrastructure plans. For example, “Deutsche Bank and the China Development Bank plan to jointly fund Silk Road Initiative projects to the tune of three-billion-euro over the next five years.”

Similar assessments can be found in SWP publications. For example, a contribution that appeared in the latest issue of the SWP journal International Politics, under the title, “Plea for a new German foreign policy in uncertain times”, warns against any “misjudgement that the transatlantic crisis had begun with Trump and would end with his departure”. In fact, the problem had already begun under President Obama.

Also, “the supposed moderates” in Trump’s team had made “the radical break with 70 years of American post-war policy their own,” writes the author of the article, Time journalist Jörg Lau. In a contribution for the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, and business consultant Gary Cohn, had praised the president’s “clarity”, that the world “is not a global community, but an arena where nations, non-governmental organizations and businesses struggle for advantage... Instead of denying this elementary nature of international relations, we welcome it.”

According to Lau, this text is “a shocking document” for the German government. It was a question of a “conflict of principles” rather than “the usual differences between Willy Brandt and Richard Nixon, Helmut Schmidt and Jimmy Carter, Gerhard Schröder and George W. Bush”. This was “something else”. It concerned the “fundamental questions of the world order”.

The response of the SWP and the DGAP to this “fundamental conflict” is unambiguous: they advocate a return to the great power and militaristic traditions of Germany, which twice inflicted disaster upon the world. Under the pretence of defending “Western values” and “rule-based structures of order” against Trump, they are advocating German dominance over Europe, the formation of new international power blocks, and a massive military rearmament.

The headlines alone of the DGAP dossier are symptomatic: “Germany’s leadership tasks in Europe”; “Use the scope for action in the Western Balkans now”; “A permanent commitment: Ukraine” and “Burden-sharing in NATO: German leadership remains in demand”. Other contributions deal with German interests in the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Lau advocates that the Bundestag election should become a massive campaign for military rearmament. He warns against a “reflexive counter-course to the US president” for disarmament and writes, “Instead of making the Bundestag election a referendum on a supposedly dangerous rearmament, the population should be enlightened about the new logic of German security: not because of, but in spite of Trump, not because he commands it, but because we want to oppose his irrational policy, we must spend much more on defence.” According to Lau, it is a matter of “Germany’s assertiveness in a crumbling West”.

These statements make clear that the danger of war in North Korea, even if it were temporarily defused, is only a prelude to further conflicts, which would inevitably result in a Third World War if they are not stopped by a mass movement of the working class. As at the beginning of the last century, conflicts of interest between the imperialist powers have become so acute that they can no longer be resolved by peaceful means.

The return to militarism is supported in Germany by all the parties represented in the Bundestag. In particular, the Left Party is accusing the government of not opposing Washington aggressively enough.

The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) is the only party fighting in the election campaign to unite the international working class based on a socialist programme directed against war and capitalism.

Sales declines at US department stores belie claims of economic recovery

Barry Grey

Major US retail chains this week reported continuing declines in same-store sales in the second quarter of 2017, sending their stock prices plummeting. On Thursday, Macy’s, Kohl’s and Dillard’s all reported negative sales results.

Same-store sales declined 2.8 percent at Macy’s and 0.4 percent at Kohl’s. Since 2015, Macy’s has experienced year-over-year sales declines in every quarter.

Macy’s shares fell 10 percent Thursday and Kohl’s dropped 5.8 percent. Macy’s stock price is now down over 40 percent this year. Kohl’s has fallen nearly 25 percent. On Thursday, Dillard’s stock plunged 15 percent, wiping out all of its gains for the year.

The declines continued Friday, with Macy’s losing another 0.24 percent, Kohl’s dropping 2.18 percent and Dillard’s closing with a loss of nearly 6 percent for the day.

On Friday, JC Penney, already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, revealed a bigger quarterly loss than it had anticipated, sending its stock plunging more than 15 percent to close below $4 a share for the first time ever. The department store chain said it lost $62 million in the second quarter, a greater loss than in the same period of 2016. It also revealed that its same-store sales had fallen by more than 1 percent.

JC Penney stock has fallen by more than 50 percent so far in 2017 and plunged 85 percent over the past five years. At its peak in 1998, the firm’s market capitalization was $30 billion. Today, its market value is just over $1 billion.

Major retail chains that cater to moderate- and low-income consumers such as Macy’s, Kohl’s, JC Penney, Sears, Target and Kmart have all announced large-scale store closures in recent months, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs and placing in jeopardy many thousands more as the survival of the commercial malls they anchor grows increasingly precarious.

Macy’s is in the process of closing an additional 100 stores. Last month, Sears announced it was closing 43 more stores in the US on top of the 265 closings it announced earlier in the year. Its sales are down nearly 37 percent since early 2013.

In February, JC Penney announced plans to close between 130 and 140 stores as well as two distribution centers.

The wave of department store closings is part of a broader flood of retail closures and bankruptcies, on pace to surpass the numbers recorded at the height of the financial crisis and recession in 2008. As of July, US retailers had announced more than 3,200 store closures this year, with analysts expecting the figure to rise to more than 8,600.

Since October of 2016, retailers have eliminated more than 90,000 jobs. Since 2001, some 500,000 retail jobs have been slashed in the US.

Retail chains that filed for bankruptcy or liquidated so far this year include:

* Dollar Express, which closed all 323 locations, eliminating 3,000 jobs

* Payless Shoes, which filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to close 400 stores

* Clothing retailer Rue 21, HHGregg, Gordmans and Gander Mountain, which have either filed or are planning to file for bankruptcy

* American Apparel, which is liquidating its remaining stores and a factory in Los Angeles

* RadioShack, which filed for bankruptcy for the second time in two years and announced the closure of 552 stores

For the most part, those employed in retail are paid poverty-level wages. Currently there are over 32 million such workers, paid an average of $10.87 an hour, with cashiers receiving even less.

