Where will the US attack next?

By Pierre Marshall and Robin Coleman

This post is an attempt at predicting the next moves of the world’s foremost imperialist power. As a disclaimer it shouldn’t be taken too seriously, instead it should be taken as our reflection on the balance of world power at the moment.

With the recent media storm surrounding the events in the DPRK it would seem as though it is inevitable that the US will be drawn into a conflict there sooner or later, however, North Korea doesn’t really fit the bill in terms of the kind of country that the US would choose to attack, given modern historical precedent. If we look at the pattern of conflicts where the US have been involved in the last 20 years we see resource motivated involvements in countries that are in what US foreign policy brainchild Zbigniew Brzezinski calls “the Eurasian Balkans” (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia) as well as the air strikes on oil rich Libya. Whilst there were immediate political reasons for all of these military excursions, a closer study of American geostrategy reveals that these are secondary excuses to the main goal. Take the 1992 Defence Planning Guidance for instance – which formed the still dominant Wolfowitz foreign policy doctrine. In this now declassified document, it is admitted that

In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil.

It would be reasonable to apply that the same rule still applies. Likewise, the neo-conservative think-tank – Project for A New American Century, stated in the late 1990s that

While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Why should North Korea break the pattern? It does not – as far as we know – have a resource base significant enough to warrant military intervention on that reason alone. A war in the DPRK is not lucrative as a stand-alone endeavour, and should be therefore ruled out as the country that the USA would most likely choose to attack next. A more likely candidate is Iran, which was also mentioned in the same PNAC document that called for regime change in Iraq. The imperialist scholar and current Obama adviser Brzezinski, who we have already encountered, has identified the Eurasian Balkans as the bridgehead for 21st century conflict, an area he calls “the region of percolating violence”. Brezezinski has identified burgeoning demand for energy as the primary reason for the geostrategic importance of this area tomorrow. This is admitted fact, not wild speculation. A US-friendly Iran would also significantly encroach on the Sino-Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia.

The second candidate would probably be Syria. It’s placed in a strategic location where taking it would deny Russia its outlet to the Mediterranean, provide security for Israel in halting support for Palestine, and further isolate Iran in the region. A full intervention would likely be supported by the Arab monarchies (Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates) and of course Israel. The Syrian Arab Army is weakened by a holy war with the new mujahideen, a civil war with the ‘Free’ Syrian Army, and an emergent Kurdish separatist movement in the north. The country is vulnerable and I’m confident that a massive deployment of US troops and tanks would result in a swift military victory. However, at the moment the Syrian Arab Army is slowly winning the war, and the nationalism of the Syrian government still has some traction amongst the population. An invasion would certainly provoke the national sentiments of Syrian patriots to form a simmering resistance. While the US would win the war they would also have to deal with the multitude of ethnic, tribal and religious rivalries which have been exacerbated by conflict. The US is actually quite good at dealing with this kind of post-war low-intensity conflict situation, they’ve had a lot of experience with it in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has the advantage of creating the atmosphere of a full-scale war which justifies huge military spending without incurring unreasonable casualties.

So far we’ve been ticking down the unofficial Axis of Evil: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria, North Korea. Next down are Cuba, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Myannmar, Somalia, Eritrea, Russia, China, and most of Latin America. Now I’m going to deviate from this pattern and propose a new and significantly less likely situation, one in which the US intervenes in a European country.
I’d say that the current trend in Europe is one of decline, one in which the Euro crisis combined with neoliberal measures have created a fantastic economic collapse which is set to continue well into the next few years. The political response has been a polarisation of the political spectrum. In the Czech Republic communists have made impressive electoral gains, and I think such successes will be seen in other countries too. There is an emergent pan-European protest movement which, although leaderless and lacking direction nevertheless shows up strong social tensions. This protest movement would not have existed in the relatively stable years from 2003-2007 so what we are dealing with is a new thing. The downside of this is that the forces of the left have been met with a response from the right; the support for the Left Front in France was matched by an increase in votes for the National Front. In Greece the electoral gains of Syriza and the Communist Party of Greece were matched by a surge in popularity for Golden Dawn (a fascist party). In Hungary, the Netherlands, and even in Britain, populist far-right parties menace the legislatures as a shadowy ‘third force’. Communists are in a similar electoral position in Moldova.

