US hosts special ASEAN summit as conflict with China deepens

Ben McGrath

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met for a special two-day summit with US President Joe Biden in Washington last week as part of a diplomatic offensive against China.

For US imperialism, the meeting provided an opportunity to escalate its confrontation with Beijing in the Indo-Pacific even as it prosecutes the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Moscow. However, disagreements were evident within ASEAN over the US agenda.

The ASEAN-US Special Summit in Washington DC, 2022 (Photo: Facebook/ASEAN)

The ASEAN-US summit took place May 12 and 13, and was the first to be held in Washington in the organization’s 45-year history. It was also the second special summit held in the US following a 2016 meeting hosted by then President Barack Obama in California.

Biden exploited the summit to again accuse Beijing of planning an unprovoked invasion of Taiwan, comparing it to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In reality, the US is goading and antagonizing Beijing over regional territorial disputes and Taiwan, just as the US and NATO deliberately provoked the war in Europe.

Calling the meeting the launch of a “new era in US-ASEAN relations,” Biden told assembled leaders that “the breadth of our discussions reflects just how vital the Indo-Pacific and ASEAN region are to the United States of America, from our perspective.”

Without explicitly naming China, Biden stated that US was seeking “an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, stable and prosperous, and resilient and secure.” Washington regularly demonizes Beijing declaring it to be a threat to the “free and open” Indo-Pacific and to the so-called “international rules-based order.”

Washington’s real fear is that China’s economic expansion constitutes a threat to US global domination—that is, the post-World War II order in which it set the international rules to meet its own economic and strategic interests.

The joint statement released after the meeting struck a similar note, stating, that the US and ASEAN “share relevant fundamental principles in promoting an open, inclusive, and rules-based regional architecture, in which ASEAN is central, alongside partners who share in these goals.”

In fact, Washington, for more than a decade, has stoked tensions in the region between China and ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The US Navy has repeatedly staged provocative “freedom of navigation operations,” sending its warships into waters claimed by China around islets under its control.

The ASEAN-US joint statement made several references to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the SEA (UNCLOS), which the US has never ratified, indirectly justifying these naval provocations. “We are dedicated to maintaining peace, security, and stability in the region, and to ensuring maritime security and safety, as well as freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful uses of the seas as described in the 1982 UNCLOS,” it stated.

The aim of such denunciations, veiled or otherwise, is to paint China as a threat to “freedom” in the Indo-Pacific region while allowing for the development of Washington’s military plans with its allies. In particular, the US and Australia have denounced a security agreement recently signed by China with the Solomon Islands and issued barely veiled threats of regime-change against the government of the small Pacific Island state.

Biden pledged $150 million to ASEAN during the summit to try to offset the $1.5 billion in development aid pledged by Beijing to ASEAN in November. The largest allocation was $60 million towards military cooperation in the South China Sea. This includes dispatching a US Coast Guard ship to the region to work with ASEAN-member fleets, on the pretext of preventing illegal Chinese fishing.

However, there are broad differences among the ASEAN countries in their stance towards Russia and China. So while both were undoubtedly discussed behind closed doors, public statements avoided direct condemnations. Only Singapore has imposed sanctions on Russia. Vietnam and Laos abstained from passing a UN resolution in March condemning Russia over Ukraine. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have adopted more neutral positions.

On Ukraine, the summit’s joint statement did not follow the US in condemning the Russian invasion. It reaffirmed “our respect for sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity” and reiterated “our call for compliance with the UN Charter and international law.” It called for “an immediate cessation of hostilities” and a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Similar divisions exist among ASEAN members about fully lining up with the US-led war drive against China. Prior to the summit, Kurt Campbell, the US Indo-Pacific coordinator, publicly declared that Taiwan would be on the agenda and hypocritically claimed that the US wanted “to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” However, no reference to Taiwan appeared in the summit’s joint statement.

Amalina Anuar, a senior analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, told Al Jazeera, “[I]f we’re talking about persuading ASEAN members to align with the US, it’s doubtful that ASEAN members would move away from neutrality. ASEAN and China are in the same neighborhood and are interdependent in many ways, not least economically. ASEAN is not looking to exclude China from the regional architecture because of this.”

Cambodia in particular has close relations with Beijing while Indonesia is heavily reliant on Chinese investment. In addition, the leaders of both Myanmar and the Philippines were absent from the summit, with the former excluded following a military coup in 2021 and the latter going through a leadership change. The new Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration in Manila appears likely to follow in the footsteps of outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte in developing closer relations with Beijing.

To offset these economic relations, Washington is working on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which Biden plans to formally launch during his upcoming trip to Asia this week. The IPEF, announced last October and similar to the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is meant to put US trade and interests at the center of economic relationships in the region. The administration intends to implement its plan through executive orders rather than risk facing Congressional opposition.

At the end of this week, Biden will travel to Northeast Asia where he will meet with new South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on May 21 in Seoul and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on May 23 in Tokyo. The following day, Biden will take part in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) summit—a quasi-military alliance directed against China—with Kishida and the leaders of India and Australia.

Finland and Sweden formally announce application for NATO membership

Jordan Shilton

Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson formally announced Monday that Stockholm will submit an application to join NATO. The move followed a parliamentary debate in which almost all parties voted in favour of the move. The Greens and ex-Stalinist Left Party, which have helped keep the Social Democratic minority government in power for the past eight years, voted against.

Sweden’s decision came one day after Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin confirmed Sunday that Helsinki will apply for NATO membership. Although a parliamentary vote is necessary to finalise the process, this is seen as a formality since Niinistö and Marin represent the two largest parties, the conservative National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats.

Helsinki and Stockholm’s formal applications to join the aggressive Western military alliance were prepared in close consultation with the major imperialist powers. Washington, Berlin and London see in NATO’s expansion the opportunity to open up a second front in their drive to bring about regime change in Moscow and reduce Russia to the status of a semi-colony of Western imperialism.

