What The US Really Fears

Where money and trade lead, politics follows. The main EU leaders this week seem to have shown that they are not as gullible as US politicians hoped. The drive to impose more and more sanctions on Russia, will only hurt Europe. That is what the US hopes for, just as its policy of fermenting chaos in the Middle East and North Africa has been geared to meet its interests as against those of the EU, and its other main strategic competitors, Russia and China.

Nobody knows what happened with the Malaysian airliner that crashed in Ukraine. It is the same kind of Boeing 777 that Malaysian Airlines lost several months ago in the Indian Ocean, and no one is suggesting that Ukrainian separatists, or Vladimir Putin had anything to do with its loss. The same kind of speculation and conspiracy theory about MH17, could easily be extended to suggest that the two crashes were in fact, linked in some way. For example, could it be a fault in the aircraft, that is being covered up? Very unlikely, I'd suggest, but, without any actual facts, to base an analysis on – let alone impartial facts, as all the “evidence” so far has come from either the Ukrainian Government, or hypotheses from western politicians - it is just as valid a possibility.

Yet, despite the lack of any facts or evidence, western politicians have continued to speak and act, as though Vladimir Putin himself shot down the plane! I have absolutely no time for Putin, or his gangster regime, which is the heir to the gangster regime established by Yeltsin, with the help of imperialism, but opposition to Putin is no reason to play the part of “useful idiot” to US imperialism either. On CNBC on Tuesday, one financial analyst, Roger Nightingale, made what I thought was a sensible point against the line being given by former Labour Minister Mark Malloch Brown. Nightingale said, why were sanctions being proposed against Russia rather than against Ukraine?

In the past, he pointed out, the west has supported calls for self-determination by minority groups, and yet here the call for such independence by people in Eastern Ukraine had been met, by large scale violence by the Ukrainian state. Hundreds of East Ukrainians have died in the violence unleashed on them by the regime in Kiev, and many more have been injured, as well as being left homeless. Even if the separatists did shoot down the jet liner – and given the fact that responsibility for the shootings in the Maidan were probably organised by some of the leaders of that protest, in a false flag operation, that has been used several times, in the past, by the CIA – no one is suggesting that it was done by them deliberately. If they did shoot it down, they did so, because they mistook it for one of the regime's own war planes that has been bombing their homes, for the past months, without one word of condemnation from the west about such flagrant war crimes, against a civilian population.

In fact, the Youtube video that was supposed to show the BUK missiles being driven back towards Russia, has been shown to have been filmed in a part of eastern Ukraine that is under the control of the regime, not the separatists!

The loss of life of the people on the Malaysian airline is terrible, but the use of that loss of life for political purposes by western, and in particular US politicians, is truly sickening. It is completely hypocritical when compared with their own justification of “collateral damage” when it happens as a result of their supposedly smart weapons. The number of civilians killed on this airliner is relatively small compared to the number of civilians killed by US drone strikes, let alone from their air strikes. It is thoroughly hypocritical compared to their lack of comment about the deaths of Ukrainian civilians at the hands of the Kiev regime, or the more than 500 civilians killed in the last week in Gaza, by the US proxy in Israel.

The US attitude to the EU was set out plainly some time ago, when their ambassador to Ukraine said “Fuck the EU”. What the US fears is that the large amount of trade between the EU, particularly its main economies, and even more particularly Germany, will necessarily lead to a growing political closeness and allegiance with Russia, and a drawing away from the US. That is undoubtedly why the US has been engaged in large scale spying and phone tapping of European political leaders, like Angela Merkel. Wherever, money and trade flows, political allegiances are sure to follow. The establishment of every nation state, and of the EU itself, is evidence of that fact.

