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White House proclaims “new era” of nuclear weapons “without numerical constraints”
Andre Damon, WSWS, Jun 28 2024

In an interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph published Monday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made it clear that expanding the number of deployed nuclear weapons, in response to both Russia and China, was the central subject of discussion at last week’s NATO defense ministers’ summit. Stoltenberg said:

I won’t go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues. That’s exactly what we’re doing at NATO, for instance at meetings in NATO, a nuclear planning group as we had during the defence ministerial meeting this week.

At a White House briefing Monday ahead of a scheduled visit by Stoltenberg for talks with Biden focusing on the war against Russia in Ukraine, NSC spox Adm (Retd) John Kirby rerused to deny Stoltenberg’s statement when asked whether “the President taken part in consultations about deployment of more nuclear weapons.” In a follow-up question, Kirby was asked:

How can this not be perceived as provocation or an escalation?

He replied by saying, “NATO is a defensive alliance,” and since he has uttered these magic words, its actions by definition cannot be a “provocation” or “escalation.” Stoltenberg’s statements come ten days after Pranay Vaddi, senior director for arms control at the NSC, speaking to the Arms Control Association, proclaimed a “new era” for nuclear arms in which the US would deploy nuclear weapons “without numerical constraints.” Condemning “national weakness,” Vaddi said:

We may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from the current deployed numbers is required. We will have no choice. We’re modernizing each leg of our nuclear triad, updating our nuclear command control and communication systems, and investing in our nuclear enterprise.

The US media, in line with the official propaganda of the Biden administration, has framed the semi-official decision by the Biden administration to abandon all limits on the deployment of nuclear weapons as a response to unexpected actions of Russia and China. It is no such thing. Instead, it is the consummation of a years-long plan to massively expand the US nuclear arsenal, which US think tanks christened in 2016 as a “second nuclear age,” language that was echoed six years later in the Biden administration’s proclamation of a nuclear “new era.” In its lead editorial published online Monday afternoon, the WaPo laid stress on this impending nuclear escalation, calling attention to a largely unreported speech by Vaddi. The Post editorial board statement was published under the headline:

If you liked ‘Dr Strangelove,’ you’ll find the new arms race thrilling.

Both Vaddi and the WaPo editorial sought to portray a possible “breakout” of a new nuclear arms race as the product of Russian aggression in Ukraine and Chinese decisions to greatly increase the size of their own nuclear arsenal, although it is still dwarfed by the destructive power of Russia and the US. Stoltenberg’s comments after the NATO summit make it clear that the nuclear escalation is not idle talk about “the coming years,” but refers to decisions that had already been largely finalized. As is usual in American politics, by the time the public hears that a decision is being “considered,” it has already been made, and all that is necessary is the proper media messaging to announce it to the public. In 2016, the Obama administration and the Republican-controlled Congress launched a bipartisan plan to spend trillions of dollars modernizing every single aspect of the US nuclear arsenal, from its ICBMs to its ballistic missile submarines to the fighters that would deliver nuclear bombs and missiles. One think-tank wrote:

In this second nuclear age, combattants would “think through how they might actually employ a nuclear weapon, both early in a conflict and in a discriminate manner.

Over the ensuing eight years, it has become clear that the nuclear rearmament initiated under Obama, then escalated under Trump and Biden, involves systematic efforts by the US to move its nuclear weapons and missile defense capabilities ever closer to their targets in Moscow and Beijing. Over this period, NATO built two missile bases in Eastern Europe, in Poland and in Romania, capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles in the event of a nuclear war, as well as having the theoretical capability to deploy nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. In 2019, the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which constrained its ability to push nuclear weapons up to the border of Russia and China. The US has worked systematically to ring China with missiles, facilitating massive new long-range weapons deployments in Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Stoltenberg’s remarks point to the extremely dangerous and reckless character of the upcoming NATO summit in Washington, which is expected to massively expand direct US participation in the war against Russia. In remarks in Washington after his arrival Monday, Stoltenberg implied that the present period is analogous to the decisions by Woodrow Wilson to send US combat troops to Europe in WW1 and by FDR to send US troops to Europe and the Pacific in WW2:

President Wilson wanted to keep the US out of the ‘Great War.’ But he eventually changed course, realizing that America could never be safe without a Europe at peace. Just two decades later, Franklin D Roosevelt promised not to send American boys to yet another war in Europe and to maintain America’s neutrality. But after Pearl Harbor, he decided otherwise. So twice when Europe has been at war, the US chose isolationism. And twice, it realized that this did not work. That was true then, and it is even more true today.

