Japan plans to double military spending

Ben McGrath & Peter Symonds

The Japanese government last Friday announced a doubling of military spending and, for the first time, is openly acquiring offensive weapons, all of which is in breach of not only of the country’s so-called pacifist constitution, but of the limits placed on its military for decades. The military build-up is explicitly directed against China and is part of the rapidly escalating, US-led confrontation with Beijing.

An MV-22 Osprey takes off during a Japan-US joint military drill in Gotemba, southwest of Tokyo, on March 15, 2022. [AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko]

Article 9 of the Japanese constitution imposed by US occupation forces following World War II declares that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” To accomplish that aim, it continues “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be sustained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Article 9 quickly became a dead letter as Washington came to regard Japan as a critical ally in the Cold War against the Soviet bloc including China. The US and Japan signed a military alliance in 1952 and, in the name of defence, Japan established air, sea and land military forces—under the thin disguise of Self-Defence Forces.

For decades, Japanese governments retained the fiction that its sizeable and well-armed military was purely for defensive purposes in a bid to ward off deep-seated popular hostility, particularly in the working class, to its war preparations. Military budgets have been limited to around 1 percent of GDP and the purchase of nakedly offensive weaponry has been largely avoided.

These limits have now been cast aside in documents released last week: a revised National Security Strategy (NSS), as well as the National Defense Strategy (NDS) and the Defense Buildup Program (DBP), both of which are based on the new NSS. It is the first time the NSS has been revised since the initial 2013 strategy.

Tokyo will increase its military spending between the 2023 and 2027 fiscal years to 43 trillion yen ($US316 billion), a 56.5 percent increase over the previous five years. The annual defence budget is projected to increase from $US40 billion this year to about $80 billion in 2027. This will bring its military spending to 2 percent of GDP, in line with that of NATO countries.

Anticipating opposition, the government is attempting to dress up the acquisition of offensive weaponry as “counterstrike” capabilities necessary for “self-defense.” Their use will supposedly be limited to when an armed attack against Japan, or a foreign country in a close relationship with Tokyo, threatens Japan’s national survival. It is a meaningless caveat that could be subverted by a range of invented pretexts.

The Japanese military will acquire a range of weapons including cruise missiles like Lockheed Martin’s Tomahawk and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM). Tokyo is also planning to upgrade its own Type 12 guided missiles that can be fired from the surface, ships, or aircrafts to strike naval vessels, and to manufacture its own hypersonic guided missiles. It will also produce its own advanced fighter jets, being jointly developing with the United Kingdom and Italy, to complement its F-35 fighters being purchased from the US.

Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told a press release that the military build-up would enable the “strengthening [of] the Japan-US Alliance.” To this end, two trillion yen will be allocated to create space and cyber warfare units at the insistence of the US. The cyber warfare unit will be manned by up to 20,000 military personnel and, along with the expansion of military intelligence, is considered critical to the integration with the US military, which maintains some 50,000 personnel and large bases in Japan.

Japan also intends to dispatch standoff missile units to undisclosed locations throughout the country. Tokyo, however, has previously announced plans to militarize several islands within the Ryukyu Island chain in the East China Sea, including Amami, Miyako, Ishigaki, and Yonaguni Islands. Tokyo has deployed or intends to deploy missile and electronic warfare units to these islands in addition to constructing ammunition and fuel depots.

New military spending includes 15 trillion yen on expanding and upgrading ammunition and fuel depots in order to sustain prolonged military action. The Japanese military is acutely aware that the country is completely dependent on imports for oil and petroleum products and is therefore vulnerable to blockade.

The new National Security Strategy openly targets China, declaring that Beijing’s activities in the region “present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge” to the peace and security of Japan and international community, as well as to the international rules-based order. “Japan should respond with its comprehensive national power and in cooperation with its allies, like-minded countries and others,” it stated.

The shift is significant. Japan has previously justified its remilitarization by claiming North Korea was a threat. However, retired Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) Admiral Tomohisa Takei told the media that China has been the main target for which Japan has been preparing “by using North Korea’s threat as cover.”

The claim that China is a “challenge” to the “international rules-based order” is the pretext that the US cites endlessly to justify its huge military build-up in Asia and military provocations against China in the South China Sea. US imperialism regards China as the chief threat to its global dominance and the post-World War II order in which it sets the international rules to meet its strategic and economic interests.

While the US has welcomed Japan’s military expansion, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin criticized Japan on Friday, declaring, “Japan disregards the facts, deviates from the common understandings between China and Japan and its commitment to bilateral relations, and discredits China.”

In justifying its military build-up, Japan has inflamed tensions over Taiwan, having previously claimed that whatever takes place on the island has a direct impact on Japan, since Yonaguni Island lies just 110 kilometres to the east of Taiwan. Taking his cue from Washington, Prime Minister Kishida has regularly declared that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow.”

In reality, the greatest threat to peace in the Indo-Pacific region is the United States. Since the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” Washington has deliberately intensified tensions with Beijing. Both the Trump and Biden governments have challenged the “One China” policy under which the US de facto recognizes Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan.

