Pelosi pledges war “until victory is won”
Andre Damon, WSWS, May 3 2022
Pelosi visits the 82nd Airborne in Poland
Over the weekend, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives and second in the line of presidential succession, traveled in secret to the war zone of Kiev, Ukraine and pledged a commitment by the United States to ensure “victory” against Russia. Repeating the false premise that the US involvement in the war with Russia is about helping Ukraine, an embattled ally, Pelosi told Zelensky:
Our commitment is to be there for you until the fight is done. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won.
Democrat Representative Jason Crow, who accompanied Pelosi on her trip to Ukraine, was even more emphatic in asserting that the US is a party to the war, declaring at a press conference in Poland:
The USA is in this to win, and we will stand with Ukraine until victory is won.
Pelosi’s pledge, coming just one week after similar assurances by Austin and Blinken, amounts to an unlimited commitment of treasure and blood to the pursuit of sweeping, open-ended war aims that threaten to draw the US into what Biden called “world war.” What does “victory” in Ukraine mean? In the span of just one week, Biden, Austin and leading members of the president’s political party have all given conflicting and irreconcilable answers as to what the US is trying to achieve in Eastern Europe. On one hand, Biden claimed that it is “not true” that the US is engaged in a proxy war with Russia. On the other, Austin said at a press conference in Poland last week that the US is seeking to “weaken” Russia. The NYT has raised the prospect of “bringing Russia to its knees,” while former US Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges called for “breaking the back” of Russia. To which of these goals is Pelosi committing the US?
If one accepts Pelosi’s statements in the most limited and most literal sense, they mean that the US will assist Ukraine in achieving its military aims in regard to Russia. But Ukraine’s own military goals, developed in close cooperation with US military planners, are sweeping. On Mar 24 2021, Zelensky signed a document pledging to “implement measures to ensure the deoccupation and reintegration of the peninsula.” This means that Ukraine is formally committed to the seizure of Crimea, territory that Russia claims as its own, through military means. If Ukraine succeeds in breaking the Russian offensive in the Donbass, routs the attacking Russian forces, and pushes into Russian territory, would the US be “committed” to support Ukraine in this “fight”?
In another scenario, what will the US do if Russian forces continue their advance toward Western Ukraine, encircling pockets of the Ukrainian army and leading to its disintegration? What does Pelosi’s open-ended commitment to “victory” against Russia mean if Ukraine is threatened with strategic defeat? Pelosi’s statement makes clear that, forced to choose between the prospect of reneging on its “commitment” and the deployment of troops, or even the use of nuclear weapons, the US will choose the latter. Last week, Democratic Senator Chris Coons called for a “conversation” about sending US troops to fight against Russia in Ukraine. Asked about Coons’s statements, Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, merely called the measure “premature,” effectively an admission that plans are already in the works. On Sunday, Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger announced that he has introduced an AUMF that would allow Biden to deploy US troops in a full-scale war with Russia.
In the course of the Vietnam War, the US was drawn into an ever more bloody and brutal war that followed the logic of the military commitments it had made. The Pentagon Papers, first published in 1971, revealed that in the early 1960s under JFK, American imperialism transformed its involvement in Vietnam, which had up to that point been called a “limited-risk gamble” into a “broad commitment.” One of the most damning components of the Pentagon Papers was an internal DoD memo drafted in 1965 that concluded that the main reason for US involvement was to uphold the US “commitment,” the breach of which would lead to a “humiliating US defeat.” The US goals were ranked as follows:
- 70% — To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).
- 20% — To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
- 10% — To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
- ALSO — To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
- NOT — To “help a friend,” although it would be hard to stay in if asked out.
In pursuit of enforcing the global position of the US in the post-war period, 58,220 American soldiers lost their lives, hundreds of thousands were physically and psychologically destroyed, and over 1 million Vietnamese men, women and children were killed. The Pentagon Papers revealed the extent to which American foreign policy is made in secret. The public is presented with a set of facts and arguments that bear no relationship to the actual goals that are propelling the conflict. The aim of media discussion is not to allow the people to democratically control the conduct of foreign policy, but to condition public opinion to accept the outcome desired by the American state apparatus. The stakes in the present war are vastly higher than they were in Vietnam. From its origins as a US proxy war aiming to “bleed Russia white,” the conflict over Ukraine is rapidly spiraling into a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. Within the entire US political establishment, there is no serious attempt to explain what the war is about. There simply exists no opposition to a reckless and insane policy that threatens to end human civilization through the eruption of a nuclear third world war. The real aims of US imperialism in the war against Russia were spelled out by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North in his opening report to the May Day 2022 Online Rally. Russia has become a target of US imperialism not because of the Putin regime’s autocratic character, but because of:
- its defense of the interests of the Russian capitalists collides with the drive of the US for global hegemony, which is centered on its preparations for war with China; and
- the vast expanse of Russian territory is the source of immensely valuable and strategically critical raw materials, metals and minerals: gold, platinum, palladium, zinc, bauxite, nickel, mercury, manganese, chromium, uranium, iron ore, cobalt and iridium, to name only a few, that the US is determined to bring under its control.
