Tuesday, May 5, 2020
As World Joins Forces to Raise $8 Billion for Global Covid-19 Fund, US Contributes This Much: $0
"It is a pity the U.S. is not a part of it. When you are in a crisis, you manage it and you do it jointly with others."
by
Eoin Higgins, staff writer
50 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/04/world-joins-forces-raise-8-billion-global-covid-19-fund-us-contributes-much-0
President Donald Trump's brand of "America First" isolationism was on full display Monday as the U.S. declined to participate in a international pledge drive which raised more than $8 billion during its kick-event to create a global fund to develop and deploy diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
"It is a pity the U.S. is not a part of it," Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, whose country pledged $1 billion to the effort, told Reuters. "When you are in a crisis, you manage it and you do it jointly with others."
As Reuters reported, the pledging conference was the initiative of the European Union, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., Saudi Arabia, Norway, and Spain and featured representatives of nations, civil society groups, and private financial interests.
Reuters broke down the numbers:
The 8-billion-dollar goal was in line with expectations but is only an initial figure. Von der Leyen has said more money will be needed over time.
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a U.N.-backed body focusing on health crises, estimates that of the $8 billion immediately needed, $3 billion will have to be spent to develop, manufacture and distribute a possible vaccine against Covid-19, the EU Commission said.
Another $2.25 billion is needed to develop treatments for Covid-19, $750 million for testing kits, and another $750 million to stockpile protective equipment, such as face masks. The remaining $1.25 billion would go to the World Health Organization to support the most vulnerable countries.
"Today the world showed extraordinary unity for the common good," European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. "Governments and global health organizations joined forces against coronavirus. With such commitment, we are on track for developing, producing, and deploying a vaccine for all."
"However, this is only the beginning," von der Leyen added. "We need to sustain the effort and to stand ready to contribute more. The pledging marathon will continue."
Non-governmental organizations and wealthy individuals are also contributing to the pledge.
"We are facing an unprecedented global health emergency and only a global response can fight a global disease like Covid-19," Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund, said in a statement announcing the group's $1 billion contribution to the cause. "To defeat Covid-19, every country's capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious diseases must be reinforced. We must unite to fight."
The U.S. resistance to joining the effort was the topic of a State Department call with reporters Monday as officials declined repeatedly to answer questions on why the U.S. was not joining the effort.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Monday, Trump's resistance to international cooperation on a vaccine is causing critics of the administration to warn the president's "America First" mentality could have severe ramifications for the country and the world.
"The results may be catastrophic," tweeted Ilan Goldberg of the Center for a New American Security.
In an interview with CNN, von der Leyen emphasized that the disease would not be deterred by isolationism.
"We all know that this virus knows no borders and no nationalities," she said.
'Dangerous and Irresponsible': 40 Rights Groups Demand McConnell Stop Ramming Through Lifetime Judges During Covid-19 Crisis
"Trump and McConnell are prioritizing their morally bankrupt agenda instead of addressing the impact of this public health crisis."
by
Julia Conley, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/04/dangerous-and-irresponsible-40-rights-groups-demand-mcconnell-stop-ramming-through
As the U.S. Senate reconvened Monday with Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell planning to prioritize confirming right-wing judges to lifetime appointments, 40 civil rights groups demanded lawmakers halt the practice and instead get to work passing legislation to help frontline workers and American families during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The organizations sent a letter to McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling on them to maintain "a continued focus on support and resources to address the COVID-19 pandemic" instead of solidifying an ultra-conservative judicial branch while the country is focused on a public health and economic crisis.
"The United States is in the midst of the worst public health and economic crisis our nation has faced in at least 100 years. Covid-19 is wreaking havoc throughout society, laying siege to our lives, our health, our economic well-being, our schools, our justice system, our security, and our democracy," the letter reads. "Prioritizing judicial nominations as if there were no pandemic and ignoring the business that is most urgent for relief and recovery would be irresponsible. Therefore, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Senate as a whole, must take the necessary and commonsense action of putting the processing of judicial nominations on hold until the devastating impact of the pandemic has been diminished."
Signatories include the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Indivisible, and Demand Justice.