So given this situation, lets think the unthinkable, imagine that one day a socialist government comes to power in one of the Western European states. Now take another mental leap, imagine if the Euro and the European Union collapses or undergoes some fundamental structural changes which exclude some countries and divide the European continent. One of the proclaimed aims of EU/NATO was to maintain a steady peace between the imperialist countries. In this hypothetical scenario I’ve described there would be no legal barrier to stop the remaining imperialist countries from fighting amongst each other, or worse forming together to crush the socialist and non-EU countries. The North Atlantic ocean is controlled by the USA on one side and Europe on the other. In case of a split in Europe the USA would need to intervene to keep control of the largest ocean, and therefore the world.

Another consideration is that while the US may remain the world’s leading imperialist power, it will not necessarily remain the world’s leading power in general. The rise of China as a world power has occurred without the aggressive military adventurism so characteristic of US behaviour. There’s a great potential here for a new cold war, one which is fought through cyber-attacks and covert destabilisation programs. The battlefield of this new war would not be the jungles of Vietnam but the trading floors of the world stock exchanges. It’s an interesting possibility.

Lastly I want to point out that the attention of the international community changes very quickly. This post was first written at the time of manufactured crisis on the Korean peninsula. Now South Korea and the USA are carrying out new military exercises and provocations against the North, the news remains silent. There was a major French/AFISMA offensive on Gao in Mali and the British media almost completely ignored it. The struggle of trade unions and other popular forces in Bahrain has long since been forgotten by the western press and Iran has also temporarily disappeared from our televisions. Tomorrow, next month, next year, there will be a new war and another rogue state to worry about. As for where the USA will attack next? I think your guess is as good as mine.

Everyday violence By Andie Berryman

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A couple of weeks ago I was out at a bedroom tax protest in the middle of town, we built a cardboard housing estate , displayed placards, gave speeches on the loud speaker and tried to engage the passers by with leaflets. We weren’t just protesting about the bedroom tax, we were outlining a campaign to achieve rent caps in the city and spelling out how the cuts were affecting people on low incomes. The public seemed utterly apathetic to the message, like it had nothing to do with them, well the bedroom tax doesn’t affect me directly but it does affect a friend of mine.

My friend is disabled. She has ME/CFS, she is housebound, the mental aspect of her condition means she’s isolated, can’t cope on her own and her meaning and her entire world is bound up in a three bedroomed house that she has lived in for 20 years. For the past two years I have filled in the forms: the ESA, the DLA. I’ve sat through the investigative visits from professionals and watched her face as yet another dreaded brown envelope drops through the letter box. I’ve listened to her despair at the government and the absolute fear of being removed from her world. We had the visit from the council to fill in the form to qualify for an exemption. We managed to get one room exempt (it is for an overnight carer) but the boxroom, the one that contains her medical supplies has to be paid for. She can just scrimp enough to pay for it, there’s no alternative.

On Saturday I clicked a link on Facebook about the death of Stephanie Bottrill. The story of an ordinary woman who took her own life because of the bedroom tax. This woman was no ‘shirker’,  she raised two children and didn’t even get access to benefits that she was entitled to. She was disabled but was not registered as such. Her home, no, her haven became un-affordable to live in because of a think tank’s policy which was implemented by the millionaires in the Houses of Parliament.

I know behind that £20 a week extra she would have had to find to stay in, her home isn’t the full story, the unseen ‘soft’ violence of the struggle to feed herself, the isolation and the absolute exhaustion of having to get through the day all contributed to the horrifically violent conclusion of suicide.

We live in a first world country in 2013, there is no excuse for anyone to go hungry, live on the streets or get down to such a state that your existence is only valued by how much of those paper notes emblazoned with the Queens head you have in your pocket. We don’t live in a big society, we are not all in this together. People who live in poverty live in a state of everyday violence, attacked by the press, the divide and conquer polices of the Con-Dems which trickle down in everyday life i.e.  the workers v/s the shirkers.

I can’t get my head around someone taking their own life for £20, a stupid piece of paper that really doesn’t buy that much but could of bought Stephanie Bottrill that little piece of mind she needed. She was one of us, a normal person trying to get by in this world and now her name is on top of a new list of the dead, death by policy. Words can’t describe how F***ing angry I am about it, it is why I will be back out on the streets with the campaign, we all need to get angry about it How can we claim we live in a civil society and let people slip through the cracks? Walk on by when clearly, protesting against unjust policies is the ‘civil’ thing to do? How can we live in the knowledge that people are killing themselves because of stupid paper notes emblazoned with the Queens head?

Cyprus rejects bailout deal – cash grab defeated for now – but what does it really mean?

