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Weekly Political Report — Week Ending 21 February 2026

Democratic Rights, economics, english, Imperialism, Militarism, News, Oligarchy, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, Weekly Political Report, World Economy, World War /

This political report for the week of February 15–21, 2026, is compiled based on coverage from the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS.org).

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, peaks standing between Alexander Sollfrank, right, Commander of the Operational Command and Carsten Breuer, Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, during his first visit to the Operational Command of the Bundeswehr in Brandenburg, Schwielowsee, Saturday, June 28, 2025. [AP Photo/Michael Kappeler/DPA via AP, Pool]

I. Imperialism and War

US War Preparations Against Iran

The most urgent development of the week is the accelerating US preparation for war against Iran. Washington drew up plans for “leadership change” and “targeting of individuals” in any Iran strike, while US forces were repositioned in the region in readiness for what military planners described as a “sustained, weeks-long” campaign.[1] The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was already operational in the Arabian Sea and the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — transited the Strait of Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean. More than 50 fighter jets, two carrier strike groups and dozens of refueling tankers were deployed.[2]

Trump and Netanyahu held a three-hour war council at the White House to coordinate strategy.[3] European imperialist powers — Britain, Germany and others — lined up behind regime-change in Tehran. This is not a bilateral US-Iran crisis but an expression of inter-imperialist competition for regional dominance, energy resources and geostrategic control. The working class internationally must oppose this war drive through mass mobilisation, linking anti-war demands to opposition to the domestic austerity imposed to finance rearmament.

Gaza: Slaughter Continues Amid Diplomatic Theatre

Israeli air strikes killed 12 Palestinians on the eve of Trump’s “Board of Peace” meeting — a cynical exercise in diplomatic theatre that masks Washington’s unconditional backing for genocide. Eyewitness testimony from Gaza published during the week, recounting the brutal killing of a Palestinian child and the systematic denial of medical care, cuts through every abstraction and exposes the class basis of imperialist violence. More than 100 international film artists condemned the Berlinale festival for censoring artists who oppose Israel’s actions, while Germany’s parliament president conducted an embedded visit to Gaza, signalling Berlin’s endorsement of the genocidal campaign. European institutions are not neutral bystanders — they are complicit partners in imperialist crime.

Militarisation of Europe

The heads of British and German armed forces called this week for “whole-of-society” mobilisation and massive increases in defence spending, demanding that Europe’s populations be made ready for war. Factories in ailing industrial regions of Berlin are being repurposed for military weapons production. This is a declaration of class war: rearmament will be paid for by workers through wage cuts, service reductions and political repression. The working class must respond with international anti-war mobilisation and rank-and-file committees to resist the austerity that militarisation demands.

II. Authoritarian Consolidation and State Repression

ICE: Spearhead for Dictatorship

ICE raids intensified across the United States during the week. Masked ICE agents conducted operations outside GM’s Factory Zero in Detroit; two Amazon Flex drivers were abducted during enforcement actions; a two-month-old infant was deported after falling gravely ill in a south Texas detention facility; and a former Cass Tech student, Alcides Caceres, was held in what lawyers described as an illegal “domestic Guantánamo.” Immigration attorney Eric Lee warned that the mass detention infrastructure being constructed by the Trump administration is the spearhead of a broader drive toward authoritarianism and domestic dictatorship.

Pennsylvania high school students who walked out in protest against ICE operations were met with violent police repression. The UAW bureaucracy remained silent as agents operated outside Factory Zero. This silence is not accidental — it reflects the union apparatus’s accommodation to state and employer power. The defence of immigrant workers is inseparable from the defence of the entire working class, and requires workplace committees prepared to shut down production in defence of coworkers.

Trump’s Assault on Democratic Rights

Trump signalled plans for an executive order restricting voting procedures ahead of midterm elections. The jailing of a former South Korean president for coup-related offences, contrasted with Trump’s continued occupation of the White House, illustrates the decomposition of bourgeois democratic forms under the weight of capitalist crisis. These are not isolated authoritarian manoeuvres — they form part of a systematic consolidation of executive power that requires mass, independent working-class political resistance, including preparedness for a general strike.

State Repression Internationally

In Hungary, German anti-fascist Maja T. was sentenced to eight years in prison in a politically orchestrated show trial. France’s mainstream politics lurched further right following the death of a prominent fascist figure. The ANC government in South Africa moved to deploy the army domestically to suppress worker unrest. Russia banned WhatsApp. The Albanese Labor government in Australia moved to bar women and children interned in Syria from returning home. France’s human rights commission documented torture, mass detentions and systematic discrimination against the Kanak people during 2024 unrest in New Caledonia. The common thread is the international capitalist class reaching for repression as its preferred instrument of social management.

III. Global Economy and Corporate Restructuring

IMF Presses China; Inter-Imperialist Economic Rivalry Sharpens

The IMF this week called on China to halve industrial subsidies from 4 to 2 percent of GDP and pivot from export-led manufacturing to domestic consumption, warning of international “spillovers” from China’s growing trade surplus and rising share of global manufacturing. Beijing rejected the framing, defending its competitiveness as innovation-driven — signalling that no major course correction will follow and that economic confrontation, above all with Washington, will intensify. The IMF’s prescriptions are not neutral technical advice but coordinated imperialist pressure to constrain China’s industrial rise. Workers in China and internationally must reject both IMF-dictated restructuring and nationalist protectionism as twin instruments of rival capitalist classes.

Wages, Jobs and Corporate Profits

The week’s economic reporting exposed the class content of the global “cost of living crisis” with precision. In Australia, new data confirmed real wages have fallen to their lowest level in 15 years — nominal growth of 3.4 percent against inflation of 3.8 percent — while major corporations simultaneously announced record profits and accelerated job cuts. Volkswagen announced plans to impose a 20 percent cost reduction across all its brands by 2028, equivalent to €60 billion annually, with entire plant closures envisaged — an escalation beyond the 35,000 job cuts and real wage reductions of up to 18 percent already certified by IG Metall in December 2024. UPS simultaneously prepared a second round of driver buyouts ahead of 30,000 planned layoffs in 2026, while the Los Angeles Unified School District moved to eliminate hundreds of positions. The US Department of Labor’s annual tally recorded 5,070 workers killed on the job in 2024 — not accidents but the structural outcome of deregulation, staffing cuts and production speedups driven by the profit motive, with union bureaucracies and weakened regulators normalising lethal conditions. In Argentina, Javier Milei’s Labour Modernisation Law — slashing protections and facilitating mass layoffs — passed despite a national general strike, as the CGT and allied bureaucracies deliberately confined action to a symbolic 24-hour stoppage. India’s BJP budget raised defence spending by approximately 15 percent while cutting the share of social expenditure and shifting rural relief costs onto cash-strapped states, combining military build-up with attacks on workers’ rights through new labour “reforms.”

