Russia Ukraine War: How the West backed Putin into a corner, Joseph Massad
| Kana’an – The e-Bulletin In this issue: – A War for the Termination of Russia and China: Is Capitalism the last stage of Human Race? Adel Samara- Russia Ukraine War: How the West backed Putin into a corner, Joseph Massad- From the Black Sea to the East Med, don’t poke The Russian Bear, Pepe Escobar● ● ● A War for the Termination of Russia and China Is Capitalism the last stage of Human Race? Dr. Adel Samara, Occupied Palestine https://kanaanonline.org/en/2022/03/03/a-war-for-the-termination-of-russia-and-china-is-capitalism-the-last-stage-of-human-race-dr-adel-samara/ Few days before the Russian troops started it’s defensive war against Zio/Nazi regime of Ukraine, I wrote an article touching upon the roots of the whole situation from a Marxist theoretical/political economy’s perspective arguing that political and military factors are not enough to elaborate reasonable analysis. The following is a synopsis of that article. I wrote that the war is coming because it is the only and last alternative for US imperialism to manage its crisis and accordingly the US department will oblige Ukraine to attack Russia and they were sure that Russia will respond. Russia’s response against Ukraine aggression is because Ukraine insists to be a member of NATO a step considered from Russia’s perspective as a threat of war against Russia. But there are other and big reasons for US launching war against Russia which are more decisive and making the war imperative: First: The US internal economic situation has been deteriorating continuously at least since 2007-08 economic/financial crisis, which was followed by covid-19 where the growth was very simple, no real employment vacancies opened for the working class, Trump’s attraction of US companies in China wasn’t too effective and its economic war, which is called “sanctions” against China and Russia, wasn’t a solution at least for the short run to provide remedy for a current crisis which needs direct reform. The US debt reaches the edge of $30 trillion and more and more countries are trying to avoid dollar hegemony especially Russia and China by creating their own exchange system and even an alternative to IMF and SWIFT system. The solution to face this crisis needs internal deep reform, economic and social reform, i.e. similar to what Roosevelt did in the thirties and the adoption of Kenya’s theory of expanding state’s role, the state of luxury, creating jobs…etc. But the US since Reaganomics had adopted privatization, de-regulation, minimizing the size of the state, decreasing taxes on big businesses. The huge amounts of money which the Federal Reserve pours into the US banking system to face 2007-08 crisis and Coved -19 had disappeared inside the bags of the bankers. The bankers did not lend people and did not lend each other as well, because none of them believes others’ reports on their financial situation. The regime supported the gigantic banks pretending that “This is bigger than collaping”! Some economists expected that, after 2007-08 and Covid-19, that inflation will became very high as long as a lot of money liquidity were provided and the tax devalued to nearly zero. But this did not happen because: a. The money was been hidden by the bankers b. And the lock-down kept the people imprisoned. Second: The other solution/alternative for this form of deep social/economic crisis is the revolution against the capitalist system. This solution has no chance as long as the real revolutionary tool is not available, in addition to the fact that labor is still defeated by capital on the world scale, a fact which encourages capital to give lip service to the interests and needs of the popular classes. This becomes very clear in the behavior of bourgeois regimes in the imperialist and even all capitalist regimes around the world especially in comparison with how China was very responsible, humanitarian and effective in containing the Covid-19 pandemic. Third: For an imperialist power the alternative is only war as the last resort. But this war, while it is war, it has its’ own characteristics. Why? According to the defeats of the US power in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan despite of the US victory in destroying those countries, and even despite of the collapse of the Soviet block and the expansion of the world capitalist market to the working class and economy of those countries, during the same era, the US economy continuous its decline. The current war has two components: Classic economic war, the so-called “sanctions” which the imperialists launched since October Revolution, against North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Iran and later against Russia and China. That is why US and EU declared an expansion of that war against Russia aiming to bring it down on its knees in the long run. b. Luring Ukraine to apply for membership in the aggressive NATO and pushing Ukraine to attack Russia as well, a development which obliged Russia to respond against Ukraine, a response which might lead to the dismantling of Ukraine. It must be noted here that the US will not enter that war by its’ own forces, even if it will expand to Europe. The US forces are coward enough and they never participate in a direct war with great power, but attacking little armies here and there. The US forces participated in the imperialist World Wars I and II only after all fighting powers became exhausted. This might be the reason why Mao describes imperialism as a paper tiger. Obliging old Europe to participate in the economic war against Russia, buying US weapons by billions and billions of dollars, in addition to the fact that if the war expanded it will not reach the US shores. The US capitalist regime is practicing military war by others and benefiting from economic war more than others and strengthens its hegemony and domination over Europe weakening the EU more and more. Goals, Opinions and Results of this War There are, At least, three goals or stages of this war. First: Capitalism is a formation of crime and war motivated in the final analysis by unlimited accumulation. That is why western capitalism launched all forms of aggression against the socialist regimes of Russia and China under the pretext that the west is fighting communism.But, even when both Russia and China became capitalist regimes, the West maintains NATO and declared both countries as their enemies, and expanding NATO to Russian’s borders. The imperialist regimes’ aggression against Russia and China is based on two components or steps: a. To weaken both countries and blocking their development, b. And to plunder their wealth as in the case of the rest of the South. The imperialist center’s strategy is to never allow any country in the globe to develop, to be independent and, for sure, not be able to compete with imperialism. As long as this is the essence of this imperialist strategy, NATO must be maintained despite the fact that the socialist block and Warsaw Pact had been dismantled. The preservation of NATO has astonished some people: Why would the West maintains NATO after the collapse of socialist regimes especially Warsaw pact! Those people are: 1- Either naive and did not understand the unlimited lust of capital for accumulation by war, plunder, stealing, unequal exchange…etc. It is in the nature of capital looking for absolute accumulation on the one hand, and that it will never allow any country to develop to the extent that it will reach a stage of independence. In other words, the whole world must be dependent on the core capitalist regimes. As long as Russia and China are countries who: a. Endow huge wealth b. And are ruled by regimes which are not clientele for the west. Then, those countries must be destroyed, regardless of whether their regimes are communist or capitalist. 