This AWTWNS news packet for the week of 24 February 2014
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part, as long as it is credited.
Web site: aworldtowinns.co.uk
Ukraine:
the wolves are loose
24
February 2014. A World to Win News Service. "Ukraine
is now in a pre-default condition and sliding into the abyss," Alexander
Turchynov warned immediately after becoming speaker of the Ukrainian parliament
and the country's acting president. Ukraine needs $35 billion over the next two
years and an emergency loan in the next two weeks just to pay its creditors in
the East and West. Those creditors are engaged in a mutual tug of war which
neither side can afford to lose, and maybe not afford to win. But much more
than cash is at stake.
The
Ukraine governing party and most of the so-called "oligarchs"
suddenly deserted President Victor Yanukovych and brought in Turchynov, an ally
of Yulia Tymoshenko, the darling of the European Union, especially
Germany. Becoming filthy rich overnight
when the country's state enterprises were dissolved, she was one of the first
of Ukraine's "oligarchs" and a fitting embodiment of this class, who
may be weaker and less adept at hiding their flesh-eating nature than their
Western counterparts, but are no less monopoly capitalists. Like the
now-deposed Yanukovych and the rest, none of them are loyal to "democratic
values" or even any particular foreign power but only to the needs of
their chunk of capital to expand without limit in lethal competition with other
capitals.
This
is not the first time that the U.S. and Europe have tried to snatched Ukraine
away from Russia. The so-called "Orange Revolution" of 2004-05
exacerbated an economic and political crisis that led Ukraine to where it is
today, and that underlying crisis is far from resolved.
In
2004 the West engineered street demonstrations that snatched the presidency
away from Yanukovych and brought Tymoshenko and Victor Yushchenko to
government. Despite her Western support, Tymoshenko's signature political move
was a deal with the Russian monopoly Gazprom that was politically advantageous
for her but so disadvantageous to Ukraine that by 2010 Yanukovych was back in
the presidency and she was imprisoned for corruption. Though considered
pro-Russian, Yanukovych entered into negotiations with the EU for a free trade
agreement with it. Then last November he suddenly turned around, refused to sign
after all and instead accepted a Russian deal for $15
billion in loans and a one-third reduction in gas prices.
So
much for loyalty or even predictability among any of Ukraine's leaders. His
reversal, however, was not irrational: it seems that the IMF wanted to impose
conditions that might have brought even greater political instability and not
the relief that his debt-ridden regime needed to survive. He tried playing off
Russia and the EU, and in the end neither saved him.
The
youth and others who angrily took to the streets chanting "We want in to
the European Union" were badly deluded. Why would the EU or the IMF treat
Ukraine any differently than Greece, for example? Germany and other European
powers (notably France) skinned Greece twice, once by lending it enormous
amounts of money for a "development" that meant importing capital and
consumer goods at a rate that helped keep the German economy humming, and then,
and then again, when the financial crisis meant that Greece couldn't pay, by forcing
the country to make "adjustments" that drove millions of Greeks into
destitution so that foreign capital could recover its principal and
interests.
Look
at Romania, Bulgaria, Hungry, the Baltic states and other former Soviet-bloc
countries that have entered the EU – where has that gotten them? Perhaps young
Ukrainians hoped that EU ties would bring their country's living standards up
to the slightly higher level of neighbouring Poland, which used to own western
Ukraine. But one of that country's leading exports is young Polish women and
men. Becoming more like Poland is not a revolutionary aspiration.
A country of 46 million people, Ukraine
became independent in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The world’s
tenth largest steel producer, it has very developed agricultural and industrial
sectors, but its dependence on exporting steel and steel products has made the
country highly vulnerable to the global financial turmoil as well as Russian
pressure. Its geo-strategic location provides a vital energy transit route from
Russia to Western Europe. About 60 percent of Ukraine exports go to Russia,
Belarus and Kazakhstan. Natural gas, used to fuel industry as well as for
household consumption, is the biggest import and the main cause of its trade
deficit. Ukrainian external debts grew from $23.8 billion in December 2003 to
$137.7 billion in September 2013.
