Poland: Law and Justice Party wins second term in office, loses majority in the Senate

Clara Weiss

The far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS) won 43.49 percent in Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Poland, up from the 37.6 percent it received in the previous parliamentary elections in 2015.

The Civic Coalition (KO), comprised of, among others, the liberal Civic Platform (PO), the Polish Greens, and the Nowoczesna (“Modern”) party, received only 27.40 percent. The Lewica coalition, which includes pseudo-left parties like Razem (Together) and Wiosna (Spring) as well as the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), had hoped to achieve between 20 and 27 percent, but received only 12.56 percent of the votes. Voter turnout stood at 61.7 percent.

PiS retained its majority in the Sejm (lower house of parliament), but lost its majority in the Senate where it will now hold 48 seats. The opposition parties from KO and the Lewica and the PSL will together also hold 48 seats.

While PiS polled over 60 percent in its traditional bastions in the predominantly rural East and southeast of the country, the liberal opposition failed to win a majority in all but one region.

Nevertheless, the electoral victory for PiS was narrower than the ruling party had expected. PiS headquarters, according to a report by Politico, were “far from euphoric.” In an evident sign of nervousness within the party, its head Jarosław Kaczyński stated, “We received a lot, but we deserve more.”

The election marks a deepening of the years-long political crisis in Poland. Since PiS became the ruling party in 2015, when it won an overwhelming majority in both houses of parliament, it has implemented far-reaching methods aimed at creating an authoritarian regime by criminalizing speech and historical research on Polish anti-Semitism, whipping up xenophobic and nationalist sentiments, and transforming Poland into a leading bulwark of US imperialism’s war preparations against Russia, spending billions on military armament and the creation of paramilitary structures.

PiS has thus stood at the forefront of the international turn of the bourgeoisie to the right and the promotion of far-right forces and militarism. This has created conditions in which the largest march of fascists in Europe since the end of World War II took place in the Polish capital Warsaw in 2017. Last year, Polish president Andrzej Duda and prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki demonstratively joined a demonstration of a quarter million people dominated by the far-right on the occasion of Poland’s “Independence Day.”

The fact that PiS was nevertheless reelected is largely due to the incapacity and, indeed, unwillingness of the official opposition to capitalize on the social and political opposition to PiS in the working class. For years, the official opposition parties have focused their criticism of PiS on appeals to the EU and especially German imperialism. They are speaking for a section of the bourgeoisie and upper middle class that is as fervently pro-war and anti-Russian as PiS but fear that the latter’s almost exclusive reliance on the US as an ally endangers Poland’s geopolitical and economic interests.

Their biggest fear, however, is that a genuinely left-wing opposition to the PiS government will emerge from within the working class. In the spring, 300,000 Polish teachers went on a national general strike, one of the largest in Poland since 1989, when the Polish People’s Republic was destroyed by the Stalinist bureaucracy and capitalism was restored. The strike shook the entire political establishment in Poland and provided an inkling of the enormous class and political tensions that have been building up in the country.

Teachers were seething with anger not only over the poverty wages they receive, but also about the education reform by PiS that has been aimed at transforming schools into a vehicles for nationalist and historically revisionist propaganda.

However, the PO-aligned teachers’ unions worked systematically to sabotage the teachers’ strike. Blacking out all political issues from the strike, they eventually sold it out, leaving teachers without virtually any gains after an embittered 17-day struggle.

The unions also opposed any renewed strike before the elections, even though a vast majority of the teachers have indicated that they were ready to go on strike again. The unions eventually called for a national work-to-rule protest which began on Tuesday in a effort to dissipate teachers’ anger.

According to recent statistics, Polish teachers make only 59 percent of the average pay of teachers in the European Union.

The liberal opposition has consciously decided to focus exclusively on mobilizing its traditional base in sections of the upper-middle class, and the EU-oriented educated intelligentsia. Throughout the campaign, the opposition refused to make any appeals to social discontent, and made barely a mention of the dictatorial measures, historical revisionism and build-up of fascist forces openly pursued by PiS.

Under these conditions, PiS, has been able to exploit the opposition’s collaboration in stifling workers’ anger and the fact that the liberal parties are correctly associated with years of devastating austerity and privatization programs.

Germany: Thousands of job cuts at Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank

Gustav Kemper

After Chief Executive Martin Zielke announced the elimination of 4,300 jobs at Commerzbank in September, Deutsche Bank folowed suit by publicly revealing that 9,000 jobs will be cut at its operations in Germany alone. This amounts to half of the 18,000 global job cuts announced by one of the world’s largest banks in July, a much larger number than had been expected.

Following the failure of merger talks between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in April, both banks have pursued savage restructuring plans at the expense of their workforces so as to boost payouts to shareholders and prepare for future takeover battles. Justifying his decision to cut jobs, Zielke declared bluntly that Commerzbank wants “to be an active player in the game of merger poker.”

As in other economic sectors, the banking industry is undergoing a “showdown for global leadership,” as business daily Handelsblatt put it with reference to the German industrial giant Siemens.

Siemens chief executive Joe Kaeser has spoken of a “merger endgame.” A similar agenda is being pursued by the steel producer ThyssenKrupp. The formation of global monopolies is also under way in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals sectors, as shown by the takeover of America’s Monsanto by Germany’s Bayer AG.

Commerzbank’s restructuring programme will involve the closure of 200 of its 1,000 banks. Although 2,000 additional jobs are to be created in other areas, such as operations, IT, and regulatory affairs, the skills required for these jobs are not comparable with those of workers in the banks.

The cost of the job cuts and bank shutdowns has been calculated at €850 million. An additional €650 million is to be invested in digitalising the bank’s operations. The bank intends to raise the costs for these investments by selling its 70 percent share of Poland’s mBank.

The subsidiary Comdirect, 82 percent of which is owned by Commerzbank, will be taken over in full so as to integrate the strong digital operations used there.

Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, the value of Commerzbank shares has collapsed from over €200 to less than €5, a drop of around 97 percent. Germany’s federal government rescued the bank during the crisis with the injection of €15 billion. After the bank paid back the fixed investments in 2011 and 2013, the government retained a 15 percent share in the bank. This was valued at the time at €5.1 billion, but with the current share price it amounts to around €1 billion. The rescuing of the bank was thus paid for through billions in taxpayers’ money and thousands of job cuts.