2- Liberal people who understood world politics but believe in capitalism, but as liberals, they criticize imperialism but stand against communism. Noam Chomsky is a striking example of this trend. He argues that why NATO was not dissolved after the collapse of communism! His argument means that war did occur only between capitalism and communism! While wars between capitalist powers never stopped before the first socialist state USSR. Lenin wrote that imperialist regimes divide the world between themselves through colonial wars and after that they fall into internal wars among themselves each one try to catch the share of the other which results into the two world wars. Some Marxists, in discussing the current war, exaggerate the role of technological advantage to the extent that they lost class analysis, class struggle and end in reconciliation with the bourgeois state, i.e. the US. In his analysis of the current war between Russia and the west, the Marxist David Harvey https://youtu.be/rIr187kBwXs criticizes Russia, ignores NATO’s threat against Russia, praising the role of US state in developing technology and pretend that the state financing of technology must lead to well-being for the whole society! Unfortunately, Harvey lost his long history of class analysis: “ It’s only a very rich state that can afford enough money to maintain its technological advantage, but technological advantage means that you get a super amount of surplus value flowing in your country. So, technological advantage is terribly important to the relative well-being of the population of the United States. And the well-being of the corporations that works here in the United States so technological advantage is something which the state is obviously involved in. “ Is it right that technological advantage really provides well-being to all classes of the United States to the producers and the capitalists, but with large gap between the shares of the two classes. While the producers’ share is too little in comparison to what the capitalists’ gains, the whole production process contains alienation of the real producers from their products. This is without discussing the fact that when Covid-19 pandemic took place, the technological advantage of the US corporations did not help the majority of its population, while in China the case was the opposite. Here, the Marxist Harvey left Marxism as a theory of class conflict, ignored Marxist political economy. Moreover, Harvey finished his speech by making a class reconciliation between state, capitalism and the rest of US social classes! Harvey concentrates on the technological advantage to the extent that he justifies the state paying people’s money to the corporations to develop their industries, for instance the pharmaceutical industry, and he is pleased that the end result is well-being for the state, corporations and the people in general! World War I between multipolar countries did, in fact, open the opportunity for the first socialist revolution. World War II also took place between imperialist countries and resulted in strengthening and expansion of the socialist camp. World War II was launched by the capitalist Nazi regime against the socialist USSR, and it was its Red Army that defeated Nazism and rescued humanity. While we are not for war for the sake of war, but capitalism is breeding wars and now who knows what route this war will take and what results might come out of it? In fact, a new world order will emerge out of it with three poles, the imperialist block, the self – reliance capitalist block of Russia and China and the Third World/the South. If labor lost the war with capital by the collapse of the USSR, this shouldn’t mean that labor will lose it after the current war if it is expanded unless and unfortunately it will turn into a nuclear war. The current war might strengthen the relationship between Russia and China and some progressive regimes North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Vietnam. The imperialist block will tighten its economic and technological wars against Russia and China aiming to besiege them and subjugate them to their domination over world market and to keep them on a second level of technological standards. This policy might push Russia and China to orientate themselves towards a defense policy of: · Development by popular protection/internal withdrawal · Adopting de-linking. Those policies will push both countries again towards socialism. By other token, any war between capitalists might breed revolutionary changes. In fact, China has been more oriented towards expanding its own internal market following the 2007-08 crisis and pandemic Coved-19. Due to the economic sanctions since 2014, Russia has concentrated on self –reliance and developed its industry and agriculture. As the world is already divided into two capitalist poles, the competition between them will intensify especially in technology which is more monopolized by imperialism. Two questions arise on this level: 1- To what extent China and Russia will be able to bridge the technological gap with imperialism taking into consideration the great development of the USSR, the current development of China and the possible transfer of Russia’s current military technology to civil industries. 