Redrawing The Map Of Syria

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the United States “does not want to keep Syria as a state in its current borders”, accusing Washington of seeking to establish a Kurdish-controlled entity along Turkish and Iraqi border zones.

Speaking at an annual press conference in Moscow to review the past year’s diplomatic activities on Monday Jan 13, Lavrov said:

“The [US’] actions that we have been observing indicate that the US does not want to keep Syria as a state in its current borders … The US wants to help the Syrian Democratic Forces to set up some border security zones,” he said, referring to a US-backed rebel alliance dominated by Syrian Kurds, known as the SDF. What it would mean is that vast swaths of territory along the border of Turkey and Iraq would be isolated, it’s to the east of the Euphrates river. There are difficult relations between Kurds and Arabs there. If you say that this zone will be controlled by the forces supported by the US, there will be a force of 30,000 people.”

Erdogan: US trying to form ‘terror army’ in Syria

Commenting on reports of the US plan to establish a 30,000-strong new border security force with the involvement of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the US was working to form a “terror army” on his country’s southern border by training a new force in Syria that includes Kurdish fighters.

“What we are supposed to do is to drown this terror army before in comes into being,” he said in an address in the capital Ankara on Jan 15, calling the Kurdish fighters “backstabbers” who will point their weapons to the US in the future.

According to media reports quoting US officials, the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL also known as ISIS) will recruit around half of the new force from the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF), an umbrella group of fighters dominated by the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Ankara considers Kurdish YPG fighters as a “terrorist” organization with links to to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long fight inside the country. PKK is blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its Western allies. The US views the YPG as a highly effective fighting force against ISIL.

Erdogan said that Turkey’s armed forces had completed preparations for an operation against the Kurdish-controlled region of Afrin in northwest Syria and the town of Manbij.

He warned Turkey’s allies against helping “terrorists” in Syria and said: “We won’t be responsible for consequences.”

“The establishment of the so-called Syria Border Protection Force was not consulted with Turkey, which is a member of the coalition,” the Turkish foreign ministry said.

US backtracks on Syrian ‘border guard’

The United States continues to train local security forces linked to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria, but will not create a ‘border guard force’ and understands the concerns of Turkey, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement on Wednesday Jan 17.

“The training is designed to enhance security for displaced persons returning to their devastated communities,” the Pentagon said. “It is also essential so that ISIS cannot reemerge in liberated and ungoverned areas. This is not a new “army” or conventional ‘border guard’ force.”

The statement added that the U.S. was “keenly aware of the security concerns of Turkey, our Coalition partner and NATO ally.”

Noting that Turkey’s security concerns are legitimate, the Pentagon said it would continue to be transparent with Ankara about its efforts to defeat ISIS in Syria, “and stand by our NATO ally in its counter-terrorism efforts.”

“The military campaign against ISIS in Syria is not over and heavy fighting is still underway in the Middle Euphrates River Valley,” the Pentagon said adding:

“These security forces are internally-focused to prevent ISIS fighters from fleeing Syria and augment local security in liberated areas. These forces will protect the local population and help prevent ISIS from launching new attacks against the U.S. and its allies and partners, pending a longer-term political solution to the Syrian civil war in Geneva.”

Will Syria’s conflict redraw the map of the Middle East?

Fabrice Balanche, associate professor and research director at the University of Lyon 2, wrote in June 2017: “The global resonance of the Syrian war has a precedent from some four centuries ago: the conflict in Bohemia (1618–23), which initiated the Thirty Years’ War. Today, world powers such as Russia, China, the United States, and Europe are assessing their regional interests and the measures they will take to achieve them. The conflict itself, meanwhile, can only grow, as the Yemen example shows, given the freeing up of local actors. But amid the great instability, a new Westphalian order is emerging in the Middle East. Rather than erasing the mistakes of the past a new territorial division could end up being superimposed upon the Sykes-Picot line by which the departing colonial powers split the region.”

Not surprisingly, Michael Hayden, a former director of America’s Central Intelligence Agency told CNN in February 2016, that the international agreements made after World War Two are starting to fall apart, and may change the borders of some countries in the Middle East.

“What we see here is a fundamental melting down of the international order,” Michael Hayden said adding:

“We are seeing a melting down of the post-WWII Bretton Woods American liberal order. We are certainly seeing a melting down of the borders drawn at the time of Versailles and Sykes-Picot. I am very fond of saying Iraq no longer exists, Syria no longer exists; they aren’t coming back. Lebanon is teetering and Libya is long gone.”

Hayden described the current situation as a “tectonic” moment. “Within that we then have the war against terrorism; it is an incredibly complex time.”

Argument for greater Kurdistan

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters wrote in June 2006, the most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.

Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East, Peters argued and added:

“The most glaring injustice in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas is the absence of an independent Kurdish state. There are between 27 million and 36 million Kurds living in contiguous regions in the Middle East (the figures are imprecise because no state has ever allowed an honest census). Greater than the population of present-day Iraq, even the lower figure makes the Kurds the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of its own. Worse, Kurds have been oppressed by every government controlling the hills and mountains where they’ve lived since Xenophon’s day.

“The U.S. and its coalition partners missed a glorious chance to begin to correct this injustice after Baghdad’s fall. A Frankenstein’s monster of a state sewn together from ill-fitting parts, Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states immediately. We failed from cowardice and lack of vision, bullying Iraq’s Kurds into supporting the new Iraqi government — which they do wistfully as a quid pro quo for our good will. But were a free plebiscite to be held, make no mistake: Nearly 100 percent of Iraq’s Kurds would vote for independence.

“As would the long-suffering Kurds of Turkey, who have endured decades of violent military oppression and a decades-long demotion to “mountain Turks” in an effort to eradicate their identity. While the Kurdish plight at Ankara’s hands has eased somewhat over the past decade, the repression recently intensified again and the eastern fifth of Turkey should be viewed as occupied territory. As for the Kurds of Syria and Iran, they, too, would rush to join an independent Kurdistan if they could. The refusal by the world’s legitimate democracies to champion Kurdish independence is a human-rights sin of omission far worse than the clumsy, minor sins of commission that routinely excite our media. And by the way: A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.”

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters further argued: “A just alignment in the region would leave Iraq’s three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenecia reborn. The Shia south of old Iraq would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf. Jordan would retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.”

His article was published in the Armed Forces Journal under the title: Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look.