Having goaded Vladimir Putin into an invasion of Ukraine in a bid to weaken and fragment Russia, the US is seeking to turn Taiwan into a military quagmire for China. The latest US military budget includes for the first time the provision of billions of dollars in military aid. In addition, the Biden administration is facilitating Taiwan’s purchase of advanced weaponry from the US and greater diplomatic ties with the island, knowing full well that China has warned it will respond forcefully to any formal declaration of independence by Taipei.

Ultimately, Japan’s military buildup, while currently part of the US-led preparations for war with China, is to ensure Tokyo’s ability to prosecute the interests of Japanese imperialism by force. For more than a decade, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has been pushing for an end to the constitutional and legal restrictions on the country’s military including Article 7 of the current constitution.

The government’s propaganda campaign promoting the alleged threat posed by China is not only to justify its huge military budget that will inevitably mean severe cuts to the country’s limited social spending. It is also aimed at undermining the widespread opposition to constitutional change among working people who recall the brutal repression meted out by the wartime militarist regime in the 1930s and 1940s.

How Organized Crime Plays a Key Role in the Ukrainian Conflict

John P. Ruehl

On November 1, the deputy director of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation downplayed remarks made on October 30 by an agency official, who warned of Western weapons bound for Ukraine being smuggled into Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Nonetheless, the affair generated significant attention and reflected previous concerns expressed by European authorities over Ukraine’s vulnerability to organized crime and the repercussions for the continent.

Organized crime emerged as a potent force in Ukraine after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Criminal groups exploited flawed economic privatization measures to amass significant economic power, while the collapse of the Soviet security state allowed armed criminal factions to replace government authority and entrench themselves permanently.

These developments were mirrored in many former Soviet states in the 1990s, including Russia. But after Vladimir Putin assumed the Russian presidency in 2000, he and his allies in Russia’s intelligence community reestablished a strong security apparatus and clamped down on many domestic organized crime syndicates.

However, the Kremlin chose not to eradicate them completely. Wary of further violence, Putin sought to consolidate power rather than risk a return to the instability that characterized Russia in the 1990s.

And perhaps more importantly, criminal groups could provide Moscow with unique opportunities. By turning a blind eye to much of their activities and legitimizing their wealth and businesses, the Kremlin gained access to illegal profit-making schemes, extensive smuggling networks, manpower, and other illicit services.

The Kremlin also expanded cooperation with criminal groups across the former Soviet Union. In Ukraine’s southeast, where criminal activity has been most concentrated, Russian intelligence figures have cultivated relationships for decades, with most of Crimea’s high-end criminal businesses dependent on relations with Russian criminal networks to survive.

Organized crime in Ukraine had also evolved significantly by the time Putin entered office. In 2006, a U.S. Embassy cable stated that Crimean criminals were “fundamentally different than in the 1990s: then, they were tracksuit-wearing, pistol-wielding ‘bandits’ who gave Crimea a reputation as the ‘Ukrainian Sicily’ and ended up in jail, shot, or going to ground; now they had moved into mainly above-board businesses, as well as local government.”

These developments allowed Russia to quickly assume political control over Crimea when Russian forces seized it in 2014. Dozens of pro-Russian politicians elected to Crimean political offices, including the Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov and speaker of the Crimean Parliament Vladimir Konstantinov shared suspected ties to organized crime.

In Ukraine’s Donbas region, the “density of criminality, combined with the weakness of local institutions” similarly allowed criminal groups to amass significant economic and political power after the Soviet collapse. But following the launch of Russia’s proxy war in the region alongside the seizure of Crimea in 2014, Donbas criminal groups also provided much of the manpower for newly-created militant groups and attempted to recruit others in neighboring Ukrainian regions to take up arms against government forces.

Despite their higher density in Crimea and the Donbas, Russian-supported criminal groups operate across Ukraine and the Black Sea region. Speaking with Mark Galeotti, an expert on modern Russia, in 2019, a Bulgarian security officer detailed a smuggling operation through Bulgaria’s port of Varna, bringing in drugs and counterfeit goods from Ukraine’s port of Odessa.

Operated by “Ukrainians working for a Russian-based gang,” the Bulgarian officer believed the criminal group was being taxed by Russian authorities and was “feeding information on Odessa” back to the Kremlin.

The threat of Russian-backed organized crime has only grown since Russia’s invasion in February. Conflicts generally tend to weaken state capacity, or the ability of governments to function properly, allowing organized crime groups to increase their power and influence. The Kremlin has expanded its use of criminality to both weaken Ukraine and complement its own war effort.

While reports of Ukrainian criminal groups smuggling Western weapons out of Ukraine have been consistently downplayed, it would be in the Russian government’s interest to dilute the effectiveness of Western military aid. Additionally, many weapons successfully smuggled out of Ukraine will likely end up in Europe, with weapons from Eastern Europe having been used in several terrorist attacks over the last decade. “Just beyond the countries of Western Europe, with their restrictive gun laws, lie the Balkan states, awash with illegal weapons left over from the conflicts that raged there in the 1990s,” stated Time magazine.

In April, Ukrainian officials also accused Russia of smuggling weapons into Ukraine from the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria in an effort to arm local allies, as well as using smugglers to bring in sanctioned weapons and military technology for the Russian military via Georgia.