Representatives of NATO and the imperialist powers sought to cover up this reality over recent days with Orwellian propaganda about “democracies” coming together in a “defensive” alliance to ensure “security” in Europe.

Speaking after a three-day G7 foreign ministers meeting on Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock claimed, “Every democratic country should be happy that democracies with strong defence capabilities will make the joint alliance stronger.” She added that NATO is not pushing both countries to join. Instead, these two “strong democracies” are joining in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Baerbock then hosted a NATO summit in Berlin, where foreign ministers from NATO’s 30 member states joined their colleagues from Finland and Sweden to consult on a “very, very fast” approval of the membership applications, as Baerbock put it. “Their membership in NATO would increase our shared security,” added NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

In reality, there is nothing “democratic” about Sweden and Finland’s decision to join the world’s most aggressive military alliance, which has been responsible for spreading death and destruction from the Balkans to Afghanistan and Libya over the past three decades. The move has much more the character of a conspiracy engineered by the most powerful imperialist states, above all, Britain, Germany and the United States. Together with their accomplices in the Finnish and Swedish ruling elites, they are rushing to present the population of the region with a fait accompli: that they now live on a new frontline in a rapidly escalating military conflict with Russia.

As late as March, Andersson stated that Sweden would not join NATO, declaring that it would destabilize security in the region. Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist remarked the same month, “Sweden’s membership in NATO means fundamentally changing the security line. This affects the safety of our immediate region.”

According to an analysis by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, which is aligned with Germany’s Free Democratic Party, “Finnish diplomats in Brussels started informal discussions with the defence alliance on 25 February, the day after the war started, and government officials have been on a diplomatic whirlwind tour ever since.”

At a NATO meeting attended by Finnish and Swedish officials on February 26, participants discussed special intelligence-sharing arrangements for both countries with NATO. “They need to be fully informed because of their strategic position for Russia,” a diplomatic source told EURACTIV.

Politico likewise described the “intense schedule of meetings at home and abroad” over recent weeks. Marin and Andersson travelled to a German cabinet retreat near Berlin in early May to obtain pledges of military support from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who heads a government engaged in the largest rearmament programme since Hitler’s Third Reich. Meanwhile, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde traveled to the US and Canada to make arrangements with the Biden administration and Trudeau government.

The imperialist powers are eager to bring Sweden and Finland into NATO not only due to their relatively well-equipped militaries but, above all, due to the countries’ geostrategic location. Finland shares a 1,300-kilometre border with Russia that is within striking distance of St. Petersburg. Swedish membership in NATO would leave Russia totally encircled by NATO members in the Baltic Sea and make it easier for the alliance to supply its battlegroups in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the event of an attack on Russia.

The two membership applications must be approved by all 30 NATO members before Finland and Sweden can join. This could prove to be a stumbling block in the imperialist powers’ drive to conclude the membership process as soon as possible. On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his opposition to Helsinki and Stockholm joining the alliance, saying they were “guest houses for terrorist organisations.” Erdogan accused Sweden and Finland of supporting the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) against which Ankara has waged a bloody military conflict for decades. Finland and Sweden have dispatched delegations to Ankara for talks aimed at resolving the dispute.

The political establishments in Helsinki and Stockholm have been striving to become NATO members for well over two decades. In the mid-1990s, Finland and Sweden joined NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” programme, which was a key instrument in the US-led military alliance’s aggressive expansion up to the borders of Russia in the Baltic region and in Eastern Europe. Finland and Sweden went on to send troops to support the neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan, while Swedish fighter jets participated in NATO’s savage bombardment of Libya.

In 2017, Finland and Sweden then joined the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), a British-led military alliance of Baltic and Nordic countries aimed explicitly at Russia. The goals of the alliance were to enable NATO members to launch military attacks without the delays required for consultation within the military alliance and engage non-NATO members in joint military exercises with NATO equipment.

Russia’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine—which was intentionally provoked by the transformation of Ukraine into a NATO member in all but name after the US- and German-backed Maidan coup in 2014—was seized upon by the imperialists, and the plan for NATO expansion involving the Swedish and Finnish governments has long been in the works. The main obstacle was always strong opposition to the military alliance among the Swedish and Finnish populations, but this was overcome through a sustained barrage of pro-war propaganda and a vicious anti-Russia campaign portraying the nationalist Putin regime as the main aggressor.

As Petteri Orpo, head of the conservative National Coalition Party in Finland, put it during a recent trip to Washington for consultations with Biden administration officials, “For 16 years, we have supported NATO membership, and now it’s possible. Thanks, Putin.”

A striking feature of the pro-war consensus that has emerged within Finnish and Swedish ruling circles as they prepared to join NATO is that it was led primarily by the Social Democratic parties, who owed their considerable popularity for much of the 20th century to their professed opposition to war and military violence.

Marin’s Social Democrats, who currently head the government in Helsinki, voted at a national executive meeting on Saturday by a 53-5 vote with 2 abstentions for NATO membership. At a similar meeting held a day later by Sweden’s Social Democrats, who currently govern in a minority tolerated by the Greens and Left Party, Andersson obtained agreement from the party executive. Reflecting the significant skepticism towards NATO that still exists, the Social Democrats felt compelled to pledge that if Sweden’s application is accepted, the party will “work to ensure that Sweden expresses unilateral reservations against the deployment of nuclear weapons and permanent bases on Swedish territory.”

Just four days earlier, Andersson hosted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who confirmed London’s readiness to provide Sweden with military assistance as part of a mutual security pact. Asked if this would include nuclear weapons, Johnson told the media, “When it comes to our nuclear deterrent, that’s something we don’t generally comment upon, but what I’ve made clear is that it’s up to either party to make a request, and we take it very seriously.”

