Escalating conflict between the beleaguered U.S. and resurgent Russian empires led President Barack Obama to cancel a planned September summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin. The “emerging differences” (as Obama calls them) behind the snub run far deeper than Putin’s granting asylum to National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden. It’s all about the unceasing fight for profits under capitalism.
Hostile blocs of capitalists, represented by Obama and Putin, are more and more at odds in their inter-imperialist competition for the world’s resources, markets, and labor. Those bosses who control global energy supplies gain political and economic advantages over their rivals. Each major power needs armed force — including nuclear weapons — to enforce its domination. It’s no surprise, then, that oil, gas, and missiles top the list of grievances between Obama and Putin. At the same time, both the U.S. and Russia are tailoring their tactics toward building coalitions for a wider confrontation down the road, one that may involve emerging superpower China.
The cost of this competition bears heavily on the world’s working class. As the imperialist rivals prepare for war, their austerity policies devastate the living standards of the international working class. Several billion workers now live on less than two dollars a day. There is mass unemployment in Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, South America, China, the U.S., and elsewhere. Millions have been laid off during world capitalism’s latest economic crisis. Hazardous working conditions kill thousands in the fire-prone factories of Bangladesh. Miners are openly murdered by Nelson Mandela’s political heirs in South Africa. Millions more are suffering and dying from lack of healthcare.
Above and beyond these capitalist horrors, imperialist confrontations kill tens of millions in wars over resources in Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and in Obama’s terror drone attacks over Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Rulers’ Racism Runs Wild
Finally, there is the racism built against Arab and Muslim workers by the U.S. rulers’ closing of their embassies in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. This trumped-up panic move demonizes these workers as enemies who can be killed with impunity. Racism is wielded as well by the U.S. rulers’ cops as they murder black and Latino youth across the country. And by the prosecutors and judges who incarcerate millions in prisons on frame-ups or petty, non-violent violations of the bosses’ laws.
These horrors will end only when this capitalist hell is destroyed by a communist revolution. Only by building a mass, revolutionary Progressive Labor Party can the world eliminate the bosses and their profit system. Only then can we create a society run by and for workers, one without wars, racism, sexism, unemployment and poverty.
Syria, the Bosses’ Latest Battlefront
The U.S. dispute with Russia has killed more than 100,000 workers in Syria over the last two years. Russia maintains a naval base there, backs the anti-U.S. Assad regime, and fosters its alliance with potential nuclear power Iran. Obama’s Russian-Syrian problem centers on the need for continued flow of Middle East oil under Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and other allied brands. A Russian-assisted Assad victory will strengthen Iran’s anti-U.S. rulers, who are threatening to shut off U.S. and British firms’ oil exports through the critical Strait of Hormuz. On the other hand, Obama has been reluctant to support anti-Assad Islamists after al Qaeda forces gained dominance within their camp. The success of this opposition could imperil the slave-state monarchy of Saudi Arabia, Exxon Mobil’s biggest partner.
A less publicized U.S.-Russian battle is raging for supremacy in the crucial European gas arena. New production technology, known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” has for the first time made U.S. gas a globally significant commodity.
Fracking extracts natural gas from wells far below the earth’s surface by shooting water mixed with sand and chemicals at high pressure into shale deposits that contain oil and gas, bringing them cheaply to the surface. It also contaminates ground water and drinking water, forces gases and chemicals to the surface, and has been known to sicken animals and people and cause cancer. But geostrategic and profit considerations have quickly overcome the environmental opposition.
Fracking the Working Class
The racist U.S. ruling class, which murdered millions of Native Americans in the 19th century, has renewed its genocide by fracking on reservations in North Dakota and other Western states. Residents are forced to boil drinking water while they suffer from air pollution caused by huge fires that erupt as natural gas burns off over the prairies.
