Author: Ajit Singh

No Cold War presents an international webinar on ‘Hyper-imperialism’.

Saturday 9 March
9:00 ET, 14:00 GMT, 16:00 South Africa Standard Time, 22:00 China Standard Time

REGISTER HERE.

Speakers:

· Cheng Enfu – Chief Editor, World Marxist Review (China)
· Joao Pedro Stedile – Landless Workers’ Movement (Brazil)
· Rania Khalek – Breakthrough News (Lebanon)
· Carlos Ron – President, Simon Bolivar Institute (Venezuela)
· Shannon Ebrahim – Director, Department of International Relations, personal capacity (South Africa)
· Darini Rajasingham-Senanyake – Political commentator (Sri Lanka)
· Lowkey – Journalist and rapper (UK)
· Mikaela Erskog – Tricontintental: Institute for Social Research (South Africa)
· Jodie Evans – Co-founder, Code Pink (United States)
· Gisela Cernadas – Global South Insights (Argentina)
· Imani Na UMOJA – Executive Member, West African People’s Organisation (Guinea Bissau)

Chair:
· Vijay Prashad, No Cold War

Co-sponsors: ALBA Movimientos | Pan Africanism Today | Simon Bolivar Institute | International Strategy Center | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

This online event will be an opportunity to discuss a new publication from the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Global South Insights: ‘Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage.’

This document is published at a time of great threats to humanity as NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine continues, the US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza intensifies and the massive US-led military build-up in the Pacific escalates.

Meanwhile, global warming threatens all living creatures on the planet while economic stagnation deepens and persists. If left and progressive social forces are to mount an effective offensive to overcome these crises, we must start by developing a common discourse and understanding of the global situation. We hope this document can be a spark in igniting such conversations.

At this webinar you will hear analysis and insights from speakers across the world on imperialism today, the global order, and regional possibilities and challenges in building the global movement for peace – against the US-led war drive.

The New Cold War is rapidly heating up, with severe consequences for people around the world. Our series, Briefings, provides the key facts on these matters of global concern.

Two years ago, on 24 February 2022, Russian forces entered Ukraine. This act was not the start of the war in Ukraine. Rather, it was the acceleration of a conflict that dates back to at least 2014. That year, at the behest of the United States, a new government was imposed on Ukraine, aiming to bring the country closer to the European Union. This initiated the sustained persecution of the country’s Russian-speaking population. The conflict moved swiftly, with Crimea de facto becoming part of Russia once again and the Donbass region of Ukraine becoming a frontline in the conflict between Ukrainian far-right nationalists and Russian speakers. In May 2019, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office and pledged to end the battle in the Donbass. Instead, due to pressure from NATO, the conflict intensified, eventually leading to the Russian intervention three years later. It is imperative for the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the world that the war be halted and that the issues be transferred from the battlefield to the negotiating table.

What has been the impact of the war?

In any conflict, casualty figures become a matter of dispute. However, there is little disagreement that over 500,000 Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have died or been injured in this war, that over six million Ukrainians have fled the country, and that over seven million Ukrainians have been internally displaced (out of a pre-war population of nearly 44 million). If the war is not brought to a halt, tens of thousands more will be killed and tens of millions more will suffer.

Ukraine’s economy has been devastated, shrinking by 29% in 2022 alone, according to the World Bank. The impact of the war ricocheted across the globe, causing wheat prices to rise by 21% and some fertilisers to rise by 40% within the first month of the conflict. Global South countries were hit particularly hard by sharp increases in food and energy prices in many regions while the European economy inches towards a recession. In other countries, astronomic amounts of resources have been diverted to the war which instead could have been used for social and economic spending. The US and Europe have already spent well over $200 billion on the war. In December 2023, the head of the Ukrainian armed forces asked US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin for a further $350–400 billion to pursue ‘victory’.

In reality, no amount of money will lead to a military triumph. It is clear, particularly after the failure of the Ukrainian ‘counter-offensive’, that there has been no significant change in the military situation, nor is there a credible prospect of one. The continued payment of such huge human and economic costs would be purposeless.

What issues need to be resolved?