The U.S. and EU-backed and financed
"Orange Revolution" from 2005-2010 was not able to bring about
structural economic changes and rearrange Ukraine's political landscape. That
would have required strategic political and astronomical financial commitments
they were not able to deliver, entangled as they were in wars of occupation in
Iraq and Afghanistan and especially as they sank into financial crisis.
The effects of the global financial
crisis on Russia during this period were not so severe. Due to rising prices
for its oil and gas exports, Russia accumulated huge currency reserves. In some
aspects it began to reverse the weak situation it found itself in after the
collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.
At the same time, the emergence of
renewed imperialist rivalry and the rise of capitalist China, along with the
global financial crisis, has forced the big powers to take greater risks to
advance their spheres of influence in every dimension: strategic, political and
economic. Ukraine, the biggest non-Russian piece of the shattered Soviet Union,
has become one focus of global contradictions.
Germany in particular, already a major
trading partner with Ukraine, has been anxious to tear more deeply into this
relatively large country and its plentiful natural resources, highly developed
industry and export-oriented agriculture. It is a prime market for exported
capital and commodities, with a fairly young, skilled and educated labour force
accustomed to low pay. German dominance over Ukraine could change the balance
of power within the European Union and more broadly.
Yet while Europe and especially Germany
have been poised to devour Ukraine, the U.S. has been intensely involved as
well, often out of synch with Germany, if not in open opposition. While Obama
and Europe's governments are hailing Yanukovych's downfall as "the
will" of the Ukrainian people, no Ukrainian desires and interests were
even an issue in the famous leaked phone call between U.S. Under-Secretary of
State Victoria Nuland and the American ambassador to Ukraine. They discussed
exactly whom they would and would not accept as the future leader of Ukraine,
and agreed that the transition should be brokered by the UN to take the EU out
of the decision-making process – "Fuck the EU," Nuland concludes.
As it turned out, an exit plan for
Yanukovych was put together by the foreign ministers of Germany, France and
Poland, which Russia refused to sign, as it argued that it would only help pave
the way for the opposition to Yanukovych to get rid of him. In any case, for
the moment he's vanished.
American firepower is still
Washington's ultimate argument. It was implicit in US National Security Advisor
Susan Rice's warning to Russia not to send in troops. Opposition to foreign
interference rings hollow from the country that occupied Iraq and Afghanistan,
led the armed overthrow of the Qaddafi regime and recently threatened military
action against Syria and Iran. Not to mention its activities in its own
"backward" – the annexation of a big chunk of Mexico and a century of
fattening on the wealth created by Mexicans. The concern Washington displayed
for the fate of demonstrators under attack in Kiev's main square (Maidan) was nowhere to be seen when the
Obama government coordinated the violent clearing of the parks taken over by
the far more peaceful Occupy movement in the U.S.
The U.S. 2008 adventure at encouraging
Georgia to fight Russia ended in humiliation for Washington, but the stakes for
both the U.S. and Russia are now much higher.
For the U.S. and Russia especially, the
chief issue is Ukraine's strategic importance to Russia's re-emergence as a
great power. A tighter alliance of Ukraine with Russia could help Russia bring
its former republics into line, especially the more reluctant such as
Azerbaijan and to some extent Georgia. Conversely, Ukraine's further separation
would make such a dream for Russia much more difficult and complicated, and
encourage more mutiny within Russia’s sphere of influence. Putin's plan for a
Eurasian Economic Union could not prosper without the biggest and richest of
the six non-Russian ex-Soviet states.
Russia's policy has apparently been to
encourage contradictions between the EU and the U.S. and lean towards the EU
conditionally to isolate the U.S. During the political crisis of the last
months, while some forces in Ukraine demanded the resignation of the president,
pro-EU forces and Germany proposed a dialogue and reform without a change in
president. Even now that Yanukovych is out of the picture, it seems that Angela
Merkel and Vladimir Putin have been negotiating over the phone, perhaps,
according to some observers, discussing the idea of putting in Tymoshenko,
ironically one of the least anti-Russian aspirants, as a kind of compromise
head of state.