Two years ago, the rulers’ New York Times published a series called “Drilling Down” on the evils of fracking. Its headlines warned of “toxic materials,” “tainted water,” and “polluted air.” By 2012, however, the Times did an about-face with articles headlined “Revisiting the Facts on Fracking,” and “Rethinking Opposition to Fracking.” The U.S. ruling class has closed ranks to break Moscow’s energy stranglehold on Germany and other European Union countries, which have had to rely on Russian gas.
Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. imperialists’ leading think tank (which counts Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Citicorp, and JP Morgan among its “founders) told Congress on April 23:
U.S. LNG [liquefied natural gas] exports would also help Europe maintain leverage vis-à-vis Russia — even if, as appears likely, little U.S. natural gas is actually shipped to Europe. In the wake of the U.S. shale gas boom, Middle Eastern and North African suppliers have turned to Europe to sell their surplus natural gas, creating intense competition in the European market and increasingly forcing Russia to sell its natural gas on transparent, market-based terms rather than through opaque, politically charged contracts. Even the possibility of significant U.S. natural gas exports will help sustain pressure on Russia to sell natural gas on these [cheaper] market-based European terms.
Flaunting the Nuclear Threat
While Washington and Moscow wield their energy resources as a means of control, they are clashing over the nuclear weapons that protect their respective empires. “In October, Putin let it be known that he would not renew America’s Cooperative Threat Reduction [CTR] program, which has safeguarded nuclear stockpiles in former Soviet countries since the 1990s” (Boston Globe, 8/11/13). In 1992, a severely weakened Russia had agreed to CTR, under which the U.S. oversaw the dismantling of warheads in Russia’s traditional stronghold, Eastern Europe and the old Soviet Union. But today Putin calls the nuclear shots there, and Russia is flaunting its nuclear threat in these former Soviet republics and satellites. Georgia, which Russia invaded in 2008 to suppress its opening to the West, is making similar noises today — and getting a harsh response from its old master. As Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanshvili wrote in the Wall Street Journal on August 5:
Georgia is already a key byway for Caspian energy....               [W]ith four key oil pipelines running through Georgia, our government has declared its intent to join the [European Union-run] Energy Community. We intend to make the country an example of a stable democracy and a reliable partner for Europe and the U.S., as well.... Georgia has already moved closer to NATO [the U.S-controlled North Atlantic Treaty Organization].
The next day, Moscow went literally ballistic. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev appeared on Georgian television to declare:
We do not welcome Georgia’s membership in NATO, to put it mildly....Russia is a very large country with a huge nuclear arsenal.... If there’s a state which is a member of another military-political alliance whose nuclear missiles are aimed at targets located on the Russian territory, we cannot welcome this....you [Georgia] would become a member of a big military political alliance which...is a potential enemy if certain situations arise.
Medvedev is referring to a potential world war. Like U.S. rulers, the Putin regime has two priorities: bolstering its territorial sphere of influence (including Georgia and the rest of Eastern Europe), and cementing grand alliances. This summer saw large-scale military and naval exercises between Russia and China.
Significantly, it was the Atlantic Council think tank that plastered Medvedev’s menacing speech on the front page of its website (8/7/13). The Council, funded both by U.S. capitalist “philanthropies” and the Pentagon, is at the front of the line in applauding NATO’s expansion. More aggressively, it pounds the drums for the formation of a U.S.-led axis to confront its imperialist rivals. In his last act as Atlantic Council boss, before he became Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel published a report outlining a pro-U.S. “dream team” of strategically located allies: India, Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey. All four could potentially mobilize massive armies to help fight the enemies of U.S. capitalism.
Capitalism, No — Revolution, Yes!
In the wake of the Obama-Putin flare-up, U.S. politicians and pundits are debating whether the mid-century Cold War between Russia and the U.S. is back. In fact, much worse lies in store for our class. But as always, the working class is fighting back, from rebellions in South Africa to garment strikes in Bangladesh, from anti-austerity demonstrations in southern Europe to street protests against police murders of black youth in New York City.
But we must go beyond protests and demonstrations. Workers must turn the capitalists’ attacks against us into class war. Led by the Progressive Labor Party, we can overthrow them with communist revolution. Join us and help lead our class along that road.