Bolivia's Morales Slams Trump to His Face at UN Security Council

By 

Toluse Olorunnipa

 and 

Jennifer Epstein

September 26

www.bloomberg.com

  

Most foreign leaders are delicate when presented the opportunity to criticize Donald Trump to his face. Not Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Trump was forced to sit through a lengthy tongue-lashing from Morales on Wednesday at a meeting of the UN Security Council that the U.S. president hosted. It’s likely the harshest any foreign leader has ever spoken to Trump in public.

“I would like to say to you, frankly and openly here, that in no way is the United States interested in upholding democracy ’’ Morales said through a translator.

Morales is a well-known agitator at the UN with longstanding anti-American sentiments. He has in the past attacked the U.S. for its interventions in the Middle East, including the Iraq war, the toppling of Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi and the civil war in Syria.

But on Wednesday he rebuked Trump’s foreign and domestic policies alike, asserting that the U.S. president’s treatment of other countries and immigrants is callous.

“The United States could not care less about human rights or justice,’’ Morales said. “If this were the case, it would have signed the international conventions and treaties that have protected human rights. It would not have threatened the investigation mechanism of the International Criminal Court, nor would it promote the use of torture, nor would it have walked away from the Human Rights Council. And nor would it have separated migrant children from their families, nor put them in cages."

Morales, a former coca union leader who once led nationwide protests before reaching the presidency, has in the past backed late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s criticism of the U.S. Morales was in a position to criticize Trump because Bolivia holds one of the 10 non-permanent slots on the Security Council.

Trump decided to chair the meeting as part of a broader attempt to build international support for a pressure campaign targeting Iran. But Bolivia and other countries on the council rejected Trump’s view that the Iran nuclear accord negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, was “horrible’’ and “one-sided.’’

“Bolivia categorically condemns the unilateral actions imposed by the government of the United States of America against Iran,’’ Morales said. “Likewise, we condemn the fact that the United States has withdrawn from the JCPOA, hiding behind pretext to continue its policy of interference of its brother country, Iran.’’

Trump, who treated world leaders to his own list of grievances during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, didn’t offer much of a response to Morales.

“Thank you, Mr. President,’’ he said, before ceding the floor to the Peruvian representative.

America Hits China in Order to Frighten Russia

September 26, 2018

By Rostislav Ishchenko
Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard

https://thesaker.is/america-hits-china-in-order-to-frighten-russia/

cross posted with http://www.stalkerzone.org/rostislav-ishchenko-america-hits-china-in-order-to-frighten-russia/
source: https://ukraina.ru/exclusive/20180925/1021237227.html

The Central Military Commission of China was hit because of its purchase of 10 Russian Su-35 and equipment for surface-to-air S-400 missiles. Or more precisely, China was allegedly hit — a number of its average importance employees are now forbidden from granting American export licenses, performing currency transactions in American jurisdiction, and the US can also arrest their property and freeze their accounts in its territory.

It’s possible to call these sanctions ridiculous. It is clear that all of this is already forbidden for the corresponding officials within the framework of Chinese legislation. In comparison with the introduction of prohibitive duties on Chinese goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars exported to the US, this isn’t even a mosquito bite. It’s simply nothing. But there is a nuance. Washington stressed that the final addressee of the sanctions is Russia, which allegedly interferes with the American elections, behaves badly in the East of Ukraine, and in general prevents America from living worldwide.

I think that the US thus reacted not to the specific purchase by China of Russian military equipment, but to the general strengthening of military-political cooperation between Russia and China.

Two years ago, when Xi Jinping suggested to Russia to seal a military-political union between the countries in the form of a binding contract, I already happened to write that in the present conditions it is unprofitable to Russia to sign documents of this sort. This would not just make Russian foreign policy dependent on the decisions made in Beijing, but would also allow China to behave much more rigidly towards the US thanks to the coercive reorientation of Russian activity in the Far East. But in the European theater the level of China’s support for Russia wouldn’t grow. Unlike Russia, China isn’t present there territorially, i.e., a direct threat doesn’t come to it from Europe, but in the Pacific theater of military operations Beijing needs to concentrate practically all its resources against the US, and preferably also the maximum amount of Russian resources too.

But I wrote that the non-formalisation of relations in the form of a binding contract doesn’t mean the absence of a Russian-Chinese military-political union in practice. It exists. It acts. It is directed against the US, like against a general threat. But at the same time, at every separate moment Moscow and Beijing make a decision about the level of support for each other in a specific region, proceeding from the general geopolitical situation.

Obviously, for some time Washington amused itself with the same illusions found among Russian SOS-patriots [members of Russian society who have a habit of reacting over-emotionally to news concerning foreign policy matters – ed], who for some reason consider that if a specific paper isn’t signed, then it is impossible to establish cooperation in any way. The statements and actions of both the administration of Obama (in the latter years of his reign) and Trump testifies that the US hopes to divide Russia and China and fight against them separately — against Russia on the European battlefield, and against China in the Pacific battlefield. It would give America the chance to manoeuvre with resources, throwing them against the main, at the current moment, opponent.

These hopes were surprising even earlier. Perhaps the Americans overestimated the efficiency of the anti-Chinese propaganda organised by them in the Russian media and expert community, intimidating Russians by talking about the “Chinese occupation” of Siberia and the Far East. By the way, the Americans tried to unleash similar anti-Russian propaganda in China with the help of local expert circles. But, anyway, they definitively vanished when Russia once again asymmetrically responded to the American intrigues that lead towards an increase in tensions in Syria and in Ukraine, and also to attempts to block Russian-German (and more widely – Russian-European) energy cooperation.