Russia is the third biggest trading partner of the EU, and the EU is Russia's largest trading partner. Within that the role of Germany is again pre-eminent, whereas the UK has a much smaller trading relation with Russia. Similarly, US trade with Russia is small. So its no wonder that the US and UK are some of the more vociferous in calling for increased sanctions. Throughout, the 19^th century, as repeated attempts were made to unify Europe, Britain intervened, realising that a large European state, on similar lines to the US, would quickly reduce the importance of the UK as a global power. Britain's role in WWI, and WWII, should be seen as merely a continuation of that role, and Britain's eurosceptic position ever since should be seen as simply a continuation of that mindset amongst some sections of the ruling elite, especially those that continue to look towards the US rather than the EU.

The US was happy with the development of the EU so long as it acted as a buffer against the USSR, and provided the US with a huge aircraft carrier on which to base its nuclear weapons, during the Cold War, but now, the economic logic is for the EU to expand eastwards, and southwards. Russia is forming a closer and closer relation with the world's largest economy in China, and aiming towards the development of a Eurasian economic zone. It would be crazy for the EU to cut itself off from that development, in favour of a continuing relation with a relatively declining US economy.

The obvious development, as Trotsky and the Comintern argued, back in the 1920's, is for the development of a United States of Europe that would include Russia. Lenin believed that the economic rationale for that was undeniable too, but thought it was politically unachievable when the idea was first raised. Even if such a development is not possible, it would make the same kind of economic sense for the EU to foster a close relation with any developing Eurasian economic zone including Russia, China and the Central Asian republics. But, in just the same way that a unified Europe threatened Britain in the 19^th and early 20^th century, so such a development would threaten the global hegemony of the US today. That is what it really fears. That is why it is trying to drive a wedge between the EU and Russia.

Similarly, over the last 20 years, the EU has been developing increasing economic ties with its southern periphery in the Middle East and North Africa. It had established a number of trade agreements with these countries, drawing them closer towards becoming at some point associate states similar to the way states in central and eastern Europe had been drawn in. In fact, it was the economic development that resulted from these arrangements that created the material basis for the “Arab Spring”, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia. But, with China increasingly becoming the dominant economic power in the rapidly developing sub-Saharan economies, such developments increasingly threatened another area of the globe over which US hegemony would not run.

The role of the US's agents in the Gulf States, in providing jihadists with the resources to create chaos in those states, has brought any such development to a halt. Chaos may not directly benefit the US, but to the extent that it removes any state from a position where it, or some related state may exert control, it indirectly benefits the US. For the last century, the US has been happy to settle for creating chaos in regimes it could not control. It has usually been able to find “useful idiots” to enable it to achieve that function.

Often the UK, as a very junior partner to US imperialism has fulfilled that role. But, there are always aggrieved parties that will be prepared to sell their services to the US, in order to gain what they hope might be future favours. In the 19^th century, Marx and Engels describe how small central and eastern European states sold their services to Russian Tsarism in that way, in the hope of obtaining its favour. Ultimately, it was those kinds of relations that led to the Balkan Wars, and then to WWI.

Today, some of those same countries and nationalities, having suffered under the heel of Tsarism and then Stalinism, are happy to sell their services to the US, and its agents such as the UK, in the hope of obtaining favours, if only the hope of setting up a large military barrier on the border with Russia. In many ways, these are very similar conditions to those that led to the Balkan Wars, and World War I.

The US, for its own global strategic reasons is trying to drive a wedge between the EU and Russia. It has already created the conditions in the Middle East and North Africa, where chaos and instability reigns, and where the EU now has to devote increasing resources to tightening its borders, and warding off the threat off jihadism. The US encouraged similar movements in the 1990's in central Asia, first with its arming and provisioning of Bin Laden and the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, and then with its relations with assorted central Asian dictators.  It has created chaos in Libya and Syria, and Iraq.

Marxists have no reason to support any of the bourgeois forces involved in these global strategic chess games. But, we do have every reason to oppose such manoeuvres aimed at creating divisions between workers, especially when such manoeuvres have the potential of leading the world increasingly towards war, and the destruction of mankind.