The declining number of bank branches in Germany demonstrates this trend. According to Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, the total number of bank branches in Germany dropped from 40,000 in 2007 to just under 28,000 in 2018.

Opinion polls indicate Canada’s elections to end in hung parliament

Keith Jones

With the campaign for Canada’s Monday, October 21 federal election in its final days, opinion polls strongly suggest that no party will win a parliamentary majority.

The governing Liberals and the Conservatives are neck and neck, each supported by slightly less than a third of the electorate. During the course of the campaign, the ruling class’s traditional parties of national government have bled support to the NDP, the social-democratic party supported by a wing of the trade union bureaucracy, and to the

The corporate media concedes there is little popular enthusiasm for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals or for the Conservatives and their prospective prime minister, Andrew Scheer. Much of the electorate, pollsters claim, will cast their vote more to oppose a party than out of support for, and confidence, in their actual ballot choice.

The election campaign has been distinguished above all by its parochial and essentially fraudulent character, with the official policy debate revolving round the parties’ rival plans for tax cuts and, in the case of some, modest social spending increases.

Excluded from the official campaign has been any substantive discussion, or for the most part even mention, of the multiple, interconnected crises roiling world capitalism—from trade war and the growing likelihood of a 2008-style financial implosion, to the surge in great-power tensions, and the unprecedented political crisis embroiling the United States, far and away Canada’s most important economic and strategic partner.

In a silence that bespeaks consent, none of the parties has made an issue of the Trudeau government’s plans to spend tens of billions of dollars on buying new fleets of battleships and warplanes, and to hike military spending by more than 70 percent by 2026. Similarly, discussion of Canada’s ever deepening integration into Washington’s military-strategic offensives against China and Russia, and in the oil-rich Middle East—any of which could ignite a global conflagration—has effectively been censored by all-party agreement.

The Liberals, NDP, Greens, and Bloc all claim urgent action is needed to deal with climate change. But their proposals, based as they are on the inviolability of production for profit and the capitalist nation-state system, are at best pathetically inadequate and pie in the sky.

With unions’ backing, NDP prepares to ally with big business Liberals

For the past four years, the NDP was hard put to distinguish itself from the big business Liberals, even as the Trudeau government pursued rearmament, cut corporate taxes, further expanded the powers of the national security apparatus, and criminalized or threatened to criminalize job action by postal and other workers. When the election campaign began, the NDP with barely 10 percent support in the poll was facing an electoral debacle. But after a campaign in which the social democrats made a very calibrated and calculated appeal to popular anger over social inequality, precarious unemployment, student debt, an increasingly privatized health care system and an economy “rigged” against the “people,” their support has apparently rebounded.

Buoyed by the prospect of the NDP holding the “balance of power” in a minority parliament, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh announced late last week his party’s six “urgent priorities” for post-election negotiations with Trudeau and his Liberals. Not only are these priorities, which include such minimalist measures as a reduction in cellphone bills, vaguely worded and things that the Liberals have for the most indicated they favour. Singh stressed that the NDP would only insist on a discussion on how to advance them.

Then on Sunday, Singh proclaimed that in the name of preventing the Conservatives from returning to power, the social democrats would be ready to consider serving in a Liberal-led coalition government. In 2008, the NDP, with the full support of the trade unions, responded to the eruption of the greatest crisis of world capitalism since the Great Depression by entering into an abortive agreement with the Liberals to replace Stephen Harper’s Conservatives with a coalition government committed to $50 billion in corporate tax cuts, “fiscal responsibility,” and waging war in Afghanistan through 2011.

Underscoring the NDP’s continuing full-throated support for Canada’s imperialist alliances, the NDP issued a statement Monday demanding Ottawa work “with our allies in the EU and NATO”—that is those principally responsible for the endless wars ravaging the Middle East—to end Turkey’s reactionary invasion of northern Syria, targeting the country’s Kurdish minority.

Prime Minister Trudeau has responded to the tightening of the election race by amplifying his claims that voting Liberal is the only way to deliver a “progressive” government that will “stand up” to US President Donald Trump, and prevent the coming to power of a Conservative government, akin to that of Ontario’s hated right-wing populist premier Doug Ford, that will dramatically slash social spending.

This is all demagogy and lies.

It was the Chretien-Martin Liberal government, elected on the basis of denunciations of the Conservatives’ “fixation” with the deficit that implemented the greatest social spending cuts and the biggest tax cuts for big business and the rich in Canadian history.

And while Trudeau, following the advice of the IMF, somewhat eased austerity at the federal level on coming to power in 2015, his closest provincial allies, the Philippe Couillard-led Quebec Liberal government and Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario Liberal government, implemented sweeping social spending cuts.

Mass strikes and protests force Ecuador’s president to cancel austerity decree

Andrea Lobo

A mass protest movement of 12 days—involving mass marches by workers, indigenous peasants and students, three days of national strike, widespread roadblocks and the occupation of key oilfields—forced the US-backed administration of Lenín Moreno late Sunday to annul the elimination of fuel subsidies dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The decision does not mean IMF reforms are permanently off the table, only that the Ecuadorian ruling class, in league with US and European imperialism, is buying time to formulate a new strategy to enforce devastating austerity.

After Moreno’s announcement from the coastal city of Guayaquil where his government had retreated, the streets of the capital Quito turned from a battlefield into a mass celebration, with chants, music, caravans and fireworks celebrating the rescission of the measures after heavy sacrifices on the part of workers and peasants. In total, the repression left 8 people dead, 1,340 injured and 1,192 arrested, according to Ecuador’s Ombudsman Office.

On Tuesday, fuel prices, which had risen dramatically, were sliding back down. The agency in charge of transportation fees said it would meet to withdraw the recent hikes. Schools and the national congress re-opened after nearly two weeks closed, while the government said that all state-owned oilfields would resume operations this week.

Moreno’s new decree, however, makes clear that the ruling class is only seeking a better footing to eliminate the subsidies, and that those organizations negotiating the retreat will play a key role in the next offensive, while they ram through a new labor reform and other social cuts also announced on October 2. These forces are exposed as loyal servants of the interests of foreign capital and the local financial oligarchy.