In light of recent developments, these statements are chilling. Last month, Joint Chiefs chair Charles Q Brown told the NYT that the NATO military alliance will “eventually” send significant numbers of active-duty NATO troops to Ukraine. This was followed by the announcement by Macron that he is seeking to form a “coalition” of NATO members to send troops to Ukraine, and the decision by the US to allow Ukraine to use NATO weapons to strike inside Russia. The implications of Stoltenberg’s remarks, therefore, are that just as in WW1 and WW2, when Democratic US presidents sent hundreds of thousands of American troops to fight in Europe, a similar scenario is around the corner. But unlike the previous two world wars, a full-scale war in Europe against Russia and in Asia against China would be fought against countries with significant nuclear arsenals of their own. In this context, the Biden administration and NATO are making clear that they will go to any length to achieve their aims. In his remarks, Stoltenberg was blunt about the US goals in the war in Ukraine:

Ensuring Ukraine prevails serves US security interests. By allocating a small fraction of its defense budget, the US helps Ukraine to destroy a significant share of Russia’s offensive combat capabilities, without putting a single American soldier in harm’s way.

This tactic has, however, run its course. Ukraine has been bled white, and NATO has, to use the words of Senator Lindsey Graham, fought Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” Now, with Russian forces advancing across the front, preventing the collapse of the decade-long imperialist effort to turn Ukraine into a bastion against Russia requires a dramatic escalation of direct US-NATO involvement in the conflict. By raising the prospect of direct US and NATO involvement in the war, together with the implicit threat to use nuclear weapons to achieve the US’s goals, the Biden administration is making clear that there are no limits to the number of lives, whether Ukrainian or Russian, European or American, that world imperialism is prepared to sacrifice in pursuit of its aims of global domination.

US, Japan, and South Korea to conduct major war games
Ben McGrath, WSWS, Jun 18 2024

The US, Japan, and SK are planning to hold a major new trilateral military exercise, dubbed Freedom Edge, as early as this month, military sources in Seoul revealed on Friday. The drills were initially announced during the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore and represent the increased push by the three allies to formalize their de facto military alliance targeting China, as well as Russia. Freedom Edge, will likely cover land, sea, air, and cyber domains. The US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Roosevelt will likely participate in the first iteration of the drills, though the exact dates have yet to be confirmed. US Sec Def Austin declared at Shangri-La:

Freedom Edge would allow our countries to train together in unprecedented ways.

During last August’s Camp David summit Biden, Japanese PM Kishida and SK President Yoon Suk-yeol agreed to hold new trilateral exercises, ostensibly aimed at deterring the NK “threat.” In reality, these drills are part of a growing system of Indo-Pacific alliances led by the US to encircle and threaten China. Austin stated at Shangri-La on Jun 1:

Today, we are witnessing a new convergence around nearly all aspects of security in the Indo-Pacific. And this new convergence is producing a stronger, more resilient, and more capable network of partnerships. And that is defining a new era of security in the Indo-Pacific.

The following day, Austin was joined by Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and SK Defense Minister Sin Won-sik to announce Freedom Edge in line with the three governments’ agreement at Camp David. The exercise takes its name from the US bilateral war games Keen Edge and Freedom Shield with Japan and SK respectively. On Jun 5, in a preview of the weaponry Washington and its allies are prepared to unleash, the US dispatched a B-1B bomber to the Korean Peninsula to conduct bombing drills, the first by such an aircraft since 2017. The B-1B carries the heaviest conventional payload of any US bomber. It was joined by two SK F-15K fighter jets. The B-1B also conducted additional air drills with US and SK military aircraft. There is no doubt that the new and old drills are directed above all at China. During this year’s Keen Edge in February, Grant Nesham, a retired US Marine colonel and senior researcher at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, stated:

This exercise is almost by definition directed at China. It has been for at least a decade.

In addition, Freedom Shield is one of two massive war games that takes place annually between the US and South Korea, involving tens of thousands of troops directly on Beijing’s doorstep. Furthermore, the revelation that Freedom Edge could take place this month coincides with Putin’s reported upcoming visit to NK, a sign of increasing cooperation between the two. NK has been accused of helping arm Russia even as the US has relied on SK and Japan, in flagrant violation of the latter’s constitution, to arm Ukraine. The US-Japan-SK war games therefore take on an increasingly direct challenge to Russia as well. This US-led war planning and the military exercises are bound up with Washington and NATO’s acceleration of the war against Russia in Ukraine as well as their support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza. These threaten to bring China directly into what is an expanding global conflict, particularly as Washington has directly challenged the One China policy over Taiwan, attempting to goad Beijing into war, much as it did with Russia in Ukraine.