Militarisation of Production and Civilian Infrastructure

The economic offensive is inseparable from the drive toward war. In Berlin, factories in declining industrial regions are being bought up and retooled for military weapons production. Walter Reed military hospital formalised an agreement with Kaiser Permanente to coordinate mass-casualty care for future wars — the subordination of civilian healthcare to military contingency planning. Veolia, the multinational water services corporation, was implicated in New Zealand’s wastewater crisis, exposing how the privatisation of essential infrastructure produces environmental disaster and social harm. Across every sector, the picture is the same: capital extracts record profits, destroys jobs, slashes wages, converts civilian production to military ends — and charges the working class for it all. The working class must reject the austerity that funds militarism, build independent rank-and-file committees to resist corporate restructuring, and link these struggles across borders and sectors into a unified international movement.

IV. Austerity and Economic Warfare

India: Guns Before Butter

The BJP government’s 2026–27 budget raised defence spending by approximately 15 percent while cutting the share of social spending and shifting rural relief costs to debt-ridden states. Corporate subsidies and infrastructure CAPEX were expanded alongside labour “reforms” that erode workers’ rights. The budget encapsulates capitalism’s response to global strategic instability: privilege military capacity and corporate accumulation while attacking living standards. The tens of millions who joined a one-day national strike against Modi’s class war assault the prior week demonstrated the scale of mass anger — but the Stalinist-led federations channelled that energy toward bourgeois electoral alternatives rather than independent working-class struggle.

Argentina: Bureaucracy Enables Historic Counterreform

In Argentina, a 24-hour general strike failed to halt the passage of Javier Milei’s Labour Modernisation Law, which slashes worker protections and facilitates mass layoffs.[4] The CGT and allied bureaucracies deliberately bottled up the struggle, enabling the ruling class to ram through anti-labour reforms that constitute the most sweeping attack on working-class rights in decades. The lesson is unambiguous: a single-day strike controlled by bureaucracies that refuse to paralyse production is not a general strike — it is a safety valve.

Volkswagen: 20 Percent Cost Reduction Across All Brands

Volkswagen announced a corporate plan to cut costs by 20 percent across all brands, threatening plant closures, job losses and intensified speed-ups. Co-management institutions and union bureaucracies will facilitate these cuts unless workers build rank-and-file committees to coordinate cross-plant resistance and international solidarity across global supply chains.

Falling Real Wages and Public Service Collapse

Real wages continued to fall in Australia. Seven Los Angeles County public health clinics announced the end of clinical services. The Los Angeles school district moved to eliminate hundreds of positions. Washington D.C. declared a public emergency after a major sewer collapse. The US Department of Labor reported 5,070 workers killed on the job in 2024 — an annual death toll that reflects not accidents but the structural outcome of capitalism’s drive for profit under conditions of deregulation and staffing cuts.

V. Class Struggle and Bureaucratic Betrayal

US Healthcare: The Central Arena of Struggle

The Kaiser Permanente strike of 31,000 healthcare workers entered its fourth week, with operating engineers from IUOE Local 501 joining the action, broadening the dispute to technical trades whose withdrawal threatens hospital functioning.[5] Nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian simultaneously defied the New York State Nurses Association’s attempt to impose a second sellout agreement through a rushed snap ratification vote. Rank-and-file nurses had overwhelmingly rejected the first tentative agreement — nearly 74 percent voted it down; the bureaucracy responded by engineering a second vote under conditions designed to maximise management-friendly outcomes and minimise membership oversight.[6]

These strikes reveal a healthcare system driven by profit, executive pay and marketisation. The decisive question is whether they remain fragmented or develop into a unified national fight. That depends on the construction of democratic rank-and-file committees across hospitals, unions and regions, capable of coordinating industrial strategy, enforcing strike discipline and expanding the struggle beyond the boundaries set by bureaucratic leaders.

Mexican Auto Parts Workers Occupy Plants

Workers at six First Brands maquiladora plants occupied factories across northern Mexico after mass shutdowns and the firing of over 4,000 employees, physically preventing the removal of machinery.[7] The occupations echo the historic sit-down strikes of the 1930s and demonstrate the willingness of workers to assert direct control over production. This struggle exposes the transnational integration of auto supply chains: UAW bureaucratic nationalism and employer collaboration must be broken by international rank-and-file coordination. UAW rank-and-file candidate Will Lehman publicly backed the occupations and linked them to his campaign for democratic restructuring of the union.[8]

San Francisco Teachers and the NYSNA Sellout

The UESF bureaucracy in San Francisco ended a four-day strike with a tentative agreement containing minimal raises, a no-strike clause, and acceptance of austerity parameters — while the district warned of imminent budget cuts and layoffs. In New York, the NYSNA forced a second snap vote on a contract for NewYork-Presbyterian nurses that fails to secure safe staffing or meaningful job protections. Both episodes exemplify the same dynamic: union bureaucracies choreograph controlled stoppages that dissipate militant momentum while accepting the fundamental terms of the employers’ austerity agenda.

BP Whiting Refinery Workers and the USW Betrayal

Workers at BP’s Whiting refinery, who voted 98 percent for strike authorisation, were left on the job under day-to-day extensions while the United Steelworkers International negotiated a national pattern deal in secret. Workers publicly denounced the union for isolating their facility. The USW’s pattern deals normalise concessions, fragment industrial power and prevent the coordinated national strike that alone can defend wages, jobs and safety.

Royal Mail: CWU as Industrial Enforcer

At Royal Mail’s Mount Pleasant Mail Centre in London, workers circulated the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee statement exposing the CWU leadership’s role in implementing the Optimised Delivery Model — a restructuring scheme that extends delivery spans, intensifies workloads and entrenches two-tier pay. The CWU has disappeared into closed-door talks with management and the EP Group. The breakdown of service is not the result of operational difficulties but of deliberate asset-stripping backed by the union apparatus. The only path forward is democratically controlled rank-and-file committees that restore power to workers on the shop floor.