The workers and the toiling masses in Ecuador and internationally must use the breathing space to extract the sober lessons of this experience. This month’s events show that any struggle against social inequality and dictatorship must be based on the fight against imperialism and for the overthrow of the entire system of capitalist exploitation on an international scale. The genuine spontaneous anger of workers, peasants and youth may be sufficient to force the ruling class into a temporary retreat, but to transform society on the basis of socialist egalitarianism, a revolutionary Trotskyist leadership is necessary.

The repeal of “decree 883” eliminating fuel subsidies resulted after a round of talks between Moreno, his cabinet, and the indigenous leadership headed by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), which was leading the protests in partnership with the trade unions and several opposition parties.

The breaking point for the government was the warning by these organizations that they were unable to keep a lid on social anger.

Initially, this fear led the trade unions to call off the national strike on October 4. The transportation union leader, Abel Gómez, declared: “Analyzing the situation in the country, the chaotic situation that the transportation system is in, and having expressed our disagreement with our government…the transportation workers responsibly announce to the Ecuadorian people the end of our strike.”

Then, during the first televised hour of the talks Sunday—the UN mediators asked the media to step out during the final three hours—the president of CONAIE, Jaime Vargas, said, visibly shaken, “I’m being pressured by the rank-and-file. ‘How much is the government paying you?’ they ask.”

Leonidas Iza, the head of the Cotopaxi indigenous movement, was even more explicit: “We are not seeing things objectively. Even we were surprised by the amount of people. I don’t think [ex-president Rafael] Correa could mobilize that. … Nobody wants war, but we need to resolve the issues now and that depends on who is ruling Ecuador.”

The repeal demonstrates that the ruling class’s greatest fear is that workers and peasants will break free from the organizations that have for decades channeled opposition behind one or another faction of the bourgeoisie.

US Supreme Court term begins with new threats to democratic rights

Ed Hightower

Last Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States began its 2019-2020 term. The court is slated to hear cases involving a number of democratic and civil rights issues, including the separation of church and state, the right to abortion, equal employment for homosexual and transgender persons, the rights of immigrants and those defending them from state repression, and the rights of criminal defendants.

The term begins under a newly consolidated 5-4 far-right majority, including Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. They join Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee and opponent of democratic rights, and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, both committed reactionaries appointed by George W. Bush.

On October 7, the court heard arguments in two major cases concerning the rights of criminal defendants. Of particular significance is Kahler v. Kansas, which considers whether the US Constitution allows states to abolish the insanity defense. The insanity defense, which asserts that the defendant lacked the ability to know right from wrong, dates back hundreds of years, although defense attorneys rarely employ it and courts even more rarely permit it.

The oral arguments revealed the eagerness of Justice Gorsuch to eliminate this already narrow and seldom used legal doctrine. A zealous supporter of capital punishment, Gorsuch wrote the opinion in Bucklew v. Precythe in April of this year, which treated legal efforts to oppose the death penalty with unprecedented contempt, even in cases where the mode of execution clearly amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned under the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.

Also on October 7, the court heard arguments in Ramos v. Louisiana concerning the constitutional requirement that a jury verdict in state court for conviction of a criminal offense be unanimous. The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the right to a trial by an impartial jury. Although it does not explicitly call for a unanimous verdict, that concept was so prevalent at the time of ratification that it did not merit a specific mention, and all federal criminal cases afford the defendant the right of a unanimous jury.

This provision is a critical component of the presumption of innocence and the principle that the burden of proof rests with the prosecution. The unanimity requirement enjoins the jury to adopt the appropriate seriousness and intensity in deliberations about a defendant’s freedom, or even life. It thus upholds the high burden of proof for criminal cases, that of guilt beyond a “reasonable doubt.”

Nonetheless, most justices at the oral arguments appeared disinclined to rule that the Sixth Amendment requirement had been “incorporated” to apply to state criminal proceedings.

Three cases this term threaten workplace discrimination protections for homosexuals and transgender persons. All three center on the interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws employment discrimination on the basis of sex. The question before the court is: Does discrimination against homosexuals (in the cases Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda and Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia ) or transgender persons (as in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) consist of discrimination on the basis of “sex?”

During oral arguments on October 8, the right-wing bloc appeared ready to hand another victory to the advocates of bigotry. (In the previous term, the 7-2 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop supported a confectioner’s “free speech right” to not make a wedding cake for a gay couple. The ostensibly liberal justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer joined the right-wing bloc in that opinion).

Chief Justice Roberts posed the question to the employees’ attorney: “What about the response that you do not need to know the sex of the people involved; you can just have a policy against same sex [relationships]? So you don’t care whether the participants [in same-sex relationships] are women or men.”

A series of Gallup polls conducted in May 2019 show overwhelming public support for the rights of homosexuals and transgender persons. Large percentages answered affirmatively that gays would be suitable for a series of professions—salesperson (95 percent), soldier (83 percent), doctor (91 percent), clergyman (72 percent), elementary school teacher (81 percent), high school teacher (83 percent) and member of the president’s cabinet (88 percent)—indicating a narrow base of support for discriminatory employment policies.

Asked whether new laws are needed to protect these groups from discrimination, 53 percent said “yes.” Seventy-five percent of respondents said gays and lesbians should be able to adopt children. Likewise, 71 percent said transgender men and women should be able to openly serve in the military.

Several cases to be heard this term have serious implications for the rights of immigrants.

In Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, the Supreme Court will decide the fate of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which gave limited legal protections to some 800,000 young people who immigrated to the United States as undocumented children. President Trump nixed the program in September 2017 as part of his administration’s xenophobic agenda. There is a high probability that the court will find Trump’s action a permissible exercise of his executive powers over administrative agencies, in this case, the Department of Homeland Security .

Another important immigration case involves the federal prosecution of immigration attorney Evelyn Sineneng-Smith because she allegedly “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States” illegally, and profits from it.

French President Macron launches Islamophobic campaign after Paris police office attack

Anthony Torres

French President Emmanuel Macron’s October 7 speech at the Paris police headquarters, where an intelligence employee killed five people in a knife attack on October 3, marks a further milestone in his turn towards a neo-fascist policy. While covering over the deeper underlying causes of the attack, Macron issued a violent call to “eradicate” Islamism.