Two major factors are driving what CNN Money refers to as the “retail apocalypse.” One is the rise of online retailers, particularly Amazon, which are gaining increasing market share at the expense of so-called “brick and mortar” companies. Amazon, which accounted for 53 percent of all online sales growth in 2016, is expected to overtake Macy’s this year as the country’s largest apparel retailer.

More pervasive, however, is the impact of the devastating social crisis affecting broad layers of the working class. While President Donald Trump boasts of a booming economy, citing record high stock prices, and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen talks of “full employment” and a full recovery from the post-2008 “Great Recession,” tens of millions are struggling to survive on the basis of poverty-level wages that have either stagnated or declined and part-time or temporary employment in place of full-time jobs that have been permanently eliminated.

Even as the stock market is driven upwards by unlimited subsidies from the Federal Reserve and unchecked financial speculation, real economic growth continues to stagnate. The US gross domestic product is rising at an anemic annual rate of 2 percent, far below the rates of previous post-World War II economic recoveries. And despite a nominal unemployment rate of just 4.3 percent, wages continue to rise a mere 2 percent on an annual basis, far more slowly than in previous post-recession periods and below the rate of prices increases for basic necessities.

Large sections of the working population lack the wherewithal to buy more than the bare necessities, which is why the retail slump is primarily hitting stores that cater to the working class.

That the destruction of decent-paying and stable employment is driving the retail crisis is confirmed by the announcement Thursday of plans to close up to 135 Applebee’s and up to 60 IHOP restaurants—two chains owned by parent company DineEquity. Both restaurant chains feature relatively low prices and appeal primarily to a working class clientele. Both recorded lower same-restaurant sales in the second quarter of 2017.

Australian government orders sham postal “survey” on same-sex marriage

Mike Head

As part of an escalating political crisis, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government has ordered an unprecedented, anti-democratic and probably illegal postal ballot on same-sex marriage. The measure has been taken in a desperate bid to stave off splits in the Liberal-National Coalition on the issue.

Turnbull and his ministers announced the ballot on Wednesday, immediately after the Senate rejected, for the second time, the government’s bill for a national plebiscite on same-sex marriage. Unable to command a parliamentary majority for its plebiscite bill, the Liberal-National Coalition government is trying to achieve the same ends by under-handed means.

Growing calls are being made to boycott the ballot, while yesterday two High Court challenges were launched to halt it, via urgent interlocutory injunctions, potentially for months, until its legality can be tested.

The non-binding postal vote, now officially being called a “survey,” is a fraud on every level—politically, legally and organisationally. Like the abandoned plebiscite, it has nothing to do with the long-overdue recognition of the basic legal and democratic right of all couples to marry, regardless of gender. On the contrary, it amounts to another blatant effort to stymie the accelerating popular demand for marriage equality.

Even if a majority votes "yes" for the designated question—“Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”—the government has refused to be bound by the result. If, however, a majority votes  “no,” the government has already ruled out permitting any marriage equality bill to be put before the parliament for a vote.

Not only is the postal ballot being launched to delay a parliamentary vote on the issue; it is designed to pander to the most right-wing, socially conservative elements in the Coalition and let loose the homophobic and religious fundamentalist social base on which they rest.

Already, the airwaves are being polluted by bigoted taunts against same-sex couples, accusing them of “abuse and neglect” of their children. One pamphlet asserts that their children are more likely to use drugs, be unemployed and suffer depression.

Turnbull has given the green light for this campaign, declaring: “We’re not going to shut down democracy and debate because people here or there say outrageous things or defamatory things.”

The prime minister is insisting, for the sake of his “progressive” electoral pitch to mainly upper-middle class layers, that he will vote “yes.” But he says he will not actively campaign for a "yes" vote. By contrast, Tony Abbott, the man Turnbull ousted as prime minister in 2015, has thrown himself into the fray, absurdly alleging that marriage equality is a threat to religious freedom and free speech.

Turnbull and key ministers from the socially conservative camp that devised the postal plan, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, are anxious to conduct the ballot within weeks, in order to avert divisions that could bring down Turnbull's increasingly fragile government. It holds just a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives and only 29 of the 76 Senate seats.

Their proposed “survey,” to be conducted between September 12 and November 15, would be unreliable, unrepresentative and open to manipulation and abuse. It would be far less accurate than the numerous surveys, some government-funded, conducted in recent times, all showing 60–70 percent support for marriage equality.

The ballot would particularly disenfranchise young people—many of whom are unfamiliar with the postal system, or are not on the electoral rolls—as well as indigenous and other people living in remote locations, or those living or travelling overseas, or who have moved house since the last election.

Supposedly, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), acting on the government’s instructions, would post voting papers to all citizens on the electoral roll, requiring them to mail them back. Not only would ballots inevitably go astray; there would be no means to guarantee that the votes were cast by those to whom the letters were sent.

If ballots included personal identifiers, in order to prevent manipulation, the ABS would then be able to match respondents' opinions on same-sex marriage with other personal information, violating the concept of a secret vote.

There is no precedent for such an operation. The government claims that it has validity because in 1974, the Whitlam government instructed the ABS to conduct a phone survey of 60,000 randomly selected people about a new national anthem. But Turnbull's postal ballot bears no relation to that phone survey, politically or logistically.

Moreover, the bill proposed this week by five Liberal Party backbenchers, in the event that the process produces a "yes" vote, would allow ministers of religion, military chaplains and “independent religious celebrants” to refuse to marry couples on grounds of sex, sexuality and family status. Other entities could legally refuse to provide facilities, goods or services.

Labor and the Greens, despite criticising the flaws in the postal vote, are imploring voters not to boycott it, thus giving it political legitimacy. They are pleading for young people to put themselves on the electoral rolls to participate, ostensibly as a means of ensuring a “yes” majority, in order to channel popular outrage over the ballot back into the parliamentary framework.

Speaking with feigned passion in parliament yesterday, Labor leader Bill Shorten said he would hold Turnbull responsible for “every hurtful bit of filth this debate will unleash.” Yet, he urged people: “Get your name on the electoral roll today, make your voice heard.”

