In foreign policy, Biden continues Trump's policy, even its most extreme steps. We need a union of peoples and states against the ambition of US policy to assert its supremacy by all means, including war: In the age of nuclear weapons, this ambition threatens the survival of all humanity. We wanted to demand and implement a new policy of détente and disarmament. We should use our chances and ourselves promote the building of trust between the peoples, above all the people of the USA, China and Russia as a basis for the transition to a multipolar world: this transition was already decided in 1945 after the end of the Second World War in the UN Charter, but has not yet been able to assert itself, above all also because the political pressure of the citizens of the world are too weak, because most are not aware of the dangers in which we are all hovering worldwide due to the unresolved conflict for global supremacy. In an event on ZOOM on Friday, 3 December, starting at 7 pm, we want to discuss what the peace movement can do to ensure that this conflict does not escalate and can be resolved by peaceful means in accordance with international law. The link to participate in the meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3216854044
In der Außenpolitik setzt Biden Trumps Politik fort, sogar ihre extremsten Schritte. Wir brauchen einen Zusammenschluss der Völker und Staaten gegen das Bestreben der US-Politik, mit allen Mitteln und auch mit Krieg ihre Vorherrschaft behaupten zu wollen: In Zeitalter der Atomwaffen bedroht dieses Bestreben das Überleben der ganzen Menschheit. Wir wollten eine neue Entspannungs- und Abrüstungspolitik einfordern und durchsetzen. Wir sollten unsere Chancen nutzen und selbst den Vertrauensaufbau zwischen den Völkern, vor allen dem Menschen in den USA, Chinas und Russlands vorantreiben als Basis für den Übergang zu einer multipolaren Welt: dieser Übergang wurde bereits 1945 nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in der UNO-Charta beschlossen, konnte sich aber bisher nicht durchsetzen, vor allem auch, weil der politische Druck der Bürger der Welt zu schwach sind, weil sich die meisten der Gefahren nicht bewusst sind, in der wir weltweit alle schweben durch den ungelösten Konflikt um die globale Vorherrschaft. Wir wollen in einer Veranstaltung über ZOOM am Freitag, 3. Dezember, ab 19 Uhr diskutieren, was die Friedensbewegung dazu beitragen kann, dass dieser Konflikt nicht eskaliert und im Sinne des Völkerrechts mit friedlichen Mitteln gelöst werden kann. Der Link zur Teilnahme an dem Treffen: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3216854044
The USA after the Afghanistan disaster: With all its might against the systemic enemy China - is a major war looming?
Conrad Schuhler
The withdrawal of US and all Nato troops from Afghanistan was negotiated by Trump in Doha in March 2020 with the Taliban on 1 May 2021 and then completed by President Biden in September 2021. (20) These dates reveal the complete incompetence of German foreign and military policy, which was still surprised by the withdrawal of US troops a year and a half after the Doha agreement. While the US was able to fly out 98% of its local relief forces, the German troops left at least 80% of its more than 30,000 local forces in the hands of the Taliban. Biden had justified the withdrawal with the completely new strategic foreign and military policy: "You have to understand one critical thing: The world is changing. We are in serious competition with China. We have to deal with threats on several fronts with Russia... We have to increase America's competitiveness to meet these new challenges in the 21st century competition." He added: "The decision on Afghanistan is not simply about Afghanistan. It is about ending an era of major military operations to transform other countries."
At one point, this means the strategic reorientation of the country's forces towards its main strategic enemies, No.1 China, No.2 Russia. Already in the programme of the Democrats in the election campaign against Trump, as later in the "priorities" of the Biden-Harris administration, the two goals are juxtaposed: The country, torn apart by deep social inequality, is to be united and thus led with renewed strength into the struggle against the antagonistic, "authoritarian" opponent China with its first adjutant Russia.
