A Brief Neocolonial History of the Five UN Security Council Permanent Members

John P. Ruehl

Understanding the actions and justifications behind territorial colonial behavior by the UN Security Council since 1945.

One of the underlying principles of the UN Charter is the protection of the sovereign rights of states. Yet since 1945, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Soviet Union/Russia, France, UK, U.S., and China) have consistently used military force to undermine this notion. And while acts of seizing territory have grown rare, ongoing military domination allows imperialism to further manifest through economic, political, and cultural control.

System justification theory helps explain how policymakers and the public defend and rationalize unfair systems through the surprising capacity to find logical and moral coherence in any society. “Reframing” neocolonial policies to reinforce system-justifying narratives, often by highlighting the need to defend historical and cultural ties and maintain geopolitical stability, has been essential to sustaining the status quo of international affairs.

Naturally, the five UNSC members have often accused one another of imperialism and colonialism to deflect criticism from their own practices. Yet prolonging these relationships in former colonies or spheres of influence simply perpetuates dependency, hinders economic development, and encourages instability through inequality and exploitation.

France

In response to comments made by Russia’s foreign ministry in February 2023, which singled out France for continuing to treat African countries “from the point of view of its colonial past,” the French foreign ministry chastised Russia for its “neocolonial political involvement” in Africa. The previous June, French President Emmanuel Macron meanwhile accused Russia of being “one of the last colonial imperial powers” during a visit to Benin, a former French colony that last saw an attempted coup by French mercenaries in 1977.

Independence movements in European colonies grew substantially during World War II, and Paris granted greater autonomy to its possessions, most of them in Africa, in 1945. Yet France was intent on keeping most of its empire and became embroiled in independence conflicts in Algeria and Indochina. Growing public sentiment in France, since referred to as “utilitarian anti-colonialism,” meanwhile promoted decolonization, believing that the empire was actually holding back France economically and because “the emancipation of colonial people was unavoidable,” according to French journalist Raymond Cartier.

France left Indochina in defeat in 1954, while in 1960, 14 of France’s former colonies gained independence. And after Algeria won its independence in 1962, France’s empire was all but gone. But like other newly independent states, many former French colonies were unstable and vulnerable to or reliant on French military power. France has launched dozens of military interventions and coups since the 1960s in Africa to stabilize friendly governments, topple hostile ones, and support its interests.

French military dominance has been able to secure a hospitable environment for French multinational companies and preferential trade agreements and currency arrangements. More recently, the French military has consistently intervened in Côte d’Ivoire since 2002, as well as in the countries of the Sahel region (particularly Mali) since 2013, and the Central African Republic (CAR) since 2016. The French-led campaigns have received significant U.S. help. Speaking in 2019 on the French deployments, Macron stated that the French military was not there “for neo-colonialist, imperialist, or economic reasons. We’re there for our collective security and the region.”

But growing anti-French sentiment in former colonies in recent years has undermined Paris’ historical military dominance. Closer relations between Mali and Russia saw France pull the last of its troops out of the country in 2022, with Russian private military company (PMC) forces replacing them. A similar situation occurred in the CAR months later, and in 2023, French troops pulled out of Burkina Faso, with Russian PMC liaisons having reportedly been observed in the country.

Frustration with the negative effects of France’s ongoing influence in former colonies has also been directly tied to problems in immigrant communities living in France. The fatal shooting of a North African teenager by police in the suburbs of Paris in June 2023 caused nights of rioting, with Russia and China accusing France of authoritarianism for its security response.

UK

Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson denounced the Russian president for still believing in “imperial conquest.” Yet like France, the UK has often been accused of using military force to help promote British interests in its former empire, including the dominant role of British banks and financial services and other firms, for decades.

As the only European colonial power not defeated by Nazi Germany, British forces were sent to secure Indochina and Indonesia before French and Dutch forces could return after World War II. But London’s focus soon turned to protecting its own empire and emerging independent states. British forces helped suppress a communist insurgency in Malaysia from 1948-1960, fought in the Kenya Emergency from 1952-1960, and intervened across former colonies in Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Pacific islands.

Additionally, British, French, and Israeli forces invaded Egypt in 1956 after the Egyptian government nationalized the Suez Canal before diplomatic pressure from the U.S. and Soviet Union forced them to retreat. Over the next few decades, almost all former British colonies were steadily granted independence, and by 1980 the rate of British military interventions abroad had slowed.

