https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdQnUOLtuy4
Saturday, September 4, 2021
French railway workers support German rail strike
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/rail-s04.html
Our reporters
14 hours ago
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with railway workers in Paris on Thursday. They expressed their support and solidarity for the ongoing national rail strike by their counterparts in Germany.
The German rail strike has been underway Thursday afternoon. The drivers and other rail employees are opposing the efforts of the Deutsche Bahn national operator to impose a labour contract that cuts pensions and enforces a zero percent wage rise—in reality, given inflation, a real wage cut. The company is effectively demanding that the workforce bear the brunt of the costs of the coronavirus pandemic through a further reduction in its conditions.
Their French counterparts are familiar with the international assault underway against railway workers. In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would scrap the railway statute that had been in place since World War II. Thousands of workers have since been laid off; the railways are being steadily opened up to competition from private providers, while new-hire workers are being hired on different conditions, with fewer protections and on lower wage scales.
In June 2018, French rail workers conducted a powerful strike to oppose Macron’s pro-corporate law. The strike was defeated because it was isolated by the rail unions, who refused to mobilise any broader support in the working class and kept the workers isolated.
“Good luck to the workers in Germany,” said Louis, who inspects tickets on the SNCF network and has been working on the rail lines since 2016. “If they are still fighting they can’t give up, because once you give up it’s finished. I support them completely especially if they want to avoid what we have just been through.”
In the wake of the 2018 strike, Louis explained, “the rules that are supposed to protect us in terms of hours and conditions are not respected at all. We are all exhausted. We work hours that are completely absurd now.”
When he heard that the German rail networks were demanding that the workers bear the costs of the pandemic, Louis replied that “it is the same situation here. It’s the employees who have to pay. They have already laid off workers and made other changes to the schedules since the beginning of the pandemic. They took advantage of it to get rid of temporary workers. Now many of us work nine or ten hours a day because there are fewer people to do the same work. The coronavirus was just an excuse to do what they wanted to do for a long time.”
“I hope that the passengers are with them and support them,” Louis added. “What they have to do is explain to the population why they are on strike and show them what is going to happen if we don’t strike. The times when we explained this to the public they felt it and understood it.”
Louis said he thought it would be powerful for workers in Germany, France and across Europe to conduct united actions together. “But it would be on the condition that we had a spokesperson, a real representation which speaks on behalf of the workers. Often the union heads are just there for themselves, or prefer to fight with one another than make a common front against the enemy.”
Stefan, a driver with 23 years’ experience, gave this message to the strikers in Germany: “We support them, as train drivers in Europe. They should know that what impacts them can come here as well. The more that time passes, the more our conditions tend to become the same. The more there are things that impact them, the more it will affect us. We have to support them.”
“In Germany I believe they have had competition in the rails for a number of years,” he said. “Now they are doing this here too, and it will come into force in the next years. We are not yet fully impacted but it will come quick. I think they are trying to bring the level down everywhere. It is up to the workers to do the maximum to defend their interests.”
HLM Civically Minded with Lainie Petersen and Jerry Vasilatos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uW6UVYahDk
Germany: Train drivers launch third consecutive strike for better wages and working conditions
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/bahn-s04.html
Marianne Arens
18 hours ago
At 2 in the morning on Thursday, train drivers and other railway workers began a third consecutive strike to obtain better wages and working conditions. In freight transport, a strike had already begun on Wednesday afternoon. It is becoming increasingly clear that the industrial action raises political issues which cannot be resolved or left in the hands of the trade union that called for the strikes, the German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL).
Striking railway workers in Frankfurt
The offer made to strikers on Tuesday by the management of the Deutsche Bahn (DB) railway company is a sham. Deutsche Bahn remains insistent on cutting the company pensions of railway workers and freezing wages for 2021.
GDL leader Claus Weselsky accused the DB board of seeking to destroy his union. He said that although the GDL had recently gained about 4,000 new members, the DB management was not prepared to comply with a contract already agreed with the GDL.
Earlier this year, a new law on Collective Bargaining Unity (Tarifeinheitsgesetz, TEG) has been applied to the railways which stipulates that companies can only conclude contracts with the union which has the largest number of members in that workplace. In most railway companies, the larger union is the Rail and Transport Workers’ Union (EVG), which has already agreed to a pay freeze and has ordered its members to work during the strike, effectively forcing them to scab on workers in the GDL.
On Thursday, the DB board also took legal action against the train drivers’ strike. Martin Seiler, the board member responsible for human resources, applied to the labour court in Frankfurt am Main for a temporary injunction to ban the industrial action. According to Seiler, the strike did “not fall into the framework of applicable law.”