Tacit approval from the ex-Stalinist and pseudo-left parties has played a no less important role in suppressing opposition in the population. Li Andersson, leader of the Left Alliance and Education Minister in Marin’s government, declared last week that while she personally opposed joining NATO, she saw no reason to resign from the government if Finland filed an application to join.

Sri Lankan prime minister demands more sacrifice from working people

Peter Symonds

In a special address to the nation, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe bluntly outlined the dire economic situation confronting the country. He warned that “the next couple of months will be the most difficult ones in the lives of all citizens,” and insisted that the population “must prepare to make some sacrifices.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe [Source: United National Party Facebook]

Wickremesinghe made the statement late yesterday on the eve of today’s parliamentary session, where a vote of support for the new prime minister is due to take place. He was only appointed by President Gotabhaya Rajapakse last Thursday amid an unprecedented economic, social and political crisis engulfing the country.

The president’s brother, Mahinda Rajapakse, resigned as prime minister on May 9, after weeks of mass protests and strikes demanding the resignation of both Rajapakses and an end to the social disaster facing working people. Prices for essentials, including food, fuel and medicines, have skyrocketed. Chronic shortages have produced long queues, and lengthy power outages occur every day.

The turmoil in Sri Lanka is a particularly acute expression of the global crisis of capitalism that has been produced by the criminal “let it rip” pandemic policy of governments around the world, now compounded by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Sri Lanka’s tourist industry has collapsed, remittances from Sri Lankans working overseas have slumped by 61 percent year-on-year and tea exports to the major markets of Ukraine and Russia have dried up. The country’s central bank has declared a temporary default on the huge foreign loans of more than more than $51 billion. The lack of foreign exchange has meant that imports of fuel, medicines and basic food items cannot be paid for.

Wickremesinghe’s appointment was a desperate bid to buy time for the ruling class as negotiations are underway with the IMF and creditors. His speech yesterday was aimed at convincing them that his government will take the harsh austerity measures they require, and bludgeoning working people into “sacrificing” for the nation.

Wickremesinghe offered no relief for workers or the poor, millions of whom are struggling to put food on the table, obtain medicines or pay for transport to go to work. Instead, he emphasised the depth of the economic crisis to justify the harsh measures that he intends to take.

In November 2019, he said, Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves were $US7.5 billion, but “today, it is a challenge for the treasury to find $1 million… To ease the queues, we must obtain approximately $75 million within the next couple of days.

“At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day,” he threatened. While a diesel shipment arrived on Sunday, more will be needed in the coming days. “A quarter of electricity is generated through oil. Therefore, there is a possibility that the daily power outages will increase to 15 hours a day,” he continued.

“Another grave concern is the lack of medicine,” Wickermesinghe said. “There is a severe shortage of a number of medicines including medicine required for heart disease as well as surgical equipment. Payments have not been made for four months to suppliers of medicine, medical equipment, and food for patients.”

In a revealing comment, Wickremesinghe declared his intention to sell off the Sri Lankan Airlines and then noted that even with the sale there would be huge losses to be paid. “You must be aware that this is a loss that must be borne even by the poor people of this country who have never stepped on an airplane,” he said.

The remark is an open confirmation that the working people are going to be compelled to bear the brunt of the capitalist crisis—to pay off the huge loans incurred for the benefit of the wealthy corporate elite. The prime minister also foreshadowed further large price hikes for fuel and electricity, saying that government subsidies were no longer affordable.

Wickremesinghe concluded his address by declaring that “these facts are unpleasant and terrifying” but promising that the “tough times” would be short, and that a rosy future was ahead if everyone pulled together. He painted himself as a martyr to the nation, ready to tread a dangerous and difficult path.

What a fraud! Wickremesinghe has been installed to do the bidding of Sri Lankan big business and the IMF and foreign creditors. As prime minister on five previous occasions, he is notorious for his imposition of pro-market restructuring and for his pro-US orientation. His appointment was welcomed by the US ambassador to Colombo.

Wickremesinghe has spent his first few days in office huddled in discussions with diplomats from the US, Japan and China, while holding closed door talks with government and opposition figures in a desperate effort to pull together a majority for the parliamentary vote today.

His lack of any popular support is underscored by the fact that he is the only representative of his United National Party (UNP) in 225-seat parliament. The UNP split in 2020, with the majority of its members forming what is now the main opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya. The SJB has indicated qualified support for a Wickremesinghe government but has refused to enter its cabinet. As of yesterday, only four ministers had been appointed to the Wickremesinghe cabinet—all members of President Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).   

Even if Wickremesinghe gains a parliamentary majority today, his government will inevitably lurch from crisis to crisis as it seeks to impose intolerable new burdens on working people. Anti-government protests are continuing at Galle Face Green in central Colombo. Protest leaders have opposed Wickremesinghe’s appointment, reflecting far broader distrust in the manoeuvres being carried out in the political establishment.

Rejecting the main demand of the protests, President Rajapakse has flatly refused to resign and retains sweeping powers, including to dismiss the government and impose police-state measures. In the wake of a general strike of millions of workers throughout the island on May 5, he imposed a nationwide state of emergency, connived with his brother to orchestrate a violent attack on protesters at Galle Face Green, then exploited the eruption of anger to institute a curfew and mobilise the military onto the streets.

In comments to the WSWS, Wije Dias, chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka, condemned Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s call for working people to make an unending series of sacrifices in the name of the country.

SEP General Secretary Wije Dias [WSWS Media]

“The Socialist Equality Party strongly urges the working class, rural poor and youth of all communities, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim, to reject Wickremesinghe’s appeal, which he makes on behalf of the international bankers and the local capitalist leaches who have bled white the Sri Lankan people, under different bourgeois governments for the last 74 years, since the bogus independence.

“It is a totally different outcome from what protesting workers, small farmers and youth expected when they occupied the streets with their mass protests and one-day general strikes. They wanted an end to the shortages and high prices of fuel, gas, milk powder and the outages of electricity which have become intolerable under the capitalist profit system.

“It is the trade unions and their pseudo-left allies, all of which have a long history of treachery, that are consciously blocking the victory of the mass struggle by spreading false illusions in bourgeois parliamentary democracy and thus continue to sustain capitalist rule.

Morbid Matters: Estimating COVID-19 Mortality

Binoy Kampmark

COVID Dead Body

It has dominated news cycles, debates and policies since 2020, but COVID-19 continues to exercise the interest of number crunchers and talliers.  While the ghoulish daily press announcements about infections and deaths across many a country have diminished and, in some cases, disappeared altogether, publications abound about how many were taken in the pandemic.

The World Health Organization, ever that herald of dark news, has offered a revised assessment across of the SARS-CoV-2 death toll associated either directly or indirectly with the pandemic.  Between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, the global health body suggests that the mortality figure is closer to 14.9 million, with a range of 13.3 million to 16.6 million.

The number considers excess mortality, the figure reached after accounting for the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred, and the number expected in the absence of the pandemic.  It also accounts for deaths occasioned directly by COVID-19, or indirectly (for instance, the pandemic’s disruption of society and health systems).

The impact, as expected, has been disproportionate in terms of which countries have suffered more.  Of the excess deaths, 68% were concentrated in 10 countries – Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States.  Middle-income countries accounted for 81% of excess deaths; high-income countries, for 15%, and low-income countries, 4%.

The United States, if only for being ascendant in terms of power, wealth, and incompetence in dealing with the virus, finds itself in the undistinguished position of having lost a million people.  “Today,” remarked President Joe Biden, “we mark a tragic milestone here in the United States, one million COVID deaths, one million empty chairs around the family dinner table, each irreplaceable, irreplaceable losses, each leaving behind a family, a community forever changed because of this pandemic.”

Chief Medical Adviser to the President, Anthony Fauci, rued the fact that “at least a quarter of those deaths, namely about 250,000” might have been saved by vaccinations.  He also warned about the ugly prospect of a resurgence in numbers, and not bringing “down our guard”.

In light of such figures, WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reiterates the line he and his colleagues have done so for months.  Pandemics demand more “resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems”.  His organisation “was committed to working with all countries to strengthen their health information systems to generate better data for better decisions and better outcomes.”  Much of this will be wishful thinking.

Figures, certainly when they concern matters of mortality, can become the subject of bitter dispute.  COVID-19 has proved no exception.  In Africa, 41 of 54 countries reported insufficient data.  Some countries have released incomplete data sets; others, none to speak of.  This meant, inevitably, that the WHO’s Technical Advisory Group for COVID-19 Mortality Assessment could only model the missing figures to fill gaps.

As a result scrapping and arguments over methodology duly emerged.  India, for one, has very publicly objected to the way the WHO has approached the compilation, communicating its concerns in no less than six letters between November 2021 and March 2022 and in a number of virtual meetings.  Concerns have also been registered by WHO Member States, including China, Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, Ethiopia and Egypt.

The case with India is particularly telling, given WHO modelling showing 4,740,894 excess deaths, almost triple that of New Delhi’s own figures.  Such figures imply, as epidemiologist Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto claimed back in January, that the authorities were “trying to suppress the numbers in the way that they coded the COVID deaths.”

In an indignant statement from the Union Health Ministry released early this month, much is made of “how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size & population of India and also fits in with other countries which have smaller population.”  This constituted an unacceptable “one-size-fits-all approach and models which are true for smaller countries like Tunisia may not be applicable to India with a population of 1.3 billion.”

The WHO model also returned two highly varied sets of excess mortality estimates when using data from Tier 1 countries and when using data from 18 Indian states that had not been verified.  “India has asserted that if the model [is] accurate and reliable, it should be authenticated by running it for all Tier 1 countries” and the “result of such exercise may be shared with all Member States.”

WHO assistant director general for emergency response, Ibrahima Soće Fall, concedes that any accurate picture is only as complete as the data provided.  “We know where the data gaps are, and we must collectively intensify our support to countries, so that every country has the capability to track outbreaks in real time, ensure delivery of essential health services, and safeguard population health.”

The degree of fractiousness that persists in public health shows that sharp fault lines remain in each country’s approach to the pandemic problem.  Disunity and factionalism, petty nationalism and self-interest, remain imperishable, even at the direst of times.  And all governments, given the chance, will err on the side of inaccuracy rather than risk acute embarrassment.

UK’s role confirms Sweden/Finland NATO membership planned for years

Robert Stevens

British imperialism has played a critical role over the last decade in deepening co-operation with Finland and Sweden as NATO “partners”, culminating in their decisions this week to formally join the military alliance.

In September 2014, David Cameron’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition hosted a summit of NATO in Wales that founded the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). Originally facilitated by Britain as the “framework nation”, it consisted of seven NATO allies which would assemble military forces among the northern and high regions of Europe. The “rapidly deployable force capable of conducting the full spectrum of operations, including high intensity operations” would “facilitate the efficient deployment of existing and emerging military capabilities and units.” In 2021, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said of its remit, “The JEF is able to operate wherever in the world any two of its members choose to deploy together.”

There was no attempt to conceal the target of the JEF. Outlining a “NATO Readiness Action Plan” the summit declared, “It provides a coherent and comprehensive package of necessary measures to respond to the changes in the security environment on NATO’s borders and further afield that are of concern to Allies [emphasis added].” By that time, after well over a decade of NATO encroaching ever closer to Russia’s western border, “NATO’s borders” were a few hundred miles from St Petersburg and Moscow.

