Juergen Roth, Neue Internationale 196, Berlin, February 2015
Having completed combat operations in Afghanistan, a full troop withdrawal was, of course, never in question, NATO is now turning its attention back towards Europe. A special task force of several thousand soldiers, above all from Germany, Norway and the Netherlands, with a very high state of readiness, is planned in order to deter Russia. The number of manoeuvres on the eastern flank of the military alliance is to be increased and there will be a rotation of units of all branches of the armed forces of the United States and other allies in the NATO countries closest to Russia. It is still unclear how this is to be funded and the extent to which stockpiles of military equipment have been established. This change in strategy toward Cold War 2.0 was decided in September 2014 at the NATO summit in Wales.
New bipolarity
It is obvious that these decisions are related to the Ukraine crisis. However, to draw a complete picture of the policy towards Russia and its history, and to identify similarities and differences amomg the NATO countries themselves, we must first take a look at the global strategies of the Great Powers.
The world is already moving towards a conflict between China and the United States. Although still the world’s hegemonic power, the economic domination of the USA is waning. Until the 1990s, it was the Western European countries and Japan that were catching up. Since then, the US has been losing economic power in comparison to the BRICS countries, especially China. This process has accelerated since the outbreak of the global economic crisis.
Quite explicitly, East Asia is now the region that has the highest priority for US imperialism. Military relations with South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia are now more carefully maintained than ever before. Japanese imperialism is encouraged to upgrade and to take a more aggressive stance. The government of Shinzo Abe repealed the corresponding constitutional provisions for precisely this purpose. To promote exports from an economy that has been stagnating since the early 1990s, he was allowed to devalue the yen, which had previously been sharply condemned, or even blocked, by Washington.
On November 29, 2014, China’s President, and Chief of the Central Military Commission (!) Xi Jingping, gave a major speech to the Central Conference on Work in Foreign Affairs in which he announced a strategic change of course by Beijing. China no longer considers relations with the United States and the EU as the first priority. That position is now to be enjoyed by the BRICS countries, especially Russia and neighbouring Asian countries as well as Africa and other developing countries.
We can expect that in future China will more clearly express opposition to US intervention, as happened during Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Revolution” when the official newspaper, China Daily, asked “Why is Washington promoting colour revolutions”, and drew attention to the role played by the vice director of the government-funded American NGO, the “National Endowment for Democracy”.
More significant, however, is the Chinese plan to build alternative institutions to the IMF and the World Bank, two strategic pillars for the economic hegemony of the United States since 1945. This open intention is backed up by the Chinese project to establish its own free trade zone in the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP ) a clear counter-measure to the American attempt to isolate China through the TTIP Agreement with the EU.
New Alliances
An intermediate step towards the final confrontation between the two “superpowers” is the strengthening of old alliances as well as the creation of new ones. At a time when Putin’s Russia is beset by NATO’s economic sanctions, China has concluded several gigantic contracts for energy supplies from Russia’s state-owned Gazprom and Rosneft, which can, in time, compensate for the threatened exports to Europe. The two countries agreed to build two new gas pipelines. The extension of a currency swap (ie the exchange of interest payments on capital in yuan and roubles) and increased use of the yuan in bilateral trade is designed to stabilise the beleaguered rouble.
According to Viktor Sokolov, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Geopolitical Problems, the joint exercise, “Marine Cooperation” will be held in the northern part of the East China Sea, just because the US regularly holds manoeuvres there with its allies to put China and North Korea under pressure.
Now, as the period between the two world wars shows, we should not conclude that, because the main line of conflict is between China and the United States, the next world war will break out between the two great powers and their partner countries. Between 1918 and 1939, Europe and America faced each other as the fiercest competitors, but as the Second World War began, Europe’s leading industrial power, Germany, was prepared at least to tolerate the post-war conditions. The alliances currently forming will change, one way or another, as the imperialist powers switch sides and because the increasing antagonism between the major powers can become more explosive than the current principal contradiction.
Their collaboration in the Ukraine crisis and over the TTIP negotiations appear to have brought NATO members closer to each other and to have reduced rivalry between the EU and the USA, at least temporarily. This is a result not only of the growing opposition of the two to Russia, but also to the world situation described above.
US military strategies
Firstly, the largest world power can still impose its will even on its NATO and SEATO allies. This gives it a greater ability to intervene globally than any other army. Secondly, it is very adept at drawing its allies into its conflicts. If the EU confronts Russia, and Japan stands up to China, this scenario has the advantage for the US not only that their main opponents have to face up to increased force but also that their current allies are kept busy by these conflicts.