Nonetheless, the 1982 Falklands War somewhat reversed the perception of the UK as a declining, imperial power. The successful defense of the Falkland Islands’ small, vulnerable population against Argentinian aggression enhanced the perception of the UK as a defender of human rights and champion of self-determination. Additionally, Britain’s focus on naval power “was important to the self-image of empire” as naval strength is often perceived as less threatening than land armies. Prominent British politicians such as former Prime Minister David Cameron have similarly restated Britain’s commitment to protecting the islands from Argentinian colonialism.

More recently, the British military intervened in the Sierra Leone Civil War in 2000 and was also a crucial partner for the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. And alongside ongoing official deployments, British Special Forces have meanwhile been active in 11 countries secretly from 2011-2023, a report by Action Against Armed Violence revealed. The residual presence of the British military has often made it difficult to embrace the “new and equal partnership” between Britain and former colonies, championed by former British Foreign Minister William Hague in 2012.

The domestic perception of Britain’s colonial legacy continues to play a divisive role in British politics and society. Winston Churchill, the winner of a 2002 BBC poll on the top 100 Great Britons, was “cited as a defender of an endangered country/people/culture, not as an exponent of empire.” Yet during anti-racism protests in the UK in 2020, a statue of the former prime minister was covered up to avoid being damaged by protestors. Believing him to be a figurehead of the cruelty of British colonialism, the covering up of Churchill’s statue shows the contrasting and evolving domestic views of British imperialism.

Soviet Union/Russia

After 1945, Soviet troops were stationed across the Eastern Bloc to deter NATO and suppress dissent. Several military operations in support of communist governments against “counterrevolutionary” protestors were approved in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968). Soviet forces also took part in a decade-long conflict to prop up Afghanistan’s government from 1979-1989.

In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, however, the Soviet Union presented itself as the leading anti-colonial force. It proclaimed an ideological duty to financially, politically, and militarily support numerous pro-independence/communist movements and governments, tying these efforts to confronting the colonial West.

The Soviet collapse forced Moscow to prioritize maintaining Russia’s influence in former Soviet states. But even today, many Russians do not see the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire as empires, as Russians insist that they lived alongside their colonized subjects through a “Friendship of Peoples,” unlike the British or French. This sentiment drives much of the rhetoric defending Russia’s ongoing dominance across parts of the former Soviet Union.

On the eve of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin once again called into question Ukrainian statehood. Ukraine, like other former Soviet states, has often been labeled an artificial creation by Russian politicians. Alongside the necessity of military force to protect Russian speakers/citizens, Russian officials have justified conflict and exploitation of fragile post-Soviet borders in separatist regions of Georgia, Moldova, and Armenia/Azerbaijan since the early 1990s.

Russia has also worked to maintain a dependency on its military power in former Soviet states. The Kazakh government’s reliance on the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military alliance was clearly demonstrated during the CSTO intervention during protests in January 2022. Prominent Russian politicians such as Sergey Lavrov have consistently compared the CSTO favorably to NATO, but the lack of support from CSTO member states (except for Belarus) for Russia in its war with Ukraine has demonstrated its limitations.

The Russian military has also been active in Syria since 2011, while dozens of Russian private military companies have increased operations across Africa over the last decade. The Kremlin is increasingly tying these conflicts, as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine, to reinforce Moscow’s traditional role as an anti-colonial power. Russia has performed significant outreach to Africa since the start of the war, and at the annual St. Petersburg economic forum in 2023, Putin declared the “ugly neo-colonialism” of international affairs was ending as a result of its war.

By amplifying criticism over the domination of global affairs by the “Golden Billion” in the West, the Kremlin believes it can blunt foreign and domestic criticism over its war in Ukraine, as well as over its approach to other post-Soviet states.

USA

The USA, born out of an anti-colonial struggle, has naturally been wary of being perceived as a colonial power. U.S. Presidents voiced support for decolonization after World War II, particularly John F. Kennedy. But because “anti-communism came before anti-colonialism,” Washington often supported neocolonial practices by European powers to prevent the spread of Soviet influence and secure Western interests.

The U.S. has also been criticized for its own imperial behavior toward Latin America since 1823 when the Monroe Doctrine was first proclaimed. The United States’s sentiment that it had a special right to intervene in the Americas increased during the Cold War as Washington grew wary of communism. U.S. military forces intervened in Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989 to enforce Washington’s political will.

The U.S. War on Drugs, launched in 1969, also destabilized much of Latin America, while other instances of covertly fostering instability have prevented the emergence of strong sovereign states in the region.

