[D66] G7 leaders escalate war threats against Russia

[J.N.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/09/ukra-j09.html

G7 leaders escalate war threats against Russia
By Thomas Gaist
9 June 2015

During their second day of discussions in the resort town of
Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the German Alps on Monday, the leaders of the
major imperialist powers affirmed their commitment to a policy of
escalating strategic and military pressure against Russia.

“We need to keep pushing Russia,” Obama said. “Russian forces continue
to operate in eastern Ukraine, violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and
territorial integrity.”

“The G7 is making it clear that if necessary we stand ready to impose
additional significant sanctions against Russia,” Obama declared.

An official communiqué released by the G7 powers—the United States,
Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and Canada—reaffirmed Obama’s
anti-Russia comments. It warned that the assembled powers would devise
“further restrictive measures in order to increase cost on Russia.”

The hypocrisy and recklessness of Obama and his G7 counterparts is
breathtaking. They are denouncing Russian “aggression” in Ukraine, which
they plunged into civil war by backing a fascist-led putsch last year
that toppled a pro-Russian government. Now, US and NATO armed forces are
conducting air, sea and ground exercises all along Russia’s borders. In
Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea, and the Black
Sea, the US and its allies are rehearsing the opening stages of an
all-out war with Russia.

Last week, US defense officials testifying before the US House of
Representatives indicated that the Pentagon is considering launching
pre-emptive strikes against Russian targets, including with nuclear
weapons (see: US officials consider nuclear strikes against Russia).
These statements are no doubt now being carefully studied by the Russian
military.

NATO’s recently-formed Rapid Response Force, which has been assembled to
serve as the spearhead of a NATO ground war against Russian forces, is
set to conduct military exercises in Poland starting today. The
so-called “Baltops” exercises are to involve thousands of US-NATO troops
and will take place simultaneously in Sweden, Germany and the Baltic Sea.

A quarter century after the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union
and the end of the “Cold War,” Washington is preparing new
forward-deployments of its nuclear arsenal to Europe. In an interview
with the BBC given the preceding day, British Foreign Minister Philip
Hammond made clear that plans for new US nuclear deployments to Europe
are far advanced.

Hammond told the BBC Sunday that Britain may soon withdraw from the INF
treaty, clearing the way for Britain to serve as a staging area for an
American nuclear build-up against Russia, just as it did prior to 1991,
when US nuclear weapons were stationed at the Royal Air Force’s Greenham
Common base.

“There have been some worrying signs of stepping up levels of activity
both by Russian forces and by Russian-controlled separatist forces,”
Hammond said. “We have got to send a clear signal to Russia that we will
not allow them to transgress our red lines.”

The US and European ruling elites’ strategy of endlessly bullying Russia
by threatening it with war and nuclear strikes poses immense dangers to
the world’s population. Even assuming that the ruling elites of the NATO
powers are not immediately seeking to provoke outright war with Russia,
the constant drumbeat of NATO threats and military exercises immensely
heightens the danger of war breaking out accidentally.

With thousands of jet fighters, warships, and armored units on
heightened alert throughout the region, the world is only a few
miscalculations away from a clash between NATO and Russian forces that
could rapidly escalate into war.

The immense dangers posed to the world’s population arising from the US
and NATO war drive against Russia are being hidden from masses of
workers in the United States and worldwide. No one in the official media
are asking how many people would die if the military maneuvers being
practiced by Russian and NATO forces in their exercises turned into the
real thing. Instead, much of the media coverage of the G7 summit focused
on controversy over whether Obama was drinking alcohol-free beer yesterday.

The relentless military escalation at this G7 summit testifies to the
breakdown and historic bankruptcy of capitalism. Without the unification
and mobilization of the international working class in revolutionary
struggle against imperialism and war, it is not only likely, but
inevitable, that NATO war threats will at some point unleash all-out war.

Russian leaders have already warned that they are on alert for signs of
an imminent first strike by NATO and are holding Russian nuclear forces
ready to respond to such an attack, should it come (see: Russian
President Putin says Ukraine crisis threatens nuclear war).

The second main priority of the assembled leaders was to coordinate the
imposition of austerity measures that have already set in motion the
collapse of large parts of the European economy.

Even as Obama denounced Putin for “wrecking his country’s economy,” the
social cuts, mass layoffs and other “economic restructuring” measures
dictated by the Western banks and financial institutions are pushing
millions into poverty and ravaging key social infrastructure across
Southern and Eastern Europe.

In its official communique, the G7 powers demanded that the Ukrainian
government continue to implement austerity policies that, as in Greece,
are pushing broad layers of the population into poverty. The Kiev regime
must “decisively continue the necessary fundamental transformation in
line with IMF and EU commitments,” the joint G7 communique demanded Monday.

In remarks after Monday’s G7 session, German Chancellor Angela Merkel
threatened Greece, insisting that it “does not have much time left” to
reach a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union
and European Central Bank (the “troika”). Such a deal would transfer a
new loan of some €7 billion to Athens in exchange for new social cuts to
the Greek economy, which has already been eviscerated by years of brutal
austerity.

The precise makeup of the social cuts, which are to be directed largely
against the salaries and pensions of government workers, were a major
topic of discussion at the G7 talks, Merkel said. The German chancellor
will reportedly meet for informal discussions with Greek Prime Minister
Alex Tsipras during EU meetings with heads of state from Latin America
scheduled for later in the week.

Despite criticizing the European Commission’s proposals for the Greek
economy as “borderline insulting,” Greek Finance Minister Yanis
Varoufakis nonetheless affirmed his determination to “come to an
agreement” with the troika and the big banks.

“It is time to stop pointing fingers at one another and it is time that
we do our job,” he said.