Moscow staged large-scale drills in the Far East (“Vostok-2018”), having involved in total over 300,000 people (a third of the combat structure of the army). Russia earlier showed its possibilities for operative manoeuvres via forces and means and for the creation, in the shortest possible time, of shock groups in any strategic directions. But such a number of troops have never been involved in exercises of this sort before. Russia extremely transparently showed to Washington that it is capable in only a few days of gathering in the Far East a group of troops of any number and structure, and also to provide military operations during an unlimited period of time.

The participation of a Chinese contingent in the exercises unambiguously showed who this military activity was aimed at. At the same time, it is necessary to understand that for the creation and provision of a two-three times smaller group (on the territories of ally states, with developed in advance infrastructure) Washington usually needs from two months to half a year. I.e., in the event of a joint Russian-Chinese military action in the region, the US will be able to react (without the use of the strategic nuclear weapons) only when it will have already ended.

Meanwhile, in the 90’s and in the beginning of the 2000’s the US ensured their military-political domination in the world precisely thanks to the ability to quickly create in any region of the planet a grouping capable, by means of conventional arms, of suppressing any opponent in the zone of responsibility. Back then Russia was able to defend its territory only because an attack on Russia meant the beginning of nuclear war, but it couldn’t effectively resist the US outside its own borders, which the Americans actively exploited.

During the “Vostok-2018” exercises it was convincingly shown to America that in this region its former advantage had disappeared. It can’t effectively resist joint Russian-Chinese military activity. At the same time, the US has no reason to opt for a nuclear confrontation, because their territory is reliably protected from non-nuclear military action by the ocean, where (for now) the American fleet dominates.

In fact, the military-political squeezing of the US out of Southeast Asia has started, like how earlier Russia started to squeeze Washington out of the Middle East during the Syrian campaign. The concept “Big Eurasia”, besides the earlier inherent in it economic outlines, obtained a concrete military-political form. The sharp breakthrough in inter-Korean dialogue, which took place practically on the terms of Pyongyang, is the best confirmation of this.

Already in the spring of this year the US, relying on its South Korean ally, threatened the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with military aggression. Back then China took a hard line, having notified Washington that if the Americans will strike the first blow, then Beijing will give Northern Korea military support. Russia expressed itself more flexibly, having called for the parties to hold dialogue and having put its troops in the region on full combat readiness. Nobody doubted whose side Moscow would be on in the event of a military conflict. By the way, the dialogue that took place soon after between Trump and Kim Jong-un was regarded in the world as a victory for Pyongyang, and thus its allies too.

And after less than half a year had passed since those events, the Republic of Korea, looking at its northern neighbor through the crosshairs and preparing for war, reaches unprecedented agreements on political and economic interaction with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; the exchange of visits starts, during which sincere friendliness and full mutual understanding is shown. But inter-Korean dialogue and peace between two Koreas means for the US the loss of the South Korean bridgehead. And after having lost military-political influence over Seoul, Washington will also lose economic influence. And this is seen in all Southeast Asia. This is a catastrophe.

For the Russians who got used to a Euro-centric policy, events in the Far East aren’t so obvious, but their geopolitical meaning is huge. The loss of control over Southeast Asia makes for the US any attempts to remain in Europe and in the Middle East senseless. They simply can’t be insured with resources (neither military-politically, nor economically).

That’s why Washington is nervous and sends signals of its discontent with the developing Russian-Chinese military cooperation, which unexpectedly for the US, without any written contracts, came to the level of close interaction that has destroyed the American military-political control over Southeast Asia that took decades to build.

Yes, these signals aren’t convincing. But the US already used everything serious that they could use in the sphere of the economy against Russia in 2014-2015, when Obama was sure that he had torn the Russian economy to pieces. And the Trump administration already involved all available sanctions mechanisms against China. Anyway, it is impossible to introduce duties that are greater than the volume of Chinese export, but the US has already come close to this threshold.

Of course, the Chinese economy is more vulnerable to American attacks than the Russian one. Beijing, unlike Moscow, wasn’t engaged during 15 years in the concealed reorganisation of its economy and the creation even not of import-substituting enterprises, but of whole spheres. Those several years that were lacking for full strategic self-sufficiency, due to the ahead of schedule eruption of the Ukrainian crisis, were made up in 2014-2016. Now Russia is capable not only of standing on its feet, but also of supporting China.

Without the severance of the Russian-Chinese union – unwritten, but no less strong and effective as a result – Washington isn’t able to reach any of its strategic objectives, neither in Trump’s concept, nor in Clinton/Obama’s concept. The only thing that the US is capable of doing, which they obviously lead affairs towards, is to set fire to some more regions and to try to additionally foment already existing conflicts in order to leave behind only ruins for the winners, like the retreating Germans did in 1943-1945.

But the concept of scorched earth didn’t save the Reich, and it won’t save the US either. It will simply cause additional damage to America’s allies, who are being scorched just to spite Russia. And this means that those from them who still can break free from the leash will flee from Washington en masse. After all, they have no place to hide except under the Russian-Chinese umbrella. There is no force in the world anymore that would throw down to the US a military-political and economic challenge and would force Washington to retreat on all fronts, including the internal one – where, as the Americans try to assure, Russia elects presidents for them.

