The fight
by Ukraine to defeat the EU and the US
accentuates
the decline of “Pax Americana”
Statement
by the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International - LCFI
Liga Comunista (Brazil) - Socialist Fight (Britain) - Tendencia Militante Bolchevique (Argentina)
January - 2014
Russia’s
agreement with Ukraine temporarily dispelled tensions that have created the
“EuroMaidan”, demonstrations in favour of the recolonisation of Ukraine by the
European Union (EU) on “Maidan” Square (Independence Square) in the centre of
the capital Kiev. But the current might not last months and can come back in
the form of open civil war in the near future or already a conflict of global
proportions, paving the way for a World War III.
ukraineA
new diplomatic offensive by the European Union against Ukraine is scheduled for
April. The furore was a response to the refusal of the current Ukrainian
Government to accept the conditions of the country in November for the Summit
in Lithuania, on the eastern flank of the EU, which wanted to celebrate the
integration of six former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus:
Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to 28 EU Nations
block.The Ukraine was the highest prize of the agreement, with their nuclear
power plants, factories, farms and pipelines. The failure of the Summit dragged
in Lithuania on the side of Russia and also Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus.
Desperate, Angela Merkel, Putin warned: “we should overcome the mentality of we
or they, the cold war is over” (AFP, 11/28/2013).
The dispute
goes in the opposite direction to the false plea of the German Chancellor and
will warm up even more and become more intense the more we approach the
elections by the Ukrainian Government in 2015. The current battle was only the
beginning of the election campaign where the Ukrainian parties represent
different interests the world bourgeoisie.
It is worth
remembering that the “Orange Revolution”, a precursor to the current wave of
protests, was unleashed just when European and American imperialism were
rejecting the election results that led to the victory of the current President
Viktor Yanukovych in 2004, overthrew him and imposed the victory of one
candidate pro-imperialist Viktor Yushchenko. It is worth noting that the
economic situation in which Ukraine has arrived is the product of the country’s
EU integration by all Governments after the capitalist restoration, including
Yanukovych.
“Vasyl
Gouliï, a businessman from 49 years of Ternopil (west) blamed Europe which,
according to him, was not firm enough after the episodes of police brutality
against demonstrators in Kiev in November. “Europe could have pressed the
Government, but she abandoned the Ukraine “, he lamented. “The opposition must
act more actively. They should tell you how to get the impeachment of President
Viktor Yanukovych” declared 23 year old AFP Pantchuk Lessia, who comes from the
region of Chernivtsi in the west.
The signing
in Moscow of economic agreements providing for a credit of $15 billion to
Ukraine and the decrease by a third in the price of Russian gas, while the
country is on the verge of bankruptcy, appears to have destabilized the leaders
of the defence, unprecedented since the pro-Western Orange Revolution in 2004.
After the Moscow agreements, “attempts to form a “technical” Government to sign
an association agreement with the EU are no longer valid. The revolt of the
oligarchs was drowned out by the cheap gas”, former Interior Minister Yuriy
Lutsenko said recently and he made an appeal in favour of the expansion of the
defence forces which are stronger today than in 2004, when he was overthrown by
the Orange Revolution, says Volodymyr Fessenko. (AFP, 12/22/2013)Russian
GasResult of 2013 this battle of the new “cold war”
In the
battle for the Ukraine, US and EU imperialism has suffered its third major
defeat of 2013 for the composite block by Russia and China. The first defeat
was in Syria, when Russia stopped the bombing was announced by a US-led
military coalition and France against Damascus. The second defeat for the
information war, with the asylum given by Moscow to Snowden, former CIA/NSA
spy.
It is a war
of positions. The Western hegemonic imperialism has been losing ground to the
Eurasian pre-imperialist block. 2013 marked a trend which re-versed the
imperialist offensive of 2011. The core Sino-Russian counter offensive began
after the bloody occupation of Libya and they saw the eminent risk of
repetition of the same defeat in Syria, with warmongering escalating in the
Pacific Ocean, particularly on the Korean peninsula and retreat in favour of
reconciliation between Venezuela and Iran with the United States. But by mid
February Venezuela was back in the firing line and the western imperialist
counter offensive had resumed in Ukraine.