By Robin Coleman

Austerity for the poor, or for the rich – it’s our choice…

Yesterday Cypriot MPs stunned Europe by rejecting a bailout deal that would have required savers to pay a windfall tax of up to 10% of their deposits.1 The bailout buggered; Cypriot banks will remain closed until next Tuesday, meaning that savers will be deprived access to all of their savings for the time being, rather than the 6.75-10% sacrifice originally on the table. We all know what will happen on Tuesday if things don’t get sorted out soon. A bank run. If that were to happen it would be proof of the utter incompetence of the self-appointed elites who have repeatedly professed to have the situation under control. It should now be clear that they are very close to losing control, and they are rapidly running out of ideas to stop doing so.

This evening, the German finance minister Wolfgang Schaulbe2 has unfairly claimed that Cyprus is entirely to blame for this crisis. In my previous piece, I pointed out that the crisis that Cyprus finds itself in is obviously just an extension of the global financial crisis that started in 2008 – but you don’t need to be told that again. So moving on, it appears as though at least two Cypriot banks are insolvent (meaning that their assets are not enough to cover their liabilities). Eurosceptics such as UKIP’s Nigel Farage have pounced on the situation, claiming that the developing Cypriot crisis will force the island state to abandon the Euro, which could in turn bring the whole currency down.3 That is hardly likely to happen immediately, but no doubt some members of the political right are gleefully rubbing their hands in anticipation of such an event. They probably can’t wait to tell us all how right they were about the fate of the Euro. However, it doesn’t need to be like this.

Since the Eurozone crisis first emerged in the spring of 2010 we have seen a series of attempts to kick the can down the road, by imposing austerity in exchange for debt relief (a deal called a “bailout”), each time in a more severe fashion than the last, and each time we have been told that the situation is very much under control, and good times are just around the corner. President Anastasiades has suggested today that other plans might be on the table. Perhaps Russia – in one form or another – will come to Cyprus’ aid – after all there is a significant amount of Russian money invested in the Cypriot banking system, so it would be in their interests to do something, just as it is in the interests of the ECB to help Cyprus in the name of saving the Euro. It has been suggested that Gazprom might help if they are given the rights to some of the Cypriot oil and gas reserves – surely not a more attractive deal that that proposed by the EU? The degree of international ‘bailout bluffing’ – political negotiation – that is going on is uncertain – have Cyprus rejected the original deal in the hope that they can get a better one – or because it is genuinely unjust? There is little doubt that Cypriot bankruptcy would be far more disastrous than a wealth tax – albeit a heavy one – however, neither option is necessary.

Cyprus is bankrupt whether you like it or not, but then, so is the rest of the European banking system. The question is how to address the crisis, for it cannot be denied. It is not a matter for debate whether or not any given bank has enough capital (or any at all), in fact, under recent ‘mark to market’ accounting conventions, most European banks are known to have vastly over-valued some asset classes. It is the manner in which the system needs to be rescued that is the issue for debate – not whether or not we can kick the can down the road with another bailout – no matter how fairly it is financed.

Since the resurrection of Keynesian economics by the left since about 20094 it has been popular to juxtapose ‘fiscal stimulus’ against ‘austerity’ without more carefully discerning a long term economic strategy based on progressive political values. We can agree that slashing welfare spending and public services in the name of propping up the banking system is the wrong thing to do, especially to the extent that propping up the banking system is simply a means to protect top investors rather than ordinary depositors, however, the Cypriot crisis is so severe that we might need to reconsider what is practical. It is clear that amongst the political elites there is a consensus that spending cuts are necessary to reduce deficits. Whilst we on the political left can argue that public spending is good for reasons of equity and fairness (supporting people in need and providing essential services) etc it is becoming more difficult to continue to make the case that fiscal stimulus will be self-financing via economic growth. We need to come out strongly in support of higher taxes on the rich in order to avoid cuts. I appreciate that this is controversial, but let us consider what that would mean. To argue that running a deficit is always good because the difference between spending and tax revenues is an injection to spending that would not otherwise happen, at that that extra spending will lead to long term growth that will pay back all of the debts it caused is not a position that is reconcilable with any basic concern for either financial or importantly environmental sustainability in the long run. Instead, we should be prepared to agree that deficit reduction is necessary, so long as it comes entirely via progressive policies. We should be very clear that we support windfall taxes etc on the wealth of the very richest – and funnily enough that means making the so called “investors” take the hit. It is clear that where debts cannot be paid, they must be written down, especially since in large part they have been accumulated via the compounding of interest obligations that have been politically engineered – the so called “bond vigilantes” have driven up rates by creating unnecessary fear about our economies. We are not the ones to fear – they are, and it is they who must pay the price for this crisis. That is called austerity for the rich, and we should proudly support it.