Trump Pushes His Destructive Iran Policy at the UN

Daniel Larison Posted on September 25, 2018

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2018/09/25/trump-pushes-his-destructive-iran-policy-at-the-un/

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Aside from being laughed at by the audience, Trump achieved very little in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly today. The president talked a lot about the importance of sovereignty, and then called on the rest of the world to gang up on Iran to infringe on their sovereignty. It is nothing new for hard-liners to treat the sovereignty of their country as sacrosanct at the same time that they routinely violate the sovereignty of other states, but Trump made a point of boasting about this double standard before the entire world.

There was also the usual hypocritical denunciation of Iranian behavior that we have come to expect in these speeches:

“Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death, and destruction,” Trump said in his address. “They do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations.

Other governments would have more reason to use those descriptions for the behavior of our government in the Middle East over the last thirty years. Iran has pursued destructive policies during the same period, but the same could be said of several U.S. clients as well. Trump refers to Iran’s “agenda of aggression and expansion,” which would much more accurately describe the actions of the Saudis and Emiratis. The president had the gall to praise the Saudis and Emiratis for their humanitarian assistance to Yemen when it is their U.S.-backed bombing campaign and blockade that created the catastrophe that threatens to claim millions of lives. Trump ignores the latter because the US is aiding and abetting the coalition in its war crimes and shares responsibility for creating the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. The Saudi coalition’s leaders and our political leaders are just as guilty of sowing death and destruction, and in Yemen, they are doing so on a massive scale.

Trump asserted that “so many countries in the Middle East strongly supported at my decision to withdraw the United States from the horrible 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimpose nuclear sanctions,” but in fact only a handful of countries including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE supported this decision. Almost all other countries in the region and the world consider the reimposition of nuclear sanctions to be illegitimate and unjustified because Iran continues to comply with the JCPOA. Many of Iran’s immediate neighbors are being negatively affected by the sanctions.

Iraq desperately needs to be exempted from these sanctions because its economy is intertwined with that of its neighbor. Trump’s decision is not popular there, and the sanctions are already causing hardship. The same is true for Afghanistan. Turkey has made it clear that they won’t go along with the US effort to cut off Iran’s oil exports.

The reimposition of sanctions not only hurts the Iranian people but imposes significant costs on the populations of neighboring countries as well. Trump’s Iran policy is inflicting harm on the entire region, and it is stoking greater resentment against the US It is Trump’s effort to strangle Iran’s economy that threatens and harms Iran’s neighbors more than anything that Iran is currently doing.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter. This article is reprinted from The American Conservative with permission.

DISCURSO LLENO DE AGRESIVIDAD DE TRUMP EN LA AGONU

Presumió el gasto militar, la economía y la supuesta fortaleza de Estados Unidos, lo que según él beneficia a la paz mundial. Insistió en que cada país debe defender su soberanía, su cultura y sus intereses, lo que resulta absolutamente contradictorio con sus intentos de cambio de régimen para Venezuela, Siria, Irán y Nicaragua.

Las negociaciones con Corea del Norte las presentó como un gran logro, al haber detenido las pruebas nucleares y de misiles de Pyongyang.

En el Medio Oriente, presumió las acciones de las petro-monarquías del Golfo para “combatir el terrorismo”; e increíblemente aplaudió la “ayuda” que Arabia Saudita, Emiratos Arabes Unidos y Qatar han dado para “terminar” la guerra civil en Yemen. Una realidad alterna, pues Estados Unidos ha apoyado los bombardeos de Arabia Saudita en Yemen, generando una de las crisis humanitarias más graves de la actualidad.

Sobre Siria, señaló que lo que se requiere es des escalar el conflicto, pero volvió a amenazar a Assad si utiliza “nuevamente” armas químicas. Atacó a Irán como el principal causante de la guerra civil de Siria y lo calificó como régimen corrupto, maligno, que esparce destrucción y el terrorismo en el Medio Oriente y el mundo.

Trump demuestra con esto que sigue siendo el “shabbos goy” de Netanyahu y de los neoconservadores y pro-israelíes que manejan la política exterior y militar de Estados Unidos. Fue como escuchar a Netanyahu mismo; es casi seguro que toda la parte relativa a Irán, fue escrita en Tel Aviv.

Y por supuesto, exaltó el cambio de la embajada de Estados Unidos de Tel Aviv a Jerusalén, subrayando que sólo se reconoció una realidad.

Increíble el nivel de servidumbre de Washington hacia el gobierno israelí.

Se quejó del comercio “desleal” de otros países hacia Estados Unidos, así como la supuesta manipulación de los tipos de cambio que los afectan. Presumió los acuerdos comerciales logrados con México y Corea del Sur y se quejó del funcionamiento de la Organización Mundial de Comercio, especialmente por el “robo” de propiedad intelectual. Y, por supuesto señaló que su país ya no será “víctima de esos abusos” y puso como ejemplo las tarifas que se han aplicado a China.

Denostó nuevamente a la Comisión de Derechos Humanos de la ONU por “atacar” a Estados Unidos y a otros aliados (llámese Israel), por lo que se retiraron de este cuerpo.

Igual se lanzó contra la Corte Internacional de Justicia, la que según él viola el debido proceso, por lo que Estados Unidos no acatará ninguna de sus resoluciones.