Before the
three losses, the White House acted quickly to crush the anti-Western coup in
South Sudan, the newest nation on the planet, arising from the division of
Sudan by imperialism. All this accentuates the decline of world forces
correlation established for the entire period of the Pax Americana. Decline
that is leveraged by the rise of new block of pre-imperialist bourgeois in
Russia and China, a kind of late imperial-ism which must be taken advantage of
by the world proletariat in its favour against the whole world bourgeoisie.
WHAT IS AT
STAKE IN UKRAINE?
After
Russia, Ukraine is the richest and militarily powerful of the 14 former Soviet
republics. The Ukraine depends on Russian natural gas, although it is
self-sufficient in terms of electrical production, due to nuclear power plants
and hydroelectric dams. In 2005, was the seventh largest steel producer in the
world. The Ukraine has a huge high-tech industrial base; they inherited much of
this from the USSR. It includes electronics, armaments and space articles, most
of which are still under State control. In the manufacturing sector the country
produces metallurgical equipment, diesel locomotives, tractors and automobiles.
The Ukraine
is one of the European countries with the highest consumption of energy, in
proportion to its GDP, Ukraine consumes twice the amount of energy consumed in
Germany. 45% of the energy produced in the country is through its nuclear power
plants. The largest nuclear plant in Europe, the Nu-clear power plant of
Zaporijia, is located in Ukraine.
THE ISSUE
OF RUSSIAN GAS
25% of the
natural gas consumed in the country is produced in Ukraine, but about 35% comes
from Russia and the remaining 40% of Central Asia through transit routes
controlled by Russia. 85% of Russian gas is delivered to Western Europe via
Ukraine. There is one of the core issues which divides the country and the
capitalists between west and east. The great economic importance of Ukraine to
European imperialism lies in the fact that it’s through Ukrainian pipe-lines
almost all Russian gas supplies to Europe pass.FascistIt was precisely to
prevent the installation of more NATO military bases in Ukraine and in exchange
for control of the Ukrainian pipelines that Russia has agreed to invest $15
billion in debt securities of the Government of Ukraine and reduce by about
one-third the price that Naftogaz, Ukraine’s national energy company, pays for
gas from Russian State-owned Gazprom, the largest exporter of natural gas on
the planet. While the IMF and the European Union require a 40% increase in the
price of gas and the de-valuation of the Ukrainian currency, the Grivna.
With the
Russian-Ukrainian agreement the EU will be more directly de-pendent on the
Russian blue fuel without being able to use Ukrainian pipelines that distribute
Russian gas to many nations, as a bargaining chip against Moscow.
The
economic crisis and the austerity policies of the imperialists pushed the
Ukrainian bourgeoisie into the arms of Russia. Until the Lithuania Summit in
November, Yanukovych seemed sincerely focused on closer ties with the EU. The
turnaround came when he realized that the Ukraine, in the hands of the “Big
Three” would go through an intermediate crisis like that suffered by Greece and
Spain.
Yanukovych
said he needed 160 billion dollars over three years to compensate for the
reduction of trade with Russia and Ukraine to help deaden the pain of austerity
reforms required by the EU. The EU had little room for manoeuvre, be-cause they
couldn’t follow a different road, requiring compliance with the austerity plans
by other members of the block and throwing a lifeline to Ukraine. That’s why
the EU refused to give the amount required by the Ukrainian Government,
offering only half of it.
The Ukraine
doesn’t want to follow the path of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Spain.