1. The position of Ukraine regarding military blocs. At the end of the Cold War, Europe had an opportunity to pursue peaceful economic development. A coherent and balanced economy with enormous potential could have been formed by reducing military spending while combining Western Europe’s high value-added manufacturing and service industries with the former Soviet Union’s energy, raw materials, agriculture, and high-technology industries such as space. In East Asia, which overcame a period of even greater Cold War division and conflict (as seen in the Korean and successive Vietnam and Indochina wars), a focus on mutually beneficial economic development and an avoidance of military and political blocs led it to become the world’s most rapidly growing economic region. This is evidenced by the fact that, since 1990, the GDP of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has grown by more than 400%. However, in Europe, the US insisted that such policies not be followed and that, instead, the region was to expand the NATO military bloc into Eastern Europe, breaking the commitment it had made at the time of German reunification that NATO would not advance ‘one inch eastward’ towards Russia. The US was fully aware that NATO’s expansion would greatly inflame tensions with Russia and across Europe. Of particular sensitivity was the possibility of Ukraine’s entry into NATO, which would bring the nuclear-armed bloc within immediate striking range of Moscow. Numerous experts on Eastern Europe and Russia strongly and repeatedly advised against such expansion of NATO. Most famously, George Kennan, the original architect of US Cold War policy, predicted in 1997 that, ‘expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. In December 2021, Russia proposed an agreement that Ukraine would not become a NATO member. In negotiations in March 2022, Ukraine proposed adopting a neutral status in exchange for security guarantees, inspired by NATO’s collective defence clause, which could have involved Poland, Israel, Turkey, and Canada as guarantors. This was blocked by NATO, directly conveyed by way of an urgent visit from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Ukraine in May 2022, thereby preventing a rapid end of the war.

2. The position of the Russian-speaking minority in the territory of the Ukrainian state (as it was formed in 1991). A 2001 census found that nearly 30% of Ukraine’s population considered Russian to be their native language. States with large linguistic and ethnic minority populations can only maintain their unity if the rights of such minorities are respected. The policies of the Ukrainian government after 2014, which included suppressing the official use of the Russian language in numerous spheres, were therefore bound to lead to an explosive crisis within the Ukrainian state. As the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which certainly cannot be accused of being pro-Russian, stated: ‘the current Law on National Minorities is far from providing adequate guarantees for the protection of minorities… many other provisions which restrict the use of minority languages have already been in force since 16 July 2019’. There are only two ways to resolve this situation: restoration of the full linguistic and other rights of the Russian-speaking minority within the borders of the old Ukrainian state or the secession of these regions from Ukraine. Which outcome is realised will be a key subject of the negotiations. Nonetheless, it is clear that any attempt to maintain the Russian-speaking minority within the Ukrainian state while continuing to deprive them of their rights will not succeed, nor will any attempt by Russia to impose another state on the Ukrainian-speaking population of western and northern Ukraine.

All efforts to resolve these issues by military means will continue to be futile and will only result in further intense suffering, above all for the Ukrainian people. These realities will become increasingly obvious if the war continues – which is why it must be brought to a halt as rapidly as possible and negotiations must commence.

The New Cold War is rapidly heating up, with severe consequences for people around the world. Our series, Briefings, provides the key facts on these matters of global concern.

On 22 October, the United States, Japan, and South Korea held their first-ever joint aerial drill. The military exercise took place after US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol gathered at Camp David in August ‘to inaugurate a new era of trilateral partnership’. Although North Korea has frequently been invoked as a regional bogeyman to justify militarisation, the formation of a trilateral alliance between the US, Japan, and South Korea is a key element of Washington’s efforts to contain China. The militarisation of Northeast Asia threatens to divide the region into antagonistic blocs, undermining decades of mutually beneficial economic cooperation, and raises the likelihood of a conflict breaking out, in particular over Taiwan, entangling neighbouring countries through a web of alliances.

The Remilitarisation of Japan

In recent years, encouraged by the United States, Japan has undergone its most extensive militarisation since the end of the Second World War. After Japan’s defeat, a new postwar constitution was drafted by US occupation officials and came into effect in 1947. Under this ‘peace constitution’, Japan pledged to ‘forever renounce war […] and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes’. However, with the Chinese Revolution in 1949 and the breakout of the Korean War in 1950, the US quickly reversed its course in Japan. According to US State Department historians, ‘the idea of a re-armed and militant Japan no longer alarmed US officials; instead, the real threat appeared to be the creep of communism, particularly in Asia’. The cause of amending and circumventing Japan’s ‘peace constitution’ was taken up by the right-wing nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which received millions of dollars in support from the US Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War and has ruled the country almost without interruption (except for 1993–1994 and 2009–2012) since 1955.

Over the past decade, the LDP has transformed Japan’s defence policy. In 2014, unable to amend the constitution, the LDP government led by Shinzo Abe ‘re-interpreted’ it to allow for ‘proactive pacifism’ and lifted a ban on Japanese troops engaging in combat overseas, enabling the country to participate in military interventions to aid allies such as the US. In 2022, the Kishida administration labeled China ‘the greatest strategic challenge ever to securing the peace and stability of Japan’ and announced plans to double military spending to 2% of gross domestic product (on par with NATO countries) by 2027, overturning Japan’s postwar cap that limited military spending to 1% of GDP. The administration also ended a policy dating back to 1956 that limited Japan’s missile capability to defend against incoming missiles and adopted a policy that allows for counter-strike abilities. This move has paved the way for Japan to purchase 400 US Tomahawk missiles beginning in 2025, with the ability to strike Chinese and Russian naval bases located on the countries’ eastern coasts.

Absolving Japanese Colonialism

Historically, Washington’s efforts to create multilateral alliances in the Asia-Pacific have failed due to the legacy of Japanese colonialism. During the Cold War, the US resorted to a network of bilateral alliances with countries in the region known as the San Francisco System. The initial step in creating this system was the San Francisco Peace Treaty (1951), which established peaceful relations between the Allied Powers and Japan. To expedite the integration of Japan as an ally, the US excluded the victims of Japanese colonialism (including China, the Kuomintang-led administration in Taiwan, and both Koreas) from the San Francisco peace conference and excused Tokyo from taking responsibility for its colonial and war crimes (including massacres, sexual slavery, human experimentation, and forced labour).

The new trilateral alliance between the US, Japan, and South Korea has been able to overcome previous impediments because South Korea’s Yoon administration has waived away Japan’s responsibility for the crimes committed during its colonial rule over Korea (1910–1945). More specifically, the Yoon administration abandoned a 2018 South Korean Supreme Court ruling holding Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi responsible for the forced labour of Koreans. Rather than finally being held accountable, Japan has once again been let off the hook.

Towards an Asian NATO?

In 2022, NATO named China a security challenge for the first time. That year’s summit was also the first attended by leaders from the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand (these four countries participated again in 2023). Meanwhile, in May, it was reported that NATO was planning to open a ‘liaison office’ in Japan, though the proposal appears to have been shelved – for now.

The US-Japan-South Korea trilateral alliance is a major step towards achieving NATO-level capabilities in Asia, namely interoperability with respect to armed forces, infrastructure, and information. The agreement reached at the Camp David meeting in August commits each country to annual meetings and military exercises. These war exercises allow the three militaries to practice sharing data and coordinating their activities in real time. In addition, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) between Japan and South Korea – much sought after by the US – expands military intelligence sharing between the two countries to not only be ‘limited to the DPRK’s missiles and nuclear programs but also includ[e] the threats from China and Russia’. This allows the US, Japan, and South Korea to develop a common operational picture, the foundation of interoperability in the Northeast Asian military theatre.

Waging Peace

Earlier this year, in reference to the Asia-Pacific, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns declared that his country is ‘the leader in this region’. While China has proposed a concept of ‘indivisible security’, meaning the security of one country is dependent on the security of all, the US is taking a hostile approach that seeks to form exclusive blocs. Washington’s hegemonic attitude towards Asia is stoking tensions and pushing the region towards conflict and war – particularly over Taiwan, which Beijing has called a ‘red line’ issue. Defusing the situation in Northeast Asia will require moving away from a strategy that is centred on maintaining US dominance. Those positioned to lead this movement are the people who are already struggling on the frontlines, from Gangjeong villagers who have opposed a naval base for US warships since 2007 and Okinawans fighting to no longer be the US’s unsinkable aircraft carrier to the people of Taiwan who may ultimately have the most to lose from war in the region.

For over two weeks the Israeli military has been pummelling the Palestinians in Gaza, killing over six thousand people including more than 2,000 children. Israel’s bombing has been indiscriminate. Homes, hospitals, schools and vital infrastructure have been destroyed. Whole neighbourhoods have been flattened and entire families wiped out.    

The 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are suffering a terrible humanitarian catastrophe as a result of what Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has described as “a complete siege on Gaza…” in which “no electricity, no food, no water, no gas” is allowed to enter. 

Israel’s siege on Gaza has been widely condemned across the world, including by the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, as “collective punishment” of the Palestinian people in contravention with international humanitarian law. A tiny number of trucks have been allowed into Gaza in recent days which the World Health Organisation has described as “a drop in the ocean of need right now.”

Many millions of people around the world have marched to end this slaughter by Israel – in a clear indication that world public opinion is in solidarity with the Palestinians. 

Indeed, Israel’s international isolation has been further confirmed this week as it demanded that Guterres resign his position as UN Secretary General for stating the indisputable fact that “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” Guterres said in a speech at the UN that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Nonetheless, the Western countries continue to arm Israel and to veto resolutions in the United Nations (UN) to end the bombing.

On 16 October the United States, France, United Kingdom and Japan voted against a resolution at the UN Security Council calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Then on 18 October the United States was the only country to veto another resolution, introduced by Brazil, calling for a “humanitarian pause.” 

The US has been arming Israel to the teeth for decades. In 2022 the US provided Israel with $3.3 billion in aid, 99.7% of which went to the Israeli military. 

The Biden administration has proposed a $105 billion national security package which threatens to increase conflict on three fronts globally: continuing the conflict in Ukraine, boosting military assistance to Israel and increasing the US’s military involvement in Taiwan. 

In the case of Israel $14.3 billion in military assistance is being proposed to strengthen Israel’s military capacity. 

Since 7 October, the US has deployed the U.S.S Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, where it joins another aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, in a show of support for Israel. The United States has also moved an aircraft carrier and attack ships to the Persian Gulf and has deployed advanced missile defence systems to the region. The UK has followed Washington’s lead, sending Royal Navy ships to the eastern Mediterranean. 

Without this diplomatic, political and military support from the United States, European Union member States and institutions and other Western countries Israel would not be in a position to wage its murderous war on Gaza and to sustain its occupation and colonization of Palestine. 

End this slaughter. End the Israeli occupation of Palestine. No more arms exports and transfers to Israel. No more arms purchases from Israel.

In Israel’s war on Gaza, there is only one side to choose for those who want peace and justice to prevail: opposing unilateral militarism, colonial oppression and repression, and following a multilateral approach, human rights and international law.

The New Cold War is rapidly heating up, with severe consequences for people around the world. Our series, Briefings, provides the key facts on these matters of global concern.

The upcoming fifteenth BRICS Summit (22–24 August) in Johannesburg, South Africa, has the potential to make history. The heads of state of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will gather for their first face-to-face meeting since the 2019 summit in Brasilia, Brazil. The meeting will take place eighteen months since the beginning of military conflict in Ukraine, which has not only raised tensions between the US-led Western powers and Russia to a level unseen since the Cold War but also sharpened differences between the Global North and South.

There are growing cracks in the unipolar international order imposed by Washington and Brussels on the rest of the world through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the international financial system, the control of information flows (in both traditional and social media networks), and the indiscriminate use of unilateral sanctions against an increasing number of countries. As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently put it, ‘the post-Cold War period is over. A transition is under way to a new global order’.