Major foreign conflicts involving U.S. forces since 1945 meanwhile include the Korean War (1953-1953) Vietnam War (1955-1975), the Gulf War (1991), intervention in the Yugoslav Wars (1995,1999), and the War on Terror (2001-present). U.S. forces also intervened in Haiti in 1994-1995 during “Operation Uphold Democracy” and again in 2004, while leading international interventions in Libya (2011) and Syria (2014). These interventions have often been criticized for perpetuating instability and weakening local institutions.

Nonetheless, the global U.S. military presence has continued to grow. Since 2007, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) has seen the U.S. expand its military footprint across Africa and today, 750 known military bases are spread across 80 countries. U.S. special operations forces are meanwhile estimated to be active in 154 countries. The U.S. global military presence also gives Washington considerable control over transportation routes, with the U.S. Navy routinely seizing ships violating trade restrictions.

U.S. officials have continued to lean on the country’s history as a former British colony to highlight solidarity with other countries and propose greater cooperation. In 2013, for example, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated that the Monroe Doctrine, which allowed the U.S. “to step in and oppose the influence of European powers in Latin America,” was over. And in a 2023 address from the White House briefing room proclaiming the start of Caribbean-American history month, President Biden noted how the U.S. and Caribbean countries are bound by common values and a shared history of “overcoming the yoke of colonialism.”

But domestic divides over Washington’s role in global affairs have increased calls for the U.S. to return to its early foreign policy of isolationism. While this will not be enough for the U.S. to retreat on the global stage, it has helped prevent the U.S. military from committing to new major conflicts in recent years.

China

The conclusion of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 marked the end of China’s “Century of Humiliation” at the hands of European powers, the U.S., and Japan. The victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allowed Beijing to consolidate power and look toward expanding China’s borders. This included launching the “peaceful liberation” of both Xinjiang in 1949 and Tibet in 1950, steadily bringing these regions under China’s control—though China only took Taiwan’s seat at the UN in 1971.

China’s history of exploitation by foreign powers has frequently been cited by Beijing to increase solidarity with other countries which suffered from Western imperialism. Key to this messaging was fighting against U.S.-led forces in the Korean War, as part of a “Great Movement to Resist America and Assist Korea” and opposing wider Western neocolonialism, while Chinese forces also engaged in border clashes with the Soviet Union as relations between Moscow and Beijing soured in the 1960s.

But Chinese forces have also been involved in clashes with former European colonies. This includes confrontations with India, as well as China’s launch of a major invasion of northern Vietnam in 1979. Tens of thousands of casualties were recorded on both sides during the month-long operation, while continued border clashes between Chinese and Vietnamese forces continued until relations were normalized in 1991.

Since 2003, Chinese officials have instead placed great emphasis on China’s “peaceful rise,” which has seen the country drastically increase its power in world affairs without having to resort to military force. But while large-scale Chinese military operations have not materialized, China has rapidly increased the construction of ports, air bases, and other military installations to enforce its territorial control over the South China Sea over the last decade, at the expense of several Southeast Asian countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping has justified these developments because the islands “have been China’s territory since ancient times.”

China’s extensive maritime militias and civilian distant-water fishing (DWF) fleets have also been accused of asserting Chinese maritime territorial claims while blurring the lines between civilian and military force. Additionally, there is also fear that China’s growing economic and military might will be enough to force countries in Central Asia to accept the Chinese position on various territorial disputes.

While China has avoided any major military operations this century, it has used its growing economic and military might to pressure other countries into accepting its territorial claims. To offset criticism, Chinese officials have turned their attention toward ongoing and historical imperialism by the West. Following British criticism over China’s handling of pro-democracy protests in 2019, China criticized the UK for acting with a “colonial mindset,” and, in support of Argentina, accused the UK of practicing colonialism in the Falklands in 2021. These claims help sustain domestic support for China’s policies, help to increase solidarity among other countries which have suffered from Western imperialism, and put China’s geopolitical rivals on the defensive.

Conclusions

It is true that the U.S. military provides necessary security deterrence to numerous countries, and has also proven essential to responding to natural disasters and other emergencies. But like other major powers, the use of U.S. military force has consistently been abused since 1945. The historical legacy of Western imperialism and interventionism has helped explain why Western calls for global solidarity with Ukraine have often fallen on deaf ears today.

Additionally, some of the consequences of the war in Ukraine, including rising energy and food prices, are being most acutely felt in poorer countries, while the growing dominance of Western firms in crucial Ukrainian economic sectors has also undermined the West’s messaging over Ukraine further.

