Its only just a week or so ago that the global NATO propaganda war machine was predicting inevitable, and imminent Russian defeat in Ukraine, and the potential for a palace coup in Moscow itself. The first casualty of war, is indeed the truth. A week in politics is a long time, Harold Wilson said, and war is the continuation of politics by other means. You don't have to accept the lies of the vile and reactionary Putin regime, to see that NATO and its apologists have their pants on fire at least as much.
A week ago, NATO and its warmongering apologists were talking about Russian defeats, Russia being pushed back, and so on. Paul Mason, wrote about such defeats for Russia, providing maps to indicate the scale of the rout of Russian forces.
Indeed, he went on to talk not only about Russian defeat in Ukraine, but the possibility of a global strategic defeat of Russia at the hands of Biden, and NATO imperialism, in another post. Its interesting that, here, he acknowledges NATO imperialism's global strategic aim, and yet, elsewhere denies that this is an inter imperialist war!
“This was the week America took charge of the Russia-Ukraine war. It stated two war aims:
- the weakening of Russia to the point where it can no longer threaten its European neighbours;
- and the defence of an armed, sovereign and democratic Ukraine (though indeterminate as to the territory it would exist on).
And then it began to mobilise the means. It convened the Ukraine Defense Consultative Group of 40 countries, to co-ordinate the continous supply of heavy weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. And Biden asked Congress for a $33bn war chest: $20bn for arms, $8.5bn for economic assistance and $3bn for humanitarian aid. They even revived the Lend-Lease Act to authorise donation of arms to Ukraine.”
That was on April 29th, and in the last few weeks the claims about imminent Russian defeat, coming out of NATO, got even grander, to accompany the above increased supply of weapons, and pressure applied on Russia, in NATO's economic war. But, in the last week, it has fallen to pieces for NATO, both on the battlefield in Ukraine, and in its economic war against Russia and China. It looks as though Russia has pretty much consolidated its grip over the Donbass, as well as over the Southern coastal area of Ukraine, linking up Crimea, and providing both a land bridge, and sea routes from Russia.
Western media that has acted openly as propaganda arms of NATO, were left having to quickly reverse, and to forget all about their claims of only days earlier, about imminent Russian defeat, and to admit that Russia had secured the areas. They were left with the narrative about Russia still not being able to take control of Kyiv, and so on, which was never the Russian goal to begin with.
Now, stories begin to come out, about the incompetence of the Ukrainian military, and of the British government, which had encouraged mercenaries to go fight in Ukraine. Channel 4 News has carried stories from such mercenaries who recounted that they had had to spend thousands of pounds to provide themselves with food and equipment, of a lack of any kind of efficient logistic support by either Britain or Ukraine, and the generally amateurish way in which the Ukrainian government and military were operating.
It appears that hundreds of mercenaries have gone from Britain, and that dozens of them have been killed, although the media is reporting only a handful of them. Despite the billions of Dollars of military equipment that NATO has poured into Ukraine, as it uses the population there as its own human battering ram against Russia, the reports said that the soldiers were using supermarket radios that the Russians could simply listen into, and so both locate their targets, and anticipate actions.
On the one hand, this is reminiscent of the reports of George Orwell from the Spanish Civil War, of the way the best weapons and soldiers were not thrown into the battle against the fascists, but were held back to ensure the interests of the Stalinists, against their own enemies. On the other hand, it also smacks of western media outlets looking for scapegoats to explain how it is that reality turns out to be diametrically opposed to the story they have been peddling for several weeks, as Russia consolidates its position.
Its also reminiscent of the way that US imperialism encouraged the Marsh Arabs to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and then subsequently left them to their fate at his hands. Using proxies to provoke a response as a justification for US intervention is a well worn tactic by US imperialism, used in Iraq, in Kosovo, Libya, Syria, South Ossetia and elsewhere. In nearly every case those it used as such pawns got left to their fate afterwards. And, that has its historical roots in the attitude of NATO's predecessor, and its betrayal of the Lienz Cossacks after WWII. Another, more recent example, is the way that US imperialism and NATO provided Saddam Hussein with WMD to fight a proxy war on its behalf against Iran, and then when he failed to secure their objectives, they turned on him too. Zelensky can expect a similar fate having failed in achieving US imperialism's objectives set for him, despite having been given billions of Dollars of the latest equipment, and having fought a war that has now imposed crippling economic penalties on the West that are likely to see Biden's Democrats dumped, as the first political casualty.