Afrin Offensive: Erdogan’s Madness Continues

Nauman Sadiq

During the last 24 hours, 72 Turkish jets have reportedly struck 150 targets inside the Kurdish-controlled Afrin district in north-western Syria in which six civilians and three Kurdish militiamen have lost their lives. And today, Turkish ground troops in armoured vehicles have intruded five kilometres inside Afrin from Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

In addition, Turkey has also mobilised the Syrian militant groups under its tutelage in Azaz and Idlib in Syria, and in Kilis and Hatay provinces of Turkey, the latter of which has a substantial presence of Arabs and Syrian refugees, hence the Kurdish-controlled Afrin enclave has been surrounded from all sides by Turkey and its proxies.

Well-informed readers who have been keenly watching Erdogan’s behaviour since the failed July 2016 coup plot must have noticed that Erdogan has committed quite a few reckless and impulsive acts during the last couple of years.

Firstly, the Turkish air force shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet on the border between Syria and Turkey on 24 November 2015 that brought the Turkish and Russian armed forces on the brink of a full-scale confrontation in Syria.

Secondly, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was assassinated at an art exhibition in Ankara on the evening of 19 December 2016 by an off-duty Turkish police officer, Mevlut Mert Altintas, who was suspected of being a Muslim fundamentalist.

Thirdly, the Turkish military mounted the seven-month-long Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria immediately after the attempted coup plot from August 2016 to March 2017 that brought the Turkish military and its Syrian militant proxies head-to-head with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and their US bakers.

And lastly, before Turkey’s intrusion in Afrin, the Turkish military invaded Idlib in north-western Syria in October last year on the pretext of enforcing a de-escalation zone between the Syrian militants and the Syrian government, despite official protest from the latter that the Turkish armed forces are in violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Regarding the July 2016 coup plot, instead of a serious attempt at overthrowing the government, the coup plot was actually a large-scale mutiny within the ranks of the Turkish armed forces. Although Erdogan scapegoated the Gulenists to settle scores with his one-time ally, but according to credible reports, the coup was in fact attempted by the Kemalist liberals against the Islamist government of Turkey.

For the last several years of the Syrian civil war, the Kemalists had been looking with suspicion at Erdogan administration’s policy of deliberately training and arming Sunni militants against the Shi’a-dominated government of Bashar al-Assad in the training camps located on Turkey’s borders with Syria in collaboration with CIA’s MOM, which is a Turkish acronym for military operations centre.

As long as the US was on-board on the policy of nurturing Sunni Arab jihadists in Syria, the hands of Kemalists were tied. But after the US declared a war against one faction of Sunni militants, the Islamic State, in August 2014 and the consequent divergence between Washington’s policy of supporting the Kurds in Syria and the Islamist government of Turkey’s continued support to Sunni jihadists, it led to discord and adoption of contradictory policies.

Moreover, the spate of bombings in Turkey claimed by the Islamic State and separatist Kurds during the last couple of years, all of these factors contributed to widespread disaffection among the rank and file of Turkish armed forces, which regard themselves as the custodians of secular traditions and guarantors of peace and stability in Turkey.

The fact that one-third of 220 brigadiers and ten major generals were detained after the coup plot shows the level of frustration shown by the top and mid-ranking officers of the Turkish armed forces against Erdogan’s megalomaniac and self-destructive policies.

Regarding the split between Washington and Ankara, although the proximate cause of this confrontation seems to be the July 2016 coup plot against the Erdogan administration by the supporters of the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, but this surprising development also sheds light on the deeper divisions between the United States and Turkey over their respective Syria policy.

After the United States reversal of ‘regime change’ policy in Syria in August 2014 when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014 and threatened the capital of another steadfast American ally Masoud Barzani’s Erbil in the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan, Washington has made the Kurds the centrepiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq.

It would be pertinent to mention here that the conflict in Syria and Iraq is actually a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arab militants, the Shi’a-led governments and the Kurds. Although after the declaration of war against a faction of Sunni Arab militants, the Islamic State, Washington has also lent its support to the Shi’a-led government in Iraq, but the Shi’a Arabs of Iraq are not the trustworthy allies of the United States because they are under the influence of Iran.

Therefore, Washington was left with no other choice but to make the Kurds the centrepiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq after a group of Sunni Arab jihadists, the Islamic State, transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014 from where the United States had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are nothing more than the Kurdish militias with a symbolic presence of mercenary Arab tribesmen in order to make them appear more representative and inclusive in outlook. As far as the regional parties to the Syrian civil war are concerned, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the rest of the Gulf states may not have serious reservations against this close cooperation between the United States and the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, because the Gulf states tend to look at the regional conflicts from the lens of the Iranian Shi’a threat.

Turkey, on the other hand, has been more wary of the separatist Kurdish tendencies in its southeast than the Iranian Shi’a threat, as such. And the recent announcement by Washington of training and arming 30,000 Kurdish border guards to patrol Syria’s northern border with Turkey and prolonging the stay of 2000 US troops embedded with the Kurds in Syria indefinitely must have proven a tipping point for the Erdogan administration.

US takes aim at China over trade

Nick Beams

Some of the growing economic tensions underlying the increasingly bellicose moves by the United States against both Russia and China were revealed by last week’s US Trade Representative (USTR) report on the two countries’ compliance with the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The report coincided with the issuing of a new National Defense Strategy by the Pentagon on Friday, the first in a decade, in which, according to Defense Secretary James Mattis, “great power competition, not terrorism” is the central focus.

Mattis said the US was facing a “growing threat from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models.”

The report on China, which reflected the imprimatur of US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, one of the most vociferous advocates of “America First” within the Trump administration, amounted to a virtual declaration of trade war from the very first paragraph.

It said the hopes that China, when it was admitted to the WTO in 2001, would dismantle state-led policies incompatible with open market-oriented policies had not been realised. China largely remained a state-led economy.

At the same time, China had used WTO membership to become a “dominant player” in international trade. “Given these facts, it seems clear that the United States erred in supporting China’s entry into the WTO on terms that have proven to be ineffective in securing China’s embrace of an open, market-oriented trade regime.”

The conclusions regarding Russia, which only joined the WTO in 2012, were along the same lines.

The report on China ruled out any prospect of addressing US complaints through the WTO’s dispute mechanisms, in which individual countries can take up complaints about the actions of others.

According to the report, “it is now clear that the WTO rules are not sufficient to constrain China’s market-distorting behaviour.” While some matters had been dealt with under WTO procedures, “many of the most troubling ones are not directly disciplined by WTO rules” or additional commitments made by China when it joined.

“The reality is that the WTO rules were not formulated with a state-led economy in mind,” it stated. While China had made certain changes after 2001 in regard to state-led measures, “the Chinese government has since replaced them with more sophisticated—and still very troubling—policies and practices.”

The report set out a litany of complaints, ranging across the board from steel and aluminium production to agriculture, technology, intellectual property rights and services.