The “reforms” required by the EU include the currency devaluation, the increase
in energy prices for consumers, and cuts in salaries and pensions. The opening
of its economy to competition from the west would break many industries
Ukraine, especially in the east of the country.cbobodaThe Ukraine is strongly
divided between east and west. In the east is the Soviet-era heavy industry,
industries that are threatened with going bankrupt if the wolves of imperialism
are let loose on the Ukrainian economy. The New York Times reports: “this is
how it works in Ukraine: the east makes money, and the west eats it”. This
demonstrates the division; the WSWS reports: “A survey con-ducted by pro-EU
European Centre for a Modern Ukraine recorded that only 13% of the population
in the east of the country are supporting the protests against the Government,
compared to 84% in the west. Yanukovych’s decision not to sign an association
agreement with the EU, which was the impetus for the demonstrations, is
rejected by most in the west, but supported by 70% in the east”.
Many of the
protesters were wrong in the current economic crisis, induced to think that the
EU would resolve their crisis, driven by the support given to them by Germany
and the US in particular. It serves the economic interests of a few oligarchs
who dominate politically Parliament and politics in Ukraine today. How-ever, a
sufficient number of them fear Personal ruin if they accept the terms of the EU
and remain in the opposition.
THE ROLE OF
IMPERIALISM-VASSAL OF GERMANY
The
greatest imperialist economy in Western Europe, Germany, is a power exporter of
capital to the rest of the planet, but militarily, even after the annexation of
Eastern Germany, the country remains, since the end of World War II, a US
military colony that hosts no less than 227 military bases and 50 thousand
soldiers.
36% of the
gas consumed in the country comes from Russia passing through Ukraine and the
recolonisation of the latter by the EU would represent the liquidation of the Ukrainian
industrial base and the dismissal of thousands of workers, destroying the main
point of resistance to recolonisation of Ukraine.putinThe bourgeois interests
of Germany are the spearhead of economic recolonisation of Ukraine. Also, the
expansion of NATO to the east requires of imperialism take ownership of all the
nuclear power, energy and Ukrainian space. In turn, a defeat of the imperialist
interests in Ukraine can awaken the anti-imperialist democratic and
anti-fascist struggle throughout the region and in particular in Poland and
Austria.
ANOTHER
OPENLY PRO-IMPERIALIST “REVOLUTION”
What we see
today in Ukraine is a fraudulent pro-imperialist “revolution” like dozens of
other contrived by the CIA during the cold war, in the processes of capitalist
restoration of 1989-1991 and the “Arab spring”. The main claim of the
“revolution” was the requirement that the country’s Government to sign a
recolonisation agreement of “free trade” with the European Union.
The
“popular movement” was triggered after the failure of the pressure exerted
directly by the heads of the so-called “Big Three”, Merkel, Hollande and
Cameron and the US threat to impose sanctions on the country if US
“revolutions” directed by the CIA, the US Embassy, CEOs of multinational
companies, NGOs, churches and neo-Nazi parties as the Svoboda (Freedom) which
held the emblematic destruction of the monument to Lenin during the recent wave
of pro-tests Ukrainian pro-EU [1].
While among
organizations that claim to be revolutionary, the study of historical
experience of proletarian revolutions of the 20th century is still something
pre-dominantly amateur, within the intelligence services and military academies
in the pay of big business tactics and the revolutionary strategy are subject
to meticulous analysis. So much so that since the cold war imperialism has been
improving its know-how in coups camouflaged as “revolutionary”.
The first
“pro-imperialist revolution” was orchestrated by the intelligence services of
England and USA was in 1953 in Iran [2], with the overthrow of the
democratically elected Government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh
who had thwarted the imperialist interests of the multinational British
Petroleum by nationalising it.
winningThe
behind-the-scenes description of the successful “Operation Ajax” is made by
journalist Stephen Kinzer for the New York Times, in his book All the Shah’s
men: An American coup and the roots of terror in the Middle East, he shows that
“the CIA engineered a scenario that gives the impression of a popular revolt
when in fact it is a covert operation. The highlight of the show was a
demonstration in Tehran with eight thousand extras paid by the Agency in order
to provide convincing photos the Western press,”(All the Shah’s Men: An
American Coup and the Roots of Middle east Terror, 2003).