The letter follows a statement from McConnell last month that "as soon as we get back in session" the Senate would begin confirming judges once back in session, starting with U.S. District Court Judge Justin Walker.
The Kentucky judge, a McConnell ally, was rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association last year when President Donald Trump nominated him for his current seat. His confirmation hearing for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled for Wednesday, and Democratic lawmakers have accused McConnell of endangering his colleagues and Capitol Hill workers by insisting on holding the proceedings during the pandemic.
"It is dangerous and irresponsible for the Senate to continue dedicating time to judges," Leadership Conference president Vanita Gupta tweeted. "Addressing Covid-19 must be the priority."
"The Senate must use its time to address the growing concerns of a nation confronting increasing death and illness, severely high unemployment, rampant food insecurity, insufficient access to healthcare, and long-term economic uncertainty," the letter reads. "The Senate cannot be so reckless and negligent as to prioritize judicial confirmations. Rather, the Senate must prioritize its efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus, reduce economic devastation, and deliver relief to the people who need it most."
Before returning to Washington Monday, the Republican leader said state governments that are struggling to provide medical equipment and economic relief should file for bankruptcy rather than request federal aid.
Last week, McConnell said any upcoming Covid-19 relief legislation should include legal immunity for corporations in case workers become sick with Covid-19 on the job.
"Trump and McConnell are prioritizing their morally bankrupt agenda instead of addressing the impact of this public health crisis," said Gupta in a statement. "Trump has carelessly botched the administration's response to this devastating pandemic, even as the economic security of millions hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, McConnell is moving in lock-step, continuing to push judicial nominees whose records demonstrate dangerous hostility to health care access. Their inability to meet the real needs of the people—especially vulnerable communities—is a disaster."
US Amazon worker describes callous attitude toward safety as management reports $75 billion in 2020 revenue
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/04/amzn-m04.html
By Nick Barrickman
4 May 2020
As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its fifth month, many workers on the front lines are still without the basic safety protections necessary to protect them against the deadly respiratory disease. For millions, the inability of the world’s most powerful governments and corporations to provide safe working conditions and basic necessities has exposed the rot of the capitalist system for all to see.
This contradiction finds one of its sharpest expressions at Amazon, a trillion-dollar conglomerate operated by the world’s richest man, where workers have played a key role in the distribution of commodities to families sheltering in their homes. Late last month it was reported that nearly 75 percent of all Amazon facilities in the United States have reported at least one confirmed case. Since testing is not widely available and many cases are asymptomatic, no scientific estimate of infections at Amazon has been compiled to date. Undoubtedly, the numbers of confirmed cases are underestimations of the actual amount of sickness.
Following the initial COVID-19 infection reported at the company’s Seattle headquarters in early March, the corporation, worth an estimated $1.2 trillion in market capitalization, did next to nothing to protect its employees.
“When the first case [was recorded at Amazon], they showed us a video,” said one warehouse worker in the US to the International Amazon Workers Voice. Preferring to remain anonymous, the worker spoke about the limited, inefficient and miserly efforts put forward by the company during the several critical weeks in March after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. “They were advising us to wash our hands, offering us sanitizers. They didn’t make masks a big issue at first,” he said.
Meanwhile, the state economy everywhere was shutting down at a rapid rate. “At first [in mid-March], they were closing schools, certain small businesses,” he said. “For the first six hours or so [after management made us watch the video on health safety], I thought we’d be shut down, too.”
“Then we got this paper saying that we were ‘essential,’” he noted. “I’ve been here for years and never heard them say that.”
The decision to implement a few minor, cosmetic precautions occurred a month after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in late January. Amazon is a global commerce firm employing hundreds of thousands of workers and involving millions its operations, and the infection levels in many countries were already spiking. One might have hoped at the very least for a heightened level of concern and sensitivity to the dangers posed by the virus on the part of the corporation. This was not so.
“We started asking questions, ‘shouldn’t we be standing six feet apart?’” the worker said. “We were reporting all types of places [in the warehouses] where we’d been working together, all bunched up.”