2- To what extent Russia and China will move towards socialist policies into their own countries and build alliances with world revolution? Some people believe that imperialist countries will maintain its technological hegemony, and the other block will never be able to compete. But the experience of the USSR and Socialist China proved that the bridging of the technological gap is possible. Who Blames Russia For sure Russia was in problem and must choose one of two bitter options: a. Either to let NATO threatens its’ mere stability, wealth and even existence for the sake of western capitalist/imperialist companies, b. Or to enter a war of defense which will cost it a lot and might reverse its economic progress. If Russia decides to sacrifice its mere existence for the sake of rescuing human race, capitalism will never stop war against all nations to continue its hegemony and blunder. An Alliance between Fake left and Politicized Religion A lot of traditional communist parties either stand against Russia or criticize both Russia on the one hand, and imperialism on the other in equal terms. This is the position of many communist parties, i.e. the Greece, Israeli, Iraqi, Egyptian, Sudani, French and many leftist organizations in the USA…etc. It is really astonishing that despite the colonial history and the current various imperialist wars against Arab Homeland, many Arab “communists and leftists” support imperialism against Russia which at least never attacked any Arab country! In fact, this communist and left is a tail to Arab clientele regimes and Arab forces of Politicized Religion as well. The Trotskyites maintain their position that Russia like the USSR is an imperialist regime and the war is between imperialist countries, i.e. not between imperialism and capitalist Russia! When imperialism launches any war, the Trots blame both the imperialists and the others who were invaded by imperialism, when US and other 31 countries invaded Iraq 1991 and later 2003, the US destruction of Serbia, Libya the Trots blamed both equally. In fact, this uncovers the curtain which this current hides its cooperation with the western imperialists against other countries. The most shameful position is the formal and most of private Arab media which support imperialism. Unfortunately, imperialists’ war against Russia and later China aimed at changing the regimes of those countries to be similar to clientele Arab regime which launch a civil war against their own people, executing inside their countries all imperialist policies, protecting imperialism interests, and their armies suppress its’ own people on behalf of imperialist armies. While Lenin was right in his argument that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, if capitalism will not be defeated by revolution, then capitalism itself will be the last stage of human race. ● ● ● Russia Ukraine war: How the West backed Putin into a corner By Joseph Massad https://kanaanonline.org/en/2022/03/03/russia-ukraine-war-how-the-west-backed-putin-into-a-corner-joseph-massad/ In the face of western bellicosity, Moscow apparently concluded that military intervention to push back Nato’s advance was the only option In the last few years of Nato’s expansion eastwards, Russia’s leaders felt increasingly and legitimately threatened by hostile military encirclement. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the military advance of western capitalist powers was unrelenting. The West conscripted most of the formerly socialist Eastern European countries into the European Union and Nato (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Montenegro and Slovenia). Even former Soviet republics, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, ever a thorn in the side of the Soviets and now in the side of Russia, joined Nato. In the last decade, it was Ukraine’s turn to be brought into Nato’s orbit to fully encircle post-Soviet Russia Over the last decade, it was the turn of Ukraine to be conscripted into the anti-Russian alliance. To understand Russia’s fears over this western military encroachment, it is important to remember the suffering Russians endured as a result of many western invasions since 1917. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks not only withdrew from the “First Imperialist War”, dubbed in the West as World War I, but also granted independence to regions that were part of imperial Russia before the revolution. The Russian communists accepted the draconian territorial and financial conditions imposed on them by Germany and its Central Powers allies, and conceded erstwhile Russian territories. With the 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Bolsheviks gave up Finland, the Baltic territories and Ukraine, which became client states of Germany, as well as portions of Poland and Byelorussia. All in all, the Soviets lost one million square miles of imperial Russia’s territory; 50 million people; most of Russia’s coal, oil and iron ore; half of its industry; and a third of its railroads and agricultural lands. Reversing fortunes In the case of Poland, the Bolsheviks supported its independence, but the Polish nationalist General Jozef Pilsudski remained belligerent, seeking to acquire more territories. In April 1920, Pilsudski’s forces invaded Ukraine, and by May they occupied Kyiv (the spelling of Kiev as Kyiv is a recent western concession in support of recent Ukrainian nationalism). But by June, the Red Army had driven Polish forces out and taken the offensive. The Soviet advance alarmed western imperial powers, and as the Red Army prepared to conquer Warsaw, western states rushed military aid to Polish forces to defend the city. In August, as the Red Army continued its advance, Soviet and Polish negotiators were to meet in Minsk – but soon, events on the ground would reverse Soviet fortunes. With the aid of the French government, the Poles launched a successful counteroffensive, forcing the Red Army to retreat. An armistice agreement was reached in October, and a humiliating peace deal was signed in March 1921 in Riga, by which the Soviets ceded a large tract of Byelorussia and western Ukraine, including a wedge that separated Soviet Russia from Lithuania. The story of Poland’s aggression against Soviet Russia was the clearest evidence that western capitalist countries were vehement in their determination to encircle the young Soviet state by transforming all the territories that the Soviets ceded after coming to power into military outposts, to be used to threaten the Soviet Union militarily. The rise of Nazism in the 1930s created a new threat to Soviet security. Finland, after a civil war that ended with the execution of thousands of communist revolutionaries, became a vassal state of Britain and France. Later, Finland would become Nazi Germany’s staging ground and ally for Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. As for the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, to which the Soviets granted independence in 1920, they would all become military outposts for the West – the “cordon sanitaire” engineered by France and Britain against Bolshevism. Rampant discrimination As for Poland, in January 1934, Pilsudski signed a 10-year non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Later that year, Poland unilaterally abrogated the Minority Treaty it had signed in 1919. Ukrainian separatists agitated for secession and attacked and assassinated Polish politicians. By the early 1930s, the Polish army was razing Ukrainian villages accused of harbouring separatists and rounding up its leaders. Ukrainian schools were closed and Polonisation ensued. Similarly, Polish denial of the linguistic and cultural rights of the two-million-strong Byelorussian community proceeded, with discrimination favouring Catholic Byelorussians over Orthodox. After Pilsudski died in 1935, a more right-wing and antisemitic regime