Likewise, Greens leader Senator Richard Di Natale declared: “We are hoping that the shonky postal plebiscite is knocked off by the upcoming court challenges, but you’ll want to be on the roll in case it isn’t.”

This is sheer hypocrisy. The last Labor government—in which Shorten was a senior minister and with which the Greens formed a de facto coalition—effectively blocked same-sex marriage bills from 2007 to 2013. Like Turnbull, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard appeased the religious right wing in Labor’s own parliamentary ranks, in order to cling to office as her government imposed its rightwing agenda of austerity and war.

Legal experts have indicated that the High Court challenges could well succeed. One application lists seven grounds of objection. They include the lack of any legislation to authorise the $122 million ballot, violation of the legislation covering the ABS, which confines it to collecting “statistics,” not opinions, and the use of ministerial directions and regulations to by-pass parliament.

Regardless of the law suits, working people and youth should take no part in this sham. Its primary political purpose is to hold together a government and an entire parliamentary set-up that is preparing to join a US-led war against North Korea and China, and deepen the assault on the working class. Millions of people are already experiencing the destruction of full-time jobs, falling real wages, soaring prices for housing, utilities and other essentials, and deteriorating schools, healthcare and other social services.

The fight for basic democratic rights, such as marriage equality, can only be taken forward through the independent political mobilisation of the working class on the basis of a socialist perspective, against the ruling elite and its political servants, who are increasingly tearing up basic legal and democratic rights across the board in preparation for suppressing widespread social unrest.

Opioid-related deaths soaring in Australia

Margaret Rees

New research points to a rising number of accidental opioid overdose deaths in Australia, echoing the opioid epidemic ravaging the United States, particularly among low-income and unemployed people.

The study, “Accidental drug-induced deaths due to opioids in Australia, 2013,” published by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), is based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

A key finding was that accidental opioid deaths are trending upward. There were 398 deaths in 2007, soaring to 639 deaths in 2012—a terrible 60 percent increase that points to a deepening social crisis.

Prescription painkillers (pharmaceutical opioids) are now primarily responsible for more overdose deaths than heroin. Prescription painkillers caused 70 percent of the 668 opioid overdose deaths in 2013, more than double the other 30 percent due to heroin overdoses.

The largest proportion of deaths—40 percent—occurred in the 35–44 year age group, followed by the 25–34 age group and the 45–54 group, both with 27 percent. These are adults in their prime years, not adolescents.

During 2013, there were 432 male victims aged 15 to 54, about two-and-a-half times the 165 females in the same age group, suggesting that male workers are particularly being affected.

The trends are thought to have worsened since 2013. “We expect further increases once the deaths data for 2014 and 2015 are finalised,” report co-author Amanda Roxburgh told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“We’re seeing a real shift from illicit to pharmaceutical opioids implicated in these deaths, affecting a broader range of people who want to manage their pain. There’s good research showing there’s been a four-fold increase in the prescribing of these drugs between 1990 and 2014, particularly for Oxycontin, Tramadol and Fentanyl.”

Roxburgh suggested changes to medical prescription practices. She commented: “I think doctors need to prescribe for a shorter time and have the patient come in again for a review before they prescribe more.”

Once prescribed mainly for cancer patients, such opioids are now prescribed for acute pain after an operation and even chronic pain (lasting more than three months), such as lower back pain and osteoarthritis.

It is estimated that at least 20 percent of the population suffers chronic pain. This rising occurrence of pain, often work-related, has been the subject of aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical giants to persuade time-poor general practitioners to prescribe the powerful drugs.

Another paper: “Is there a pill for that? The increasing harms from opioid and benzodiazepine medication,” published last November by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation. It showed that between 1992 and 2012, the number of opioids dispensed through the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) actually increased 15-fold to 7.5 million.

The paper said the drugs were “over-promoted and highly prescribed” and “an increasing public health risk.” It noted that nearly half of Australia’s general practitioner prescriptions for opioids are to treat chronic pain.

A PBS Opioids Roundtable Report stated that 3 million people were prescribed at least one opioid under the PBS in 2014. The most common prescriptions were for paracetamol, combined with codeine, dispensed to 1.7 million patients, followed by Oxycodone, dispensed to one million patients. The use was highest in older age groups.

The PBS reported a high variation in prescribing among medical practitioners, with a small number of prescribers making a large number of authority requests. This highlights the fact that prescriptions for drugs like Oxycontin (Oxycodone) can be abused, by being diverted to non-prescribed users. The Australian Needle and Syringe Program found that the number of people injecting (misusing) these drugs has nearly doubled since 2001.

Around 50,000 people are undergoing treatment for opioid addiction, the majority of whom started using the drugs for a pain condition. There are higher rates of treatment for dependence on pharmaceutical opioids in rural and regional areas, where jobs and treatment services are scarcer.

Unfortunately, these studies do not examine the socio-economic causes of the developing epidemic. Research from the United States, however, points to the rise in opioid addictions and deaths being related to the deepening social crisis produced by the destruction of full-time jobs, mounting under-employment, poverty, social inequality and decimation of public health services.

A recent US study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse noted that reported abuse of opioids rose significantly among people with lower family incomes and those who were unemployed.

Uninsured people also were twice as likely as those with health insurance to report prescription opioid misuse and had higher rates of use disorders. There also was a link between mental health and opioid use. Respondents with a major depressive disorder and those with suicidal thoughts had higher rates of prescription opioid misuse and use disorders.

No such data has yet been produced in Australia, but indications exist of similar patterns. One badly de-industrialised region, in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, reportedly has one of the highest opioid dispensing rates in Australia. One unnamed Latrobe Valley doctor told Fairfax Media that half his practice caseload related to chronic pain.

Former workers suffering from job injuries such as back injuries, aggravated by poor living conditions, can become addicted to prescription drugs and face extremely limited treatment options.

In the Latrobe Valley, for example, there are outreach day rehabilitation services, but no residential and withdrawal centres. People with substance addiction must travel several hours to the state capital Melbourne, about 150 kilometres away, for such treatment, an expensive option.

