Australian Interest in the Indian Ocean: Domestic Motivations

Stephen Westcott

Australia has been edging closer to embracing the Indian Ocean region for several years and finally openly declared in the 2013 Defence White Paper that it considered the Indian Ocean to be a key interest of the country. The international compulsions behind Australia’s new focus, from the rise of India to the concern over China’s recent posturing to the securing of its neighbouring sea lanes from criminal activities, are all relatively well known. Less widely discussed are Australia’s domestic factors that have led to this relatively new policy approach. This dearth of analysis naturally beggars the question: what, if any, are the domestic motivations behind Australia’s relatively new interest in the Indian Ocean?

The answer to this question rests first and foremost on the growing concern about the state and nature of the Australian economy. Though services such as education are an increasing part of the Australian economy, Australia still predominately relies upon its export of primary resources, especially mineral resources and agricultural products. Indeed, Australia managed by and large to avoid the worst of the Global Financial Crisis in primarily due to its strong export growth to Asia and in particular the People’s Republic of China. According to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics quoted by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia’s exports to China in 2013 broke approximately US$94 billion, which amounts to nearly a third of Australia’s total exports. Indeed, this figure is effectively double the second highest export partner, Japan, and certainly dwarfs Australian-Indian trade which reaches approximately US$46 billion and US$10 billion respectively. The sheer volume of Australia-China bilateral trade, which is only expected to grow following the reaching of a free trade agreement in November 2014, has caused consternation amongst a few Australians who worry the country is becoming too dependent on the Asian giant.

Even with such worries aside, the degree to which the Australian economy is linked to China’s has made it particularly susceptible to any shifts. With the Chinese economy now definitely slowing, there has been concern from industry groups in Australia that the country could dip into a recession owing to a subsequent decline in the country’s exports. With decreasing demand from other traditional trading partners in Asia and Europe, Australian diplomats have naturally begun to look around for other markets for export in order to mitigate the impact of any economic slowdown and ensure that Australia does not, as the current Trade Minister articulated, “have all our eggs in one basket.” With two of the BRICS countries, India and South Africa, and several other key growing economies, such as Indonesia, having a presence in Indian Ocean, it is a natural for Australia to take more of an interest to events off its western shores. 

Of course the growing interest has not been completely driven by economic concerns. The fact that there have been three prominent Defence and/or Foreign Ministers over the past seven years from the Indian Ocean facing Western Australia has certainly helped as they have sought to raise the state’s profile by highlighting the importance of the Indian Ocean at the national level as well as hosting international summits in Perth. More influential has been the increasing concern within Australian society over the potential impact of asylum-seekers, who largely originate from the Indian Ocean. A 2014 poll conducted by an influential Australian think-tank, the Lowy Institute, found that approximately 75 per cent of Australians consider asylum-seekers, especially those that arrive via boat, to be a threat to the stability of the country and believe they should be discouraged, if not actively repulsed. Even though the extent to which asylum-seekers attempting to reach Australia realistically constitute a threat is contentious, these perceptions have been highly influential on recent Australian domestic politics. As Indian Ocean littoral countries are typically where these asylum-seekers come from, Australia has inevitably taken greater interest and sought ways to improve stability in the region, if only to address the flow of refugees at the source.  

Part of the shift also has to do with Australia’s perception of itself as a ‘middle power’ that should have a significant interest and engagement with its neighbourhood. Indeed, this is a near universal belief within the Australian polity that the only real debate has been over whether the country is stronger than a middle power and how best to exercise this power. In essence, Australia’s strong self-conception of itself as a middle power has led it to pursue policies that seek to contribute, as a ‘good international citizen’, to the security of the international community and to be a source of diplomatic influence. This has manifested most visibly with Australia’s maintenance and utilisation of a relatively small but highly effective defence force. The ADF is utilised by Australia not only as a deterrent against encroachment on its interests, but also frequently for expeditionary missions alongside the US and also on of its own initiative within its neighbourhood, as Australia did in 1999 in Timor Leste and in 2003 in the Solomon Islands. The recent interest that Australia has shown in the Indian Ocean clearly has the imprint of its middle power mentality, and it will clearly attempt to ‘punch above its weight’ as it enters the region in earnest.

Sri Lankan foreign minister visits US to strengthen ties

Sanjaya Jayasekera

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s three-day trip to the US last week highlighted the rapid shift in relations between the two countries since President Mithripala Sirisena took office in Colombo, after defeating Mahinda Rajapakse in the January 8 presidential election.

Hostile to Rajapakse’s close ties with China, the Obama administration supported Sirisena’s installation. His entire campaign, which involved his defection from Rajapakse’s cabinet and the gathering of several parties, including the pro-US United National Party (UNP), around his presidential candidacy, was a US regime-change operation aimed at shifting Colombo’s foreign policy away from Beijing and toward Washington.

Sirisena’s government is steadily tilting Sri Lankan policy in line with the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia”—aimed at undermining China and encircling it militarily in preparation for war. Following the Sri Lankan election, the US has speedily moved to integrate Colombo into the “pivot.” The Obama administration sent its Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Biswal to Sri Lanka early this month.

Samaraweera’s visit sought to forge closer ties with Washington. He met with US Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials. During a joint press briefing before their meeting on February 12, Kerry hailed Sri Lanka’s “historic election in which there has been really a vote for change, a vote to move Sri Lanka in a new direction.”

Samaraweera responded: “We also hope to revive and strengthen the very strong bonds we have had with the United States for several decades, but of course … the relations have been somewhat strained given the last few years.”

In effect, Samaraweera pledged that the Sirisena government will make a definitive break from Rajapakse’s orientation to China. He added: “And my job I feel is to ensure that we put back our relations to an irreversible state of excellence in the coming months… For us, for the new administration, the United States of America, is not a threat but a great opportunity.”

Later, addressing the National Press Club in Washington, Samaraweera stated: “I have come with the message that we want to broaden and strengthen these ties and I have discussed with Secretary Kerry about the way forward.” The fact that Samaraweera was invited to speak at the Press Club underlines the importance that the US political establishment has given to the change of government in Sri Lanka.

On the first date of his visit, February 11, Samaraweera addressed a large gathering at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a key US think tank. He said his government wished for “our relations with the United States to be as comprehensive as possible, encompassing a multitude of areas of cooperation.” Samaraweera signaled the Sirisena government’s readiness to fully embrace the US strategic agenda in the Indo-Pacific region.