"Major military operations to rebuild other countries" are beyond the economic means of the tottering superpower USA. Afghanistan, as Biden calculates, cost the US $300 million every day for 20 years; 800,000 men and women of troops fought there over the years, most of whom returned home traumatised; some 21,000 wounded and 2,461 dead. Neither politically - the dead, wounded and traumatised come from the lower middle class, which Biden sees himself as representing - nor economically can the USA afford this burden of a world policeman in the old way. Measured in terms of purchasing power-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP), the country has long since lagged behind China and is distanced from it further every year.
Ranking of economies (GDP) by share of world GDP
CountryRank2020 (trillion $)2021 (trillion $)Share of world GDP (2020)China124,226,719.1 %USA220,821,915.7 %India38,79,76.9 %Japan45,25,83.9 %Germany54,54,73.4 %Source: statisticstimes.com; data for 2021: IWFChina and the USA lead by a wide margin. According to the US government's assessment, the world is splitting into two blocs, the democracies, which includes the West, and the autocracies, which includes above all China and Russia. Biden wants to "strengthen security forces, rebuild democratic alliances around the globe, put American values and human rights first, and equip the American middle class to lead in the global economy". So no more nation building around the globe to introduce the American way of life everywhere, the cost in money and lives would be too high for the US. But "security forces" that can strike quickly and thoroughly, and which may no longer need troops stationed on the ground in the long term, can take over a large part of the military dirty work from drones and other kinds of precise remote-controlled weapons technology. In doing so, Biden told the United Nations General Assembly in September 2021, the US will focus "on the regions that are among the most important today and tomorrow, like the Indo-Pacific, and we will do so with our allies and partners. And as the US seeks to galvanise the world to action, so we will do so not only with the example of our power, but also, God willing, with the power of our example."
Biden thus officially proclaims the Indo-Pacific as the main battle line between the antagonistic competing blocs. On the one hand, this is understandable from the perspective of the US president, since four of the world's five main economic powers are located around the Pacific: the USA, Japan, India and China. Russia and Indonesia follow behind Germany in sixth and seventh place. The Indo-Pacific is the defining global region, just as the Transatlantic was centuries before. But the fact that the USA could score points here with the power of its example, i.e. its own social constitution, is something that its own citizens will not let their government get away with.
At the end of October 2021, the Pew Research Center conducted a study of the political attitudes of the populations in 17 highly developed countries. The researchers entitled their findings: "Citizens in advanced economies want significant change in their political systems". On average, 56% of the 17 populations were in favour of major reforms or complete transformation of their political systems. In the US, the figure was 85%, surpassed only by Italy (89) and Spain (86). Germany proved to be relatively conservative (on par with the UK or Taiwan) with 52% in favour of fundamental reform. In the US, however, nearly five out of six citizens are fundamentally dissatisfied. And three out of five doubt that the system will produce this necessary change. This survey was conducted early in Biden's presidency. Back then, in February 2021, 57% of voters were satisfied with Biden's performance in office. In October 2021, the figure is down to 42%.
While programmes for mild change at home in the US are playing dead in Congress, Biden is rapidly advancing his foreign and security policy agenda. David Vine, alluding to the Building Back Better propaganda of the Biden force, sums up, "When It Comes to China, Biden Builds Back Worse", as far as China is concerned, Biden's deconstruction is worse. https://www.laprogressive.com/biden-builds-back-worse/ Already Trump had joined Australia, India, Japan and the US in a political-military bloc against China in the "Quad". Biden went a big step further with AUKUS, a military alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the USA. To kick things off, the US kicked its French NATO partner out of an arms deal with Australia, which is now being supplied with eight nuclear-powered submarines by the US. Such submarines are offensive weapons, as they remain underwater off China's coasts for months and can hardly be detected. In addition, the treaty will allow the transfer of nuclear technology and highly enriched uranium to Australia, which can use it to fuel its submarines. The parties to the treaty name China as their essential target, thus bringing the world "to the brink of the abyss".