US officials are admitting with increasing candor that American imperialism wants to “break the back” of Russia and “bring Russia to its knees.” In pledging to wage war to complete “victory,” the US is creating the conditions for catastrophe.
China holds “emergency” conference over sanctions threat
Nick Beams, WSWS, May 3 2022
Xi and Putin in Beijing, Feb 4 2022. (Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/AP)
With China next in line to be targeted by US imperialism and the likely use of unprecedented financial sanctions, such as those employed against Russia, Beijing is seeking ways to counter the threat. According to a report in the Financial Times published over the weekend, Chinese financial regulators held an “emergency meeting” on Apr 22 with domestic and foreign banks to discuss how they could protect the country’s overseas assets from the type of measures imposed on Russia. In a well-prepared operation going back at least several months, involving officials from the White House and the European Commission, the US and the EU excluded Russia from the SWIFT international financial messaging system and froze much of its $630b of foreign currency reserves within days of the invasion of Ukraine. Citing “people familiar with the discussion,” the FT said:
Chinese officials are worried that the same measures could be taken against Beijing in the event of a regional military conflict or other crisis.
Already US officials have been keeping a close watch on China’s financial dealings with Russia. This has provoked fears in Beijing that China will be hit with punitive measures if it is seen to infringe on the anti-Russia sanctions. Chinese President Xi Jinping has expressed opposition to the US proxy war against Russia, calling for negotiations, and has refused to line up behind US-sponsored resolutions directed against Russia in the UN. But at the same time Chinese banks and firms have been wary of doing anything that could provoke a US reaction. The conference involved officials from the central bank and the finance ministry as well as executives from “dozens of local and international lenders such as HSBC,” the FT report said. All large foreign and domestic banks operating in China were represented. The meeting began with a briefing from a senior official from the finance ministry who said the government had been put on alert by the punitive sanctions against Russia. No doubt there are also concerns in Beijing that the measures against Moscow could go well beyond the existing sanctions. There is already discussion in the imperialist capitals that Russia’s assets be completely expropriated to pay for the war damage in Ukraine.
No specific scenario was raised at the conference as to what could be the circumstances for the use of financial sanctions against China, but the issue of Taiwan was on the minds of participants. Over the recent period the US has been steadily moving to abandon its “one China” policy agreed to when diplomatic recognition was accorded to China in 1979. The provocations by the US over Ukraine which led to the Russian invasion will have raised concerns in Beijing that Washington will adopt a similar scenario in relation to Taiwan, possibly through a US military build-up on the island or encouraging Taiwan to declare formal independence. Such actions could provoke Beijing to take military action in the same way as the NATO expansion goaded Putin to invade Ukraine. Taiwan may not be the only issue to spark a US escalation. The US, backed by its ally Australia, has issued threats against the Solomon Islands over the decision of the Sogavare government to sign a security pact with China. During a visit by senior White House official Kurt Campbell to the Solomon Islands capital Honiara last month, the White House issued a threatening statement that the US would have “significant concerns and respond accordingly” if steps were taken to establish a “de facto” Chinese military presence in the island nation.
The terms of the statement are so wide that an aggressive US response could follow from virtually any action that Washington interprets as inimical to its interests. There is already considerable US hostility to the decision by the Sogavare government to switch its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing. It appears, at least from the FT report, that the conference was unable to come up with concrete measures if the US decided to impose sanctions. A person briefed on the meeting said:
No-one on site could think of a good solution to the problem. China’s banking system isn’t prepared for a freeze of its dollar assets or exclusion from the SWIFT messaging system as the US has done to Russia.