Amazon reported quarterly earnings of $75.4 billion at the end of April. In a letter to investors, company CEO Jeffrey Bezos remarked, “We are inspired by all the essential workers we see doing their jobs—nurses and doctors, grocery store cashiers, police officers, and our own extraordinary frontline employees. The service we provide has never been more critical, and the people doing the frontline work—our employees and all the contractors throughout our supply chain—are counting on us to keep them safe as they do that work.”
“We’re not going to let them down. Providing for customers and protecting employees as this crisis continues for more months is going to take skill, humility, invention, and money,” Bezos gushed. As the pandemic has forced millions to remain at home and forego essential trips outside, Bezos has profited handsomely, raking in over $24 billion in personal wealth while his employees, declared “essential,” were forced to work unprotected.
“What really insulted me was when I found out that Amazon was selling masks to the public, but not giving them to us,” the worker told the IAWV. In late March, Bezos wrote employees directly in a “letter from our founder” on an internal company blog, callously asserting that company employees would have to “wait their turn” for masks and other protective gear. The letter came days after Amazon workers walked off the job at a facility in New York in response to a positive COVID-19 case detected there.
These walk outs occurred alongside a massive international strike wave of workers in the auto industry, who defied both management and union representatives to shut their facilities down rather than work in unsafe conditions.
During this initial period, Amazon management relaxed certain company policies. The company began suspending limits on unpaid time off (UPT), opting to hire new workers rather than attempt to force existing workers into the warehouse. The company also began allowing personal cell phones into the facilities. “The phones were supposed to be allowed in case of family emergencies,” they said. “I began asking why we weren’t being given masks, and that’s when they let us have cell phones.”
Inadvertently, the loosened restriction on phones led to workers filming and taking photos of the dangerous conditions they had been forced to remain working in.
“Someone took a picture, I didn’t actually see it, but I heard the photo got out of us working in close proximity,” he said. “It had to be done,” to expose what was happening.
“We were then told that the state government would be coming” to make sure Amazon was complying with the safety requirements. At the time, workers were reporting to the IAWV completely lax and unworkable “social distancing” measures at their facilities. “Amazon’s expectations are completely unrealistic,” the worker said, adding “it’s like the managers don’t even listen to you when you suggest improvements that can be made.”
Amazon “provides us with all these ways we can ‘speak up’ and be heard when it comes to reporting things, whenever there is a suggestion to improve things, but if it’s something they don’t like … [the worker’s voice trails off].” The IAWV has previously written on Amazon’s internal reporting system, which encourages workers to spy and inform on one another. However, when such a system is used to point out the shortcomings of the company, the corporation seeks to silence its critics.
The company began limiting the number of workers in break rooms stationed around warehouses to two per table. “I remember walking inside a break room and seeing all these chairs shrink-wrapped and saying, ‘what’s going on?’” the Amazon employee said. Before that time, the company did not bother requiring that workers wear protective facial masks or providing them with hand sanitizer.
“Now they have traffic cones set out on the main floor area, with little markers telling us to go ‘one way’ from A-side to B-side” in the warehouses. “Before, we would have ‘stand up’ meetings with management twice a day. Once the meetings stopped [due to social distancing], we stopped seeing our building’s general manager at all,” they said.
In early April, after a wave of walk outs among Instacart, Whole Food and Amazon workers, the company introduced a requirement for masks and thorough cleaning. “This was two weeks after the first case was reported at my facility ,” they said. “At my site, they weren’t wiping down our stations. Only once in a while. It was like this until early April.”
“I’d asked PAs, Assistant Managers, everyone and would get no response. ‘What if someone else touches this right before me?’ I got no response. It’s even worse because I get moved around from station to station. That’s the way this company operates.”
It was previously reported that at this time that an unnamed worker at a warehouse in Hawthorne California became the first Amazon employee to die of COVID-19. Amazon did not report the death until mid-April.
Summing up their experience at Amazon, the worker told the IAWV: “This is the only company I ever went to work for and all its reviews were bad. And the funny thing is, all of the reviews were true! We’ve lost so many great workers over this B.S., I’m disappointed. I’m not interested in moving up in the company. I just say to myself ‘let me get my time in and then go home.’”
