by Will Podmore
In November 2013, the EU triggered a crisis when it told President Viktor Yanukovych (elected in February 2010) to sign a free trade deal with the EU. The deal would have imposed the usual EU ‘austerity’, ending food and energy subsidies and ending all prospects for development. When Yanukovych refused to sign the deal, the EU and the US government started moves to oust him. They fomented civil war in Ukraine, arming and funding the fascists of Svoboda and Pravy Sektor (Right Sector, a paramilitary group). The European Parliament had called Svoboda ‘racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic’ in 2012, but when Svoboda backed the EU deal, the EU rebranded its members ‘pro-democracy activists’.
The Russian, French and German governments and Ukraine’s government and opposition reached an agreement for a peaceful transfer of power after new elections. But the Ukrainian opposition illegally overthrew the elected president on 22 February 2014. The NATO powers celebrated this as a ‘democratic revolution’. Many in Ukraine, especially in eastern Ukraine, resisted the coup. The post-coup regime at once signed the free trade deal with the EU.
The EU and the US government wanted Arseniy Yatsenuk as Prime Minister and so it happened. One of his first acts was to tell Russia to leave its naval base of Sebastopol in the Crimea, breaking Ukraine’s 1997 agreement with Russia on the Status and Conditions of the Black Sea Fleet Stationing on the Territory of Ukraine. Khrushchev had in 1954 illegally split Crimea from Russia. On 16 March 2014, Crimea held a referendum on whether to rejoin Russia. Voter turnout was 83 per cent; 97 per cent voted to rejoin. The NATO powers denounced the referendum, saying that all Ukraine should have been polled and that a referendum in Crimea alone was invalid. But when Khrushchev split Crimea from Russia, he held no referendum in Russia or Crimea. And when NATO split Kosovo from Serbia in 1999, it held no referendum in Serbia or Kosovo.
In April, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced the reinforcement of NATO forces across Eastern Europe: “air policing aircraft will fly more sorties over the Baltic region. Allied ships will deploy to the Baltic Sea, the eastern Mediterranean, and elsewhere as required.” The US government deployed troops to Poland and the Baltic states ‘for military exercises’. Finland and Sweden signed Memoranda of Understanding with NATO stating their readiness to host NATO forces.
On 27 May, his second day in office, the new president of Ukraine, billionaire Petro Poroshenko, launched an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ against eastern Ukraine, with airstrikes and ground assaults. NATO pledged military support for Poroshenko. His air and artillery attacks on residential areas forced more than 250,000 Ukrainians to flee to Russia. By 3 February 2015, 5,350 people had been killed.
On 17 July, commercial airliner MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. US intelligence officials said that there was no evidence of Russian involvement. President Vladimir Putin called for an independent investigation by ‘a fully representative group of experts to be working at the site under the guidance of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)’. The preliminary report into the tragedy, conducted by representatives of all the countries involved, did not assign blame to any side.
But NATO and the EU pushed NATO armed forces right up to Russia’s western borders, imposed more sanctions and ratcheted up the ‘hate Russia’ propaganda war. They were pursuing Brzezinski’s strategy of trying to draw Russia into a ‘prolonged and costly’ war in Ukraine. Brzezinski had used a similar strategy in the 1980s when he armed Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan as part of a proxy war against the Soviet Union. On 4 December, the US Congress passed resolution H. Res. 758, by 411 votes to 10. The resolution did everything except openly declare war on Russia. It stated that ‘military intervention’ by the Russian Federation in Ukraine ‘poses a threat to international peace’. It proffered no proof, no pictures of any Russian military units. It demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. It urged the regime to resume military operations against eastern Ukraine, calling for the ‘disarming of separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine’. This would mean the deaths of many more civilians.
The resolution urged the US president to ‘provide the government of Ukraine with necessary defense articles, services, and intelligence in order to defend its territory and sovereignty’. The German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung warned that Russia would take a US decision to arm the Kiev regime with offensive weapons as equivalent to a declaration of war.
The resolution also demanded that Russia ‘cease its support for the Assad regime in Syria’. It called on NATO to increase its war-readiness. It called for the return of Crimea to Ukraine, of Abhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia and of Transnistria to Moldova.
The US Congress also passed a ‘Ukraine Freedom Support Act’ which President Barack Obama signed into law on 19 December. This provided for increased sanctions against Russia. It authorised spending $350 million on military aid to Ukraine, including anti-tank and anti-armour weapons; crew weapons and ammunition; counter-artillery radars; fire control and guidance equipment; surveillance drones; and secure command and communications equipment. The Act also designated Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as major non-NATO allies, to speed up the transfer of military equipment. Finally, the Act authorised $30 million to ‘counter Russian propaganda’ in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The Pentagon’s 2016 budget proposal asked for an extra $168 million to ‘counter Russian aggressive acts’, $117 million for Ukraine and $51 million for Moldova and Georgia, plus $789 million to bolster NATO in the European Union.