Honest accountability by major powers for the historical and ongoing exploitation of weaker countries remains rare. But public, government-funded initiatives, such as the U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, documents the beginning and justification behind empire-building in the U.S., and is an important step to addressing past and contemporary wrongdoing, as envisioned by the UN Charter in 1945. In 2018, French President Macron meanwhile commissioned a report that discovered that “around 90 to 95 percent of African cultural heritage” was located abroad, prompting the French parliament to pass a bill in 2020 allowing these artifacts to be returned.

The promotion of actual history and accountability may also remove barriers to more selfless assistance to weaker countries by major powers. This approach could, in turn, invite greater cooperation and positive repercussions than costly military interventions, and would also serve as an example for weaker states grappling with their own legacies of violence, exploitation, and suppression.

Spain’s acting PSOE-Podemos/Sumar government carries out huge military spending increases

Santiago Guillen

The coalition government of the Socialist Party and Podemos, now integrated in Sumar, is continuing to shower billions of euros on the Spanish military and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

That a temporary, acting government, seeking the formation of a viable coalition after last month’s inconclusive elections, is making war preparations is a warning. Whatever government is formed, whether led by the right-wing Popular Party (PP) or the PSOE with Sumar, imperialist war abroad and the war on workers at home will continue.

In last month’s conference of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, known as the Ramstein format, acting Defense Minister Margarita Robles confirmed that Spain was sending four additional Leopard tanks, 10 armoured transports, 10 trucks, three civilian ambulances, an armoured ambulance and a field hospital.

US Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper (left) meets with Spain’s Minister of Defense Margarita Robles during the Defense Ministerial at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Febuary 12, 2020 [Photo by DoD photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Nicole Mejia / CC BY 2.0]

She announced the shipment of new batches of light weapons and large-caliber heavy ammunition and confirmed that 1,900 Ukrainian soldiers have already been trained in Spanish territory.

Spain is also part of NATO’s advanced plans to deploy tens of thousands of NATO troops near the Russian border. At the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) promised to send 800 soldiers to Slovakia for the first time, while the number of troops in Romania will be increased by 250. There are currently 1,150 troops deployed in Romania, Poland and the Baltics. Eight F-16 jet fighters are also stationed in Romania.

This increase will more than double the presence of Spanish troops in Eastern Europe. Since 2017, Spain has contributed 650 troops—equipped with Leopard 2E and Pizarro battle tanks, among other material—to the NATO combat group in Latvia, led by Canada. In addition, the Air Force has deployed an air surveillance radar in the vicinity of the Romanian city of Constanza operated by some 40 soldiers; and the Army two Nasams anti-aircraft missile batteries in Amari (Estonia) and Lielvardes (Latvia), with about 100 soldiers each.

As Ukrainian conscripts are again thrust into well-defended front lines—dying by the thousands in minefields and trenches following a bloody debacle in the first phase of the offensive—Madrid has promised a batch of 500 tourniquets for Ukrainian doctors to treat those injured and maimed by Russian mines, artillery, and aviation. The message of PSOE and Podemos/Sumar is clear: the butchery of young soldiers must continue. Ukrainians must continue dying for no other purpose than to advance the interests of the imperialist powers.

The acting government’s role recalls the darkest traditions of Spanish imperialism’s alliance with Nazism against Russia. During World War II, the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco sent the Blue Division of 47,000 soldiers to Russia as a thank you to Hitler for his support in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in crushing the working class. Eighty years after the Blue Division’s oath to Hitler in July 1941 and its incorporation into the Wehrmacht as the 250th Division, Spanish tanks, weapons and ammunition are again rolling against Russia.

The Spanish government remains secretive about the actual amount of aid delivered to Ukraine. It officially records only €74 million, according to the 2023-2026 Stability Programme Update presented to the European Commission in April. But the real figure is much higher.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Spanish military aid up to February this year amounted to €320 million. This includes rifles, machine gun cartridges, grenade launchers, Hawk missile launchers, Aspide anti-aircraft missile systems, winter clothes and equipment, fuel, bulletproof helmets, armored personnel carriers, howitzers and light vehicles. Many of these have been sent to the neo-Nazi Azov battalion.

The PSOE-Podemos government has also contributed over €350 million in financial support to the Ukrainian state to continue serving as a proxy for imperialist war against Russia, and €50 million in humanitarian aid. The Institute recognized this was probably a huge underestimate.

Madrid also participates in the joint aid that the European Union gives to Ukraine, which now amounts to €5.4 billion, diverted from the European Fund for Peace. Aware of the need to escalate and prolong the war, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, Sánchez’s former foreign affairs minister, has proposed a plan to almost quadruple the military aid to €20 billion at the meeting of EU foreign ministers on July 28.

