As the conflict in Ukraine enters 2023 with no real end in sight, what is obvious is that this proxy war between the NATO imperialist military alliance and Russian imperialism will continue as long as the US continues to pump massive amounts of military hardware into Ukraine. British imperialism, having since Brexit tied its survival to its alliance with US imperialism, continues to act as the US’s loyal attack dog in its support for the war. There are, though, continuing underlying tensions between the interests of US imperialism and the major EU imperialist states which are reflected in their contrasting relations with China. The strength and extent of any social explosion against the escalating cost of living crisis, which is hitting the working class across Europe, will be crucial in determining the future outcome of the war. BOB SHEPHERD reports.
Under continuing military pressure and advances by Ukrainian forces, Russia completed a full military withdrawal from the city of Kherson to positions on the eastern banks of the river Dnieper on 11 November. These new defensive lines are seemingly the positions Russian troops will consolidate over the winter months. Kherson was the only regional capital city in Ukraine that Russian forces had successfully occupied since their February invasion. The explanation for the pullback was given by the current head of Russian military operations in Ukraine, General Sergey Surovikin: ‘Having comprehensively assessed the current situation, it is proposed to take up defence along the left [eastern] bank of the Dnieper River … I understand that this is a very difficult decision, but at the same time, we will preserve the most important thing, the lives of our servicemen and, in general, the combat effectiveness of the group of troops’.
As we pointed out in FRFI 290 the continuing military successes of the Ukrainian forces are a direct result of the massive amount of military hardware that has been, and continues to be, shipped into the country by the US, Britain and the rest of the NATO countries. However the US has provided nearly twice as much in military supplies as all the EU members combined, with Britain at the head of the rest. France, which has one of the largest armies in Europe, is only ninth on the list of countries supplying military aid.
On 4 November the US Bureau of Political-Military Affairs issued its latest factsheet detailing the massive range of military assistance given to Ukraine. The costs of what the factsheet hypocritically labels ‘investments in security assistance’ are astronomical. Since the Russian invasion began on 24 February the US has provided approximately $18.2bn of military hardware. Since 2014 and the Maidan coup, which saw the ousting of the democratically elected President of Ukraine by right wing forces supported by the US and Britain, the US has provided a total of around $21bn to ‘help Ukraine preserve its territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve inter-operability with NATO’. This factsheet, just like previous reports on the military hardware being pumped into Ukraine, openly brags about the US’s role in developing the Ukrainian military as a force allied with the western imperialist military alliance, NATO, directed against the interests of Russian imperialism.
The amount of arms and missiles that have flooded into Ukraine make it inevitable that there will be some unplanned consequences. One of these was the missile strike in Poland on 15 November which killed two farmworkers. Ukrainian President Zelensky immediately blamed Russia and called for NATO action, in other words an escalation of the conflict with an open attack from NATO against Russia. The missile was in fact fired by the Ukrainians, so for the moment the issue has been defused.
British imperialist warmongering
When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister on 25 October, his first two phone calls with other heads of state that evening were with the US and Ukrainian Presidents, Biden and Zelensky. After visiting COP27 the first international leader he met at 10 Downing Street, on 9 November, was NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
At a press briefing during the visit, when asked about reports of a Russian military pullback from Kherson, Stoltenberg stated: ‘It is encouraging to see how the brave Ukrainian forces are able to liberate more Ukrainian territory … but the support they receive from the United Kingdom and from NATO allies is also essential’.
On the morning of 9 November Stoltenberg accompanied Defence Minister Ben Wallace on a visit to military training camps where around 7,500 Ukrainian troops have been trained and kitted out. Britain has pledged to train a further 19,000 during 2023. The same day Wallace announced that Britain would be supplying Ukraine with around 1,000 surface-to-air missiles to assist with the protection of Ukraine’s infrastructure from Russian missile attacks and with 12,000 extreme cold weather sleeping kits for the Ukrainian army in the coming winter months. Ten days later, on a visit to Ukraine, Sunak announced a further £50m package of military aid comprising 125 anti-aircraft guns and anti-drone electronic warfare capability.
On 10 November Britain hosted the latest summit of the Joint Expeditionary Force which was officially launched as a NATO initiative in September 2014 at the NATO Summit in Wales. It is now made up of ten countries – Britain, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway – with Britain as the lead nation. Its remit is to ‘help bring stability and security in the North Atlantic, Baltic Sea Region and in the High North’.