On May 1, Amazon returned to its company policy of strictly limiting the amount of times a worker can call out without being disciplined. The shift in company policy coincides with President Trump’s demand for the “re-opening” of the United States economy, a homicidal act under conditions where the COVID-19 pandemic not been contained, systematic testing is not being conducted, and there is no vaccine. “I give it two weeks,” the worker said. “There are some serious issues coming.”
Millions of Americans cannot pay their rent
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/04/rent-m04.html
By Kayla Costa
4 May 2020
On May 1, millions of Americans were not able to pay their rent due to the dire social crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, opening up a housing crisis in which many working class families face a future of debt, eviction and homelessness.
The exact number of people who failed to meet rent or mortgage payments on May 1 has not been published. However, based on statistics gathered by the National Multifamily Housing Council, 31 percent of renters (25.8 million people) across the country will either fail to pay their April rent or will do so belatedly.
Experts predict that the rate will be far higher for the month of May, as the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 crisis deepens. An estimated 44 percent of New York City residents say they cannot pay their May rent, according to a localized survey by PropertyNext.
In addition, 6.4 percent of all active home mortgages are currently in forbearance, temporarily extending the due date on a family’s payment, according to financial website Bankrate. This accounts for roughly 8 million households involving mortgages carrying an unpaid principal of $754 billion.
Already, at least 3.8 million homeowners have sought mortgage relief and had stopped making their payments by the end of April, a 2,400 percent increase from early March, according to Black Knight, a mortgage technology and data provider.
According to official figures, more than 30 million people have applied for unemployment benefits over the past six weeks. This is likely an underestimation of the number of people who have been laid off or furloughed due to the inability of many individuals to successfully file a claim, as underfunded and technologically backward state unemployment offices are inundated with requests. The true unemployment rate is estimated at between one-third and one-fourth of the eligible population.
While trillions of dollars are handed over to the financial oligarchy by the political establishment, tens of millions of Americans face unemployment, loss of health care coverage, poverty and hunger. Without jobs and still waiting on stimulus checks and unemployment benefits, thousands are lining up their cars at food banks across the country. Small business owners are among those affected, as are undocumented immigrants, who do not qualify for any benefits.
Emberlea, a veteran with metastatic stage four cancer who is living with her adult son in the Sacramento area of California, spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about the enormous financial hardship produced by the pandemic and the area’s high rents.
Emberlea“Our rent is close to $2,000 a month,” she explained. “That is close to 60 percent of our regular income. We paid only $500 this month for rent because my son hasn’t gotten compensation yet. The apartment complex took the $500 and applied the rest over the next eight months, an extra $170 per month.”
States such as Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Washington have enacted moratoriums on evictions, preventing landlords from initiating the eviction process for an average of two months. However, families are still responsible for repaying their missed payments on top of their ongoing monthly expenses. This creates a situation of insurmountable debt, which most people will never be able to pay off, given the fact that the majority of the US population did not have enough saved to afford a $1,000 emergency expense before the pandemic.
“If you lose your job for two or three months, you might be $3,000 in the hole with no way to really make that up,” Matt Desmond, a sociologist and lead investigator at a Princeton University project called Eviction Lab, told National Public Radio. “We’re faced with millions of families who are behind in rent.”
The financial impact will hit renters in major US cities particularly hard, given the enormous cost of living that is difficult to manage even while working a full-time job. To give a sense of the burden, the average monthly cost of a two-bedroom apartment ranges between $974 in St. Louis to $3,629 in San Francisco.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition calculated that 11.5 million or more people will now be spending at least 50 percent of their income on rent, up by 1.5 million people since the mass layoffs and state shutdowns began in March.
Calls for a freeze on rent and mortgage payments have found growing support from renters and homeowners in major cities throughout the United States and parts of Canada. In some cities, tenants are organizing rent strikes to collectively negotiate with their landlords or issue demands to state governments.
Emberlea has been trying to organize her Sacramento neighborhood to collectively withhold their rent and mortgage payments. “We have so many people out of work,” she said. “We have to make it very clear that the capitalist class, the owners, the CEOs, the bankers, the politicians are sucking the lifeblood out of us. They are working us so hard for almost nothing.”