A major aim of Samaraweera’s US visit was to secure Washington’s assistance to delay a UN report on Sri Lanka. In recent years, the Obama administration sponsored a series of United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolutions over the war crimes committed by the Rajapakse government and the military during its onslaught against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). These resolutions sought to pressure Rajapake’s government to fully line up with Washington’s anti-China “pivot.”

The UN report is the product of an international inquiry, established in line with a US-sponsored resolution last March. It was scheduled to be tabled at the UNHRC session next month. Sirisena’s government requested a delay, citing Colombo’s readiness to launch a “domestic inquiry” into war crimes allegations.

During his Carnegie Endowment speech, Samaraweera said: “Unlike the previous government, we are not in a state of denial, saying that such violations have not happened…We believe such violations have happened. We are ready to ensure that those who have violated human rights in Sri Lanka will be brought to justice.”

However, Sirisena himself is directly complicit in the war crimes. Not only was he a central figure in Rajapakse’s cabinet, he was acting Defence Minister at times during the final weeks of the war against the LTTE, when tens of thousands of Tamils were killed.

Noting the new government’s foreign policy realignment, sections of the US ruling elite are advocating concessions to Colombo over the war crimes issue. These calls highlight the fact that the raising of the “human rights” issues by the US never had anything to do with concerns about the victims of such violations, or basic democratic rights, but was based on its geo-strategic interests.

In a “counseling article” to the Brookings Institute, former US ambassador to Colombo Teresita Schaffer called on the US State Department to “lower its voice” on human rights in Sri Lanka, citing the change of the government. ANew York Times editorial last week declared: “Sirisena has moved swiftly to usher in a new chapter of hope for Sri Lanka.” It backed a delay in the release of the UN report, while stating that the postponement should be “brief.”

On February 16, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, duly recommended delaying the report’s release from March to September. Such a postponement rests on clear political calculations. For its part, the Sirisena government wants to preserve what Samaraweera termed a “rainbow coalition” and head off any chauvinist campaign in support of Rajapakse’s comeback in the general elections to be called in late April.

The Sirisena government’s rapid change of policy toward the US includes building better relations with US allies and strategic partners. Samaraweera’s first foreign trip was to India. En route to the US he met with British Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire in London. Swire also visited Colombo at the end of January. Sirisena this week conducted a three-day visit to India—his first trip abroad as president.

Sri Lanka is being more closely integrated into Washington’s war preparations, which include controlling major sea routes that can cut off China’s essential supplies of energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East. These developments are a warning to the working class and the oppressed masses throughout South Asia and the world of the growing danger of war.

Finance capital pushes for Australian economic “restructuring”

Nick Beams

The ongoing turmoil in Australia’s governing Liberal-National Coalition, which ten days ago saw about 40 percent of the Liberal Party’s federal MPs vote to end Tony Abbott’s prime ministership, was sparked by mass opposition to the currently-stalled spending cuts in the government’s budget brought down last May.

Two recent statements by corporate analysts, however, make clear that for the dominant sections of finance capital, the political impasse goes far beyond the government’s budgetary measures. They are seeking nothing less than a restructuring of the Australian economy, including a drastic reduction in real wages, in order to make it “internationally competitive.”

In a research note issued on Monday, JP Morgan analyst Stephen Walters said Australia was “sliding down the precipice,” due to “glacial” reform efforts.

The next day, former Treasury official and now chief economist at the Edinburgh-based global asset manager Standard Life Investments, Jeremy Lawson, told an investment seminar that Australia needed a recession to focus political minds on the growing imbalances in the economy.

In his research note, Walters pointed to a “recession-like” weakness in domestic demand as investment in the mining industry fell away without any replacement. “We knew for some time a plunge of mining investment was fast approaching,” he said. “The economy is now sliding down a precipice pretty much as expected, as the sector moves from expansion to production.” Investment in areas outside of resources had been “slow to appear.”

Walters outlined what he considered to be the main problems holding back investment spending. These included “chronic reform inertia”—with the regressive goods and services tax, introduced in 2000, being the last major and enduring change—as well as lack of spending on infrastructure.

But Walters’s main focus was on wage levels and working conditions. “Australia now has, on key measures, more rigid labour markets than many competitors and punishingly high penalty rates,” he said, adding that “Australia’s minimum wage is double that in the US.” In 2013, he noted, average weekly earnings were 70 percent above the global mean.

Picking up on this theme, Business Spectator columnist Alan Kohler wrote that while the “circus in Canberra” was no doubt a factor in reduced investor confidence, “for most people the real problem is the cost of doing business in Australia.”

“In a globalised world, and open economy, you don’t have to look much further than wage levels that are 70 percent above the global mean to discover why businesses aren’t feeling that great and are not investing,” Kohler wrote.

During his seminar presentation, Lawson recalled the experiences of the 1980s when the Hawke Labor government invoked the worsening economic climate—summed up in Treasurer Paul Keating’s phrase in 1986 that Australia was in danger of becoming a banana republic. Labor pushed through major economic restructuring, including the privatisation of major state-owned enterprises and the “restructuring” of wage rates and working conditions.

“If you look at Australia’s history, major reform episodes, tended to follow crises,” Lawson said. “It’s when you have that next recession, when unemployment is not 6.5 percent but 8 or 9 or 10 percent, you’ll really concentrate minds.”

In other words, only when wide sections of the population are subjected to economic devastation will governments be able to impose the agenda being demanded by finance capital.

Lawson made clear the critical questions went far beyond the budget and said the government had decided to tackle the wrong problems. “It has invested in a lot of capital in some unpopular things that actually aren’t going to be the critical determinants of whether Australia’s potential growth rate and productivity growth ends up being lifted,” he said.

The “critical determinants” are those outlined by Maurice Newman, the head of the Abbott government’s Business Advisory Council, shortly after the government took office. Under conditions of falling national income, due to the sharp downturn in commodity prices, Newman said the Australian minimum wage was far higher than the UK, Canada and New Zealand and more than double US levels, in a system “dogged by rigidities.”

The demands of finance are finding their reflection in the manoeuvring over the Liberal leadership. Amid growing criticism of Abbott’s government in business circles, leadership rival and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull made an appearance on the “Q&A” television program on Monday night to outline his agenda, albeit somewhat guardedly because publicly, at least, he is still professing loyalty to Abbott.

