Each year, Japan’s Foreign Ministry releases a Diplomatic Bluebook, a guide to the government’s views on the world. Kyodo News, a reputed Japanese wire service, reports that the 2022 Bluebook will have strong language against Russia. This Bluebook will be released to the public before the end of April, but Kyodo News’ reporters have seen a leaked text. The text that the news agency has seen has not been finally vetted by the government of Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Two startling changes appear in this draft text. First, the Bluebook refers to the Russian control over some islands north of Hokkaido as an “illegal occupation.” The last time the annual Bluebooks used this phrase was in 2003. Then, the Bluebook pointed out that Japan “renounced its right to the Kuril Islands” in the 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan, signed in San Francisco (Chapter II, Article 2[c]); these islands were then part of the USSR. Nonetheless, the 2003 Bluebook said, “In the Four Northern Islands, the illegal occupation by the Soviet Union and Russia continues today.” Japan calls these “Four Northern Islands” Etorofu, Habomai, Kunashiri, and Shikotan (Russia calls the “Southern Kurils” Iturup, Khabomai, Kunashir, and Shikotan, respectively). Second, the 2006 Bluebook called the islands “inherently Japanese.” This phrase has not been used since then but has reappeared in the 2022 draft Bluebook. Phrases such as “illegal occupation” and “inherently Japanese” in the Bluebook suggest that the tensions between Japan and Russia will certainly increase.

Japan’s Sanctions on Russia

On February 24, 2022, as Russian forces entered Ukraine, Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa released a statement to condemn the action and to demand that Russian military forces return to their territory. The next day, Japan, in line with its fellow G-7 countries, announced measures against Russia. These included the freezing of Japan-based assets of three Russian banks, Bank Rossiya, Promsvyazbank, and VEB (Russia’s development bank). Not long afterward, Japan agreed with the European Union position to exclude seven major Russian banks (including the three already sanctioned by Japan) from the SWIFT system. These four other banks are Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Sovcombank, and VTB.

In addition, Japan’s finance ministry said that it would prevent the major Japanese banks from doing business with Russia’s largest financial institution, Sberbank. Three of Japan’s principal banks—Mizuho Bank, MUFG, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation—have considerable exposure inside Russia since these banks have provided long-term financing for oil and natural gas projects; they are set to lose $4.69 billion, 20 percent of these banks’ expected net annual profits. The government’s Japan Bank for International Cooperation has large investments in Russian gas fields and gas pipelines (including with Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund). This exposure will pose problems for its balance sheets.

Russia retaliated by placing Japan on its list of “unfriendly countries,” whose diplomatic staff must be reduced and whose citizens will have a difficult time getting a visa into Russia.

Japan’s Energy Dependence

On March 31, 2022, as his government pledged to sanction Russian banks, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida told Japan’s parliament, the Diet, that his government would remain involved with Russia’s Sakhalin 2 natural gas and oil project. This project, Kishida said, will provide Japan with “long-term, inexpensive, and stable LNG [liquefied natural gas] supplies.” “It is an extremely important project in terms of our energy security,” he said. “Our plan is not to withdraw.”

Japan’s government owns a significant part of Sakhalin Oil and Gas Development Co (SODECO), which has built and manages the Sakhalin 1 and Sakhalin 2 projects. Four of the investors in Sakhalin 2 are Gazprom (the Russian energy company), Shell, and two Japanese firms (Mitsubishi and Mitsui). About 60 percent of the 9.6 million tons of LNG produced by Sakhalin 2, located on Sakhalin Island (about 28 miles off the coast of Japan), is delivered to Japan. Japanese investment in the oil fields of Sakhalin 1 had been intended to reduce its crude oil reliance on the Middle East (now 80 percent of Japan’s oil comes from the Gulf).

Last December, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation partnered with banks from China (China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China) as well as from Russia (Gazprombank, Sberbank, and VEB) to finance the Arctic LNG 2 Project in Russia’s Gydan Peninsula on the Kara Sea (Arctic Ocean). When this plant comes online, it will provide 19.8 million tons of LNG, twice the current production from Sakhalin 2.

Prime Minister Kishida’s hesitancy to walk away from Russian energy imports requires explanation. Japan imports most of its energy from countries other than Russia. In 2019, Japan imported 88 percent of its energy needs, mostly fossil fuels. These fuels come from a range of countries, which includes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for 58 percent of its crude oil, Australia for 65 percent of its coal, and Australia and Malaysia for 40 percent of its liquefied natural gas. Russia is a small, but important provider of crude oil (9 percent), coal (8.7 percent) and LNG (9 percent). Due to the proximity of Russia’s fuels, and to the price of Russian gas on the spot market, the overall cost of Russian energy is much less than that of energy from the Gulf States. If Japan stopped importing LNG from Sakhalin 2, its bills would immediately go up by between $15 and $25 billion. That is the reason why Prime Minister Kishida has refused to cease energy imports from Russia. Whether Russia will stop exports to Japan or whether it will insist on the trade being denominated in rubles is to be seen (thus far, Russia has only insisted that payment for the gaseous form of national gas be made in rubles).

Tensions in the Sea of Okhotsk

In 1956, the USSR and Japan signed a declaration that promised to settle outstanding issues between the two countries. The USSR agreed that it would hand over two of the four islands (Habomai and Shikotan) “after the conclusion of a Peace Treaty” between the two countries. No such treaty was completed. Each Bluebook over the past decades notes that these small islands form “the most outstanding issue in Japan-Russia relations.” The previous prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, met with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin more than 20 times, but they were not able to make a breakthrough.

These small islands in the Sea of Okhotsk allow Russia to extend its territorial waters into the Pacific Ocean. It is from these passages that Russia’s Pacific and Northern Fleets—based in Fokino and Severomorsk, respectively—traverse the increasingly important Arctic waters and the northern waters of the Pacific (where Russia rubs shoulders with an increased NATO presence). The loss of these islands will be an issue not merely of prestige, but also of Russian commercial ambitions in its northern waters.

It is unlikely that these islands will draw these two countries into any kind of conflict beyond the sanctions that Japan has placed upon Russian banks. But these are dangerous times, and it is impossible to guess exactly what comes next. Any accidental clash between Japan and Russia would trigger Article V of the 1960 treaty that Japan signed with the United States; if that were to happen, it would be a catastrophe.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Less than a week after the start of Russia’s military intervention, Juan Sebastian Gonzalez, senior director of Western Hemisphere affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, in an interview with Voice of America (a State Department asset), stated that “the sanctions against Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments that have economic affiliations with Russia, and that is by design. So, Venezuela will start feeling the pressure; Nicaragua will start feeling the pressure; as will Cuba.” A recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine, which by way of the Council on Foreign Relations serves unofficially as a kind of discussion forum of the U.S. State Department, titled “The Eurasian Nightmare,” defended the thesis that Washington has no choice but to fight Russia and China at the same time. However, Gonzalez hints that the Biden administration’s strategy not only contemplates attacking the main front in the east (Moscow and Beijing), but also opens a front in the south—secondary, but important—against three Latin American countries that have challenged Washington the most in recent years (Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba). The southern front, however, may be broader than what the Colombia-born Juan Gonzalez makes clear.