The alleged attacker, Mickaël Harpon, who was 45 and of Martiniquais origin, had worked as an IT employee of the Paris police for almost 20 years. At the time of the attack, he was employed by the intelligence division of the Paris police. Between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. on October 3, Harpon, who had low-level deafness, reportedly stabbed multiple police officers inside the building, before descending into the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, where he was shot and killed by police.

According to investigations since the attack, Harpon reportedly adhered to a “radical vision of Islam” for approximately 10 years. Police now claim he became more radicalized over the past five years. He had reportedly limited his contact with women, defended the 2015 Islamic State terror attacks on Charlie Hebdo among his colleagues, and sent 33 text messages on religious issues on the day of the attack to his wife, who is now at the center of police investigations.

In his speech last Tuesday, Macron was silent about France’s and NATO’s promotion of Islamist terror networks to wage war in Syria, along with the additional workload on police as a result of the government’s violent police repression of anti-inequality protests. One year after his salute to Marshall Pétain as a “great soldier,” Macron called for the formation of a police state to wage war against Islamists.

“Your colleagues have fallen victim to a rogue and deadly Islam that it is our responsibility to eradicate,” Macron said. “The administration alone and all the services of the State cannot overcome the Islamist hydra … A society of vigilance must be built.”

Macron said that to prevent such attacks required the fomenting of an atmosphere of anti-Islamic denunciations. The population must “know how to identify at school, at work, in places of worship, close to home, looseness, deviations, those small gestures that signal a distance from the laws and values of the Republic,” he said.

Thus, a person of Muslim faith practicing Ramadan or praying several times a day may be denounced as “far from the laws and values of the Republic.” They could be opened to prosecution, or even dismissed if they are employed by the national public transportation networks, which can dismiss their staff on the basis of investigations requested by the intelligence agencies into potential “radicalisation.”

Projecting an indefinite period for this campaign, Macron said that “defeating radical Islamism will take time. This is the challenge of a generation. It is a long-term task that is always too slow, but it is also a necessary task from which we will not give up anything. Quite the contrary.”

Macron’s lies make clear how political lies about imperialist wars abroad are used to reinforce the drive towards a police state at home. The emergence of the “Islamist hydra” is above all the product of imperialism, not of Islam or Muslims.

Halt the jobs massacre in the UK auto industry: For a joint struggle at Honda, Nissan, Ford and Vauxhall

Richard Tyler

Last Monday saw the announcement that the Honda Logistics facility in Swindon would close in 2021, destroying the jobs of its 1,200-strong workforce.

On Thursday, Gianluca de Ficchy, chairman of Nissan Europe said a no-deal Brexit—the UK leaving the European Union’s Single Market and Customs Union without an agreement—would place “the entire business model for Nissan Europe … in jeopardy,” threatening the jobs of 7,000 at its Sunderland plant.

In April this year, Honda announced the closure of its main production plant in Swindon, also set for 2021, costing 3,500 jobs. Then in June, Ford said it was shutting its Bridgend engine plant in autumn 2020 with the loss of 1,700 jobs. In July, Vauxhall threatened to move production out of its Ellesmere Port plant if Brexit made it unprofitable, destroying 1,000 jobs.

The livelihoods of an estimated 12,000 others currently employed in the Honda supply chain locally in Swindon and further afield are at risk. According to one analyst, the closure of the Honda plant would remove £2.4 billion from the economy in the South West, devastating many local businesses and services dependent on the wages of those working in the factory—70 percent of whom live in Swindon. They estimate that total job losses could easily reach 17,000, approximately 8 percent of the town’s population.

According to one estimate, the Nissan plant in Sunderland supports another 30,000 jobs in Britain.

At a stroke, some 15,000 jobs of those employed directly in the UK auto industry face the axe. Including those working in the wider supply chain, this potentially threatens the pay packets of some 75,000 people, almost 9 percent of the jobs in the sector.

The misery that would result from such an assault would be profound. The cuts to the welfare system mean those who lose their jobs are forced to exist on a pittance or must accept minimum wage “McJobs.” Those with mortgages face falling behind in their repayments, and the threat of repossession by the banks and mortgage companies.

Confronted by such a jobs massacre, the trade unions’ protracted opposition to mounting any fightback is a bitter indictment of their role as co-managers and company policemen, whose real function is to ensure nothing threatens the smooth running of industry. In Swindon, Unite General Secretary Len McClusky told car workers in March, “We are not going to let this [the plant closure] happen, not without a fight.” But far from organising a fight to defend jobs, Unite officials have negotiated redundancy terms for the closure of the Honda plant, selling off the jobs of future generations.

Speaking outside the Honda Logistics facility, one union official told a WSWS reporter that “the decision has been taken by Honda, what can you do? We’ve negotiated the best redundancy package, and nobody wants a fight.”

Homeless deaths rise more than 20 percent in England and Wales

Dennis Moore

Figures recently published by the Office for National Statistics show that 726 homeless people died in England and Wales in 2018, a rise of 22 percent on 2017. This is the highest recorded death-toll since reporting began and it is expected that the number will be higher for 2019.

The average age of those who died is 45 years for males and 43 for females. This compares to the average age of death in England and Wales of 76 years for men and 81 for women.

The highest number of deaths in 2018 occurred in London and the North West of England, standing at 148 and 103 people respectively, though there have been increases in deaths in the other parts of the UK.

These deaths come at a time when there have been repeated cuts to local authority budgets in the last decade, with many frontline services bearing the brunt of substantial cuts.

A homeless person in Manchester city centre sleeps as the temperatures reached freezing last January

Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the Crisis homelessness charity, commented, “It’s heart-breaking that hundreds of people were forced to spend the last days of their lives without the dignity of a secure home.”

Jessica Turtle from the Museum of Homelessness, a community driven social justice museum, said that people were mainly dying from drug and alcohol misuse, which is directly linked to cuts in services. “A lot of these deaths are preventable,” she said.

There is mounting concern over the dangers associated with the use of the synthetic cannabinoid Spice, known on the streets as Black Mamba.

The number of drug related deaths rose by 55 percent compared to 2017, with 131 deaths related to opiate poisoning, via heroin and morphine use, and the numbers of deaths from cocaine use increasing from 15 in 2017, to 30 in 2018.