She added: “How out of touch do you have to be when we’ve got food banks where there are lines miles and miles long of people needing food? They are destroying crops of food. They’re pouring milk out at dairies. They’re crushing eggs because if they can’t sell it, they don’t need it. This is happening all over California, everywhere.”
Facebook groups for tenant coordination are growing and new ones are being established in cities such as Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, New York City, Los Angeles, Kansas City, St. Louis, Jersey City, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Milwaukee, Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as cities in Canada.
In New York City, tenants from 2,000 living units across 57 buildings have organized rent strikes to demand that Governor Andrew Cuomo order a halt to rent payments. The Los Angeles Tenant Union reported a rise in membership from 3,000 before the outbreak to 8,000 by mid-April. As of this writing, nearly 1.8 million people signed a “Rent Strike 2020” petition, stating their agreement with the demand for a mortgage and rent freeze along with their intention to withhold rent payments, either voluntarily or because they have no money.
A coalition of pseudo-left and activist groups that stands behind the official “Rent Strike 2020” campaign are seeking to subordinate popular opposition to the Democratic Party, under the false claim that Democratic politicians can be pressured to carry out serious measures to address the social crisis.
This role is exemplified by Socialist Alternative member and Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, who is working to channel popular anger behind appeals to Democratic Governor Jay Inslee to enact a temporary cancellation of rent payments. Sawant told her audience at an April 16 town hall that to pressure the Democratic Party, “We will need a fighting movement, and a May 1 rent strike will help to build momentum.”
To mount an effective fight against evictions and impossibly high rents, the struggle must be consciously directed not to the Democratic Party, but rather to the growing wave of strikes and protests by the working class against the policy of both parties to impose the full cost of the pandemic crisis on the working population, summed up in the drive to force workers back to work without any protection against the virus.
Behind the landlords stand banks and big investors who reap immense profits from the private housing market. Thus, the struggle must be guided by the principle that the health and basic needs of the population must take unconditional priority over private profit. The Socialist Equality Party calls for the formation of workers’ neighborhood committees to link up with rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, independent of the pro-corporate trade unions and the Democratic Party.
The criminally negligent response to the pandemic on the part of the Trump administration and governments around the world, driven by a class policy of subordinating human life to corporate profits and the stock market, has demonstrated that the fight against COVID-19 is a fight against the capitalist system. It must be guided by a program to unite the working class internationally to put an end to the profit system and establish socialism.
The author also recommends:
The coronavirus pandemic fuels the class struggle
[30 April 2020]
To Counter Trump Inaction, Sanders-Khanna Bill Would Unleash $75 Billion for Emergency Manufacture of PPE, Covid-19 Testing
"It's been three months, but somehow the Trump administration continues to drag its feet in ramping up the production of critical testing and protective equipment that our health care providers are begging for."
by
Julia Conley, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/04/counter-trump-inaction-sanders-khanna-bill-would-unleash-75-billion-emergency
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna on Monday introduced legislation to ensure healthcare providers have enough medical equipment and Covid-19 tests, demanding that the federal government dramatically step up its response to the coronavirus pandemic rather than focusing on getting people back to work as soon as possible.
The Emergency Medical Supplies Procurement Act would dedicate $75 billion to the effort, allowing the government to purchase or manufacture supplies including N-95 respirators, surgical gowns, ventilators, testing kits, and other badly-needed medical equipment as well as vaccines and treatments for Covid-19.
The progressive lawmakers introduced the legislation three days after President Donald Trump moved to fire Health and Human Services deputy inspector general Christi Grimm over her report last month about supply shortages at hundreds of medical centers across the country.
"The United States is the richest country in the world. There is no excuse for our medical professionals and essential workers not to have the masks, gloves, gowns and tests they need to keep safe, treat their patients and stop the spread of this deadly pandemic," said Sanders.
According to Sanders and Khanna, the U.S. currently is testing between 100,000 and 200,000 people per day for the coronavirus—while public health experts recommend testing 500,000 to one million people per day before the country considers ending social distancing orders which have forced millions to stay mainly at home for more than a month.