On March 24, the commander of the U.S. Armed Forces Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, testified before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. She said that although Russia is the “more immediate threat” in Latin America and the Caribbean, China would pose a diplomatic, technological, informational, and military challenge to the United States. Richardson had given similar testimony in the House of Representatives about two weeks earlier, where she also stated that without “U.S. leadership,” Chinese influence in the region could “soon resemble the self-serving predatory influence it now holds in Africa.” She refers to the advance of the Belt and Road Initiative across the African continent since 2013, responsible for unprecedented tens of billions of dollars in Chinese investment in basic infrastructure (energy, telecommunications, ports, railroads, highways, etc.) in exchange for the natural resources China needs to feed its industry, which is responsible for 28.7 percent of all manufacturing produced in the world and consumed globally.

General Richardson’s statements are based on two principles. First, that the United States views Latin America and the Caribbean as its “backyard,” expressed in the Monroe Doctrine since 1823 and put into practice in countless military invasions, coups, and, more recently, hybrid wars against peoples and governments not aligned with Washington. Biden recently said that “Latin America is not our backyard,” but rather that it is “America’s front yard.” Latin Americans do not want to be anyone’s yard, whether front or back. Second, that the United States believes that the foreign policy of the region’s governments should be defined by Washington.

China in Latin America

In 2000, the U.S. Congress set up the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which offers Congress its assessment of China on U.S. national security. In November 2021, the commission’s report had an important chapter on the relations between China and the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean. The report worried about China’s support for what it termed “populist” governments from Argentina to Venezuela. It remarked on the increase in the region’s trade with China: from $18.9 billion (2002) to $295.6 billion (2020), in addition to its growing importance as a source of loans, financing ($137 billion from 2005 to 2020) and direct investments ($58 billion between 2016 and 2020). Due to this investment, China was able to assist the region in lessening the impact of the 2008 financial crisis; this investment created jobs (1.8 million between 1995 and 2016) and decreased poverty (falling from 12 percent in 2002 to 4 percent in 2018). Chinese vaccines rushed in during the pandemic, and Latin American commodity exports to China dampened the burden of the COVID recession.

The U.S.-China Commission worried about the increased connections between China and the region in telecommunications and transportation networks. Huawei’s leadership in 5G in the region as well as Sino-South American partnerships in the development of satellites (21 launched in joint ventures, most of which were with Argentina) are offered as examples. The commission also expressed alarm that China’s control or influence over ports in the region, particularly in the Caribbean, since these could—in the future—be used for military purposes (although there is no indication of any such military use by China or by the Latin American and Caribbean states).

Washington’s Cold War

Washington’s hard-right elements reacted to this report with speed. In February 2022, Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, both Cuban-Americans, introduced the Western Hemisphere Security Strategy Act of 2022 in Congress. This bill, drawing from the commission’s recommendations, proposes that the United States government directly challenge China’s role in the region. It characterizes the existence of China and Russia in the region as a “harmful and malign influence.” The bill is vague and short on details.

Dr. Evan Ellis, a professor at the U.S. Army War College whose testimony was part of the commission’s report, wrote a report in January 2022 for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The report—“Preparing for Deterioration of the Latin America and Caribbean Strategic Environment”—points to the revival “of a particular model of leftist authoritarian populism” in Latin America and the Caribbean. The new governments, he writes, have developed links with China to help them over the COVID recession. The United States, Ellis argues, cannot mobilize sufficient resources for investment in the region because the U.S. Congress is divided and because the private sector is unwilling to take on this mission. He remains skeptical of U.S. policy in the region, particularly as Chinese state-owned companies have been effectively investing in sectors such as construction, mining, energy, and finance.

Ellis recommends four immediate actions, many of them part of what is known as “hybrid war.” First, he says that Washington should promote a media narrative that denounces the leftist governments and their relations with China. Second, the United States should support protest movements against these governments. Third, the United States must deepen its alliances with regional elites. Fourth, the United States must apply sanctions to these left-leaning governments.

Two elections in the coming months could make things more difficult for the United States. In Colombia (May), the main ally of the United States in the region, leftist candidate Gustavo Petro could push the right wing out of power. In Brazil (October), Lula leads the polls against President Jair Bolsonaro.

Ellis suspects that the arrest and imprisonment of Lula had “deepened the radicalism of his leftist populist orientation.” In May 2021, Lula told the Chinese website Guancha: “It’s not possible that every time a Latin American country starts to grow, there is a coup. And in this coup, there is always someone from the U.S., there is always the U.S. ambassador. It is not possible.”

Lula is not a radical, but if he is re-elected president of Brazil, he will bring a realistic attitude toward his country’s development. He has stressed the importance of rebuilding the Latin American and Caribbean regional bloc (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), both of which have been weakened in recent years. Chinese investment and trade are already a key part of Brazil’s plans for its future, but Lula also knows that this partnership must evolve, and Brazil needs to be more than an exporter of commodities to China.

Will the United States be able to roll back the influence of China and Russia on the region? Even Ellis does not feel confident about such an outcome. Along with Senators Rubio and Menendez, Ellis would prefer to destabilize the region than allow it to become a protagonist in a possible new world order.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. Marco Fernandes is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a member of the No Cold War collective. He lives in Shanghai.

This week the people of Argentina are commemorating the 40th anniversary of the April 2, 1982, war to take back the Malvinas archipelago from imperialist Britain. In the English-speaking world, the imperialist media usually calls this Britain’s “Falklands War.”

Six hundred forty-nine Argentine soldiers lost their lives and ultimately the British military held onto their colonialist-era possession of the islands. Yet the military campaign — being a fight against imperialism – is a great point of pride for the people of Argentina. 

Argentina’s military sank the HMS Sheffield and damaged other British warships with Exocet missiles that were sold to them by imperialist France. Anti-imperialist demonstrators filled the streets of Buenos Aires, calling for victory over Britain. 

The fact that Argentina was ruled by a repressive, right-wing military junta didn’t hinder the masses’ support for anti-imperialist action at all.

In fact, the momentum of the anti-imperialist struggle fueled a desire for justice that burned in the hearts of Argentine people. The war to take back the Malvinas ignited a resurgent people’s movement that ended the junta’s rule over Argentina within months.

Possession of the Malvinas had been contested between Spain, France and Britain in the 18th century. The islands could serve as a naval asset – valuable in the colonial mission of dominating South America. 

After winning independence from Spain, the flag of Argentina was hoisted on the Malvinas in 1820, but Britain invaded and stole the archipelago in 1833 and held it for nearly 150 years.

By April 1982, negotiations for possession of the islands had yielded nothing. The junta’s long hold on Argentina’s government was shaky. Runaway inflation and working-class anger against bloody repression led them to launch an invasion to take back the Malvinas as a distraction.