It cited Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong, who said Beijing was right to be concerned, “because it has very few alternatives and the consequences are disastrous.” The effect of any sanction measures, even if they were milder than those imposed on Russia, would go beyond the considerable financial turmoil the Russian ban has produced. China’s weight in international financial markets is far greater than that of Russia. China is estimated to hold $1.5t worth of US securities, including more than $1t worth of US T-Bonds. All told, China holds $3.2t in foreign assets. According to some bankers present at the meeting, it was doubtful that the US could impose significant sanctions because of China’s huge holdings of dollar financial assets and the massive effect any freeze would have on the US and global financial system. Collier said:
It is difficult for the US to impose massive sanctions against China. It is like mutually assured destruction in a nuclear war.
But in conditions where the use of nuclear weapons has become an ever-greater danger in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the use of the financial “nuclear option” can by no means be ruled out. Moreover, the issue goes beyond China. The imposition of sanctions on Russia has already delivered a major blow to the international financial system based on the use of the dollar. Its weaponisation means that any country that crosses the US can find itself under attack, including major countries. At present the major imperialist powers, above all those in Europe, have aligned themselves behind the US drive to “break the back” of Russia in the hope they may obtain some benefit from the plunder of its resources. But they have conflicting interests which could rapidly emerge. The US has already used its control of the dollar to enforce unilateral sanctions against Iran by compelling European companies and financial institutions to abide by them or face large penalties. The longer-term and not so long-term implications of the US measures against Russia are emerging clearly. So-called free market operations in the global system are being done away with. It is increasingly being placed on a war footing as the prospect re-emerges of the division of the world into rival currency and financial blocs, as took place in the lead-up to WW2.
British Virgin Islands premier’s arrest exposes Britain’s central role in global corruption and criminality
Jean Shaoul, WSWS, Apr 2 2022
On Thursday, the US DEA arrested Andrew Fahie, prime minister of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), in Florida charging him with drug trafficking and money laundering after undercover agents caught him in a sting operation set in motion last October. Also arrested were BVI port authority director Oleanvine Maynard, and his son Kadeem in a separate operation. The arrests expose the financial skullduggery of not only the BVI, one of the world’s premier tax havens, but Britain, which retains overall control of the islands. Far from serving as a check on criminal activities, Britain stands exposed as the ringleader.
US law enforcement officials lured the pair into Miami’s Opa-Locka Executive Airport with the promise of $700k in cash in designer shopping bags in return for help in enabling drug shipments. Earlier this month, Fahie had agreed a 12% commission on a three-ton shipment of cocaine smuggled via the BVI. According to court filings, Fahie had complained that “the British did not pay him much.” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss struck an outraged pose, saying she was “appalled” by the arrest and associated revelations. The BVI has long been known to be the centre of a major drug trafficking route, with shipments of cocaine routed from Columbia to the US through the islands. In Nov 2020, the authorities seized more than two tons of cocaine at a property on the islands belonging to a serving police officer. Truss immediately dispatched Amanda Milling, the minister for overseas territories, to the British Virgin Islands for talks.
Fahie, widely described as a flamboyant character, was first investigated in 2003 in relation to money laundering, allegations he denied as ‘outdated, unproven, and unsubstantiated,’ but the investigation resulted in no action being taken against him. So rife were the allegations of drug-smuggling, corruption, nepotism, jury intimidation and the misuse of public funds that in Jan 2021 Britain’s then-governor of the islands, Gus Jaspert, who once served as private secretary to former Prime Minister David Cameron, himself a beneficiary of BVI’s tax haven status, was forced to set up a Commission of Inquiry into misgovernance in the British overseas territory. However, as the present governor John Rankin pointed out:
The remit of the Commission of Inquiry focused on governance and corruption and was not a criminal investigation into the illegal drug trade.
He failed to explain why it did not deal with the serious claims of high-level collusion with drug trafficking. The Commission, due to report last January, conveniently published its 943-page long report the day after Fahie’s arrest. Headed by retired judge ‘Sir’ Gary Hickinbottom, it found that “almost everywhere the principles of good governance are ignored” but concluded it was “highly likely” that serious dishonesty had taken place. It recommended imposing direct rule from London by the BVI’s governor, tantamount to putting the mafia boss in direct charge. The recommendation to suspend the elected government and impose direct rule comes just months after Barbados dumped the Queen as head of state, and the visit of Wills & Kate to Jamaica prompted similar calls, amid protests calling for apologies and reparations over slavery and historical mistreatment. The lawyer hired to defend Fahie’s administration is former attorney-general ‘Sir’ Geoffrey Cox, widely criticized for taking on highly lucrative legal work when being a Conservative MP is supposed to be a full-time job. He earned more than £1m in 2021 from his non-parliamentary work for the international law firm Withers. During his visits to the BVI, he stayed in a luxury villa that costs $7,100 a week to rent during the low season, paid for by the BVI government.