In speeches over the past few years Turnbull, who has the closest connections with corporate finance and banking, has emphasised that economic globalisation signifies major changes for the Australian economy. On “Q&A,” he placed the conflict over the budget in that context.

“Everything we do has to be designed to ensure that our prosperity is secure, and that is by being more productive, more innovative, smarter, faster, leaner,” he told the audience. “That is what this budget repair thing is all about.”

These are the same free-market “buzz words” employed during the “restructuring” carried out under the Hawke and Keating governments, which resulted in the redistribution of wealth up the income scale, the closure of large sections of industry and the growth of financial parasitism. Now in worsening global economic conditions, finance is demanding that this program be intensified.

With around a quarter of the last budget’s measures still blocked in the Senate and amid growing concerns in ruling circles about the viability of the present parliamentary system for carrying through major economic changes, Turnbull indicated that he was looking for collaboration with the Labor Party in carrying out his program.

Both sides of politics, he said in the “Q&A” discussion, agreed on the need for changes in government revenue-raising and spending measures. The Liberals should put forward their proposals while Labor set out its alternative and then there should be a discussion. A third set of measures would emerge, possibly better than the two original plans.

The Labor Party has, for electoral reasons, opposed some of the more egregious measures in the May budget, while signing off on cuts worth billions of dollars in funding to the states. It is now increasingly making clear its readiness to carry through the demands of the corporate elites.

Writing in today’s Australian Financial Review, shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said the Liberals had not been “honest” either about the economic problems or their solution. Instead, they engaged in “Santa Claus economics,” with Treasurer Joe Hockey suggesting that the return of a Liberal government would boost business confidence and profits. Abbott’s government had not been serious about “ending the age of entitlement” when at the same time it was promoting a paid parental leave scheme.

The Labor Party has yet to announce specific measures but Bowen wrote that it acknowledged economic growth was not enough to return to a budget surplus—a clear indication that it is aligning itself with the demands of finance for major cuts and “restructuring.”

Study shows inequality much higher in Germany than previously estimated

Denis Krassnin

The distribution of wealth in modern society resembles an inverted pyramid. The higher up the pyramid, the fewer the people who share in total wealth. The top layer of society conceals its fortunes, and official figures are hard to come by, making it difficult to say precisely how rich they are. A new study by the trade union-run Hans Böckler Foundation aims to illuminate this “great statistical uncertainty.”

What the researchers at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) discovered, on the basis of an approximation of peak assets, far surpasses previous assumptions about social inequality in Germany—even though the reevaluation, in the words of the author, is “fraught with uncertainty.” Unfortunately, researchers could only draw on data that was three years old.

According to the study, the richest 10 percent possess over 63 to 74 percent of the total wealth of private households, which amounts to 8.6 to 9.3 billion Euros in the estimation of researchers. That means approximately 400,000 households possess more wealth than the remaining 3.5 million. Earlier data had indicated a share of only 60 percent.

In the case of the super-rich, the authors had to make even stronger corrections to earlier figures. The wealthiest one percent possesses not just 18 percent of total wealth as previously believed, but 31 to 34 percent—almost twice as much. The richest tenth of one percent control three times as much wealth as previously thought—instead of five percent, between 14 and 16 percent. These approximately 80,000 people are wealthier than the poorest half of the German population, roughly 40 million people.

The previous methods used to determine the distribution of wealth demonstrate severe weaknesses. The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), established by the same institute in 1983, surveyed the wealth of thousands of representative households. It would be highly unlikely, according to the authors of the latest DIW study, that a millionaire or even a billionaire would participate in such a poll conducted by telephone. On the basis of the SOEP data, at most, the wealthiest households, with tens of millions of euros, were included in the calculations. The results were distorted.

In order to incorporate the super-rich into the calculations of the distribution of wealth, researchers used, among other things, the richest persons list ofForbes magazine, which includes only individuals with assets of more than one billion dollars

Their wealth and numbers have sharply increased in the last year. Despite, or thanks to, the financial crisis, the number of billionaires in Germany climbed from 34 in the year 2002 to 55 in 2012. The collective wealth of this tiny layer amounted to 130 billion euros in 2003, and grew to as much as 230 billion by 2013.

These figures are so high, that they themselves raise concerns among the defenders and beneficiaries of such vast inequality. As the charity organization Oxfam reported in mid-January, the top one percent of the world’s population will have more wealth next year than the remaining 99 percent. The S üddeutsche Zeitung wrote of the “explosive force of social inequity.”

The ongoing concentration of wealth at the top of society is observed not only in Germany, but throughout the world. The magnitude of social inequality is ever more sharply expressed on a global scale.

In 2010, approximately 380 billionaires possessed exactly as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity. In the course of only three years, this number sank to 92 billionaires. One year later, just 80 billionaires possessed more wealth than three and a half billion people.

“The growth of social inequality,” the World Socialist Web Site wrote following the publication of the Oxfam report, “is the consequence of policies enacted by the ruling class in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. … Governments responded to the collapse of asset values and the insolvency of major banks by pumping some $12 trillion into the financial markets by means of bank bailouts, near-zero interest rates, and central bank money-printing (Quantitative Easing).”

The richest layer in Germany controls far more wealth than previously known. To return to the initial image of this article: no pyramid can stand on its peak for long without toppling over—or being overthrown from the bottom.

Right-wing nationalists regain Croatian presidency

Paul Mitchell

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was inaugurated as president on February 15. Her surprise, wafer-thin victory over Ivo Josipović—who is allied to the ruling Social Democratic Party (SDP)—makes it likely that the HDZ will win the general election later this year.

Just four years ago, in 2011, the SDP won a landslide victory over the HDZ, but since then it has pursued anti-working class policies, imposed austerity measures and cut public spendingdriving the country into a seventh year of recession. (See: EU imposes harsh austerity on Croatia, its newest member)

The employment rate is among the EU’s lowest and unemployment is around 18 percent and among young people (excluding students) is close to 50 percent. A growing number are at risk of poverty and social exclusion, which already affects almost one third of the population. Wages continue to decline, with over half of employees receiving less than 5,000 kunas (€650) a month.

In the first round of the presidential election in December, Grabar-Kitarović received 37.2 percent of the vote, narrowly losing to Josipović’s 38.5 percent. Ivan Vilibor Sinćić from the anti-eviction Human Wall movement polled 16.4 percent and Milan Kujundžić from Alliance for Croatia, a coalition of extreme nationalist and fascistic parties 6.3 percent.

Because none of the candidates won more than 50 percent of the vote, a run-off election was held on January 11, in which Grabar-Kitarović scraped in with 50.7 percent of the vote.

The turnout for the first round was just 47.1 percent, an indication of the disconnect between the working population and the two main political parties that have alternated power over the last two decades. There is little to choose between them, with both espousing Croatian nationalism and an unwavering commitment to austerity.

The main role of the president is in the field of foreign affairs and as head of the armed forces, but Grabar-Kitarović made clear she was going to intervene in domestic matters. “We have come a long way but we have to completely change our current economic paradigm,” she declared. “We must overcome party interests and implement changes that cannot be postponed. We must stop living off the money we’re borrowing from future generations.”

Grabar-Kitarovic promised to continue the legacy of the late President Franjo Tudjman, who founded the HDZ in 1989. The party’s extreme nationalism helped to hasten the fragmentation of Yugoslavia and its collapse into years of bloody civil war. Despite the perilous implications of Tudjman’s demands for secession from the Yugoslav Federation, the US, Germany, Britain and France saw the independence of Croatia as best serving their own interests following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. There was no further value in upholding the unity of Yugoslavia, which, since the split between Stalin and Tito, had performed a valuable function as a buffer against a Soviet thrust into the Mediterranean. With the demise of the USSR, the Western powers regarded Yugoslavia’s old, centralised state structure as an obstacle to the privatisation of state-owned industry and the penetration of Western capital.

They considered Tudjman an ally in breaking open these structures and limiting Serbian [and hence Russian] influence in the Balkans. Thus Slobodan Milosevic was cast as the sole villain and Serbia was categorised as a “rogue state”, while Tudjman, despite his authoritarianism and racist opinions, was portrayed in the most favourable light.

Since then the West has continued to see Croatia as a bulwark against Russia in the Western Balkans, hastened its integrating into NATO and the EU (it joined in July 2013 as the 28th member state) and cultivated its politicians.

After graduating from Los Alamos High School in New Mexico in 1986 Grabar-Kitarović returned to Yugoslavia to complete a degree at Zagreb University. In 1993, she became an adviser, and then senior adviser, to then Deputy Foreign Minister Ivo Sanader, who assumed leadership of the HDZ following Tudjman’s death in 2000. Grabar-Kitarović became Sanader’s protégé, but has had to distance herself from him more recently. Last year, he was sentenced to a nine-year jail sentence after being convicted for embezzling millions of kunas whilst in office. The charges against Sanader threw the HDZ into crisis and contributed to it losing power to the SDP in 2011. (See: Croatia’s ruling party in crisis).

From 1995 to 1997, Grabar-Kitarović served as head of North American relations in the Croatian Foreign Minister. After a spell at the Croatian embassy in Canada, she attended George Washington University as a Fulbright scholar in 2002–2003, then Harvard University and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In 2003 she became an HDZ member of the Croatian parliament, Minister of European integration, and then Foreign Minister from 2005 to 2008--overseeing Croatia’s entry into NATO. In 2008 she stood next to US President George W. Bush as he signed the accession documents at the White House.

US cables from that period released by Wikileaks show the very close relationship between Grabar-Kitarović and US officials. One, for example, from 2007 reports a meeting with Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns who “then turned to domestic issues that Croatia should address… FM [Foreign Minister] Grabar-Kitarovic responded that Croatia is aware of these problems and is working to resolve them.”

That Grabar-Kitarović was seen as a valuable asset and conduit for US policy was demonstrated in her appointment as Croatia’s Ambassador to the US from 2008 to 2011 and then as Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy at NATO until 2014.

Her call to change Croatia’s “current economic paradigm” chimes with the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Commission. In November the IMF warned, “Reform fatigue is a risk, especially in view of approaching presidential and parliamentary elections.” It called for “steadfast fiscal consolidation” (i.e., more austerity) and “significant additional reforms.”

The measures demanded included implementing the second phase of the labour law reform, reviewing the wage-setting system and streamlining public wage bonuses, improving the effectiveness and transparency of the social protection system (i.e., cut benefits), reducing access to early retirement, taking forward retirement age reform (i.e., reduce pensions), reforming the health sector, restructuring the local government system and state-owned enterprises and reducing their role in the economy.

Last year, Independent Croatian Unions President Kresimir Sever warned, “What those in power should be afraid of are spontaneous unrest and going out in the streets. While it is organised by the unions, they are under surveillance.”

This was a plea to the ruling elite not to forget the vital role the trade unions were performing in stifling popular opposition. With Grabar-Kitarović’s election, Sever said “he expects even better cooperation” with her than he had with Josipović and that “we will find in her a strong champion for workers’ rights, for decent wages and decent working conditions.”

The election campaign has heated up with both the SDP and HDZ trying to outdo each other in stoking up Croat nationalism, seizing on the provocative statements of Serb nationalist Vojislav Seselj following his release from The Hague on the grounds of terminal ill health.

The SDP government is attempting to reduce support for the Human Wall movement by introducing an “emergency” debt-relief initiative named “Fresh Start” this month. Many Croatians—an estimated 317,000 household and businesses—have had their bank accounts blocked and are unable to get credit. However, the proposals will only apply to around 60,000 people, with an income of less than 1,250 kuna (€160) a month and debt of less than 35,000 kuna (€4,500).

White House outlines policy for deepening intervention in Central America

Mathew Brennan

In the FY 2016 budget proposal presented to Congress earlier this month, the White House included a request for tripling US aid to Central America to $1 billion. The funding would be channeled through the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle, which was formed last November in Washington at a conference convened by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It will be directed primarily toward the governments of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

The Obama administration’s budget proposal was followed by a campaign on its behalf in the New York Times—by both the newspaper’s editorial board and Vice President Joseph Biden, who is overseeing the initiative. Both made the case that the Central American aid, coupled with an increase in the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, would promote the White House’s purported goals of “comprehensive immigration reform” and “stemming systemic violence” in the region.

The Times’s editorials were quick to point to the approximately 70,000 unaccompanied children who fled to the United States last year, largely from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. These child refugees, and the violence and poverty rampant in the regions they were fleeing, are the supposed impetus to, as Biden cynically put it, Washington’s drive to “stem the dangerous surge in migration.” Or as the Times’s editorial board dishonestly framed the issue, the increase in aid will “meaningfully tackle the root causes of instability that over the decades have led to thousands of people to embark on dangerous journeys to the United States searching for a better life.”