VI. Elite Criminality and Political Decay

The Epstein Files and the Monarchy

Former Prince Andrew was arrested on suspicion of Misconduct in Public Office after documents from the Jeffrey Epstein releases linked him to the sharing of confidential information and access with Epstein’s network. Searches were conducted at royal residences.[9] Further documents forced high-profile billionaires, corporate lawyers and executives to resign. US corporate media simultaneously framed public outrage over the files as “conspiracy theories,” protecting elite networks from accountability.[10]

The arrest and the ongoing revelations do not represent justice — they represent factional damage control within a decomposing ruling class. The Epstein files expose the intimate integration of the monarchy, the state and the global financial oligarchy.[11] Newly released documents also confirmed Noam Chomsky’s extensive personal accommodation with Epstein — travel on his plane, stays at his properties, private counsel during Epstein’s 2019 media crisis — exposing the capacity of sections of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia to be co-opted by the ruling class while posturing as moral critics.[12] The lesson: meaningful opposition to oligarchy cannot rest on celebrity dissent. It requires independent working-class organisation.

VII. The Political Bankruptcy of Reformism

Fortress Europe: Social Democracy’s Capitulation

The European Parliament approved a revised Asylum Procedure Regulation and Return Border Procedure Regulation, creating an EU-level list of “safe countries of origin” (including Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, India, Bangladesh, Colombia and Kosovo) and expanding powers to deport migrants to external “return hubs.”[13] The measures passed with notable defections and abstentions from social-democratic deputies in Denmark, Malta, Romania and Sweden. This is not a technocratic tightening of asylum law but a political offensive — the continentalisation of “Fortress Europe.” Social-democratic parties have abandoned any substantive defence of migrants or democratic rights, aligning with conservatives and the far right to militarise borders and outsource repression. The measures serve capitalist interests: disciplining labour markets, deflecting social unrest into xenophobia and consolidating the authoritarian tools the ruling class requires for class war at home.

The Pseudo-Left as Bureaucratic Enforcer

The DSA launched personal attacks and smears against UAW rank-and-file candidate Will Lehman, whose campaign for union president — built on abolishing the Solidarity House bureaucracy and establishing rank-and-file committees — drew wide grassroots support from autoworkers in the US and Canada. The DSA’s intervention exposes the pseudo-left’s function: to police acceptable labour politics and divert militancy into safe institutional channels. In Catalonia, union bureaucracies and the regional government moved rapidly after a mass teachers’ strike to contain rank-and-file anger through negotiated settlements. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani threatened a 9.5 percent property tax rise on workers while shelving rental voucher expansions and accommodating Governor Hochul — the DSA mayor managing capitalist budgets rather than challenging Wall Street.[14]

David North’s Lectures in Ankara

David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), delivered lectures at Bilkent University and METU in Ankara titled “Where is America headed? The American volcano and the global tsunami.” The lectures connected the US political crisis — domestic democratic erosion, rising inequality, aggressive imperialism — to Trotsky’s analysis of the epoch and the necessity of world socialist revolution. The strategic tasks posed are clear: build political independence from bourgeois institutions, construct rank-and-file and party-building organs across borders, and prepare the working class to lead the struggle against war, austerity and dictatorship.

***

The developments of this week confirm the central thesis advanced by the International Committee of the Fourth International: capitalist crisis produces simultaneous austerity, repression and imperialist war, while union bureaucracies and reformist parties function as the enforcers of the ruling class within the workers’ movement. The necessary answer is the independent, international organisation of the working class around a Trotskyist programme — rank-and-file committees in workplaces and schools, coordinated across national boundaries, and the construction of sections of the Fourth International capable of providing revolutionary leadership.

—theSocialist.lk

References:

[1] “US draws up plans for ‘leadership change’ and ‘targeting individuals’ in Iran strike,” WSWS, 21 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/21/abbz-f21.html

[2]: “US forces in position for illegal attack on Iran,” WSWS, 20 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/20/lhql-f20.html

[3]: “Trump and Netanyahu hold Iran war conclave,” WSWS, 12 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/12/wali-f12.html

[4]: “National strike in Argentina fails to halt historic labor counterreform and mass layoffs,” WSWS, 21 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/21/bdeb-f21.html

[5]: “Expanding nurses strikes in California and New York raise need for unified struggle,” WSWS, 18 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/18/uyrg-f18.html

[6]: “New York nurses in ‘uprising’ against union boss’s attempts to sabotage strike,” WSWS, 18 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/18/rtmw-f18.html

[7]: “Auto parts workers occupy plants across northern Mexico after 4,000 jobs cut,” WSWS, 18 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/18/whph-f18.html

[8]: “Will Lehman backs plant occupations by Mexican auto parts workers against mass layoffs,” WSWS, 20 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/20/jczl-f20.html

[9]: “Former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested in Epstein investigation,” WSWS, 19 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/19/xxkq-f19.html

[10]: “US corporate media slanders anger over Epstein cover-up as ‘conspiracy theories’,” WSWS, 18 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/18/pbbm-f18.html

[11]: “Andrew’s arrest, the British monarchy, and the international oligarchy,” WSWS, 20 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/20/zcdn-f20.html

[12]: “Noam Chomsky’s contemptible friendship with Jeffrey Epstein,” WSWS, 15 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/15/f305-f15.html

[13]  “Sections of European social democrats vote with conservatives and far-right to pass anti-migrant policies,” WSWS, 15 February 2026. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/15/zvsc-f15.html

[14] Zohran Mamdani threatens to increase property tax on New York City workers” WSWS, 19 February 2026

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/02/19/zqky-f19.html

Weekly Political Report — Week Ending 21 February 2026 Read More »

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Supreme Court ruling against Trump tariffs exposes ruling class crisis

Democratic Rights, economics, english, Law and Judiciary, lead article, Oligarchy, Perspective, politics, politics & economics, Trade War /

By John Burton

This perspective article was originally published on the World Socialist Web Site on 23 February 2026.

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President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, in Washington with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

Friday’s Supreme Court ruling invalidating $160 billion in tariffs collected under President Donald Trump over the last year generated sighs of relief among sections of the ruling class. It also provoked an unhinged verbal tantrum at a hastily convened press conference during which Trump labeled the three conservative justices who joined the three liberals against him “fools and lapdogs … of the radical left.”

The decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and its fallout expose deepening divisions within the ruling class that ultimately stem from the decline of US capitalism.

After labeling  the three liberals a “disgrace to our nation,” Trump accused the entire majority of being “swayed by foreign interest and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think.” 

Trump called the forces challenging his unbridled assertion of power to set and modify tariffs, “major sleazebags” who are “foreign country-centric,” and  the two justices he nominated who voted with the majority, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, “an embarrassment to their families.”

