Joseph Kishore, Senior Analyst, wsws.org
Dateline: 10 April 2017
In the aftermath of last week’s cruise missile attack on Syria, the relentless logic of military escalation is driving decisions in Washington. The US political establishment and media are demanding that the action be followed up by a “comprehensive strategy” to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and escalate the confrontation with Russia.
The Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, declared on Sunday that “regime change [in Syria] is something that we think is going to happen.” As for Russia and Iran, she said, “We’re calling them out. But I don’t think anything is off the table at this point… You’re going to continue to see the United States act when it needs to act.”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called on Sunday for the deployment of “five to six thousand” US troops to Syria and for economic sanctions against Russia. Assad, he said, is making a “serious mistake because if you are an adversary of the United States and you don’t worry about what Trump may do on any given day, then you’re crazy.”
The chorus of calls for action against the Russian government came from both Democrats and Republicans. “They’re accomplices,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. “Vladimir Putin is a war criminal who is assisting another war criminal.” His colleague, Democrat Ben Cardin, declared the UN Security Council should set up a tribunal to indict both Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes.
How will the US and its allies respond if Russia rejects an ultimatum to back down in Syria? Amidst the hysteria gripping the American ruling class and media, no one is asking how many hundreds of millions of people will be killed in a war with Russia, or if there will still be a habitable world in the aftermath of a nuclear conflagration…
Such rhetoric is the language of war. The denunciation of one or another foreign leader as a war criminal is the standard prelude to military action.
The United States is not alone in its incendiary provocations. All the imperialist powers in Europe have lined up to support the US strikes. British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon wrote on Sunday that Russia is “by proxy responsible for every civilian death last week”—claims that of course were not made in relation to the US massacre in Mosul last month.
US paratrooper in the mountains of Paktika Province, Afghanistan. The US military meddles literally everywhere.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is participating in a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Italy beginning today, in which the US and its European allies are discussing an ultimatum that Moscow remove all its troops from Syria and cease support for the Assad government. Tillerson will repeat this demand in a face-to-face meeting with the Russian foreign minister in Moscow, reportedly accompanied by charges that Russia is complicit in “war crimes.”
In one of the few comments pointing to the consequences of such positions, Georgetown University professor Colin Kahl wrote in the Washington Post on Sunday that if the US goes down the road of escalation, demands for regime change and no-fly zones, “the prospects of a military confrontation with Moscow are real.” Yet this is precisely the road that the Trump administration, backed by the entire political establishment and the imperialist powers of Europe, is taking.
How will the US and its allies respond if Russia rejects an ultimatum to back down in Syria? Amidst the hysteria gripping the American ruling class and media, no one is asking how many hundreds of millions of people will be killed in a war with Russia, or if there will still be a habitable world in the aftermath of a nuclear conflagration.
As all of this is taking place, the US is escalating its war threats in Asia. The Trump administration deployed warships to the Korean Peninsula over the weekend, amidst media reports that the White House is considering “decapitation” strikes and other military actions against the North Korean government—which could happen as early as this week.
The level of recklessness of imperialist foreign policy has an objective basis. There are two interrelated factors that are driving it.
First, dominant sections of the military—which is now largely dictating Trump administration policy—are determined at all costs to reverse the retreat of the Obama administration from war in Syria in 2013, when an agreement was reached with Russia to oversee the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons. They see this as critical for maintaining US domination not only in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, but globally.
Writing in the New York Times on Sunday, Republican Senator Tom Cotton stated that the strikes on Syria “have gone a long way to restoring our badly damaged credibility in the world.” Cotton proclaimed: “In one night, President Trump turned the tables. He showed the world that when the United States issues a warning, it will back up its words with action… With our credibility restored, the United States can go back on offense around the world.”
Cotton’s arguments make clear that the chemical weapons attack is yet another manufactured pretext for intervention. Time and again, imperialist accusations that war crimes had been committed have later been proven to entirely fabricated to justify a neo-colonial and predatory agenda.
The Syrian government of Assad, whose forces have been on the offensive, had nothing to gain from ordering a chemical attack on his retreating enemies. The United States had obvious political motives. The CIA and military were looking for a justification to launch airstrikes on the Syrian government based on geostrategic considerations.
Now that they have done so, Cotton boasted: “Friend and foe alike have been reminded that the United States not only possesses unmatched power, but also once again will employ our power to protect our interests, aspirations and allies.”