Economic sanctions have in turn forced the Kremlin to expand its criminal profiteering activities, according to Western intelligence and law enforcement officials who spoke with VICE World News. A report by the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute mentioned an incident from April 2022 where the “Ukrainian Ministry of Justice officials charged a Ukrainian individual with helping a Russian business to launder money using a Cypriot company, registering their accounts into a private bank in Ukraine.” Meanwhile, a metal shipment worth more than $3 million was intercepted before it could leave a port in Ukraine’s Odessa region.

On top of existing, lucrative tobacco-smuggling networks, NATO and EU officials believe that a large tobacco smuggling ring in Belgium exposed in September was sponsored by both Belarusian and Russian intelligence to raise funds for their operations in the face of sanctions. Russian and Belarusian state-controlled industries have similarly increased cooperation with criminal groups to export oil, gas, and counterfeit goods to bypass sanctions.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, European security officials have also noted a rise in drug smuggling to Europe through the northern route from Afghanistan through Central Asia and Russia—likely due to Moscow easing restraints on these activities. Central Asian political and security circles have historically had direct involvement in the drug smuggling networks and often work closely with Russian criminal groups aligned with the Kremlin.

Taxing the drug trade allows Russian government entities to raise cash. But as with guns, flooding Europe with drugs creates its own problems. Court systems, prisons, hospitals, and other state and social institutions can be overwhelmed by increased drug flows, while distribution fuels local criminal activity—similar to Washington’s concern over Chinese drug trafficking to the U.S.

Additionally, Russia has turned to Central Asian smugglers to gain access to essential sanctioned products from abroad, while the Kremlin may explore selling Russia’s vast gold reserves on the international black markets depending on the compounding effects of sanctions.

And following the West’s decision to freeze much of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves and other financial assets, Russian criminals, in coordination with the Kremlin, have turned to cryptocurrencies to help raise funds and evade sanctions. Criminal hacking groups have also been used by Moscow to help launch cyberattacks on Ukraine and Western targets.

Notably, the Russian government has taken steps in recent months to further institutionalize illegal activity among Russian companies. In March, the Kremlin legalized “parallel imports,” allowing Russian companies to import commodities into the country without the consent of the overseas producer.

Though often innovative, the Kremlin’s embrace of organized crime underlines Russia’s sense of desperation as the most sanctioned country in the world. Yet Russia poses a greater challenge than other sanctioned rogue states like Venezuela, Iran, or North Korea. Its relatively large, industrialized economy, natural resources, extensive borders, and economic integration with Eurasia make isolating it far more difficult.

Continued collaboration with organized crime will be essential for Russia to safeguard its economy and prolong its war effort. Despite the risks of greater integration with the underworld and a growing dependency on their illicit networks, the Kremlin will continue these policies so long as sanctions remain in place.

Encouraging the growth of organized crime in Ukraine also has its own benefits for Moscow. Domestic criminal groups have helped Ukrainian men seeking to avoid conscription to leave the country, reducing the manpower available to Kyiv. In addition, sustaining Ukraine’s entrenched criminal culture and corruption prevents its further Westernization through economic and political reform.

Western law enforcement agencies have attempted to increase cross-country coordination with Ukraine to stem Russian-backed organized crime since the outbreak of the war. The European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT) gathered in April to discuss the situation, while entities such as Interpol, Europol, Frontex, and others have increased cooperation with both Ukraine and Moldova in recent months in “fighting serious and organized crime.”

The fight against Russian-backed organized crime clearly remains essential to Ukraine’s war effort. But as Kyiv has observed since the 1990s, just as much attention should be paid to how organized crime in the country will continue to evolve once large-scale fighting subsides.

Britain’s High Court rules asylum deportations to Rwanda legal

Laura Tiernan

The High Court has ruled that the British government’s barbaric policy of deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda is legal. The court’s decision effectively overturns key provisions of the Geneva Convention (1951) and is a watershed in the assault on fundamental democratic rights.

In their written judgment handed down this morning, Lord Justice Lewis and Mr Justice Swift ruled that sending asylum-seekers 4,000 miles away to Rwanda did not breach the UN's Refugee Convention or human rights laws, “The court has concluded that, it is lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined in Rwanda rather than in the United Kingdom.”

The High Court was responding to a judicial review application by asylum seekers and their supporters challenging the legality of their deportation. Care4Calais, Detention Action and the Public and Commercial Services Union (whose members are charged with arranging deportation flights) brought the action in June alongside eight unnamed asylum seekers from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam and Albania.

Protesters stand outside the High Court where a ruling on Rwanda deportation flights took place, in London. June 13, 2022. [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

Flights to Rwanda were halted on June 14 by an emergency intervention from the European Court of Human Rights after twenty asylum claims by some of those scheduled for deportation to Rwanda were refused by the Administrative Court, the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court between June 8 and June 14.

A crowdfund launched by Care4Calais to finance its legal appeal explained, “Sending asylum seekers to Rwanda would breach the UK’s legal obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention. The government cannot act with impunity, these proposals violate the most fundamental tenets of domestic and international law.”

This is exactly what the High Court has endorsed.