However, as is the case with US foreign policy everywhere else in the world, there is a political chasm between the public statements of the White House and the real aims of US imperialism.

On the one hand, there is a massive social crisis in Central America. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador account for the world’s first, fifth, and sixth highest murder rates, respectively.

According to the World Bank, at least 60 percent of Hondurans, 54 percent of Guatemalans, and 35 percent of El Salvadorans live below the official poverty line. Nearly a third of the Honduran population and a quarter of the Guatemalan population live on less than two dollars a day. At least 30 percent of the Honduran population is officially unemployed, the highest rate in all of Latin America.

Gang and state violence are rampant in all three countries. According to a 2013 United Nations report, over 60 percent of the unaccompanied children who were interviewed by their representatives while being held in US immigration detention centers cited violence by gangs, drug cartels and state security forces, and fear of being recruited into gangs, as their reasons for fleeing.

On the other hand, there is the source of this enormous instability, delicately described by the Times as the “root causes,” which are overwhelming bound up with decades of brutal US imperialism-directed “dirty wars” against the populations of all three countries.

A CIA-orchestrated coup in 1954 against the, the democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz began more than four decades of carnage in the region. Arbenz’s government was overthrown by CIA-organized military forces in 1954, at the behest of the United Fruit Company, which adamantly opposed a limited land reform. That country’s dirty war continued until 1996. Guatemalan security forces, trained and directed by the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies, systematically suppressed and terrorized the working class and peasantry, killing more than 200,000 Guatemalans during this genocidal period.

In El Salvador, Washington funneled at least $6 billion in aid to support and arm military juntas that terrorized workers and peasants over the last quarter of the twentieth century. These juntas employed “death squads” as a form of counter-insurgency against the FLMN guerrilla group. At least 75,000 people were murdered by the military in the peak years of repression, between 1980 and 1992, when a peace accord was signed and the FMLN transformed itself into a bourgeois party.

More recently in Honduras, the democratically elected government of President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by US-backed military forces in 2008, after it turned to Venezuela for cheap oil and loans. In her book Hard Choices, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton admits that she ensured Zelaya would not return to office after he was kidnapped and flown out of the country by the Honduran military. Since 2008, under a government controlled heavily by the coup leaders, the murder rate has increased by over 50 percent, several opposition political leaders have been assassinated, and gang membership has increased to more than 65,000 by some estimates.

There is also the larger historical context of US “aid” to Central America. Historically, this money has been funneled through state agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)—which all provided economic and political support for the repressive military dictatorships. William Blum points out in his bookKilling Hope that “(t)hese organizations with their reassuring names all contributed to a program to greatly expand the size of Guatemala’s national police force and develop it into a professionalized body skilled at counteracting urban disorder…with officers sent for training in Washington…and Los Fresnos, Texas.”

When Joseph Biden speaks of “confronting the interlocking security, governance, and economic challenges” in Central America through the Alliance for Prosperity, this is the sort of “interlocking” partnerships he has in mind.

The White House budget proposal is in line with similar US-led initiatives such as Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative in Mexico.

Taken together, these aid initiatives, while cloaked in rhetoric about “fostering democracy” and “combating narco-trafficking,” have been overwhelmingly used as a wedge to open up new markets for US investment, exploit cheap labor and crush emerging opposition movements to US-backed right-wing governments.

The new initiative is also driven by challenges confronting US imperialism in the region: the encroachment of economic rivals, on the one hand, and the threat of social upheavals within the working class, on the other. China as well as Russia have made significant trade deals and capital investments across Latin America over the last 15 years. China increased trade in the region by 1,200 percent between 2000 and 2009, and has plans to build a $50 billion canal in Nicaragua in 2019 that will dwarf the Panama Canal.

Internally, the bourgeoisie is overseeing virtually unprecedented levels of social inequality, wage stagnation, and an assault on democratic rights across the board. Social unrest related to these developments is already on display among the working class throughout the region—most recently in the mass protests over the disappeared students in Mexico.

Partnerships such as the proposed Alliance for Prosperity, with its emphasis on the increased militarization of the southern borders of the US and Mexico, are at their heart a preparation by the US ruling class to repress social upheavals and scapegoat immigrants for the inherent crisis of global capitalism.

Alabama judge asks courts to defy order granting same-sex marriage licenses

Eric London

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is ordering probate judges in his state to ignore a US federal court order allowing gay and lesbian Alabamians to exercise their right to marry.

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore

Judge Moore’s maneuver is in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states: “No state shall … deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Fourteenth Amendment gives the federal government power to prohibit states from carrying out actions that violate these basic rights.

Moore’s action flouts a February 12 ruling by US District Court Judge Callie V.S. Granade ordering Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis to begin allowing same-sex marriages in the state’s largest county. Davis had previously failed to abide by an earlier court order.

Judge Granade’s ruling was the latest in a lawsuit filed by four homosexual couples who were denied marriage licenses under the Alabama state constitution’s ban on same-sex marriage. One of the plaintiffs, whose partner faces serious health issues, is unable to enforce a medical power of attorney document because of the couple’s non-married status.

In late January, Judge Granade granted the plaintiff couples’ motion for a preliminary injunction against the state law. In effect, Judge Granade’s decision prohibited Alabama from enforcing its marriage ban on the grounds that it denied the plaintiffs’ fundamental right to marriage.

Judge Granade ordered a stay on her own decision, which expired on February 9. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States denied the Alabama Attorney General’s request to extend the stay, and probate judges in many Alabama counties began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples the same day the stay expired.

Judge Moore, however, sought to block the federal court’s decision and ordered probate judges to continue to refuse marriage licenses. Although most probate judges are issuing marriage licenses, a substantial minority of counties are following Judge Moore’s orders and refusing to abide by the District Court’s decision.

In refusing to abide by the federal district court ruling, Moore invoked the “states’ rights” arguments that were traditionally utilized by southern states in opposing desegregation and other civil rights legislation. “It’s my duty to speak up when I see the jurisdiction of our courts being intruded by unlawful federal authority,” Moore declared.

This argument was supported by US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who filed a dissent in the Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene in the case. The decision, Thomas wrote, “represents yet another example of this court’s increasingly cavalier attitude toward the states.”

The basic conclusion that flows from Judge Moore’s pseudo-legal rationale is that the states have the right to ignore the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, which were ratified alongside the amendment banning slavery (Thirteenth) and the amendment granting former slaves the right to vote (Fifteenth).