John Hamblin CEO of Plymouth’s largest homeless charity, Shekinah Mission, spoke out recently about the deaths of homeless people, linking these deaths to cuts to funding from central government impacting on vital services for homeless people.

“Plymouth is doing some really good work but these figures are not any reflection on the efforts being done locally… Quite simply if you divest money from drug treatment services people will die.”

He went on to say, “You can’t remove that much money from local councils who worked to keep people off the streets and it not have a negative effect. This is not salami slicing—it’s amputation.”

In Middlesbrough in August this year, the deaths of five homeless people were linked to the redeployment of council staff in April. The council team, “Breaking the Boundaries,” had employed three dedicated workers to provide intensive support to rough sleepers living on the streets. Susan Gill, a community worker who runs the Neighbourhood Welfare homeless hub, and homeless cafe, said five homeless people she fed and helped at her homeless café on Princess Road in Gresham have died in the town since Breaking the Boundaries officers were removed.

Gill went on to say that the introduction of the draconian Universal Credit welfare payments had plunged many people into poverty, leaving them vulnerable to homelessness and mental health problems.

The number of homeless people dying in 2018 were just some of the 4,677 people who were classed as sleeping rough in England in the autumn of 2018, according to government figures. The figure for rough sleepers in 2018 was lower than the year before but is double that recorded in 2010.

The official rough sleeping figure is a vast underestimation of the real scale of homelessness. Last year, the Shelter housing charity estimated that there are at least 320,000 people in Britain sleeping rough or in temporary accommodation. Even this is a lower end estimation with the organisation explaining that its estimate does not include “sofa-surfers” and those sleeping in sheds, cars, etc.

IMF meeting confronts “synchronized” global economic slowdown

Nick Beams

The semi-annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which begins in Washington today and runs to the end of the weekend, is being held amid warnings that the world economy has entered a major slowdown and could be on the way to outright recession.

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) report, due to be published today, will include a downward revision on previous growth forecasts, as foreshadowed in a major speech by incoming managing director Kristalina Georgieva last week.

Georgieva began by pointing out that two years ago the global economy was experiencing a synchronised upswing with growth in nearly 75 percent of the world economy on the rise. Today the world economy is in a synchronised global downswing with lower growth expected in 90 percent of the world.

“The widespread deceleration means that growth this year will fall to its lowest rate since the beginning of the decade,” she said, foreshadowing a downgrade by the IMF of its growth forecasts for both 2019 and 2020 in its WEO report.

Georgieva pointed to the increasing “fractures” in the world economy caused by the escalation of trade conflicts. In the past, she said, the IMF had warned of the dangers arising from trade disputes.

“Now, we see that they are actually taking their toll. Global trade growth has come to a near standstill.”

As a result, “world manufacturing and investment have weakened substantially” and there is a “serious risk that services and consumption could soon be affected.”

Georgieva warned that, because of the cumulative effect of trade conflicts, the fall in growth could be as high as $700 billion by 2020, or about 0.8 percent of the world economy, equivalent to the size of the Swiss economy.

“Disputes now extend between multiple countries and into other critical issues. Currencies are once again in the spotlight. Because of our interconnected economies, many more countries will soon feel the impact.”

The divisions go well beyond trade as the US campaign to block the international usage of the Chinese technology giant Huawei demonstrates.

The IMF chief warned that even if growth revived in 2020, “the current rifts could lead to changes that last a generation—broken supply chains, siloed trade sectors, a ‘digital Berlin Wall’ that forces countries to choose between technology systems.”

As has now become customary in IMF statements and speeches, Georgieva called on all countries to work together to produce a lasting solution on trade. But the prospects for such an agreement are rapidly receding.

The agreement reached between the US and China last week is not an end to the trade war but merely a highly unstable truce before conflict resumes over the central US demands that China scrap its subsidies to state-owned enterprises and take action to curb its technological development. These demands have been rejected by Beijing as being tantamount to the scrapping of its central economic policies.

Within days of the limited US-China deal being announced, there are even doubts that a final agreement will be signed off by presidents Trump and Xi in November.

The trade conflicts are not confined to the US and China. This week the US is set to impose tariffs against a range of European products in response to a finding by the World Trade Organisation that subsidies paid to the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus in contravention of WTO rules adversely impact its US rival Boeing.

The European Union has indicated it will respond when the WTO brings down an expected finding that Boeing was assisted by tax breaks, also in contravention of WTO rules.

The trade conflict between the US and the EU could intensify in November if Trump goes ahead with a threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on European auto exports on “national security” grounds. The threat is the sharp end of the drive by his administration to impose a trade deal in which European markets are opened to American agricultural exports—a demand which EU negotiators have insisted is off the table.

In a preview of the IMF meeting, a Bloomberg article painted a sombre picture of the world economy.

Spanish police attack mass protests against prison terms for Catalan nationalists

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

Protests erupted across Catalonia Monday after Spain’s Supreme Court handed down harsh jail sentences against 12 Catalan nationalists on trumped-up charges relating to the October 1, 2017 Catalan independence referendum.

Within minutes of the Monday morning verdict, thousands of protesters descended into the streets to demand the release of the defendants, occupying public squares and blocking highways in cities across the region. In Barcelona, the regional capital, they shut down major arteries such as the Via Laietana and Passeig de Gràcia. According to police figures, 25,000 people protested in Girona, 8,000 in Tarragona, 4,000 in Sabadell and thousands more in dozens of smaller Catalan cities.

In addition to highways, protesters blocked RENFE national railway lines and the Barcelona metro.

Clashes erupted in the early evening as police attacked tens of thousands of people rallying in downtown Barcelona and marching on El Prat airport. Shouting “Do it like Hong Kong,” protesters attempted to blockade and occupy airport terminals. The airport was forced to cancel 108 flights on Monday and 20 Tuesday due to traffic disturbances and the occupation of its facilities.

Police violently charged protesters to prevent them from fully occupying Terminal 1 of the airport, and protesters accused the security forces of firing rubber bullets and noxious foam. French journalist Elise Gazengel was repeatedly beaten by police and tweeted pictures of her bruises.