Trump ranted, imitating a Mafia don, that “foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years are ecstatic … dancing in the streets, but they won’t be dancing for long, that I can assure you.”

The Wall Street Journal editorialized, “Trump owes the Supreme Court an apology—to the individual Justices he smeared on Friday and the institution itself. Mr. Trump doubtless won’t offer one, but his rant in response to his tariff defeat at the Court was arguably the worst moment of his Presidency.” 

The legal issues presented are relatively straightforward. Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution expressly allocates all taxation power, including the imposition of duties on imported goods and services, to Congress. Following President Richard Nixon’s resort to extraordinary measures in response to the collapse of the post-World War II Bretton Woods financial framework, Congress enacted the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which allows the president to identify an “unusual and extraordinary threat” and declare a “national emergency,” triggering executive power to “investigate, block, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit” transactions involving foreign-held property. The list of executive powers notably does not include tariffs, and for almost 50 years no president invoked IEEPA powers to impose them. 

Shortly after resuming office, however, Trump declared a national emergency based on drug trafficking to justify a 25 percent duty on most Canadian and Mexican imports, and another national emergency citing trade deficits to justify an array of tariffs, modifications, reductions and exemptions that sent equity markets careening. The rate on Chinese goods was ratcheted up in rapid succession—from 10 percent to 20, then to an additional 34, then 84, and finally 125 percent—bringing the total effective tariff rate on most Chinese goods to 145 percent.

Trump’s IEEPA tariffs account for almost three-fourths of US tariffs imposed last year. Without them, the average effective US tariff rate would fall from 17.4 percent to 6.8 percent. 

Separate suits were filed by businesses hammered by tariffs, joined by 12 states. Several lower courts ruled the IEEPA tariffs illegal prior to the Supreme Court taking the case, where nine justices splintered into three camps of three, producing seven separate opinions totaling 170 pages.

The decisive opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, contains language that amounts to a remarkable indictment of the White House’s dictatorial aims. Roberts wrote that the Framers, “having just fought a revolution motivated in large part by ‘taxation without representation,’” gave Congress “alone … access to the pockets of the people,” and deliberately excluded the executive branch from any part of the taxing power. This was, Roberts noted, the “birthright power” of Congress—a characterization that underscores how fundamental the majority considered the constitutional question.

Gorsuch went even further in his own concurring opinion, warning that “our system of separated powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man. That is no recipe for a republic.”

Roberts was blunt in his description of the scope of power Trump claimed, writing, “All it takes to unlock that extraordinary power is a Presidential declaration of emergency, which the Government asserts is unreviewable.” The only check, Roberts observed, would be a veto-proof supermajority in Congress—rendering the legislature virtually powerless. This would “replace the longstanding executive-legislative collaboration over trade policy with unchecked Presidential policymaking.”

Trump craves the tariff power to bully and extort foreign nations, to promote or harm certain economic sectors, and to steer wealth to favored industries and companies, including those that directly benefit his family. Roberts’s opinion, read in full, describes a president who has arrogated to himself the unilateral power to tax the entire population, even the world, answerable to no one, on the basis of an “emergency” declaration that he asserts cannot be reviewed.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh drafted a 63-page dissent joined by the arch-reactionary Trump toadies Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito that, Roberts noted, “echoed point-for-point” Trump’s arguments. Kavanaugh bemoaned the fact that the US “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs,” like a bank robber asking to be let off the hook because the stolen money has already been spent.

Kavanaugh then switched from his role as a supposed neutral judge to Trump’s consiglieri, advising him, “Although I firmly disagree with the Court’s holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs at issue in this case.” Those alternatives were not raised in the briefing, which addressed only IEEPA tariffs, and Kavanaugh’s addressing them in his dissent, which itself has no legal force, deviates from accepted judicial standards.

Media outlets reported that Trump exploded in profane anger when informed of the ruling while in the midst of a breakfast meeting with various governors. A few hours later he appeared before cameras in the White House press room, his face beet-red with rage under layers of orange makeup.

“Those tariffs remain,” Trump said repeatedly. “We’re still getting them and we will after the decision,” adding, “As Justice Kavanaugh—whose stock has gone so up, you have to see, I’m so proud of him—wrote in his dissent … ‘the decision might not substantially constrain a president’s ability to order tariffs going forward.’”

“He’s right,” Trump continued, “In fact, I can charge much more than I was charging. So I’m going to just start.” Following a Kavanaugh suggestion, Trump announced new tariffs under a never used emergency statute that authorizes 150-day tariffs to remedy balance of payment deficits.

The invocations of the American Revolution by the majority justices are not merely rhetorical ornaments. As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches this July, the Revolution and the democratic principles it evoked are intruding into political life—and not only into the sphere of legal opinions. The language of 1776 retains an explosive contemporary relevance. 

That a chief justice of the Supreme Court felt compelled to invoke the memory of the Revolution against a sitting president’s assertion of unchecked taxing power is itself a measure of how deep the present constitutional crisis has become. The ideals of the American Revolution, rooted in the Enlightenment and in the struggle against monarchical tyranny, stand in irreconcilable opposition to the regime Trump is attempting to construct.

The Supreme Court has not, however, undergone a democratic awakening. The Court is, and remains, a pillar of the capitalist state. Its function is to uphold the property relations and class interests upon which the existing social order depends. Nothing in Friday’s ruling alters that fundamental character. The same Roberts Court that struck down Trump’s tariffs has gutted voting rights, overturned Roe v. Wade, and granted presidents sweeping criminal immunity. To recognize the political significance of the divisions within the Court on specific issues is not to harbor any illusions in the nature of the institution itself.

Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh—the uncompromising Nazis on the Court—argued that IEEPA gives the president essentially unlimited power to impose tariffs. Thomas, in his separate dissent, suggested a bare and temporary congressional majority can delegate virtually any power to the president.

The conflict between the two factions is not absolute. Roberts, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett have provided critical support for large portions of Trump’s fascist agenda. They have backed the brutal assault on immigrants—the mass arrests, the deportation flights, the use of military facilities as detention camps—that constitutes one of the most vicious attacks on democratic rights in modern American history. On the tariff question, however, which impinges directly on the economic interests of powerful sections of the ruling class, a part of Trump’s judicial majority has been compelled to blurt out—though in carefully worded legal language—that the president is seeking to overthrow the Constitution.

The ruling exposes a profound crisis within the American ruling class. One faction, represented by the Wall Street Journal and the internationally oriented sections of finance capital, recognizes that Trump’s tariff war is a catastrophe—raising consumer prices, disrupting supply chains, and provoking retaliatory measures that threaten the global position of American capitalism. The other views the tariff power as an instrument of personal rule and plunder, a means of rewarding allies and punishing enemies entirely outside the framework of democratic accountability.