There are countless policy options that are fairer than the ones currently on the table. Firstly, the ECB could simply print the cash needed to bail Cyprus out – ‘quantitatively ease’ their troubles. Given the small size of Cyprus’ economy relative to the rest of the Eurozone this would only have a mild inflationary impact, but we should be concerned that it would create moral hazard – a situation where mistakes are not allowed to be punished because the punishment is worse than the mistake – which could contribute to the continuation of the crisis in a more significant way via a repeat in one of the bigger Periphery states in trouble – mostly likely Spain or Italy. A wealth tax on the richest members of society is a more attractive option. The rich have a low propensity to consume so a windfall cash grab would have no noticeable impact on demand – as if the demand of obscenely rich people mattered anyway. Confiscating some ill-gotten gains from the obscenely rich fat cats would go nicely towards writing down the debts of those who cannot afford to pay. Is this fair? Yes in fact. The modern fractional reserve banking system operates in such a way that the poorer members of society are perpetually trapped in a cycle of debt,5 accruing gradually larger obligations to ‘pay’ richer members of society for the privilege of borrowing the money that they don’t use, in the form of interest. The rich get richer, and the poor have to borrow more. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s time to take a radical step towards correcting it. It’s time to trim some fat off the cats. The rest of us are on financial life support.

References

1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9939296/Cyprus-bailout-live.html

2) Ibid.

3) Ibid.

4) For example see: Keynes: The Return of the Master, Skidelsky, Penguin, 2010.

5) The Grip of Death: A study of modern money debt slavery and destructive economics, Michael Rowbotham, 1998.

The great Cypriot cash grab

By Robin Coleman

You know that the faecal matter has made contact with the rotating domestic device (ahem) when the BBC reports that “One man threatens to break into a Kyperounta Co-operative bank branch with his bulldozer, while others speak of their anger”.1 The bulldozer is a perfect metaphor for what’s going on.  The bankers and politicians have decided to bulldoze their way into people’s private savings to cover their own losses. It is an extreme case of the awful practice of privatising gains and socialising losses that the EU seems to have appointed itself as the supreme administrator of in the wake of the recent apparently perpetual crisis that it now finds itself in. The deal – ordinary people’s cash in exchange for bailout loans – is so stupid it just fucks with your mind. There is a naughty little “progressive” element to the deal scam in the sense that savers with less than 100,000 euros will have to pay 6.75% whereas savers with more will suffer to the tune of a 9.9% windfall.2 Also, savers will be “compensated” with bank shares worthless pieces of paper that will never be redeemable at anything close to what would be enough to fully compensate for the theft.3

The bailout game has been in town for a long time. In the 1980s and 1990s the practice of providing ‘development loans’ under the auspices of the IMF/World Bank in exchange for trade liberalisation was pioneered, enabling rich countries unprecedented ‘access to markets’.4 Now, the bankers provide similar loans to the rich countries themselves, enabling themselves ‘access to savings’ as well as other tasty morsels such as relaxation of labour market controls (minimum wage agreements etc.). The theft of the Cypriot people’s money represents a direct movement of money from the liabilities side of the banking system to the assets side. Since the difference between any banks assets and liabilities has to be made up by share capital it is hardly an excuse to say that these savers are going to be compensated. They couldn’t possibly sell the new shares to raise the money to pay for the tax because the only people with the cash to pay for the shares are themselves. This is how the scam works. If anybody hoped it would sound innocuous, they should pay attention to the bulldozer.

Reuters claims that half of the depositors in Cyprus are non-resident Russians.5 This seems somewhat hard to believe, but in any case, this means neither that (a) the Russians actually account for half of the money saved or that (b) it is somehow less bad because the Russians don’t deserve to bank in Cyprus. The point is that this is about the 99% being screwed by a system designed for and run by the 1%. We should ask ourselves why the Cypriot banking system requires a bailout. The question is tired and the answer is obvious. Contagion. Cyprus invested in Greece and Greece was screwed by the corrupt elites, so tough cookie. But none of this would ever have happened if it weren’t for the worst financial crisis in a century. Deregulation in the 1990s such as the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley enabled American banks to securitise fraudulent mortgage debt into large bundles, which they sold on to unknowing investors worldwide (sometimes repackaged again and again into collateralised debt obligations or structured investment vehicles).6 The resulting financial crisis and recession caused tax revenues to tank, and debt to rise.  The banking system has become addicted to bailouts and it feels entitled to many more. There is not the space here to explain what needs to be done to wean the banks off the bailout drug, but the injustice that is apparent in terms of the disparity between bankers ‘compensation’ and the ‘compensation’ offered to the “ordinary” citizen such as the Cypriot saver is obvious. The great Cypriot cash grab shows who the real scroungers are.