began to also target Polish Jews. In 1939, Hitler renounced the non-aggression pact and invaded Poland. Stalin quickly followed by invading Poland from the east, and within weeks, the Soviets had annexed the Polish territories that they had ceded in 1921. The areas of western Ukraine seized from Poland were incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Stalin would ultimately occupy the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and reintegrate them into the Soviet Union. During the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalists from the western region not only collaborated with the invading Nazis, but also helped perpetrate one of the worst massacres of World War II at Babi Yar, where more than 100,000 Ukrainian Jews, communists, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war were killed. After World War II, the West did not change its ways, rejecting Stalin’s demand for a neutral Germany, which was ultimately divided into two separate partisan states. Western plans to encircle the Soviets from the south were also successful, with Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, serving their western masters. Neutral India was harder to coopt, and the Chinese would soon have a falling-out with the Soviets. Encircling Russia In the last decade, it was Ukraine’s turn to be brought into Nato’s orbit to fully encircle post-Soviet Russia, whose leadership, including President Vladimir Putin, had even offered to become part of Nato, rather than a potential target of its aggression – but there were no takers among the western countries. Already, in 2003, Ukraine had participated in the US-led illegal invasion of Iraq by sending 5,000 troops, being the third-largest contingent to destroy and occupy that country. But as Ukraine’s elected president was not forthcoming on joining Nato in 2014, a quick regime change was arranged for the country. The heirs of the antisemitic Ukrainian nationalists who had aided the Nazis in the 1940s were resurrected to champion the Ukrainian nation against Russia. Led by the far-right and US-supported Svoboda party, as well as the more right-wing and neo-Nazi “Right Sector”, they rioted and took over government buildings in a dress rehearsal of what Trump supporters would do in Washington seven years later. Putin will not stand back and let the West threaten his country once again. His attempts over the years to change the belligerent western policy towards Russia have clearly failed In the Ukrainian case, however, the right-wing nationalists, mostly from western Ukraine, succeeded in toppling the elected, though corrupt, government. Since then, the US, specifically the CIA, has reportedly been training Ukrainian militias to advance western interests against Russia. As much of the territory that is now included in Ukraine was previously conquered by the Russians, Moscow is not happy with such Ukrainian nationalist injunctions. Fourteen armies invaded Soviet Russia after the 1917 revolution, devastating its economy, in order to destroy it. The Nazis and their allies tried again in 1941, but were defeated, at the cost of 26 million Soviet lives. Despite his revisionist and Russian nationalist attacks on the right of self-determination, which the Soviet Union had championed since its inception, it is clear that Putin will not stand back and let the West threaten his country once again. His attempts over the years to change the belligerent western policy towards Russia have clearly failed. In light of this western intransigence and bellicosity, it would seem that Putin, unfortunately, concluded that Russian military intervention to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and push back Nato’s advance was his only remaining option. The victims, as always, will be the civilians caught in the middle. Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan; Desiring Arabs; The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated into a dozen languages. ::::: Source: Middle East Eye, 2 March 2022 ● ● ● From the Black Sea to the East Med, don’t poke The Russian Bear By Pepe Escobar https://kanaanonline.org/en/2022/03/03/from-the-black-sea-to-the-east-med-dont-poke-the-russian-bear-pepe-escobar/ The US shouldn’t have poked the Russian Bear. Now it is fully awake: after Ukraine, the Russians are likely to do a clean sweep of foreign belligerents poking around the East Med and the Black Sea. February 24 2022 Russia endured eight years of NATO provocations in Ukraine before it roared. Now it will clean house in West Asia and beyond. Photo Credit: The Cradle This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born at breathtaking speed. From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a UN history lesson delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to the breakaway republics’ appeal to Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process, executed at warp speed. The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced it to pounce – was Comedian/Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed. That would be the equivalent of a nuclear Mexico south of the Hegemon. Putin immediately turned Responsibility to Protect (R2P) upside down: an American construct invented to launch wars was retrofitted to stop a slow-motion genocide in Donbass. First came the recognition of the Baby Twins – Putin’s most important foreign policy decision since inserting Russian jets into Syria’s airspace in 2015. That was the preamble for the next game-changer: a “special military operation…aimed at demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” as Putin defined it. Up to the last minute, the Kremlin was trying to rely on diplomacy, explaining to Kiev the necessary imperatives to prevent heavy metal thunder: recognition of Crimea as Russian; abandoning any plans to join NATO; negotiating directly with the Baby Twins – an anathema for the Americans since 2015; finally, demilitarizing and declaring Ukraine as neutral. Kiev’s handlers, predictably, would never accept the package – as they didn’t accept the Master Package that really matters, which is the Russian demand for “indivisible security.” The sequence, then, became inevitable. In a flash, all Ukrainian military forces between the so-called line of contact and the original borders of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were re-framed as an occupying army in Russian-allied territories that Moscow had just sworn to protect. Get Out – Or Else The Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense were not bluffing. Timed to the end of Putin’s speech announcing the operation, the Russians decapitated with precision missiles everything that mattered in terms of the Ukrainian military in just one hour: Air force, navy, airfields, bridges, command and control centers, the whole Turkish Bayraktar drone fleet. And it was not only Russian raw power. It was the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) artillery that hit the Armed Forces of Ukraine headquarters in Donbass, which actually housed the entire Ukrainian military command. This means that the Ukrainian General Staff instantly lost control of all its troops. This was Shock and Awe against Iraq, 19 years ago, in reverse: not for conquest, not as a prelude for an invasion and occupation. The political-military leadership in Kiev did not even have time to declare war. They froze. Demoralized troops started deserting. Total defeat – in one hour. The water supply to Crimea was instantly re-established. Humanitarian corridors were set up for the deserters. Ukrainian forces remnants now include mostly surviving Azov batallion Nazis, mercenaries trained by the usual Blackwater/Academi suspects, and a bunch of Salafi-jihadis. Predictably, western corporate media has already gone totally berserk, branding it as the much-awaited Russian ‘invasion.’ A reminder: when Israel routinely bombs Syria and when the House of One Saudi routinely bombs Yemeni civilians, there is never any peep in NATO’s media. As it stands, realpolitik spells out a possible endgame, as voiced by Donetsk’s head, Denis Pushilin: “The special operation in Donbass will soon be over and all the cities will be liberated.” We could soon witness the birth of an independent Novorossiya – east of the Dnieper, south along Sea of Azov/Black Sea, the way it was when attached to Ukraine by Lenin in 1922. But now it would be totally aligned with Russia, and providing a land bridge to Transnistria. Ukraine, of course, would lose any access to the Black Sea. History loves playing tricks: what was a ‘gift’ to Ukraine in 1922 may become a parting gift a hundred years later. It’s creative destruction time It will be fascinating to watch what Prof. Sergey Karaganov masterfully described, in detail, as the new Putin doctrine of constructive destruction, and how it will interconnect with West Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean and further on down the Global South road. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the ceremonial NATO Sultan, denounced the recognition of the Baby Twins as “unacceptable.” No wonder: that shift smashed all his elaborate plans to pose as privileged mediator between Moscow and Kiev during Putin’s upcoming visit to Ankara. The Kremlin – as well as the Foreign Ministry – don’t waste time talking to NATO minions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for his part, had a recent, very productive entente with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad. Russia, this past weekend, has staged a spectacular strategic missile display, hypersonic and otherwise, featuring Khinzal, Zircon, Kalibr, Yars ICBMs, Iskander and Sineva – irony of ironies, in synch with the Russophobia-fest in Munich. In parallel, Russian Navy ships of the Pacific, Northern and Black Sea fleets performed a series of submarine search drills in the Mediterranean. The Putin doctrine privileges the asymmetrical – and that applies to the near abroad and beyond. Putin’s body language, in his last two crucial interventions, spell out nearly maximum exasperation. As in realizing, not auspiciously, but rather in resignation, that the only language Beltway Neo-conservatives and ‘humanitarian imperialists’ understand is heavy metal thunder. They are definitely deaf, dumb and blind to history, geography and diplomacy. So, one can always game the Russian military – for instance, imposing a no-fly zone in Syria to conduct a series of visits by Mr. Khinzal not only to the Turk-protected shady jihadist umbrella in Idlib but also the jihadists protected by the Americans in Al-Tanf base, near the Syria-Jordan border. After all, these specimens are all NATO proxies. The US government barks non-stop about “territorial sovereignty.” So let’s game the Kremlin asking the White House for a road map on getting out of Syria: after all the Americans are illegally occupying a section of Syrian territory and adding extra disaster to the Syrian economy by stealing their oil. NATO’s stultifying leader, Jens Stoltenberg, has announced the alliance is dusting off its “defense plans.” That may include little more than hiding behind their expensive Brussels desks. They are as inconsequential in the Black Sea as in the East Med – as the US remains quite vulnerable in Syria. There are now four Russian TU-22M3 strategic bombers in Russia’s Hmeimim base in Syria, each capable of carrying three S-32 anti-ship missiles that fly at supersonic Mach 4.3 with a range of 1,000 km. No Aegis system is able to handle them. Russia also has stationed a few Mig-31Ks in Syria’s coastal region in Latakia equipped with hypersonic Khinzals – more than enough to sink any kind of US surface group, including aircraft carriers, in the East Med. The US has no air defense mechanism whatsoever with even a minimal chance of intercepting them. So the rules have changed. Drastically. The Hegemon is naked. The new deal starts with turning the post-Cold War set-up in Eastern Europe completely upside down. The East Med will be next. The Bear is back, hear him roar. :::: Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore and Bangkok. He is the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties. Show Less Source: The Cradle https://www.thecradle.co/Article/columns/7266 ____________The opinions and views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Kana’an’s Editorial Board.Any part of this material may be disseminated without permission, provided that attribution to https://kanaanonline.org is stated.To visit Kana’an Online (KOL) website, go to www.kanaanonline.org.For articles from the year 2001 through 2008, please visit Kana’an Online website at: http://www.kanaanonline.org/ebulletin.php Please write to us or send your contributions to: mail@kanaanonline.org.To subscribe to our mailing list, please send a blank e-mail message to english-join@kanaanonline.org.To unsubscribe from our mailing list, please send a blank e-mail message to english-leave@kanaanonline.org. |