The 50 or more islands that comprise the British Virgin Islands are situated to the east of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands and have a population of just 30k. After capturing the islands in 1672, the British introduced sugar cane production and brought slaves from Africa to work on the plantations. In the years that followed the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire in 1833, the BVI, like its counterparts throughout the Caribbean, was never able to overcome British imperialism’s legacy of underdevelopment, dependency and economic hardship. On gaining notional independence from Britain in 1960, when few people had access to electricity, the BVI diversified away from its traditionally agriculture-based economy in favour of tourism and financial services for the world’s corporations and kleptocrats that use the islands as a tax haven. Since the 1980s, the BVI has become synonymous with the tax avoidance industry, hosting the brass plates of 370k companies that control an estimated $1,500b of assets, and is now one of the wealthiest areas in the Caribbean. The scale of its transactions is enormous. By 2012, according to the Financial Times, the British Virgin Islands was the fifth largest recipient of foreign direct investment globally, “with inflows at $72b, higher than those of the UK, which has an economy almost 3k times larger.” Despite the enormous wealth controlled by BVI’s corporations, little remains in the BVI, with BVI’s entire banking system holding just $2.5b.
The money, often of dubious origin, and the financial services industry that provides the necessary legal cover is channeled through these tax havens that offer their owners both anonymity and tax-free status. The money is then funneled through to businesses and banks in the City of London that then pay little or no tax on their operations, while at the same time underpinning London’s position as a major financial centre as it laundered the world’s dirty money. Such is the sordid status today of what was the world’s first major capitalist state. This is likely why the US launched the sting operation: to undermine London’s position and shore up New York’s. It comes as the City of London is still reeling from sanctions imposed in the wake of the US/NATO provoked war in Ukraine on Russian oligarchs who have parked their money in Britain’s capital. The latest scandal follows the release of the Panama papers in 2016, and later the Paradise Papers in 2017 and the Pandora Papers in 2021, by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The Pandora Papers’ analysis identified 956 companies specializing in offshore tax havens with ties to 336 “high-level politicians and public officials, including country leaders, cabinet ministers, ambassadors and others.” “More than two-thirds” of the companies identified were “set up in the British Virgin Islands.”
The BVI is one of the 15 British Overseas Territories, a collection of islands strategically located around the world. Most of them function as tax havens and military bases for British imperialism, with Britain responsible for their criminal justice system, defence and foreign relations. To put it another way, their governments have no more powers than local authorities in Britain. The British government can issue instructions to the BVI, declare a state of emergency as the previous governor Jaspert did after Hurricane Irma caused devastation on the islands in 2017, and even assume overall control of the islands. Thus, Britain plays a crucial role in enabling the tax havens that protect the wealth of the world’s kleptocrats and depriving the world’s governments of nearly $500b through tax abuse by multinationals and the super-rich, according to the State of Tax Justice 2021 published jointly by the Tax Justice Network, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice and the global union federation Public Services International last November. It found that estimated tax losses had risen from $427b in 2020 to $483b in 2021, although these figures were likely “the tip of the iceberg,” with the UK alone responsible for almost 40% of the total. These losses must be recouped through savage cuts and ramping up the taxation and, above all, exploitation of the working class.
For decades successive British Chancellors of the Exchequer have lyingly protested their helplessness in the face of tax havens, even as the governor of the BVI, and the governors of Britain’s other tax havens, has for decades and by right attended and presided over the BVI’s cabinet, and is thus intimately involved in the formulation and implementation of its financial policy. Fahie’s arrest come as British politicians, many of whom benefit from Britain’s offshore tax havens, insist there is no money to pay for the most essential social services. They allow the world’s financial elite and its bribed political stooges to dodge taxes by stashing their wealth in secretive locations right under the noses of the so-called “financial regulators,” while the working class is told it must accept ever-worsening poverty and deprivation. The whole disgusting episode illustrates the basic reality that criminality, corruption and misrule are not the result of a few “bad apples” but flow inexorably from the essential nature of the capitalist system. Clearing out the billionaire oligarchs, corrupt politicians and criminal CEOs who are today plotting wars of plunder requires the building of a socialist movement of the working class in opposition to the present social order.
Niqnaq 