In this global context, three of the most important debates to monitor at the Johannesburg summit are: (1) the possible expansion of BRICS membership, (2) the expansion of the membership of its New Development Bank (NDB), and (3) the NDB’s role in creating alternatives to the use of the US dollar. According to Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s ambassador to BRICS, twenty-two countries have formally applied to join the group (including Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Algeria, Mexico, and Indonesia) and a further two dozen have expressed interest. Even with numerous challenges to overcome, the BRICS are now seen as a major driving force of the world economy and of economic developments across the Global South in particular.

The BRICS Today

In the middle of the last decade, the BRICS experienced a number of problems. With the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India (2014) and the coup against President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil (2016), two of the group’s member countries became headed by right-wing governments more favourable to Washington Both India and Brazil retreated in their participation in the group. The de facto absence of Brazil, which from the outset had been one of the key driving forces behind the BRICS, represented a significant loss for the consolidation of the group. These developments undermined and hampered the progress of the NDB and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), established in 2015 – which represented the greatest institutional achievement of the BRICS to date. Although the NDB has made some progress it has fallen short of its original objectives. To date, the bank has approved some $32.8 billion in financing (in fact, less than that has been issued), while the CRA – which has $100 billion in funds to assist countries that have a shortage of US dollars in their international reserves and are facing short-term balance of payments or liquidity pressures – has never been activated.

However, developments in recent years have reinvigorated the BRICS project. The decisions of Moscow and Beijing to respond to escalations of aggression in the New Cold War by Washington and Brussels; the return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency of Brazil in 2022 and the consequent appointment of Dilma Rousseff to the presidency of the NDB; and the relative estrangement, to varying degrees, of India and South Africa from the Western powers have resulted in a ‘perfect storm’ that seems to have rebuilt a sense of political unity in the BRICS (despite unresolved tensions between India and China). Added to this is the growing weight of the BRICS in the global economy and strengthened economic interaction between its members. In 2020, the global share of the BRICS’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in purchasing power parity terms – 31.5 percent – overtook that of the Group of Seven (G7) – 30.7 percent – and this gap is expected to grow. Bilateral trade among BRICS countries has also grown robustly: Brazil and China are breaking records every year, reaching $150 billion in 2022; Russian exports to India tripled from April to December 2022, year-on-year, expanding to $32.8 billion; while trade between China and Russia jumped from $147 billion in 2021 to $190 billion in 2022, an increase of nearly 30 percent.

What’s at Stake in Johannesburg?

Faced with this dynamic international situation and growing requests for expansion, the BRICS face a number of important questions:

In addition to providing concrete responses to interested applicants, expansion has the potential to increase the political and economic weight of the BRICS and, eventually, strengthen other regional platforms that its members belong to. But expansion also requires having to decide on the specific form that membership should take and may increase the complexity of consensus building, with a risk of slowing the progress of decision making and initiatives. How should these matters be dealt with?

How can the NDB’s financing capacity be increased, as well as its coordination with other development banks of the Global South and other multilateral banks? And, above all, how can the NDB, in partnership with the BRICS’ network of think tanks, promote the formulation of a new development policy for the Global South?

Since the BRICS member countries have solid international reserves (with South Africa having a little less), it’s unlikely that they will need to use the CRA, instead, this fund could provide countries in need with an alternative to the political blackmail of the International Monetary Fund, which requires developing countries to enact devastating austerity measures in exchange for loans.

BRICS is reported to be discussing the creation of a reserve currency that would enable trade and investment without the use of the US dollar. If this were established it could be one more step in efforts to create alternatives to the dollar, but questions remain. How could the stability of such a reserve currency be ensured? How could it be articulated with newly created trade mechanisms which do not use the dollar, such as bilateral China-Russia, China-Brazil, Russia-India, and other arrangements? 

How can cooperation and technology transfer support the re-industrialisation of countries like Brazil and South Africa, especially in strategic sectors such as biotech, information technology, artificial intelligence, and renewable energies, while also fighting poverty and inequality, and achieving other basic demands of the peoples of the South?

Leaders representing 71 countries of the Global South have been invited to attend the meeting in Johannesburg. Xi, Putin, Lula, Modi, Ramaphosa, and Dilma have a lot of work to do, to answer these questions and make progress on the urgent matters in global development.