Su coartada para no asumir ninguno de los compromisos internacionales establecidos, es que el patriotismo y la defensa de la soberanía de Estados Unidos está primero que todo.

Atacó a la OPEP por el aumento de los precios del barril de petróleo, y a Alemania por la construcción de un oleoducto desde Rusia, que los hará dependientes energéticamente de ese país.

Estableció que en el hemisferio occidental no aceptan interferencias extracontinentales, haciendo referencia a la Doctrina Monroe (qué dirán los vasallos países latinoamericanos al respecto); demostrando así que no tiene respeto alguno por América Latina, a la que sigue considerando su “patio trasero”.

Señaló que los países latinoamericanos trabajan con Estados Unidos para detener la migración ilegal y el tráfico de seres humanos, presentando su posición anti inmigratoria como si fuera una política humanitaria.

Y por supuesto, señaló que Estados Unidos no se unirá al nuevo pacto sobre migración recientemente finalizado, pues no se subordinarán a acuerdos internacionales que limiten su capacidad soberana.

También se lanzó contra el gobierno venezolano y sus “patrocinadores cubanos” y pidió que todos los países se unan a Estados Unidos para “restaurar la democracia en Venezuela”; además, anunció nuevas sanciones contra el gobierno de Maduro.

Así también, señaló que la ayuda que dan internacionalmente se revisará, de acuerdo a los compromisos que los países tengan con los valores e intereses de Estados Unidos.

Además, Estados Unidos ya no pagará más del 25% de los Cuerpos de Mantenimiento de la Paz de la ONU.

En resumidas cuentas, va a usar el poder financiero para obligar a la ONU a velar por los intereses estadounidenses, y ninguno otro.

Alabó los logros de India, Arabia Saudita, Israel, Polonia, países que se han alineado (en el caso de Israel, Estados Unidos se ha alineado a los intereses israelíes) a las prioridades de Washington, poniéndolos como ejemplo de lo que deben hacer el resto de los países, para que el imperio los considere buenos vasallos.

Es uno de los discursos más desastrosos y destructivos que se han escuchado en las Naciones Unidas, en el que el país aún hegemónico, llegó a amenazar a los países del resto del mundo, advirtiéndoles que si no se someten a las órdenes de Estados Unidos, sufrirán las consecuencias. Reflejó su completo desprecio al derecho Internacional, al multilateralismo, a los organismos internacionales, a la cooperación internacional y a la paz mundial.

Ominosos tiempos los que le esperan al mundo con un gobierno de Estados Unidos decidido a mantener su decadente y peligrosa hegemonía a como dé lugar; y a defender con todos los medios a su alcance a su amo, el gobierno israelí, otro violador consuetudinario del Derecho Internacional y de la paz internacional.

LOS NEOLIBERALES, LOS OLIGARCAS Y EL MORIBUNDO DINOSAURIO, DISPUESTOS A NO DEJAR GOBERNAR A AMLO

Esta claro que el sistema depredador neoliberal y sus principales beneficiarios, los oligarcas del Consejo Mexicano de Negocios (CMN) y sus subordinados del Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE); los corruptos del PRI, PAN, PRD y PVEM (ahora adherido a la fórmula ganadora de Morena); las trasnacionales y el crimen organizado, no acusaron recibo de su derrota electoral el 1o de Julio pasado, y pretenden que todo siga igual.

Desde el Banco de México, la Secretaría de Hacienda, las “calificadoras” como Moody’s y Standard & Poor’s; el Fondo Monetario Internacional, el Departamento del Tesoro y Wall Street se mantiene la presión sobre López Obrador (AMLO) para que no cambie una coma de la política económica que por treinta años ha concentrado el ingreso en una minoría y ha mantenido en la pobreza a por lo menos el 43.6% de la población (según el Coneval), es decir a 53.4 millones de personas; situando a México en el lugar 119 mundial en lo que se refiere al coeficiente de Gini con 0.43 (el primer lugar es Islandia con 0.241; y en América Latina es Uruguay con 0.380 en el lugar 85 mundial).[1]

Desde el CMN y el CCE se insiste en que no hay alternativa a Texcoco para la construcción del Nuevo Aeropuerto de la Ciudad de México, que asegurara contratos para empresarios mexicanos y extranjeros por casi 500 mil millones de pesos en la sola construcción del aeródromo y otro millón de millones de pesos en las obras adyacentes como medios de comunicación y transportes terrestres, hoteles, restaurantes, bodegas, centros de negocios, etc.

Por su parte el naciente complejo militar mexicano ha logrado ya convencer a López Obrador que la estrategia de combate al narcotráfico, mediante el uso de las fuerzas armadas, debe continuar (siguiendo el guion del Pentágono), lo que evidentemente tenderá a chocar con la otra estrategia de AMLO de “perdón” y “amnistía”; así como con la posible legalización del uso de la marihuana y del cultivo de la amapola, lo que seguramente rechazará el gobierno de Estados Unidos y entonces se medirá la resolución del nuevo gobierno ante las presiones de la potencia del norte.

Por su parte, el moribundo dinosaurio priísta y sus hermanos de proyecto, el PAN y el PRD, pretenden obstaculizar las políticas públicas del nuevo gobierno, como ya lo amenazó directamente el gobernador priista de Campeche, Alejandro Moreno.

