The 2023 NATO summit on 11-12 July reaffirmed NATO’s intention to draw out the proxy war in Ukraine and ensure imperialist Russia remains tied in to a prolonged conflict. Equally explicit was its plan to mobilise against the challenge posed by China. However, the stuttering progress of Ukraine’s counter-offensive is creating differing views within NATO as to how it should play out. GEORGE O’CONNELL and BOB SHEPHERD report.
Counter-offensive
The much-vaunted Ukrainian counter-offensive started in June after several months of widely-publicised planning. It was quickly bogged down in a war of attrition with Russian forces who were dug in along well-established defensive positions. While inflating the limited scale of Ukrainian successes, the Western imperialist media is struggling to veil the extent of Ukrainian losses and the very limited territorial gains. The failed mutiny by the influential Wagner private military company does not appear to have threatened Russia’s war effort or the stability of the Russian leadership, despite widespread speculation.
Ukrainian forces have been unable to overcome reportedly well-organised Russian artillery, supported by a significant Soviet-era munitions stockpile. Western imperialist claims that they are rapidly depleting are seemingly unfounded. Meanwhile, Ukrainian Soviet-era artillery is shackled by the scarcity of shells outside Russian markets, and now of NATO standard 155mm shells for use in NATO-provided weaponry. Ukraine estimates that it is firing 100,000 shells per month, a quarter of Russian volumes, and one fifth of what its forces could fire with sufficient ammunition. However, this already outstrips US and European yearly production several times over. Such limited supply has determined the Biden administration’s decision on 7 July to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs.
Cluster bombs – monstrous tool of imperialist warfare
Cluster bombs are shells which, upon detonation above a target, can spread hundreds of bomblets over a large area. Compatible with the NATO-provided 155mm field guns, they will not only help offset Ukraine’s dwindling stocks of standard shells, but will also prove more effective against entrenched Russian positions as they do not require the same accuracy as regular artillery fire.
The US decision to provide Ukraine with them has been condemned by countless human rights groups and governments alike. Cluster munitions have a ‘dud rate’ of unexploded bomblets of anywhere between 20-40%. They remain live for decades, deadly to anyone who stumbles across them. Although the Pentagon claims a 3% dud rate for US cluster bombs, this is likely to be an underestimate. The first shells arrived in Ukraine on 14 July.
Most recorded cluster bomb casualties are civilians, a third of them children. Their use was largely banned in 2008, when 108 nations signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Notably, the US was not a signatory, nor were Ukraine or Russia which have both used them in the present conflict. Ukraine has said it would not use these shells in urban areas, but Human Rights Watch documented their use in Donetsk in 2014 and Izium in 2022. Britain, a signatory, has not condemned the US decision to provide Ukraine with them. The Western media is claiming Russia’s use of the weapon as justification for what is a major escalation: NATO cluster bombs will be met with a widespread deployment of Russian equivalents which have up to now been used in a limited way.
2023 NATO Summit
The 11-12 July Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania saw Finland attend for the first time as a member. The priorities of the summit were threefold: Ukraine’s relationship with NATO, bolstering members’ military capabilities, and expanding NATO influence in the Pacific to counter China.
Whilst it has been expedient to offer Ukraine hopes of NATO membership, NATO Articles conveniently prevent accession while the state is involved in military conflict. Instead, NATO aims can be achieved by continually ramping up the supply of weaponry and in the meantime establishing a joint Ukraine-NATO council. The possibility of Ukraine’s future NATO membership will not be acceptable to Russia as it regards a guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality as a precondition for any peace agreement. The war is therefore set to continue with US imperialism and NATO getting Ukraine’s forces to do their dirty work for them.
European divisions
One of the aims of US imperialism is to force the major European imperialist powers, in particular France and Germany, to unite behind US efforts not just against Russia but also China. European sanctions on Russia cut their reliance on Russian natural gas, to the detriment of their economies. Now US imperialism is attempting to coerce Europe into decoupling, or ‘de-risking’, from China. This aim is encountering opposition from European imperialism. Following a visit to China in April, French President Macron stated bluntly that ‘Europe must resist pressure to become America’s followers’. However, a precondition for re-establishing any hope of an independent European imperialist bloc will require the European imperialists to break their military dependence on the US, which continues to spend more on its military than the rest of NATO combined. Until then, these states have little choice but to remain embedded within a US-led NATO. On 11 July France joined Britain in providing long-range missiles to Ukraine.