Borrell said this was to provide the Ukrainian army with arms and ammunition during the period 2024-2027, confirming the imperialist powers’ long-term plan to use Ukrainian lives to weaken and ultimately carve up and dismantle Russia, as preparation for conflict with China. These actions threaten a direct war with Russia and even the use of nuclear weapons.

As the PSOE-Podemos government fuels war abroad, it has implemented brutal attacks on the working class. Its pension cuts have raised the retirement age to 67, it has imposed below-inflation wage increases on broad layers of workers and passed a labour law reform slashing legal protections in the workplace, all while provided billions of euros in bailouts for major banks and corporations.

This was accompanied by a huge military budget hike. Although the government recognises €12 billion in military spending, this is only the funding assigned directly to the Ministry of Defence. Total military spending accounts for €27 billion according to Delás Center for Peace Studies, as it is spread across other ministries. This sum exceeds the 2 percent GDP that NATO requires its members to spend on their militaries.

Over €7.7 billion is allocated for the purchase and development of weapons, growing by 69 percent since 2022. In this way, 30 percent of total investment budgeted by the government is in weapons. But that is only what is budgeted. The figure for military spending is actually much higher.

Just this year, additional military spending worth €8.7 billion has been approved in a modification of the main budget. This spending was approved across 13 of the 17 council of ministers meetings held this year until April 25, showing that in most meetings of the highest decision-making body of the Spanish government, there is an agenda item to increase military spending. A large part will go to the purchase of weapons such armored and combat vehicles, helicopters, planes, drones and warships.

The global upsurge of the class struggle provides the only basis for opposing escalating militarism. Across Europe, millions of workers in France, Germany, Britan, Italy and Portugal, and tens of thousands of Spanish workers, are participating in strikes and protests against inflation, the deterioration of working conditions, the degradation of public services such as health and education, and the unstoppable rise in rents and mortgages. It is this social force that can put an end to the ruling class’s war plans abroad and the social counterrevolution at home.

UK education unions end strikes with below-inflation pay deal

Robert Stevens

Britain’s teaching unions have ended a months-long dispute over pay and education funding with a sell-out.

On Monday, the National Education Union (NEU), the largest schools union with around 300,000 teacher members, announced the end of its seven-month dispute after members in England voted to accept a pay offer of 6.5 percent. The NEU declared, “further strike action over 2023/24 pay will not now go ahead in the autumn term.”

NEU joint general secretaries Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney [Photo: screenshot from video: NEU/YouTube]

The NASUWT and NAHT unions announced the deal had been accepted later that day. The ASCL headteachers’ union paved the way for the rout, having already accepted the deal in July.

In recommending the offer, the unions reneged on every pledge made at the outset of the dispute. The 6.5 percent pay “rise” is a real-terms cut, with inflation having been at double-digit levels for much of the last year. The government’s measure of inflation, CPI, is still at almost 8 percent and the more accurate RPI measure is at 10.7 percent.

In the ballot, 86 percent of NEU teacher members backed the pay offer, on a turnout of 60 percent. The deal was also backed by 85 percent of support staff on a turnout of 40 percent.

Many workers voted to accept the deal reluctantly, knowing it was a betrayal. NEU members had already taken eight days of industrial action since the start of the year and their determination to fight on was made clear by the result of another ballot, also announced Monday. In that poll, 153,340 teacher members (95.35 percent) voted Yes to “take part in strike action in furtherance of this dispute”.

However, teachers’ lack of belief that the NEU would lead a successful struggle was made clear by the fact that, of 303,331 teacher members eligible, only a slight majority (53 percent) voted in favour.

The ballot results had the same character as last month’s de facto vote of no confidence in the Communication Workers Union (CWU) bureaucracy by postal workers, after the union had blocked all strike action for months. That vote saw 75 percent of postal workers voting Yes, and 24 percent voting No, on a turnout of 67.1 percent, passing an historic sell-out agreement.

The education union bureaucracy could not disguise its relief. Joint general secretaries of the NEU, Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, declared, “Members have spoken very clearly and in great numbers…

“The government should be in no doubt that we will hold its feet to the fire on delivering for teachers and support staff on workload and funding and continue to represent the profession in future STRB [School Teachers’ Review Body] consultations.”

These two will be holding no-one’s feet to the fire. They are now set for a comfortable retirement, after years of coining it in as the leading figures in the NEU bureaucracy. Last year Bousted and Courtney jointly took home over £260,000 in pay (£219,848) and benefits (£46,982), while their members continue to eke out an existence on declining real-terms pay.