The three amendments are together known as the “Civil War Amendments,” because they codified the egalitarian outcome of the war between the union and the slaveocracy. In this sense, Judge Moore is repudiating a fundamental legal product of the defeat of the confederacy: that the federal government can prevent the states from violating the democratic rights of the people.

The actions of Moore in relation to gay marriage are also a continuation of his efforts to integrate religion and the state, a direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution.

“It seems as if the foundations of our nation are becoming rotten, and Christians seem to act as if they think that God does not see what they do in politics,” Judge Moore said in 2012, arguing for what amounts to a theocratic conception of the state. He has often complained of the “moral decay” of American society, noting that gay marriage would lead to the “ultimate destruction” of the country and that homosexuality is an “inherent evil.”

Judge Moore has been on the forefront of religious assaults on the separation of church and state. In 2003, he made a name for himself when he disobeyed a federal court order requiring the removal of a monument to the biblical ten commandments on the steps of the state judicial building. At the time, Moore denounced jurists who believe “obedience of a court order [is] superior to all other concerns, even the suppression of belief in the sovereignty of god.”

Moore is no small-town magistrate—he is the most powerful judge in the state who won election with significant political and financial backing from the state’s political establishment. His efforts to create a controversy over the gay marriage issue serve both to whip-up homophobic sentiment in Alabama and to elevate his own profile to national prominence.

That someone like Judge Moore occupies the highest judicial position in an American state is an indictment of the entire American ruling class. Increasingly detached from its democratic traditions, the political establishment elevates the political progeny of southern segregationists to occupy leading positions in the most impoverished regions of the country.

While President Barack Obama issued mild criticisms of Moore’s actions, they have largely been left to stand. This is in line with the continuous efforts of the White House to accommodate the anti-democratic actions of the religious right, as the administration has carried out a wholesale attack on every other democratic principle.

Most recently, Obama’s pandering to right wing religious elements found expression in his decision to exclude non-profit religious organizations from the requirement that employers provide contraceptives to their workers, following a campaign by religious fundamentalists denouncing the provision as a “war on religion.”

Obama’s climb-down was followed by two reactionary rulings by the US Supreme Court, undermining the Establishment Clause. In particular, the Court ruled last year that in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that contraceptive provisions of the Affordable Care Act violated the “religious liberty” of “Christian corporations.”

As a concession to those supporting the measure, the Obama administration did not raise the Establishment Clause in the defense of the contraception mandate.

Mounting violence against Muslims in America

Tom Carter

A series of attacks on Muslims in the US have occurred in the wake of theCharlie Hebdo shootings in France and executions carried out by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria. These events have been seized on by governments around the world, including the Obama administration, to promote anti-Islamic sentiment so as to justify expanded military interventions in the Middle East and stepped up domestic repression.

On February 10, three Muslim-American students—Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19—were found shot in the head, execution-style, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The two young women were wearing traditional hijabs when they were killed.

The man who turned himself in to authorities in connection with the murders had previously brandished guns at the victims and threatened them. Before the shooting, Yusor Abu-Salha told her father, “Daddy, I think he hates us for who we are and how we look.”

On February 12, an Arab-American man was brutally attacked by two white men at a Kroger supermarket in Dearborn, Michigan. The attackers also taunted his daughter, who wears a hijab, making references to ISIS and Muslims. The attackers called the man and his daughter “r--head” and said, “Go back to your country.”

On February 13, the Quba Islamic Institute in southeast Houston, Texas was the target of an arson attack that destroyed a substantial portion of the building and caused an estimated $100,000 in damage. On February 17, police in Austin, Texas arrested a man for threatening to bomb an Islamic center as well as a Middle Eastern restaurant.

Last month, a “Texas Muslim Capitol Day” event (the declared purpose of which was to “engage American Muslims in the political process”) was attacked and disrupted by anti-Muslim thugs. Another attack was organized on “Muslim Day” in Oklahoma City. The attacking group’s Facebook page screamed, “Get Islam Out of America.”

The rate of hate crimes against Muslims in the United States stands at five times what it was before September 2001. A recent poll found that out of all religions, Americans harbor the most negative feelings towards Muslims.

The American political and media establishment bears a significant portion of the responsibility for these trends.

A recent report by the Center for American Progress entitled “Fear, Inc. 2.0, The Islamophobia Network’s Efforts to Manufacture Hate in America” exposes a veritable “Islamophobia industry” operating on the periphery of the American state. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent over the past decade to promote anti-Muslim bigotry through a shady network of politicians, journalists, foundations, “activists” and “experts.”

This Islamophobia network enjoys close ties with police departments and the intelligence agencies. Anti-Muslim bigotry, the report indicates, can often be found “masquerading as law-enforcement counterterrorism training.” The training materials and “experts,” according to the report, encourage police and intelligence agents to see “a terrorist plot in every mosque.”

The intentional whipping up of anti-Muslim bigotry has intensified internationally in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks last month. As theWorld Socialist Web Site has explained, the campaign to vilify Muslims serves definite political ends.

Anti-Muslim hysteria provides a justification for imperialist mayhem abroad as well as a wedge with which to attack democratic rights at home. Policies can be pursued in the climate of such hysteria that would otherwise be unthinkable. And, as with all such campaigns against racial and religious minorities throughout the twentieth century, murderous and fascistic elements are mobilized that, in a crisis, can be unleashed against the working class as a whole.

In cultivating the conditions for an intensification of anti-Muslim violence within the United States, a particularly reprehensible role has been played by the racist, homicidal film American Sniper. The film features an elite US soldier heroically slaughtering Iraqi “savages” for God and country.

Chris Kyle, the real-life sniper behind Clint Eastwood’s pro-war propaganda film, boasted of killing more than 300 people. (He was apparently also a pathological liar who bragged about having shot and killed dozens of “looters” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and to have participated in other events that are unlikely ever to have happened).

During a military investigation of allegations that Kyle killed an unarmed civilian in Iraq, Kyle said, “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”

In the current toxic social climate, and in the absence of any progressive outlet for social discontent, American Sniper has met with a certain and disturbing response. “American sniper makes me wanna go shoot some f---ing Arabs,” wrote one individual on Twitter. “Nice to see a movie where the Arabs are portrayed for who they really are,” wrote another, “vermin scum intent on destroying us.”