Summing up the overall position of the US, it said the Chinese government pursued a “wide array of continually evolving interventionist policies and practices aimed at limiting market access for imported goods and services.” At the same time, Beijing offered “substantial government guidance, resources and regulatory support to Chinese industries, including through initiatives designed to extract advanced technologies from foreign companies in sectors across the economy.”

The beneficiaries were Chinese state-owned companies and other significant domestic firms “attempting to move up the economic value chain,” with the result that markets all over the world are “less efficient than they should be.”

In other words, the US considers it is being increasingly adversely affected, particularly in areas of more sophisticated technology and production that it regards as its own province. The situation is worse than it was five years ago, the report stated. Despite Chinese pronouncements to the contrary, the state’s role in the economy had increased.

The report claimed that since China’s accession to the WTO the US had tried to work with China in a “cooperative constructive manner” to resolve trade disputes and had encouraged China to be a “more responsible member of the WTO.”

“These bilateral efforts have been unsuccessful—not because of failures by US policymakers, but because Chinese policymakers were not interested in moving towards a true market economy.”

The report on Russia, after reviewing a series of complaints, said its actions “strongly indicate” that it had “no intention of complying with many of the promises it made to the United States and other WTO members.” It “was a mistake to allow Russia to join the WTO if it is not fully prepared to live by WTO rules.”

The roots of the intense US hostility toward Russia and China over the issues of trade can be seen, at least partially, in the USTR’s assessment of the significance of the WTO’s creation in 1995 as the successor organisation to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), established in 1947.

The Marrakesh Declaration of April 1994, which set up the WTO at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, said the creation of the new organisation “ushers in a new era of global economic cooperation” based on “a more open and multilateral trading system” centred on “open, market-oriented policies.”

The 1994 declaration was issued in the midst of the euphoria of the American ruling class, following the liquidation of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the collapse of national-based economic policies. The perspective was that the “Washington consensus”—in reality the enforcement of the interests of American finance capital and market power—would open a new era of US domination. Control over the vast Eurasian landmass, with its abundant resources and supply of cheap labour, was viewed as a key component of this strategy.

Things have not turned out exactly as the US planned, however. While capitalism has been well and truly restored in Russia and China, American capitalism does not exercise the degree of direct control, through the operation of the “free market” and finance capital, for which it had hoped.

Capitalist oligarchies have arisen in both Russia and China, which pursue their own interests, often cutting across those of the US. This does not mean that the US has abandoned its drive for domination of these regions—in fact, the ongoing weakening of its global economic position makes that even more imperative. Consequently, there is a push to pursue this goal by other, that is, military measures, as set out in the latest Pentagon strategy, focusing on “great power” competition, above all directed against Russia and China.

Carillion collapse in UK leaves pension scheme deficit of £2.6 billion

Robert Stevens

The political fallout from last week’s collapse of Carillion, the UK’s second largest construction firm, forced Prime Minister Theresa May to write an article Sunday in the pro-Labour Observer, declaring, “Boardroom excesses can no longer be tolerated.”

The discrediting of the private sector by Carillion’s collapse prompted May to insist on “the invention, innovation and creativity of private enterprise,” while promising to “set out new tough new rules for executives who try to line their own pockets by putting their workers’ pensions at risk—an unacceptable abuse that we will end.”

Addressing growing anger at the ruinous impact on the lives of tens of thousands of workers, she pledged, “[I]t will be the shareholders of Carillion, not taxpayers, who pay the price for the company’s collapse.”

May’s worthless promises were made only after it was revealed that Carillion’s debts and pension liabilities were almost double the amount initially cited.

An investigation by Sky News said its total financial liabilities, including most importantly its pension liability, were around £5 billion. Sky News reported that a “private analysis of Carillion’s pension deficit on a Section 75—or full buyout—basis has concluded that it was as high as £2.6 billion. …

“The £2.6 billion figure relates to the cost to Carillion of paying an insurance company to guarantee all of its pension liabilities, and is significant because it is likely to be the sum claimed on behalf of the pension schemes as part of the liquidation process, according to insiders.”

Carillion was a major government contractor, involved in 450 contracts in schools, hospitals, prisons and key infrastructure projects such as the HS2 high-speed rail network. When it went into compulsory liquidation, Carillion employed 20,000 workers in the UK and 23,000 overseas. Its debts were initially estimated at £2.2 billion, of which £900 million was said to be pension liabilities.

The newly estimated pension deficit of £2.6 billion is more than four times as high as the pension deficit figure of £587 million referred to by Carillion’s former chief executive in a High Court witness statement reported in the firm’s last interim financial results.

Behind May’s self-serving statements is the reality that the public purse and all pensioners with still solvent pensions will be fleeced to pay for Carillion’s collapse. Carillion operated 13 final salary pension schemes in the UK, with around 28,500 members. More than 12,000 of these are already claiming a pension.

With their pension schemes collapsed, the liabilities will be paid by the state-run Pension Protection Fund (PPF). Under PPF rules, those already receiving their pensions will be protected and receive the existing value of their pensions, but those below retirement age will face cuts of 10-20 percent as there is a cap on pay-outs to higher earners in defined benefit pension schemes.

The government and media have sought to play down the implications of the collapse of the Carillion pension scheme by citing the PPF as having a £6 billion surplus.

The Conservative government-supporting Daily Mail described the PPF as a “lifeboat” that “can afford to pay the bill without costing taxpayers.” This was even as another columnist in the newspaper felt obliged to point out that the PPF is entirely funded by workers paying into other currently solvent pension funds. Columnist James Coney wrote, “[M]oney for these comes from a pot of cash that the PPF has acquired by charging a levy on final-salary schemes that are still up and running.”

The money does not come from “anonymous pension funds—this comes from the pockets of savers, because it’s their retirement pots that have to pay. Perversely, the higher the fees to run the PPF, the more strain on other pension funds. Every penny to run a final-salary pension comes from cash that would otherwise be used to boost savers’ returns. The more pension schemes that go bust, the more the healthier schemes are forced to subsidise them. This in turn can put the previously solvent schemes under pressure and push more of them to the brink.”

Since the PPF scheme was opened by Labour in 2005, it has served as a boon for the corporations, who have continued to reap massive dividends from pension funds while reducing the amount they pay into them to the bare minimum. Hundreds of pension schemes have been taken on by the PPF, with 230,000 members transferred into it by the end of October 2017. Of these, fully 124,705 receive pension compensation.

Total compensation paid out so far by the PPF is £2.7 billion. This is set to rocket with the Carillion pension scheme—by far the largest yet entering the PPF—along with 20,000 British Steel pension scheme workers who will enter in the spring. They will be joined by a further 2,000 former BHS workers.

