NATO held its 75th anniversary summit between 9 and 11 July in Washington: it was a sabre-rattling carnival as the alliance ramped up its rhetoric and its military preparations against Russia and China. It continues to flood Ukraine with increasingly advanced weaponry to prop up its military effort against Russia. New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer attended the summit and presented Labour government’s imperialist credentials. The 1945-51 Labour government had led NATO’s establishment in 1949 to confront the Soviet Union, and 75 years on, Labour remains the ‘party of NATO’. GEORGE O’CONNELL reports.
Ukrainian shortages
On 30 June Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat from parts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important city in the Donetsk region in Eastern Ukraine, a gateway for a Russian advance across the whole of Donetsk. This reflected Ukraine’s increasingly precarious military position which has arisen from shortages in both manpower and munitions. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed during the war, and the state is desperate for replacement recruits. It is now extending conscription internationally: new draft laws in May 2024 lowered the recruitment age from 27 to 25 and introduced measures to conscript some of the 750,000 Ukrainian men of military age living abroad by forcing the tens of thousands who have fled since the start of the war to return to Ukraine for vital consular services. Some 3,000 prisoners have also been conscripted under the new laws.
The response of Ukraine’s imperialist backers to Russian gains has been to unload increasingly advanced military hardware onto Ukraine. NATO powers calculate that this will draw Russia deeper into a costly war, and they are transferring scores of long-range missiles in preparation to strike Russian territory, previously a ‘red line’ for escalation. They in turn will be replaced by even more advanced weapons. The summit announced the stationing of US cruise missiles in Germany from 2026 for the first time since the Cold War; among them will be developmental hypersonic missiles capable of hitting Moscow or Iran. The summit also declared Ukraine on an ‘irreversible’ path towards membership, although it did not give a timeframe.
Carving up Ukraine
The destruction in Ukraine provides a potentially enormous opportunity for Western capital. As far back as December 2022, the Financial Times ran the headline: ‘Investors size up opportunities in post-conflict Ukraine’. In February 2024 the World Bank, European Commission, and United Nations agreed the cost of ‘reconstruction’ would be half a trillion dollars and rising. ‘Reconstruction’ would see Ukraine plundered by capital from competing imperialist powers, each vying for the largest possible share of the loot. US investment fund Blackrock and banking monopoly JP Morgan are helping to manage the Ukraine Development Fund which already expects to muster $15bn of private investment. The fund is primarily concerned with manufacturing, infrastructure, agriculture, and energy, all of which have enormous potential in Ukraine. A 9 July World Economic Forum report states that ‘Ukraine is a key potential supplier of rare earth metals, including titanium, lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium, zirconium, graphite, apatite, fluorite, and nickel.’ Control over such resources is critical for competing imperialist powers for their extensive military and technological applications.
In March 2024 the EU set up a ‘Ukraine Facility’, a €50bn fund of loans and private investment available between 2024 and 2027, to facilitate European capital’s penetration into Ukraine. On 25 June, the EU began membership negotiations with Ukraine. Membership will be important for safeguarding European imperialism’s position in Ukraine and is therefore being fast tracked.
Any Western involvement in a negotiated settlement of the war will have no concern for Ukrainian sovereignty or democracy: the aim will be to maximise the geographic area for plundering. However, Ukraine’s precarious military situation is prompting growing concern amongst its imperialist backers that continuing the conflict will leave a smaller share of Ukrainian territory for the taking, and a larger share for Russia. A letter published by the Financial Times on 10 July titled ‘Seize peace in Ukraine before it’s too late’ expressed the worry. Signed by a handful of former Western politicians, including a former British ambassador to Russia and a US ambassador to the USSR, it warns: ‘Some territorial concessions would seem a small price to pay for [Ukraine’s] independence.’
European imperialism
The war in Ukraine has catalysed growing tensions between US imperialism and the major European imperialist powers, especially France and Germany. US imperialism is extending its military influence over peripheral European states: since the outbreak of the war, the US has reached new bilateral military agreements with Sweden, Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Norway, Czech Republic and Moldova. These deals range from US access to military bases in these countries to financial aid or loans towards their military spending. These arrangements are in conflict with the drive to greater European military integration. In March 2024, the European Commission unveiled the EU’s first-ever defence industrial strategy, aimed at stimulating European arms production by incentivising member states to both invest in arms production and procure weapons from within Europe. Europe’s NATO members are already set to increase military spending by half a trillion dollars through 2024; however, the EU’s current inability to independently guarantee collective security is acknowledged as a barrier to Ukraine’s membership. Providing the required assurances necessitates centralisation of European arms production, military spending and defence strategy, all of which remain in the hands of individual member states.
US imperialism pivots towards China
US imperialism’s primary target is China, the principal threat to its hegemony, and the pivot towards China has now become central to NATO policy. In the lead-up to the summit, outgoing NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg declared China to be ‘the main enabler of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine’. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated in May that Chinese support is ‘a huge difference-maker right now on the battlefield’. This is because China is providing civilian components which are important for Russian arms production, including microelectronics, machine tools, navigation equipment, and ‘dual use’ components with military applications.
Chinese exports to Russia have increased since the invasion of Ukraine, up 67% in 2023 from 2021 levels. So too have Russian exports to China, especially oil and other natural resources, the former up 37% from immediately prior to the invasion. Russia and China are being pushed closer together in the search for trading partners and consumer markets. China however has not supplied any weapons to Russia and has repeatedly called for a settlement of the conflict, a stance Xi Jinping reaffirmed on 9 July whilst hosting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The importance of containing China was underlined at the summit by the attendance of Japan, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand. Strengthening ties with these allies is crucial for US imperialism as it foments tensions in the South China Sea where Chinese coastguards have been obstructing the resupply of a Philippine Navy ship marooned on a Spratly Island reef claimed by both nations. Although China and the Philippines have agreed a deal for the present to prevent repeated clashes, the US had threatened to invoke a long-standing defence treaty with the Philippines to intervene. There are other disputes over the Spratly Islands which involve Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam; the US seeks to exploit these in an escalating confrontation.
Labour – the party of NATO
The new Labour government has made clear its ‘ironclad’ commitment to arming Ukraine against imperialist rival Russia. Within 48 hours of being appointed, Labour Defence Secretary John Healey was in Ukraine with a promise to deliver £500m of weapons within 100 days. At the NATO summit in Washington, Starmer confirmed that Labour would adhere to the Tory government’s commitment to supply £3bn of munitions annually ‘for as long as it takes’. Foreign Secretary David Lammy underlined Labour’s belligerent foreign policy when he declared:
‘I am concerned when I see Iranian drones turning up in Ukraine. I am concerned when I see shells from North Korea being used here on European soil. And of course I’m concerned with the partnership that I see Russia brokering across those authoritarian states. I think that China should be very careful about deepening those partnerships over the coming weeks and months.’
Labour will continue the policy of brazen escalation against Russia: following bilateral talks with Starmer on 10 July, Ukrainian President Zelensky publicly celebrated ‘permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory’. The Ministry of Defence was later forced to row back, clarifying that these missiles, which are being operated by British troops in Ukraine, can only be used on Crimea, which is viewed by Russia as its own territory. Labour has already pledged to raise military spending to 2.5% of GDP; its promise is one of war without end. No to imperialist war!
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 301 August/September 2024