Incoming NEU General Secretary Daniel Kebede had also recommended the deal. Like Courtney, he claims a left-wing politics and is a supporter of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

At the outset of the struggle, NEU members backed a strike ballot based on a campaign calling for a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise. In January, announcing a ballot result in which over 90 percent of its members in England and Wales backed industrial action—with seven days of strikes to be held in February and March—an NEU statement read: “The ballot is a result of failure by the Secretary of State in England and the employers in Wales to ensure enough money is available to pay a fully-funded increase in pay for teachers which at least matches inflation, and which begins to restore lost pay [emphasis added].” This referenced the fact that teachers had suffered a wage loss of over 17 percent since 2010.

In its sell-out statement, the NEU sought to hail the STRB as an organisation which could be relied on to protect teachers’ pay, writing, “On 13 July, the Government published the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) report on teacher pay. It recommended a 6.5% pay increase from September. Despite briefing that this would not be honoured, the Government has now agreed to fully implement the STRB recommendation on all pay points and allowances.”

As the WSWS noted in its call for a rejection of the deal, “The Conservative government declared that it would accept the recommendation of the STRB… in a move clearly negotiated with the unions to end the longest running teachers’ strike in over a decade.”

The Tories have used the STRB to keep teachers’ pay down for years and were more than happy to endorse its recommendation.

The Tories have insisted throughout—exposing the lies of the NEU—that the deal will not be fully funded, meaning nearly half of the pay rise will come directly from school budgets already cut to the bone. Of the 6.5 percent deal, news site Schools Week commented, “Schools will be expected to fund 3.5 per cent from their own budgets, with the remaining 3 per cent coming from cuts to the Department for Education’s own budget.” Schools Week noted, “Government and unions are steering clear of saying the deal is ‘fully funded’, instead describing it as ‘properly funded’”.

Teachers opposed to the NEU’s sell-out must draw the lessons from the union bureaucracy’s sabotage. Every national dispute of the last year—including those of postal workers, rail workers, university staff, and health workers—has either been sold out or is in the final stages of a betrayal by the union bureaucracy.

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union is also preparing an “online consultative ballot” for August 3 to 31, through which it plans to end another major dispute. This is based on a pay deal for 2023/24 of just 4.5 percent and a minuscule “extra 0.5% for the lowest paid.” In a sick joke, the PCS states, “This is more than double its originally intended figure of 2%.”

Spelling out the terms of its surrender, the PSC states, “Our first priority is to take targeted action in the small number of employers who have yet to agree to pay the £1,500 lump sum recommended by the government.”

How thoroughly the union bureaucracy is stamping out any opposition to the plans of the Tories and employers was revealed this week by Mick Lynch, the General Secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union.

Taking advantage of the RMT’s all but closing down strike action on the railways in a dispute dating back more than a year, the Railway Delivery Group (RDG) representing all private rail operators last month announced the closure of nearly every railway station ticket office in Britain—a move expected to see thousands of jobs losses.

The RMT has refused to mobilise its tens of thousands of members in opposition, instead organising a harmless campaign giving credence to a bogus “consultation” process being organised by the RDG, including two days of action on August 9 and 16.

In a circular to RMT members this week, Lynch made clear, “Further to my message on Friday 28th July, please note that these are campaign days of action, focused on distributing postcards to passengers and drawing attention to the campaign, and not any form of industrial action [emphasis added].”

Ukraine strikes Moscow again as war expands

Andre Damon

Ukrainian suicide drones struck downtown Moscow for the second time this week on Tuesday as strikes deep inside Russia are becoming a regular occurrence.

The latest drone attack struck a skyscraper in the business district of central Moscow. The 42-story building is home to major Russian companies including VTB Bank and Norilsk Nickel. It was the same skyscraper struck in Sunday’s drone attack.

Russian authorities claimed that the drones that crashed into the building on both strikes had been brought down through electronic jamming.

The unlikeliness of drones that were allegedly downed by Russian defenses striking the same building twice raised widespread questions.

Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of RT, wrote on Telegram, “A drone hitting the same tower for the second time in a row, where three federal ministries are located, at least requires explaining the comments that the electronic warfare downed them all.”

The mayor of Moscow claimed that approximately 1,600 feet of the building’s facade had been damaged. Many of the building’s occupants, including workers at Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development, were told to work from home on Tuesday.

Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the International Committee of Russia’s parliament, claimed that the drones were likely launched by Ukrainian intelligence operatives working inside of Russia.