The Labour Court threw out the application the same evening, stating it was not possible to determine sufficiently in summary proceedings whether inadmissible strike objectives were being pursued. Deutsche Bahn has announced that it will appeal against the court’s decision, and the Regional Labour Court in Frankfurt scheduled the appeal for Friday.
Drivers and conductors, who have worked day and night during the coronavirus pandemic, are very bitter about the action taken by the DB executive. “We have practically no weekends off, have different working hours every day, have been on the job throughout the pandemic. Who is of systemic importance here?” said one striking train driver at Frankfurt’s main station. “The DB executive awards itself bonuses worth millions, but nobody cares about us.”
In fact, the offer made by DB to the workers is a new provocation. Deutsche Bahn did agree to pay a one-time coronavirus bonus of “600 or 400 euros” and “shorten” the duration of the contract from the originally planned 40 months to 36 months. In these three years, however, wages would increase by a total of just 3.2 percent, under conditions of soaring inflation which is already nearly 4 percent in Germany. The DB board still refuses to pay even one cent more in 2021.
At the same time, the board of directors is raking in millions. The annual financial statement of Deutsche Bahn for 2019 listed total remuneration of the six board members at more than 7.4 million euros; in addition, more than 1.3 billion euros is listed in provisions for the pensions of retired board members.
The head of Deutsche Bahn, Richard Lutz, pocketed more than 1.7 million euros in 2019. Ronald Pofalla, DB’s Board Member for Infrastructure and former chief of staff of the German Chancellery, raked in just under 1.25 million. Martin Seiler, the head of Human Resources who is leading contract bargaining, took home more than 800,000 euros.
“The inequality is unimaginably blatant,” a striking train attendant in Frankfurt commented. “I have huge difficulty finding any affordable housing here in Frankfurt. You can’t find anything in the city for less than 800 euros, and yet I am often expected to turn up here at the station in the middle of the night to work.”
Like other strikers, including very young ones, this train conductor was particularly outraged by the board’s attacks on the company pension. “We want at least the hope that we can live reasonably securely when we retire. Poverty in old age is definitely an issue. For example, my grandma is now in a situation where she has to live on a monthly pension of just 650 euros.”
Train drivers and conductors are fighting over social issues that affect all workers. They are in conflict not only with the DB board and the German government, which owns Deutsche Bahn, they also face the hostility of the rest of the trade unions and all of Germany’s main political parties.
The head of the Federation of German Trade Unions (DGB) Reiner Hoffmann and EVG chairman Klaus-Dieter Hommel have publicly denounced the strikes and stabbed train workers in the back. The leading election candidate of the Left Party, Dietmar Bartsch, has described the strike as “theatre” and “completely unreasonable” and called upon Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) to intervene.
For its part, the GDL is also neither willing nor able to lead a principled struggle for a real improvement of wages and working conditions. It has only called for limited strike action: two strikes of two days, and now a five-day stoppage, but vehemently rejects an indefinite strike.
At the same time, the demands set by the GDL also mean a real wage reduction, even if they were fully implemented. The GDL is demanding 1.4 percent more pay this year and 1.8 percent next year to cover a 28-month period, plus a coronavirus bonus of 600 euros. In 2014, the GDL called off a strike on short notice, although it had been confirmed as legal by a labour court.
The career of Martin Seiler, the personnel director of Deutsche Bahn, illustrates the close relations between the trade union bureaucracy and management. For 15 years Seiler was a works council member and trade union section leader, first of the German Postal Workers’ Union, then of the service trade union Verdi. In 2003, he moved to the management of Deutsche Post AG, and twelve years later became Labour Director at Deutsche Telekom, responsible for 70,000 employees. At the beginning of 2018, he took over as personnel director at Deutsche Bahn in charge of 320,000 railway employees.
The German media is acting as a mouthpiece for management in the rail strike. This is another issue that deeply angers strikers. The media describe the strike as a pure “power play” by the GDL. All of the news reports about the strike on Wednesday contained the sentence: “Despite a new offer from Deutsche Bahn, train drivers began their announced strike this morning.” None of the media outlets said a word about what the “offer” really entailed.
A team from the German public broadcaster ZDF filmed and interviewed several train drivers in front of Frankfurt’s main station on Wednesday morning, but the subsequent broadcast featured just one sentence from the strikers alongside a number of spiteful comments critical of the strike.
“We’ve explained everything in detail to the media so many times,” one striking train driver told the World Socialist Web Site in response. “But they don’t publish it.” Instead, for example, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported on the GDL’s “hunger for power,” while the Hamburger Abendblatt described the strike as “out of control.”