People who rely on prescription opioids often have no access to alternative measures, such as physiotherapy, nutrition advice or counselling. “They don’t have the money and they don’t live in a central location that has these services,” Briony Larance, senior researcher at NDARC, told the Monthlyearlier this year.

As a result of all these social, economic and health service factors, the most devastating consequences of drug addiction are felt by the poor in economically-depressed areas. The impact is magnified by the profit-driven pharmaceutical companies adopting predatory practices in order to exploit a growing demand for pain relief from an increasingly pain-ridden population.

This human catastrophe is not accidental. It is part of the immense social crisis created by the ruling capitalist class and its political servants over the past four decades through job destruction, the gutting of social services and a huge transfer of wealth from the working class and poor to the rich.

Canadian military to construct refugee camp as hundreds of Haitians flee US

Roger Jordan

Canada’s armed forces announced Wednesday that soldiers are constructing a camp near the Canada-US border in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec to house asylum seekers.

Tents to house up to 500 people are being erected in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, close to a border crossing where up to 300 refugee claimants—most of them Haitians—are arriving daily. Although the majority of troops engaged in putting up the shelters will return to their barracks afterward, a CBC report has suggested that an unknown number will remain on-site to help with security.

The influx has been triggered by US President Donald Trump’s vicious clampdown on immigrants. In May, he vowed not to renew beyond January 2018 the Temporary Protection Status (TPS) accorded to Haitians following the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Despite the desperate plight faced by the approximately 60,000 Haitians staying in the US on TPS, including the imminent threat of being rounded up in Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and unceremoniously deported to conditions of poverty and misery in Haiti, Canada’s government has responded with callous indifference. Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen blandly declared August 4, “We discourage people from conducting irregular crossings of our borders. It’s not safe, it’s not something that we want people to do. We want people to claim asylum in the first country that they’re in, which in this case is the US.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a similar tone, stating that the refugees should apply for asylum in the proper way and that Canada has to defend the “integrity” of its immigration system.

Such statements are deeply cynical. The hundreds of Haitians and other refugees crossing the border daily are being forced to cross “irregularly” because the Trudeau government continues to enforce the Canada-US Safe Third Country agreement, according to which refugees who make an asylum application at a regular border crossing are automatically turned back to the United States. They can only make a claim in Canada if they cross the land border independently, often at considerable risk. The refusal to abandon the agreement is bound up with the Trudeau government’s determination to deepen Ottawa’s strategic partnership with the Trump administration on the basis of stepped up military collaboration and enhanced North American economic protectionism, via a “modernized” North America Free Trade Agreement.

For Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, the main concern is getting the asylum applications processed as fast as possible so as to limit the provincial government’s financial liability. “We give them social assistance, help to find housing. We give them healthcare, even education for the children,” he complained. “All that is expensive, and we don’t want the delay to be unduly prolonged. We’re talking about many millions of dollars.”

The right-wing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ—Coalition for Quebec’s Future), meanwhile, is agitating for the refugee claimants to be summarily expelled. “The Liberals,” said CAQ leader François Legault, “are sending a very bad signal to illegal migrants by opening arms to them, as if Quebec can welcome all the misery of the world.”

Although Canada’s government was made aware in briefings as early as March of a potential influx of refugees, it has failed to provide adequate resources, forcing many of those crossing the border having to wait days in makeshift, ramshackle facilities to be processed.

Evidence suggests that the Trudeau Liberal government is already moving towards reaching some kind of an agreement with Haiti’s right-wing government to deport the asylum seekers after their applications have been summarily rejected. Two Haitian government ministers visited Montreal Wednesday and met with the city’s mayor, Denis Coderre.

A former federal Liberal Immigration minister, Coderre played a major role in the negotiations that led to the reactionary Safe Third Country agreement. Moreover, as Canada’s Representative to La Francophonie and “special adviser” to Prime Minster Paul Martin on Haiti in 2003-4, Coderre played a major role in fronting and organizing Canada’s participation in the US-led 2004 “regime-change” invasion and occupation of Haiti.

Jean Sebastien Boudreault, head of the Quebec Association of Immigration Lawyers, warned against the Haitian ministers having any contact with the asylum seekers. “We need to make sure, first and foremost, that we are protecting the people we are supposed to be protecting,” he told CBC, “which are the people who are seeking a refugee status.”

In contrast to the indifference and outright hostility from the authorities, the Haitian refugees have been met with an overwhelmingly positive welcome by residents of Montreal. On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered at the Olympic Stadium, where many of the refugees are being housed, to welcome the new arrivals, carrying signs that read “Refugees welcome” and “Haitians welcome.”

Many of the Haitians now fleeing Trump’s reactionary anti-immigrant policies were forced out of the impoverished Caribbean nation following the 2010 earthquake, which killed over 200,000 people and displaced half a million more. But Haiti’s endemic poverty and related social problems go back much further than that and are bound up with the ruthless exploitation of the country by American and Canadian imperialism.

American Marines first occupied Haiti in 1915, remaining for 20 years and leaving behind a trained Haitian army that for decades formed the backbone of pro-US dictatorial regimes.

In 2004, 500 Canadian troops intervened alongside US military forces to oust the elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, working in tandem with a bloody uprising based on elements drawn from the disbanded Haitian army and death squads active under the Duvalier military dictatorship and successor military regimes.

Canada’s determination to support the coup was bound up with its imperialist interests in the Caribbean, which has long been a major destination of Canadian foreign investment. Canada’s major banks have been active in the region since the early 20th century.

Following the 2010 earthquake, Canada deployed 2,000 troops and two battleships to the impoverished country in what was one of the largest overseas deployments by the Canadian Armed Forces since World War II. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper ensured that Canada obtained a leading role in the so-called rebuilding of Haiti, which amounted to developing plans to establish the country as a cheap-labour haven and a source of super-profits for big business.

The lack of concern within Canadian ruling circles for the fate of ordinary Haitians is further illustrated by the callous treatment of Haitians who found refuge in Canada following the 2010 earthquake. Little more than four years after the disaster and under conditions where the country remains an effective ruin, Ottawa canceled its own temporary residency program, forcing Haitians to leave “voluntarily” or be expelled.