| Kana’an – The e-Bulletin كنعان النشرة الإلكترونية Volume XXII – Issue 6225 3 March 2022 In this issue: A War for the Termination of Russia and China: Is Capitalism the last stage of Human Race? Adel SamaraRussia Ukraine War: How the West backed Putin into a corner, Joseph MassadFrom the Black Sea to the East Med, don’t poke The Russian Bear, Pepe Escobar ● ● ● A War for the Termination of Russia and China Is Capitalism the last stage of Human Race? Dr. Adel Samara, Occupied Palestine https://kanaanonline.org/en/2022/03/03/a-war-for-the-termination-of-russia-and-china-is-capitalism-the-last-stage-of-human-race-dr-adel-samara/ Few days before the Russian troops started it’s defensive war against Zio/Nazi regime of Ukraine, I wrote an article touching upon the roots of the whole situation from a Marxist theoretical/political economy’s perspective arguing that political and military factors are not enough to elaborate reasonable analysis. The following is a synopsis of that article. I wrote that the war is coming because it is the only and last alternative for US imperialism to manage its crisis and accordingly the US department will oblige Ukraine to attack Russia and they were sure that Russia will respond. Russia’s response against Ukraine aggression is because Ukraine insists to be a member of NATO a step considered from Russia’s perspective as a threat of war against Russia. But there are other and big reasons for US launching war against Russia which are more decisive and making the war imperative: First: The US internal economic situation has been deteriorating continuously at least since 2007-08 economic/financial crisis, which was followed by covid-19 where the growth was very simple, no real employment vacancies opened for the working class, Trump’s attraction of US companies in China wasn’t too effective and its economic war, which is called “sanctions” against China and Russia, wasn’t a solution at least for the short run to provide remedy for a current crisis which needs direct reform. The US debt reaches the edge of $30 trillion and more and more countries are trying to avoid dollar hegemony especially Russia and China by creating their own exchange system and even an alternative to IMF and SWIFT system. The solution to face this crisis needs internal deep reform, economic and social reform, i.e. similar to what Roosevelt did in the thirties and the adoption of Kenya’s theory of expanding state’s role, the state of luxury, creating jobs…etc. But the US since Reaganomics had adopted privatization, de-regulation, minimizing the size of the state, decreasing taxes on big businesses. The huge amounts of money which the Federal Reserve pours into the US banking system to face 2007-08 crisis and Coved -19 had disappeared inside the bags of the bankers. The bankers did not lend people and did not lend each other as well, because none of them believes others’ reports on their financial situation. The regime supported the gigantic banks pretending that “This is bigger than collaping”! Some economists expected that, after 2007-08 and Covid-19, that inflation will became very high as long as a lot of money liquidity were provided and the tax devalued to nearly zero. But this did not happen because: a. The money was been hidden by the bankers b. And the lock-down kept the people imprisoned. Second: The other solution/alternative for this form of deep social/economic crisis is the revolution against the capitalist system. This solution has no chance as long as the real revolutionary tool is not available, in addition to the fact that labor is still defeated by capital on the world scale, a fact which encourages capital to give lip service to the interests and needs of the popular classes. This becomes very clear in the behavior of bourgeois regimes in the imperialist and even all capitalist regimes around the world especially in comparison with how China was very responsible, humanitarian and effective in containing the Covid-19 pandemic. Third: For an imperialist power the alternative is only war as the last resort. But this war, while it is war, it has its’ own characteristics. Why? According to the defeats of the US power in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan despite of the US victory in destroying those countries, and even despite of the collapse of the Soviet block and the expansion of the world capitalist market to the working class and economy of those countries, during the same era, the US economy continuous its decline. The current war has two components: Classic economic war, the so-called “sanctions” which the imperialists launched since October Revolution, against North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Iran and later against Russia and China. That is why US and EU declared an expansion of that war against Russia aiming to bring it down on its knees in the long run. b. Luring Ukraine to apply for membership in the aggressive NATO and pushing Ukraine to attack Russia as well, a development which obliged Russia to respond against Ukraine, a response which might lead to the dismantling of Ukraine. It must be noted here that the US will not enter that war by its’ own forces, even if it will expand to Europe. The US forces are coward enough and they never participate in a direct war with great power, but attacking little armies here and there. The US forces participated in the imperialist World Wars I and II only after all fighting powers became exhausted. This might be the reason why Mao describes imperialism as a paper tiger. Obliging old Europe to participate in the economic war against Russia, buying US weapons by billions and billions of dollars, in addition to the fact that if the war expanded it will not reach the US shores. The US capitalist regime is practicing military war by others and benefiting from economic war more than others and strengthens its hegemony and domination over Europe weakening the EU more and more. Goals, Opinions and Results of this War There are, At least, three goals or stages of this war. First: Capitalism is a formation of crime and war motivated in the final analysis by unlimited accumulation. That is why western capitalism launched all forms of aggression against the socialist regimes of Russia and China under the pretext that the west is fighting communism.But, even when both Russia and China became capitalist regimes, the West maintains NATO and declared both countries as their enemies, and expanding NATO to Russian’s borders. The imperialist regimes’ aggression against Russia and China is based on two components or steps: a. To weaken both countries and blocking their development, b. And to plunder their wealth as in the case of the rest of the South. The imperialist center’s strategy is to never allow any country in the globe to develop, to be independent and, for sure, not be able to compete with imperialism. As long as this is the essence of this imperialist strategy, NATO must be maintained despite the fact that the socialist block and Warsaw Pact had been dismantled. The preservation of NATO has astonished some people: Why would the West maintains NATO after the collapse of socialist regimes especially Warsaw pact! Those people are: 1- Either naive and did not understand the unlimited lust of capital for accumulation by war, plunder, stealing, unequal exchange…etc. It is in the nature of capital looking for absolute accumulation on the one hand, and that it will never allow any country to develop to the extent that it will reach a stage of independence. In other words, the whole world must be dependent on the core capitalist regimes. As long as Russia and China are countries who: a. Endow huge wealth b. And are ruled by regimes which are not clientele for the west. Then, those countries must be destroyed, regardless of whether their regimes are communist or capitalist. 