30th anniversary fund & subscription drives

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W e thank you, our readers, for supporting Socialist Action newspaper. Some of you have been regular readers since our first issue came off the presses — in December 1983. Now, we ask for your support once again. And for NEW T his month, Socialist Action newspaper is launching our Spring 2014 SUB­ SCRIPTION DRIVE. New readers can now subscribe for an entire year at a cut-rate price of $12, or five months for $5. Please return the sub blank on page T he subscription drive coincides with our campaign to raise $25,000 for the Socialist Action annual FUND DRIVE. Achieving this goal will enable us to expand our efforts to build the revolutionary socialist party in the United States and worldwide. Please send your contribution to Socialist Action, Box 10328, readers — we have an attractive offer for you too!

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Oakland, CA 94610. Thank you! ments were, “We out-organized the staff organizers” and “We got our union back.”

This attempt at creating a mega-local with a corpo­ rate-style governance is something that has occurred before. It was definitely more of a softball approach than the travesty in California when Andy Stern was International president. Local 790 was told that the international could “impose” a merger on the locals without a vote. But the end result could have been the same. It wasn’t the same because there was already a rank-and-file organization in existence that had stat­ ed goals that included increasing union transparency and union democracy.

The CFSU is moving forward by increasing its num­ bers and running candidates in upcoming elections. General Council, the unique democratic institution that was saved by the “no” vote, will be meeting in August, and members can submit new resolutions to steer the union’s policies towards transparency and democracy. But first on the agenda must be to watch for the signs of a push for a revote. Just three days af­ ter the vote, the current leadership was already trum­ peting, “We are getting calls from ‘no’ voters who say they want ‘unification’ (merger).” n SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 2014 5

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... U.S. imperialism & Ukraine (continued from page 1: “U.S. imperialism and the Ukraine coup”)

Agriculture Minister Ihor Shvaika, and act­ ing Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky. Top U.S. officials visit Kiev U.S. Republican Party firebrand and former presidential candidate John McCain had paid a previous visit to the Maidan, sharing the stage with Svoboda’s anti-Semitic lead­ er Oleg Tyahnybok. McCain tried to rouse the crowd with cries of “democracy” and promises of “freedom and independence”— American style. But “democracy” was to be granted only after the looting government of oligarchs had approved the austerity terms that came with the European Union’s (EU) proposed “bailout” package, called the “Association Agreement.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Eu­ rope Victoria Nuland had also participated in the protests—to pass out cookies, no less—in a well-or­ chestrated imperial stage-crafting effort to present the United States as a nation with the most benevo­ lent and generous of intentions. She had previously boasted about U.S. funding of the “democratic op­ position” to the tune of $5 billion over the past 10 years, not to mention the creation of some 40,000 NGOs to spread the “democracy” of U.S. imperialism.

Nuland has since become famous for her off-thecuff “Fuck the EU” statement, which has been circu­ lated by bloggers around the world. A Russian sur­ veillance team caught her red-handed in denounc­ ing the European Union negotiating team for its deal with former President Yanukovych. Nuland’s Russian-acquired exchange with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called for the U.S., rather than the EU, to determine who would compose the new Ukrainian government. Yanukovych’s agree­ ment with EU top officials from Germany, France and Poland, his third reversal regarding who would plunder and subject his country to imperial control, had him appointing top opposition leaders to ma­ jor government posts. Nuland disagreed with key appointments, indicating that “Yats” was to be the U.S. choice. Indeed, “Yats,” or Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, is today’s Ukrainan Prime Minister. Nuland preferred figures who had shown themselves to be loyal to Western interests and to IMF-type austerity.

If there is a “war” in Ukraine today, it is between which of the imperialist Western powers will have priority “rights” in absorbing this nation of 46 mil­ lion people into its orbit to become yet another subcolony of imperialism, along with the other nine na­ tions that two decades ago constituted the former Soviet Union and today are largely incorporated in Europe’s capitalist economy and military alliance, NATO. With the U.S.-instigated coup, Russian capi­ talism has been effectively marginalized as a player in the Ukraine.