The US has also focused on formalizing the trilateral military cooperation between Japan and SK, with Austin, Kihara and Sin also agreeing to deepen military cooperation in other fields while in Singapore. The three announced a new framework that would be developed within the year. This will include senior-level policy consultations, information sharing, military exchanges, and more trilateral drills, such as tabletop exercises. The US has long pushed for cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul, having built a ballistic missile system throughout the region that targets China. This requires increased military and intelligence sharing between Japan and SK, which has been hampered in the past by unresolved historical issues stemming from Japan’s colonization of Korea (1910–1945) and economic tensions between the two. Speaking anonymously to the Japan Times, a former US-Japan alliance manager, an official responsible for coordinating between the two, stated that the allies are now seeking to capitalize on the current relations between the three as the opportunity “does not come along often.” In other words, the three countries are moving quickly to solidify this alliance behind the backs of their people, so as not to fuel anti-war sentiment. These arrangements could include Japan’s cooperation in carrying out nuclear attacks. Washington and Seoul last year launched the bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group to give the latter more say in how US nuclear weapons would be used. Seoul is reportedly “open” to the idea of Japan participating in the group, Kim Seong-han, President Yoon’s national security advisor from 2022‒2023, stated in February.

The US is claiming all this is a push for peace. At Shangri-La, Austin declared that the new alliances in the region were motivated by “respect for sovereignty and international law. The free flow of commerce and ideas. Freedom of the seas and skies. And openness, transparency, and accountability.” Washington has regularly used these claims to above all challenge the One China policy over Taiwan and upend the status quo in the region while demonizing Beijing. The One China policy states that Taiwan is a part of China, which has its roots in Washington’s claim that the KMT government in Taipei was the legitimate government of all China following the Chinese Revolution in 1949. The US defended the KMT at the time by sending its 7th fleet into the Taiwan Strait. Only in 1979, for tactical considerations focused on the Soviet Union, did Washington formally recognize Beijing and withdraw diplomatic relations with Taipei. Since then, the US has de facto recognized the One China policy and Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan. Now, as US and Japanese imperialism seek to subjugate and ultimately carve up China, reducing it to a semi-colonial status, the two have all but renounced the One China policy to further their aims, bringing the region closer to war.

New Popular Front embraces war in French snap election campaign
Alex Lantier, WSWS, Jun 18 2024

Events are rapidly confirming that the New Popular Front alliance called by Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the French snap elections is a political trap for workers seeking to deny the far right a new victory after its surge in the June 9 European elections. The New Popular Front is advancing a war policy for French imperialism compatible with President Emmanuel Macron, the “president of the rich.” Yesterday, the New Popular Front held its first rally in Montreuil, outside Paris. Leaders of the New Popular Front’s four main parties spoke: François Ruffin of Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI) party, Clémentine Autain of LFI and formerly of the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF), Marine Tondelier of the Greens, and Olivier Faure of Hollande’s Socialist Party (PS). Ruffin, who launched the call for the New Popular Front alliance, claimed:

We have not won yet, but we have won against the slide towards the worst and towards feeling resigned.

Hollande’s Socialist Party National Secretary Olivier Faure said, “Let us swear an oath never to abandon each other.” He said he opposed “putting an equal sign” between the New Popular Front and the far-right National Rally (RN), rejecting official accusations of antisemitism against Mélenchon for his statements of solidarity with Gaza. Faure said the New Popular Front has “people who are sometimes noisy, who sometimes annoy certain Frenchmen, but the program they defend is one of justice.” Before the rally, however, former PS European candidate Raphaël Glucksmann had made clear that the basis of this alliance is support for global imperialist war plans. He supports NATO intervention in Ukraine against Russia and has denied that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. While denying the Gaza genocide, he echoes NATO’s anti-Chinese war propaganda making unsubstantiated accusations against China over a supposed genocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Glucksmann said the New Popular Front is committed to escalation against Russia and repudiating Mélenchon’s earlier talk of a Ukraine cease-fire. Citing internal talks in the New Popular Front on the electoral platform, Glucksmann said:

It was an ideological trial of strength, it was hard. But we have obtained an extremely clear engagement on arms deliveries to Ukraine, Ukraine’s borders, on unwavering support for the Ukrainian resistance.