Overall, 78 protesters were hospitalized, including 38 who were still in hospital at the end of the day. Three people were arrested.

The sentences are the illegitimate result of a show trial that is part of the drive by the ruling class to create the legal framework for a fascistic police state in Spain. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has explained its principled differences with the pro-capitalist, secessionist and pro-European Union (EU) perspective of the Catalan nationalist parties. However, it opposes, and calls on all workers to oppose, the prison terms imposed on the defendants despite the state’s failure to prove a case against them.

Following the incarceration of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by the British authorities, we are now witnessing the return of political prisoners being held in Western Europe for the first time since the fall of the fascist dictatorships in Portugal in 1974 and Spain in 1978. Their frame-up and imprisonment have far-reaching implications for the working class, the central target of police state repression in Spain and internationally.

Already in June, the Supreme Court demonstrated its politically criminal character by ruling that Generalissimo Francisco Franco became Spain’s legitimate head of state when he launched the fascist coup against the Republic in 1936 that triggered the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) government and the Stalinist-Pabloite Podemos party have maintained a deafening silence on this ruling. However, it gives the court ruling against the Catalan nationalist prisoners the character of a retroactive legitimization of Franco’s fascist repression of left-wing politics.

The Supreme Court found the defendants guilty on various counts of sedition, misuse of public funds and disobedience. It handed down sentences totaling over 100 years in jail, including:

* Thirteen years in prison and electoral ineligibility for ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) leader, former deputy Catalan premier and EU parliamentarian Oriol Junqueras, who was prevented from taking his European Parliament seat.

* Prison and electoral ineligibility for 12 years for former regional ministers Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Dolors Bassa; for 11.5 years for former Catalan parliamentary speaker Carme Forcadell; for 10.5 years for former regional ministers Joaquim Forn and Josep Rull; for 9 years for Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart, the leaders of the Catalan National Assembly and Òmnium Cultural associations.

* A draconian fine of €200 per day for 10 months for former regional ministers Santi Vila, Meritxell Borràs and Carles Mundó, who are all barred from running for office for 1 year and 8 months.

The entire framework of the show trial organized by the Supreme Court was illegitimate. The PSOE government invited the recently formed pro-Franco Vox party to assist the state in prosecuting the defendants. It indicted the defendants on charges of rebellion, that is, “rising in a violent and public manner” against the state authority. In fact, they supported a peaceful referendum and called peaceful demonstrations.

There was large-scale violence, but it was organized by the right-wing Popular Party (PP) government in Madrid, not by the referendum supporters. The PP government ordered a brutal police crackdown on peaceful voters that left over 1,000 injured and was witnessed by millions on social networks around the world.

Conflict erupts over European Central Bank’s return to “quantitative easing”

Nick Beams

A bitter conflict, characterised by one leading banking economist as a “War of the Roses,” has broken out in European banking and financial circles over last month’s decision by the European Central Bank to further loosen its monetary policy.

At its meeting on September 12, the ECB’s governing council decided to send its base interest rate further into negative territory. It is reducing the rate from minus 0.4 percent to minus 0.5 percent, and resuming its €2.6 trillion asset purchasing program, after a hiatus of nine months, at the rate of €20 billion a month.

There was an immediate response. Reflecting the long-standing opposition to the quantitative easing policies in German financial circles, the Bild tabloid depicted the outgoing ECB president Mario Draghi as “Count Draghila”—a vampire, sucking dry the investments of savers. This has been a continuing theme of this section of the press.

On this occasion, however, it received support from higher levels. The day after the meeting, Klaus Knot, the head of the Dutch national bank, issued a statement calling the ECB’s actions “excessive.” Jens Weidmann, president of Germany’s Bundesbank said Draghi was “overshooting the mark” and Robert Holzmann, the head of Austria’s central bank, said the decision was a “possible mistake.”

Two weeks after the decision, the rift over the ECB decision was highlighted by the decision of the German representative, Sabine Lautenschläger, to resign from the ECB’s executive board. A known opponent of a further easing of monetary policy, her term did not expire until 2022.

According to the initial reports of the September meeting, as many as nine members of the 25-member governing council spoke out against the decision. The extent of the opposition has been confirmed in the minutes of the meeting released last week. These show that while there was broad agreement on the need to take action to counter the ongoing slowdown in the eurozone economy, there was significant opposition to the package announced by Draghi.

Most of the opposition centred on the decision to resume bond purchases. The minutes recorded that “a number of members” argued that the case for such action was “not sufficiently strong.”

In announcing the decision, Draghi told a news conference there was a “clear majority” in favour of the measures” and that an “ample degree of monetary accommodation” was needed to ensure 2 percent inflation over the medium term.

However, it has since emerged that the decision to restart the bond-buying program was taken over the objections of ECB officials. Three members of the ECB’s governing council leaked the contents of a letter sent to Draghi by the central bank’s monetary policy committee days before the decision which advised against the resumption of asset purchases.

Reporting on the leak last week, the Financial Times said it came as opponents of Draghi’s loose monetary policy “fight a rearguard action to put pressure on [former International Monetary Fund managing director] Christine Lagarde for her to change course after she takes over at the ECB on November 1.”

It is not the first time the committee’s advice has not been followed, but it is a relatively rare occurrence. The ECB did not officially comment on the leak but the ECB vice-president Luis de Guindos called for internal critics on the governing council not to make public their dissent.

“There are 25 of us and, for sure, there are sometimes different views, but when a decision is taken by a clear majority, it is important to defend it,” he said. “It would be much better if we tried to reduce the level of surrounding noise.”

However, in view of the widening differences, the “noise” level seems certain to rise, not decrease. This is because there is a deepening rift over the direction of monetary policy in view of its failure to provide a real boost to the eurozone economy.

Pointing last week to the intensification of the conflict, Carsten Brzeski, chief economist for Germany at ING, said: “The ECB seems to be in the middle of a War of the Roses. Christine Lagarde’s first task as new ECB president will be to fix the rift.”

The widening divisions make that a tall order. The extent of the gap was highlighted by a statement issued in the name of six former central bankers earlier this month.

It said the loose monetary policy of the ECB was based on “the wrong diagnosis” and risked eroding the ECB’s independence.