The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) advocates mobilising broad sections of the working class to support the strike and warns it cannot not be left in the hands of GDL leadership. It is necessary to build independent action committees. Members and supporters discussed with strikers at stations and distributed the SGP statement, entitled: “Support the struggle of train drivers and conductors! Build independent action committees!”
In the statement the SGP formulates the political tasks facing rail workers: “Today, train drivers and conductors are confronted with political tasks at every turn. All of the political parties represented in the Bundestag, including today’s SPD and the Left Party, vehemently oppose their strike.” The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) is contesting the federal election to build a new mass party in the working class, fighting for a socialist and international programme.
The offer made to strikers on Tuesday by the management of the Deutsche Bahn (DB) railway company is a sham. Deutsche Bahn remains insistent on cutting the company pensions of railway workers and freezing wages for 2021.
GDL leader Claus Weselsky accused the DB board of seeking to destroy his union. He said that although the GDL had recently gained about 4,000 new members, the DB management was not prepared to comply with a contract already agreed with the GDL.
Earlier this year, a new law on Collective Bargaining Unity (Tarifeinheitsgesetz, TEG) has been applied to the railways which stipulates that companies can only conclude contracts with the union which has the largest number of members in that workplace. In most railway companies, the larger union is the Rail and Transport Workers’ Union (EVG), which has already agreed to a pay freeze and has ordered its members to work during the strike, effectively forcing them to scab on workers in the GDL.
On Thursday, the DB board also took legal action against the train drivers’ strike. Martin Seiler, the board member responsible for human resources, applied to the labour court in Frankfurt am Main for a temporary injunction to ban the industrial action. According to Seiler, the strike did “not fall into the framework of applicable law.”
The Labour Court threw out the application the same evening, stating it was not possible to determine sufficiently in summary proceedings whether inadmissible strike objectives were being pursued. Deutsche Bahn has announced that it will appeal against the court’s decision, and the Regional Labour Court in Frankfurt scheduled the appeal for Friday.
Drivers and conductors, who have worked day and night during the coronavirus pandemic, are very bitter about the action taken by the DB executive. “We have practically no weekends off, have different working hours every day, have been on the job throughout the pandemic. Who is of systemic importance here?” said one striking train driver at Frankfurt’s main station. “The DB executive awards itself bonuses worth millions, but nobody cares about us.”
In fact, the offer made by DB to the workers is a new provocation. Deutsche Bahn did agree to pay a one-time coronavirus bonus of “600 or 400 euros” and “shorten” the duration of the contract from the originally planned 40 months to 36 months. In these three years, however, wages would increase by a total of just 3.2 percent, under conditions of soaring inflation which is already nearly 4 percent in Germany. The DB board still refuses to pay even one cent more in 2021.
At the same time, the board of directors is raking in millions. The annual financial statement of Deutsche Bahn for 2019 listed total remuneration of the six board members at more than 7.4 million euros; in addition, more than 1.3 billion euros is listed in provisions for the pensions of retired board members.
The head of Deutsche Bahn, Richard Lutz, pocketed more than 1.7 million euros in 2019. Ronald Pofalla, DB’s Board Member for Infrastructure and former chief of staff of the German Chancellery, raked in just under 1.25 million. Martin Seiler, the head of Human Resources who is leading contract bargaining, took home more than 800,000 euros.
“The inequality is unimaginably blatant,” a striking train attendant in Frankfurt commented. “I have huge difficulty finding any affordable housing here in Frankfurt. You can’t find anything in the city for less than 800 euros, and yet I am often expected to turn up here at the station in the middle of the night to work.”
Like other strikers, including very young ones, this train conductor was particularly outraged by the board’s attacks on the company pension. “We want at least the hope that we can live reasonably securely when we retire. Poverty in old age is definitely an issue. For example, my grandma is now in a situation where she has to live on a monthly pension of just 650 euros.”
Train drivers and conductors are fighting over social issues that affect all workers. They are in conflict not only with the DB board and the German government, which owns Deutsche Bahn, they also face the hostility of the rest of the trade unions and all of Germany’s main political parties.
The head of the Federation of German Trade Unions (DGB) Reiner Hoffmann and EVG chairman Klaus-Dieter Hommel have publicly denounced the strikes and stabbed train workers in the back. The leading election candidate of the Left Party, Dietmar Bartsch, has described the strike as “theatre” and “completely unreasonable” and called upon Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) to intervene.