Reference list

(1)    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21814325 – Shock in Cyprus as savers face bailout levy.

(2)    Ibid.

(3)    Ibid.

(4)    Caroline Lucas and Mike Woodin, Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto, Pluto, 2004.

(5)    “Almost half of Cyprus’ bank depositors are believed to be non-resident Russians” (quote), in “Cyrpus’ savers bear brunt of unprecedented bailout” (article), at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/16/us-eurozone-cyprus-idUSBRE92E02220130316

(6)    Nouriel Roubini, Crisis Economics, Penguin, 2009.

Unemployment: a warning from history (part 2)

Reblogged from Forum for Fair Employment:

By E. E. Jones

Involuntary unemployment begins as a nightmare for individuals and families and ends as a catastrophe for communities, generations and nations. Not only is unemployment often followed by attendant life-wrecking disasters (such as ill-health, debt crisis, family breakdown and homelessness) but in an aggressively capitalist culture, unemployed people are increasingly made to feel disenfranchised from society itself, subject to damaging social punishment - and loss of…

Read more… 1,420 more words

Unemployment: a warning from history (part 1)

Reblogged from Forum for Fair Employment:

By E. E. Jones

History should teach us to beware of politicians who confuse fighting poverty with attacking the poor. Yet how else can we explain the current thinking on what is called - euphemistically - welfare reform? As often happens when the political right senses a certain level of public disquiet, the hunt is on for a scapegoat - anything to distract attention from the real issues of economic policy and democratic accountability.

Read more… 2,659 more words

Banishing our communities

By Andie Berryman

With the latest round of cuts and the inevitable omnishambles, that is, the universal tax credits that will hit in April, isn’t it about time we looked to the notion that a person IS a human being and not just a national insurance number? The Conservatives seem quite keen on using this premise when looking to lower and adjust what constitutes as poverty and quality of life. Some normal person must have whispered in the ear of the right wing think tank desperately scratching around for ideas as to what constitutes this ‘big society’. I want to say this – stop scrabbling around for this huge true blue macro miracle. The big society has always functioned in society except on a local micro scale it is known as living and participating in a community.

When I say community, please do not assume I have been watching some moral boosting ‘Ma in the kitchen and Dad down the pub singing knees up mother brown‘ film and thought ‘blimey that’s just the ticket’. The think tanks do not seem to understand that communities are made up of different people and are not just geographically rooted to a hegemonic blob of networking bees, different, diverse people.

Lots of things damage a community, poverty, gradual loss of infrastructure (libraries, shops, local services) and ultimately people having to move out the area. I look at what is happening to families living in London with the housing benefit cap and local authorities taking no duty of care for homeless/vulnerably housed people. They are being moved on to poverty stricken towns in the North, where local authority budgets have been drastically cut and the Tesco themed regeneration schemes have failed. People facing the bedroom tax for that tiny box room in their house are also forced to move on like vagabonds – ‘Why, they should be grateful they have a roof over their head, shouldn’t they?’ – say the ministers who live in 10 bedroomed mansions! If you dare to be poor in 2013 Britain, then you face a stone age like penalty, you are banished from your community.

Communities are not just about low-carbon car clubs, shared allotments and people’s supermarkets, it is also about the relationships you make – can that alleviate some symptoms of poverty? For example, last week my youngest was too sick to go to school; my eldest was fine, I had to get her to school. Being a single parent it was tricky, so I asked my friend to sit with sick kid whilst I took the other one to school. Another friend came round later for a while so I could go and see my housebound friend (I am one of her few visitors a week). Sounds banal, doesn’t it? But remember, poverty is not just about money, it is about the isolation it creates, the hopelessness and worthlessness. On this occasion I saw how just three people can alleviate stress and isolation; just three people can make up a section of community, can beat emotional poverty. You take one person out of the equation and the community is broken and this is just on the micro scale. The government is essentially economically cleansing communities, leaving them broken or turning them into ghettos of the rich and the poor, low carbon hotspots and high crime blackspots. This insipid assault upon the citizens who do not have those disposable bits of paper and coins with the Queens head on, is almost medieval and it is the ‘beat the peasants down’ white papers are the things that should be banished, not people.