While the High Court today overruled deportation orders against eight asylum-seekers who brought the judicial review application, their fate is far from certain. The court merely found the Home Secretary had “not properly considered” the claimants’ circumstances, concluding, “For that reason, the decisions in those cases will be set aside and their cases will be referred back to the Home Secretary for her to consider afresh.”

Their fate will be determined by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the equally sadistic successor to Priti Patel who announced the policy in April. Braverman told the Conservative Party conference in October it was her “dream” and “obsession” to see asylum seekers back on deportation flights to Rwanda. She has described English Channel crossings by defenceless migrants as “an invasion of our southern coast”.

Home Secretary Priti Patel and Minister Biruta sign the migration and economic development partnership between the UK and Rwanda. April 14, 2022 [Photo by UK Home Office / CC BY 2.0]

Braverman welcomed today’s ruling, gloating, “We have always maintained that this policy is lawful and today the High Court has upheld this.” She pledged that Rwanda deportations would commence “as soon as possible”.

Refugee rights groups condemned today’s High Court ruling and have indicated they will appeal. The Migrants’ Rights Network called it “a dark day in the UK's history. The Government has now been given the green light to traffic refugees across the globe.”

Josie Naughton, CEO of not-for-profit Choose Love which helped fund the legal action stated, “Today is a dark moment for upholding human rights in the UK. Hostility has come at the expense of compassion, and the country is turning its back on the principle that all should have rights to live in freedom and in safety. Today’s ruling sets a dangerous precedent for evading international and moral commitments towards those seeking asylum.”

Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper attacked the Conservative Party on the most right-wing grounds imaginable, declaring that its Rwandan scheme was “unworkable” and “extremely expensive”. Speaking in parliament, she said the government had presided over a “collapse” in people-smuggler prosecutions and had “totally failed to take action against the criminal gangs”, while its “flawed and chaotic” decisions in the eight cases reviewed by the High Court meant that deportation orders had been overturned.

Stephen Kinnock, Labour's shadow immigration minister, was more bellicose still, attacking the government for a massive backlog of deportations. He claimed that just 21 out of 18,000 inadmissible people had been deported so far, declaring that “sending 300 asylum seekers to Rwanda won't even touch the size of that 18,000”.

The High Court’s 139-page judgment upholds the right of the British government to deport those with asylum claims in Britain, with the ultimate decision on their asylum status contracted out to the Rwandan government under a £140 million five-year deal.

Human Rights Watch has accused the Rwandan government of major human rights violations: “Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities is commonplace, and fair trial standards are routinely flouted.” Yet Britain’s High Court has ruled that Rwanda is a “safe third country” to send traumatised and defenceless asylum seekers.

Rwanda’s Patriotic Front government—whose human rights abuses stretch back to the 1994 genocide—will return unsuccessful claimants to the countries from which they have sought refuge, contravening the core principle of “non refoulment”, the bedrock of international refugee law under both the Geneva Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The High Court has crossed a Rubicon with today’s judgment. Justices Lewis and Swift referenced arguments “that the Refugee Convention imposes an obligation on contracting states to determine all asylum claims made, on their merits”, concluding, “We disagree… An obligation to determine every asylum claim on its merits would be a significant addition to the Refugee Convention.”

In the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust that claimed the lives of six million Jews, the right to asylum from political and religious persecution was enshrined in international law. Throughout the 1930s, the major imperialist “democracies” had rejected asylum applications from persecuted Jews, condemning them to death. In Britain, out of 500,000-600,000 refugee applications in the decade prior to World War II, just 80,000 were successful, with Jews frequently rejected as “undesirable”. More than 80 years later, the capitalist class is reviving such barbaric measures.

There is widespread revulsion toward the government’s brutal crackdown on asylum-seekers. A crowdfund has raised nearly £130,000 to finance the case, with thousands today condemning the decision on social media. There is recognition by workers that anti-immigrant sentiment is being stoked by the government to deflect from its own criminal policies.

Sweden to increase military budget 64 percent by 2028

Bran Karlsson

Sweden plans on increasing its defense and security budget by 64 percent between 2022 and 2028. The increase, proposed in a draft budget released last month, will see the small country spend about $12 billion a year on defense by 2028.

US Marines work alongside members of the Swedish mechanized infantry during BALTOPS 22. [Photo: US Marines]

The proposed increase follows Finland and Sweden’s application to join NATO in May. While Turkey retracted its veto against the two Scandinavian countries joining the military alliance in June, both Turkey and Hungary have yet to sign off on their membership.

The war in Ukraine has rapidly developed into a direct conflict between the US and its NATO allies on the one hand, and Russia on the other. The Swedish ruling elite was able to exploit Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine to overcome long-standing popular hostility to joining the imperialist powers in NATO and significantly expanding its armed forces.

Sweden’s proposed enlargement of its military budget comes weeks after a new right-wing coalition government took power. The right-wing coalition government rules with the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, a party which originated in Sweden’s neo-Nazi movement and has now become the second-largest party in parliament.

A few days after Sweden announced its massive defense budget increase, Sweden signed a military aid package for Ukraine worth $287 million—more than all its past aid.