The ruling class is deeply divided, its democratic institutions are breaking down, and the working class has no voice in official politics. The defense of democratic rights and the struggle against the emerging dictatorship can be carried forward only through the independent social and political mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program. It is the working class that is the true heir of the revolutionary principles and spirit of 1776, and it is the working class that must fight to defend them.

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The Venezuela Invasion: A Turning Point in the Crisis of American Imperialism

english, Fascism, Imperialism, lead article, Militarism, News, Perspective, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, World War /

By Sanjaya Jayasekera.

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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Image courtesy of www.aa.com.trn

The January 3, 2026 U.S. military assault on Venezuela and the forcible seizure of President Nicolás Maduro constitute a watershed in the degeneration of American imperialism and the collapse of the post-1945 juridical order. This was not a rogue “raid” or law-enforcement operation but a war of aggression conducted to impose control over strategic resources and geopolitical space. As the World Socialist Web Site emphasized, the operation represents “a total repudiation by the Trump regime of any semblance of legality… an unprovoked war of aggression launched in flagrant violation of international law.”[1] The deployment of over 150 aircrafts launched from 20 bases across the Western Hemisphere, heavy bombardment across Caracas and surrounding states, a naval blockade, and at least 100 deaths—including 32 Cuban military personnel—underscore the operation’s character as large-scale military conquest rather than counter-narcotics action.

Material Foundations: Oil, Finance Capital and Geopolitical Rivalry

The assault must be understood through the material interests driving contemporary imperialism. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves alongside substantial deposits of gold, bauxite, diamonds, copper, nickel, manganese, coltan and uranium. Control of these resources is central to U.S. finance capital and the oil majors’ strategic aims. Trump made the predatory motive explicit, declaring that “we’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars.”[2] Reportedly, Trump briefed oil executives about the assault before it occurred while deliberately withholding information from Congress and the American people.

The operation simultaneously aims to reverse China’s and Russia’s deepening economic penetration of Latin America. U.S. demands to interim President Delcy Rodríguez revealed the geopolitical objectives: Venezuela must “kick out China, Russia, Iran and Cuba and sever economic ties,” then “agree to partner exclusively with the US on oil production and favor America when selling heavy crude.”[3] Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed this explicitly: “Why does China need their oil? Why does Russia need their oil? They’re not even in this continent. This is the Western Hemisphere.”[4] The raid therefore expresses both the search for surplus value through direct plunder and the sharpening geo-political rivalry born of US imperialism’s systemic crisis.

This crisis has deep historical roots. As Lenin analyzed in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, monopoly capital’s need to secure sources of raw materials, investment outlets and markets drives the violent redivision of the world among rival powers. The contemporary period witnesses this process in acute form: decades of financialization, debt expansion and speculative excess have failed to resolve capitalism’s fundamental contradiction—the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The globalization of production from the late 1970s represented a temporary response based on accessing cheap labor and strategic territories, but that framework is now disintegrating as American imperialism confronts eroding economic dominance and intensifying competition from rival powers.

From Juridical Pretense to the “Iron Law” of Force

The assault signifies American imperialism’s abandonment of postwar legal constraints—UN Charter norms, sovereignty protections, diplomatic process—which had served as inter-imperialist settlement for the ‘peaceful’ neocolonial plunder of former colonies, their resources and cheap labor.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Historically, US imperialism never wanted to be restrained by these international limitations. Today US administration officials dismiss such constraints with unprecedented candor. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller declared: “We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” dismissing international law as mere “international niceties.”[5] Miller made explicit that “the United States of America is running Venezuela… we are in charge, because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions.”[6]

This represents government doctrine enacted through military operations, not rhetorical excess. The WSWS correctly characterized Miller’s formulations as “the language of the Nazis, drawn from Hitler’s Mein Kampf and its talk of ‘iron laws of Nature’ in relation to races and racial-state conflict.”[7] The Manhattan spectacle of parading Maduro in chains before federal courts—a sitting head of state declared a “prisoner of war” and denied even the opportunity to complete his statement of identity—aims to legitimize seizure through pseudo-legal theater while humiliating a sovereign nation.[8]

The postwar institutions that once helped regulate inter-imperialist rivalry and provided a veneer of legitimacy for neocolonial extraction have become, under conditions of acute capitalist crisis, obstacles to plunder. That order has collapsed. Trump’s invocation of what he terms the “Donroe Doctrine”—superseding the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine—and his declaration that “this is OUR hemisphere” make explicit that Washington treats Latin America as colonial property. The willingness to threaten even NATO ally Denmark over Greenland, combined with explicit orders to expel foreign economic partners from Venezuela, demonstrates that the U.S. oligarchy now regards legal constraints as impediments to be swept aside. The long-standing fiction that American policy is shaped by principles other than naked imperialist interests is now being openly set aside.

An Escalation Built on Prolonged Aggression

The assault on Venezuela followed shortly after the release of the December 2025 National Defense Strategy, which explicitly designated the Western Hemisphere as an “American sphere of influence” where Washington would reject any involvement by “extra-hemispheric powers.” This strategic document identified China as the primary adversary and demanded U.S. military control over “energy dominance” by securing strategic resources across Latin America and the Middle East. The Venezuelan intervention represents the doctrine’s inaugural execution.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The Maduro abduction completed a sustained campaign of military pressure and economic strangulation. Throughout 2025, the U.S. assembled a massive naval armada in the Caribbean, conducted repeated deadly strikes on Venezuelan vessels, seized oil tankers, and imposed an effective naval quarantine—measures constituting acts of war and a de facto blockade. In late December 2025, the CIA conducted the first strike on Venezuelan territory, targeting a port facility. By early January, the military buildup had reached culmination point, with special forces rehearsing the raid using models of Maduro’s compound while Trump approved the final operation before Christmas.