Despite warnings from public health officials, more than half of U.S. states partially reopened their economies in recent days—even as the country saw its highest single-day death toll from Covid-19.
In order to produce the number of tests needed to track the outbreak and the equipment needed to protect healthcare providers and save patients' lives, Khanna and Sanders said, the federal government must be compelled to invoke the Defense Production Act specifically for that purpose.
"Congress must explicitly authorize that the Defense Production Act (DPA) is fully utilized to demand that the private sector manufacture the equipment and products that our medical personnel, patients, and frontline workers desperately need," said Sanders.
The U.S. Congress authorized $1 billion for the production of protective equipment and other hospital necessities—a figure which "pales in comparison to the amount of supplies needed to protect frontline healthcare workers and increase testing capacity," said Khanna and Sanders in a statement.
"It's been three months, but somehow the Trump administration continues to drag its feet in ramping up the production of critical testing and protective equipment that our health care providers are begging for," said Khanna. "Testing is the key to safely restarting our economy and this bill provides the federal government with the resources and directives that will get us where we need to be."
Trump has invoked the DPA only to direct specific companies to manufacture PPE and ventilators, and last week he used the law to compel meat processing plants to stay open during the pandemic, putting thousands of workers at risk in workplaces where social distancing is difficult if not impossible.
Under the Emergency Medical Supplies Procurement Act, the administration would be required to respond promptly requests from states in need of healthcare supplies. With states relying on the Strategic National Stockpile for equipment—and then going directly to manufacturers as that supply dwindled—state governments have been forced into a bidding war over desperately-needed products.
"States and cities should not be forced to bid against each other for scarce and overpriced medical equipment," said Sanders.
The legislation would also include strict oversight and accountability provisions to avoid the misuse of the funding, after other federal programs responding to the pandemic, including the Paycheck Protection Program, were beset with the misappropriation of funds.
"We're also including safeguards to ensure no member of the Trump family or administration gets a dime of recovery funding," tweeted Khanna, two weeks after the president's business, the Trump Organization, sought rent relief due to the pandemic.
Think tank sees coronavirus crisis as “opportunity” for German militarism
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/04/mili-m04.html
By Gregor Link
4 May 2020
The world economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic has become a catalyst for the plans of German imperialism to force Europe under its hegemony and to grasp for world power again.
This is most openly expressed in a recent paper by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), an influential German think tank. Under the title “Deterrence and Defence in Times of COVID-19”, it says: “As the unprecedented economic fall-out of this crisis is starting to become apparent, it may seem tempting to curtail defence spending. However, “current volatility in the world,” according to the authors of the study, would make this “irresponsible.”
Christian Mölling, the main author, is well networked in foreign policy circles. Before becoming DGAP research director and program director for security and defence, he worked for the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP), which jointly published the programmatic paper“New Power, New Responsibility” in 2013.
“Europe”—meaning, above all, Germany—“can still shape its own destiny,” write Mölling et al. “Germany’s upcoming EU presidency” offers “a genuine opportunity” to emerge from the crisis “intact” and “possibly even stronger.” In order to achieve this goal, the advisers to the German government call for a “comprehensive conflict strategy” in the confrontation with rival powers, both within the borders of Europe and at the global level.
With a view to Germany’s EU Council presidency in July, the authors write: “This may have looked like a routine job—until now. The fact that the largest EU economy, the largest defence spender and the second largest military force in the EU takes over in midst of the crisis gives Berlin leverage to shape outcomes in the defence realm.” Germany should use its leadership role to “shield key European defence and industrial capabilities” and “propose a pragmatic redesign of instruments like the European Defence Fund and PESCO [Permanent Structured Cooperation].”
PESCO is the preliminary stage of a continental European military alliance being promoted by Germany in particular. Except for Denmark and Malta, all EU states belong to it. Founded in November 2017, the cooperative “is to be seen as a direct reaction to the British [EU] exit referendum,” Ronja Kempin of the SWP told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 2019.
As a basis for German options for action, the DGAP authors draft various scenarios of political developments on the European continent.