The fact that the war was launched by the Argentine side, and that it was launched by a right-wing government, confused much of the U.S. anti-war movement. The limitations of pacifism prevented them from looking at the world situation in the context of the imperialist epoch. Moreover, the hated Reagan administration initially sided with the Argentine junta and that muddied the waters even more.

Imperialist secret diplomacy

In a 1990 article written during the leadup to the U.S. attack on Iraq, Marxist-Leninist leader Sam Marcy used the example of the Malvinas War to try to strengthen the movement’s understanding of imperialism. He described a moment in the early days of the war when the fog lifted and the relationship between imperialist countries and against all challengers to imperialism was illuminated.

Marcy wrote: “When the Argentine military decided to take the plunge and retake the islands, this greatly upset the reactionary Thatcher regime in Britain, which decided to militarily challenge the Argentine takeover.

“This in turn upset General Alexander Haig, who at that time was secretary of state under the Reagan administration. They had such a chummy relationship with the Argentine fascist military that they forgot the secret agreement the U.S. had with Britain over the Malvinas.

“When Haig was called to London, Thatcher virtually read the riot act to him. She recalled to him the specific secret agreement: that when the British needed military support in the North or South Atlantic, and especially those islands, the U.S. was obligated to give not only the necessary intelligence, but also air reconnaissance, satellite photos and other material assistance as needed.

“Haig’s efforts to persuade Thatcher not to challenge the Argentine military were thwarted when she threatened to break up the agreement altogether, unless Washington supported Britain and lived up to the secret agreement. The Reagan administration, seeing the better part of wisdom, lined up quickly with the Thatcher government against the Argentine military in order to save the alliance, which was far more important to them.”

The imperialist powers side with each other to this day to defend their respective “spheres of influence.” The fact that they each fight for their own interests at times doesn’t shake their alliance. 

The U.S., the European imperialist powers and Japan have the world divided up amongst them. The clear example of how they guard their world dominance is that capitalist Russia, over more than three decades, has been unable to reach a stage in its economic development when it exports capital – a feature of the imperialist state of capitalism. 

The already-existing imperialist countries are united in hemming in Russia and trying to hinder the development of socialist China. At this stage in history, even capitalist countries have to either be an appendage or a proxy of imperialism or they will be starved and punished.

Today, U.S.-led NATO is the most prominent expression of this circumstance. The confusion over Russia’s operation in Ukraine, and of Russia’s defense of the people of the Donbass region, is similar to the U.S. movement’s reaction to Argentina’s war against imperialist Britain. 

The political character of the military junta didn’t matter to the people of Argentina. They cheered the war as a rebellion against imperialism and dealt a death blow to the junta afterward. 

Russia is not led by a fascist military, but in any case, Putin’s character, or the nature of the Russian state, are not the question today. NATO’s expansion strengthens imperialism – U.S. imperialism in particular — and the abolition of NATO should be the rallying cry of the U.S. anti-war movement.

On March 31, dock workers of the Italian port of Genoa observed a 24-hour strike protesting the usage of the port for the transit of arms which are likely to be used in deadly imperialist wars going across the world. The call of the strike was given by USB Italia trade union. Activists from various left, anti-war groups including Potere al Popolo participated in the blockade held at the Ethiopia crossing at the Genoa port and an assembly of workers at Cap in via Albertazzi.

During the protest, workers raised a banner which read “Not a penny, a rifle or a soldier for war“ and also stated that Italian ports and airstrips must not be used to make arms deliveries for imperialist war. The protesting workers also resolved for a greater participation in national mobilization of Italian workers on April 22 in Rome against the anti-worker policies of the Mario Draghi government.

Dock workers in Genoa have a legacy of anti-war interventions as the port has become a major transit point for cargo ships carrying weapons allegedly destined for use in the ongoing wars in Yemen and Ukraine. Earlier, in the first week of March, dock workers of Genoa protested the disembarking of camouflage tanks at the port from a ferry coming from Palermo, allegedly destined for Ukraine. On March 14, cargo workers at the Pisa airport refused to load cartons of arms and ammunition in planes destined to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Workers and trade unions in Italy have already denounced the transfer of arms and ammunition to Ukraine from Italian seaports and airports disguised as humanitarian aid.

The USB Italia union has stated that “on behalf of the interest of the US and NATO, the Mario Draghi government in the country is dragging Italy into more imperialist conflicts with the sending of our resources and the adoption of sanctions. The price of such conflict will be paid by workers with austerity and layoffs. As port workers have no intention of staying indifferent in the face of the new war winds that are blowing in Europe again”

“Not a penny, a rifle, or a soldier for war. Let’s block our gates to gun traffic. It’s time for the labor variant,” added the USB.

Potere al Popolo has demanded that there should not be any increase in military spending and that public money should be used for urgent social measures. “It is the workers more than anything else paying very dearly the price increase, the crisis of raw materials and energy etc. Italian workers are the ones with the lowest salaries in Europe. We want the government to stop the military escalation. This is why we stand by the workers who oppose the war.”

Source: Peoples Dispatch

On March 24, 1999 – 23 years ago – the U.S./NATO armed forces started a 78-day long aerial bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The brutal bombing campaign targeted civilians, city centers, public transportation, schools, hospitals, hotels and even the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China. 

More than a thousand aircraft were used to drop more than 3,000 cruise missiles and about 80,000 tons of bombs. More than 3,000 people were killed, and up to 20,000 seriously injured. 

NATO flattened 25,000 residential buildings, 300 miles of roads, almost 375 miles of railroads, nearly 40 bridges, 100 schools and childcare facilities, 30 hospitals and 14 airfields. 

The bombardment ended June 10 with the declaration of a “NATO victory,” as Wikipedia puts it. The real background to NATO’s war on Yugoslavia can’t be found on Wikipedia, however. 

Reprinted below is an article by Marxist leader Sam Marcy, originally published in 1992. It also appeared as a chapter in the book “NATO in the Balkans,” published in 1998, only months before the bombing began.

NATO is a U.S.-commanded military alliance established in 1949 as a military force aimed against the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist states. NATO now acts to enforce Washington’s dominance in Europe and to intervene in other parts of the world. NATO’s war on Yugoslavia asserted suzerainty over the Balkans.

After the overturn of the Soviet Union, NATO was expanded to every country of Eastern Europe to lock in place capitalist restoration of the formerly socialist countries. The threatened expansion of NATO’s military force to Ukraine, on the border of Russia, along with NATO naval operations in the Black Sea, are direct provocations of Russia. As Leon Panetta — White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton, CIA Director and Secretary of Defense under Barack Obama — explained, the conflict in Ukraine is a NATO “proxy war” against Russia.

How imperialism broke up Yugoslav Socialist Federation

By Sam Marcy
June 11, 1992

It is impossible to seriously consider the Yugoslav situation without first taking into account some pertinent aspects of history and politics.