The Trudeau government’s treatment of those fleeing the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant witch hunt underscores the bogus character of its much-publicized “refugee-friendly” stance. In 2015, shortly after coming to power, Trudeau made a great show of welcoming the first group of Syrian refugees flown into Canada as part of a resettlement program. In reality, Canada was extremely restrictive in the number of Syrians it accepted as refugees, allowing just 40,000 to enter the country. Many were only allowed in thanks to private sponsorships by churches, mosques and community groups.

Conditions for refugees in Canada are abysmal. Many are forced to rely on food banks and other charities to make ends meet. In addition, successive Canadian governments, including the Trudeau Liberals, have illegally locked up immigrants and refugees indefinitely if they are deemed to be a flight risk, a danger to the public, or if their identities cannot be confirmed. Reports have denounced the practice, which has led to children being confined to conditions comparable to medium-security prisons.

Trudeau has used his pose as a pro-refugee leader concerned about “humanitarian” problems as political cover for vastly expanding Canada’s military deployments around the world, from the sending of additional Special Forces to the Mideast war in Iraq, to leading one of NATO’s battalions on Russia’s borders in Eastern Europe, and bolstering Canada’s naval presence in the Asia-Pacific to help the US threaten China. In June, the Liberals unveiled a 70 percent hike in military spending and declared that “hard power,” i.e. war, must be a central part of Canada’s foreign policy.

Catalan independence referendum sparks growing concerns in Europe

Alejandro López

The Catalan independence referendum, planned for October 1 is setting the stage for a bitter clash between Madrid and Barcelona.

The Catalan secessionists—the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT) and the pseudo-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP)—are continuing to push forward with the referendum. The Popular Party government, Socialist Party (PSOE) and Citizens party are vehemently opposed, with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy swearing that “all means” will be used to prevent it taking place.

A confrontation is likely to take place later this month as the Catalan parliament starts the formal drafting of the referendum law and the law of disconnection—the legal foundation for the transition from the Spanish legal system to a new Catalan republic should the “Yes” vote win. This would come into effect, regardless of the level of participation, and ignoring the fact that most of those opposed to independence will not vote because as they regard the referendum as illegitimate.

The PP government, which has appealed to the Constitutional Court and been supported by its rulings, has already put in place a repressive framework targeting the secessionists. It has pursued prosecutions, disqualifications from public office, threats to civil servants who facilitate the referendum (such as setting up voting booths in public schools), encouraged interrogations by the Guardia Civil without judicial authorization and spied both “legally” and illegally on secessionist figures. The PP has also threatened to withhold central government funding if the regional government uses it to prepare for the referendum.

These measures are backed by most of the Madrid-based media, with scant regard to their anti-democratic, repressive nature. Official chauvinism has reached levels not seen since the Franco dictatorship.

For their part, the Catalan secessionists have passed an anti-democratic reform to the regional parliament’s statutes that will allow laws to be approved after a single reading, allowing the independence legislation to be fast-tracked with little or no debate.

The Catalan government has also replaced the chief of the 17,000-strong regional Mossos d’Esquadra police force, Albert Batlle. He had been under increasing pressure from the CUP to resign after he had said that he would obey Spanish law and courts. His replacement, Pere Soler, a staunch nationalist, has a track record of derogatory remarks about Spain, declaring last year, “I hope we secede now, because I feel sorry for all you Spaniards.”

The Madrid-based media has reacted by defining the whole process as a “coup” against the government and called for article 155 of the constitution to be invoked. El País declared it would be “the only ordinary way—short of declaring a state of exception—that the central government could legally take over the Mossos d’Esquadra law enforcement agency if the latter decides to cooperate with the Catalan executive’s secessionist plans.”

Batlle’s downfall came days after three members of Catalonia’s regional government stepped down and a few weeks after regional Premier Carles Puigdemont dismissed a senior member of his government for expressing doubts about the referendum.

It is in this context that the major European dailies are raising the alarm.

David Gardner for the Financial Times, in his article, “Rajoy is cutting it fine with his Catalonian intervention,” describes the prime minister’s last-minute offer of greater fiscal autonomy for Catalonia of merely sounding “statesmanlike, waiting almost until the eve of a constitutional train-crash that could wreck Spain.”

He accuses Rajoy and the PP of bearing a “heavy responsibility” for the crisis, which they are then irresponsibly exploiting because they find “it electorally rewarding in the rest of Spain to incite antagonism against the Basque Country and Catalonia, where its centralising instincts severely limit its support.”

The FT concludes with a warning against the Constitutional Court sitting next month and “honing its legal weapons against the Catalan plebiscite.” Instead, “The test […] will be if Madrid drops the alibi that Spain is trapped in a legal labyrinth, in which the constitution is a tablet of stone, and judges are shielded against a political problem elected politicians have a duty to resolve.”

The German Suddeutsche Zeitung in “Spain is threatening the Catalans, instead of transforming them” goes further, openly sympathising with the secessionists. It describes them as “a very pro-European coalition of Liberals, Conservatives and Social Democrats” working in “the tradition of the Spanish Republic, which was smashed by General Franco, who had the support of the Nazi regime in the Civil War.” The PP is described as “having emerged from the Francoites.”

The paper states that European Union (EU) diplomats “are surprised that the central government makes no attempt at all to woo the Catalans,” especially under conditions where most Catalans agree with holding a referendum but do not support secession. It concludes by warning that “the problem is not to be solved with prohibitions. The more Rajoy and his fellow campaigners attack Barcelona... the louder the demands for a referendum.”

An editorial in the French Le Figaro , “Spanish Divorce,” follows suit, criticizing Madrid for rolling out the “heavy weapons” and a whole range of other measures in a “legal arsenal” to prevent the referendum. It blames the government for its “hard” attitude and its failure to generate any initiative “to calm the fever.”