Nuland’s apology for her poor choice of words was not accompanied by any apology for U.S. moves to dominate the future neoliberal exploitation of Ukraine, as opposed to handing over this right to 6 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 2014 longstanding U.S. competitors—not to mention to the wannabe imperialist Russian President Vladi­ mir Putin and his billionaire oligarch regime. He and his predecessors gave birth to the Russian oligarchy some 20-plus years ago when the USSR’s wealth and resources were stolen, with U.S. complicity, by the tiny layer of former Stalinist bureaucrats who now preside over capitalist Russia, today a minor player in the world imperialist configuration.

Assistant Secretary Nuland directed her ire not against Russia but rather Germany, France, and Poland—who brokered the deal as to the future composition of the Ukrainian government and the distribution of that nation’s industrial strength and rich and fertile agricultural resources. This was an unacceptable arrangement in the eyes of imperial America.

The irrefutably recorded discussions between Nuland and Pyatt revealed their choice of United Nations “glue,” said Nuland, to cement any Ukraine deal. In that scenario, the U.S.-handpicked and sub­ servient UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would be called in to “negotiate” the nation’s future, rather than a more pro-EU assortment of capitalist plun­ derers.

On March 4, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry vis­ ited Kiev in a further attempt to shoulder aside EU competitors in a deal. Kerry offered $1 billion in loan guarantees to the Ukrainian coup-makers and promised to send in a host of U.S. “technical experts” to help re-align the country’s national bank and fi­ nance ministry.

In today’s game of re-dividing and re-colonizing the world, the Russians are bit players as compared to the U.S. imperialists and their not-too-happy less­ er competitors in the EU, ever scrambling to main­ tain their perceived share of the booty extracted from their former colonies and new ones to be as­ similated across Eastern Europe. At the level of mili­ tary power, Russia’s few bases outside its borders pale before the 1100 maintained by the U.S. around the world and another 1000 or so stationed in the U.S.

The handful of Russian billionaires and their vir­ tually non-competitive industries are almost in­ (Left) U. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland poses with neo-Nazi Oleg Tyahnybok of the Svoboda Party (l.), politician and former boxer Vitali Klitschko (ctr.), and new Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk (rt.).

Nuland preferred Yatsenyuk, believed a proven friend of Western interests, over Klitschko as the head of the new Ukrainian regime. (Below) Tyanhnybok gives Nazi salute.

significant compared to those of the American behemoth, whose multitrillion-dollar banking houses (JP Mor­ gan Chase has $4.4 trillion in assets) control vast arrays of the leading U.S. and multi-national corporations that do “business” around the world. Half of the multi-nationals in China, for ex­ ample, are U.S. owned, while the Rus­ sians have none. Indeed, The New York Times recently noted that close to half of the income of Russia, a “petro-dollar state,” comes from the export of fossil fuels. But today, for the first time, Rus­ sia is second to the U.S. in the export of shale gas. The United States seeks to push aside all its “competitors,” and now especially in the Ukraine.

Yanukovych and his government’s original intention to resolve its vir­ tual bankruptcy via the EU austerity plan momentarily gave way to Russian President Putin’s counter-offer of $15 billion in bail-out loans to the Ukrai­ nian oligarchs—mostly former Stalin­ ist bureaucrats themselves—which are peanuts in comparison to the $51 billion the Russians spent on the Sochi Olympic spectacle. The latter, aimed at glorifying Russia’s pretended emer­ gence as a great power (it came in first in the medal total in Sochi!), was a trifle as compared to what U.S. and West­ ern imperialism had to offer to buy Ukraine’s near bankrupt government and its workers and resources. The Russians’ subse­ quent offer to reduce the price of oil and gas by 55 percent to the heavily oil-dependent Ukraine was nearly instantly countered by EU pledges to substi­ tute Polish coal and other fossil fuels.

The coup regime has also agreed to a deal with Chevron Corporation for large-scale shale-gas fracking operations in western Ukraine. The Yanu­ kovich government, before its ignominious demise, had previously signed production-sharing agree­ ments with Shell and Chevron. The U.S. Energy In­ formation Administration reports that Ukraine has Europe’s fourth largest shale-gas reserves. EU-IMF economic agenda for Ukraine The original EU offer to Ukraine (the one that Yanukovych temporarily rejected on Nov. 21) had certainly come with strings attached. These debili­ tating conditions were outlined by Marilyn VogtDowney, a revolutionary socialist with a long career as an analyst of Ukrainian and Russian politics, in a Feb. 27 CounterPunch article entitled, “An Imperial­ ist Invasion Without an Imperialist Army: Whither Ukraine?” Her assessment rings with a truth that has rarely entered the discussion.

Vogt-Downey suggested that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych might have “easily calmed the rebellion in Independence Square in Ukraine’s capi­ tal Kiev early on if he had simply told the crowds the truth about what the Association Agreement with the European Union would mean to their lives and futures.” She pointed out that the “Free Trade section alone—removing tariff barriers and export duties—would convert Ukraine into one big “free trade zone,” where the anti-environment, anti-labor, and pro-business laws would prevail. … It would create the economic devastation of the type that NAFTA has created in Mexico.

Vogt-Downey said that Yanukovych might then have “gone on to outline what the pending IMF ‘fi­ nancial aid package’ would do to further worsen their lives. ” She cited the Feb. 23 New York Times report on Yanukovych’s flight, which summarized (continued on page 7)

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what the “EU option” would mean. “The economy will remain the greatest problem facing the coun­ try,” The Times reported, and then went on: “The International Monetary Fund remains a potential source of financing to replace the $15 billion that Russia had made available before the protests. But that comes with an insistence on austerity and eco­ nomic changes that will inflict considerable pain.”

Marilyn Vogt-Downey continued: “Considerable pain, indeed!! The IMF loans will require in Ukraine, as they do everywhere, that the government un­ dertake broad-scale privatization of resources and basic public services, cut government spending on education, health care, pensions, housing, and ben­ efits for the needy, as well as laws that hinder the accumulation and free movement of capitalist prof­ its. And that’s just for starters. All this will further lower the wages and standard of living of the mass of the population of Ukraine, which are already low­ er than the European average.”

Vogt-Downey pointed out that Ukrainian accep­ tance of the Association Agreement with the EU and the IMF aid package would remove any semblance of independence for the country. She listed the fol­ lowing points to back up her thesis:

“1) It stipulates that Ukraine cannot accept any fi­ nancial support from Russia.

“2) It would make impossible any Ukrainian eco­ nomic planning that did not follow the guidelines established by the IMF and other imperialist lend­ ing agencies.

“3) Because of the nature of the IMF-imposed eco­ nomic agenda, Ukraine would find it very difficult to ever escape the debt cycle. The IMF mandates, for example, that capitalist profits be only minimally taxed, the government provide generous finan­ cial support and tax breaks for capitalist ventures, public services be privatized, and restrictions on transfer of capitalist profits abroad be minimal. As a result, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for any Ukrainian government to raise funds for basic institutions people need to live a quality life.”

“However,” Vogt-Downey continued, “Yanukovych could not say such things. It is not just that he is not a man of integrity. The problem is that during his time in power, he—like all the Ukrainian rul­ ers since Ukraine became independent with the collapse of the USSR in 1992—had already been pursuing measures similar to those the IMF would impose. These include measures such as privatizing public resources, cutting public spending, cutting subsidies for major industries—leading to stagna­ tion, non-payment of wages, and benefit cuts—and imposing market mechanisms.” And while the stan­ dard of living has fallen for the majority of the popu­ lation, “politicians and their cronies have managed to considerably enrich themselves and acquire vast fortunes from resources that should belong to the Ukrainian working people.”

Russian troops enter Crimea Despite the onerous conditions that it imposed, Yanukovych’s deal with the EU was initially ap­ proved by the parliament but quickly unraveled when the fascist-led and undoubtedly U.S.-instigat­ ed protests caused Yanukovych to flee, in his own words, for his life. In a matter of hours, Ukraine’s rump parliament changed course, adopted some 21 of the most reactionary and chauvinist laws imagin­ able, and effectively agreed to the terms imposed by the Western powers. The super-nationalist regime now in power even eliminated the Russian language as one of the country’s official languages, disregard­ ing the fact that half of all Ukrainians speak Russian as their primary language.

Putin’s response was to send Russian soldiers to the Crimea, a semi-autonomous region of Ukraine where Russia maintains its North Sea fleet via a lease that expires in 2045. The corporate media ini­ tially sounded the alarm, along with the new Ukrai­ are salivating at the possibility of establishing oildrilling rights on Russia’s Arctic frontier, and per­ haps eventually in Russia itself. But his momentary display of “power” by sending in some 16,000 sol­ diers to the Crimea, according to the new Ukrainian regime, is his version of imperial stagecraft, more akin to his Olympic victory than a military threat to the Ukraine. Not a single shot has been fired to date. Putin is fully capable of compromising with Western imperialism in a deal that would require him to withdraw the troops in the not too distant future. Indeed, as of March 4, Putin was already in negotiations with Secretary of State John Kerry. In truth, the future of the people of the Crimea will be determined by their own independent and revolu­ tionary mobilization as opposed to reliance on any capitalist power, West or East.

Putin had no problem voting for the UN’s “hu­ manitarian” resolution that paved the way for the NATO/U.S. devastation of Libya and its subsequent sequestration of Libyan oil. We hear no Russian objections to the recent U.S. declaration to send an army of 5000 U.S. troops to Libya, with that nation now reduced to warring and out-of-control funda­ mentalist militias.

After a few rhetorical threats, the Obama admin­ istration made clear that it had no intention of go­ ing to war with Russia—a largely defanged and pathetic world power, although one with a nuclear arsenal. The worst that the Obama administration could threaten were possible economic sanctions or staging a boycott of the upcoming G-8 conference in Sochi.

Legacy of Great Russian chauvinism Whatever threat Russia poses to the people of the Ukraine reflects its legacy of plunder and repres­ sion, beginning with the pre-1917 Tsarist era. This was interrupted with magnificent results immedi­ ately following the 1917 Russian Revolution, which guaranteed not only the right of self-determination to all of Russia’s former colonies but the right to in­ dependence and succession. The leadership of Len­ in and Trotsky during this historic period brought enlightenment, solidarity, and equality be­ tween the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. But this was abruptly ended with the com­ ing to power of Stalin and his counter-rev­ olutionary bureaucratic regime.

Since that time, the Ukrainian people have once again been subjected to the bru­ (Above) Republican Party politician John McCain shakes hands with fascist leader Oleg Tyahnybok.

the Middle East and worldwide, weighs heavily on the world’s working masses, who have proved ca­ pable of rising up in the tens of millions time and again against the most powerful of tyrants and dic­ tators, only to suffer setbacks and defeats because an authoritative, deeply rooted, and revolutionary mass party of all the oppressed and exploited has yet to be constructed. This is the critical task for revolutionary-minded activists everywhere.

Vogt-Downey pointed out in CounterPunch that “what is unfolding right now in Ukraine is not a rev­ olution but imperialist consolidation of the capital­ ist counterrevolution by imperialist finance capital and the army of international capitalist investors who seek unfettered opportunities to milk every ounce of profit they can from the Ukrainian work­ ing class and the resources in their territory.”

For the moment, U.S. imperialism, the central play­ er in a crisis-ridden world economy in decay, has undoubtedly scored a significant victory in Ukraine, again at the expense of the working masses. Oppo­ sition to U.S. imperialism in all its manifestations must be a top priority of any successful antiwar movement.

Ukraine demonstrates in bold relief that oppres­ sion and exploitation can be achieved in more ways than overt military intervention. Privatized death squads and drone warfare around the globe, sur­ veillance of the world’s people and the corporate media’s manufacture—Orwellian style—of a pseu­ do-democracy in America that masks mass murder, racism, and plunder everywhere are also in today’s imperialist arsenal. The imperial beast takes many forms, all aimed at advancing, by any means neces­ sary, the interests of the ruling-class minority. n *A Jan. 15 McClatchy news report states, “A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated.”

In the report, titled “Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Techni­ cal Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technol­ ogy, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the question about the rocket’s range indicates a major weakness in the case for military action initially pressed by Obama administration officials.

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Opposition to U.S. imperialism must be a top priority of any successful antiwar movement.

A Socialist Action pamphlet