“As former central bankers and as European citizens, we are witnessing the ECB’s ongoing crisis mode with growing concern,” the statement signed by former German, Austrian, Dutch and French central bankers said.

“The ECB essentially justified in 2014 its ultra-loose policy by the threat of deflation. However, there has never been any danger of a deflationary spiral and the ECB itself has seen less and less of a threat for some time. This weakens its logic in aiming for a higher inflation rate. The ECB’s monetary policy is therefore based on a wrong diagnosis.”

Nationalists win parliamentary elections in Kosovo

Markus Salzmann

Following snap parliamentary elections on October 6 in Kosovo, and a week of coalition talks, there will in all likelihood be a change of government.

The nationalist Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) won the most votes (25.9 percent). It was followed by the Democratic League (LDK) with 25.2 percent. The loser of the election, the Democratic Party (PDK), which has been in power since 2007 and achieved only 21.3 percent in last week’s poll, has conceded defeat.

The election had little to do with democracy. Twenty years after the Western powers bombed the former Yugoslavia, plunging it into a bloody civil war and establishing a protectorate in Kosovo where bitter poverty and crime are commonplace, corrupt, nationalist and reactionary cliques are fiercely fighting for power. The turnout of just 44 percent shows that the majority of the population rejects the policies of the narrow layer that runs the country.

The governing coalition of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj’s Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AKK) with the PDK and the smaller party Nisma, also lost votes, achieving around 11 percent. The outgoing government was dubbed the “war coalition,” as all three parties emerged from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which fought an armed struggle against Serbia.

The election became necessary following Haradinaj’s resignation in July. The former KLA commander, accused of committing war crimes in the 1990s, and current interim head of state Hashim Thaci, also a former KLA commander and war crimes suspect, symbolize the elite that has ruled since independence in 2008.

The probable head of government will be the leading candidate of Vetevendosje, Albin Kurti. The former student leader had organized nationalist student protests in the late 1990s, specifically to stir up ethnic tensions with the Serbian population. Until recently, he had argued for the establishment of a “Greater Albania,” which included Albania and Kosovo, as well as the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia and a significant part of Northern Macedonia and the Greek region of Epirus. In the election campaign, he moderated his tone so as not to repel influential financiers and possible coalition partners. For example, saying, it was not possible to carry through such a unification “at the moment.”

Kurtis’ most likely coalition partner is the LDK. The party is headed by lawyer Vjosa Osmani, who set herself the goal of fighting corruption in the country. Osmani, who holds a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, has strong links with the IMF and the World Bank. She regards the rampant corruption in Kosovo as an obstacle to the boundless exploitation of the poverty-stricken land by Western companies and banks. The LDK is associated with Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and is favoured by most European powers as a party of government.

But the prospects of forming a stable government look bad. Twenty of the 120 seats in parliament are reserved for different ethnic minorities, and the faction of the oppressed Serbian minority has 10 seats. In the north of the country, in the predominantly Serb-inhabited areas, the list supported by Belgrade won almost 100 percent of the vote.

Around 120,000 Serbs live in Kosovo. Their stronghold lies in the city Mitrovica, divided between ethnic Serbs and Albanians. In the rest of the country, they live in about a dozen enclaves. Like Russia, China and some EU countries, Serbia did not recognize the independence of the former Serbian province of Kosovo in 2008.

A minority administration of the former governing parties might also be possible, which would then depend on receiving support from the minority representatives in parliament. The latter had supported Haradinaj partly because they were afraid of losing all rights under a Kurti government. Kurti not only announced that he would limit the rights of minorities, he has long demanded a ban on imports of goods from Serbia.

This would represent another escalation going beyond the introduction of the 100 percent duty on Serbian goods. This tariff, which excludes products of American, European and Asian manufacturers, was enacted by the old government. As a result, the prices for basic foods exploded.

Especially in the Serbian part of Mitrovica, where there are close economic links with Serbia, this has led to dramatic supply shortages. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić accused the government in Pristina of wanting to force the Serbs in Mitrovica to emigrate and continue the ethnic cleansing—which cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Syrian army, Iran threaten counterattack against Turkish invasion of Syria

Alex Lantier

The war unleashed by Turkey’s invasion of Syria, targeting formerly US-backed Kurdish forces, escalated out of control this weekend as the Syrian army and Iran moved to counterattack. With Turkish troops and allied Al Qaeda militias advancing deep into Kurdish-held territory in Syria, the Middle East is only days away from an all-out war between the major regional powers that could trigger a global conflict between nuclear-armed world powers.

UN reports show that 130,000 Syrians have fled their homes in the region amid the Turkish offensive, and Turkish officials claim they had “neutralized” at least 415 Kurdish fighters. Turkish troops seized the cities of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, amid heavy fighting including ongoing Turkish air raids, and seized a road crossing that cut off US and Kurdish troops in Kobani. Turkish troops also fired artillery at US troops near Kobani in what former US envoy Brett McGurk said was “not a mistake,” although Turkish officials later denied this.

Smoke billows from fires on targets in Ras al-Ayn, Syria, caused by bombardment by Turkish forces [Credit:"AP Photo/Emrah Gurel]

Turkey’s Syrian “rebel” allies, the Islamist Syrian National Army (SNA, formerly the Free Syrian Army), are executing Kurdish civilians in areas they hold, according to multiple reports. Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf was executed; her bullet-riddled car appeared in a video surrounded by SNA fighters. Beyond Al Qaeda-linked calls to destroy infidels, the British Daily Telegraph noted, the SNA’s main outlook “is sectarian: they are anti-Kurdish and they are Arab chauvinists.”

Yesterday evening, the Syrian army announced it would march on the area. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported: “Syrian Arab Army units began moving north to confront Turkish aggression on Syrian territory... The movement comes to confront the ongoing Turkish aggression on towns and areas in the north of Hasaka and Raqqa provinces, where the Turkish forces committed massacres against locals, occupied some areas and destroyed infrastructure.”

The Syrian army has reportedly reached an agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia, whose alliance with the United States was broken by Washington a week ago. Under this agreement, Syrian army troops would reach the city of Kobani near the Syrian-Turkish border in 48 hours. On Saturday, President Donald Trump had authorized the remaining 1,000 US troops in Kobani to withdraw, and US forces were in full retreat across northern Syria this weekend to avoid being cut off by advancing Turkish troops.