UK Challenger 2 tank in action during Exercise Arrow, a Joint Expeditionary Force exercise held in Finland earlier this month. (Credit: Defence Equipment & Support/Twitter)

The Wales summit was held following the 2014 Maidan Square pro-Western coup in Ukraine, involving fascist forces, that led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and installed Petro Poroshenko.

In response, Russia annexed the Crimea and sent military forces into the eastern regions of Ukraine. The NATO summit declared, “This violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is a serious breach of international law and a major challenge to Euro-Atlantic security,” adding, “Russia’s aggressive actions against Ukraine have fundamentally challenged our vision of a Europe whole, free, and at peace.”

The JEF was envisaged initially as a 10,000-strong force, with the Financial Times reporting at the time that it was created “to bolster NATO’s power in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

The original seven countries were Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Norway. It was made clear that the JEF was a NATO force in all but name. As an article in the Belfast Telegraph noted in relation to this year’s JEF operations, “The force uses NATO standards and doctrine so it can operate in conjunction with the alliance, the United Nations or other multinational coalitions.”

It was critical for the ratcheting up of provocations against Russia that Sweden and Finland join the JEF. Both signed up in 2017. With their inclusion, the JEF became fully operational in 2018 when it began holding a series of military exercises and wargaming operations both independently and together with NATO.

The importance of the JEF for US and British imperialism as a Europe-based military force formally operating outside the orbit of the European Union (EU) was summed up by the Washington think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). It noted last October, “The integration of the JEF Baltic Protector maritime task force into the U.S.-led BALTOPS 2019 exercise—an annual NATO-led exercise running since 1972—shows the potential utility of JEF in a nutshell: independent and flexible, but NATO-capable and scalable. As one Royal Navy commodore puts it, the JEF is a ‘force of friends, filling a hole in the security architecture of northern Europe between a national force and a NATO force.’”

In March 2021, the UK Ministry of Defence published its “Defence in a Competitive Age” review following its Integrated Review of foreign and defence policy. Central to British imperialism’s post-Brexit agenda, during a period of “Great Power conflict”, was “further developing the JEF (with Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and from spring 2021, Iceland) so that it offers these countries flexible options for managing sub-threshold competition as well as responding to crises, and improving its interoperability with NATO.”

On July 1 last year, Finland’s role as a leading force within the JEF was made clear by its hosting, for the first time, a meeting of JEF Defence Ministers.

Joint Expeditionary Force defence ministers meet in Finland (Credit: UK in Estonia/Twitter)

At this year’s JEF Summit, held on February 22 at Belvoir Castle in England, tensions with Russia were stoked further. The 10 defence ministers of the participating countries declared that the JEF is “a group of like-minded and proactive nations, with shared purpose and values, and a common focus on security and stability in the High North, North Atlantic and Baltic Sea region.” They were united against “the build-up of Russian forces on the border with Ukraine, and further incursion in the Donbas region.” Two days later Russia invaded Ukraine.

The summit confirmed the participation of the JEF alongside NATO in a series of anti-Russian exercises, which involved Finland and Sweden. These would take place in April, May and throughout 2023. UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace declared in an April 29 Ministry of Defence statement that they would see “our troops join forces with allies and partners across NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force in a show of solidarity and strength in one of the largest shared deployments since the Cold War.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson performs a posed handshake for the media as he greets the President of Finland Sauli Niinisto before their meeting inside 10 Downing Street, in London, Tuesday, March 15, 2022. Johnson on Tuesday hosted a meeting of the leaders of the the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), a coalition of 10 states focused on security in northern Europe. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) noted, “The exercises will see 72 Challenger 2 tanks, 12 AS90 tracked artillery guns and 120 Warrior armoured fighting vehicles deploy to countries from Finland to North Macedonia….

“Troops from B Squadron of the Queen’s Royal Hussars have deployed to Finland this week to take part in Exercise Arrow. They will be embedded into a Finnish Armoured Brigade, with participation from other partners including the US, Latvia and Estonia. The exercise will improve the ability of UK and Finnish troops to work alongside each other as part of the JEF, deterring Russian aggression in Scandinavia and the Baltic states.”

The statement announced details of Exercise Hedgehog, now underway, which involves Finnish and Swedish forces joining US and UK forces in NATO war games over the next weeks, including in Estonia, whose border with Russia is just 150 kilometres from Saint Petersburg.

The Belvoir Castle Summit was followed by another high-level JEF summit, held on March 14-15 in London and at the UK prime minister’s residence, Chequers. It was attended, the Economist reported, by “six leaders and other representatives of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF)”. The magazine described the JEF as Boris Johnson’s “anti-Russia coalition,” noting, “The British-led Joint Expeditionary Force is moving quickly against Russia.”

Johnson described the following day what took place at the Chequers meeting, the magazine reported. “We agreed that Putin must not succeed in this venture,” he said. The Economist continued, “They agreed to ‘co-ordinate, supply and fund’ more arms and other equipment requested by Ukraine. And they declared that JEF, through exercises and ‘forward defence’, would seek to deter further Russian aggression—including provocations outside Ukraine that might stymie NATO or fall under its threshold.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (sixth from left) hosts other Joint Expeditionary Force nation leader in London on March 15. Another meeting of the leaders was held at the UK prime minister’s country residence, Chequers, the previous evening (Credit: screenshot of video clip—Boris Johnson/Facebook)

The importance of the JEF operating as a nominally non-NATO military force was again stressed. It was a “high-readiness force focused on the High North, North Atlantic and Baltic Sea regions… Unlike NATO, it does not need internal consensus to deploy troops in a crisis: Britain, the ‘framework’ nation, could launch operations with one or more partners. As one British officer puts it: ‘The JEF can act while NATO is thinking.’”

Under conditions of incessant provocations against Russia, including the funneling of vast tranches of armaments to Ukraine, the JEF was to play a pivotal role.