ANTI-IMPERIALIST
TACTIC AND LONG TERM STRATEGY FOR THE UKRAINE
The
Ukrainian industrial proletariat is the main bulwark against the recolonisation
of the country in favour of a “Green Europe” with the spoils of the
bureaucratised workers states, with Germany as the control tower of the
interests of American imperialism.
How many
times in history has capitalist economic crises put the issue of Ukrainian
national aspirations on the agenda? The question returns again and again to
play an important role on the arena of global class struggle. Here are combined
elements of imperialist domination, anti worker and fascism, the anti-Communist
eminence of a new imperialist war and a historical reckoning with the Stalinist
anti worker policy disaster. On this last question, the greatest of all
Ukrainian revolutionaries declared: “Toward the sections of the Ukraine now
outside its frontiers, the Kremlin’s attitude today is the same as it is toward
all oppressed nationalities, all colonies, and semi-colonies, i.e., small
change in its international combinations with imperialist governments. (Leon
Trotsky, the Ukrainian question, 2/4/1939)”.
Although
the negotiation Putin-Yanukovych has benefited enormously the Ukraine with a
reduction in the price of gas in relation to the Greek panorama which proposed
the EU, the current Russian bourgeois Government uses much more to Ukraine as a
bargaining chip than did the Stalinist bureaucracy in the past. And the current
Ukrainian bourgeois Government, representative of regional oligarchies,
appropriates part of the ad-vantage of reducing the energy costs that could
benefit the people.Anti-MaidenEven for democratic demagoguery of Putin in
Russia, winter pre-Olympiads the defeat of imperialism in this battle, cheered
the struggle for democratic rights in Russia. However, the struggle for
democratic rights in Russia, as it had been for a long time in the USSR, is not
ad-dressed by the Communist proletarian vanguard, is almost entirely deformed
and influenced the politics of democratic reaction of Western imperialism. The
first by-product of this new situation was the release of the members of the
rock band Pussy Riot, activists from Greenpeace and the Russian oil Tycoon
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an ally of Western imperialism against Putin.
In this
battle and the civil war that temporarily ebbed but that accentuate in the
coming months, the Liaison Commit-tee for the Fourth International (CLQI)
believes that the only option for Ukraine is the struggle which combines the
tactics of the Anti-Imperialist Front (AIUF) and the strategy of Permanent
Revolution. So, join the methods and goals of permanent revolution in the
struggle for national independence, i.e. Ukrainian self-determination against
the European Union.
This fight
is not about to align itself with the lesser of two evils, in the case with the
Russian bourgeoisie, but to fight the greater evil, hegemonic imperialism
across the globe. Therefore, tactically we’re with the proletariat of Eastern
Ukrainian in a Anti-imperialist Front with the Yanukovych Government against
the EU and its mercenaries and fascist agents.
But we
denounce the Government of Yanukovych as bourgeois oligarch for having led the
country to this situation by betting on a gradual plan of privatization and
capitalist restoration. We demand the Government defends and restore the Soviet
monuments, the statues of Lenin and the monuments that symbolize the victory of
the proletariat over fascism, which now serve as inspiration against the
imperialist resettlement already suffered by our Greeks, Irish, Italian, Polish
and Spanish brothers and sisters.