In their criticism of the Spanish government, the editors of the FT, Suddeutsche Zeitung and Le Figaro are following in the footsteps of The New York Times, which last month criticised the PP’s “intransigence” and the way it had “galvanised” Catalan separatists.

The concerns on both sides of the Atlantic express the fears of sections of the ruling elite that a confrontation between Barcelona and Madrid, with its threats of suspending Catalan autonomy and military figures talking of sending in the army, might spark a crisis that will engulf Spain.

Such a scenario could rapidly spiral out of control, dragging down the fourth largest economy of the Eurozone and a key EU and NATO member. All this would occur post-Brexit, dragging the EU into a yet deeper quagmire.

It would risk inflaming already rising tensions between the major European powers, the US and Russia against a background of growing social tensions in Spain and across the continent provoked by one wave of austerity after another.

In Barcelona, July has seen a record number of strikes affecting transport. Industrial action has been taken by taxi drivers and workers in the metro, Bicing (the city’s bicycle sharing system), Renfe (the state-owned company which operates freight and passenger trains), Barcelona Airport security and Deliveroo (the British online food delivery company).

These struggles have been spurred by wage cuts, growing job insecurity—class issues recognised by workers throughout Spain, Europe and the world. It a reminder that the growth of separatism is a retrograde development that cuts across the critical struggle to unite the working class in opposition to the social counterrevolution being carried out by both Spain and Catalonia under the auspices of the EU.

As Americans die younger, corporations to reap billions in pension costs

Kate Randall 

Life expectancy for Americans has stalled and reversed in recent years, ending decades of improvement. According to a new Bloomberg study, this grim reality has an upside for US corporations, saving them billions in pension and other retirement obligations owed to workers who are dying at younger ages.

In 2015, the American death rate rose slightly for the first time since 1999, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Over the last two years, at least 12 large companies have reported that negative trends in mortality have led them to reduce their estimates for how much they could owe to retirees by a combined $9.7 billion, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of company filings.

It is highly unusual in modern times, except under epidemic or war conditions, for life expectancy in an industrial country to stop improving, let alone decline. Laudan Aron, a demographer at the Urban Institute, told Bloomberg that falling US life expectancy, especially when compared to other high-income countries, should be “as urgent a national issue as any other that’s on our national agenda.”

But this has not sounded alarm bells in Washington. In fact, shortened life expectancy in the 21st century is the result of deliberate government policy of both big business parties: to restrict access to affordable health care, resulting in increased disease, suffering and early death.

Those who stand to cash in on the shortened lifespans of workers include General Motors, Verizon and other giant corporations. Lockheed Martin, for instance, has reduced its estimated retirement obligations for 2015 and 2016 by a total of about $1.6 billion, according to a recent annual report.

Companies have reduced estimates of what they will owe future retirees. According to a Society of Actuaries (SOA) report, companies can expect to lower their pension obligations by about 1.5 to 2 percent, based on a 2016 update of mortality data.

Life expectancy for the US population was 78.8 in 2015, a decrease of 0.1 year from 2014, according to the CDC, with the age-adjusted death rate increasing 1.2 percent over the year. Since the introduction in 1965 of Medicare and Medicaid—the government insurance programs for the elderly, poor and disabled—US life expectancy has steadily increased.

Death rates for Americans over age 50 have improved by 1 percent on average each year since 1950, according the SOA. In 1970, a 65-year-old American could expect to live another 15.2 years, on average, until just past 80 years.

From 2000 to 2009, the death rates for Americans over age 50 decreased, with annual improvements of 1.5 to 2 percent. By 2010, a 65-year-old could expect to live to 84. But these increases have slowed in recent years, with life expectancy at 65 rising only about four months between 2010 and 2015.

The slowing in death rate improvements since 2010, and the actual lowering of life expectancy in 2015, have followed the global financial crash of 2007-2008. Despite the Obama administration’s declaration that the Great Recession ended mid-2009, millions of US workers and their families continue to suffer under the weight of unemployment, underemployment, and stagnant or falling wages.

Seven years after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, a staggering 28 million Americans remain uninsured. Those who are insured have seen their premiums, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs skyrocket. Families are saddled with billions of dollars in medical debt.

The lack of access to affordable health care is resulting in an unprecedented health crisis in the US. A 2015 study showed that mortality was rising for middle-aged white Americans, with deaths from suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol, collectively referred to as “ deaths of despair.” Both women and men have been affected by this phenomenon.

CDC data shows that more than 500,000 Americans have died of drug overdoses in the period between 2000 and 2015, now approaching an average of 60,000 a year.

The 10 leading causes of death in 2015 were heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease, and suicide, according the CDC. Despite scientific advances in medical treatment and the development of new drugs to treat these diseases and conditions, they still accounted for 74.3 of all US deaths in 2015.

Moreover, from 2014 to 2015, age-adjusted death rates increased 0.9 percent for heart disease, 2.7 percent for chronic lower respiratory diseases, 6.7 percent for unintentional injuries, 3 percent for stroke, 15.7 percent for Alzheimer’s disease, 1.9 percent for diabetes, 1.5 percent for kidney disease, and 2.3 percent for suicide. Only cancer saw a reduction, of 1.7 percent.

It is on the backs of workers dying earlier from these diseases, alongside “deaths of despair,” that US corporations now stand to save billions, increasing their bottom lines by not paying out pensions and retirement benefits.

This is by design. Obamacare was the first significant effort to reduce the trend of increasing life expectancy by shifting the costs of medical care from the corporations and government to the working class. The ACA was drafted in close consultation with the insurance industry, requiring those without insurance to purchase coverage from private insurers under the threat of tax penalty.

The ACA set into motion the rationing of health care for ordinary Americans, making vitally needed treatments and medicines increasingly inaccessible for millions. This has now borne fruit in the first reduction in US life expectancy in more than half a century.

Following the Republicans’ failure to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, the Democrats have responded by offering to work with the Republicans to “repair” the ACA. But they do not mean reducing the number of uninsured or further expanding Medicaid.