The Carillion pension fund collapse is the tip of the iceberg, with many more schemes on the brink of collapse. Their total liabilities dwarf the surplus of the PPF. More than two in three of all final-salary pension schemes—3,663 schemes—have a deficit “black hole,” owing a total of £197 billion.

Among the major corporations recording the largest deficits for the year ending 2016 are Royal Dutch Shell (£6.9 billion, up from £2.8 billion in 2015), BP (£6.7 billion, up from £4.2 billion), BT Group (£.6.3 billion, down from £7.5 billion), BAE Systems (£6 billion, up from £4.5 billion), Tesco (£3.1 billion, down from £4.8 billion), Unilever (£2.2 billion, up from £1.2 billion) and GlaxoSmithKline (£2 billion, up from £1.5 billion).

The pension deficits have risen, not because the corporations have no money but because they refuse to make the necessary contributions to the pension fund for what are essentially deferred wages.

Instead, they have diverted the cash to their shareholders, paying out far more in dividends to shareholders than they contribute to the pension fund, robbing their workforce of their legal entitlement.

Each year, actuarial consultants Lane Clark & Peacock produce a survey of the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 companies’ pension disclosures . Last year it found that FTSE companies with defined benefit schemes, which offer a guaranteed income in retirement, paid £71 billion in dividends in 2015 compared with just £13.3 billion in pension contributions.

This year’s report notes, “[D]espite their persistent deficits, FTSE 100 companies were still able to pay four times as much in dividends in 2016 as they did in pension contributions.”

It states that if the £4.2 billion paid by the RBS bank to its pension scheme as a one-off is excluded, dividends were more than five times the pension contributions paid: “Looking just at companies with 31 December year-ends, 39 declared pensions deficits totalling £37 billion. Those same companies paid out £39 billion in dividends during 2016.”

So the corporations, the regulators and the government know this industrial scale larceny is going on and no one does anything to stop it.

This same looting operation took place at Carillion. Since its pension scheme was established 19 years ago, more than £775 million was paid out in dividends to shareholders. Every year Carillion increased the dividend paid to shareholders, which rose from 4 pence-a-share in 1999 to 18.45 pence-a-share in 2016. Even as the company was on the verge of collapse, with its annual report for the 2016 financial year showing a 5 percent fall in pre-tax profits to £146.7 million and its pension deficit more than doubling in size to £804.8 million, shareholders continued to benefit.

The financial report laid out a “progressive” policy for shareholder pay-outs, whose aim was “to increase the dividend each year broadly in line with the growth in underlying earnings-per-share.”

Analysis carried out by Reuters showed that “underlying earnings-per-share rose 1 percent to 35.3 pence that year, and its dividend was also lifted by 1 percent from 18.25 pence-a-share in 2015.”

Germany: Sharp conflicts inside the Left Party

Peter Schwarz

After the shift to the right in last year’s federal elections and the Social Democrats’ decision to continue the grand coalition with the Christian Democrats, long-simmering conflicts inside the Left Party have intensified.

At the turn of the year, former SPD chairman and founder of the Left Party Oskar Lafontaine called for a new left-wing movement. “We need an all-embracing left-wing movement, a kind of left people’s party, in which the Left Party, parts of the Greens and the SPD can come together,” he told newsweekly Der Spiegel. “This movement should not only include the classic parties, but also trade unionists, social organizations, scientists, cultural workers and others,” he explained his proposal in the Osnabrücker Zeitung.

Sahra Wagenknecht, Left Party faction leader in the Bundestag (parliament) and Lafontaine’s wife, supports his proposal. “Of course, I want a strong left-wing people’s party,” she says in the latest issue of Der Spiegel. “In the end, it can only work if prominent personalities join in, giving people back the hope that something is moving their way politically.” As an example, Wagenknecht pointed to the movement “La France insoumise” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who “achieved just under 20 percent from a standing start”.

The Left Party leadership around Bernd Riexienger and Katja Kipping, who have been at loggerheads with Wagenknecht for a long time, took the proposal as a declaration of war. Kipping described it as a “project for a schism” and countered with a “Project 15”, which aims to increase the party’s election results from just under ten to 15 percent. Riexinger said that “no new constructions are necessary, but only a stronger Left Party”.

Last weekend, there were two separate Left Party meetings to mark the new year. The party leadership met with representatives from the federal states, many of whom have regional government responsibility. The parliamentary group organized a rally in the Kosmos cinema at Karl-Marx-Allee, the largest cinema in the former East Germany, at which Jean-Luc Mélenchon appeared as a star guest alongside Wagenknecht and Lafontaine.

The only joint appearance of the party and the parliamentary group leaderships was at the annual wreath-laying ceremony at the grave of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht—a “tribute” against which the two revolutionary socialists, murdered 99 years ago, can no longer defend themselves.

The crisis of the Left Party is a consequence of the failure of the perspective on which it was founded over ten years ago. The heirs of the East German Stalinist State party in the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the former SPD functionaries, union bureaucrats and pseudo- leftists in the Electoral Alternative Work and Social Justice (WASG) joined forces in 2005 to compensate for the decline of the SPD, which had rapidly lost influence in the working class after implementing the Hartz welfare and labour “reforms”.

Oskar Lafontaine, who had held leading positions in the SPD for forty years, lastly as party chairman and federal finance minister, before giving up office in 1999 amidst conflict with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, had always regarded the SPD’s task as keeping the working class under control. If he denounced social ills, it was not to develop a movement to overthrow capitalism, but to capture and stop such a development.

Unlike many other SPD politicians, including Gerhard Schröder, who went through their “Marxist” phase as members of the Young Socialists before they became pillars of the state, Lafontaine always defended the bourgeois order and held extremely right-wing positions regarding domestic policy. As mayor of Saarbrücken, he ensured a balanced budget in the 1970s, and was one of the first to introduce compulsory work for welfare recipients. As Saarland’s state premier, he was responsible for the trouble-free shutdown of large parts of the state’s coal and steel industry.

After the end of the SPD-Green Party federal government in 2005, Lafontaine supported the founding of the Left Party and, together with Gregor Gysi, took over its leadership, because he hoped in this way he could help to get back a majority for an SPD-led government. “My hope was that the SPD would be compelled by the competition from the left to carry out social democratic politics again,” he told the Osnabrücker Zeitung recently, justifying his attitude at the time.

But this perspective has failed miserably. Not only the SPD—which has ruled for two legislative periods in a grand coalition under Angela Merkel—but also the Left Party, has moved further and further to the right.