As part of the war preparations, Britain aimed to send 1,000 troops and four RAF Typhoon jets to add to NATO ‘Force Integration Units’ to be set up in new NATO command posts in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. There were also plans to deploy such a unit in Hungary. 30,000 NATO troops were to be deployed in the region in what the new NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called ‘the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the cold war’.
NATO’s aggression was based on the big lie that there had been a Russian invasion. But the Chief of Ukraine’s General Staff, Colonel-General Viktor Muzhenko, revealed on 29 January 2015, “Now we have only the facts of participation of individual citizens of the Russian Federation and the Russian Army, who are members of illegal armed groups. I will also say that currently the Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army.”
But NATO continued to escalate the conflict. NATO deputy general secretary Alexander Vershbow said on 2 February, “NATO is doing its part. To help Ukraine to modernize and reform its armed forces, we have launched five trust funds to assist in areas like command and control, logistics, cyber defense and military medicine.” Vershbow continued, “We are sending more advisors to Kiev and will be carrying out exercises with Ukraine’s armed forces. And we are helping Moldova and Georgia to strengthen their defense capacity in similar ways, and, in Georgia’s case, to help it prepare for future membership in the Alliance.” NATO defence ministers also discussed ‘the nuclear threat scenario from Russia in the past few months’ and ‘the consequences for the nuclear strategy of the alliance’.
At a press conference at the Munich Security Conference on 7 February US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the head of both the US European Command and NATO in Europe, insisted that NATO could not ‘preclude out of hand the possibility of the military option’ in Ukraine. By contrast, President Putin said, “We repeatedly called upon all conflicting sides to stop the bloodshed immediately and sit down at the negotiating table.”
On 12 February, the governments of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France concluded the Minsk peace agreement, later approved by the UN Security Council:
1.Immediate and full bilateral ceasefire
2.Withdrawal of all heavy weapons by both sides
3.Effective monitoring and verification regime for the ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons
4.From day one of the withdrawal begin a dialogue on the holding of local elections
5.Pardon and amnesty by banning any prosecution of figures involved in the Donetsk and Luhansk conflict
6.Release of all hostages and other illegally detained people
7.Unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to the needy, internationally supervised
8.Restoration of full social and economic links with affected areas
9.Full Ukrainian government control will be restored over the state border, throughout the conflict zone
10.Withdrawal of all foreign armed groups, weapons and mercenaries from Ukrainian territory
11.11. Constitutional reform in Ukraine, with adoption of a new constitution by the end of 2015.
The peace agreement was achieved because resistance forces in eastern Ukraine had pushed the regime’s forces, fascist militias and mercenaries out of the Donbass/Donetsk region. And because EU Commissioners and US, British, Polish and other Eastern European governments were kept out of the peace talks.
In direct violation of point 10 of the agreement, the US government announced in late February that it would send 300 troops to Ukraine to help train the regime’s forces and Prime Minister David Cameron announced on 24 February that 75 British troops would do likewise.
Chapter 14
Cuba, the Special Period – workers in control
The Special Period, 1990-2010
When the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe collapsed, Cuba lost 80 per cent of its trade and more than 40 per cent of its GDP. It suffered power cuts and hunger, with shortages of everything. The US government tightened its blockade to try to make Cuba collapse too. The Torricelli-Graham Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 banned US companies from trading with Cuba and also made it illegal for foreign companies to do so. The sanctions blocked Cuba’s access to US markets and to loans and aid, restricting investment and growth.1
The sanctions cut Cubans’ access to medicines and medical goods. In 1990, Cuba imported $55 millions’ worth, in 1996, just $18 million. WHO officials noted, “In the health sector, the consequences of the embargo have a negative multiplier effect on the cost of basic everyday health products, on the difficulties in acquiring health products, on the availability of basic services and, therefore, on the overall living conditions of the population … The embargo affects the individual health care of all people, regardless of age or gender, through its impact on Cuba’s unified health system institutions, research facilities, epidemiological surveillance institutions and disease control agencies.”2 The US government admitted, “The embargo on Cuba is the most comprehensive set of American sanctions ever imposed upon a country.”3
The EU backed the US blockade. It refused to sign any cooperation agreement with Cuba, the only Latin American country with which it had no such agreement. EU Commissioner Chris Patten pressed for Cuba to be indefinitely banned from membership of the Cotonou Agreement for African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
President Yeltsin too banned all trade with Cuba. He went on to give away the assets of the Soviet working class to the new breed of gangsters running the country. Cubans saw what would happen to their country if they did not take charge.
The US government also continued to sponsor terrorism against Cuba. Some 3,500 Cubans were killed during mercenary attacks, all launched from the USA. Five brave Cubans volunteered to infiltrate the mercenary organisations to stop these attacks. When they told US authorities about possible terrorist attacks against Cuba, they were jailed in 1998 for long sentences. The last three of the five were finally freed in December 2014.