What if, Vine writes, China and Russia supplied Venezuela with nuclear-powered submarines that manoeuvred underwater off the US coast, nuclear-tipped and hard to track? We could be sure they would respond as they did in 1962 in the Cuban Missile Crisis with the full mobilisation of their nuclear weapons potential, then the imminent threat of a third, this time an all-destroying world war.
Although China is relatively restrained in its reactions, the USA is rapidly advancing its military build-up against China. Two goals are now in the foreground. First, to bring Canada into the front against China, to turn the AUCUS into the CAUCUS. In "The Diplomat", a publication close to the Pentagon, in which authors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs - a think tank of US superpower strategists - publish, it is calculated that Canada has the longest coastline in the world, four times as long as Australia's, its population is almost twice as large as Australia's and yet its arms budget is smaller. In general: Canada is Missing in Action. This must change immediately, Canada must assume its role as a Pacific power and line up alongside the USA.
The second target of the Pentagon planners is India, one of the Quad members. Up to now, India has pursued a policy of swinging between the USA and Russia, which can be seen in the equipment of the Indian army. This coexistence of Russian and US weapons cannot continue and is also no longer possible in terms of information technology. India must rearm and, secondly, become an active part of the Western alliances against China and Russia.
Thirdly, Washington wants to swear his transatlantic partners to the crusade against China. With Germany, on the one hand, this was not difficult for him. As early as December 2020, the German government adopted "Indo-Pacific Guidelines" in which it openly declared its strategic interest in the region and the resulting military consequences: "As an open, globally oriented economy, free trade routes and maritime security are of vital importance for Germany. More than 20 % of German trade takes place in the Indo-Pacific region. The volume of German trade with the region has almost doubled in the last 15 years." While the majority of Indo-Pacific states "exhibit a high degree of internal stability", there are also "unresolved territorial issues both on land and at sea, conflicts over natural resources and the intensifying antagonisms between China and the USA". Only a few years ago, the then Federal President Köhler had been hounded out of office because of a similar statement - Germany must secure its trade routes militarily if necessary. This time, the German government sent the frigate "Bayern" to the embattled region as an "active contribution to strengthening the international order". China banned the frigate from entering the port of Shanghai on its orderly voyage.
With the Indo-Pacific guidelines, the Far Eastern region is declared a task area for the German Armed Forces and NATO. In return, the Chinese could now use the same justification to let their warships cruise in the North Sea and the Mediterranean. The path to a major conflict would be opened wider and wider. However, the very justification of the German government shows that its interests are different from those of the US government. China has been Germany's largest trading partner since 2016. The pillars of the German export world champion's industry - motor vehicles and mechanical engineering - find an ever larger share of their sales in China. A tough confrontation, as desired by the USA, would run counter to German interests. France, too, has been running up a storm against the dictates from Washington for years; the AUCUS coup by the USA had led France to temporarily recall its ambassador from the USA. In the fight against China, the USA will not be able to rally its bloc behind it.
In truth, the danger does not come from China, but from the aggressive policy of the USA, which was started by Trump and is even being exacerbated by Biden. The US has an arms budget almost three times that of China; it has seven military bases in Australia alone and almost 300 more in East Asia; it is now expanding Quad and AUCUS into military pacts that are designed to constrict China militarily and make it ripe for a first strike. Biden repeated in October 2021 the threat to immediately provide military support to Taiwan - considered by China as a seceded province subsidised by the US from day one - in the event of a conflict with China. To be sure, before the United Nations, Biden has declared that the last thing he wants is "a new cold war or a world divided into rigid blocs". But this is mere rhetoric, the truth is in these actions - a rapid build-up of arms, ever more sharply focused on one target: China.
Two problems have rightly come to the fore in world public opinion: firstly, the ruination of the planet through the plundering of resources and the poisoning of the environment; and secondly, the reservation of wealth for the top 1% and social insecurity for the rest, and poverty and hardship for more and more.