In the September 2017 general election, both parties together received just under 30 percent of the vote, 16 percent less than in 1998, when Lafontaine was still chairman of the SPD. The SPD halved its share of the vote, from 40 to 20 percent, while, with 9 percent, the Left Party won only four percent more than the PDS did in 1998. Even including the Greens, this is still not enough for a government majority. Instead, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered the Bundestag, with 12 percent.

“I have repeatedly asked myself whether it would have been more meaningful to fight within the SPD for a renewal”, Lafontaine told the Osnabrücker Zeitung. “But that’s water under the bridge. Today, a new all-encompassing left-wing movement would be the right response to the strengthening of the right.”

The task of this movement is to block the left-wing development of the working class and channel growing social outrage in a right-wing direction. Both Lafontaine and Wagenknecht regularly denounce “neoliberalism” and social inequality, but at the heart of their programme is the fomenting of nationalism. Their attitude to refugee policy and the stepping up of state powers at home do not differ from that of the AfD. They attack the government’s refugee policy from the right. In recent days, they have confirmed this in numerous interviews.

Wagenknecht told the Südwest Presse that the Left Party’s losses among workers had “to do with the immigration debate”. She told the Donaukurier, “The impression that the Left Party advocates a lot of immigration discouraged many within this layer at the previous election.” Nobody could “seriously demand unlimited immigration”. We can’t “give everyone who wants to the opportunity to live in Germany”, she added.

On his Facebook page, Lafontaine blames the “burdens of immigration” for “increased competition in the low-paid sector, rising rents in city neighbourhoods, and increasing difficulties in schools.”

It is no coincidence that Lafontaine and Wagenknecht are working together with Mélenchon, who in Berlin confessed “proudly” that he was “a product of the Left Party”.

Mélenchon was a senior Socialist Party official for thirty years, including as Minister of Vocational Training in the government of Lionel Jospin, before launching a French version of the Left Party (Parti de Gauche) in 2008. Now he is trying to steer the growing opposition to the anti-working-class policies of President Emmanuel Macron into a nationalist impasse.

“La France insoumise”, tailored to Mélenchon personally, does not base itself on the working class and socialism, but on “the people” and the French nation, to which it wants to give a new bourgeois constitution in the form of a “Sixth Republic”. Like Lafontaine, Mélenchon is an opponent of the European Union. He does not attack it from the left, however, from the point of view of the unity of the European working class, but from the right, from the point of view of the national interests of France, thereby fuelling anti-German nationalism.

Lafontaine and Wagenknecht’s opponents in the Left Party are no less reactionary. On the one hand, they are oriented to groups of the urban middle class, who have become politically homeless due to the rightward development of the Greens. It was here that the Left Party won votes in the general election, while losing almost half a million voters to the AfD among workers and the unemployed. Party leader Katja Kipping, who is considered to be Wagenknecht’s arch-enemy, represents this course, which focuses on environmental issues, identity politics and the like, and supports the European Union.

On the other hand, they are interested only in power, holding government responsibility in the federal states and municipalities and, in close cooperation with the SPD, the Greens and the Christian Democrats, carrying out social and budget cuts. They regard every political dispute as a disruption. Typical representatives of this trend are the Thuringia state premier Bodo Ramelow and Dietmar Bartsch, who heads the parliamentary group together with Wagenknecht.

In the power struggle with the party leadership, Bartsch had long formed a common front with Wagenknecht. However, he rejects her call for an all-embracing left-wing movement.

Common to all the various currents in the Left Party is their hostility to an independent socialist movement of the working class. The more acute social opposition becomes, the more openly they move to the right.

Twitter warns users: We’re watching you

Andre Damon 

In an overt act of political intimidation, the social media platform Twitter emailed hundreds of thousands of users Saturday informing them that they had shared or followed “Russian propaganda.”

Twitter made these claims without substantiation, refusing to tell its users exactly what content they shared or viewed that fell afoul of the US government and its social media enforcers. Among the recipients of the email was the Senate’s second-highest ranking Republican, John Cornyn.

“As part of our recent work to understand Russian-linked activities on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” read the email sent out by Twitter, “we identified and suspended a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.”

Taking the guise of a friendly warning, Twitter continued, “Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing you because we have reason to believe that you either followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked content from these accounts during the election period.”

In other words, Twitter is warning its users that it knows exactly what they are viewing and sharing on social media, implying that if they post something that falls afoul of the US government, they may be subject to investigation or prosecution.

Twitter’s action is the latest step in a campaign led by the Democratic Party, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the leading intelligence agencies to argue that the growth of social opposition that expressed itself in broad popular hostility to the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election is the result of “Russian propaganda” aimed at “sowing divisions” in American society.

Lawmakers, including Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, have demanded that the major technology companies draw up lists of accounts and individuals that disseminated what they called “Russian Propaganda.” The technology companies have complied.

Twitter’s action comes amid a massive escalation of the drive by social media companies to censor the Internet. Last week, representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube testified before the Senate Commerce committee on their efforts to combat “extremist” content.

Monika Bickert, head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, told lawmakers that the social media company has hired 10,000 people for its “security” department to review, block and take down content, and that this number will be doubled over the next year. Google, for its part, plans to bring the number of content moderators it employs to 10,000 this year.

Twitter’s email blast to users followed the January 12 announcement by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg that it plans to dramatically reduce the amount of independent news that appears on users’ news feeds.

On Friday, Zuckerberg clarified that while the total amount of news that users see would fall only slightly, the great majority of news content on users’ feeds would now come from “authoritative” and “trustworthy” news sources, instead of those that promote “polarization.”

In an indication of what this will mean in practice, the stock value of the New York Times shot up by nine percent that day, in the expectation that its postings would displace content from independent media organizations.

The growing drive to censor political speech on the Internet comes amid growing preparations by the Trump administration and the military for the eruption of major state-on-state military conflict.

The National Defense Strategy, published Friday by the Pentagon, stresses the need for the US government to combat “political subversion” in preparation for “Inter-state strategic competition.”

“It is now undeniable that the homeland is no longer a sanctuary. America is a target,” the document states, for “political and information subversion” on the part of “revisionist powers” such as Russia and China.

The document argues for the formation of what can only be termed a totalitarian regime, waging total war. It writes, “A long-term strategic competition requires the seamless integration of multiple elements of national power—diplomacy, information, economics, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and military.”

The ever-tighter censorship and monitoring of social media and other online communications is a major component of this strategy, which aims to lay the ground for major conflict, potentially involving millions of deaths, by effectively eliminating the freedom of expression.