Ukraine is increasingly dropping the pretense that it is not carrying out attacks inside Russia. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, said, “Moscow is rapidly getting used to a full-fledged war, which, in turn, will soon finally move to the territory of the ‘authors of the war’ to collect all their debts.” He added, “Everything that will happen in #Russia is an objective historical process. More unidentified drones, more collapse.”

After the attack last weekend, Zelensky boasted of the growing costs of the war for the Russian population. “The war is gradually returning to Russian territory—to its symbolic centers and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural, and absolutely fair process.”

There were indications that the increasingly open strikes deep inside Russia, which Ukraine’s imperialist backers claim to oppose, were causing embarrassment to the NATO powers.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told the Financial Times that the organization has put in place measures to make sure weapons provided by the European powers were used “for the sole purpose of self-defense.”

Asked to comment on the strikes, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, asserted that “we are against any and all attacks on civilian facilities and we want them to stop.”

There are indications, moreover, that the war is expanding further in geographic scope. On Tuesday, Poland’s Ministry of Defense claimed that two Belarusian military helicopters violated Polish airspace.

“After the commanders and service chiefs presented conclusions from the analysis of the situation, it was established that today, Aug. 1, 2023, there was a violation of Polish airspace by two Belarusian helicopters that were training near the border,” said the Polish Ministry of Defense.

It continued, “The border crossing took place in the Białowieża area at a very low altitude, making it difficult to detect by radar systems.” The Polish Foreign Ministry said it “expects Belarus to refrain from such actions,” which represent “yet another element in the escalation of tension on the Polish-Belarusian border.” In response, the Polish Defense Ministry ordered additional soldiers to the border region.

Polish officials claimed that they were deploying “additional forces and resources, including combat helicopters,” adding that NATO had been informed of the event.

This was on top of 1,000 troops that were dispatched to the border. Poland said that Belarus’s ambassador was summoned to provide an explanation for the event.

Last week, Poland announced plans to nearly double the size of its army from 172,000 to 300,000.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said last month that fighters from the Wagner group, who were transferred to Belarus following its June 23–24 attempted coup, wanted to “go on a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszów,” in a veiled threat to attack Poland.

Even as the war expands in scale, the magnitude of the disaster is becoming clear. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published an article headlined, “In Ukraine, Amputations Already Evoke Scale of World War I,” which reported that up to 50,000 Ukrainians have lost one or more limbs since the start of the war.

The Journal wrote, “By comparison, some 67,000 Germans and 41,000 Britons had to have amputations during the course of World War I, when the procedure was often the only one available to prevent death. Fewer than 2,000 U.S. veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions had amputations.”

Volkswagen plans massive cuts at its main German plant

Ludwig Weller

Autoworkers at Volkswagen Passenger Cars are heading into a fierce battle to counter the counter the company’s massive attack on jobs and working conditions, which is planned for the end of the summer holidays. VW management, in close cooperation with the works council, is preparing a major restructuring and wide-ranging cuts.

Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, Germany (Vanellus-Foto / CC BY-SA 3.0) [Photo by Vanellus photo / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The company is under considerable pressure due to a sharp decline in electric vehicle sales in the wake of strong competition from Tesla and Chinese and other international car producers.

In addition, investors are demanding a tripling of returns from the current 3 to 9 percent with the shift to EVs, a goal that can only be achieved through a brutal increase in the exploitation of its workforce.

In recent weeks, one crisis meeting has followed the next. At a management information meeting (MMI)—a video conference attended by nearly all of the group’s 2,200 managers—VW car boss Thomas Schäfer declared, “The future of the VW brand is at stake.” He warned that the company was threatened with “being burned to the ground” and that this was “a final wake-up call.”

To make the core VW brand profitable, a complete restructuring of production processes was required, Schäfer said. Existing operations were “too complicated, too slow, too inflexible.” In addition, the costs in many spheres, i.e., labor costs, were far too high.

In May, Schäfer unveiled VW’s “performance programme,” which aims to double the return on sales and generate “more profits” through “greater efficiency” and “lower costs.” .Then, on June 13, the VW supervisory board met and decided on a restructuring and savings programme that had been prepared by its Economic Committee, described by the media as “the biggest restructuring in decades.” Management, works council and the IG Metall union worked closely to shape the plan in a veritable conspiracy against the company’s workers.

Shortly afterwards, on June 21, VW held a “Capital Markets Day,” a luxurious event for investors at the motor racing venue in Hockenheimring. The event was a “prelude to a more intensive dialogue with capital markets” where VW Group CEO Oliver Bloom and CFO Arno Antlitz promised fantastic returns of up to 11 percent to the 200 invited investors.