The Economist noted that its nominal non-NATO status “makes it especially useful in murky circumstances. ‘It’s there to respond flexibly to all sorts of contingencies, maybe [those] that fall short of an Article Five threshold,’ says Mr Johnson, referring to NATO’s collective-defence clause. JEF matters because, although Article Five covers ‘armed attack’, it is unclear whether lower-level or ambiguous provocations, such as the unmarked Russian soldiers who seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, would meet the threshold.”

The Economist cited Martin Hurt of the ICDS defence think-tank in Estonia explaining that the JEF is a “valuable complement” to NATO. “In the case of an attack in northern Europe, he says, JEF, alongside American forces, has the potential to become a first responder.”

Therefore, commented the Economist, “JEF has also become an important diplomatic and military instrument in responding to Russia’s war in Ukraine. British officials say that only a few weeks ago a London summit built around the force would have been unthinkable.”

Johnson said that the JEF “consists of the countries that were fastest off the blocks, with us, in sending direct military assistance to Ukraine.” The Economist noted that as the meeting took place, “Nine out of ten members are now supplying weapons (Iceland, which lacks a standing army, is the exception).”

Britain has provided Ukraine with more than 5,000 Next Generation light anti-tank (NLAW) weapons. These are developed and built in Belfast by Thales UK—a subsidiary of the French global conglomerate—from an original design by the Swedish defence giant Saab-Bofors.

Last month the MoD launched the UK’s Defence Contribution in the High North, which declared, “The Army has increased its cold weather training, including as part of its enhanced Forward Presence deployment in Estonia, where Army cold weather doctrine has been tested and refined alongside the Estonian Defence Forces. Army exercising with JEF partners, including Finland, Norway, and Sweden, enhances its cold weather capabilities, building on Royal Marine and Joint Helicopter Command expertise in the High North.”

Following the Belvoir Castle summit, the World Socialist Web Site wrote: “The defence ministers’ statement emphasised, ‘The JEF is designed from first principles to be complementary to NATO’s Deterrence and Defence posture.’ That the JEF also includes two non-NATO members, Finland and Sweden, blows out of the water the lies of the US and its allies that the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO is a distant prospect, which Moscow is exaggerating in order to excuse its own aggression. The JEF’s military architecture already exists for Ukraine to be fully integrated into anti-Russia operations well before it is granted NATO membership.”

Within just three months, Finland and Sweden’s de facto membership of NATO will rapidly become de jure, with the JEF playing a crucial role on behalf of US and British imperialism in propelling their agenda aimed at regime change in Russia and the dismemberment of that vast country.

Andy Warhol 1964 painting sells for $195 million, breaking auction record

Erik Schreiber

A painting by Andy Warhol sold for a final price of $195 million last week, breaking the auction record for an American artist and for any 20th century art work. At a sale for charity at Christie’s in New York, four bidders competed for Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964). After less than four minutes of bidding, the painting was sold to art dealer and gallerist Larry Gagosian. It is unclear whether he bought the painting for himself or on behalf of a client. According to Forbes, Gagosian’s super-rich clientele includes “billionaire mega collectors such as David Geffen, Leon Black, Steve Cohen and Leonard Lauder.”

The previous auction record for an American artist was set only five years ago. In 2017, a painting of a skull by Jean-Michel Basquiat, a friend and collaborator of Warhol, sold for $110.5 million at an auction at Sotheby’s. The price of Shot Sage Blue Marilyn was almost double the previous auction high price for a Warhol work. Double Disaster (1963), one of his car crash paintings, was sold for $105.4 million in 2013.

In fact, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn has become one of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction. Its price surpassed that of Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (“Version O”), which Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani of Qatar bought for $179 million in 2015. 

Andy Warhol, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, 1964, silkscreen and acrylic on linen, 40 x 40'. Photo- Christe’s Images, Ltd.

This series of rising prices and broken auction records reminds us that the world of fine art, which is part of the cultural heritage of mankind, is dominated by a tiny, extraordinarily wealthy elite. For this layer, works of art are not aesthetic objects but investments and tokens of prestige.

The Warhol sale took place at the beginning of a spring auction season once again being held in person. The ongoing pandemic is of no importance. The focus of the participants is the potential profit to be made. “There’s been a huge amount held back for two years, and there’s a huge amount of pent-up demand from new clients,” art adviser Philip Hoffman told the New York Times. “Everyone was waiting for the right moment, and the right moment has come.”

The way that auctioneers, gallerists and collectors talk about the artwork is revealing. “We did sell the most expensive painting of the 20th century,” Alex Rotter of Christie’s told the Times. “This is a big achievement.” One imagines him licking his lips. 

“The top of the market is still strong, and there is a lot of demand for quality,” art dealer Bill Acquavella told the Times. “Look what real estate is selling for. There are other assets that are bringing prices that you haven’t seen before [emphasis added].”

“Within the greater market for trophy art, the figure of $200 million is very much in keeping with prices realized in the private dealer market for quite a few years [emphasis added],” art appraiser David Shapiro told ARTnews.

In fact, some had speculated that Shot Sage Blue Marilyn would bring in as much as $400 million and were disappointed in its final price. “It was an incredibly healthy price, but at the same time, I believe the buyer got a deal,” art adviser Abigail Asher told the Times.

In The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech (2020), author William Deresiewicz noted that a 2009 study “revealed a direct correlation between the run-up in [art] prices and the growing concentration of wealth, consistent with the behavior of markets in other luxury goods like high-end real estate. ‘A one percentage point increase in the share of total income earned by the top 0.1 percent,’ the researchers discovered, ‘triggers an increase in art prices of about 14 percent.’ The new money is hedge-fund money, oligarch money, Asian-billionaire money. More than half of the global art market, by aggregate value, consists of sales of $1 million or more. Art collecting at that level is an affair of ‘ultra-high-net-worth individuals,’ people with liquid assets of $30 million or more—though one insider told me that the bar is more like $250 million.”