In response, Macron sent a signal of support to the New Popular Front yesterday. His Renaissance party signaled that it would not run a candidate against François Hollande, the widely despised former president of France whom the New Popular Front named as its legislative candidate as a PS member in the Corrèze region. It said this decision was taken out of “respect for his former position” as president of France.

NATO war plans with Russia are at the center of Macron’s calculations in calling the snap general elections in two rounds, Jun 30 and Jul 7. Macron called these elections just after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also called snap elections for Jul 4, and Macron and other NATO officials called to send troops to Ukraine. Both Britain and France will therefore have new governments as the July 9 NATO war summit is convened in Washington to prepare a direct NATO intervention against Russia. Macron’s snap election call is a desperate bid to prepare the state machine to wage war on the workers at home, so it can wage war on Russia abroad. Last year, to finance the related surge in military spending, Macron slashed pensions by decree, despite overwhelming popular opposition and mass strikes. The strikes and protests this policy generated were widely acknowledged, even by capitalist media, as France’s deepest political crisis since the May 1968 general strike. The military escalation NATO is planning against Russia, like last year’s pension cuts, is opposed by an overwhelming majority of the population. Polls found 68% of Frenchmen, 80% of Germans and 90% of Poles oppose Macron’s call to send troops to Ukraine to fight Russia. The question Macron aims to resolve with these elections is what government could best force this monumentally reckless escalation, which threatens to provoke nuclear war, on the workers.

In this explosive situation, enormous uncertainty hangs over the election result. Polls show the far-right RN with 33% of the vote, the Popular Front coalition with 25%, and Macron’s coalition with 20%. The right-wing The Republicans would have 7% and the far-right Reconquest party 3%, with the rest of the vote divided between smaller parties mostly allied to the Popular Front. With Macron unable to assemble a parliamentary majority from his own party, the question is whether he would form a government with RN or Popular Front forces. Last week, the German tabloid Bild reported that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had told the leadership of her CDU that Macron was considering putting the RN in power. Macron claimed, von der Leyen said, that the RN would therefore become unpopular, leading to lasting “disenchantment” in France with the far right. Such reports, together with widespread opposition in France at the repressive nature of Macron’s regime, led to protests and social anger against his collusion with the far right. The attempt of the parliamentarians, academics and middle class functionaries of the New Popular Front to capitalize on this anger is however deeply cynical. With LFI’s alignment on the PS, the New Popular Front is offering itself as another potential party of capitalist government and war. During the 2022 elections, Mélenchon had offered to serve as a prime minister under Macron and even under a neo-fascist president. Now, his hailing of the New Popular Front’s investiture in Corrèze of Hollande—who is widely despised for imposing austerity, a state of emergency suspending democratic rights, and for invading Mali—only confirms this orientation.

Indeed, the decision of LFI to call for a Popular Front is not merely empty rhetoric or demagogy. As Mélenchon entered into politics as a student shortly after the May 1968 general strike, he joined Pierre Lambert’s Organisation communiste internationaliste (OCI), which was then breaking with Trotskyism and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). While he joined the PS in 1976, ultimately becoming a senator and minister, Mélenchon was thus from the outset aware of Trotsky’s critique of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism and the Popular Front. The liberals, social democrats and Stalinists of the 1934-1938 Popular Front blocked a struggle of the working class for power and for socialism during the 1936 general strike. The capitalist government they formed then brutally repressed strikes that broke out over the next two years. The Popular Front thus blocked the last great revolutionary opportunities in Europe during WW2. Ultimately, the majority of French liberal and social democratic parliamentarians voted for dictatorial powers to Nazi-collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain in 1940.

While Mélenchon left the PS in 2009 to form the Left Party and then the LFI, he maintained this essential orientation, born of the rejection of Trotskyism, to strangling and disarming the working class and blocking a revolutionary struggle for workers power and for socialism. This took a particularly egregious form in his role during last year’s struggle against Macron’s pension cuts. The LFI-PCF-PS alliance launched empty moral appeals to Macron and supported the union bureaucracy’s decision to abort and shut down strikes against it. The sharpest warnings must be made: The New Popular Front, while it seeks to exploit working class anger against neo-fascism, speaks for pro-imperialist layers of the middle class who do not oppose war or dictatorship. A movement against imperialist war, austerity and capitalism can only be built in the working class by opposing the New Popular Front. That struggle is inseparable from the struggle for Trotskyism against the politics of Stalinism and Popular Frontism.