Instead they have offered a five-point plan to shore up the insurance companies by setting up a “stability fund” for companies to insure high-risk enrollees, and guaranteeing they receive $8 billion in government cost-sharing payments to the insurance firms that the Trump administration has threatened to cut off.

Such measures, along with savings from unpaid retirement benefits, will further bloat corporate profits along with those of the private insurance companies and health care industry as a whole.

Facebook establishes new censorship centre in Germany

Christoph Vandreier 

Facebook announced Wednesday that it would open a new control centre in Essen with 500 employees. The number of workers responsible for censoring and checking content in Germany will almost double as a result. The company has thus far only one such centre in Berlin.

Facebook has gone to great lengths to cover up the work of the control centres. While the training documents and internal guidelines for the workers have been kept strictly secret, the company organised a tour of the Berlin centre for selected media outlets a month ago.

The public broadcaster WDR, Die Zeit and Spiegel Online were permitted to look at locked screens and ask questions of workers specially primed for the occasion in the offices of Arvato, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, which carries out the deletions for Facebook. All three media outlets focused their subsequent reports on the difficult working conditions of the employees and presented them as being responsible merely for deleting videos of brutal beheadings and child pornography.

In fact, millions of Internet users are being systematically censored in the hermetically sealed-off offices. Reports about the deletion of critical posts and the blocking of left-wing and progressive authors have risen rapidly in recent months.

Last December, for example, a post by the satirist Leo Fischer was deleted. Fischer placed the xenophobic headline of the right-wing Bild newspaper, “The great debate about refugees’ perceptions of women,” alongside the same newspaper’s regular pictures of women in bikinis and took a picture of it. It was not only attacked by numerous right-wing extremists, but also deleted by Facebook, because the post allegedly breached the community’s regulations.

With the same justification, Facebook blocked Austrian author Stephanie Sargnagel for 30 days. Her profile had been flagged by numerous right-wing and far-right users in a concerted campaign. Sargnagel had posted satirical comments against xenophobia and racism, and therefore ended up in the crosshairs of the far right and the Internet company.

Berlin-based blogger Jörg Kantel also reported that some of his posts were deleted. After the Bild seized on the violence surrounding the G-20 summit in Hamburg to publish unpixelated pictures of alleged rioters from Hamburg, Kantel wrote, among other comments, “Germany, a land of denunciators and surveillance. At least since 1933!” According to the blogger, Facebook deleted the post.

The list of censored authors could be extended at will. In addition, there are those who go unnoticed because they lack the prominence of the individuals involved in the cases discussed. The Guardian revealed on May 21 that Facebook was carrying out this work systematically. The newspaper obtained 100 training documents for the workers at the control centres and came to the conclusion that they were alarming for advocates of free speech.

While posts advocating extreme violence and brutal murder or containing insults were deemed unproblematic, the employees were ordered to immediately delete posts like “Someone shoot Trump,” because as a head of government, Trump was part of a “protected category.” Freedom of speech therefore only applies at Facebook so long as the government, which is considered worthy of protection, is not attacked.

This is an obvious violation of freedom of speech, which above all protects the population’s right to criticise the government.

The close connections between the government and the major corporation’s censorship apparatus is especially clear in Germany. Even though on July 1 only 1.5 percent of Facebook users came from Germany, 16 percent of Facebook’s 7,500 censors will work in Germany by the end of the year when the new facility is up and running. At the end of June, the federal parliament passed the so-called Network Enforcement Law, which compels companies like Facebook to fulfill the responsibilities of a censor. Without any judicial ruling, the company must delete “obviously unlawful content” within 24 hours or face a fine of up to €50 million [$US 59 million]. The major companies are left to determine what “obviously unlawful” is.

The censoring of the Internet by the government and corporations is by no means restricted to Facebook. Google, the search engine monopoly, has disappeared entire websites from its search results, making them inaccessible to millions of readers.

This operation was also implemented in close consultation with German government circles. On April 25, Google’s chief engineer of search, Ben Gomes, announced that Google would downgrade “low-quality” information such as “conspiracy theories” and “fake news.”

Just three weeks earlier, Gomes met with representatives of all German state governments to discuss the functionality of search engines.

Google’s censorship measures resulted in numerous anti-war websites and left-wing publications being massively downgraded. The World Socialist Web Site was targeted in particular, with its search traffic from Google declining by 67 percent.

The resort to such aggressive censorship by the government and major corporations can only be explained by mounting social conflicts. Policies of militarism and social attacks are being met with opposition from the vast majority of the working population. War and capitalism are incompatible with basic democratic rights.

This is why all of the parties represented in the German parliament are calling in their election programmes for the strengthening of the state apparatus and the censoring of the Internet. Concepts such as “fake news” or “hate speech” serve in this context to justify state repression. The lies of the major media outlets and agitation by all parties against refugees, by contrast, are being spread without hindrance.

In its programme, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) describes “fake news” as “a great danger for peaceful coexistence and for a free and democratic society.” Therefore, it calls for the “better training and equipping of police authorities and judicial system in this area.” The SPD intends to retain the Network Enforcement Law and cut the “reaction times” even more. “Anybody failing to abide by the provisions will be punished with painful financial penalties.”

The Left Party also calls for more police and for action to be taken against “verbal attacks” online. “We want to protect the security of citizens in public spaces with more personnel,” their election programme states. “On social networks, as in public spaces in general, protection against verbal attacks, hate speech and character assassination must be enforced.”

It is no coincidence that this choice of words recalls the campaign of leading media outlets against the World Socialist Web Site and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality. Because they criticised right-wing extremist statements, which were subsequently confirmed as such by a court, from Humboldt University Professor Jörg Baberowski, accusations of “bullying” and “character assassination” were directed against them.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung complained shortly prior to Gomes’ visit to Berlin about “how impactful the Trotskyist splinter group is,” and demanded the WSWS be censored—a demand that Google has since fulfilled.