In this way, Japan and the EU are weakened as a precaution against the possibility that, one day, US interests may be counterposed to theirs. US policy in the Second World War was designed to ensure not only that Germany, Italy and Japan were defeated, but that the allies, Britain and France, had to give up their colonial empires in favour of the US free trade, or “open-door”, policy.
Following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, it looked as if the US would now collaborate with the weakened Russia. However, in 1999, President Clinton presented a new NATO orientation. The “defence community” of the West against the East mutated into a worldwide military alliance for crisis regulation under the executive control of the United States, not the UN.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bush Jr. cancelled the ABM disarmament treaty. After 11 September 2001, Putin proposed a joint missile defence system but the only outcome of that was the “NATO-Russia Council”, now an ineffective relic. The US allies stood behind their hegemonic leader. In its slipstream, Germany forced through the transformation of the Bundeswehr into a professional army for worldwide “out of area” operations.
At the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Merkel followed the lead of her US counterparts, explaining that the world order must be stabilised by the US, EU and NATO, and rejecting Russia’s 2001 proposal for cooperation and integration.
Nonetheless, the attitude of the United States to Russia is still different from that of the EU. After it became, under Putin, a new imperialist power, it constituted a major obstacle to American control of the Near and Middle East and Central Asia, a resource-rich region of immense strategic importance. Russia’s military power, especially its nuclear capabilities, make it the most powerful military opponent of the North American colossus.
Russia’s gas and its potential as an investment location and product market, however, are of little importance for them. That is why Washington has promoted the revolution in Kiev more intensively than the EU. The costs of the conflict are incurred in Russia and elsewhere in Europe.
At present, the German monopoly bourgeoisie is still grudgingly accepting the “primacy of politics” which means that their own counterposed economic interests are deprioritised for the time being. As a side effect, the US can anjoy a certain Schadenfreude at their expense.
In the long term, however, Russia is also tempting prey for the EU, especially Germany, possibly in the form of an economically and politically subordinate ally. For geostrategic reasons, the “free hand in the East”, that is, the goal of a Eurasian empire, remains the objective. The EU / Germany can have no overseas ambitions and must rather focus on the land mass to the East, and to the South. For now, the EU is too weak militarily for this because it is not a unified state and is in a deep crisis that threatens to tear it apart. First, a way out of that must be found.
EU: the cards are shuffled
The grounds for the EU’s dissatisfaction with its military weakness are not limited to those outlined above, in addition it is losing ground in Sub-Saharan Africa. The classic colonial powers, Britain and France, are losing influence to China and the United States. It is very hard for them to cope with their decline into third rate powers in an economic area which, with respect to its currency and economic capacities, stands a long way behind the word leaders.
However, the structural crisis has changed the order within the EU: Germany has done best out of the crisis with even France clearly reduced to the second rank. Germany’s export strength has visibly reduced the other EU members to the status of debtor countries with significant, and growing, payment deficits. Where France’s foreign policy and military superiority could previously compensate for its economic backwardness, Premier Hollande must now beg the EU to assist him in his foreign missions. The burden of its military operations in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mali, Central African Republic, etc.) has crushed the flagging “Grande Nation”.
Reorientation of the Bundeswehr
Germany’s energetic Defence Minister, von der Leyen, has drawn the following conclusions from this analysis:
1. The Bundeswehr must become an “attractive employer” (for example allowing parental leave for female soldiers).
2. The army must be upgraded and improved technically (combat drones, helicopters, assault craft, etc.).
3. Their area of intervention must be extended: Somalia, Mali and Zambia are high on the list. Also planned are interventions in eastern Ukraine and Iraq, and possibly a commando unit in Jordan.
4. Mandates must be extended: Patriot air defence missiles in Turkey, near the Syrian border (“Active Fence”), the Mediterranean operation led by NATO off the Lebanese coast, originally established in response to the attacks of 11 September 2001 (“Active Endeavour “).
The Parliamentary Participation Act of 2005 is to be amended. A 16-man War Commission, under former Defence Minister Rühe, will ensure the further exclusion of the public. It will “Verify and ensure parliamentary rights in the mandate of Bundeswehr operations abroad” to use the language of insider-jargon.
The spectre of the great crisis continues to cast a shadow before it: the great powers are sharpening their knives. This year’s Munich Security Conference must be carefully monitored.