The imperialist conspiracy to break up the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia didn’t start yesterday. It didn’t start with the U.N. Security Council voting for sanctions. It didn’t start with the earlier meeting of the European Economic Community in Spain.

It started a long time ago, when the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), led by Tito (Josip Broz) and the Communist Party, defeated the royalist, reactionary and pro-fascist forces of Col. Draza Mihajlovic and his Chetniks.

The front mobilized the workers, peasants, progressive intellectuals and thousands of middle class people in the Partisan guerrilla army that defeated the German Nazi and Italian fascist invaders and their quisling regimes.

The U.S. and the British until 1943 recognized Mihajlovic and his Nazi-sympathizing coalition and refused recognition to the representatives of the Yugoslav people organized in the AVNOJ.

Then, seeing that the progressive and revolutionary forces were on the verge of scoring a historic victory, the imperialists suddenly changed sides and began to give token support to the Partisans. They did so largely to disrupt the socialist solidarity between the Yugoslav leaders and the Soviet Union.

The very same forces which fought in Yugoslavia against the revolution, particularly the royalist riff-raff and pro-fascist groupings, have all these years been promoted, secured, cultivated and supported financially by the U.S. and European imperialists. Now they are being pushed forward as an authentic leadership to replace the Yugoslav government in Belgrade.

Monarchist democrats?

In recent days, the imperialist press have written about a “democratic opposition” in Serbia. Who are they?

There is “the Democratic Movement of Serbia, which embraces the old monarchy and enjoys the support of many Serbian traditionalists.” (Washington Post, May 31, 1992)

What are these monarchist traditions? Suppression of the Serbian people! These idle rich have for decades been living it up in the decadent casinos and watering places of Europe.

The Post continued: “Crown Prince Alexander — the son of the last king of Yugoslavia who was forced into exile during World War II — met recently in Washington with senior White House and State Department officials. This week he expressed his willingness to preside over a constitutional monarchy in cooperation with the democratic movement and spoke of a coalition government that would fall into the mainstream of European democracy. It seems likely that the opposition will win the backing of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which reportedly has dispatched senior clerics to meet with the prince.”

This stooge, who is ordered around by U.S. imperialism like an errand boy, has expressed his willingness to head up a “democratic government.” And giving him their blessing are the reactionary clergy that supported the Mihajlovic forces. This “Democratic Movement of Serbia” is nothing but the old reactionaries in a new form.

They are now boycotting the elections in Serbia because they haven’t got the forces to contest them. The sanctions against Serbia just passed by the U.N. Security Council (the same council that okayed sanctions and then outright imperialist war against Iraq) are timed to coincide with and disrupt the elections.

An editorial headed “Popular Opposition” (!) in the Financial Times of London (June 2, 1992) calls for the isolation of Serbia: “The demonstration inside Belgrade by some 50,000 anti-war protesters was an indication that popular opposition to [Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s] policies is growing, at least in the capital. However, the peace movement in Serbia is mainly middle-class based.” 

In other words, it’s a bourgeois, pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist opposition. The demonstrations seem to be precisely timed to undermine the government of Milosevic.

“It would be an illusion to believe,” concedes the London big business paper, “that it finds much of an echo in the rural Serb and Montenegrin population, not least the Serbs in Bosnia who look on the Belgrade government as their main protector and champion.”

A valuable admission from the mouth of the enemy.

What’s missing here is any word on the attitude of the workers. Notwithstanding the political confusion caused by the maneuvers of the principal imperialist powers involved in the current struggle, the workers of these areas support the Yugoslav government.

Most deeply involved among the European imperialist powers are the Germans and Austrians and, to a lesser extent, France and Italy. That’s who dominated the European Community conference on the Balkans held recently in Spain. …

Germany made it clear it would recognize Slovenia and Croatia. By Dec. 23, 1991, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia indicated they too were moving toward secession.

Imperialism and self-determination

What is the Leninist point of view in a case like this? Is the secession of these republics from Yugoslavia an example of self-determination?

Each and every nation has a right to determine its destiny. This can mean integration; it can mean joining in a federation; it can also mean exercising the right to leave, to secession. In any case it has to express the will of the nation or nationality.

But when the choice is the product of external imperialist pressures of an economic, political and even military character, that is another matter.

Was the president of Croatia defending genuine self-determination when he openly called for the U.S. Sixth Fleet to come to Dubrovnik? (CNN Prime News, May 29, 1992; the president spoke in English.)

The strategy of the imperialists has been to lure the republics away from the Yugoslav federation.

But they are not united. There is a struggle between Germany and the U.S. over who will get the dominant position in the entire Balkan area. Each has its own forum. Germany has used the European Community as its instrument. The U.S. is using the United Nations.

Germany and the U.S. are both seeking to make pawns of the republics. The U.S. may at one time support the Yugoslav Federal Republic and later come out against it; Germany may support Croatia and Slovenia at one point and later change. It all depends strictly on the military and political exigencies of the situation. But each is attempting to win overall control for itself.

Rich vs. poor republics

As in so many other areas of the world, there is a more developed so-called northern part of Yugoslavia where the bourgeoisie is stronger, and a southern, poorer part. Slovenia and Croatia are more developed, whereas Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as the province of Kosovo in Serbia, are less developed.

As of 1975, Croatia was the most industrialized and prosperous. Said the New Columbia Encyclopedia of that year: “More than one-third of Croatia is forested and lumber is a major export. The region is the leading coal producer of Yugoslavia and also has deposits of bauxite, copper, petroleum and iron ore. The republic is the most industrialized and prosperous area of Yugoslavia.”

Since then, Slovenia has overtaken Croatia as the most developed.

Henry Kamm wrote in the New York Times on July 13, 1987, about the rich-poor split in Yugoslavia. “The southern republics — Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro as well as the province of Kosovo — are subsidized by the more prosperous areas through a federal fund and direct contributions. … Slovenia [is aware] that its 2 million people have the highest level of economic development among the republics and provinces that make up the federal country of 23 million. Slovenia is a small Slavic republic. The economic crisis has sharpened the contrast between the rich and the poor.”

Kamm interviewed people in Slovenia who resented the southern republics. Milos Kobe said, “Fantastic sums go to the south and they don’t know how to use them economically.” A man named Kmecl told the U.S. reporter, “We cannot invest in renewal because our capital is going for the development of the underdeveloped. A small country like this cannot afford this. After 40 years of this policy, [the southern republics] are still not developed and we can’t maintain the pace. We’re immobilized. A technologically highly developed society like Slovenia always needs more for its own science and culture while the underdeveloped need more for social protection than they produce.”

We have heard this refrain before. It sounds just like the rich bourgeois elements in any capitalist country who complain that they have to subsidize the poor. They forget that their riches come from the sweat and blood of the workers in every one of these republics and that they became industrialized only because of the socialization of the means of production and centralized planning. This is what protected them from the ravages of imperialist penetration. The federation was like a security blanket that helped them develop.