That the largest sum ever paid for a piece of 20th century art was spent on a trivial, empty work is not unimportant or coincidental. Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is a 40-inch-by-40-inch silk-screened painting of iconic actress Marilyn Monroe. The well-known image is based on a promotional photo for the movie Niagara (1953), in which Monroe starred alongside Joseph Cotten. The work is one of five “Marilyn” paintings that Warhol executed in 1964, almost two years after Monroe herself had died by probable suicide. It is likely that Warhol chose his subject not only for her glamor, but also for the scandal surrounding her death. 

The painting’s title reflects what happened to the work after Warhol had completed it. In 1964, a woman named Dorothy Podber walked into Warhol’s studio (which he dubbed the Factory) and shot at a stack of Marilyn paintings. Sources differ on the questions of whether Warhol had invited her to do so and whether he believed Podber intended to “shoot” photographs of the paintings. This legend reflects the anarchy that prevailed at the Factory, as well as Warhol’s own penchant for sensation.

Four Shot Marilyns by Andy Warhol (1964)

The silk-screening technique, which Warhol borrowed from commercial art, removes any trace of the artist’s hand from the painting. Nor does the work convey any critical or in-depth analysis of its subject. In his most prominent work, Warhol borrows from advertising and tabloid celebrity journalism, passing on reality as it immediately appears in those debased realms. With this passivity, Warhol implicitly denies any significant role for the artist. 

As we argued in 2019, Warhol “did not encourage us to develop ourselves or build a better world. His is the art of the voyeur or, at worst, the self-promoter. He reinforced and actively participated in the cult of celebrity. In uncritically bringing the banality of popular culture into the world of fine art, he relinquished all that is most vital and nourishing in art, for the artist as well as for his audience: the imaginative reinterpretation of reality.”

That element apparently appeals to art collectors with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend. In the 1980s, Gagosian began amassing the enormous wealth with which he bought Shot Sage Blue Marilyn by reselling works by well-established and highly regarded modern artists. Like the stock traders who were rising to economic dominance during the same period, Gagosian appropriated profits for himself without creating anything of value. 

Little wonder that Gagosian (or whichever moneyed client on whose behalf he acted) would “invest” in a “blue-chip” celebrity artist like Warhol. The artist’s reputation is international and largely unquestioned. For the social layer that Gagosian represents, the name Warhol has a significance like that of Cartier or Hermès. 

The orgy of wealth in the art market must encourage demoralization and cynicism among artists, on the one hand, and intense outrage, on the other. The way forward in art can only take in direct opposition to the concentration of fabulous riches that leads to the cultural impoverishment of society.

Profits over lives: The New York Times demands China end its Zero-COVID policy

Benjamin Mateus

Since the beginning of March, China has confronted the highly contagious Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, brought into the country from outside, with a high degree of social mobilization and considerable difficulty, but so far with considerable success. That has not stopped the American corporate press from repeatedly and severely denouncing China’s Zero-COVID policy, condemnations that rise in vitriol in proportion to China’s progress in beating back the tide of infections. 

Residents line up for the first round of mass COVID testing in the Jingan district of western Shanghai, China, Friday, April 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Chen Si, File)

In this regard, the recent New York Times report by the newspaper’s Shanghai bureau chief, Alexandra Stevenson, who reports on the news of the financial world, is particularly foul. Headlined, “The World Tried to Move Beyond COVID. China May Stand in the Way,” it caters to the prejudices of a deranged reactionary upper-middle-class layer who have staked their fortunes on ever-rising financial markets.

Stevenson opens with a provocative statement: “As the rest of the world learns to live with COVID-19, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, wants his country to keep striving to live without it—no matter the cost.”

Before addressing the various assertions the Times article makes, it bears reviewing the present state of the pandemic in China.

The current wave of infections across mainland China began in early March. Since then, China has documented close to three-quarter million cases, of which a significant majority were asymptomatic. Because of broad public health measures that included lockdowns and business closures, dynamic mass testing, and redirection of resources to build isolation centers and bolster medical treatment facilities, deaths were kept to less than 600, essentially all occurring in Shanghai except two in the northeast province of Jilin. By comparison, over the same period, the US reported 90,000 deaths from COVID.

The Chinese health authorities reported that there were 1,789 COVID cases on Sunday, of which 71 were newly imported. After reaching a peak of almost 27,000 in mid-April, the number of cases in Shanghai, China’s financial hub and the epicenter of the Omicron wave, had dropped to 1,369, of which 166 were symptomatic. The seven-day average has fallen below 3,000 daily cases, down more than 90 percent from its peak four weeks ago. Outside of Shanghai, only 349 new cases were registered across mainland China.

Already, many Shanghai-based companies are resuming operations. City officials are targeting mid-May for opening after achieving zero-COVID community transmission. More than 99 percent of all new cases are currently among those under lockdown or quarantine, accounting for 2 million of the city’s 26 million inhabitants. Nearly 18 million residents (70 percent) are in designated precautionary areas, including communities, villages, companies and other sites without a positive case for more than two weeks.

The elimination strategy appears promising despite repeated claims in the corporate media that Omicron can’t be eliminated. Deaths have been kept to the lowest possible level, life has been preserved, and the country is transitioning to reopening its production and distribution centers. Given this premise, Stevenson should be asked what she means by China’s intent to live without COVID “no matter the cost?” The cost for who? Obviously she cares only about the financial cost for Western investors, not the cost in human lives for the Chinese people.

The day before Stevenson’s report appeared in the Times, President Joe Biden acknowledged in a perfunctory prerecorded statement, using only 213 words, that over 1 million Americans have died from COVID. This is the same president who said, as a candidate in October 2020, that a president like Trump, who had allowed more than 200,000 deaths from COVID, should be considered disqualified from office. Under Biden’s tenure in the White House, more than 600,000 have lost their lives to the pandemic.