The reason the media needs such scapegoats for having to abandon NATO's claims of imminent victory is obvious. After all, if NATO truly had “began to mobilise the means”, and its hard to know how else you could interpret the billions of Dollars of the latest equipment it has thrown into its proxy war against Russia, and yet, Russia had defeated it, within just a few weeks of war, that would turn out to be a rather large, historic and demoralising defeat for NATO imperialism, which for the last 75 years has thought it could send its military anywhere in the world, and, in the last 30 years, thought it could do that more or less with impunity.
The extent of the setback for NATO is now seen in Biden's agreement to send advanced, long range rocket systems to Ukraine. Ukraine has agreed not to use them to hit targets in Russia, but they are unlikely to keep to that, meaning that the dynamic of war, and drift towards an expansion and escalation of the conflict towards a wider continental, and, thereby, world war is increased. For one thing, the agreement not to hit targets in Russia, leaves it open for them to hit targets in Donbass and Crimea, now that Russia has secured control over them, and where the majority of its advanced forces are located.
A problem for NATO has been that, in providing all of this very expensive, but also highly visible equipment, it simply enables the Russians to blow it up before it even gets deployed. The Russians did not need to take Kyiv or other major cities, let alone take over the majority of Ukraine, and that was never their intention. It would have been senseless and stupid to do so. But, when NATO weapons enter Western Ukraine, Russia can simply take them out by using its long range bombers or missiles, which is what it has been doing.
Russia adopted the NATO play book used in the Balkans, in Libya, Syria and elsewhere, of using air power to take out strategic command and control, and weapons and fuel dumps, leaving ground assaults only to those areas it actually needed to control, or where air power had not completely done the job. The Russian withdrawals from Kyiv and so on, were not the kind of military defeats that NATO/Ukraine and the western media were proclaiming – though undoubtedly Russia did suffer defeats, and its military have not covered themselves in glory – but simply reflected the fact that their strategic and tactical goals of taking out command and control, and denuding military capacity of Ukraine to strike back had been achieved.
From the start, NATO claimed that Russia aimed to occupy Ukraine, to remove Zelensky and so on, but that was never likely to be Russia's aim. NATO said the same thing in 2008, when Georgia launched genocidal attacks on South Ossetia, which provoked a Russian response to kick them out. At that time, it was quite clear that Russia could have marched its troops into Tbilisi, and removed the government, indeed, its military moved swiftly and without much effort near to it, as it again, took out command and control and so on. But, almost as quickly as it did so, it pulled its military back into South Ossetia, its objectives achieved.
The last thing Russia, and Putin wants, at the moment, is to be having to effectively colonise such countries, and to waste huge amounts of money and military effort policing and subduing a hostile population. Putin has enough to do, in that regard, in Russia itself, and he knows the history of Afghanistan, let alone the history of previous colonial empires, and the US experience in Vietnam. Russia, like China, can extend its influence, much more easily and effectively by drawing around it sympathetic partners and allies, who have their own grievances, concerns, or who benefit from access to economic resources than all of the costs of old colonial empires. Indeed, its why industrial capitalism abandoned and destroyed the old colonial empires, and moved forward to the methods of imperialism to extract surplus value, and establish strategic goals.
There was no reason for Russia to seek to occupy the whole of Ukraine, given the impossibility of being able to control such a large territory and population. There was no overwhelming economic or strategic reason to do so either. Ukraine is bankrupt, and Russia would simply have been lumbering itself not only with a large hostile population, but a bankrupt economy too. Its far better for Russia that the EU be left bankrolling the Ukraine economy. The US also no doubt thought that, as it weakens the economy of its main global competitor - the EU. And, its clear that Russia, indeed, never did intend occupying the whole of Ukraine. Military strategists are all agreed that a successful military offensive requires a 4:1 numerical advantage for the attacking forces. Yet, Russia actually put fewer forces into the field than the number of Ukrainian forces!
But, things have not gone well for NATO imperialism in its economic war against Russia and China either. For one thing, in addition to the huge rise in inflation that has resulted from years of QE, and in particular the liquidity put into economies to fund income replacement schemes during the last two years of lockdowns, the economic blockade on Russian primary products such as oil, gas, grain, and industrial metals, has led to huge rises in primary product prices across the globe. As China is forced to open up again, and now with millions of Shanghai's citizens unleashed into its economy, spending money in stores, restaurants, and filling up their cars, a further boost to aggregate demand in China, and the rest of Asia, is set to cause demand for all those products to rise sharply once again.
The US itself has suffered from that, as it faces rising petrol prices into the Summer driving season, giving another boost to its own high levels of inflation that look like resulting in Biden's Democrats taking a severe kicking in the mid-term elections in the Autumn. But, the US mostly does have access to those primary products even at much higher prices. Other parts of the globe, however, in Africa, for example, do not. India has put blocks on its own export of various products such as grain and sugar, to preserve its supplies for its own population. As another humiliation for the hapless and hopeless Biden, he now looks set to capitulate to the butchers of the vile and barbaric feudal regime in Saudi Arabia, as he seeks to get them to increase oil supplies, to try to prevent the relentless rise in oil prices resulting from his attempts to blockade Russian oil, and from the actions of the US Federal Reserve in once again undermining the global monetary system.