The imperialists have lured the bourgeois elements of Slovenia and Croatia in particular with the promise of becoming an integral part of the European Community and sharing in its alleged prosperity. They think they’ll get a market for their products and be able to deal with the West Europeans on an equal basis, without being “encumbered” by the poorer republics in the federation. All of them, including Serbia, are being lured to invest their foreign exchange in Europe or America and thereby become (they hope) a prosperous part of the imperialist system. …

Socialist federation a great breakthrough

It is impossible to understand the situation in Yugoslavia if we accept the imperialist premise that what has happened is merely the surfacing of national antagonisms that had been smothered or driven underground following the Yugoslav Revolution.

The establishment of the socialist federation of Yugoslavia was a historic victory. For the first time, a united front of the Balkan countries was formed that was able to detach them from imperialist domination, either Allied or Axis. It was the product of a revolutionary upsurge that engulfed the working class movements of Europe.

The federation developed over a period of years. Its collective presidency was a progressive new political conception. Each republic had an opportunity to run the federation for a specified time and in rotation. The same concept prevailed in the structure of the communist parties. They were also organized on the basis of the collective principle that the party in each republic had an opportunity to run the federated communist party.

What opened the gates to imperialism? Unquestionably, a contributing factor was the unfortunate and ill-considered split between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform in 1948 and thereafter isolated from the socialist camp. Years later an attempt was made by the USSR leadership to repair the situation so Yugoslavia could exist without leaning on or getting aid from imperialism. But the socialized, centralized economy of Yugoslavia had already been damaged.

The gates to imperialism opened wide when Yugoslavia established its so-called workers’ control of management. This sounded highly democratic — a step away from the rigid, centralized control that stifled the creative energy of the working class. Now the workers’ talents and abilities to manage Yugoslavia’s affairs would be utilized.

Workers’ control as a step away from capitalism is progressive. But it’s a backward step when it leads away from centralized socialist planning. The concept of workers’ control soon degenerated into managerial control and the abandonment of centralized planning. Yugoslavia fell into the coils of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. By 1981, it was completely dominated by world finance capital. It had opened wide the gates to so-called free enterprise.

Decentralization, then dismemberment

This intensified competition among the various enterprises in each republic and among the republics themselves in a thoroughly bourgeois manner. Under such conditions, socialist solidarity was lost and more significantly the standard of living plummeted to such an extent that workers were no longer able to purchase basic necessities.

By 1991, the new government had acquired a debt of $31 billion. Unemployment was over a million and inflation was 200% .

From free enterprise, the necessity arose for free, sovereign, independent republics. Economic decentralization soon led to political decentralization. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia had already begun.

This was not an automatic, spontaneous development. No sooner had there developed the greater autonomy of the republics than the imperialists began to funnel funds into the republics with a view to encouraging and promoting separatist and secessionist objectives. It is they who unloosed the forces of virulent national hatred.

The stimulation of national hatred is a byproduct of imperialist finance capital’s investment in Yugoslavia.

Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, is also a product of that tendency. From the earliest days of his ascendancy to CP leadership, the imperialist press played him up as a “charismatic personality.” They supported his nationalist demagogy. It was only later that they found it might become disadvantageous to them if he went too far.

It must be taken into account that there was no unified policy of the imperialists in Yugoslavia. Germany, Italy, France and the U.S. had divergent views on how to approach the situation. Each had its own sordid material interests, which often are hidden. Their policies can also be mistaken. It is not an easy task to stimulate, promote and finance nationalist tendencies in the republics and then get them to carry out the wishes of individual imperialist countries without arousing all sorts of internecine struggles.

The very forces that they stimulated and brought into motion got out of control.

Each imperialist power, even if it has no direct economic interest in Yugoslavia, is inevitably drawn into the struggle so as not to be left out of the picture. Each tries to find a basis for a relationship with Yugoslavia that will bring it advantage.

It is no wonder that the U.S. State Department did not always know what to do. But one thing they were expert at: financing the counterrevolution.

It is true that earlier they had tangentially supported the Yugoslav regime. They felt a so-called nonaligned entity was useful in the struggle against the USSR. But after Tito died there was no basis for tolerating any remaining communist experiments. Then the dismantling began in earnest — not overtly, but covertly.

Secret diplomacy is one of the most important weapons of imperialism. But the different imperialists often find themselves at loggerheads. While each of the imperialists would want to outdo the others in exerting influence over a dominant Serbia, they are not in favor of a Milosevic who postures as an extreme nationalist and who occasionally flouts European and U.S. intervention.

Role of Milosevic

Milosevic is not very different from any bourgeois nationalist in the oppressed countries. Certainly we are opposed to the ideology of a Bonapartist, especially if he has degenerated with the abandonment of communism. But that’s no excuse for supporting imperialist intervention.

Really, Milosevic is not much different from Saddam Hussein. His espousal of bourgeois nationalism is no reason for us to fall on all fours and allow U.S. imperialism to run roughshod over the country.

It reduces itself again to the U.S., Britain and France, notwithstanding their differences, attempting to do what they did in Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Nicaragua and elsewhere. The fact that it is taking place in Europe does not change the situation at all.

It is not impossible that Serbia or a coalition of some of the republics will reunify on the basis of socialist conceptions. In any event, a federation, even on a bourgeois basis, is bound to be more progressive and productive, more independent of imperialism, than if they are cut up into small principalities with no real power in the world community.

We in this country tend to think of the oppressed nations as mainly those in the less developed world — Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and most of Asia. Of course, the bourgeoisie will turn heaven and earth to deny that there is national oppression in the U.S. From kindergarten on, they drum it into the heads of everyone that this is “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

But not well publicized is the fact that national oppression exists also in Europe.

Just saying that one nationality in the Balkans is more developed industrially than another blurs the relationship of oppressor to oppressed. For instance, Slovenia may be more developed with a higher standard of living, but once it is involved in an internecine war and becomes completely dependent on imperialism, it may well find itself in a position of subordination and potentially of oppression.

The tendency in the capitalist press is to obliterate the relationship between oppressor and oppressed and present the internecine struggle as a purely Balkan affair between the nationalities. Overlooked entirely is that for a period of time there existed a federation that not only increased the standard of living but was able on its own to play a more or less important role, even on the international arena.

Under present conditions, particularly if the war continues, all the nationalities risk being reduced to pawns of the imperialist powers. It may be true that the Yugoslav regime can hold out for a considerable period against imperialist sanctions, but even should it come out victorious it will have been drained of much of its life blood and material resources, assuming it is able to overcome overt and covert imperialist domination.

Bourgeois radicals tend to neglect the class essence of the struggle in Yugoslavia. No matter how carefully they may try to analyze the relations among the nationalities, if they leave out the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between the national bourgeoisie and the imperialist banks and industrialists, they are left completely at the mercy of monopoly capitalism.

Proletariat is leaderless

Of course, the most important aspect of the situation in Yugoslavia is the position of the proletariat itself. The proletariat at the present time is leaderless, the Communist Party having abandoned its vanguard role as leader in the struggle for socialist construction.

Only the proletariat can play a consistent internationalist role. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, by virtue of its overriding interest in overturning socialist and state property and promoting private property, not only sharpens its class relations with the proletariat but promotes and stimulates antagonisms between the nationalities.

No nation in modern times is free from class rule. Every state rules in the interests of either the workers or the bourgeoisie. The mere fact it is small or exploited by an imperialist power may obscure that fact but does not invalidate it. This must be borne in mind in approaching the national question. One can easily get lost in the struggle for nationality, for freedom from oppression, and forget the existence of an exploiting class within the nation.

In the epoch of the bourgeoisie, a nation is merely an instrument of domination by the propertied and exploiting class. Of course, the struggle against the imperialist oppressor must be led by a proletarian vanguard to be effective and the duty of the vanguard is to mobilize all the progressive elements in society on a democratic and anti-imperialist basis. An excellent example of this was the Yugoslav struggle for liberation.

The current Yugoslav regime is in large measure a product of the events in the Soviet Union, beginning with the Gorbachev administration. His reactionary program accelerated all the social antagonisms in Yugoslavia as elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Certainly the sweeping bourgeois restorationist measures taken by the new regimes in the East and particularly the swallowing up of the German Democratic Republic could not but have a detrimental effect on class and socialist consciousness in Yugoslavia.

The leadership, such as it was, panicked under the impact of these events. They not only changed the name of the party, they began to compete with each other over who would go further in bourgeois economic reforms.

The monolithic imperialist press have never had such a clear field to lie and deceive the masses, now that they are no longer restrained by the existence of a socialist camp. The absence of a strong and vigorous working class press also facilitates the task of the bourgeoisie. They are riding high.

But then comes one of those elemental and spontaneous risings, as in Los Angeles, which demonstrate the fragility of bourgeois rule over the working class and the oppressed masses.

Truth crushed to earth will rise again, and with it so will the working class.

On Thursday, March 24, a demonstration was organized at the Piraeus port region of Athens, protesting the docking of the French battleship Charles De Gaulle at the port. The rally was called by the Greek Committee for International Detente and Peace (EEDYE) and the Panhellenic Union of Merchant Marine Engineers. Hundreds of cadres of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), as well as trade unionists from the All Workers Militant Front (PAME) and Federation of Greek Women (OGE), and student youth groups like the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) and the Students Struggle Front (MAS) participated in the rally stating, “Piraeus is a port of the peoples and not of the war and the imperialists.”

902.gr reported that a small group of protesters also raised a banner from a boat in the sea near the French battleship which read “stop all interventions”. Earlier this month, KKE activists had painted NATO ships red in the same port in a protest against Greece’s involvement in the war in Ukraine.

By March 25, the French navy’s aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle had docked at the NATO naval base at Souda Bay on the island of Crete. It is likely to join a series of military exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean. Anti-imperialist sections in Greece have been protesting against the country’s collaboration in the US-NATO led endeavors in the Mediterranean. In the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine, Greek communists have intensified their campaign to demand that the government maintain neutrality and distance Greece from the war. According to reports, on March 24, Greek defense minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos met the French minister of armed forces Florence Parly and signed a deal aboard the Charles de Gaulle worth EUR 4 billion (USD 4.4 billion) for the sale of three advanced-technology frigates to the Hellenic Navy and six Rafale fighter jets to the Hellenic Air Force.

Regarding the protests on Thursday, the Labor Center of Piraeus stated that “The interests of the workers are in conflict with the aspirations and objectives of all those who are currently waging the war. We must not allow workers to become their cannon fodder.”

In 2020, Greece had ratified a new defense cooperation agreement with the US to upgrade the Souda base and integrate it into the existing circuit of bases that includes bases in Alexandroupolis, Larissa, Stefanovikio, Magnesia and  Araxos in order to facilitate NATO maneuvers in the region.

Source: Peoples Dispatch

Workers and trade unions in Italy have protested the transfer of arms and ammunition to Ukraine from Italian seaports and airports disguised as humanitarian aid to the war-torn country. On March 14, cargo workers at the Pisa airport refused to load cartons of arms and ammunition in planes destined to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Earlier, in the first week of March, dock workers at the port of Genoa also alerted that they had seen ‘camouflaged’ tanks disembarking at the port from a ferry coming from Palermo, allegedly destined for Ukraine. Trade unions like USB Italia, along with the Communist Youth Front (FGC), Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), Italian Peace and Disarmament Network, and others, protested the shipments of arms disguised as humanitarian aid and demanded an inquiry by a parliamentary commission into the issue.

As the war in Ukraine continues, several countries, including the US and the EU bloc, have imposed heavy sanctions on Russia and demanded it to stop the war immediately. On the other hand, the same countries are sending arms and ammunition to the military and paramilitary forces in Ukraine, which has led to an escalation of the conflict. As the Ukrainian government started distributing arms to its population to fight the Russians, an imminent threat of militarization and proliferation of armed gangs looms over the region even after the war ends. Progressive sections across Europe, which have condemned the war in Ukraine, have also urged EU countries to arrange the much needed medical and humanitarian aid to Ukraine instead of sending arms and ammunition.

On March 6, the Autonomous Collective of Port Workers said, “we have seen several times the vehicles of the Italian Army moving for the drills, for some time we have seen dozens of Iveco military trucks destined for the Tunisian army, we have seen hundreds of Toyota pick-ups going to Tripoli via Tunisia. We’ve seen many things and asked ourselves many questions, we see Bahri every 20 days escorted and supervised. Today for the first time we see this, well-hidden tanks disembarked from the ferry coming from Palermo, unconfirmed rumors say they are destined for Ukraine, one thing we are sure of is the economy of war, arms trafficking is the cause of the conflicts, the issue is delicate but for us a deadline exists, commercial ports cannot become the hub of military logistics under any circumstances.”

Dock workers in Genoa have a legacy of anti-war interventions. In 2019, they had protested the docking of Saudi ship Bahri Yanbu carrying weapons allegedly destined for use in the ongoing war in Yemen.

The USB Union in Pisa demanded the civil airport air traffic control authorities to immediately block these death flights disguised as “humanitarian” aid from their facilities. They also urged workers to continue refusing to load weapons and explosives that are going to intensify the war.

The Italian Peace and Disarmament Network reported that the ongoing ‘humanitarian missions’ from Italian airports act as a real international military “air bridge” towards the base of Rzeszow in Eastern Poland, which has been functioning as the center station of the USA Logistics Command. The Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) demanded a parliamentary inquiry into arms trafficking going on at Italian airports and seaports in the name of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. The Communist Youth Front (FGC) condemned the Mario Draghi-led Italian government’s complacency in escalating the war in Ukraine and applauded the workers of the Pisa airport and the dockworkers at Genoa who refused to become accomplices in an imperialist war.

Source: Peoples Dispatch

Thousands have taken to the streets across Italy to protest against NATO and call for peace as the war in Ukraine completes its fourth week. At a time when governments have focused only on condemning Russia for the current situation, left activists have sought to point out the pivotal role of NATO in escalating tensions between the two countries in the days prior to the Russian invasion. Now, instead of calling for peace and diplomacy, it is fanning the flames of war.

Questions have also been raised about the role of NATO historically. Many reject the claim that it is a defensive military partnership and argue that it is a tool of US domination in Europe and across the world, pointing to its direct involvement in the destruction of Afghanistan, Libya, Yugoslavia, and other countries in helping maintain US hegemony.

The anti-NATO sentiment surging across Italy today builds on decades of longstanding struggles against the alliance and against the imposition of the US model of militarism and its foreign policy. Italy’s aggressive response to the war in Ukraine is directly shaped by its allegiance to NATO and the US and seemingly is against the pacifist will of the people.

Arms and sanctions, escalation of war

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Italy pledged that it would work with its “NATO allies to respond immediately, with unity and determination”. It proceeded to announce on February 26 that it was joining the European Commission in imposing economic sanctions such as cutting off Russian banks from the SWIFT system, placing restrictions on the Russian Central Bank, issuing targeted sanctions against individuals and entities, and declaring it would combat “disinformation and other forms of hybrid warfare.”

On February 28, Prime Minister Mario Draghi proposed a decree to send “military vehicles, material and equipment for the Ukrainian government,” joining the efforts of other NATO countries to pour fuel on the fire. The decree was approved by the parliament with almost complete unanimity, with the exception of a small minority of MPs including Matteo Mantero of the left-wing party Potere al Popolo. Talking to Peoples Dispatch, Giuliano Brunetti of Potere al Popolo pointed out that “apart from those isolated voices, all the political parties of the establishment agree with the sending of weapons to Ukraine.”

Leftists and progressive groups have warned about sending weapons to Ukraine and several protests have even been organized in the ports to block the shipments. Brunetti said that sending weapons could lead to a dangerous outcome as “we have absolutely no idea who is going to get those weapons.”

While the Italian political establishment has fallen in lockstep with NATO orientations, in addition to opposition from progressives, some members of the Italian military have voiced concern. “Leaders of the Italian army are opposed to sending weapons because they know perfectly well that those weapons are useless and actually we are creating the conditions for a further bloodshed in this situation,” Brunetti highlighted.

Italy in NATO

The impact of Italy’s participation in NATO has consequences far beyond those seen today in its response to Ukraine. Its very entrance into NATO was part of the post-WWII strategy of the US to subordinate its former enemies in order to keep them out of the sphere of influence of its former ally, the Soviet Union: “Aside from  Italy’s strategic position in the Mediterranean, the power of the Communist Party was the main reason for the  American involvement in Italy. The United States did not want to lose a strategically placed European country to the Soviet Union.”

NATO itself acknowledges that the Communist Party, which was consistently against NATO, “played a pivotal role in the Resistance during the Second World War and was the second largest political party in the post-war period.”

With the victory of the conservative Christian Democrats in the 1948 elections, the US achieved its goal and on April 4, 1949 Italy was one of the 12 countries that signed the North Atlantic Treaty that led to the formation of NATO.

NATO’s occupation of Italy

As part of its commitment to NATO, Italy has become a strategic military staging ground for the US military. Over the past several decades, at least seven US military bases have been established in the country, as well as over 100 US military installations. The strategic command of the Sixth Fleet of the US Navy that controls all of the Mediterranean Sea is located in Naples, in the south of Italy. Sicily is home to high-tech systems of the US Military and on the island of Sardinia, the US military tests artillery, including uranium bullets that are harmful for those handling them and for those that live in the surrounding areas.

This has converted Italy into a launchpad for military aggression. Brunetti said that “Italy has been used during the last decades as a giant airfleet carrier for NATO missions against other countries. For example, when NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, the strategic bombers took off from Italy.”

Additionally, the country has become a hosting ground for part of the US’ vast arsenal of nuclear weapons despite Italy itself being barred from producing them. This has been a major point of friction especially given the mass anti-nuclear movement in Italy in the 1980s. “Even though we voted to close nuclear plants in a referendum, we still have nuclear warheads on our soil,” Brunetti said.

For Brunetti, this amounts to an occupation, “We are occupied by the US Navy. We are occupied by the US land forces. We are occupied by the US air forces. We have around 100 nuclear warheads in our country,” he said.

Italy’s role as a subordinate partner in the alliance means that Italians have more in common with those that NATO attacks than those that control it. The 20 victims of the Cermis massacre who were killed by two reckless US Marine Corps pilots from NATO’s Aviano Air Base, were denied justice as the pilots were whisked off to a US military court and found not guilty.

Brunetti noted that “We see NATO not as a defensive alliance, but actually as the boot that is stomping on the heads of the people across the world. It’s an instrument for the domination of the oceans by the United States of America, and we would like to be liberated from this military occupation.”

Atlanticism or bust

The political reaction of the Italian state to the war in Ukraine reflects the overall pattern of the Italian political class’ subservience to NATO. Brunetti criticized the fact that “all major political parties from center left to center right (including the extreme right that is supposedly nationalist and in favor of the nation’s interests), accept the fact that Italy is a NATO member and do not even consider the possibility of leaving NATO.”

In addition to having its territory occupied by US and NATO military installations, troops, weapons and more, Italy has specific political and economic responsibilities to fulfill as a member. One of these is that 2% of the national GDP has to be spent on defense, such as the arms and weapons industry. When NATO launched its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003, Italy was not able to have an independent position, but was obliged to take part in the invasions “against the will of millions of Italians.”

Brunetti said that “the mood of the Italian population has always been pacifist and of neutrality due to our history of the fascist dictatorship and having had colonies. But this pacifism is unfortunately impossible under the NATO umbrella.”

This lack of alignment between the will of the people and the actions of the ruling class is due to the loyalty of Italy’s elite class to Atlanticism. For Brunetti, this concept refers to “the special link, the special relationship that we as Italy have, not with the ordinary people of the United States, but with the ruling elite of the United States, the warmongers, the genocidal elite and so on.”

While liberal and conservative pundits have used the war in Ukraine to emphasize the importance of NATO and its centrality in defending countries across Europe, the struggle to denounce the alliance and its attacks against the people of the world intensifies.

“Our struggle against NATO is a struggle against occupying forces, and it is also a struggle for our sovereignty,” Brunetti stated, “It’s a struggle to be able to build a foreign policy, which is based on solidarity and cooperation and not on military warfare.”

Source: Peoples Dispatch

Jeff Bezos’ $500 million yacht was a hot news item back in February. The ship was so large that in order to move it from a Dutch shipyard a bridge in Rotterdam would have to be disassembled.

That obscene display of wealth by the union-busting Amazon boss could easily have built housing for over a thousand homeless families. Yet the media is now silent about Bezos’ yacht.

Instead the internet is buzzing about yachts belonging to Russian billionaires being seized. Why are rich Russian scoundrels called “oligarchs” while U.S. billionaires are treated like movie stars?

The different treatment even extends to dictionaries. The Oxford dictionary featured by the Google search engine gives this definition for oligarch: “(especially in Russia) a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence.”

Who has more political influence than U.S. billionaires? They control the U.S. government from the top to bottom.

They often run for office themselves like the former money bags mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Supreme Court justices are groomed in their corporate law firms and Ivy League law schools.

The wealthy and powerful have been running the U.S. since before 1776. Nearly three out of four signers of the Declaration of Independence owned enslaved Africans.

The U.S. Constitution was largely written by those who had a financial interest in the government taking over the debts of the states. This was shown by historian Charles Beard in “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.” 

Red, white and blue oligarchs are immensely richer than the Russian variety. The 400 richest U.S. billionaires last year had a total wealth of $4.5 trillion.

That’s 12 times as much as the $375 billion stash of Russia’s billionaires. 

Wall Street’s empire controls vast areas that the Roman emperors never even knew existed. The U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet threatens China while throttling the Pacific Ocean like it’s Lake Michigan. 

Fortunes are theft

The French novelist Balzac allegedly wrote that “behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” Gustavus Myers wanted to see if that was true.  

Apologists for the super rich claimed that they got their dough honestly by hard work and smarts. Myers found otherwise in his “History of the Great American Fortunes,” published a century ago.

U.S. tycoons got to the top of the heap not only from slavery, child labor, low wages, broken strikes and dangerous working conditions. Myers’ investigation proved that just as crucial for the captains of industry was breaking laws and stealing from other capitalists.

John D. Rockefeller ― the founder of Big Oil who became the world’s first billionaire ― had his brother bomb a rival oil refinery in Buffalo, New York. 

The Astors become the hemisphere’s biggest slumlords by taking the profits stolen from Indigenous nations in the fur trade and investing it in New York City real estate. Also necessary was bribing Michigan territorial governor Lewis Cass. New York city council members were paid off in a waterfront land grab.

A whole series of U.S. billionaires are war profiteers. The Du Ponts’ fortune hit the big time with World War I. They used the profits to buy up General Motors.  

In the years leading up to his presidency, Donald Trump was so tied in to organized crime that the state of New Jersey refused at first to give him a gambling license.

The Hearst family’s media fortune includes the San Francisco Chronicle, 23 other newspapers, dozens of TV stations and ESPN, which is jointly owned with Disney. These outlets attack Russia and ignore the neo-Nazi gangs in Ukraine that function like a Ku Klux Klan.

According to “Citizen Hearst,” by W. A. Swanberg, the Hearst riches began before the U.S. Civil War in a Missouri lead mine. George Hearst didn’t hire miners; he bought miners who were enslaved Africans.

If an honest title search was conducted into the origins of the biggest fortunes it would find that they were based on theft. It’s tens of millions of unpaid and underpaid workers who actually produced their wealth.

Birth of the oligarchs

Karl Marx pointed out that it was the African Holocaust and the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas that jumpstarted the capitalist world market. He described capitalism’s birth as “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” 

The origin of the Russian billionaires is much more recent. It was the U.S. capitalist government that’s responsible. The Pentagon spent at least $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union.

Under this unrelenting pressure, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev threw in the towel. The door was open for overthrowing socialism. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund demanded the privatization of the industries that had been built by the working class.

Russian oligarchs never would have been able to steal trillions of dollars of socialist property without Boris Yeltsin’s assault on the Congress of People’s Deputies. Hundreds of people were killed there in October 1993. 

The U.S. media either applauded the massacre or were silent about it. Their attitude was much the same about the bloody U.S. wars against Panama, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Yet we’re supposed to believe them when they tell us the Russian Federation is committing war crimes in Ukraine.

The 1993 massacre allowed a fire sale of Soviet assets that were gobbled up by the new Russian tycoons. One of the reasons the wealthy hate Belarus is that it was the only former Soviet Republic that didn’t give away the bulk of its nationalized property.

The Russian billionaires have invested hundreds of billions in London and New York City money markets. This flight of capital helped prop up the U.S. dollar and British pound. 

The oligarchs in the former Soviet Republics are justly hated by the poor and working people there. The working class there will have to deal with them like the workers did in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

We have our own oligarchs to deal with. They own half the earth and are the enemies of humankind.

Don’t let our struggle against racism and poverty be derailed by a war drive against Russia.

On March 3, the Department of Homeland Security designated Ukraine for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months. 

What is Temporary Protected Status?

TPS gives exemption from deportation, eligibility to apply for work authorization, and the possibility to be given authorization to travel outside the U.S. While TPS is not directly a path to legal residency or citizenship, it does not prevent you from filing for residency or citizenship. 

The Department of Homeland Security decides what countries are eligible for Temporary Protected Status. They say they base their decision on what they call “temporary conditions” – an ongoing armed conflict or an environmental disaster, for example. 

So is Ukraine being granted TPS a bad thing?

Of course not. The U.S. and NATO engaged in conflict with Russia through Ukraine. The least they could do is offer Ukrainians some measure of safe passage. (Of course, leave it to the fascist elements of the Ukrainian military and police to halt, harass, and murder non-white, non-Christian refugees at the border.) 

What’s the problem then?

At issue is the double standard upheld by U.S. imperialism. In a better world, migrants and refugees would not need to rely on whether their country is eligible for Temporary Protected Status – we could travel and begin a path to citizenship anywhere in the world, for any reason. After all, multinational corporations have that freedom now. 

Further, the countries currently designated for TPS are countries either directly or indirectly under attack by U.S. imperialism. Myanmar, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen are on the list of eligible countries.

The U.S. military, via AFRICOM, occupies and bombs Somalia, for example. 

Somalia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, South Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen are under the attack of U.S. sanctions, that is, economic warfare. 

Saudi Arabia, with the help of U.S. funding and arms, bombs Yemen regularly. El Salvador is still struggling decades after the U.S.-backed coup. And, of course, Syria has been the target of a U.S. proxy war campaign for nearly a decade. And so on and so on. 

Meanwhile, there are still plenty of nations either under attack or reeling from intervention by the U.S., whose people now struggle tooth-and-nail to be able to live in the U.S., the nation that caused their displacement in the first place. 

Undocumented students and workers have led numerous struggles for extending and maintaining TPS, for the DREAM Act, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), in many cases successfully. Migrants from all over the world fight to claim asylum, being forced to prove to the same system that displaced them that they qualify for asylum. Even Iraqis and Afghans, promised a life in the U.S. in exchange for military cooperation, have to prove their case.

That Ukraine has gained Temporary Protected Status, after having its fascist coup and fascist military and police being backed and funded by the United States, is yet another page in the book against U.S. imperialism.