For its part, the GDL is also neither willing nor able to lead a principled struggle for a real improvement of wages and working conditions. It has only called for limited strike action: two strikes of two days, and now a five-day stoppage, but vehemently rejects an indefinite strike.
At the same time, the demands set by the GDL also mean a real wage reduction, even if they were fully implemented. The GDL is demanding 1.4 percent more pay this year and 1.8 percent next year to cover a 28-month period, plus a coronavirus bonus of 600 euros. In 2014, the GDL called off a strike on short notice, although it had been confirmed as legal by a labour court.
The career of Martin Seiler, the personnel director of Deutsche Bahn, illustrates the close relations between the trade union bureaucracy and management. For 15 years Seiler was a works council member and trade union section leader, first of the German Postal Workers’ Union, then of the service trade union Verdi. In 2003, he moved to the management of Deutsche Post AG, and twelve years later became Labour Director at Deutsche Telekom, responsible for 70,000 employees. At the beginning of 2018, he took over as personnel director at Deutsche Bahn in charge of 320,000 railway employees.
The German media is acting as a mouthpiece for management in the rail strike. This is another issue that deeply angers strikers. The media describe the strike as a pure “power play” by the GDL. All of the news reports about the strike on Wednesday contained the sentence: “Despite a new offer from Deutsche Bahn, train drivers began their announced strike this morning.” None of the media outlets said a word about what the “offer” really entailed.
A team from the German public broadcaster ZDF filmed and interviewed several train drivers in front of Frankfurt’s main station on Wednesday morning, but the subsequent broadcast featured just one sentence from the strikers alongside a number of spiteful comments critical of the strike.
“We’ve explained everything in detail to the media so many times,” one striking train driver told the World Socialist Web Site in response. “But they don’t publish it.” Instead, for example, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported on the GDL’s “hunger for power,” while the Hamburger Abendblatt described the strike as “out of control.”
The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) advocates mobilising broad sections of the working class to support the strike and warns it cannot not be left in the hands of GDL leadership. It is necessary to build independent action committees. Members and supporters discussed with strikers at stations and distributed the SGP statement, entitled: “Support the struggle of train drivers and conductors! Build independent action committees!”
In the statement the SGP formulates the political tasks facing rail workers: “Today, train drivers and conductors are confronted with political tasks at every turn. All of the political parties represented in the Bundestag, including today’s SPD and the Left Party, vehemently oppose their strike.” The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) is contesting the federal election to build a new mass party in the working class, fighting for a socialist and international programme.
Biden visits storm-struck Louisiana as Hurricane Ida death toll continues to rise
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/hurr-s04.html
Aaron Murch
16 hours ago
President Joe Biden greets Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards as he arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, La., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, to tour damage caused by Hurricane Ida. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“My message to everyone affected is: ‘We’re all in this together,’” President Joe Biden told reporters, repeating his trademark banality as he landed Friday in New Orleans, Louisiana, to survey the damage and destruction from Hurricane Ida. Approximately one million people in the city of New Orleans and surrounding towns have been without power since Ida made landfall Sunday as a Category 4 storm and another 600,000 are without water.
The storm is the fourth most powerful to make landfall in US history and has caused deadly flooding and tornadoes as far as New Jersey and New York, where at least 42 people were killed as water overtook cars and rushed into basement apartments. Louisiana’s death toll from the storm currently stands at 12 but is expected to rise further.
With no power and no gasoline to refuel generators, many residents in New Orleans and across southern Louisiana have had to suffer under sweltering heat conditions as the heat index in the region rose to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. With water service also knocked out, the pumps are unable to filter water, creating potentially toxic conditions in the water that is left.
Biden’s visit came a day after news broke that four nursing home residents had died this week in a massive warehouse shelter in Tangipahoa Parish that had been packed with over 800 people.
Residents from seven different nursing homes across Tangipahoa, Orleans, Terrebonne, and Lafourche parishes had been crammed into the leaky warehouse last Friday, ahead of Ida’s landfall, by Baton Rouge nursing home owner Bob Dean. Senior citizens were reportedly forced to sleep on cots piled on the floor with virtually no privacy available for sensitive care. The infirm were reportedly sitting in their own filth as temperatures rose and emergency services were stifled across the region. In addition to the four known deaths, at least a dozen people were hospitalized in need of medical attention following rescue efforts on Wednesday and Thursday after the storm.
The warehouse in the town of Independence was blocked off Friday by Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Department of Health. Crime scene tape was placed around the building and the remaining residents had been taken to nearby facilities in Baton Rouge and surrounding towns.