Pål Jonson, Sweden’s defense minister and member of the right-wing Moderates, stated that the aid package contained “air defense and winter equipment—because that’s what the Ukrainians need.” He said the “first priority” of his office was to “[step] up economic, military, political and humanitarian support for Ukraine, including the transfer of more advanced weapons systems.”

The NATO-aligned international arms industry has greeted Sweden’s massive military spending increase with enthusiasm.

Defense News exclaimed, “Days after Sweden announced its largest military aid package yet for Ukraine, its lead defense officials are positioning the Nordic country’s contributions as an example of what to expect from Stockholm as a NATO member.”

They continued, “Ramping up aid from portable anti-tank weapons to heavy-duty anti-aircraft systems was just the latest in a whiplash-inducing array of changes for Sweden after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. After 200 years of nonalignment, Sweden is now a NATO aspirant, prompting a fast-tracked rewrite of its defense strategy and—from its new center-right government—a major defense budget boost.”

Sweden has long played an important role in the global arms industry.

The Nobel family, which obtained its wealth primarily from owning Russian oil fields and mines, was also a prolific manufacturer of explosives and ammunition. Alfred Nobel oversaw the invention of dynamite. When he died, his company owned 90 factories that manufactured explosives and ammunition across the world.

Sweden played a major role in the development of anti-tank weapons in the 20th century. The Carl Gustaf M series rocket launcher, now produced by Saab, is one of the most widely used portable anti-tank weapons.

In his press conference for the military budget, Jonson noted Sweden’s important role in the global arms industry, “There’s no other country of 10 million that can produce submarines, surface combatants, advanced artillery systems, combat vehicles and fighter aircraft… For being a quite small country, we have quite a vibrant defense industrial base.”

Saab, Sweden’s major defense company, recently posted a 13.6 percent rise in quarterly earnings. Its CEO Micael Johansson told a press conference, “It’s a multiple-year growth opportunity that we see in Europe and elsewhere, at least until 2030.”

Sweden has effectively been a close collaborator and participant in NATO for years. A staunch ally of the US since World War II, Stockholm’s “neutrality” is belied by its decades-long collaboration with the US military and intelligence agencies during the Cold War and War on Terror. Sweden has been involved in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Sweden has also participated in NATO military exercises for years prior to its formal application to join. It plays a major role in BALTOPS—NATO’s annual Baltic Operation exercise dating back to 1985—which Sweden hosted this year.

Sweden’s integration into the US-led military alliance and massive increase in military spending have been supported by the entire political establishment. While the latest budget is being implemented by a right-wing government, the previous Social Democrat government initiated another major defence budget increase in 2014 and reintroduced compulsory military service in 2017. Social Democrat Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson seized on the US/NATO-instigated Russian invasion of Ukraine to rush through Stockholm’s application to join NATO. The ex-Stalinist Left Party backed the sending of military equipment to Ukraine and promoted nationalism and militarism during the debate on Swedish NATO membership.

Sweden’s major increase in military spending comes as the major imperialist powers are increasing their war budgets to unprecedented levels. Over the past week alone, the United States, Germany and Japan unveiled massive new military spending proposals, underscoring the advanced preparations for World War III. Sweden could emerge as a frontline state in such a war, since it forms together with Finland a northern front that NATO could open up against Russia.

In the Swedish government’s budget draft, military spending will grow by $800 million in 2023 alone. The money will include a significant amount for increasing military personnel. This fall, Stockholm’s major subway stations were filled with advertisements to join the Swedish Defense Force. The budget also includes new money for cyber-defense, intelligence and new armaments.

A few weeks after the new budget was announced, Sweden’s special security and intelligence police (SAPO) conducted a raid with Black Hawk helicopters loaned by the military in Stockholm. According to AP, “The authorities gave few details about the case, but Swedish media cited witnesses who described elite police rappelling from two Black Hawk helicopters to arrest a couple that had allegedly spied for Russia.”

Two Iranian-born men were arrested earlier in November on charges of spying for the Russian military. One of them was previously a member of Sweden’s intelligence service SAPO.

Escalating assault on workers’ living standards in New Zealand

Tom Peters

The soaring cost of living is placing increasing pressure on working people in New Zealand and driving many into poverty, and the situation will continue to worsen in the coming year. As is the case internationally, the ruling elite is forcing the working class to shoulder the full burden of the mounting economic crisis, which is being fueled by the pro-business response to the pandemic, as well as the US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at press conference at Parliament in Wellington, Oct. 11, 2021. [AP Photo/Robert Kitchin/Pool Photo via AP]

The Labour Party-led government used the COVID-19 pandemic to transfer tens of billions of dollars to big business, in the form of tax relief, direct bailouts and so-called wage subsidies. At the same time, during 2020–2021 the Reserve Bank printed $NZ53.5 billion ($US34.08 billion) to buy up government bonds from the commercial banks, boosting their profits to record levels and contributing to rampant inflation.

As a result of these handouts, the banks and major businesses are reporting substantial profits. The Deloitte Top 200 Index, released on December 8, shows that New Zealand’s 200 biggest companies increased their combined after-tax profits by 54.6 percent from $6.8 billion last year to $10.5 billion in 2022.