2- Liberal people who understood world politics but believe in capitalism, but as liberals, they criticize imperialism but stand against communism. Noam Chomsky is a striking example of this trend. He argues that why NATO was not dissolved after the collapse of communism! His argument means that war did occur only between capitalism and communism! While wars between capitalist powers never stopped before the first socialist state USSR. Lenin wrote that imperialist regimes divide the world between themselves through colonial wars and after that they fall into internal wars among themselves each one try to catch the share of the other which results into the two world wars. Some Marxists, in discussing the current war, exaggerate the role of technological advantage to the extent that they lost class analysis, class struggle and end in reconciliation with the bourgeois state, i.e. the US. In his analysis of the current war between Russia and the west, the Marxist David Harvey https://youtu.be/rIr187kBwXs criticizes Russia, ignores NATO’s threat against Russia, praising the role of US state in developing technology and pretend that the state financing of technology must lead to well-being for the whole society! Unfortunately, Harvey lost his long history of class analysis: “ It’s only a very rich state that can afford enough money to maintain its technological advantage, but technological advantage means that you get a super amount of surplus value flowing in your country. So, technological advantage is terribly important to the relative well-being of the population of the United States. And the well-being of the corporations that works here in the United States so technological advantage is something which the state is obviously involved in. “ Is it right that technological advantage really provides well-being to all classes of the United States to the producers and the capitalists, but with large gap between the shares of the two classes. While the producers’ share is too little in comparison to what the capitalists’ gains, the whole production process contains alienation of the real producers from their products. This is without discussing the fact that when Covid-19 pandemic took place, the technological advantage of the US corporations did not help the majority of its population, while in China the case was the opposite. Here, the Marxist Harvey left Marxism as a theory of class conflict, ignored Marxist political economy. Moreover, Harvey finished his speech by making a class reconciliation between state, capitalism and the rest of US social classes! Harvey concentrates on the technological advantage to the extent that he justifies the state paying people’s money to the corporations to develop their industries, for instance the pharmaceutical industry, and he is pleased that the end result is well-being for the state, corporations and the people in general! World War I between multipolar countries did, in fact, open the opportunity for the first socialist revolution. World War II also took place between imperialist countries and resulted in strengthening and expansion of the socialist camp. World War II was launched by the capitalist Nazi regime against the socialist USSR, and it was its Red Army that defeated Nazism and rescued humanity. While we are not for war for the sake of war, but capitalism is breeding wars and now who knows what route this war will take and what results might come out of it? In fact, a new world order will emerge out of it with three poles, the imperialist block, the self – reliance capitalist block of Russia and China and the Third World/the South. If labor lost the war with capital by the collapse of the USSR, this shouldn’t mean that labor will lose it after the current war if it is expanded unless and unfortunately it will turn into a nuclear war. The current war might strengthen the relationship between Russia and China and some progressive regimes North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Vietnam. The imperialist block will tighten its economic and technological wars against Russia and China aiming to besiege them and subjugate them to their domination over world market and to keep them on a second level of technological standards. This policy might push Russia and China to orientate themselves towards a defense policy of: · Development by popular protection/internal withdrawal · Adopting de-linking. Those policies will push both countries again towards socialism. By other token, any war between capitalists might breed revolutionary changes. In fact, China has been more oriented towards expanding its own internal market following the 2007-08 crisis and pandemic Coved-19. Due to the economic sanctions since 2014, Russia has concentrated on self –reliance and developed its industry and agriculture. As the world is already divided into two capitalist poles, the competition between them will intensify especially in technology which is more monopolized by imperialism. Two questions arise on this level: 1- To what extent China and Russia will be able to bridge the technological gap with imperialism taking into consideration the great development of the USSR, the current development of China and the possible transfer of Russia’s current military technology to civil industries. 2- To what extent Russia and China will move towards socialist policies into their own countries and build alliances with world revolution? Some people believe that imperialist countries will maintain its technological hegemony, and the other block will never be able to compete. But the experience of the USSR and Socialist China proved that the bridging of the technological gap is possible. Who Blames Russia For sure Russia was in problem and must choose one of two bitter options: a. Either to let NATO threatens its’ mere stability, wealth and even existence for the sake of western capitalist/imperialist companies, b. Or to enter a war of defense which will cost it a lot and might reverse its economic progress. If Russia decides to sacrifice its mere existence for the sake of rescuing human race, capitalism will never stop war against all nations to continue its hegemony and blunder. An Alliance between Fake left and Politicized Religion A lot of traditional communist parties either stand against Russia or criticize both Russia on the one hand, and imperialism on the other in equal terms. This is the position of many communist parties, i.e. the Greece, Israeli, Iraqi, Egyptian, Sudani, French and many leftist organizations in the USA…etc. It is really astonishing that despite the colonial history and the current various imperialist wars against Arab Homeland, many Arab “communists and leftists” support imperialism against Russia which at least never attacked any Arab country! In fact, this communist and left is a tail to Arab clientele regimes and Arab forces of Politicized Religion as well. The Trotskyites maintain their position that Russia like the USSR is an imperialist regime and the war is between imperialist countries, i.e. not between imperialism and capitalist Russia! When imperialism launches any war, the Trots blame both the imperialists and the others who were invaded by imperialism, when US and other 31 countries