The second reason for the escalation of military operations relates to concerns over the deepening crisis and instability throughout Europe and within the United States. The European Union and NATO are fracturing amidst the rise of nationalist movements in the wake of Brexit.
The fight against Russia is to be a “unifying” theme. Chris Coons, the Democratic senator from Delaware, spelled this out in remarks at the Brookings Institution last week. Under the headline “Are we at war with Russia?” Coons declared that the “American-led international order” is under threat due to the actions of Russia, which “benefits directly from the election of European leaders who support narrow-minded nationalism and share its opposition to a cohesive European Union and a strong NATO.”
According to Coons, “the regime of Vladimir Putin is achieving today what the Soviet Union set out to do in 1950… It is destroying unity in the West, isolating the United States, and alienating the Western people from our governments.” It “has undermined Americans’ trust in our institutions, in each other, and in the very credibility of our democracy.”
The effort of Coons to attribute the breakdown of the EU and social discontent within Europe and the United States to the actions of the Putin government in Russia is patently absurd. Tens of millions of working people suffering from declining living standards do not need Putin to know that the political and economic system has failed them.
Within the United States, the Democratic Party—allied with the military and the intelligence agencies—is playing the leading role in fomenting anti-Russia hysteria to try to keep Europe in line and to direct internal social tensions within the United States outward toward military conflict. The Democrats have shelved their occasional criticism of the Trump administration’s domestic policies. In the aftermath of the Syrian airstrikes last week they have rushed to praise the White House and are only demanding a more consistent policy against Assad and Russia.
Ominously, Coons worried about the fact that according to recent polls, “only half of all Americans believe Russia actually interfered in our presidential election,” even after “the entire US intelligence community made it clear that Russia intervened in our electoral process.” Congress must “comprehend the nature of our conflict with Russia and ensure the American people share that understanding.”
And if people do not “share that understanding”? This is clearly then the result of “enemy propaganda” and illegitimate.
The American ruling class is right to be concerned about mass consciousness. The same contradictions of world capitalism that produce imperialist war also produce the objective basis for socialist revolution, in the form of the growth of the class struggle all over the world. In the United States, the consequences of the war drive against Russia will produce shock and outrage. There is a deep and abiding skepticism and hatred for the political establishment and media among broad sections of workers and youth.
The greatest danger, however, is that opposition is not politically organized. Decisions are being taken behind the scenes, with the population largely unaware of the cataclysmic consequences. In the media, there is a complete absence of any critical examination of the propaganda claims of the government. The entire spectrum of official politics supports the catastrophic war policy of American imperialism.
Whatever the immediate outcome of the US strikes on Syria, events are moving relentlessly in the direction of world war. That reality must animate the fight internationally for a politically conscious intervention of the working class to end imperialism and nation-state divisions and reorganize society on socialist foundations.
Appendix
Spanish ruling class closes ranks behind Washington’s attack on Syria
By Alejandro López, wsws.org
10 April 2017
The coming to power in the US of Donald Trump’s aggressively nationalist and protectionist administration sparked bitter divisions in the Spanish ruling class. Trump’s attack on Syria’s al-Shayrat airbase, the prelude to a broader military escalation directly threatening nuclear-armed Russia, marks a major shift in the political situation. The Spanish bourgeoisie is closing ranks in support of Trump and his alignment with the demands of the CIA, the Democratic Party and the Pentagon for a war policy.
Immediately after Trump’s election last year, the influential daily El Paíspublished over 20 editorials against Trump and attacked Spain’s right-wing Popular Party (PP) government for its submissiveness to Trump and called on the EU to adopt a more aggressive line toward the US.
In its Friday editorial, however, it states, “Trump had little room for manoeuvre, especially if he wanted to send a clear message to El Assad and other regimes which violate with impunity the principles and treaties on which international peace and security are based.” It denounces Russia for blocking the US and its allies’ regime-change initiatives in the UN Security Council.
Two months ago, Elena Valenciano, a European Member of Parliament of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and vice president of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, was demanding that the European Parliament act “forcefully” and “courageously” against Trump’s statements criticizing the European Union (EU). Now, she is hailing Trump’s strike on Syria, claiming it was meant to “send a clear message” to Assad, although she also said she disagreed with its unilateralism.