This trajectory followed a deliberate escalation ladder: designation of the “Cartel of the Suns”—which the state department alleged was helped manage and ultimately led by Maduro—as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, expansion of sanctions targeting Maduro’s family and oil shipments, demands for the return of nationalized assets seized from U.S. corporations in 2007, and finally direct military assault. The pattern reveals systematic preparation for regime change and resource seizure, with direct military intervention undertaken only after attempts to orchestrate a political coup failed due to lack of popular support for the opposition.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The Bankruptcy of Bourgeois Nationalism and the Pink Tide

The raid exposed with surgical precision the class character and political bankruptcy of Latin America’s national bourgeoisies. Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and other “Pink Tide” leaders offered tepid condemnations that carefully avoided breaking with imperialism or mobilizing popular opposition. As the WSWS documented, “the rotten and reactionary response of all sections of the Latin American bourgeoisie to the US invasion of Venezuela must be taken by the working class as a testament to the inadequacy of all nationalist perspectives in the epoch of imperialism.”[9]

The same pattern of cowardice and betrayal emerged across South Asia. In Sri Lanka, while the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) issued a statement on January 4 condemning the U.S. assault and declaring that “powerful countries do not have the right to violate this principle” of sovereignty, the NPP government adopted a markedly different position. Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, a politburo member of JVP,  explicitly distinguished between the party and NPP government, stating that while “political parties can have their own opinions,” the government “represents all sides” and must work through UN mechanisms. The official Foreign Ministry statement expressed mere “deep concern” while urging “dialogue” and “peaceful resolution”—the language of diplomatic evasion that refuses to name the aggressor or mobilize popular opposition. This split exposes the fundamental contradiction at the heart of bourgeois nationalist governance: the party that once postured as anti-imperialist now defends defense cooperation agreements with Washington and New Delhi, fearful of jeopardizing its integration into imperialist economic and military frameworks. 

India’s Modi government demonstrated even more abject servility. The Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement over 24 hours after the assault expressing “deep concern” but conspicuously avoiding naming the United States or condemning the military strikes. India’s response on 04 January carefully avoided naming Washington, instead calling vaguely for “all concerned to address issues peacefully through dialogue.” The Modi government’s calculation is transparent: trade negotiations with Trump, potential access to Venezuelan oil payments owed to ONGC, and strategic partnership with Washington take precedence over any principled opposition to imperialist aggression.

Pakistan’s military-dominated regime and Bangladesh’s U.S.-backed interim government maintained predictable silence, offering no statements of condemnation. Across South Asia, bourgeois nationalist parties and governments—whether presenting themselves as left-progressive, Hindu-chauvinist, or Islamist—demonstrated their organic incapacity to resist imperialism when confronted with its naked assertion of force.

This confirms Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and his analysis of the incapacity of the national bourgeoisie in dependent countries to carry forward anti-imperialist or democratic tasks. In Results and Prospects (1906) and The Permanent Revolution (1928), Trotsky demonstrated that the belated development of capitalism in backward countries produces a bourgeoisie organically tied to imperialism and landed property, terrified of independent working-class mobilization, and therefore incapable of leading struggle against foreign domination. The Pink Tide represents merely the latest chapter in Latin American bourgeois nationalism’s history of accommodation and betrayal.

Right-wing and fascistic governments went further, openly celebrating the assault. The Brazilian far-right, architects of the January 8, 2023 coup attempt in Brasília, seized on the operation to advance their own dictatorial aims under newly favorable international conditions. Trump’s threats against Colombian President Petro—“He has to watch his ass”—and declarations that Cuba and Nicaragua “will not survive” his administration signal that the Venezuela operation establishes precedent for unlimited violence throughout the hemisphere.[10]

The Counter-Revolutionary Role of the Pseudo-Left

Pseudo-left currents, reformist parties and NGOs that locate opposition to imperialism in international law, diplomatic institutions or alliances with rival capitalist powers play an objectively counter-revolutionary role. They funnel popular anger into impotent appeals and national strategies that leave capitalist property relations—and imperialist domination—fundamentally untouched.

Germany’s Left Party exemplified this tendency. While formally condemning Trump’s actions as “state terrorism,” the party directed its criticism not against imperialism but toward demanding that Europe assert its own great-power ambitions more aggressively. As the WSWS analyzed, the Left Party “criticises Chancellor Merz not from the left, but from the right,” calling for sanctions against the United States and “a concrete European plan” to counter American actions—thereby functioning as “aggressive apologists for German and European imperialism.”[11] Similar patterns emerged across pseudo-left organizations internationally, each subordinating working-class opposition to their respective national bourgeoisies’ geopolitical interests.

These tendencies propagate fatal illusions: that imperialism can be restrained through appeals to bourgeois institutions, that “multipolar” capitalist competition offers progressive alternatives, that identity politics or reformist parliamentarism can substitute for independent class struggle. As the WSWS emphasized, “the struggle against war is inseparably linked to the struggle against its cause: the capitalist system. It must be led by the working class, with the aim of building an independent political movement, overcoming capitalism and reorganising society on the basis of social needs rather than private profit.”[12]

The Domestic Dimension: War Abroad, Dictatorship at Home

The turn to militarism overseas proceeds inseparably from authoritarian consolidation domestically. The WSWS identified this essential connection: “the same illegality, the same ruthlessness, the same criminality that is expressed in the kidnapping of Maduro is expressed in the assault on democratic rights at home—the mass deportations, attacks on the press, purging of the civil service, deployment of the military against the population.”[13] Perpetual war finances and is employed to legitimize police-state measures while directing social anger outward rather than against the ruling class itself.

This pattern reflects objective necessity for the oligarchy. As Marx demonstrated, capitalism’s internal contradictions generate both external expansion and internal repression. Trump represents “a criminal oligarchy that has amassed its wealth through fraud, speculation and plunder… the chosen instrument of the American ruling class, a gangster vomited up by the oligarchy to enforce policies that can no longer be pursued through democratic or legal means.”[14] The simultaneous assault on Venezuela and acceleration of authoritarian measures domestically express unified class interests of finance capital confronting deepening crisis.

Revolutionary Tasks and the Road Forward

The assault on Venezuela demonstrates that the fight against imperialist war is inseparable from the fight against capitalism itself. Defensive measures are urgent: mobilize mass anti-war action, build rank-and-file committees in workplaces to oppose military preparations, forge international links of workers’ solidarity—especially between U.S. workers and their Latin American class brothers and sisters.

But defensive measures must connect to revolutionary perspective. The expropriation of the banks and multinationals, formation of workers’ councils and workers’ governments, construction of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) to lead an international socialist alternative—these constitute the only realistic defense of oppressed nations and working people everywhere. As the WSWS stated: “The answer must be to make 2026 a year of class struggle and the development of a mass movement for socialism. The fight against war is a fight against the capitalist system that breeds it.”[15]

The objective conditions for revolutionary struggle are maturing with extraordinary rapidity. Across the United States, the kidnapping of Maduro has provoked widespread anger and concern among workers in factories and workplaces. This opposition must be organized on independent class foundations, rejecting all factions of the bourgeoisie and pseudo-lefts that secure capitalism’s rule. Latin American workers must orient not toward their “own” national bourgeoisies but toward their class brothers and sisters internationally in unified struggle to overthrow imperialism.