NATO, of course, has tried to blame the soaring price of wheat and other grains on the restriction of exports of Ukrainian wheat, by Russia, but, as I have set out before, Ukraine is only the fifth largest wheat exporter. Russia is the biggest exporter, exporting more than double what Ukraine exports. Its those exports that have been blocked by NATO via numerous means, such as excluding Russia from global payments schemes, such as SWIFT, and so on that is the main reason for these higher prices.
And, whilst the US has plenty of oil and gas, it has called on the EU to end oil and gas supplies from Russia, which, in relation to gas, would totally cripple the EU economy. That of course, is not something that the US would be averse to, either, given that, despite the rapid rise of China, it remains the EU that is the world's largest economy, and main competitive threat to the US. In fact, EU dependence on Russian oil has been declining anyway, but that is not the case with gas, and any potential alternative is ten years away.
And, whilst NATO's economic war has, as such wars always do, impacted on ordinary Russian workers, much as was the case with sanctions on Iraq, and elsewhere, again, as is usually the case, they do not impact the ruling class against whom the sanctions are claimed to be aimed. The victims of NATO's economic war, as much as with its military war are workers across the globe, as prices rise, and shortages increase.
NATO's propaganda machine has responded by saying that Russia is selling oil at a significant discount, but that is a discount to what had already become a much inflated price due to NATO's blockade of Russia. And, Biden has had to adopt a wholly contradictory stance that is bound to fail. On the one hand, the US sees its proxy war against Russia via Ukraine as merely a warm up to its main target of China. The US wants to weaken, if not prevent, the development of a Eurasian economic bloc with China at its centre, and Russia, as the supplier of materials, and access to Central Asia and Europe.
Paul Mason is right about the US vision in that respect, which rather begs the question of why he can't see this conflict for what it is as a global inter-imperialist war, and instead continues to whimper on about bourgeois democratic rights, and other superficialities. In order to try to achieve its immediate aim of defeating Russia, Biden has been led to soften his response to China, to promise lifting the Trump era trade restrictions and so on. Some of that, also reflects US economic interests of needing to get cheaper Chinese manufactured goods into the US to help prevent US inflation soaring further, as well as the need of US farmers and other producers to regain access to Chinese markets for their commodities that had been cut off in retaliation for US trade restrictions. But, a main aim is to try to prevent China from giving economic and military assistance to Russia.
The problem for this strategy is that it relies on China not having access to global news reports, or even its own intelligence reports on US aims and objectives! The fact that the US did not reverse Trump's decision to pull out of TPP, by joining RCEP, and has instead set up a rival Pacific bloc IPEF, followed by hapless Biden's comments about going to war in defence of Taiwan, followed by Blinken's comments about China being a bigger threat to global democracy than Russia, and so on, tells China's leaders exactly where US policy is headed. It gives them every reason to back Russia, even if it does so by taking advantage for itself in terms of supplies of cheap oil, gas and other primary products. Its notable that RCEP is a free trade bloc, whereas the US dominated IPEF is not, but is really just a means of the US extending its politico-strategic interests in the area.
The reality has been, for a long time, that a Pacific economic bloc existed with China and Japan forming twin hubs at the centre of it, much as a European economic bloc existed with France and Germany as twin hubs at the centre of it, long before the establishment of the EEC or EU. That development was simply the superstructure being brought into alignment with the underlying material reality. It was manifest in the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, and in WWI and II. The same process is underway in the Pacific, and the inevitable consequence appears to be domination of such a bloc by China. US strategy is to try to block or at least disrupt and delay such a development, by establishing IPEF, and seeking to make Japan a central aspect of it.
With US strategic aims and even its short-term tactics, so transparent, it can only act to drive China into a closer relation with Russia, and others in the region who face Western sanctions any time they fail to abide by US diktats. The power of US imperialism to use the reserve currency status to achieve its politico-strategic goals, and of international money transmission and payments systems, is reminiscent of both the period of the end of British imperial privilege, and of the period ahead of the collapse of Bretton Woods, in 1971, when the US abuse of its privileges led to the ending of Dollar convertibility, and led to a decade of global currency chaos. With the technological developments that have occurred since, massively reducing the cost of establishing new international monetary systems, the potential for China-Russia and others to cut themselves free from US monopolisation of those spheres is much greater, and US actions provide the incentive to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment