Western imperialism’s military stalemate in Ukraine is continuing as the long-mooted Spring counter-offensive by Kiev has yet to take place. No major counter-offensive against the well-consolidated Russian forces is now expected to take place until the summer months in an ongoing war that is beginning to expose fractures within the NATO alliance. BOB SHEPHERD reports.
The current impasse follows the long-drawn out battle to secure the now devastated city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donbass region. After six months, the Russian military is now in control of the city, having forced out the Ukrainian forces, who nonetheless continue to attack Bakhmut from its outskirts. It represents a further setback for Ukraine’s plans for a major counter-offensive against Russia, already addressed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the beginning of May. Zelensky explained that although newly-trained combat brigades were ‘ready’, the army still needed more equipment that was arriving in ‘batches’. A counter-offensive now, he said, would mean the loss of ‘a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.’ This view was reinforced by the Czech president, Petr Pavel, who was chair of the NATO military committee until 2018. Meeting with Zelensky and the Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in May he said, ‘they still have a feeling that they do not have everything to successfully start an operation’. Pavel advised them not to be ‘pushed into a faster pace before they are fully prepared…because it might be a temptation to push them, for some, to demonstrate some results.’ This political pressure for some results on the battlefield will gather momentum as the main NATO powers continue to pour military hardware and ‘aid’ into Ukraine. At the end of April NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, responding to questions over Ukraine’s supposed lack of military equipment, declared that NATO had delivered more than 98% of the armoured vehicles already promised.
The counter-offensive by Ukraine, when it does come, is politically and militarily crucial for both western imperialism and the Ukrainian government. As Pavel put it, no matter how successful, or unsuccessful, the counter-offensive is, Ukraine would inevitably face ‘terrible losses’. If the counter-offensive fails to make any real impact, then ‘It will be extremely harmful to Ukraine…because they will not have another chance, at least not this year’.
British imperialism – attack dog of NATO
Central to Ukraine’s demands for more advanced weaponry, to give it the advantage over Russian forces when the counter-offensive does take place, has been the call for longer-range missiles and fighter jets. British imperialism, playing its role as the attack dog of NATO and following being the first country to agree to send battle tanks to Ukraine, has now become the first country to send it long-range missiles. On 11 May Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced in the House of Commons:
‘Today, I can confirm that the UK has donated Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Storm Shadow is a long-range conventional precision strike capability. It complements the long-range systems already gifted, including HIMARS and Harpoon missiles, as well as Ukraine’s own Neptune cruise missiles and longer-range munitions already gifted…Their use of Storm Shadow will allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based within Ukrainian Sovereign Territory.’
Supporting Wallace’s announcement, Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey declared, ‘We want the UK’s momentum for Ukraine to be maintained and accelerated…the Defence Secretary knows that the government have had, and will continue to have, Labour’s fullest support in providing military aid to Ukraine and in reinforcing NATO allies’.
Wallace’s use of the phrase ‘Ukrainian Sovereign Territory’ in his Commons statement is in reality code for the Crimea and the Donbass regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. It obscures the brutal reality that providing these long-range missiles is an escalation of the conflict and an indication that both Britain and the US want to see the complete military defeat of Russia. On 12 May, just one day after Wallace’s Commons announcement, Russia announced that two British supplied Storm Shadow missiles had struck targets in Luhansk.
Both the Crimea and the Donbass regions separated from Ukraine after the Maidan coup in 2014. Crimea was officially incorporated into Russia in March 2014 whilst the Donbass regions, after declaring autonomy from Ukraine, have endured years of attack from the Ukrainian armed forces and their fascist auxiliaries. Before February 2022 hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Donbass had already fled the conflict zone with most of them moving to Russia. Around 14,000 people, both combatants and civilians, were killed in this period.
On 15 May Ukrainian President Zelensky paid a flying visit to Britain for a meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, becoming the first world leader to meet with Sunak at the Prime Minister’s summer residence, Chequers. The press release issued by the government about the meeting was headed, ‘PM welcomes President Zelensky to the UK ahead of anticipated Ukrainian military surge’. This headline expresses the pressure from NATO on Ukraine to begin its counter-offensive, along with the expectation that it will be successful.
The press release detailed more of the munitions that Britain is pouring into Ukraine,
‘Today the Prime Minister will confirm the further UK provision of hundreds of air defence missiles and further unmanned aerial systems including hundreds of new long-range attack drones with a range of over 200km. These will all be delivered over the coming months as Ukraine prepares to intensify its resistance to the ongoing Russian invasion… in their anticipated military surge to counter Russian forces.’
It then went on to point to some significant actions that Britain has taken this year and in fact since 2014.
‘So far in 2023 the UK has provided equipment including a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks, self-propelled guns, hundreds of armoured vehicles and sophisticated missiles including Starstreak and Storm Shadow…Since the outbreak of full-scale war the UK has also trained 15,000 Ukrainian troops in the UK, on top of the 22,000 troops trained in Ukraine between 2014 and 2022 under Operation Orbital.’
Sunak also pledged, with the assistance of other NATO countries such as the Netherlands, to begin training Ukrainian pilots in Britain this summer to fly the US-produced F16 fighter jet in what Zelensky dubbed ‘a jets coalition’. This decision has now been supported by the US with President Biden announcing his agreement at the G7 summit in Japan for Ukraine to be supplied with F16s. Although it is unlikely the US will directly supply Ukraine with the jets, Biden’s announcement means other NATO countries that fly F16s now have the go-ahead to provide them to Ukraine.
China and imperialist divisions
As the war in Ukraine has continued the importance of China’s role in the outcome of the conflict and in highlighting the splits within the western imperialist alliance has become more and more apparent.
On 26 April Chinese President Xi Jinping and Zelensky held their first telephone conversation since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. The subject was the Chinese Peace Proposals put forward in February. Zelensky described the telephone call as ‘long and meaningful’. The practical outcome of the conversation included an agreement that China would send a Peace Envoy to Ukraine to see and discuss the current situation with government officials there. Ukraine also announced the appointment of an ambassador to China, the first since February 2021. The fact that Zelensky felt he had to engage with China over its Peace Proposals reflects the opposition of the majority of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to both the attempts by western imperialism to drag them behind the war against Russia and the connected efforts, primarily led by the US and Britain, to isolate China.
At the beginning of April, following a path trodden by German Chancellor Scholz, French President Macron led a major trade delegation to China. Included in the delegation were top executives from plane manufacturer Airbus, luxury group LVMH, and nuclear energy producer EDF, as well as the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
During the trip, by supporting China’s involvement in bringing Russia to the negotiating table and opposing involvement in the US-promoted conflict with China over Taiwan, Macron expressed the views of sections of the French and wider ruling classes in Europe that see the need to develop the European Union as an imperialist bloc independent from the US.
He called on President Xi ‘to bring Russia to its senses, and bring everyone back to the negotiating table’. On his flight back from China, in discussion with journalists Macron declared that ‘there has been such an acceleration of European power’ that it should not be jeopardised by blindly following a political agenda set by the US. It would, he said, be a ‘trap for Europe’ to get caught up in a US-driven conflict over Taiwan that is ‘not ours’. It is not in the interests of developing Europe as an independent imperialist power to rival both the US and China to, in his words ‘speed up the subject of Taiwan’. Macron predicted:
‘We will not have the time, nor the means to finance our own strategic autonomy and we will become vassals, whereas we could become the third pole if we have a few years to develop this’.
China’s economic power is continuing to develop despite the efforts of the US, supported by Britain and to a lesser degree the EU, to prevent it. This economic power is reflected not just in the promotion of its own Ukrainian peace proposals but in its growing influence, both political and economic, in the Middle East.
The IMF reported that in 2021 trade between countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and China surpassed GCC trade with the US and Europe for the very first time. Last year, trade between China and the UAE reached a record high of $99.27bn, with China now signing agreements to develop a nuclear energy plant in the UAE.
In the context of the continuing imperialist economic crisis the US in particular cannot stand aside and allow China to continue this economic development unopposed. In July NATO will be holding its next Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Stoltenberg will once again link Russia and China as the main threats:
‘We see Russia’s destabilising actions in Africa, and how Russia and China are making in-roads in the region…The Summit will be an opportunity for Allies to address these issues.’
The US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin on 16 May, arguing for a 40% rise in the military budget for its Pacific Deterrence Initiative, declared,
‘We’re focusing the entire department on continuing to outpace the PRC (People’s Republic of China)…The PRC is our only competitor, with both the intent and increasingly the capacity to reshape the international system to suit its autocratic preferences’.
US imperialism is preparing for conflict with China and is attempting to gather other western imperialist powers behind it. It has difficulties in this endeavour though, as both German and French imperialism have substantial economic interests in China and are not prepared to ‘decouple’ their economies from China. The communique issued by the G7 Summit in Japan on 20 May reflected this division.
The section on China stated, ‘We stand prepared to build constructive and stable relations with China…We act in our national interest…We are not decoupling or turning inwards. At the same time, we recognise that economic resilience requires de-risking and diversifying.’
The dilemma facing France and Germany is that although they have the economic power to pursue their own economic interests in China, they do not have the military power to back it up; for this they rely on the US through the NATO military alliance. These divisions amongst the western imperialist powers are bubbling under the surface at present but at some point they will be forced out into the open.
NO TO WAR! NO TO NATO! FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM!
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 294 June/July 2023