This goes hand-in-hand with an intensifying assault on the working class. Finance minister Grant Robertson told Newshub on November 26 that government spending reached approximately 35 percent of gross domestic product during the early response to the pandemic, and “it’s now coming down, by the end of this year, to 31 percent and it will track down further from there.”

He did not mention what services would be worst affected by funding cuts, saying it would be made clear in next year’s budget. Healthcare and education are already grossly underfunded. Hospitals face a shortage of thousands of staff, made worse by the Ardern government’s criminal decision in late 2021 to abandon its previous COVID elimination strategy; this has led to approximately 2,700 deaths and more than 22,600 hospitalisations.

The Reserve Bank, meanwhile, has declared that hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs: unemployment, currently 3.3 percent, must reach 5.7 percent in two years in order to suppress workers’ demands for wage increases.

Claims that this is necessary to bring inflation under control are a fraud: wages are not driving inflation. According to the Labour Cost Index, wages rose by 3.7 percent in the year to September, about half the inflation rate and nowhere near the 54.6 percent increase in company profits.

On November 24, Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr was asked in parliament whether he was “deliberately engineering a recession,” after he announced a steep increase in the official cash rate, from 3.5 to 4.25 percent. He replied: “I think that is correct. We are deliberately trying to slow aggregate spending in the economy.” The rate is set to be lifted to 5.5 percent by mid-2023.

Official inflation is currently 7.2 percent, and the real increase in costs facing households is considerably higher. According to Statistics NZ, if mortgage interest is factored in, inflation stands at 8.2 percent. CoreLogic estimated last month that rising interest rates could add $12,000 a year to the cost of a $500,000 home loan.

This will add to already-exorbitant housing costs. Interest.co.nz reported on December 10 that house prices have declined 12 percent from last year’s peak, but remain 30 percent higher than their level before the COVID pandemic: “The current median New Zealand house costs $820,000—more than 10 times the median household disposable income.”

The median weekly rent continues to soar: it increased 8 percent in the year to September, from $500 to $540. Rents have now gone up 35 percent since late 2017, when Jacinda Ardern became prime minister following a campaign in which Labour made false promises to reduce the cost of housing and alleviate poverty and inequality.

According to the Human Rights Commission, more than 102,000 people—2 percent of the population—were homeless or in overcrowded or inadequate housing in 2018, and the figures are undoubtedly worse now. There are around 25,000 applicants on the public housing waiting list. Nearly 10,000 homeless people, including thousands of children, have been crammed into hotels and boarding houses that are serving as “emergency housing.”

Total household debt stands at $340 billion, an average of around $85,000 per adult. Economists at ASB bank recently estimated that by the end of 2023 high debt servicing costs will add $80 a week to an average household’s budget, and an extra $70 a week will be needed to keep up with other cost pressures. In other words, a typical family would need $7,800 more per year to maintain their standard of living.

Food inflation stands at 10.7 percent. Charities across the country are reporting unprecedented levels of demand, including from working families unable to afford food and other essentials. Auckland City Mission recently told Radio NZ it was distributing 2,000 food parcels per week—about three million meals a year—compared with 450 before the pandemic.

A survey by the Consumer Advocacy Council in October found that, in order to save on electricity, one in four people were cutting back on showers and other hot water use, and around half were only heating the room they were in.

Officially, 187,300 children (16.3 percent) live in households with an income below the poverty line (less than 50 percent of the 2017/18 median income after housing costs). One in six children (14.9 percent) were in households that frequently ran out of food due to lack of money. These figures were recorded before the recent period of high inflation.

These conditions are leading to growing levels of despair. Last month Ipsos released disturbing findings from a mental health survey of 1,000 adults in New Zealand: one in four had considered suicide or self-harm in the past year. Among young people aged 18–34, the figure was 40 percent. Ipsos said concern about personal finances was having the biggest impact on respondents’ mental wellbeing.

This followed a report by the NZ Drug Foundation that deaths caused by drug overdoses increased by 54 percent between 2017 and 2021. Last year, 171 people died from overdoses, compared with 111 in 2017.

The social crisis and the out-of-control pandemic have led to a sharp drop in support for Labour.

The party won the 2020 election with more than 50 percent of the vote, largely due to its since-abandoned Zero COVID policy. In a recent One News/Kantar poll, Labour’s popularity stood at 33 percent, the lowest level since the 2017 election, compared with 38 percent for National.

In a by-election held earlier this month in Hamilton West, Labour’s candidate Georgie Dansey lost with just 30 percent of the vote, compared with 46 percent for the conservative National Party’s Tama Potaka. The low turnout, estimated at 31.4 percent of enrolled voters, points to widespread disaffection and lack of support for any of the big business parties.

Major struggles are looming as workers seek to oppose state and corporate austerity. Earlier this month over 20,000 high school teachers voted to hold a one-day strike next year after rejecting a below-inflation pay offer. In recent months, healthcare workers, firefighters, university workers and manufacturing workers have all taken industrial action.

The main obstacle to the development of a unified movement for decent wages and conditions, is the trade unions, which enforce government and big business cuts, telling workers they have no choice but to sacrifice for the good of the economy.

Canada preparing to lead new military intervention in imperialist-ravaged Haiti

Roger Jordan & Keith Jones

At Washington’s behest, Canada’s Liberal government is leading preparations for yet another imperialist military intervention in Haiti, the Western hemisphere’s most impoverished country.

Under conditions where the country’s 11 million inhabitants face a desperate health and social crisis—including mounting deaths from cholera and famine—and where there is mass opposition towards the imperialist-installed government of President Ariel Henry, Washington and its imperialist allies are determined to stabilize capitalist rule in the island nation through military force.

Henry public requested foreign military intervention in October. His regime has been increasingly crippled and discredited by a combination of mass popular protests demanding his resignation and new elections, and the occupation of large swathes of the county by criminal gangs with ties to rival factions of the Haitian oligarchy.  

The Biden administration quickly made clear its support for a military deployment by drafting a UN Security Council resolution authorizing such action. However, given the popular anger in Haiti over Washington’s long and bloody record on the island—including its colonial occupation from 1915 to 1934 and support for the bloody dictatorship of the Duvaliers—the US prefers that Canada assume responsibility for organizing and leading the new mission.

Protesters calling for the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry run after police fired tear gas to disperse them in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

The Trudeau government is eager to oblige its closest ally and principal military-security partner. But it also fears being sucked into a bloody quagmire. The gangs are heavily armed, and even more importantly, any foreign military intervention led by Canada risks facing mass opposition, especially from the working people of Port-au Prince, Cap-Haïtien, and other large cities. In recent years, Canada has been increasingly targeted by protests over its role as Washington’s partner in imperialist brigandage in Haiti, including through the so-called Core Group of nations.    

The push of Henry and Washington for a military intervention intensified as protests swept Haiti following September’s abolition of oil price subsidies at the behest of the International Monetary Fund. Henry’s appeal for military aid triggered further demonstrations, which were brutally suppressed by the Haitian National Police (HNP). To further this repression, Canada airlifted armoured vehicles to Haiti in mid-October.

Widespread food shortages, combined with a cholera epidemic that has claimed over 290 lives and infected an estimated 14,000 since October, are fuelling fears in Ottawa and Washington that the social devastation in Haiti could destabilize the entire region and trigger social unrest in neighbouring countries. Of especial concern to the imperialist vultures in Ottawa and Washington, who have imposed one savage IMF restructuring program on the country after another, is that an implosion of Haiti will produce a “refugee crisis”—i.e., a flood of people seeking to escape repression, violence and unspeakable social misery.    

The cholera epidemic is taking an especially horrific toll on children, with those aged between 1 and 5 making up more than 40 percent of infections. An emergency vaccine campaign launched December 18 with the aim of vaccinating more than one-tenth of the population, and a higher percentage of young children aged 1 to 5, is expected to fail in many areas that are under gang control due to the inability to guarantee the health care workers’ safety.

Estimates suggest that at least 70 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, is currently under the control of the gangs, who have long received support from the government and its backers in Haiti’s oligarchy.

The gangs have unleashed sustained violence in Port-au-Prince and other cities. Official figures put the death toll from gang violence this year at 1,448, while 1,005 have been kidnapped for ransom. Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, one of the most notorious gang leaders, is a former officer in the Haitian police, and was, at least for a time, working in close association with Henry’s assassinated predecessor, Jovenel Moïse.

On top of the epidemic and violence, there is a rapidly worsening food crisis. Last week, Jean-Martin Bauer, head of the World Food Program in Haiti, warned that the country is on the verge of famine. Large portions of the population have nothing to eat due to the drying up of imports and the criminal gang’s control of key transport routes, including the north-south highway. The food that remains available is beyond the financial reach of the vast majority of the population, which relies on the informal sector to make ends meet.

Trudeau’s “new approach” to securing imperialist interests in Haiti

Earlier this month, Canada’s UN ambassador, Bob Rae, travelled to Haiti for a three-day “fact-finding mission,” during which he held talks with leading government officials and opposition politicians. The trip was in response to mounting pressure from Biden for Canada to take the lead in putting boots on the ground, likely in cooperation with several Caribbean and South American states. Following a meeting late last week of Trudeau and his national-security crisis Incident Response Group that Rae and Canada’s ambassadors to the US and Haiti attended, Ottawa announced that it would be sending additional armoured vehicles to Haiti, as well as a small number of experts to assist the Haitian National Police. The HNP has consistently been a key source of support for the pro-government gangs, with widespread evidence of collusion in brutally suppressing popular protests.

Rae also indicated that Canada supports the far-right, Duvalierist-led attempt to revive the Haitian army, telling CBC, “Name me a country around the world that doesn’t have an army. The main thing to recognize right now is that Haiti has a profound security problem.”

Discussing Haiti in an interview last week with La Presse, Trudeau asserted, “We recognize that we will play a leading role in this.”

Indicating that Ottawa is well-advanced in its plans to deploy Canadian Armed Forces personnel to Haiti, Trudeau then said, “We have not taken anything off the table, but with 30 years of experience in Haiti, we know very well that there are enormous challenges when it comes to interventions. It is clear that our approach has to change this time.”

No one should be fooled by such rhetoric. Like the previous “interventions,” the one now being plotted by Ottawa and Washington has nothing to do with bringing “democracy” or “security” to the people of Haiti. Rather its aim will be to uphold and advance the North American imperialist powers’ predatory geopolitical and economic interests. In so far as there is change in “approach” from the US-led imperialist “regime change” operations launched in 1994 and 2004, it will only be how the intervention is packaged.

The first of these two interventions saw the deployment of a 20,000-strong military force to Haiti in September 1994 to reinstall Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president just three years after his ouster in a US-backed coup. The Clinton administration mounted the operation on the calculation that allowing Aristide to serve out the little more than a year remaining in his presidential term would better correspond with Washington’s global “human rights” imperialist agenda than continuing to prop up Raoul Cedras, an unpopular dictator whose rule was characterized by a reign of terror in Haiti’s impoverished urban neighbourhoods.

Nearly a decade later, Canadian and US troops united to topple Aristide, who, in spite of prostrating himself before the imperialist powers, was seen as an obstacle to their unfettered domination over Haiti and despised by the traditional oligarchy that was a key backer of the decades-long Duvalier dictatorship. The intervention of Canadian and American forces was coordinated with an uprising of fascist gangs—composed of former army personnel and Tonton Macoutes who had served as killers under Cedras—to remove Aristide for a second time. There followed a decade of military occupation by foreign troops under a UN mandate that propped up a series of right-wing, kleptocratic regimes with ties to the old Duvalier dictatorship, including President Michel Martelly.

Following the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, which claimed the lives of over 200,000 Haitians, UN troops from Brazil, Nepal, and other less-developed countries inadvertently introduced cholera into the impoverished nation. The outbreak claimed the lives of over 10,000 people over the subsequent decade.

The Montana Accord and the political forces behind it

In the hopes of reducing Haitian opposition to a Canadian-led imperialist occupation of Haiti and so as not to so blatantly appear as intervening to uphold an unelected, repressive and corrupt regime, the Trudeau government is trying to cobble together a power-sharing deal between Henry and sections of the pro-imperialist opposition.

While in Haiti, Rae met with various opposition politicians associated with the Montana Accord. Named after the hotel where it was negotiated, the accord calls for a “transitional government,” including leading oppositionists, to hold office prior to any election, so as to prevent the neo-Duvalierist faction from using its control of the state apparatus and gangs to manipulate the vote.    

In a marked shift, Ottawa recently announced sanctions against leading figures within the Haitian Bald Head Party (PHTK), which has held power with staunch US and Canadian support almost uninterruptedly for over a decade, and with which Henry, although ostensibly “independent,” has worked closely. The half-dozen leading politicians targeted by the sanctions included Martelly and former prime ministers, along with several businessmen.

While at the Francophonie summit in Tunisia last month, Trudeau said of Haiti, “Our approach now is not about doing what one political party or the government wants. We cannot simply support one side or the other on the political spectrum in Haiti, but this time we’ve implemented serious sanctions on the elite, on these oligarchs, specific individuals who for too long have been directly profiting from violence and instability in Haiti that is harming the Haitian people.”

In early December, Canada announced that it would freeze the assets of Gilbert Bigio, Reynold Deeb, and Sherif Abdallah, three of the richest members of the country’s tiny oligarchy. Known as the “15 families,” they provided the critical backing to the Duvaliers and have dominated economic and political life ever since. Bigio, the country’s only billionaire, owns a private port through which weaponry and drugs have reportedly been smuggled. It is from this layer of oligarchs that support has been provided for the gangs, who were implicated in a series of massacres of government opponents over recent years.

Under Moïse, who was bloodily assassinated in July 2021, massacres of anti-government protesters involving gang members were reported in the Port-au-Prince districts of Bel-Air, La Saline and Cite Soleil. According to Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, these incidents showed collusion between the government, gangs and HNP, the very same institution Canada and the US are now supplying with weapons.

The supporters of the Montana Accord, with whom Canada is now working to lend an air of popular legitimacy to a new imperialist military occupation of Haiti are in fact a motley group of venal right-wing politicians who felt excluded from power positions under the Martelly-Moïse governments. They are jockeying for positions in and control of the government for their individual enrichment. These include figures such as Fritz Alphonse Jean, a former governor of the central bank who was briefly prime minister in 2016 under the interim presidency of Jocelerme Privert.    

In comments to the CBC in late October, Monique Clesca, a former UN official and now a leading member of the opposition Montana Accord, made clear that the opposition is just as ready to support an imperialist intervention as Henry, provided it has the necessary “legitimacy.” Denouncing Henry’s request for military assistance as “treasonous,” Clesca asked, “Why is (US Secretary of State) Antony Blinken talking to Canada and not talking to us? Why are (Canadian Foreign Minister) Madame Joly and Mr. Trudeau talking to Antony Blinken rather than talking to us? … We have said we would need technical assistance, we need financial assistance, we would need equipment.”

Nobody should be under any illusions about Ottawa’s intentions. While Trudeau recently invoked a “special relationship” between Canada and Haiti, the reality is that Canadian imperialism has treated the impoverished nation and the entire Caribbean as a source of profit and plunder for well over a century. Its actions and those of its principal allies in the Core Group, the US and France, are what are principally responsible for the social misery and oppression to which capitalism has condemned the Haitian people.