Stevenson made no mention of this as part of the “cost” of living with COVID. 

Nor does she acknowledge that the Times has played a central role in promoting the “herd immunity” policy that has morphed over the last two years into “living with the virus,” as the ruling classes in the imperialist countries have repeatedly prioritized profits over lives, allowing the pandemic to run wild, rather than impose temporary lockdowns on business operations that have been proven effective in halting the spread of the virus. This “let it rip” policy has led to the deaths of more than 20 million people globally, pushed hundreds of millions into poverty, and forced billions to face the manifold health consequences of chronic infections with a virus that will re-infect populations again and again.

Thomas Friedman pioneered the phrase “the cure can’t be worse than the disease” in a Times column published March 23, 2020, which asserted that measures such as lockdowns and school closures to block the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were off limits because they would destroy the economy. This slogan was picked up by the Trump administration and the media because it served the interests of finance capital. Now it serves as the basis of the policy of the Biden administration.

Stevenson is duplicitous when she writes, “For more than two years, China kept its COVID numbers enviably low by doggedly reacting to signs of an outbreak with testing and snap lockdowns. The success allowed the Communist Party to boast that it had prioritized life over death in the pandemic, unlike Western democracies where deaths from the virus soared.”

First, the issue of prioritization isn’t life vs. death. Stevenson conceals the real issue: it’s life vs. profits. And if “Western democracies” were envious of China’s low COVID numbers, then why didn’t they emulate the lessons of Chinese public health experiences and save the lives of their populations? Finally, it is a basic tenet of well-established public health policies, going back to the 19th century, to insist on “doggedly” chasing every infection to prevent mass outbreaks. This is not a specifically Chinese doctrine and has nothing to do with the Stalinist politics of the Chinese Communist Party.

Instead of dealing with these facts, however, Stevenson first depicts the lockdowns as harrowing and anti-democratic and then cites the observation of an “unnamed economist” that the policy is “zero movement, zero GDP.” 

The realities are otherwise, however. China’s economy remains intact. Its per capita death rate of four per million from COVID versus the US with 3,068 deaths per million has shown the superiority of the Zero-COVID strategy. Stevenson’s “no matter the cost” is only a more obscene version of the formula proposed by Friedman, openly declaring that when human life clashes with corporate profit, profit must win out.

It is telling that the one prominent health official whom she cites as part of her anti-China diatribe against Zero-COVID is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He said last Tuesday, “We have discussed this issue with Chinese experts, and we indicated that the approach would not be sustainable. And considering the behavior of the virus, I think a shift would be very important.”

The WHO director’s comment is a reactionary statement refuting his previous statements that the world should fight to save every life possible. This is the same organization that for two years resisted accepting the scientific evidence that the virus was airborne rather than carried in large droplets. The comment only betrays, objectively, the subordination of all public health measures to the interests of international corporations. Like the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the UN health agency has been transformed into an appendage of global finance capital.

Stevenson does cite an important study published in Nature from Fudan University in Shanghai, which found that if Omicron were allowed free rein in China, in six months, the country could expect 112 million symptomatic cases, 5.1 million hospital admissions, 2.7 million ICU admissions and 1.6 million deaths, as well as the catastrophic collapse of its health system.

The clear import of this study is that unleashing COVID in China would be a colossal catastrophe, not only for China, but for the world, since 100 million more cases means 100 million more opportunities for the virus to mutate into even deadlier and more infectious variants.

But Stevenson ignores this in favor of her obsession with financial rather than human cost. She proceeds to write, “Investors and business leaders worry that China’s rigid adherence to its Zero-COVID policy could send the economy into free fall. ‘It is high time for the government to change its strategy,’ said Fred Hu, a prominent Chinese investor. The benefits of Zero-COVID no longer outweigh the economic costs, he added. ‘Sticking to the Zero-COVID strategy would decimate its economy and undermine public confidence.’”  

In support of this concern, Stevenson writes, “By one estimate, nearly 400 million people in 45 cities have been under some form of lockdown in China in the past month, accounting for $7.2 trillion in annual gross domestic product.”

This is a number created in the spirit of Mark Twain’s aphorism against “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” China’s lockdown procedures are highly segmented, with cities broken up into small districts, each with rules enforced by local committees. If one district in a city of 10 million is under lockdown, generally because of a single positive test, then the entire 10 million is counted in the estimate prepared by Nomura Bank. Hence the slippery phrase employed by Stevenson: “some form of lockdown.”

The Times writer also ignores a salient fact that entirely refutes her portrayal of the Zero-COVID policy as repressive and undemocratic: it is widely popular among the Chinese people, something that is generally acknowledged even in hostile media reports.

Americans living in China have praised this policy, including one who commented on Stevenson’s article. Sean, who is now working from home in Shanghai, writes:

As an American living in China, I click on every article regarding China, and many, many are like this: taking perverse delight in putative failure of China’s zero Covid policy. This is unseemly but also factually delusional.

The USA has nearly 3,000 deaths per million from Covid.

China has 3...

China’s economy has not gone into recession:

China’s gross domestic product (GDP) exceeded 114 trillion yuan (about $18.1 trillion) in 2021, registering an increase of 8.1 percent over the previous year and an average growth of 5.1 percent over the preceding two years.

He concludes: “there is so much ideologically motivated disinformation in Western media it’s infuriating to someone who lives here.”

Sean’s post attracted more than 100 favorable responses in the comment section following Stevenson’s article, becoming the second highest rated by readers.

Rather than deal with this dose of reality, the Times evidently prefers to suppress it, engaging in its own form of political censorship, no less noxious than the Stalinist variety. Sean’s comment praising the Zero-COVID policy has now been deleted.