invaded Iraq 1991 and later 2003, the US destruction of Serbia, Libya the Trots blamed both equally. In fact, this uncovers the curtain which this current hides its cooperation with the western imperialists against other countries. The most shameful position is the formal and most of private Arab media which support imperialism. Unfortunately, imperialists’ war against Russia and later China aimed at changing the regimes of those countries to be similar to clientele Arab regime which launch a civil war against their own people, executing inside their countries all imperialist policies, protecting imperialism interests, and their armies suppress its’ own people on behalf of imperialist armies. While Lenin was right in his argument that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, if capitalism will not be defeated by revolution, then capitalism itself will be the last stage of human race. ● ● ● Russia Ukraine war: How the West backed Putin into a corner By Joseph Massad https://kanaanonline.org/en/2022/03/03/russia-ukraine-war-how-the-west-backed-putin-into-a-corner-joseph-massad/ In the face of western bellicosity, Moscow apparently concluded that military intervention to push back Nato’s advance was the only option In the last few years of Nato’s expansion eastwards, Russia’s leaders felt increasingly and legitimately threatened by hostile military encirclement. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the military advance of western capitalist powers was unrelenting. The West conscripted most of the formerly socialist Eastern European countries into the European Union and Nato (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Montenegro and Slovenia). Even former Soviet republics, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, ever a thorn in the side of the Soviets and now in the side of Russia, joined Nato. In the last decade, it was Ukraine’s turn to be brought into Nato’s orbit to fully encircle post-Soviet Russia Over the last decade, it was the turn of Ukraine to be conscripted into the anti-Russian alliance. To understand Russia’s fears over this western military encroachment, it is important to remember the suffering Russians endured as a result of many western invasions since 1917. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks not only withdrew from the “First Imperialist War”, dubbed in the West as World War I, but also granted independence to regions that were part of imperial Russia before the revolution. The Russian communists accepted the draconian territorial and financial conditions imposed on them by Germany and its Central Powers allies, and conceded erstwhile Russian territories. With the 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Bolsheviks gave up Finland, the Baltic territories and Ukraine, which became client states of Germany, as well as portions of Poland and Byelorussia. All in all, the Soviets lost one million square miles of imperial Russia’s territory; 50 million people; most of Russia’s coal, oil and iron ore; half of its industry; and a third of its railroads and agricultural lands. Reversing fortunes In the case of Poland, the Bolsheviks supported its independence, but the Polish nationalist General Jozef Pilsudski remained belligerent, seeking to acquire more territories. In April 1920, Pilsudski’s forces invaded Ukraine, and by May they occupied Kyiv (the spelling of Kiev as Kyiv is a recent western concession in support of recent Ukrainian nationalism). But by June, the Red Army had driven Polish forces out and taken the offensive. The Soviet advance alarmed western imperial powers, and as the Red Army prepared to conquer Warsaw, western states rushed military aid to Polish forces to defend the city. In August, as the Red Army continued its advance, Soviet and Polish negotiators were to meet in Minsk – but soon, events on the ground would reverse Soviet fortunes. With the aid of the French government, the Poles launched a successful counteroffensive, forcing the Red Army to retreat. An armistice agreement was reached in October, and a humiliating peace deal was signed in March 1921 in Riga, by which the Soviets ceded a large tract of Byelorussia and western Ukraine, including a wedge that separated Soviet Russia from Lithuania. The story of Poland’s aggression against Soviet Russia was the clearest evidence that western capitalist countries were vehement in their determination to encircle the young Soviet state by transforming all the territories that the Soviets ceded after coming to power into military outposts, to be used to threaten the Soviet Union militarily. The rise of Nazism in the 1930s created a new threat to Soviet security. Finland, after a civil war that ended with the execution of thousands of communist revolutionaries, became a vassal state of Britain and France. Later, Finland would become Nazi Germany’s staging ground and ally for Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. As for the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, to which the Soviets granted independence in 1920, they would all become military outposts for the West – the “cordon sanitaire” engineered by France and Britain against Bolshevism. Rampant discrimination As for Poland, in January 1934, Pilsudski signed a 10-year non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Later that year, Poland unilaterally abrogated the Minority Treaty it had signed in 1919. Ukrainian separatists agitated for secession and attacked and assassinated Polish politicians. By the early 1930s, the Polish army was razing Ukrainian villages accused of harbouring separatists and rounding up its leaders. Ukrainian schools were closed and Polonisation ensued. Similarly, Polish denial of the linguistic and cultural rights of the two-million-strong Byelorussian community proceeded, with discrimination favouring Catholic Byelorussians over Orthodox. After Pilsudski died in 1935, a more right-wing and antisemitic regime began to also target Polish Jews. In 1939, Hitler renounced the non-aggression pact and invaded Poland. Stalin quickly followed by invading Poland from the east, and within weeks, the Soviets had annexed the Polish territories that they had ceded in 1921. The areas of western Ukraine seized from Poland were incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Stalin would ultimately occupy the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and reintegrate them into the Soviet Union. During the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalists from the western region not only collaborated with the invading Nazis, but also helped perpetrate one of the worst massacres of World War II at Babi Yar, where more than 100,000 Ukrainian Jews, communists, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war were killed. After World War II, the West did not change its ways, rejecting Stalin’s demand for a neutral Germany, which was ultimately divided into two separate partisan states. Western plans to encircle the Soviets from the south were also |