European Union criticizes US nuclear war threats against North Korea

Alex Lantier

The military stand-off that is emerging between Washington and the North Korean regime in Pyongyang threatens the entire world, including Europe, with nuclear war. European Union (EU) officials and European media are warning of the risk of war and ever more openly criticizing the Trump administration’s threats to incinerate North Korea with nuclear bombs.

The European press noted that Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against North Korea the day before the 72nd anniversary of the US atom bombing of Nagasaki. It is also widely reporting Pyongyang’s reckless threats to bomb the US Pacific island of Guam and the dispatches of its Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). These include the KCNA report of North Korean General Kim Rak Gyom’s dismissal of talks with Trump: “Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason, and only absolute force can work on him.”

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel indicated that Berlin is deeply concerned by the policies of both the North Korean regime and Germany’s ostensible ally in Washington. “Our main concern, now that this struggle is escalating,” Gabriel said, “is that both sides are ramping it up, and this can in fact end in military conflict.”

France’s Catholic daily La Croix pointed to the effects of even a limited war in Northeast Asia: “Even if the North Korean regime collapsed after a military conflict, the human and political cost for countries in the region would be considerable. The economic consequences of such a war would also be considerable, especially given the region’s role as a motor of the world economy; China, Japan, and South Korea are the world’s second, third and eleventh largest economies, respectively.”

Le Figaro cited retired General Jean-Bernard Pinatel, who indicated that a US attack would likely end in a nuclear holocaust. Speaking of Trump, Pinatel said: “What can he do? A pre-emptive strike? North Korea today has 10 to 20 nuclear weapons that are miniaturized enough to reach South Korea, Japan, or even Guam. There is the anti-missile shield, but if he asks his military staff what guarantees he has, his generals will reply that zero risk in military matters does not exist. Can he risk North Korean retaliatory strikes that claim a million lives in Seoul or Tokyo?”

Le Figaro reported that Pinatel believes Trump’s nuclear war threats are to a large extent addressed “to the American people, to make them forget his difficulties in domestic politics.”

The inescapable conclusion that emerges from the remarks of European bourgeois politicians and media is that world capitalism is passing through a political collapse on a scale comparable to the world wars of the last century. Pre-emptive wars and their use to divert the attention of angry and impoverished populations from social issues—policies employed by US imperialism for decades with the tacit acceptance of its European imperialist allies—have criminalized the NATO countries’ domestic regimes. They now threaten humanity with disaster.

The central feature of the remarks by European politicians and generals is that they downplay the threat posed to humanity in general, and the European population in particular, by the Korean crisis. Speculating about the disastrous initial effects of one or another US or North Korean missile strike, they do not address what the outcome of such a war would be.

However, anyone suggesting that a war would only have economic effects on Europe, or that conflict would stop once North Korea had been reduced to ashes—together with much of South Korea, Japan, and potentially the United States—is placing heavy bets against history. It is clear that what is emerging is a conflict with the potential to escalate rapidly into a world war.

China already intervened in the Korean War of 1950-1953 to prevent the US army from destroying North Korea, and to maintain a buffer between itself and US troops in South Korea. North Korea’s other great-power neighbor, Russia—already on high alert after the NATO-backed overthrow of a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine in 2014, and amid NATO war games across Eastern Europe—would doubtless also prepare for war in the event of a US strike on North Korea.

US war threats are aimed not in the final analysis at North Korea, moreover, but at more powerful states that Washington sees as rivals. Above all, US imperialism’s Asia policy is driven by increasing tensions with its nominal NATO allies in Europe. As the “unipolar moment” of US global military hegemony that followed the Soviet bureaucracy’s dissolution of the USSR rapidly fades, and class conflict rises in the NATO countries, inter-imperialist tensions between Europe and America are surging.

This is particularly the case in Asia. Britain and the EU powers joined China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015 over US objections. EU officials hailed their strategic relations with China after Washington obtained a ruling against China last year, over the South China Sea dispute at a UN court in The Hague. And Berlin and Paris attacked Trump after his election last year when he indicated he could move away from the One China policy, with French officials warning that US policy meant China’s “unity is being put into question.”

As Germany announces the re-militarization of its foreign policy and countries across the EU prepare vast social cuts to spend billions of euros more on their military machines, the EU countries are also seeking to expand their commercial penetration of Asia. The Trump administration’s threats in recent weeks to place massive trade sanctions on Russia and China are to a large extent a trade war measure aimed at its imperialist rivals in Europe. The US foreign policy establishment itself now remarks on the US-EU tensions in Asia.

After the election of French President Emmanuel Macron in May signaled a period of close strategic ties between Berlin and Paris, The National Interestpointed to the potential dangers to US interests in Asia posed by a Franco-German axis. It wrote, “This will signal a significant diminution in American prestige and influence abroad. Imagine, for example, that Merkel decided to defy Trump’s push for sanctions and isolating Iran by establishing trade ties with North Korea, including selling it weapons.”

Workers and youth opposed to war in Europe and internationally cannot oppose the threat of escalation against North Korea by endorsing the foreign policy of the EU powers against that of Washington. It is ever clearer that EU policy is to wait for a better moment to assert, commercially and militarily, imperialist interests not fundamentally different from those of Washington.

For now, Berlin and its allies have not carried out sufficient attacks on workers’ living standards to build a military machine capable of rivaling the Pentagon. After Britain’s exit from the EU, moreover, London is hostile to the Berlin-Paris axis and is aligning itself with aggressive US military measures against North Korea and China. Under these conditions, the EU powers are pressing for China to broker a settlement with Washington at Pyongyang’s expense.

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen stressed that China is “the only country with influence over North Korea,” while La Croix wrote, “The only diplomatic card is China, Pyongyang’s ally. Donald Trump blows hot and cold on Beijing, not without success, since Beijing voted with the rest of the UN Security Council, at the end of last week, to impose new sanctions on North Korea.”

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer said, “These sanctions must above all be firmly imposed. Thus we can increase the pressure for Pyongyang to join talks. Therefore we see US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s offer of talks as the right way forward, to set talks with North Korea into motion immediately once the [North Korean] regime stops its illegal missile tests.”