Iran, which has deployed tens of thousands of troops as well as drones to Syria in recent years to back the Syrian regime against a NATO-led proxy war, indicated it would support the Syrian army.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Advisor for International Affairs Ali Akbar Velayati met with Syrian Ambassador to Iran Adnan Mahmoud yesterday in Tehran. He gave Iran’s “full support to Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, calling for the withdrawal of the Turkish forces,” SANA reported. Velayati added, “The principled policy of Iran is based on supporting the people and government of Syria and defending their righteous stances in a way that entails continuing joint cooperation until terrorism and terrorist organizations are completely eliminated.”

At the same time, military tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are surging amid mutual attacks on tankers carrying Persian Gulf oil supplies that are critical to the world economy. Last month, the US and Saudi governments blamed a September 14 missile attack on Saudi oil facilities that caused a sharp rise in world oil prices on Iran, without providing any evidence. Then on October 11, two missiles hit the Iranian tanker Sabiti off Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast.

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, said yesterday that Iran would retaliate against unnamed targets for the attack on the Sabiti. “A special committee has been set up to investigate the attack on Sabiti... Its report will soon be submitted to the authorities for decision,” Shamkhani told Fars News. “Piracy and mischief on international waterways aimed at making commercial shipping insecure will not go unanswered.”

Saudi officials declined to comment on the Sabiti attack, and officials with the US Fifth Fleet in the Gulf sheikdom of Bahrain claimed to have no information on it. But there is widespread speculation in the international media that the attack was carried out by Saudi Arabia or with its support.

The conflicts erupting between the different capitalist regimes in the Middle East pose an imminent threat not only to the population of the region, but to the entire world. Workers can give no support to any of the competing military plans and strategic appetites of these reactionary regimes. With America, Europe, Russia and China all deeply involved in the proxy war in Syria, a large-scale Middle East war could strangle the world oil supply and escalate into war between nuclear-armed powers. The working class is coming face to face with the real possibility of a Third World War.

The Kurdish-led SDF militias in Syria, vastly outgunned by Turkish forces and vulnerable to air strikes, warned US officials in talks leaked by CNN that they would appeal for Russia to attack Turkey and protect SDF and Syrian army forces. As Turkey is legally a NATO ally of Washington and the European powers, such an attack could compel the United States and its European allies to either break the 70-year-old NATO alliance or go to war with Russia to protect Turkey.

Japan's 2019 Defence White Paper and the Contest for Southeast Asia

Sandip Kumar Mishra

In Japan’s annual Defence White Paper released on 26 September, China’s growing military might has been given priority over North Korea’s belligerence as the country's main security threat. This is the first time Japan has so explicitly identified China as a security threat greater than North Korea. This article looks at how this document clarifies Japan's determination to not only contest China in the Western Pacific and the East China Sea (ECS), but also increase its footprint in Southeast Asia.

Japan's threat assessment derives from a range of factors. One is China's deployment of "air and sea assets in the Western Pacific and through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan with greater frequency." China has also been noted to be revisionist in the South China Sea (SCS). Further, the document shows Japan's acknowledgement of the deep strides it still has left to make with regard to defence and foreign policy in the region as compared to China.

Despite raising defence expenditure by 10 per cent in the past seven years, and buying more US-made stealth fighters and other advanced weapons, Japan is still nowhere close to China's US$ 177 billion defence budget. China spends almost three times more than Japan on its security. Further, China has also offered huge economic allurements to countries in the region through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As per an Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimate, Southeast Asia would need around investments of around US$ 210 billion per annum in infrastructure to sustain the region's present growth trajectory from 2016 to 2030, which makes BRI incentives difficult to turn down.

Unlike Japan's growing strategic proximity with India and Australia and alliance with the US, its overtures towards Southeast Asia are not accorded as much coverage. However, there are nuances in this big picture narrative that play to Japan's interests, and the latest defence document shows that it has been working quietly but consistently to engage in Southeast Asia.

Japan's approach to Southeast Asia is two-pronged. First, it has undertaken greater engagement by sending, on a frequent basis, Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces (JMSDF) and its ships throughout the region. It also conducts bilateral and multilateral exercises with its partner countries. It has donated multiple patrol boats, maritime surveillance aircraft, and helicopter spare parts to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

Japan's premise is that if it is able to help buttress their maritime capacity, these countries could play a vital role in the Indo-Pacific strategy, which is intended to address an ‘assertive’ China as well as ensure a ‘free and open’ SCS. After all, 80 percent of Japan's oil supply and 70 percent of its trade pass through these waters. Perhaps in an attempt to camouflage much of this security assistance, Japan’s International Cooperation Agency (JAICA) and the Japanese Coast Guard use Overseas Development Assistance programmes to provide support, with very few directly routed through the Ministry of Defence.

Second, Japan is interested in further enhancing economic and developmental assistance to the region. It is interesting to note that despite a lot noise about BRI, Japan is still ahead of China in terms of its economic assistance Southeast Asian countries. At present, Japanese involvement in various regional projects is worth US$ 367 billion. This is more than Chinese involvement in these projects, which adds up to US$ 255 billion. Japanese assistance is dispersed quite widely across the region, with engagement in Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand, with the first three receiving a lion's share of the assistance. China is engaged in building the East Coast Rail project in Malaysia, and investing in the Philippines' 'Build, Build, Build' infrastructure initiative.

These countries appear to be more at ease with receiving Japanese economic assistance than Chinese because of reports about its 'debt trap' diplomacy through BRI, which has been witnessed recently Sri Lanka, Djibouti, and the Maldives. In fact, Japan’s consistent economic support has provided the strategic space to many of these countries to renegotiate terms with China. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, for example, initially cancelled the East Coast Rail Link project with China in August 2018, and revived it only after renegotiation that has resulted in a substantial reduction of costs that Malaysia would have to bear.

Given China's military might, deep pockets, geographical proximity, and historical-cultural linkages to Southeast Asia, it is going to be a gargantuan task for Japan to pose itself an alternative on an equal footing. At the same time, it is possible for Japan to limit strategic space for China in the region and reduce its options–particularly if this is undertaken in conjunction with the US, India, and Australia.