Turkey invades Syria to attack US-backed Kurdish forces

Halil Celik & Alex Lantier

On Sunday, at 11 AM local time, Turkish tanks and infantry invaded Afrin, a majority-Kurdish multi-ethnic region in northwestern Syria. The Turkish forces are targeting the US-backed Syrian-Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which control Afrin. At the same time, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Ankara’s proxy force in Syria, attacked Afrin from the south and east, supported by Turkish tanks and Special Forces.

This aggression by Turkey is a reckless escalation that will exacerbate the conflicts raging across the Middle East and intensify the danger of war between the major powers. With Moscow’s tacit support, Turkey is attacking the YPG, the backbone of the main US proxy force in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia. The danger of this triggering a clash between US forces and Russian and Turkish forces in Syria, and all-out war between the United States and Russia, is very real.

The ground invasion, code-named “Olive Branch,” came after hours of Turkish air strikes on Afrin, including strikes on an airfield used by US forces to deliver equipment and arms to the SDF.

It signifies a historic breakdown of the NATO alliance, of which the United States and Turkey are both members. Given that the Turkish invasion apparently has support in Berlin, it reflects deep and mounting conflicts between the major NATO powers.

In the first hours of the operation on Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters that its aim was to create a 30-kilometer “safe zone” along the Turkish-Syrian border. He said the operation would proceed in four phases, without giving further details. It seems likely to continue eastwards to Manbij, a region occupied by the SDF since it fought Islamic State (ISIS) forces in August 2016.

That development provoked Operation Euphrates Shield, an invasion by the Turkish army to block the Kurdish offensive in Syria and break up what Ankara called “a terror corridor along the Turkish border.”

Initial press reports of the Turkish attack were contradictory. Turkish officials and media unanimously hailed the operation as a great success. However, the YPG claimed to have repulsed Turkish and FSA forces “after fierce clashes.”

The Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella group including the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) of Turkey and Kurdish organizations in Syria and Iran, condemned the operation and declared it would “stand by Afrin with all its strength.” In a written statement, it accused Russia and Syria of “permitting Turkey to attack Afrin.”

The offensive threatens to provoke civil war in Kurdish-majority areas of southern Turkey. Speaking in Bursa, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to crush all opposition within Turkey to the war, including from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). “Whoever takes to the streets on the call of HDP, KCK and PKK should know that our security forces will keep a tight rein on them and they will pay a heavy price,” he said.

Late yesterday, Turkish media reported three missile attacks in the southeastern Turkish province of Reyhanlı, killing one and wounding 32 civilians.

Within Turkey, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party is using the invasion to escalate its crackdown on political opposition, with the support of the opposition Republican People’s Party and the fascistic Nationalist Movement Party. Hundreds of people protesting the invasion were arrested in several Turkish cities. The judiciary launched investigations of Democratic Society Party (DTP) Co-Chair Leyla Güven, HDP spokesperson Ayhan Bilgen and HDP Deputy Co-Chair Nadir Yıldırım for criticizing the Afrin invasion.

Turkey was able to launch the operation only due to tacit Russian support. Moscow withdrew its forces stationed in Afrin as part of the Russian intervention against NATO-backed Islamist militias in Syria, and allowed Turkish aircraft to operate in the region’s air space. It also mediated for Turkey in relations with the Syrian and Iranian governments, which criticized the invasion.

Yesterday, Russian officials blamed Washington for the attack, saying it took “provocative steps” by saying it would arm the YPG and use it to control the Syrian-Turkish border.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said Syria “strongly condemns the flagrant Turkish aggression on the city of Afrin, which is an integral part of Syrian territory, stressing that this aggression is the most recent in a series of Turkish transgressions against Syrian sovereignty.” It dismissed claims by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that Turkey had informed Syria beforehand, calling them “lies that the Turkish government continues to spout.”

Iran, Syria's main regional ally, said it hoped that “the operation will immediately come to an end.”

Turkey’s invasion of Syria is the outcome of decades of escalating carnage and imperialist war in the Middle East, led by Washington, since the Persian Gulf War and the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the USSR, both of which occurred in 1991. With the removal of the Soviet military threat, Washington was free to launch ever bloodier wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and beyond, with the aid of some or all of its NATO allies. It is increasingly clear, however, that the growing international conflicts provoked by these wars, including Ankara’s outrage over US reliance on Kurdish proxy forces, have reached an entirely new stage.

As Turkey moves to destroy the main US proxy force in Syria, NATO is on the verge of collapse and Washington is increasingly isolated. It faces a powerful coalition of opponents in the Middle East that enjoys support even among Washington’s nominal European allies. It is responding by announcing a military strategy that centers on preparations for total war against nuclear-armed powers such as Russia and China.

Initial US statements on the invasion were unclear and self-contradictory. US State Department sources said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had spoken to his Russian and Turkish counterparts about “securing stability in the north of the country,” but gave no details. Pentagon officials said they “encourage all parties to avoid escalation and to focus on the most important task of defeating the Islamic State.”

In fact, the Pentagon on Friday unveiled a National Defense Strategy that proclaims the “war on terror” to have been supplanted by the need to prepare for war against rival great powers. “Great power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of US national security,” Defense Secretary James Mattis said as he unveiled the document, which singles out Russia and China as the preeminent threats to US global dominance.

The US is clearly concerned with the Turkish invasion. The Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, warned that it “could trigger a new, bloody phase of the long-running Syrian civil war” and “may also be aimed at the United States,” which “has spent three years balancing a troubled relationship with Turkey with the imperatives of the counter-IS campaign in Syria.” The Center for American Progress statement continued, “With the end of that campaign in sight, that balancing act is once again teetering on the brink.”

The contrast to the policy of Germany, the leading European power, could not be more striking. Berlin appears to have green-lighted the invasion. Last Wednesday, as Turkish artillery strikes on YPG positions began and Erdogan’s National Security Council threatened to invade Syria, a delegation of high-level Turkish security officials arrived for two days of friendly talks in Berlin. In these talks, German and Turkish officials discussed measures against the Kurds.

As the German press discussed Berlin’s “new turn back” toward Turkey, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Berlin intended to have “better negotiations” with Ankara, “for the benefit of Turkey, Germany and Europe.” Berlin announced a new crackdown on PKK activities in Germany, with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office opening 130 investigations.

Berlin also signaled that Turkey will continue to enjoy German military support even after attacking US proxies in Syria. It did so by moving to fast-track Turkey’s requests for the modernization of its German “Leopard” tanks by Rheinmetall. “The federal government is showing itself to be flexible in its new turn back towards Turkey,” Der Spiegel wrote. “According to Der Spiegel’s sources, Berlin now wants to give the nod to a multi-million-euro arms deal with Ankara.”