In response to the US/EU blockade, Salud International asked London Ambulance Unison if it could add an ambulance to a shipment of buses, fire engines and other aid from British trade unions. In the end, with the help of generous union and individual donations, London Ambulance Unison sent more than 50 ambulances. It was a historic day when the Luric docked in Havana and delivered its cargo.
With the Soviet Union gone and the US government intensifying its assault, Cuba faced unprecedented difficulties. So the Cuban government declared a ‘Special Period not in time of war’. This put Cuba on a footing like Britain’s Special Period during World War Two. Despite severe hardship, there was a strong sense of working class unity. Cuba’s other assets included the welfare state, price controls, the monopoly of international exchange, national ownership of the means of production, a capacity for a state-led, collective response, and a tradition of winning voluntary support through mass mobilisations after public participation and debate. The Special Period, for all its pain, was the first time since colonisation that Cuba was a fully free and independent country, no longer dependent on a major power.4
Specially convened ‘workers’ parliaments’ attended by 85 per cent of Cuba’s workers discussed the way forward. Special Congresses of the Cuban Communist Party and of the mass organisations like the trade unions, the Union of Communist Youth, the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution and the Cuban Federation of Cuban Women were held.
The Committees for the Defence of the Revolution took care of their local communities and made sure that no one fell through the safety net. Trade union farms were opened to grow food. The health workers’ union looked after the health of the people and the health system’s infrastructure. The transport union looked after the transport system. The government distributed half a million bicycles to workers and students. The education and science union maintained educational standards despite lack of equipment and supported pioneering developments in biotechnology and genetics. The Institute of Innovators and Rationalisers was set up to help workers to solve the problems caused by the blockade.
Cuba maintained basic food security even in these conditions of acute scarcity. The state distribution body used the food-rationing system and networks like the vías sociales, which provided free or subsidised meals at workplaces, schools and health centres. Thanks to the ration-system’s fixed prices, the cost of meeting basic food needs, around 40 pesos a month per person, was kept below the minimum social-security allowance of 85 pesos a month. The monthly ration basket, for which the average Cuban family paid about $4.70 in 2009, actually cost $61. Similarly, the average family quarterly electricity bill was 32.22 CUP, while the actual cost of the energy supplied was 708.84 CUP.5 The government introduced a Food Programme which encouraged local self-provisioning and small-scale experimentation, including using animal traction, organic fertilisers, biological pest control, sustainable farming and renewable energy sources.6
Foreign investment was sought to develop tourism as the only short-term way to get hard currency to buy the goods needed to survive. Tourism brought with it the new problem of a dual currency, which meant that those with access to hard currency were better off than others, and this had to be managed.
Cuba also addressed its security concerns. Previously, it had relied on its relationship with the Soviet Union to defend it from the constant threat of US invasion. Now Cuba relied on its own ability to defend itself. It learned from the Vietnamese the lessons of developing a strategy of a ‘war of all the people’. The whole population had a role in the defence of the country. Trade unions had their own armouries. Previously, the watchword had been that the enemy would never step foot on the island. Now it was to defeat an invading army by guerrilla struggle.
In 2000, Cuba launched its Battle of Ideas, a nationwide campaign to reassert and develop honest, humanitarian, working class morals. They took this campaign into schools, youth organisations, trade unions and all the other mass organisations. It gave birth to a new worker called a ‘social worker’. The government opened new schools for these social workers, mainly young women from poor families. 28,000 had graduated by 2005. These workers visited every family and individual, learned the specific problems facing different groups – families, single mothers, unemployed, children, pensioners – and tried to fi
nd solutions for them. This nationwide door-to-door survey discovered that 37,000 elderly people were living alone and in need of personal attention, so the government launched programmes to help them.
These young people went into communities and sought out disaffected youth. They tried to befriend them, win their trust and convince them with ideas and arguments to find a rewarding life-project that chimed with the larger collective project of the Cuban revolution.
They also dealt with the corruption that developed during the Special Period. First they tackled the country’s 2,000 petrol stations, where half the revenue from fuel sales had gone missing. 10,000 of them took over the pumps and accompanied delivery drivers, monitoring the deliveries from the refineries. In two months, the state’s income from petrol stations doubled. This aided the country’s economic revival and redistributed wealth from the ‘new rich’ to the working class.
Their next mission was to replace every domestic incandescent light globe in the country with an energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulb and to replace ancient Soviet fans and refrigerators with new, more efficient appliances. This was part of Cuba’s ‘energy revolution’, which started in 2006 and aimed to save the country $1 billion a year.
As another part of its survival strategy, Cuba developed more links with countries around the world, especially with its neighbours in Latin America. In December 2004, Cuba and Venezuela founded ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America.7 By 2014, it had eleven members. In December 2011, all 33 countries south of the USA founded CELAC – the Community of Latin-American and Caribbean States. In 2013, Cuba was elected to its second Presidency.8