Para estos corruptos el desastre en el que dejan al país no tiene ninguna importancia; según ellos, la población los va a llamar de vuelta, pues demostrarán que AMLO y Morena “no saben gobernar”; como si ellos hubieran dejado un país en bonanza, ocupando el lugar 77 en el Indice de Desarrollo Humano de la ONU, con una puntuación de 0.762 (el primer lugar mundial es Noruega con 0.949; y en América Latina es Chile con 0.847, en el lugar 38 a nivel mundial).[2]

Y que podemos decir del tema de la corrupción, en el que México ocupa el lugar 135 en el Indice de Percepción de Transparencia Internacional, con un raquítico puntaje de 29 (el país menos corrupto según este índice es Nueva Zelanda con 89 puntos; en América Latina es Uruguay con 70 puntos, en el lugar 23 mundial).[3]

Pero oligarcas, neoliberales y corruptos viven su realidad alterna, en donde la pobreza y la destrucción del país, es inversamente proporcional a su propia riqueza y poder. De ahí que cualquier intento, por medroso que se haga, para modificar la realidad lacerante de millones de mexicanos, lo ven como un ataque a su bienestar, que identifican cínicamente con el del país.

Por ello, van a hacer todo lo posible por hacer fracasar las pocas políticas públicas que AMLO intentará desarrollar para cambiar algo de la triste y agobiante realidad que viven millones de mexicanos, que se debaten entre la vida y la muerte diariamente, ante el aumento exponencial del crimen, la violencia y la inseguridad; azuzados por un régimen político que se desmorona, y que pretende dejarle un páramo al nuevo gobierno, para después acusarlo de haber fracasado en su intento por levantar a un país moribundo, al que estos desalmados apuñalaron y torturaron por décadas.

---

[1] Mientras más se acerca a 1, más desigual es un país. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Pa%C3%ADses_por_igualdad_de_ingreso

[2] En este caso mientras más se acerca a 1, mayor desarrollo humano registra el país.  http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/HDR2016_SP_Overview_Web.pdf

[3] En este caso, mientras más se acerca el puntaje a 100, menos corrupto es un país.

https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2017

Corbyn Now

Lorna Finlayson

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

All the commentators seem to agree that something extraordinary happened when Jeremy Corbyn became the leader of the Labour Party. There is no agreement, however, on what, exactly, was so extraordinary. For the anti-Corbyn side, what’s extraordinary is that a relic from the ‘hard left’ – a faction thought to have been permanently subdued in the 1980s – managed to win the leadership and alter the party beyond recognition, assisted by social-media-savvy but politically inexperienced young people (plus a smattering of old Trots). Labour’s political identity and its inheritance of practical knowledge, both the product of long, often bitter experience over more than a century, are consequently seen to be under grave threat.

The same facts also feature in the pro-Corbyn version of the story. He almost certainly wouldn’t have become Labour leader without social media (though his opponents tend to mistake a useful tool of contemporary activism for an originating cause). The Labour Party has indeed been transformed, more than doubling its membership to over half a million on the back of an unembarrassed and credible opposition to austerity and neoliberalism. But there’s a difference: in the first version of the story, Corbynism represents a dramatic deviation in the history of the Labour Party; in the second, a dramatic return to, or resurrection of its values.

The disagreement about Labour’s true identity has more to do with clashing ideals in the present than with conflicting analyses of party history – but the history is often bent to fit a particular agenda. It is a distortion to present Corbynism, as its critics sometimes do, as the second wave of an alien invasion: first the Militant Tendency, now Momentum. Corbyn’s politics belong to a tradition that stretches back to Labour’s beginnings (this could never be said of Tony Blair’s). Those who adopt this view would do better just to come out with what they actually mean, which is that it was only in the 1990s, under Blair, that the Labour Party finally found its perfect form. But it would also be a distortion to present Corbyn’s politics as the dominant strain in the pre-Blair Labour Party. The social democratic values he stands for – a strong welfare state, public ownership and provision of services – were most fully realized by the postwar Attlee administration, but this was, for any number of reasons (mainly relating to the Second World War), exceptional rather than representative.

In other words, Corbyn may be atypical, but his views aren’t extraordinary. He is manifestly not a revolutionary – whatever the papers may say – and only in a highly circumscribed sense can he even be called a ‘radical’. While it’s true that his roots are in the Bennite ‘hard left’, this tradition – characterised by a commitment to wealth redistribution and Keynesian economics, as well as by some tentative support for workers’ control of industries and a deep scepticism about the European Union – is not to be confused with the ‘far left’. These terms are often used more or less interchangeably to describe Corbyn and Corbynism, but the ‘far left’ is more properly used of extra-parliamentary groups and movements committed to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Corbyn is not proposing to replace capitalism, with revolutionary or other means. He is not even proposing very significant wealth redistribution. What he has so far felt able to put forward is moderate by the standards of the Bennite left of the 1970s and 1980s: according to the economist James Meadway, the economic proposals in Labour’s 2017 manifesto were more conservative than those put forward in 1983 by the SDP – the breakaway party formed by a faction of Labour’s right wing. Labor under Corbyn is promising, among other things, to abolish tuition fees and expand free childcare, reversing at least some of the cuts imposed by the Conservatives – and by their coalition partners between 2010 and 2016, the Liberal Democrats. It proposes to pay for these measures by raising income tax for the top 5 percent of earners – though nowhere near pre-Thatcher levels – and by increasing corporation tax from 19 percent to 26 percent. The lowest rate under Thatcher was 34 percent. Corbyn isn’t trying to take us back to the 1970s – at least not yet.

Of course, context and direction of travel matter at least as much as the detail of particular policies – otherwise, it would seem to follow from the facts above that Thatcher was more left-wing than Corbyn. Policies or political positions which, if a continuance of the status quo, would not be a disruptive intervention in a society, can be exactly that if proposed in a different context. In one sense, free university education is not a remotely radical policy: it was, until quite recently, what we had in this country (many other European countries still have it). But to call for its reinstatement in Britain now is to challenge an already deeply entrenched model of education as a private rather than a public good, and of students as individual consumers and entrepreneurs who must borrow to invest in their own ‘human capital’.

The significance of Corbynism has less to do with Corbyn or his politics than with what it discloses about the political system in which we live, widening an already growing gap between the reality of that system and the story it tells about itself. The story we have been told is that we live in a reasonably open and well-functioning democracy, in which political decisions reflect, for better or worse, the will of the people. We are assured that in this system – in clear contrast to totalitarian societies – political dissent and challenge are possible and that the absence of advocates for positions to the left of the ones currently available to us reflects a lack of real appetite for them: people just won’t vote for the left. One variant of this story says that this is because people have realized that left-wing policies don’t work. Another holds that the problem is that people are too bigoted and irrational to see the merits of a more just and compassionate society. Either way, the message has been, in effect, that this is as good as it gets – even while for many, ‘this’ has been getting more and more difficult. Then came the 2008 financial crisis, demonstrating that things certainly could get worse. And after that, following a wave of anti-austerity movements across Europe and America, something utterly unexpected: a left-wing candidate managed to scrape together the required nominations to stand for the Labour leadership, and won a landslide victory.

The events of that campaign and of Corbyn’s subsequent embattled tenure – the purges, the attempted coup, the smears – demonstrate (or confirm) the degree to which the self-appointed political ‘centre’ has drifted to the right, leading the spectrum of political possibility to contract accordingly. Corbyn’s left reformism is mild by the standards of earlier generations, by the standards of some other European countries, and even in comparison to public opinion in the UK: the polls – though admittedly a fallible guide to people’s convictions and voting behavior – consistently show majority support for a fully public NHS, for the nationalization of rail and utility companies and for the scrapping of tuition fees. But this moderate agenda is, clearly, totally unacceptable to the British political establishment. This includes most Labour MPs and those who identify themselves as ‘left-leaning’ or ‘liberal’ journalists, many of whom remain wedded to a market-friendly model shaped by the legacies of Thatcher and Blair.

Corbynism has also called the bluff of those who argue that the recent homogeneity of British politics is simply reflective of a public consensus. It has become apparent that people are not only prepared to vote for a left alternative but they are even prepared to pay to vote for it (by joining the Labour Party), and willing to rally in their thousands in support of the chance to vote for it. Shutting their eyes to all evidence to the contrary, Corbyn’s critics maintained from the first that he was ‘unelectable’; something they continued to insist on right up until the general election of June 2017, which showed the biggest increase in Labour’s share of the vote since 1945, the year of Attlee’s first election victory. While a few still cling to this line – attributing Labour’s performance to the Tories’ poor campaign, or devising creative theories about the motivations of Labour voters (the political theorist Andrew Hindmoor suggests that people only voted Labour because they were sure the party wouldn’t win) – the ‘unelectability’ objection has now largely been dropped. But electability or public opinion was never the real issues at stake for Corbyn’s critics; they, not the electorate, are unwilling to tolerate any serious challenge to a political status quo which is extreme when judged by the same comparisons – to history, to other nations, to public opinion – that show how moderate Corbynism is. The neoliberal character of the status quo doesn’t reflect a public consensus, and it hasn’t for a long time: for example, no opinion poll since the mid-1980s has shown popular support for public sector privatization.

*

Corbyn now arguably occupies a stronger position than at any other time in his leadership: this summer a Momentum-endorsed slate of candidates was overwhelmingly elected to the party’s National Executive Committee. Yet the assault has been continued, led by some of his own MPs in conjunction and occasionally in coordination with a media whose quarrel with Corbyn has been described by a former chair of the BBC Trust, Michael Lyons, as ‘quite extraordinary’. The favorite – and perhaps the most persistent – of the many lines of attack employed so far is the charge of antisemitism.

No one has yet produced any evidence either that antisemitism is more prevalent in the Labour Party than elsewhere in British society (within the Conservative Party, for instance), or that its incidence within Labour has increased since Corbyn became a leader. The dispute is really about Corbyn’s positions on Israel and Palestine – positions which, again, have broad public support. Those who make the charge pretend to honor a clear distinction between antisemitism and criticism of the state of Israel but have in fact consistently sought to undermine the distinction in such a way as to stigmatize and stifle the latter. The recent debacle over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) guidelines provides one illustration of this. ＊Alongside an uncontroversial definition of antisemitism (long ago adopted by the Labour Party), the IHRA offers a number of ‘examples’ of antisemitism in practice, which include drawing comparisons between Israel’s policies and those of the Nazis, and ‘applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’. The argument that it is antisemitic to apply ‘double standards’ to Israel is one that is often used to brand criticism of the country as racist, on the grounds that Israel is singled out although many nations commit human rights abuses. There are very good reasons for singling Israel out, such as the deep complicity of Western liberal democracies in its violence. The point is especially pertinent in Britain, which is implicated in everything that is happening in Israel and Palestine today, as in the Middle East more broadly. Britain, after all, occupied Palestine for the thirty years between the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the founding of the state of Israel, overseeing and facilitating the construction of Jewish settlements. Yet Palestine is conspicuously absent from the sporadic conversation about ‘coming to terms’ with our imperial legacy – Rhodes must fall, but what about Balfour?

The prohibition on comparisons with the Nazi regime has also proved a useful weapon for those who wish both to shield Israel and to damage Corbyn. While Israel was completing its transition from de facto to de jure apartheid state by enshrining Jewish-only settlements in law, the attention of the British media was once again focused on Corbyn and the Labour Party. The charge this time was that Corbyn had, in 2010, been present at an event where someone had made the forbidden comparison, and that he was thus antisemitic by association. The fact that this someone, Hajo Meyer, was a Jewish Auschwitz survivor who saw similarities between his treatment at the hands of the Nazis and what was now being inflicted on Palestinians, was no barrier to his deployment as cannon fodder.

Corbyn will not satisfy his opponents by conceding or apologizing (though the IHRA examples have now been accepted in full). His accusers – who will be satisfied only with his removal – do not speak for all British Jews, who are increasingly critical of the actions and position of the Israeli state. The ‘Jewish vote’ shouldn’t be simply conflated with a pro-Israel one or treated as fixed. Political ‘common sense’ has tended to assume a tension between principle and pragmatism – and to counsel in favor of the latter. What this misses – and what Corbyn at his better moments exemplifies – is that the two can converge: that adherence to principle can be a source of strength.

If the path Corbyn has started to follow is again closed off, there are two foreseeable consequences. The first is that anger and disaffection will find another outlet. While frequent reference to a racist and right-wing public opinion has been a convenient device for the protection of the status quo, there is no virtue in maintaining an opposite fiction of the British people as saints and socialists. The appetite for Corbyn’s vision of a more compassionate and co-operative society coexists with a counter-tendency that has been well nurtured in recent years: the tendency towards suspicion of strangers and neighbors, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, resentment and a desire to dominate others. This tendency was on full display during the Brexit referendum campaign and was given a formidable boost by the result. (There is no need to choose between the interpretation of Brexit as a protest against a neoliberal political establishment or as expressive of an ill-informed, racist bigotry: it is both.) Islamophobic sentiment and related attacks are on the increase, legitimized by a media which has for years been normalizing far-right rhetoric. British liberals like to believe that Americans are a different species but they didn’t think that even the Americans would elect Trump. Boris Johnson – limbering up with carefully pitched comments about women in burqas and suicide vests – is a threat not to be underestimated. And there are fates worse than Boris.

The other foreseeable consequence of the defeat of Corbynism is that what remains of the achievements of an earlier Labour Party will be undone. The combination of the economic consequences of Brexit and another few years at the mercy of the Tories or Labour ‘moderates’ will spell certain death for the NHS (even without Brexit, the health service would be doomed to an only slightly slower demise). In this context, the attacks on Corbyn’s leadership are attacks on all those whose lives depend quite literally on a break with politics as we currently know it.

What is no longer an option is a return to politics as usual. Those who claim otherwise are incapable either of acknowledging the scale of discontent or of understanding its basis: they would rather blame ‘populists’, or the distorting effects of social media ‘echo chambers’. From this point of view, the sources of Corbyn’s appeal and his success are equally mysterious: it must be a result of infiltrators, nostalgia, a youth fad. ‘Democracy’ must be defended, but the idea that Labour candidates should be made accountable to the members of their constituency parties through a mandatory reselection process, for example, is ‘totalitarian’. The Brexit referendum must be rerun because democracy malfunctioned in that case, but the decades of neoliberal reforms, carried out against the will of the population, were safely within the bounds of the legitimate and tolerable.

In the event that Corbyn survives to win an election and form a government, what may be hoped from it? It has often been said that we should not expect his troubles to end when he becomes prime minister, and indeed that this may be the moment when his real problems begin. This is probably true, if not very useful. What we may hope for also depends on a more basic and fundamental question. If you think that capitalism can be managed in such a way as to afford a decent life for all, then it is precisely this we should hope for and demand from a Labour victory under Corbyn. If not, the hope must be for something else – whether a step towards a more radical transformation or just some temporary relief. Perhaps there are little grounds for hope from either perspective. But in immediate practical terms, it doesn’t make much difference. After all – to paraphrase the favorite slogan of the right – what is the alternative to Corbynism now?

The US in one-sided Cold War with China, Russia

Source: Global Times Published: 2018/9/19 

Editor's Note:

The world has been undergoing dramatic changes as the US has soured its relations with both China and Russia, and wielded trade war stick against not only China but US allies. Is a second Cold War imminent? How should China and Russia react to the changes? Global Times (GT) reporter Sun Xiaobo talked with Alexander Lukin (Lukin), head of Department of International Relations at Higher School of Economics in Moscow, about these issues.

GT: Dr. Sergey Karaganov, who has been a presidential advisor to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, said we are experiencing a new Cold War. Given the current international situation, do you think a Cold War has already taken place or is looming?