Another individual wrote, “Great f---ing movie and now I really want to kill some f---ing r--heads.” And another: “American sniper made me appreciate soldiers 100x more and hate Muslins (sic) 1000000x more.”

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee described a “drastic increase” in hate speech on social media following the film’s release. It is not difficult to see how these kinds of responses can translate into real violence.

A revealing episode was provided by the “National Prayer Breakfast” on February 5. Bowing to pressure from the right, Obama utilized the occasion (a reactionary spectacle under any circumstances) to denounce “ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism, terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.” Obama also mentioned the Crusades and the Inquisition as examples of “terrible deeds” committed in the name of religion.

Obama’s appearance fueled an ongoing campaign by the Republican right denouncing the White House for not going far enough in vilifying Muslims. Obama was criticized on the grounds that his invocation of the Crusades and the Inquisition “throws Christians under the bus.”

“The words ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ do not come out of the president’s mouth,” declared Republican Senator Ted Cruz. “The word ‘jihad’ does not come out of the president’s mouth. And that is dangerous.”

“The president’s comments… at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I've ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore told reporters. “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”

The engines of anti-Muslim agitation in the United States do not include only the usual suspects: the Republican Party, the military, AM talk radio, police, the intelligence agencies, Fox News, the Murdoch Press, religious zealots, billionaire reactionaries, the Tea Party and so forth.

Instead, anti-Muslim prejudice has been lent a certain respectable gloss by so-called “liberal” and “left” sections of the political establishment. These layers either endorse the vilification of Muslims, acquiesce to it, or make hand-wringing scholarly inquiries into whether or not Islam is “inherently violent.”

“The rash of horrific attacks in the name of Islam,” read a front-page article in the New York Times on January 9, “is spurring an anguished debate among Muslims here in the heart of the Islamic world about why their religion appears cited so often as a cause for violence and bloodshed.” The article then weighs arguments—for and against—the proposition that Islam is “inherently more violent than Judaism or Christianity.”

No significant section of the political establishment in any of the imperialist countries has shown itself capable of taking a principled stand in opposition to the promotion of anti-Muslim sentiment. That task falls to the socialist movement, which stands for the international unity of the working class, defends its democratic achievements, and rejects all attempts to whip up national, ethnic or religious bigotry.

German government prepares new military doctrine

Johannes Stern

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday heralded the adoption of a new military and security strategy for Germany. Her speech, on the occasion of the first meeting of those preparing the “White Paper 2016,” underscored the turn by the German ruling elite to an aggressive foreign policy 70 years after the end of the Second World War.

Almost ten years after the publication of the last White Paper in 2006, “a new White Paper is overdue,” von der Leyen said at the beginning of her presentation. She referred to the changed “security environment,” pointing in particular to “the alarming development of transnational terrorism” and “the behavior of Russia in Ukraine,” which, she said, had “wide-ranging consequences.”

Saying she hoped the Minsk ceasefire would be implemented, she warned that one should “have no illusions.” She continued: “The new policy of the Kremlin began before the crisis in Ukraine and will keep us busy for a long time to come.”

Now the task was to find “the appropriate reaction by the West to the attempt to establish geo-strategic power politics as a way of pursuing interests,” and to Russia’s efforts “to replace internationally established rules and regulations with dominance and zones of influence.”

The defense minister ignored the fact that the crisis in Ukraine was the result of the putsch carried out by fascist forces with the support of Berlin one year ago. However, she implicitly acknowledged that the real background to the new White Paper was not “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, but the end of German restraint with regard to foreign policy, announced by President Gauck, Foreign Minister Steinmeier and herself at the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of 2014.

To reduce the need for the new White Paper to the “changed environment” would be “too reactive,” said von der Leyen. Rather, the paper had to “serve the purpose of self analysis and self assurance.” It “should explain our actions and our intentions clearly. It should offer a narrative,” she added.

The contours of this “new narrative” have already become clear over the past year. In numerous speeches, commentaries, interviews and think tank strategy papers, German politicians, journalists and academics have repeatedly demanded that Germany take on “more leadership” and “responsibility” in Europe and the world. To this end, they have argued, Germany requires a foreign policy strategy that clearly formulates German interests, along with the provision of the necessary military means to defend these interests.

Von der Leyen’s speech was a continuation of this basic line. She emphasized that “our intentions with regard to German security policy have changed quite fundamentally.” What was important was “leading from the center” and “readiness to engage.” She allowed no room for doubt that what she meant by this was the development of a globally oriented militaristic foreign policy.

She explicitly excluded any political, geographic or other restriction on military intervention. She declared, in effect, that the German army was free to intervene anywhere around the world, noting that there was no “rigid prescription for action that sets immovable geographic or qualitative boundaries.”

In other words, everything that German imperialism deemed to be necessary was permissible. There was “no checklist for foreign engagements,” “no compulsion to engage,” but also “no taboos.”

“More responsibility” could mean “fighting together to establish or preserve peace,” she declared. It could mean “training together in fragile regions, educating, building.”

Von der Leyen praised the German interventions in northern Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Kosovo, off the coast of Lebanon, in Mali and in Eastern Europe. Germany was “deeply committed” to the buildup of NATO forces in these areas, she said. Together with “partners,” it was “introducing the new rapid spearhead force” and expanding NATO headquarters in Szczecin.

At the end of her speech, the defense minister let the cat out of the bag: Germany had to massively rearm! It was necessary “to maintain the armed forces as long term partners and provide them with the necessary means.” Consequently, the White Paper would discuss “efforts to secure modern weapons,” an “up-to-date personnel policy” and an “appropriate budget.”

Von der Leyen announced her first weapons deal the same day as her speech. The Defense Ministry plans to purchase 138 helicopters for the army, including 80 multi-purpose NH90 helicopters and 40 “Tiger” combat helicopters. The deal will cost 8.7 million euros.

Because of broad opposition to militarism and war within the population, the government had previously raised the question of increased military spending with caution. The aim of the White Paper is to change this.

The president of the Armed Forces Association, André Wüstner, said on the fringes of the meeting in Berlin that “it is high time for new strategic guidelines.” The defense minister had to “break free” to “fully equip the army against the backdrop of current crises and conflicts.” Two weeks ago, at the Munich Security Conference, Wüstner had called for the arming of Germany and preparations for war.