These statements of German support for Turkey even as it bombards US proxy forces in Syria point to the profound tensions tearing apart the NATO military alliance and the escalating danger of direct conflict between the major world powers.

The class issues in the US federal shutdown

Patrick Martin

The partial shutdown of the US federal government continued into Sunday night without any clear possibility of immediate resolution. Much of the civilian federal workforce is expected either to report for work only briefly Monday, turning in official cellphones and laptops and closing down their workplaces, or to stay home entirely. As many as 800,000 would be furloughed.

The shutdown was sparked by discussions between Republicans and Democrats on immigration policy, and the outcome will be a further shift to the right in official American politics. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, the chief Democratic negotiator, signaled this with his capitulation to Trump Friday, when he visited the White House for one-on-one talks, and proffered a deal in which Trump would receive full funding to build his wall along the US-Mexico border, in return for legalization of the nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children and protected under the DACA program.

In effect, Trump will have used his rescinding of the executive order that established DACA to win Democratic Party support for the building of the wall, his signature campaign promise to the ultra-right political “base.” Such a deal would strengthen Trump immeasurably, breathing new life into an administration that was in dire crisis. That Trump senses the Democrats’ prostration was shown by his decision to spurn Schumer’s offer and demand even more concessions, including a sharp reduction in legal immigration.

The proposed deal demonstrates that the Democratic Party does not want to bring down the Trump administration, but rather induce Trump to be more “reasonable” and involve the Democrats as a partner in carrying out his right-wing political agenda. The Democrats in the end wanted the shutdown, preferably a brief one, to provide a cover and excuse for doing what they have already decided to do: back Trump’s border wall.

Trump is only stepping up his appeal to fascistic elements, with his reelection campaign having released a television ad saying that Democrats who oppose his attacks on immigrants “will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.”

In terms of the actual impact of the government shutdown, the military and other uniformed federal services, including the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and TSA baggage and passenger screeners at airports will report for duty, although paychecks will be held back until Congress approves retroactive payment, as it has in every previous federal shutdown.

According to the Trump administration—and on this, there is no difference between the Republican president and his “opposition” among the congressional Democrats—the vast American military-intelligence apparatus must remain on duty, killing people overseas, patrolling battlefields on distant continents, and spying on the entire world, including the American population.

As Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan wrote in a memo Thursday, the US military “will, of course, continue to prosecute the war in Afghanistan and ongoing operations against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, including preparation of forces for deployment into those conflicts.”

But federal government functions that actually relate to the health and welfare of the American people will be shut down as inessential. This includes furloughing more than 60 percent of the staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (under conditions of a rampaging nationwide flu epidemic), 80 percent of the Department of Education (including supplementary funding for local public schools throughout the country), and a staggering 95 percent of the employees of the National Transportation Safety Board, (shutting down investigations into such disasters as the recent commuter rail crash in Washington state).

The determination of which federal offices and functions will remain open as “essential” and which will be closed provides an insight into the real character of the capitalist state machine. It corresponds entirely to the description by Frederick Engels, the great collaborator of Karl Marx, of the state as “special bodies of armed men,” including prisons and other facilities for internal repression as well as external aggression.

The social services provided or supported by the federal government were only established as a byproduct of great struggles of the working class, from the 1930s through the 1960s, and are regarded by the American ruling elite as an unnecessary and increasingly unaffordable luxury under conditions of the long-term economic decline of American capitalism in relation to its foreign rivals.

As a political event, the federal shutdown is a demonstration that the American ruling elite as a whole, and not just Trump personally, is “unfit” to run a large, complex society of more than 330 million people. Perhaps the most truthful comment from a US congressman came from Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who told the press Friday, “our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.” It would be more precise to say criminals, but one can expect only so much from a senator.

A bitter conflict between two right-wing parties—driven largely by factional disputes over foreign policy that are being concealed from the American people—now threatens the continuation of basic public services on which tens of millions of people depend. There will be real damage, in terms of health care, environmental protection and other social needs, to say nothing of the wages lost by workers who are furloughed, and the economic impact on small businesses dependent on federal contracts.

The cynical political maneuvering of the Democrats as 2018 begins, follows and flows from their role in Trump’s first year—suppressing working class opposition and seeking to direct it behind the conflict within the ruling class over issues of foreign policy, while in practice facilitating Trump’s reactionary domestic policies.

Whatever the immediate result of the political deadlock in Washington, there will be no progressive outcome without the independent intervention of the working class against both the capitalist parties. If they are allowed to work through this crisis, the twin parties of the US ruling elite will produce only more social disasters and more attacks on the jobs, living standards and democratic rights of working people, as well as a further shift in foreign policy in the direction of war and militarism.

Iran Protests: Drivers and Consequences

Majid Izadpanahi


While much of the world was busy celebrating the new year, Iran was enveloped in protests. Spread across 70 cities, these protests began in the Shiite holy city of Mashhad in reaction to endemic inflation that has plagued the Iranian economy.

This demonstration was more significant than the Green Movement in 2009 or any previous demonstrations Iran has faced. Firstly, the Green Movement opposed the election of Ahmadinejad and was driven by the participation of the middle class and restricted to three or four large cities with a clear slogan, “Where Is My Vote?” This protest was much more widespread, targeting external policies perceived to have a direct influence on the current economic downturn and hence the average Iranian's standard of living. These policies include Iran’s involvement in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, leading to slogans like “Let Go of Syria, Think of Us,” or “No Gaza, No Lebanon, My Life for Iran.” Secondly, this protest was spontaneous, organised through the Internet - specifically a messaging application called Telegram - without leadership, and lacked the support of the established reformists as some of these voters have lost their faith in them and President Rouhani. Surprisingly, two conservative and religious cities – Mashhad and Qom – witnessed anti-Islamic Republic and pro-Iranian royal family slogans. 

Though triggered by inflation, there are many factors motivating the demonstrations: inflation, unemployment, pervasive corruption and embezzlement, to name but a few. These causes absorbed the nationwide protest organised a few months earlier by  people who lost money invested in financial institutions that became bankrupt. These earlier protests led by the normal salaried class comprising a spectrum, from teachers, to bus drivers and labourers, intensified after the earthquake in Western Iran and the lack of governmental aid to the survivors. Protestors were further aggravated when President Rouhani allocated more funds for religious institutes than other crucial administrative organisations, such as the Organisation of the Environment, which looks after Iran's many environment-related problems. In short, these protests represent a far wider cross-section of the population than previous protests. 