The common starting point of these scenarios is the following situation: “From 2020 onwards, European countries are likely going to find themselves under a double strain: While public finances will come under stress, the need for continued or even increased defence investment will remain as the security environment deteriorates.”
The DGAP paper argues that the military and weapons are indispensable for managing the political upheavals arising from the crisis and at the same time to assert German and European geostrategic interests against international rivals: “Europe cannot take a tough stance on Russia in the east and neglect the south. It is not possible for Europe to focus on just one pillar. It must address deterrence, defence and crisis management simultaneously.”
The paper describes the effects of such a policy as follows: “As some governments are forced to declare bankruptcy, the remaining forces are needed for internal security tasks.” This would result in a lack of investment in the national armed forces. The security situation would be “tense as Russian analysts assume that the nuclear threshold has been lowered due to the loss of conventional capabilities.”
Elsewhere it says: “Given the lack of US leadership in the global response to COVID-19, Beijing is currently positioning itself as the alternative provider of soft power. Beijing is presenting an image of control and benevolence, delivering medical equipment and test kits to Europe and elsewhere, while the United States is barely able to handle the crisis at home.”
In fact, the United States was the greatest “source of uncertainty” from the German point of view. The DGAP paper states that it is possible that the “deep rift in US society” and the “enormous strain that the fight against the pandemic puts on the US economy” could lead to a political withdrawal of the United States from Europe.
The result of such an “Ami goes home” [Yanks go home] scenario would be “an intra-European debate on nuclear deterrence. Given that Europe includes nuclear powers as well as countries that have signed and ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, internal cohesion is strained. Both budget and nuclear debates meet with political resistance in individual states. This paradoxical situation of having to spend more while budgets are becoming tighter exacerbates political rifts between Europeans. Just as during the last crisis, Europeans have different spending priorities. Diverging spending patterns impact defence industries differently across Europe.”
From the German point of view, the goal in this situation must be to politically “integrate” countries that have fallen behind in the meantime. To this end, a political instrument should be developed that corresponds to NATO’s national framework concept.
The idea that the global crisis—despite considerable challenges—presents itself above all as an opportunity for German imperialism runs like a red thread through the DGAP study.
With a view to major European armaments projects such as MGCS (Franco-German battle tank) and FCAS (joint European air combat system), the paper recommends, for example, that the German government take the initiative immediately. This crisis “offers a chance to overcome national sentiment in organizational and defence industrial cooperation.” It should be seized even though political resistance is to be expected. Germany should “envisage the next generation of defence industrial cooperation and consolidation.”
But the stubborn nationalism of other EU countries is not the only brake on German ambitions that could now finally be “overcome.” Another “obstacle” that needs to be removed is the “firewall that traditionally separates civilian and military R&D in Europe.” Instead, the aim must be to use all available means more “creatively” to achieve military and strategic goals. If even this does not produce the desired results, “alternative means” must be used.
The paper literally states: “Conflict has already spilled out of the conventional military domain. If military means prove more expensive or less effective than alternative ones, it is prudent to consider a more comprehensive way to engage in conflicts and deter adversaries. Such a comprehensive conflict strategy could build on the lessons learned from hybrid warfare and foreign influence operations against Europe” (emphasis added).
These lines leave no doubt that the German bourgeoisie, despite its defeat in two world wars, is preparing new historical crimes behind the backs of the people. In 2005, the American military strategist Frank G. Hoffman defined “hybrid warfare” as a “combination of conventional and irregular ways of fighting in connection with terrorist actions and criminal behaviour.”
When German military advisers speak of “alternative means” in this context, this must be taken as a serious warning. The “elements” of such hybrid warfare are, according to the definition, among other things the use of “nuclear, biological, chemical and improvised explosive devices,” the implementation of “disinformation and propaganda campaigns” together with cyber-attacks, as well as the “deployment of covertly fighting troops, or soldiers and military equipment without national emblems, operating on foreign territory.”
The author also recommends:
German government expands war operations despite coronavirus pandemic
[7 April 2020]
No to the domestic deployment of the German army!
[6 April 2020]
How the revival of German militarism was prepared
[10 May 2014]
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