The local coroner’s office has not released an official cause of death for the four victims but did say that three of the deaths were related to the storm.
It is unclear at this time if extreme heat contributed to the deaths at the makeshift shelter; however, local officials are reviewing what legal actions could be taken against Dean as the owner of the nursing homes.
“We’re going to do a full investigation into whether the owner of the facilities failed to keep residents safe and whether he intentionally obstructed efforts to check in on them and determine what conditions were in the shelter,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said during a news conference Thursday.
One anonymous worker at the facility told WWL-TV he was afraid there would be some deaths when he saw the conditions at the shelter, “I knew that wasn’t going to be safe for the residents and for the workers. We did the best we could with what we had.” The worker explained, “Just wasn’t enough room, living conditions wasn’t good. It was too crowded. Didn’t have enough people.” Inspectors with the Louisiana Department of Health came to look at the facility immediately following the storm but were turned away by nursing home workers before eventually being allowed inside.
For many Louisiana residents still living in the affected areas, it is the post-storm conditions that are resulting in hospitalizations and fatalities. Road conditions remain extremely hazardous and thousands of homes are unlivable, forcing residents into crowded and unsanitary living conditions. Three deaths have been attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning, a result of the improper use of fuel generators.
Biden, for his part, was reduced to pleading with insurance companies not to deny payouts to residents facing massive damage to property. Companies are free to refuse claims since city and state officials had announced ahead of the storm that there was no time to issue a mandatory evacuation. According to state insurance regulations, companies are allowed to deny coverage for evacuees if they left during non-mandatory evacuation conditions.
Furthermore, flood insurance is prohibitively expensive for many in the flood-prone areas of the state and therefore water damage to their homes will not be covered, forcing many to leave or face homelessness.
“My message to everyone affected is: ‘We’re all in this together,’” President Joe Biden told reporters, repeating his trademark banality as he landed Friday in New Orleans, Louisiana, to survey the damage and destruction from Hurricane Ida. Approximately one million people in the city of New Orleans and surrounding towns have been without power since Ida made landfall Sunday as a Category 4 storm and another 600,000 are without water.
The storm is the fourth most powerful to make landfall in US history and has caused deadly flooding and tornadoes as far as New Jersey and New York, where at least 42 people were killed as water overtook cars and rushed into basement apartments. Louisiana’s death toll from the storm currently stands at 12 but is expected to rise further.
With no power and no gasoline to refuel generators, many residents in New Orleans and across southern Louisiana have had to suffer under sweltering heat conditions as the heat index in the region rose to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. With water service also knocked out, the pumps are unable to filter water, creating potentially toxic conditions in the water that is left.
Biden’s visit came a day after news broke that four nursing home residents had died this week in a massive warehouse shelter in Tangipahoa Parish that had been packed with over 800 people.
Residents from seven different nursing homes across Tangipahoa, Orleans, Terrebonne, and Lafourche parishes had been crammed into the leaky warehouse last Friday, ahead of Ida’s landfall, by Baton Rouge nursing home owner Bob Dean. Senior citizens were reportedly forced to sleep on cots piled on the floor with virtually no privacy available for sensitive care. The infirm were reportedly sitting in their own filth as temperatures rose and emergency services were stifled across the region. In addition to the four known deaths, at least a dozen people were hospitalized in need of medical attention following rescue efforts on Wednesday and Thursday after the storm.
The warehouse in the town of Independence was blocked off Friday by Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Department of Health. Crime scene tape was placed around the building and the remaining residents had been taken to nearby facilities in Baton Rouge and surrounding towns.
The local coroner’s office has not released an official cause of death for the four victims but did say that three of the deaths were related to the storm.
It is unclear at this time if extreme heat contributed to the deaths at the makeshift shelter; however, local officials are reviewing what legal actions could be taken against Dean as the owner of the nursing homes.
“We’re going to do a full investigation into whether the owner of the facilities failed to keep residents safe and whether he intentionally obstructed efforts to check in on them and determine what conditions were in the shelter,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said during a news conference Thursday.
One anonymous worker at the facility told WWL-TV he was afraid there would be some deaths when he saw the conditions at the shelter, “I knew that wasn’t going to be safe for the residents and for the workers. We did the best we could with what we had.” The worker explained, “Just wasn’t enough room, living conditions wasn’t good. It was too crowded. Didn’t have enough people.” Inspectors with the Louisiana Department of Health came to look at the facility immediately following the storm but were turned away by nursing home workers before eventually being allowed inside.