This sentiment was echoed in a guest column in the Süddeutsche Zeitung by Christian Mölling, a staff member of the foundation Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security AffairsSWP), which works closely with the government. He wrote that Von der Leyen had to explain in the White Paper “what role German soldiers, helicopters and tanks should play in foreign policy and in crises.” He argued that the “parameters of defense policy” depended “on the actual capabilities of the army and not on external dangers.”

The SWP published a strategy paper under the title “New Power, New Responsibility: Elements of a German Foreign and Security Policy for a Changing World” in the fall of 2013. This paper provided a template for the return of German militarism. While at that time meetings about a new, aggressive German foreign policy were taking place in secret, the current discussion on the White Paper is to take place in full view of the public.

Von der Leyen concluded by saying she looked forward “to cooperation with experts from different government agencies, with parliament, with foundations and with academia.”

To this end, four working groups, under the headings “Security and Defense Policy,” “Partnerships and Alliances,” “Armed Forces” and “National Frameworks of Action” have been established. Among the participants are leading security policy makers, journalists, academics, military personnel and representatives of German and American think tanks.

They include: Sylke Tempel, chief editor of the journal Internationale Politik; Thomas Bagger, head of the planning staff of the Foreign Office; General Major Hans-Werner Wiermann, commander of the Territorial Missions Command of the armed forces in Berlin; Winfried Nachtwei, former security policy spokesperson of the Green Party; Henning Otte, defense policy spokesperson of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) fraction in parliament; Constanze Stelzenmüller, former security policy editor of Die Zeit and fellow at the US Brookings Institution think tank; Lieutenant General Heinrich Brauß, adjunct general secretary of NATO for defense policy and military forces planning; and Humboldt University Professor Herfried Münkler.

US steps up threats against Russia as Ukrainian troops retreat from Debaltseve

Niles Williamson

The retreat Wednesday of Ukrainian soldiers from the city of Debaltseve was a major defeat for the Kiev regime in its military offensive against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass. It was also a blow to US policy in Eastern Europe.

The loss of Debaltseve has underscored the bankruptcy of the US puppet regime in Kiev and the lack of popular support for military operations against ethnic Russians in the east.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced Wednesday that he had ordered a “planned and ordered” withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the battered transit hub. The New York Times reported that a column of approximately 100 transport trucks ferried soldiers out of Debaltseve early in the morning. The convoy came under intense fire from separatist tanks and snipers as it made its way toward the government-held city of Artemivsk, approximately 45 kilometers to the northwest.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Andriy Lysenko reported that a majority of the estimated 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers who had been trapped in the city had escaped. “At the moment, almost 80 percent of the Ukrainian units have retreated from this sector and this operation is to be completed soon,” he told reporters.

The head of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, had called on the encircled soldiers to lay down their weapons and surrender ahead of last Sunday’s cease-fire deadline.

In the lead-up to the cease-fire negotiated in Minsk last week, several thousand Ukrainian troops entrenched in the city had been surrounded by separatist militias. Fighting continued in Debaltseve after the cease-fire deadline, as the separatists sought to force a complete surrender by the Ukrainian forces.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande launched a last-ditch diplomatic effort last week, securing a cease-fire after it was reported that US President Barack Obama was moving toward a decision to arm the Kiev regime with lethal military equipment, including anti-armor missiles, raising the specter of war between NATO and Russia.

Speaking from Hungary on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for the Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve to give up their weapons and for the separatists to allow them to return home. He downplayed the significance of the fighting and called for the cease-fire he negotiated with Germany and France to be “implemented in full.”

American officials have seized on continuing hostilities following Sunday’s cease-fire deadline to press for an escalation of economic and military pressure on Russia. US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki stressed at a press briefing Tuesday that the delivery of American weaponry to the Kiev regime remained “on the table.”

Ashton Carter, who was sworn in as Obama’s new secretary of defense on Tuesday, openly backed the arming of the Ukrainian regime at his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was “very much inclined” to support a plan for delivering lethal weapons. Carter insisted that the US needed to “support Ukraine in defending themselves.”

US Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham released a joint statement on Tuesday in which they pressed for Obama to move forward with such a plan. The Republican senators declared the cease-fire a failure and blamed “Russia and its Ukrainian proxies” for assaulting Debaltseve.

They demanded that in addition to arming the Kiev regime, the Obama administration impose tougher economic sanctions on Russia to “change Putin’s behavior.” McCain and Graham called for the removal of Russia from the SWIFT financial network, a move that would significantly curb the access of Russian banks to the international financial system.

EU Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini declared in a statement Wednesday that the actions of the separatists in Debaltseve constituted a “clear violation of the cease-fire” and called on Russia and the separatists to “immediately and fully implement” the terms of the Minsk agreement. She warned that the EU was prepared to take “appropriate action” in the event of further violations of the agreement.

At a meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power accused Russia of supporting an “all-out assault” in Ukraine in violation of the cease-fire. She baldly repeated US allegations, unsubstantiated, that Russian troops were involved in the fighting in eastern Ukraine and Russian arms were being funneled to the separatists. She declared that Russia had “manufactured and continues to escalate the violence in Ukraine.”

The crisis in Ukraine began last year after a pro-Western government came to power in a coup backed by the US and EU and spearheaded by fascist forces. The putsch ousted the elected pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych.

After opposition to the regime emerged in the Donbass region, which has a majority Russian-speaking population, Kiev began military operations in an attempt to violently suppress the separatists.

Large urban centers, including Luhansk and Donetsk, have been subjected to months of artillery shelling and mortar attacks by Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian military assaults have been spearheaded by fascist and nationalist “volunteer battalions,” including the notorious Azov Battalion, whose members are known to sport Nazi insignia on their helmets, and the Right Sector militia headed by Dymytro Yarosh, a devotee of Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

A cease-fire deal negotiated between Kiev and the pro-Russian rebels in September never took hold, with fighting continuing through the end of last year. Kiev launched a renewed offensive in January to solidify its control over territory in the east, but the action quickly backfired, with the separatists making significant territorial gains in a counter-offensive. The position of the Ukrainian military continued to deteriorate in the face of the separatist offensive in the east and opposition to conscription in the west.

Significant resistance has emerged in western Ukraine to the military draft that came into effect at the end of January, with many reportedly fleeing the country to avoid service. Morale is reportedly extremely low amongst the government’s armed forces, with thousands of reported desertions.

According to estimates by the UN, more than 5,400 soldiers and civilians have been killed in the conflict, while more than a million people have been displaced. A German intelligence estimate cited by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung places the death toll much higher, at approximately 50,000.