Police bar pro-Palestinian protesters outside of Hollywood fundraiser for Biden
Patrick Martin, WSWS, Jun 18 2024

While police kept anti-genocide protesters at bay outside a downtown Los Angeles theater, Hollywood actors, directors and producers, and hundreds of state and local Democratic Party officeholders, gathered Saturday to raise money for Biden’s reelection campaign. Seats at the event cost anywhere from $250 to $500k, an amount that some of those in attendance could fork over as though tipping the valet. Organizers claimed that the fundraiser at the Peacock Theater, where the Emmy Awards ceremony is held, had raked in more than $30m, eclipsing a similar event held on Broadway two months ago, which raised $26m. Obama joined Biden on stage, while the appearance was emceed by nighttime talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who combined fawning comments toward Biden with sarcastic sallies against Donald Trump. The importance of the event for the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign was shown in Biden’s decision to leave the G7 meeting in Italy Friday, skipping the final dinner, and flying across ten time zones with a stop for refueling in Washington to make his date in LA, where he arrived Saturday morning local time. The NYT reported:

Aides said the taxing schedule made clear that even at age 81, he still demonstrates the endurance to manage his many duties.

The audience was remarkable in that it included both members of SAG-AFTRA, the union that participated in last year’s lengthy and bitter strike, and members of the AMPTP, the bosses’ group that provoked the walkout and made use of the union’s collaboration to crush it. Among these was Jeffrey Katzenberg, both a Hollywood mogul and a leading fundraiser for and political backer of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign. The former head of Disney Studios and later co-founder of DreamWorks is one of the wealthiest men in Hollywood and one of the most lavish financiers of the Democratic Party. Biden, of course, purports to support the workers, but actually relies on the union apparatus to keep the workers in check, sharing that perspective with liberal capitalists like Katzenberg. While Biden took the opportunity of the fundraising event to warn ominously about the threat to democracy from Trump and his reactionary appointees who now dominate the Supreme Court, outside the theater the LAPD, under the command of Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, were carrying out their own assault on democratic rights, lining up against several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters opposing Biden’s support for the genocide in Gaza. One local press report cited protesters chanting, “Biden Biden you’re a liar, we demand a ceasefire.” A report by the NYT read:

Outside the theater complex on Olympic Boulevard, a line of black-clad police in helmets stood guard as about 100 protesters, wearing T-shirts reading “Cease-Fire Now” and carrying signs saying “Stop the Gaza Homicide,” shouted at arriving guests. “There is blood on your hands!” they said. “People are going in to fund Biden’s re-election campaign while he is arming Israel and funding a genocide against the people in Palestine,” said one of the demonstrators, Jodie Evans, 70, a political activist and documentary producer who lives in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Inside the hall, actor and co-host Julia Roberts warned the audience nervously that there might be actual protesters seated among them, so great was the concern in high places that the money-raising might be even slightly disrupted by opposition to mass murder and ethnic cleansing. As it happened, there was no apparent interruption, and no one was arrested either inside or outside the hall. The anti-genocide campaign nonetheless had an effect on the gathering. The other co-host, actor George Clooney, is married to Amal Clooney, a human rights lawyer who worked on the International Criminal Court case that resulted in the issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. After Biden denounced the warrants as “outrageous” and leading Democrats and Republicans slandered the ICC as a nest of terrorist sympathizers, George Clooney reportedly contacted the White House to complain. With the US government considering sanctions against the ICC, his wife could well have found herself a target. But to his discredit, Clooney continued in his capacity as co-host of the fundraiser, welcoming Jimmy Kimmel to emcee the proceedings. Kimmel in turn invited Biden, Obama and other imperialist war criminals on stage and turned the event over to them.

Besides his difficult electoral position in relation to Trump, who holds a narrow lead in the polls despite his role in the first-ever attempt by a sitting president to overthrow the Constitution and seize power and his distinction as the first former president convicted on felony charges, Biden is also beginning to lose his lead in the money race, which he dominated through Q1 2024. In April, Trump outraised him, $76m to $51m, although Biden still has more campaign cash in his warchest. Both candidates are focusing on the super-rich, with Trump holding two fundraisers last week in southern California, with tickets ranging up to $100k in Newport Beach and $250k in Beverly Hills. Biden’s previous trip to LA, in February, included a fundraiser at the home of billionaire cartoon media boss Haim Saban, again with a top ticket price of $250k. The Peacock Theater event, far from giving a popular boost to Biden, was a stark embodiment of the deeply reactionary and anti-democratic character of the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party. It will only fuel the growing disgust, disillusionment, anger and opposition among youth and sections of workers.