The press release emphasised that the focus of a “10-point strategy” was on capital markets. In the future, individual brands would have to take responsibility for their own target of returns. In other words, the weaknesses of the core brand VW will not be compensated by the high profits made by the subsidiary brands Porsche and Audi. To increase returns, each brand will have to develop its own program to maximise profits.

The five-page press release praises the “principles of profitability, lower fixed costs and disciplined investment” without a word about what this will mean for the workforce and every individual job.

At the VW brand alone, 10 billion euros are to be saved over the next three years in order to double the return on investment to 6.5 percent by 2026.

This will require the same measures being implemented throughout the global auto industry: the reduction of labor costs, cuts to the core workforce, production speed-up, the rationalisation of production processes and platforms and/or the closure of entire departments and plants. The number of jobs targeted for elimination is being kept secret by management, the works council and the IG Metall bureaucracy, but two years ago Herbert Diess, then head of the entire VW Group, spoke of 30,000 job cuts.

Wages and achievements won over decades are also being targeted for attack. While the core workforce is being shrunk, the use of temporary, low-paid workers is increasing.

This is aimed at transforming the car giant into a new profit machine under conditions that have changed dramatically across the world. Bloom never misses an opportunity to assure the company’s main owners and investors, above all, the billionaire Porsche and Piëch family clans, that “there is huge potential to increase the value of the company.”

The division of labour between VW executives, IG Metall and the works council

To realise its plans, the company is relying entirely on the assistance of its very well-paid IG Metall works councils. At the company’s main Wolfsburg plant alone, there are 75 works councils financed by the company, 66 of which are run by IG Metall. They are backed up by 2,500 shop stewards. In addition, the Wolfsburg works council has its own 70-strong administrative apparatus.

In no other German company does the collusion between management and trade union bureaucracy—presented as “co-determination”—take such a sophisticated and corporatist form. An army of full-time functionaries at IG Metall and the works council ensure that the group’s decisions are implemented smoothly with minimal resistance. The chair of the VW general works council, Daniela Cavallo, and her team were intimately involved in drawing up the restructuring plans from the start. They have supported the plan unconditionally and voted for it on the company’s supervisory board. As is so often the case, the works council took on the responsibility of deceiving the workforce and keeping workers in the dark about the consequences of the plan.

As early as May, the entire union apparatus of works councillors, shop stewards, youth representatives and other IG Metall bureaucrats were prepped to combat the inevitable resistance from rank-and-file workers. On 8 May, 1,500 IG Metall shop stewards took part in a conference held under the motto, “Collective bargaining policy and co-determination—a decisive pillar for successful transformation and job security.” The union’s role at VW and other German car companies is notorious and its officials are widely despised.

On 14 June, the works council in Wolfsburg held a meeting, which was carefully rehearsed with corporate management. Daniela Cavallo played the role of an unsuspecting official, who “demanded” to know what the executive board was planning.

She called out hypocritically, “The board is required to transparently inform staff about the planned measures for more efficiency in the brand. What are the next concrete steps? What does this mean for colleagues? And how can the workforce get involved? I expect this important explanatory work from the members of the board.”

VW boss Schäfer responded to the scripted question by touting his “Performance Programme” and demanding that every employee support it.

Finally, on June 23, a works council meeting was held in Wolfsburg, where 350 works council members from VW met for “networking.” The annual “summit meeting of co-determination” officially revolved around “future topics such as artificial intelligence in the work environment, networked mobility and new business models in the auto industry.” In reality, the meeting served as a platform for VW executives and other company representatives to present their agenda and intensify the collaboration between works councils and the board.

This was followed by a meeting of the VW World Works Council on July 3. IG Metall officials announced, “The top-level employee representatives from the entire Volkswagen Group gathered in Braunschweig for several days. The aim of the meeting of the European and World Group Works Council (E/WKBR) was a joint exchange on the perspectives and challenges in the international brands and companies.”

The report of the meeting notes that Cavallo (president of the E/WKBR) and Dariusz Dabrowski (general secretary of the E/WKBR) worked hand in hand VW Human Resources Director Gunnar Kilian and Karsten Brack (Head of VW Human Resources International).

The fact that VW’s entire trade union bureaucracy is gathering so intensively in lock step with the board is a indication of the magnitude of the attacks that are coming. Management, IG Metall, the works council and the state government know they cannot cushion the assault—as they have done in the past—and fear massive resistance. That is why they are closing ranks and forming a common front.