Only through the independent political mobilization of the international working class and the oppressed masses, armed with a Marxist program and the historical lessons embodied in the ICFI, can the descent into barbarism and annihilation be halted and the conditions created for genuine human emancipation through world socialist revolution.

References:

[1] “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela! Release Maduro!” WSWS, 4 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/04/avdu-j04.html>

[2] “US imperialist bandits parade kidnapped Maduro in show trial,” WSWS, 6 January 2026

[3] “Trump and Miller’s ‘iron law’ of imperialist barbarism,” WSWS, 7 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/07/erjx-j07.html>

[4] “After Venezuela attack: White House threatens Venezuelan acting president, Cuba and Greenland,” WSWS, 5 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/05/crzb-j05.html>

[5] “Trump and Miller’s ‘iron law’ of imperialist barbarism,” WSWS, 7 January 2026

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] “US imperialist bandits parade kidnapped Maduro in show trial,” WSWS, 6 January 2026 , <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/06/zyve-j06.html>

[9] “Latin America’s bourgeois governments bow to US attack on Venezuela,” WSWS, 6 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/06/slwp-j06.html>

[10] “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela!” WSWS, 4 January 2026

[11] “After Trump’s attack on Venezuela: Germany’s Left Party supports European imperialism,” WSWS, 7 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/07/sfqt-j07.html>

[12] Ibid.

[13] “Trump and Miller’s ‘iron law’ of imperialist barbarism,” WSWS, 7 January 2026

[14] Ibid.

[15] “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela!” WSWS, 4 January 2026

The Venezuela Invasion: A Turning Point in the Crisis of American Imperialism Read More »

War ship

2030 යුරෝපයේ ආරක්ෂක මාර්ග සිතියම ඒකාධිපතිත්වයට සහ ගෝලීය යුද්ධයට පදනම දමයි

Democratic Rights, economics, lead article, Militarism, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, World Economy, World War /

ජොහැන්නස් ස්ටර්න් විසිනි. 

මෙහි පලවන්නේ ලෝක සමාජවාදී වෙබ් අඩවියේ (ලෝසවෙඅ) 2025 ඔක්තෝම්බර් 25 දින ‘Europe’s defence roadmap 2030 lays the groundwork for dictatorship and global war’ යන හිසින් පලවූ ජොහැන්නස් ස්ටර්න් විසින් ලියන ලද ඉදිරිදර්ශන ලිපියේ සිංහල පරිවර්තනය යි.

War ship
2003 මාර්තු 23 වන දින මධ්‍යධරණී මුහුදේ ක්‍රියාත්මක වන USS කේප් ශාන්ත ජෝර්ජ් (CG 71) නියෙමු මිසයිල නෞකාවෙන් ටොමාහෝක් ගොඩබිම් ප්‍රහාරක මිසයිලයක් (TLAM) දියත් කරන අයුරු.[AP ඡායාරූප/බුද්ධි විශේෂඥ 1 වන කෙනත් මෝල්/එක්සත් ජනපද නාවික හමුදාව]

පසුගිය දිනවල සිදුවීම් රුසියාවට එරෙහි අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී මිලිටරි උත්සන්න කිරීමේ සහ තුන්වන ලෝක යුද්ධයකට සූදානම් වීමේ නව අවධියක් සනිටුහන් කරයි. බ්‍රහස්පතින්දා බ්‍රසල්ස් හි පැවති යුරෝපීය කවුන්සිලයේ රැස්වීම් සහ සිකුරාදා ලන්ඩනයේ පැවති ඊනියා “කැමැත්ත ඇත්තන්ගේ සන්ධානය” සාමාන්‍ය රාජ්‍ය තාන්ත්‍රික රැස්වීම් නොව යුද සමුළු විය. ඔවුහු එක්ව නව සම්බාධක, යුක්රේනයට තවදුරටත් මිලිටරි ආධාර සහ සමස්ත මහාද්වීපයම මිලිටරිකරණය කිරීම සඳහා වන පස් අවුරුදු සැලැස්මක් සකස් කරන “ආරක්ෂක සූදානම මාර්ග සිතියම 2030” අනුමත කළහ.

ඒ සමඟම, වොෂින්ටනය එහි සෘජු මැදිහත්වීම තීව්‍ර කළේය. ට්‍රම්ප් පරිපාලනය යුක්රේනයට බටහිර රටවල් විසින් සපයන ලද දිගු දුර මිසයිල භාවිතා කිරීම සඳහා පනවා තිබූ ප්‍රධාන සීමාවන් ඉවත් කිරිම මගින්, කියෙව්ට රුසියානු භූමියේ ගැඹුරට පහර දීමට හැකියාව ඇති කළේය. අඟහරුවාදා, යුක්රේනය බ්‍රිතාන්‍ය සැපයූ ස්ටෝම්  ෂැඩෝ කෲස් මිසයිලයක් භාවිතා කර බ්‍රයන්ස්ක් හි පුපුරණ ද්‍රව්‍ය සහ රොකට් ඉන්ධන නිපදවන කම්හලකට ප්‍රහාරයක් එල්ල කළේය. යුක්රේන පොදු කාර්ය මණ්ඩලය (general staff) “සාර්ථක ප්‍රහාරය” සැමරූහ. එවැනි මෙහෙයුම් නේටෝ බලවතුන් සහ රුසියාව අතර විවෘත ගැටුමක් අවුලුවාලීමේ අවදානමක් ඇති කරන අතර එය වේගයෙන් න්‍යෂ්ටික සටනක් දක්වා සර්පිලාකාර විය හැකිය.