On 29 October Russian ships from its Black Sea fleet were attacked by drones in Sevastopol bay causing Russia for a while to pull out of the grain shipment agreement agreed in July between themselves and Ukraine. The Russian Defence Ministry accused British naval operatives based in Ochakiv, Ukraine, of being behind the attack. It then went on to accuse the same British naval unit of being heavily involved in the blowing up of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea on 26 September. The blowing up of the pipelines, allowing seawater to enter them, effectively puts them permanently out of action. The main political and economic beneficiary of this is the US. The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, at a press conference on 30 September, set out the political realities for the EU from the standpoint of US imperialism:
‘And so we’ve significantly increased our production as well as making available to Europe Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). And we’re now the leading supplier of LNG to Europe … ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponisation of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come.’
The ‘strategic opportunity’ Blinken is talking about includes the opportunity for US imperialism to neutralise the ability of the EU to develop as a major imperialist economic rival. The proxy war being waged through Ukraine with Russia is allowing the US to re-establish its military and political hegemony, through NATO, over Europe and the EU. The division of Europe from its natural source of gas, Russia, and the forcing of the EU to rely on LNG further accelerates this development. Since leaving the EU, British imperialism has tied its fortunes firmly to the coat-tails of US imperialist foreign policy, playing the role of a junior partner. Its actions on all fronts support and promote US imperialist interests in Europe. However underlying economic tensions between the major imperialist powers in the EU and the US are not far from the surface.
Imperialist rivalries
In FRFI 287, we reported that on 7 March the head of the Federation of German Industries rejected the US government’s demand for a decoupling of the German economy from China saying, ‘We were not and will not be a recipient of orders from the American government…[Putin’s] crimes are not the end of global trade and global division of labour.’
Despite the continuing pressure from the US for countries to not only cease trade with Russia but to ‘decouple’ their economies from China, on 4 November German Chancellor Scholz led a major trade delegation to China. China has been Germany’s largest trading partner for the past six years; in 2021, bilateral trade reached a total of $242bn. In the first half of 2022 German companies’ direct investment in China hit a record high according to a report by the German Institute for Economic Research. China’s Ministry of Commerce has also released statistics that show the growth rate of German investment rose by 30.3% in the first eight months of 2022.
The continuation of Germany as a major imperialist power depends on it being able to continue to develop economic relations that strengthen its own independent interests. Its economic links and trade with China are crucial to this and will inevitably lead to further friction with the US.
The November trade delegation was a major statement of German imperialist strength; it included the CEOs of Volkswagen, BMW, the chemical giant BASF, Siemens and Deutsche Bank and representatives from pharmaceutical company Bayer and vaccine manufacturer Biontech.
Volkswagen and BMW sold more than 33% of their total car production in China last year. Volkswagen’s CEO Oliver Blume described the visit as an opportunity to ‘build our own perspective in this discussion with the Chinese government’ while BMW CEO Oliver Zipse declared in a statement that the visit sent ‘a strong signal towards reinforcing economic cooperation between China and Germany’. Volkswagen announced in October that it is spending $2.3bn to set up a joint software venture with a Chinese partner.
It is not just the car giants that are investing heavily in China, major German banks are involved in financing infrastructure development and in September the chemical giant BASF opened a new plant in South China’s Guangdong Province, part of a plan to invest over $10bn in China by 2030.
Fuel price rises
For the working class in the EU and Britain the massive rises in fuel and heating costs continue to accelerate. From 5 December the EU will ban the seaborne import of crude oil from Russia and from 5 February 2023 ban the seaborne import of all oil products. The International Energy Agency in its latest report states that the ban ‘will add further pressure on global oil balances, and, in particular, on already exceptionally tight diesel markets’. The EU will have to replace the 1m barrels per day (bpd) of crude and 1.1m bpd of oil products it normally imports from Russia. And with diesel especially scarce and expensive, at prices 70% higher now than this time last year, the effect will be to fuel global inflation.
The cost of the proxy war that is being waged in Ukraine by the NATO imperialist alliance and Russian imperialism is being imposed on the working class of Europe in the form of austerity and massive rises in the cost of living. The rising cost of fuel and heating is central to this. Mass working class resistance to this onslaught is essential.
No to war! No to NATO!
Fight austerity! Fight for socialism!
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 291 December 2022/January 2023