Pivot to Asia
The final Communiqué from the Summit identifies China as NATO’s principal adversary, declaring that in relation to Africa and the Middle East, ‘China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values’ – a reference to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its expanding influence among the underdeveloped and non-Western nations.
Consistent with aims to consolidate its position in the Pacific and encircle China, NATO allies Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia also attended the Summit. This leads to another point of dispute between US and European imperialism. In June, US and Japanese plans to open a NATO office in Tokyo encountered opposition from France. Macron, worried about provoking a Chinese response, argued that NATO reach should not expand beyond the North Atlantic. The plans appear to have been shelved for now.
Sweden and NATO
Since the Summit, Sweden has agreed to all the demands originally made by Turkey in opposing its application to join NATO. Their joint statement declared that Sweden had ‘significantly expanded its counter-terrorism cooperation against the PKK [Kurdish liberation movement] and resumed arms exports to Turkey… Sweden reiterates that it will not provide support to YPG/PYD’. Whilst discussions about Ukraine have prompted numerous imperialist platitudes about NATO as a ‘defensive alliance’ committed to ‘safeguarding freedom and democracy’, this is clearly not extended to the Kurdish people.
Imperialist hypocrisy amidst global hunger
While blaming Russia for damaging ‘food security, […] and the welfare of billions of people around the world’, the collapse of the Black Sea Grain Initiative on 17 July exposes the hypocrisy of the NATO Communiqué. The grain deal, brokered by Turkey and in operation since July 2022, allowed Ukraine to export grain from Black Sea ports free from Russian interference. Russia has refused to renew the deal, on the grounds that sanctions are hampering its own UN-backed effort to export Russian grain. It had threatened to pull out over this on several occasions previously.
Before the war, Ukraine was one of the world’s largest grain producers, responsible in 2021 for 11% of global corn exports, 9.5% of wheat exports and 50% of sunflower oil exports. Whilst Western media and politicians accuse Russia of exacerbating food insecurity for those in the poorest nations, Russian claims that richer European countries are solely benefiting from the grain deal are not unfounded. According to UN data, 90% of Ukrainian corn and 57% of wheat exported under the deal have gone to high and upper-middle income countries, and only 3% to low-income countries. An example is Spain, which in 2021 imported 10% of Ukrainian corn exports and 1% of wheat. Under the grain deal, however, Spain has received 18% of Ukrainian corn and 26% of its wheat shipments. By contrast, only 8% of wheat went to the World Food Programme, a UN initiative that feeds more than three times Spain’s population. Far from any concern about possible hunger and starvation among impoverished masses across the underdeveloped world, the main consideration of the imperialists in attempting to revive the grain deal will be the potential rising costs of their own imports.
Since the collapse of the deal, Russia has begun shelling Ukraine’s major grain ports, and announced that from 20 July, Ukrainian cargo ships will be considered potential military targets.
British imperialism attack dog
In contrast to some of the European imperialist states, Britain has proved itself an unstinting supporter of the Ukrainian war effort, contributing €11bn in arms since the invasion, a figure second only to the US (€71bn). Britain leads a camp of NATO states which has continually agitated for escalation. These are mainly the smaller Eastern European states that border Russia such as the Baltic states, and Poland. However, British Defence Minister Ben Wallace’s bid to replace Jens Stoltenberg as NATO General Secretary when his term expired in October 2023 was scotched by US imperialism: he had been the preferred candidate of such nations. In the lead-up to the summit, Prime Minister Sunak issued a press release praising the millions of rounds of ammunition and equipment NATO has provided to Ukraine and promising, as part of a £5bn increase in military spending announced in March, a new £190m BAE Systems contract to boost the production of artillery shells.
Oppose British imperialist warmongers!
FRFI 295 August/September 2023