The PP government for its part has increased its collaboration with the US and endorsed the attack. Last Friday, it described the strike as “measured and proportionate response” to the alleged gas attack last Tuesday in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib province. With no evidence, and discounting out of hand the Syrian government’s denial of its involvement, the statement accuses the “Syrian army use of chemical weapons against the civilian population in the country.”
The statement covers up the blatant violation of international law involved in Washington’s action, claiming that the “American operation was a limited action in its objectives and means”. The attack, it continues, struck “a military base, not civilian objectives”—though in fact, it killed at least 15 people, including nine civilians, four of which were children.
It concludes by stating that Madrid, “which has a strong sense of loyalty towards its allies, is in favour of concerted international action, and therefore regrets that the blockade of the United Nations Security Council in the Syrian conflict has not made this possible.”
At a press conference, government spokesman and Minister of Culture Íñigo Méndez Vigo had nothing to say when asked why the government had changed its position from 2013. At that time, Spain opposed the Obama administration’s attempt to use allegations of a chemical weapons attack, falsely attributed to the Syrian government, to launch a war.
Mendez baldly declared that the “situation has changed” from 2013, when Spain, under the same prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, stated that Madrid “does not at any time express support for a concrete military action.” At the time, Rajoy added, “There is no possible military solution to the civil conflict in Syria, there is only one political solution,” and that Spain wanted to prevent “Syria from becoming an Iraq II.”
What has changed is not that Trump’s act of war against Syria no longer threatens to plunge Syria into ever greater bloodshed on the scale of that in the decades-long war in Iraq, or to provoke an even broader war. Rather, in light of Trump’s sudden alignment on the CIA and the Democratic Party, the Spanish bourgeoisie has re-thought its position and is closing ranks behind Washington. The far right billionaire Trump now is seen by growing sections of the ruling class as an opportunity.
Once Trump was installed as President, the PP immediately went on a diplomatic offensive to become Washington’s new strategic partner in Europe, as its traditional closest ally, Britain, began its departure from the EU under Brexit. During his first conversation with Donald Trump, Prime Minister Rajoy offered Spain as “interlocutor in Europe, Latin America, and also in North Africa and the Middle East.” Rajoy said he was prepared to “develop a good relationship with the new US administration.”
The White House statement on the conversation said that Trump had emphasized the importance that all NATO allies share the burden of defence spending.
Last month, and at Washington’s request, Spain’s Defence Minister María Dolores de Cospedal met with US Secretary of Defence James Mattis in Washington. She promised that Spain would dedicate 2 percent of its GDP to defence spending within one decade.
No sooner had she returned, when Spain announced that the new 2017 budget would include a whopping 32 percent increase in military spending—from €5.7 billion in 2016 to €7.5 billion in 2017.
On March 26, Rajoy named former Defence Minister Pedro Morenés, with whom Rajoy has close ties, as Spain’s new ambassador in Washington. Morenés was one of the chief architects of the renewal in 2015 of a Spain-US bilateral defence agreement. It allows Washington’s military permanent use of the Morón air base in Seville, with increased numbers of troops and aircraft. It also allows the stationing of two additional destroyers equipped with the Aegis radar system at the Rota Naval Base, bringing the total to four.
In the aftermath of Trump’s attack on Syria, the Spanish social democrats, their political allies and their media supporters are joining the PP in aligning themselves on Trump’s foreign policy.
Two of the destroyers posted at the Rota Naval Base, USS Porter and USS Ross, were used in last week’s attack on Syria. Luís Simón, Senior Analyst and Director of the Elcano Royal Institute think tank’s Brussels Office, boasted that this showed “the increasing importance of Spain for the US Navy as a source of strategic depth for possible actions in the Middle East.”
Trying to limit popular anger amid broad opposition to war, government officials and the media claimed that the destroyers “left days ago” and were “patrolling off the coast of Israel”. Madrid was also quick to state, however, that even though it had not been previously consulted or received direct communication from Washington, it was forewarned about the attack by NATO.
Such statements aim to confuse and disorient the population. Rather than increasing security, as it was claimed on the eve of signing the defence agreement with the US, the Spanish and European bourgeoisies’ support of imperialist wars and regime-change operations, put millions of people at risk of annihilation, especially as the US and its European allies recklessly escalate the confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China.
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