For many Louisiana residents still living in the affected areas, it is the post-storm conditions that are resulting in hospitalizations and fatalities. Road conditions remain extremely hazardous and thousands of homes are unlivable, forcing residents into crowded and unsanitary living conditions. Three deaths have been attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning, a result of the improper use of fuel generators.
Biden, for his part, was reduced to pleading with insurance companies not to deny payouts to residents facing massive damage to property. Companies are free to refuse claims since city and state officials had announced ahead of the storm that there was no time to issue a mandatory evacuation. According to state insurance regulations, companies are allowed to deny coverage for evacuees if they left during non-mandatory evacuation conditions.
Furthermore, flood insurance is prohibitively expensive for many in the flood-prone areas of the state and therefore water damage to their homes will not be covered, forcing many to leave or face homelessness.
After the Afghanistan debacle, Berlin and Brussels pursue independent European war policy
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/afgh-s04.html
Johannes Stern
15 hours ago
Germany and the European Union are stepping up their offensive for an independent European war policy after the debacle in Afghanistan. At an informal meeting in Kranj, Slovenia, the EU defence ministers discussed on Thursday the establishment of a rapid reaction force that could also act independently of the US military.
EU defence ministers pose for a group photo in front of the Brdo Congress Centre in Kranj, Slovenia, 2 September 2021 (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will prompt the EU to establish its own permanent force, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borell said after the meeting.
“It’s clear that the need for more European defence has never been as much evident as today after the events in Afghanistan,” Borrell said. “There are events that catalyse history. Sometimes something happens that pushes history, it creates a breakthrough, and I think the Afghanistan events of this summer are one of these cases.”
The European powers had initially reacted with a mixture of disillusionment and outrage to the withdrawal of US troops and the rapid collapse of the pro-Western puppet regime in Kabul. Now they seek to position themselves so that in the future they will be able to carry out military operations like the one in Afghanistan without Washington’s support.
European defence policy will “only be credible if we are also able to launch complex military operations outside our borders,” the acting EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Industrial Policy Thierry Breton told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. This would require an EU intervention force that could be mobilised quickly, “with all that that implies in terms of logistics, preparations and command structures—and with a view to the risks for those men and women who would be deployed for Europe.”
Even before the meeting in Kranj, Borell had published a guest column in the New York Times. Under the headline “Europe, Afghanistan is Your Wake-up Call,” he pleaded for the establishment of a European military force and a further increase in European defence spending.
“Alongside increasing pivotal military capabilities—airlift and refueling, command and control, strategic reconnaissance and space-based assets—we need forces that are more capable, more deployable and more interoperable,” he wrote, adding, “But we must go further and faster. The European Defence Fund, established to boost the bloc’s defense capabilities, will receive close to 8 billion euros, or $9.4 billion, over the next six years. That should be used to significantly support collaborative research and the development of much-needed defense technologies.”
Borell left no doubt that the EU is not concerned with “human rights” or “democracy,” the propaganda used to justify US-led military interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, but with the enforcement of imperialist interests through war.
“A more strategically autonomous and militarily capable EU would be better able to address the challenges to come in Europe’s neighborhood and beyond” and “to defend its interests,” wrote Borell in the Times .
The EU would not only have to fight “threats,” such as “the risk of renewed terrorist attacks” and “irregular migration,” but also fight back against other powers. “China, Russia and Iran will have greater sway in the region, while Pakistan, India, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies will all reposition themselves,” he warned. Europe cannot “cannot let them be the only interlocutors with Afghanistan after the Western withdrawal” and “along with the United States, has to reframe its engagement.”
German imperialism is behaving particularly aggressively. In a statement, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) complained that Europeans had not been able to prevent the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan. “We Europeans hardly offered any resistance to the US decision to withdraw because we were unable to do so for lack of our own capabilities,” she complained on Twitter.
That is unequivocal. If Berlin had had its way, the brutal 20-year war effort, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in pursuit of imperialist control and exploitation of the resource-rich and geostrategically important country, would have continued. For Kramp-Karrenbauer and the German bourgeoisie, the central lesson from Afghanistan is not less but more rearmament and war.
According to the defence minister, “Europe must now become stronger in order to make the Western alliance as a whole stronger on an equal footing with the USA.” In doing so, one should not stop at “the question of whether we want a ‘European intervention force’ or not.” The central question for the future of the European Security and Defence Policy is “how we finally use our military capabilities together in the EU! With what effective decision-making processes, real joint exercises and joint missions.”
In order to implement the war plans, “coalitions of the willing could move forward in the EU after everyone has made a joint decision.” It would also be necessary to examine whether EU member states “establish regional responsibilities for security, train special forces together and jointly organise important capabilities, such as strategic airlift and satellite reconnaissance.” Germany was already “in discussion with interested EU states on these issues.”