Lukin: "Cold War" is just a symbolic term. You can call it a Cold War or not, it doesn't matter. But we do have a situation of a serious conflict of interests, which can lead to confrontation. In some cases, it has already led to a confrontation. I think in Russia most people believe this conflict has a geopolitical source because it's a struggle for power by the United States. Some experts in Russia call it "one-sided Cold War," as the US is waging a war against us but Russia doesn't want a war since it does not struggle for world domination. Russia just wants to protect its own interests and territory.

The US is very clearly a declining power. It is still the world's strongest, but its influence is going down, such as on the economic front. As China and some other countries are growing, the US' comparative influence is much smaller than before. But they don't like it because after WWII until today, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they got used to being the most powerful country. They thought, as some people in the US like Francis Fukuyama wrote, that history had ended. They thought the world would be dominated by the "liberal" US, but suddenly they proved to be wrong because other countries try to protect themselves from American domination. It happened in 2014 when Russia tried to protect its interests in Ukraine. And then we see it's beginning to happen with China because in general China is seen as a much more dangerous threat to the US domination than Russia because China is getting stronger with growing global influence. China has achieved what the Soviet Union failed to achieve: created an economically effective model without political dependence on the West. There are already countries which are interested in more cooperation with China than with the US and its allies.

Americans don't like it. They now try to limit China's growth because the sanctions and measures they take now, especially under (US President Donald) Trump, are not what they truly aim at. For example, some of their measures are against trade deficits. This looks more like looking for pretexts. Because what the US wants is that China change all its policies at once under foreign pressure, but no government can afford to do it. Americans would always find something else and you cannot fulfill it. It's the same with Russia.

GT: In the context of a deteriorating international situation, will China and Russia get closer? Your new book is about the new rapprochement between China and Russia. What do you mean by "new?" 

Lukin: The two countries had a rapprochement in the 1950s, which was mostly ideological, and the relationship was not entirely equal because the Soviet Union was stronger and called the elder brother. Today Russia and China work together, with a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, and they coordinate a lot of actions. But now we don't share any ideological goals. We just coordinate our policies because of the geopolitical situation and because the US is trying to limit the growth of China and Russia. We also cooperate with Iran and others such as the EU on some issues since Europeans are also not much satisfied with the US at the moment.

China and Russia have been close, but they won't come to the stage of formal alliance which means mutual defense obligations. It's not necessary for China and Russia to become formal allies, but we would cooperate very closely. The more pressure from the US we have, the closer we get. This is a geopolitical reality. 

GT: Against the backdrop of the current international situation, will US-Russian relations worsen further?

Lukin: US-Russia relations won't worsen because they are already at the bottom. I can hardly imagine what can be worse, maybe a war. But I don't think there will be a war since that would destroy the world, which even Americans cannot afford. The US-Russia relationship is pretty bad. In the US there is very strong anti-Russia propaganda. Whatever bad happens in the world is attributed to Russia. It's similar to China, except that China is often blamed for economic "crimes." 

GT: The US is trying to build a frontline to counter China. What do you think China can do about it?

Lukin: In this context, it's wise for China to improve its relations with neighboring countries such as India, Vietnam, and Japan, which the US is wooing. In fact, the relationship with China has become an internal issue of many neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Sri Lanka where some political parties use the China threat theory to become more popular. China should not give them the pretext since that can be quite dangerous.

Trump has an unpredictable personal character. But the personality of a US president is not very important. What's important is that he represents a strong tendency of American internal politics - the rise of right-wing politics. The criticism of China is one of the main ideas of this ideology. Until the geopolitical reality of US decline and China's emergence becomes accepted by Washington, it will go on with its policy limiting China's power. China and Russia should be prepared for it.

I appreciate the Chinese idea that it doesn't overestimate itself but publicly underestimates its influence so as not to scare others. Your rhetoric should be less strong than your real power. This is a clever policy. Russia should learn from the Chinese experience of this kind.

And China needs to maintain economic strength to keep its global influence. China's major soft power lies in its economic model that works effectively. Many countries in the world now think this model is more economically efficient than the Western system. So if China stops economic development, you lose everything.

In this process, China and Russia can coordinate efforts on military and political fronts. For instance, if we are to create some areas around our borders without American influence, Russia can provide security guarantees, such as in Central Asian countries, and China can provide more economic aid. We have long cooperated in the UN on international issues and will continue doing so.

GT: Given that global political dynamics are undergoing dramatic change, what do you think a new international order should be like?

Lukin: I don't think there was a liberal international order. This is an American myth. The liberal international order, which Western experts are talking about, never existed.

Harvard Professor Graham Allison also wrote an article about it. They (Americans) want an American dominated "liberal" international order, but never achieved it. It only existed like a utopian goal.

The US and its allies, so-called liberal countries, have never controlled the world. Instead of a unipolar world, what we see now is the emergence of multi-centers and a tendency of a multi-polar world taking shape. Multi-polarity is still a tendency because one pole - the US - is still stronger than others, but it is emerging. This is also the reason for conflicts because the strongest doesn't want to give its place to others. It's natural in a geopolitical view.

We just need to survive through this dangerous period and also to educate the US about living in such a multi-polar world. Americans need to understand that they may control quite a lot, but definitely not everything. Unfortunately, they don't want to believe it for now. Maybe they can change after one generation passes when young people come to understand it, like what Russians came through after the Soviet Union collapsed. And we are now used to the reality and don't want to return to the Soviet Union.