The LCFI
struggle for the construction of a Bolshevik-type party and inter-nationalist
in Ukraine that has as its goals a new social revolution against the bourgeois
oligarchies both pro-imperialist and pro-Russian. We fight for workers’ control
and the Sovietisation of all the country’s economy, in particular the nuclear
plants and alongside the tankers Ukrainians fought for control of exploration,
gas production and distribution by the workers themselves, as well as the gas
pipelines that the Government wants to deliver to the realm of Gazprom as part
of the agreement with Putin.deathUnder the guidance of the most revolutionary
of all Ukrainians, Leon Trotsky, we must fight the Ukrainian worker popu-lation
to overcome all prejudices built up historically against communism thanks to
bureaucratic centralization of Stalin on his country and that today are used by
the fascist nationalism to seduce the masses in favour of imperialism. We are
aware that in the words of Trotsky, but for the rape of Soviet Ukraine by the
Stalinist bureaucracy there would be no Hitlerite Ukrainian policy… The Fourth
International must clearly understand the enormous importance of the Ukrainian
question in the fate not only of South-eastern and Eastern Europe but also of Europe
as a whole. We are dealing with a people that has proved its viability, that is
numerically equal to the population of France and occupies an exceptionally
rich territory which, moreover, is of the highest strategical importance. The
question of the fate of the Ukraine has been posed in its full scope. A clear
and definite slogan is necessary that corresponds to the new situation. In my
opinion there can be at the present time only one such slogan: A united, free
and independent workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Ukraine. [3].
For us, the
LCFI the program of independence of Ukraine at the time of imperialism is
directly and inextricably linked to the programme of the proletarian
revolution. The liberation of Ukraine from webs of bourgeois domination assumes
the complete independence of the country in relation to the Russian bourgeoisie
and the domestic fronts oligarchies of some large corporations block II. The
real Ukrainian national independence can only be achieved through the fight for
a Socialist and Soviet Ukraine as part of the struggle for a new Federation of
Socialists and Soviet republics.
Notes
[1] In an
interview reproduced on the site, a Ukrainian anarchist Freedom Journal
describes how the Svoboda: Today, the main political force in the panorama of
the extreme right in Ukraine is, undeniably, the Svoboda. If I had to provide
some comparison, compare them with other right-wing parties present in Eastern
Europe, as the Hungarian Jobbik party, with which I think the American
listeners may be aware. There was a great scandal when a couple of years ago
they received many votes in Hungary Svoboda is pretty much the same thing, is a
political party that has its own design of a so-called “national” Constitution,
which would bring a lot of horrible things, such as the death penalty for what
they call “anti-Ukrainian” activities, without defini-tions of what are these
“activities”. Basically, anything contrary to the spirit of that party could be
considered “anti-Ukrainian”.
Today, in
EuroMaidan, they are urging a political strike, but, in fact, what most people
do not realize is that in their proposed the new Constitution Svoboda politics
would make striking a criminal offence. The paradox is that they have become
extremely popular among the educated liberal middle class of urban areas,
especially in Kiev. So, today Kiev votes Svoboda, as the western regions of
Ukraine make, why don’t they just say, “well, I don’t know what your program. I
have not read anything about it, but they seem so hard, they’re good guys, and
I’m sure that at least they would break the necks of the corrupt who are now in
the ruling party.
This is of
course a great reminiscence of his-torical situations in other countries in the
21st century. I don’t want to seem too panicked, but there are some similar
features, because the middle class bourgeois people don’t see anything wrong
with this. And, to some extent, they’re right, because, if the extreme right
WINS across the country, these people will not feel any great difficulties in
their lives. The main difficulties would be to the extreme left, against all
the leftist parties and movements, and to ethnic minorities and to racial
minorities.
But normal
people don’t feel anything, at least for some time, and that’s the problem.
Also another interesting fact about the Svoboda: they went through a rebranding
and now they call themselves “freedom”. This is a generic word for the European
right, but until 2005 or 2004, they called themselves Socialist National Party
of Ukraine. [Transcriber’s note in original: in fact, the current leader of the
Svoboda said that all Ukrainians must become Nazis].
http://www.diarioliberdade.org/mundo/antifascismo-e-anti-racismo/45455-ucr%C3%A2nia-anarquista-ucraniano-dissipa-mitos-que-cercam-os-protestos-do-euromaidan-e-alerta-sobre-a-influ%C3%AAnciafascista.html#.UuQqBaZLY6c.facebook
[2]
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operação_Ajax
[3] Leon
Trotsky, Problem of the Ukraine (April 1939), http://www.marxists.org/archive/