Workers and youth across the continent must take this as a warning. The ruling class in Germany has long been working feverishly to organise Europe under its leadership in order to rebuild itself as a major foreign policy and military power after losing two world wars. After German reunification and the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy 30 years ago, leading politicians and military leaders have been pleading for a stronger role for Germany in Europe and the world.
At the Munich Security Conference in 2014, then Federal President Joachim Gauck and his Social Democratic successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier, together with the current President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), finally announced the return of German militarism. This was followed by a massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr, the redeployment of German combat troops to the Russian border and new war missions in the Middle East and Africa. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ruling class is now exploiting the debacle in Afghanistan to push forward the offensive it has begun.
The federal government can only appear so aggressive because its course is also supported by the nominally “left” opposition parties. More than two decades after the Greens helped launch the first German war mission since the end of World War II in Kosovo, they are at the forefront of the German-European war offensive.
In the current election campaign, the Green candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, consistently criticises the Grand Coalition from the right with regard to a German-European great power policy. In the last television debate, she accused the CDU/CSU and SPD of “ducking away” internationally and called for a “more active German foreign policy.”
The Left Party also has both feet in the camp of German imperialism. In the elections, it is eyeing a government alliance with the SPD and the Greens and has long since made it clear that as a governing party it would support NATO and German missions abroad.
On August 25, the Left approved the “deployment of armed German forces for military evacuation from Afghanistan.” While the majority of the parliamentary group abstained, five MPs, including its spokesperson on security policy, Matthias Höhn, openly voted for the deployment.
There is something megalomaniac about the plans of the ruling class to replace the US as the leading interventionist power. But they must be taken with deadly seriousness. Ultimately, the same fundamental contradictions of capitalism that lie behind the aggression of US imperialism and which, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, increasingly directly conjure up the danger of nuclear war with Russia and China, are fueling the German-European military offensive.
This in turn intensifies the conflicts between the imperialist powers themselves—also within Europe.
The only way to prevent a catastrophic third world war is to build an anti-war movement of the international working class. The objective conditions for this are rapidly maturing. In its perspective on US President Joe Biden's latest speech on the debacle in Afghanistan, the WSWS wrote:
The humiliating retreat from Afghanistan signals the failure not just of US policy in that one country but of an entire strategy, world view and program of global domination and domestic reaction that has persisted for 30 years. This debacle, which is intersecting with an escalation of the class struggle in the US and internationally under the impact of growing social inequality and the homicidal, profit-driven policies of the world’s ruling classes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has profoundly revolutionary implications.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) is fighting in the federal election to arm the developing struggles of workers, including the important strikes of train drivers, nurses and delivery workers in Germany, with a socialist and internationalist perspective to stop the development of war and eliminate its cause, the capitalist profit system.
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will prompt the EU to establish its own permanent force, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borell said after the meeting.
“It’s clear that the need for more European defence has never been as much evident as today after the events in Afghanistan,” Borrell said. “There are events that catalyse history. Sometimes something happens that pushes history, it creates a breakthrough, and I think the Afghanistan events of this summer are one of these cases.”
The European powers had initially reacted with a mixture of disillusionment and outrage to the withdrawal of US troops and the rapid collapse of the pro-Western puppet regime in Kabul. Now they seek to position themselves so that in the future they will be able to carry out military operations like the one in Afghanistan without Washington’s support.
European defence policy will “only be credible if we are also able to launch complex military operations outside our borders,” the acting EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Industrial Policy Thierry Breton told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. This would require an EU intervention force that could be mobilised quickly, “with all that that implies in terms of logistics, preparations and command structures—and with a view to the risks for those men and women who would be deployed for Europe.”
Even before the meeting in Kranj, Borell had published a guest column in the New York Times. Under the headline “Europe, Afghanistan is Your Wake-up Call,” he pleaded for the establishment of a European military force and a further increase in European defence spending.
“Alongside increasing pivotal military capabilities—airlift and refueling, command and control, strategic reconnaissance and space-based assets—we need forces that are more capable, more deployable and more interoperable,” he wrote, adding, “But we must go further and faster. The European Defence Fund, established to boost the bloc’s defense capabilities, will receive close to 8 billion euros, or $9.4 billion, over the next six years. That should be used to significantly support collaborative research and the development of much-needed defense technologies.”
Borell left no doubt that the EU is not concerned with “human rights” or “democracy,” the propaganda used to justify US-led military interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, but with the enforcement of imperialist interests through war.