The Government's Approach
While officials accepted the right to protest and admitted to the existence of economic problems, they accused foreign powers - Saudi Arabia, the US, and Israel - of instigating the demonstrations. Consequently, the government response was three-fold: force, counter-propaganda, and censorship. Riot police was used to crack down on and arrest protestors. The counter-narrative of a foreign hand was created, stoking nationalist sentiments through mass media and organised pro-government demonstrations. Finally, apps like Telegram, Instagram and Facebook were blocked.

Consequences 
All of this leads to two main questions relating to the durability of the protests, and their consequences.

The demonstrations began based on economic motivations but very soon turned into political demands as they correctly blamed the officials’ inability to solve problems. Signs of confusion among Iranian officials over the state of affairs are visible. They failed to grapple with the demands of the demonstrators and resorted to deflection tactics accusing other countries. As long as the disillusionment with the economic function of the government and the grounds for discontent exist, the possibility of recurrent protests remains open.

While previous protests had been supported by reformists within Iran, the current demonstrations can be considered a third force outside the established political system, and beyond the reformist-fundamentalist equation. In fact, this third pole has pushed the reformists and fundamentalists closer to each other, possibly leading to the emergence of a new pro and anti-government equation. In other words, a new political makeup. 

Overplaying the foreign conspiracy angle may undermine President Rouhani’s détente foreign policy and bring about a new round of tensions between Iran and the West. The US is planning new political sanctions on Iran due to “the violation of human rights.” The continuation or recurrence of the protests may prevent foreign investments in Iran, especially in the energy sector, preventing any short-term bubbles or deeper economic recovery. 

Ultimately, if these protests achieve political amplification well beyond their current significance, the consequences will depend entirely on the reaction of the government to them.

A Global Nuclear Order in Crisis

Sheel Kant Sharma


The year 2017 saw the iconic clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists slide to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight. It is set closer than ever to the brink except in 1952 when US-Soviet hydrogen bomb tests within six months of each other had pushed it to two minutes to midnight. In fact, the furthest it came from midnight was 17 minutes in 1991 after the end of the Cold War with a raft of nuclear arms control measures agreed by Washington and Moscow. In the past 26 years, that reassuring distance from doomsday has again diminished steadily as deterioration rather than improvements have been the hall mark of great power relations. Besides, since 2007, the danger of a climate change catastrophe has combined with nuclear peril in the analysis of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. 

 The last hopeful moment for this clock was in 2009 when the  Nobel Prize for peace was awarded to President Obama. That was an investment in hope aroused by Obama’s pitch on abolition of nuclear weapons and his inclination to drafting a Nuclear Posture Review much less prone to resort to nuclear weapons (all he could eventually muster in 2010 was narrowing the definition of the country facing an “extreme circumstance”). In contrast, last year’s Nobel to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its determined campaign for the Ban Treaty had a marked sense of despair. In just eight years, hope has given way to rising unease and hopelessness. 

As things stand today, even tentative global rules – written and unwritten – for managing the nuclear age and avoidance of nuclear war have suffered severe damage. The damage appears to have been to the core. These rules as one understood them comprised a seven decade-old informal taboo against nuclear weapons, a tacit assurance among nuclear weapon states about not crossing red lines regarding respective security sensitivities, and observance of the international as well as bilateral treaties and understanding. All that compendium is severely undermined today by a number of threatening developments. A fervent urgency to respond with finality to North Korea’s provocations and North Korean actions in continued defiance are on one end of the spectrum. The weak response to the Ban Treaty by the nuclear weapon states while dismissing its clarion call figures somewhere in the middle. The inherent logic of the Ban Treaty’s prohibition is not challenged by those rejecting it. Among the argumentation adduced for their rejection are the familiar deterrence stability theories and security architecture based on nuclear weapons and also fears about the adverse impact of the Ban Treaty on the long-standing NPT. 

A breakdown in communication between Moscow and Washington about the path-breaking treaties of late last century seems to be almost complete with openly voiced intentions on their part to outstrip the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by testing new medium range missiles. The entente among the P5 about managing a world with nuclear weapons is at its weakest. Politics among nations seem to override today the almost century old wisdom of commonly pursuing agreed restraints on weapons; restraints which commenced with the Geneva Protocol of 1925 and progressively gained heft in the half century after World War II. The chimera still burns of a miracle breakthrough in technology that would trounce one’s adversary by beating all technologies of weapons, both offensive and defensive. Outlaws like North Korea meanwhile resolutely pursue the trodden path to acquire and test old-fashioned nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. The past year saw a harrowing spectacle of it in North Korea’s tests of hydrogen bomb and long range missile capable of hitting mainland US; capped by the threat of a demonstrative atmospheric nuclear test. Were that to happen the comity of nations would backtrack to 1980 when China had last conducted its nuclear test in the atmosphere. 

 There is no realistic chance in this setting of nuclear 'haves' agreeing to move further on reductions or even accept declaratory constraints on use of nuclear weapons. India and China maintain No First Use (NFU) doctrines although given the miasma that prevails, such exceptions are likely drowned in uncertainty. 

The roots of this uncertainty stem from widening divergence and lack of trust among Russia, China and the US on security, growing gaps in their approaches to global tensions, including in Ukraine, North East Asia and the Indo-Pacific, and flaring up of dangerous psychoses in West and South Asia against Iran, Syria and in Afghanistan. One captious ground against the ‘deterrence-only’ role of nuclear weapons has been extended deterrence, which seems to be challenged when South Korean president shows his pronounced unease about the dangerous nuclear war rhetoric. South Korean preference for dialogue and sanctions is reminiscent of Helmut Kohl’s Cold War Oestpolitik and the panic of many in Germany as potential victims of deterrence failure rather than beneficiaries of European missile deployment.  

The passionate advocacy of the Ban Treaty falls short of carrying conviction with those toward whom it is directed. Only a minority among the nine nuclear-armed states values the merit of the campaign which highlights that the world is just "a tantrum away" from doomsday, to quote from the Nobel ceremony. The latest news reports indicate that a draft US Nuclear Posture Review in US visualises a devastating cyber attack as an "extreme circumstance” for resorting to use of nuclear weapons. A host of questions arise about likely pre-emption or retaliation targets and a repeat of post 9/11 arguments about terror attacks justifying nuclear weapons’ use. On the other hand, reports about Russian possession of an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven intercontinental nuclear torpedo portend a new spiral of escalation.

There is, for an optimist, a faint trickle of light that shines on North Korea’s upcoming participation in the Winter Olympics in South Korea and prospect of dialogue or positive turn of events there, Iran deal’s surviving yet another killer deadline and unconfirmed informal contacts between US State Department officials and counterparts in Moscow on these issues. The enlightened appeal of the Ban Treaty in these trying times, however, is for doing much more than clutching at straws in the wind.