Thirdly, the struggle against the warmongering and aggression of the USA and its allies. After a nuclear war, this planet would no longer have a future for the human species.
translated from German: Die USA nach dem Afghanistan-Desaster: Mit aller Kraft gegen den systemischen Feind China – droht ein großer Krieg? – isw München (isw-muenchen.de)
How far to war?" - a review
6 December 2020 Ulli Sander
Conrad Schuhler has produced an important book on the redistribution of hegemonic posts in the world. He asks when a major war can, must, be expected. And he examines the chances of resistance against it. It is to be recommended to all peace activists and initiatives, that right from the start, Conrad Schuhler's book "How Far to War?" It is dramatic - and necessary.
Schuhler dares to say what many already secretly feared, that it could come to the big nuclear war. Not far to war, but still with question marks. The danger of a "Third World War" is discussed in detail as a new edition of the "Trap of Thucydides" (454 BC to 396 BC), according to which a challenger could only replace the old hegemon of the world order through war. China rejects this imputation. China's military power would also be insufficient for such action. However, China's spurt to the top of the world economy has irritated academic and journalistic opinion-makers in the West. And Western leaders are alarmed.
The author examines the arguments of Western academia against China's economic and social growth and explains the Chinese concept of the good life as the linchpin of economic policy. The "New Silk Road" is presented as "globalisation in Chinese".
Schuhler sees the main danger in the fact that in the long run the USA will no longer be able to assert its global leadership claims by "civilian" means and will thus be tempted to use its far superior military means.
The book is also relevant after the US election, because the main currents of US policy continue under Biden as before. What makes the development particularly dramatic is the old and new subservience of German politics to the USA. Annegret Kamp Karrenbauer, according to the "Ruhrnachrichten" of 18.11.20: Europe cannot defend itself without the USA in the foreseeable future. AKK wants a clear commitment by Germany to Nato's nuclear deterrent; a joint strategy with the USA vis-à-vis China; a further increase in arms spending (2% of GDP).
The Russian and Chinese danger is painted on the wall, as in Adenauer's time, when the chancellor cried out from time to time "I only say China, China, China!" and warned against the USSR. Konrad Adenauer said in 1952, when he invoked West German rearmament as a necessity: it was a matter of "joining in and taking action" in the struggle for "whether Europe remains Christian or becomes pagan." Therefore, "a dam" must be built against "Soviet Russian nationalism" - which is "particularly dangerous" because it is "carried" "by communism, which strives for the domination of the world". Communism is gone, but Russian nationalism is still there. Hence the policy of encirclement even today. West Germany, said Adenauer in 1952 in the Bundestag, had to arm itself, and whoever was against it was handing over "the peoples of Western Europe, especially our German people, to servitude by Bolshevism"[1].
On China, Schuhler already writes in the introduction, emphasising the continued existence of the ideological class struggle: "The Chinese are not only competing with their gross domestic product, they are competing with their ideology. And they seem to prove with their practice that the market, when used according to the prescriptions of private profit maximisation, loses to a socially oriented 'Chinese-style socialism'." The author examines the arguments of Western academia against China's economic and social growth and explains the Chinese concept of the good life as the linchpin of economic policy. The "New Silk Road" is presented as "globalisation in Chinese". For the author, there is a chance for the future if the movements for social justice, peace and the environment recognise and fight global capital with its ruthless exploitation interests as a common (!) opponent.
Schuhler warns, "The silent chronic threats of air pollution, water shortages and climate change will make themselves clearly felt and lead to clashes much more often than in the past."[2]
"It is nuclear war time," warns Schuhler. He says the peace movement succeeded in the 1980s when it pressed the USA and the Soviet Union on the INF Treaty. The result was a ban on land-based medium-range nuclear weapons. The USA has also revoked this treaty and wants to station nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe and Asia. However: "The wave of global protest against climate catastrophe and environmental pollution gives hope. Whether peace, climate or the horror that drives refugees from their country - the cause lies in the imperatives of global capital utilisation. If the social movements draw the consequence from this to fight together, we have a chance for the future."[3]
Conrad Schuhler: How Far to War?
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