“A more strategically autonomous and militarily capable EU would be better able to address the challenges to come in Europe’s neighborhood and beyond” and “to defend its interests,” wrote Borell in the Times .
The EU would not only have to fight “threats,” such as “the risk of renewed terrorist attacks” and “irregular migration,” but also fight back against other powers. “China, Russia and Iran will have greater sway in the region, while Pakistan, India, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies will all reposition themselves,” he warned. Europe cannot “cannot let them be the only interlocutors with Afghanistan after the Western withdrawal” and “along with the United States, has to reframe its engagement.”
German imperialism is behaving particularly aggressively. In a statement, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) complained that Europeans had not been able to prevent the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan. “We Europeans hardly offered any resistance to the US decision to withdraw because we were unable to do so for lack of our own capabilities,” she complained on Twitter.
That is unequivocal. If Berlin had had its way, the brutal 20-year war effort, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in pursuit of imperialist control and exploitation of the resource-rich and geostrategically important country, would have continued. For Kramp-Karrenbauer and the German bourgeoisie, the central lesson from Afghanistan is not less but more rearmament and war.
According to the defence minister, “Europe must now become stronger in order to make the Western alliance as a whole stronger on an equal footing with the USA.” In doing so, one should not stop at “the question of whether we want a ‘European intervention force’ or not.” The central question for the future of the European Security and Defence Policy is “how we finally use our military capabilities together in the EU! With what effective decision-making processes, real joint exercises and joint missions.”
In order to implement the war plans, “coalitions of the willing could move forward in the EU after everyone has made a joint decision.” It would also be necessary to examine whether EU member states “establish regional responsibilities for security, train special forces together and jointly organise important capabilities, such as strategic airlift and satellite reconnaissance.” Germany was already “in discussion with interested EU states on these issues.”
Workers and youth across the continent must take this as a warning. The ruling class in Germany has long been working feverishly to organise Europe under its leadership in order to rebuild itself as a major foreign policy and military power after losing two world wars. After German reunification and the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy 30 years ago, leading politicians and military leaders have been pleading for a stronger role for Germany in Europe and the world.
At the Munich Security Conference in 2014, then Federal President Joachim Gauck and his Social Democratic successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier, together with the current President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), finally announced the return of German militarism. This was followed by a massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr, the redeployment of German combat troops to the Russian border and new war missions in the Middle East and Africa. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ruling class is now exploiting the debacle in Afghanistan to push forward the offensive it has begun.
The federal government can only appear so aggressive because its course is also supported by the nominally “left” opposition parties. More than two decades after the Greens helped launch the first German war mission since the end of World War II in Kosovo, they are at the forefront of the German-European war offensive.
In the current election campaign, the Green candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, consistently criticises the Grand Coalition from the right with regard to a German-European great power policy. In the last television debate, she accused the CDU/CSU and SPD of “ducking away” internationally and called for a “more active German foreign policy.”
The Left Party also has both feet in the camp of German imperialism. In the elections, it is eyeing a government alliance with the SPD and the Greens and has long since made it clear that as a governing party it would support NATO and German missions abroad.
On August 25, the Left approved the “deployment of armed German forces for military evacuation from Afghanistan.” While the majority of the parliamentary group abstained, five MPs, including its spokesperson on security policy, Matthias Höhn, openly voted for the deployment.
There is something megalomaniac about the plans of the ruling class to replace the US as the leading interventionist power. But they must be taken with deadly seriousness. Ultimately, the same fundamental contradictions of capitalism that lie behind the aggression of US imperialism and which, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, increasingly directly conjure up the danger of nuclear war with Russia and China, are fueling the German-European military offensive.
This in turn intensifies the conflicts between the imperialist powers themselves—also within Europe.
The only way to prevent a catastrophic third world war is to build an anti-war movement of the international working class. The objective conditions for this are rapidly maturing. In its perspective on US President Joe Biden's latest speech on the debacle in Afghanistan, the WSWS wrote:
The humiliating retreat from Afghanistan signals the failure not just of US policy in that one country but of an entire strategy, world view and program of global domination and domestic reaction that has persisted for 30 years. This debacle, which is intersecting with an escalation of the class struggle in the US and internationally under the impact of growing social inequality and the homicidal, profit-driven policies of the world’s ruling classes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has profoundly revolutionary implications.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) is fighting in the federal election to arm the developing struggles of workers, including the important strikes of train drivers, nurses and delivery workers in Germany, with a socialist and internationalist perspective to stop the development of war and eliminate its cause, the capitalist profit system.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)