The Ukrainian ruling class seems to
have regrouped against Yanukovych. Even his own party disowned him. "All
responsibility for this lies with Yanukovych," the Party of Regions said
in a statement. "The party was virtually the hostage of one corrupt
family." It should be noted that the state apparatus has not suffered. In
fact, although parliament has called for other ex-ministers to be arrested and
tried, the Defence Ministry has not changed hands and the country's large Armed
Forces seem to have approved the anti-Yanukovych consensus. At the same time,
it is not at all clear what kind of stable political alliance could replace
him.
As pushed around as it has been,
Ukraine itself is a relatively developed monopoly capitalist country whose
ruling class has its own needs and ambitions. While members of that class may
clash among themselves about foreign alliances, they have a certain unity of
interests. Most probably see the current situation as an opportunity to
"free" Ukrainian capital from its subordinate position or at least
improve that position. This is a major reason why the situation is so
volatile.
It is almost unbelievable but not
impossible to understand that cries against the "Muscovite Jewish
mafia" and "Russian Jewish communist domination" should be heard
in the streets of Ukraine today. These were the slogans of Ukrainian
nationalists who saw the Nazi German invasion in World War 2 as an opportunity
to seek the overthrow of the socialism that four million Ukrainians fought and
died to defend. Rather than being oppressed by the Soviet Union, it was as a
Soviet Republic that Ukraine came into existence as a political entity for the
first time in history and that its people were able to blossom as never before.
In the beginning of the Maidan movement
students played a major role and there seemed to be a broad political mix of
people. However, according to reports, it was increasingly dominated by the
Svoboda party, the historically pro-Nazi party said to have led the seizure of
the Kiev city hall that triggered Yanukovych's flight, and the even more openly
fascistic paramilitary bands grouped together in the Right Sector. These
fascist currents seem to be an expression of the national interests of
Ukrainian capital in its opposition to as well as collusion with foreign
capitalist powers. The central role of these elements in Yanukovych's downfall
signals a dangerous political and ideological dynamic that cannot be turned off
at will.
Extreme reactionary ideology is not,
however, the special mark of one side or the other in the fight for power. The
debate between pro-U.S. and pro-Russian commentators about which side are the
real fascists is wrong and self-serving. The Ukrainian chauvinist racism
directed at Jews and ethnic Russians by the anti-Russian gangs is matched by
the patriarchal obscurantism of pro-Russian forces (including Yanukovych
himself) who insist Ukraine must not join the EU because the result would be
homosexual marriages and the end of Christian "values".
To the extent that there is an
ideological battle going on, it is not about "Western versus Russian
values" or "democracy"
versus “dictatorship” – Yanukovych was repeatedly elected – but about
Ukrainian nationalism. Again, whether or not Tymoshenko's bad health and
political circumstances allow her to come back onto the centre stage, she is a
case study in that phenomenon. Brought up speaking Russian, she has said she
had to learn to think in Ukrainian and came to oppose allowing Russian as a
second official language because of the need to unite the country – which of
course has long been united, with many speakers of four different languages,
but whose capitalists need a different political climate to achieve their ends
as a national capitalist class. One of the first moves of the new acting
government was to end Russian's status as a second official language anywhere
in Ukraine.
What we are seeing now are the tragic
reverberations of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR after the death of
Stalin, on the one hand, and on the other a cynical fight among the big
imperialist powers not only over who gets to feed on Ukraine and its people
but ultimately for empire.
Ukraine
is in more turmoil than Europe has seen since the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
While there are major differences in the two situations, they bear some
similarity in the rapacious and reckless ambitions of the leading imperialist
powers, especially Germany, the U.S. and Russia; the rapidly shifting splits
and alliances, domestic and foreign, of the country's capitalist ruling class;
and the fostering of reactionary mass movements driven by these interests. But
the world has changed, especially in the last decade, and the West cannot
expect an easy victory.
Regardless of immediate events, given
this context it is unlikely that such a complex situation will be soon
resolved. The wolves have tasted blood.
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