Intensifying Global Crisis and Conflict
- Part 2 -

Malcolm Guy *

(This paper was presented by Malcolm Guy on 6th Ojha Sanajaoba Memorial lecture held at VC's Court room on December 30, 2016)

While burning obscene for war, an estimated US$ trillion for the war on Iraq alone, the US government denies needed social services in health and education for the American people and to come to the aid of refugees fleeing from US wars and policies.

Young Americans, especially people of color and the unemployed have been sacrificed in these wars of aggression overseas. The US government has admitted that 4,448 US soldiers died and 32,221 of them were injured in the Iraq war. Many of the US soldiers who survive these wars suffer from post-traumatic brain injury and post trauma disability.

Washington's European NATO allies, meanwhile, have suffered the blowback from their support of the US wars of aggression in the Middle-East/West Asia with the terrorist bombings in Paris and Brussels that have victimized civilians and created an atmosphere of terror among the people.

As the terrorism that imperialist countries have exported comes home to roost, these states also become even more repressive at home by enacting more laws and regulations that curtail civil liberties, increasing mass surveillance and militarizing the police and border controls. Across the US, for example, heavily armed Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams are forcing their way into working people's homes in the middle of the night, often deploying explosive devices such as flashbang grenades to temporarily blind and deafen residents, simply to serve a search warrant on the suspicion that someone may be in possession of a small amount of drugs.

US expands global military hoot print

Despite the massive military setbacks and growing resistance, US militarism is now further intensifying as it sets its aim at other imperialist powers, placing humanity in ever-greater peril.

The US is expanding its global military boot print by establishing a new network of bases in countries stretching from Africa to East Asia. There are now more than 88 US bases overseas in more than 70 countries – compared to no more than 30 foreign military bases for all other countries combined, mostly owned by US allies such as France and the UK.

US overseas facilities include at least four new large-scale bases or "hubs" plus a greater number of smaller camps and "lily pads" which serve as "spokes" to house drones surveillance aircraft or pre-positioned weaponry and supplies for US troops and other military personnel present in about 160 foreign countries and territories. The new bases network – along with the US Navy's 11 aircraft carriers – will provides more launching pads for US military intervention destabilization and aggression as well as intelligence activities and counter-insurgency operations in all corners of the planet.

Even before Hillary Clinton announced the US' Strategic Pivot to Asia in 2011, the US navy has been stepping up military exercises as well as provocative air and sea-based surveillance and patrol activities near Chinese borders – raising the risk of direct confrontations and war escalation in the Asia-Pacific region. It has also imposed blockades and military provocation against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

While targeting DPRK's (North Korea) nuclear program, the US continues to stock nuclear weapons in South Korea. The US was the first-user of atomic weapons against civilian populations in Japan at the close of World War II and President Obama refused to issue an "unequivocal no-first-use pledge." (Counterpunch)

The US is using South Korea as the launch pad for the Pentagon's Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system, known as THAAD, ostensibly aimed at North Korea, but really targeting China.

In The Coming War China, John Pilger writes: "Across the East China Sea lies the Korean island of Jeju, a semi-tropical sanctuary and World Heritage Site declared 'an island of world peace'. On this island of world peace has been built one of the most provocative military bases in South Korean naval base purpose-built for US aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and destroyers equipped with the Aegis missile system, aimed at China."

The nearby Japanese island of Okinawa has 32 military installations, from which Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq have previously been attacked by the United States. Today, the principal target in China.

No room for progressive governments in the US backyard

In Latin America, the US has been supporting local oligarchs and right-wing politicians since 2002 in their relentless campaign to overthrow the Bolivarian government in Venezuela. It has directed or sponsored coup d' etats in Haiti, Bolivia, Honduras, Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil to reassert its control over the Americas and reverse the advances of "leftist" or progressive governments in the region since the turn of the century.

With Fidal Castro gone, the US will step up its ongoing attempt to overthrow the socialist government in Havana, which provides a beacon of hope throughout the Americas and the world and stands as proof that you can stand up to the monster. The US was forced to admit its deadly decades-long embargo has been unsuccessful. The US Has thus been forced to start negotiating and opening up ties with the Cuban government, but to date has refused to remove the embargo.

Despite US policies, Cuba provides quality healthcare and education to its people, unlike the US where both are a privilege of income. Castro's legacy has been to put the needs of working people first and to provide a quality of life far beyond that of the neighbouring island nations of Jamaica the Dominican Republic and Haiti, each of which has been subjected to devastating imperialist intervention.

This is why Obama's pronouncements during his trip to the island and Trump's parroting of the same mantras of "democracy and human rights", reveals astounding arrogance. They are the incoming and outgoing Presidents of the No. 1 imperialist country which at war with the world's working peoples, that continues to occupy Cuban territory through the US base and prison at Guantanamo and which imprisons a full quarter of the entire world's prison populations, disproportionately comprising blacks and other minorities. Protracted crisis, which erupted in 2007-2008, has persisted. Even bourgeois economists and financial analysts now acknowledge that the global economy has not really recovered.

The present third wave of the crisis is centered in the so-called "emerging economies" with the end of debt-driven growth in China the end of the commodities boom for raw material exporting countries such as Brazil and South Africa and capital flight from developing countries as a whole.

The results of the measures taken in relations to the crisis are paving the way to greater and more dangerous convulsions. Bank bailouts and the ultra-loose monetary policy adopted by the imperialist central banks have put more money in the hands of the financial oligarchy but has inflated global debt by US$ 57 trillion in just eight years from 2007. Global debt is the ticking time bomb that is inevitably going to explode and plunge the world into another and more severe financial seizure.

Meanwhile, the richest 62 monopoly capitalists in the world have increased their stock of wealth by US$ 542 billion since 2010 while the most exploited 3.6 billion people have lost US$ 1 trillion over the same period. The official figures show joblessness is at an all-time high of 200 million people globally, with another three million expected to join the ranks of the unemployed over the next two years.

Among those employed precarious conditions of work are now the norm even in the biggest and wealthiest monopoly firms. For instance, only 6% of the total workforce of the top 50 global corporations is recognized as direct employees while the rest are hired as short-term contractual workers or informed workers. More workers are also forced to seek employment abroad, adding to the 150 million plus global migrant work-force. Monopoly capitalists are dismantling workers' rights previously won through the heroic struggles of the labor movement, including the right to a living wage, social benefits, job security, the eight-hour workday and safe working conditions.

Never satisfied, the monopoly bourgeoisie is carrying out a new wave of neoliberal offensives aiming to increase profits amidst crisis conditions. They are implementing more severe austerity measures and labor flexibilisation; privatizing the public sector and the commons most prominently in the form of land grabs; deepening the denationalization and compradorisation of third world economies by extending the global supply chains of their monopoly firms; and strengthening protections for monopoly-capitalist property and profits, especially by extending intellectual property rights over technologies and knowledge.

(To be contd......)