එක්සත් ජනපදය සහ එහි යුරෝපීය සහචරයෝ හිතාමතාම ගැටුම උත්සන්න කරමින් සිටිති. වොෂින්ටනය සහ ලන්ඩන් යන දෙපිරසම රුසියාවේ විශාලතම තෙල් හා ගෑස් නිෂ්පාදකයින් වන රොස්නෙෆ්ට් සහ ලුකොයිල්ට (Rosneft, Lukoil) එරෙහිව නව සම්බාධක ප්‍රකාශයට පත් කළ අතර යුරෝපීය සංගමය තමන්ගේම ආර්ථික යුද්ධය දැඩි කිරීමට එකඟ විය. බ්‍රසල්ස් සමුළුවේදී ද්විත්ව-භාවිත භාණ්ඩ සඳහා අපනයන තහනම් පුළුල් කිරීමට, යුරෝපීය ප්‍රාග්ධන වෙළඳපොළට රුසියානු ප්‍රවේශය සීමා කිරීමට, රුසියානු “සෙවණැලි නැව් කණ්ඩායමේ (shadow fleet)” නැව් 117 කට යුරෝපා සංගම් වරායන් තහනම් කිරීමට සහ රුසියානු රාජ්‍ය තාන්ත්‍රිකයින්ට නව සංචාරක සහ මූල්‍ය සීමාවන් පැනවීමට තීරණය විය. කලින් සැලසුම් කළ කාල සීමාවන්ට වඩා වසරකට පෙර–2027 වන විට–රුසියානු ද්‍රව ස්වාභාවික ගෑස් (LNG) ආනයනය සම්පූර්ණයෙන්ම තහනම් කරනු ඇත.

ඊටත් වඩා ප්‍රකෝපකාරී වන්නේ යුක්‍රේනයට ආයුධ සඳහා අරමුදල් සැපයීම පිණිස රුසියානු මහ බැංකුවේ සිර කළ වත්කම් අත්පත් කර ගෙන ප්‍රති-අරමුණුගත කිරීමට යුරෝපා සංගමය සැලසුම් කිරීමයි. බෙල්ජියම නීතිමය විරෝධතා මතු කළද, යුරෝපීය කවුන්සිලය කොමිසමට උපදෙස් දුන්නේ “හැකි ඉක්මනින් යෝජනාවක් ඉදිරිපත් කරන ලෙසයි.” මෙය ජාත්‍යන්තර සොරකමකට වඩා අඩු දෙයක් නොවේ–එය බටහිර අවශ්‍යතා සමඟ ගැටෙන්නේ නම් තම  සංචිත ආරක්ෂිත නොවන බව පෘථිවියේ සෑම ජාතියකටම සංඥා කරන අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී අත්පත් කර ගැනීමකි.

යුක්‍රේනය පිළිබඳ යුරෝපීය කවුන්සිලයේ ප්‍රකාශය, 2022 සිට යුරෝපා සංගමය දැනටමත් යුරෝ බිලියන 177.5 ක් ලබා දී ඇති බවත්, “2026–2027 සඳහා එහි මිලිටරි සහ ආරක්ෂක කටයුතු ඇතුළුව යුක්‍රේනයේ හදිසි මූල්‍ය අවශ්‍යතා සපුරාලීමට කැපවී සිටින බවත්” පුරසාරම් දොඩයි. තවත් බිලියන සිය ගණනක් අනුමත කෙරෙනු ඇත.

සමුළුවට සමගාමීව ඉදිරිපත් කරන ලද, ඊනියා ආරක්ෂක සූදානම මාර්ග සිතියම 2030,  මෙම මුදල් කුමක් සඳහාද යන්න සම්පූර්ණයෙන්ම පැහැදිලි කරයි. එය පහත ප්‍රකාශයෙන් ආරම්භ වේ:

“ආරක්ෂක සූදානම යනු නවීන යුද්ධ සඳහා අවශ්‍ය හැකියාවන් වර්ධනය කිරීම සහ අත්පත් කර ගැනීමයි. එහි තේරුම යුරෝපයට උපායමාර්ගික වාසියක් සහ අවශ්‍ය ස්වාධීනත්වය ලබා දෙන ආරක්ෂක කාර්මික පදනමක් ඇති බව සහතික කිරීමයි. තවද, එහි තේරුම තීරණාත්මක කාලවලදී අති නවීන නවෝත්පාදනයන් සහ වේගවත්, මහා පරිමාණ නිෂ්පාදනයක් ලබා දීමට සූදානම් වීමයි.”

මෙය යුරෝපීය යුද ආර්ථිකයක් සඳහා මහා සැලැස්මකි–මහා පරිමාණ අවි ආයුධ සන්නද්ධ කිරීම සඳහා කර්මාන්ත, මූල්‍ය සහ තාක්‍ෂණය සම්බන්ධීකරණය කරන ලද බලමුලු ගැන්වීමකි.  මාර්ග සිතියම, “උත්සාහයන්  ඉහළ මට්ටමකට ගෙන ඒමේ සහ වේගවත් කිරීමේ අවශ්‍යතාවය, අද දින වැඩිවන අන්තරායන් පිළිබිඹු කරයි,” ලෙස සඳහන් කරයි.

රුසියාව ප්‍රධාන සතුරා ලෙස හඳුනාගෙන ඇති අතර එය “දැකිය හැකි අනාගතය සඳහා යුරෝපීය ආරක්ෂාවට නිරන්තර තර්ජනයක්” ලෙස කියාපාන නමුත් ලේඛනයේ විෂය පථය ගෝලීය වේ:

“යුරෝපයේ සූදානම, 360° ප්‍රවේශයක් සහිත පුළුල් ගෝලීය සන්දර්භය තුළ මුල් බැස ගත යුතුය. …ගාසා තීරයේ සහ මැද පෙරදිග සිට අප්‍රිකාවේ සැඟවුණු හෝ විවෘත ගැටුම් කිහිපයක් දක්වා, ආසියා-පැසිෆික් කලාපයේ වැඩිවන ආතතීන්ගේ සිට ආක්ටික් දක්වා ආදී ලෝකයේ අනෙකුත් ප්‍රදේශවලින් එල්ලවන තර්ජනවලට අපට අන්ධ විය නොහැක.”

වෙනත් වචන වලින් කිවහොත්, යුරෝපා සංගමය එක්සත් ජනපදයෙන් ස්වාධීනව තම ආර්ථික හා භූ මූලෝපායික අවශ්‍යතා ඉටු කර ගැනීම සඳහා ලෝක ව්‍යාප්ත යුද්ධයකට සූදානම් වෙමින් සිටී. එය පැහැදිලිවම සඳහන් කරන්නේ, “සාම්ප්‍රදායික සහචරයින් සහ හවුල්කරුවන් ලෝකයේ අනෙකුත් කලාප වෙත තම අවධානය යොමු කරමින් සිටින” බවත් “යුද්ධයේ වෙනස්වන ස්වභාවයට අනුකූලව, යුරෝපයේ ආරක්ෂක ඉරියව්ව සහ හැකියාවන් … හෙට දවසේ යුධ පිටි සඳහා සූදානම් කළ යුතු” බවත්ය.

මාර්ග සිතියම 1930 ගණන්වල ප්‍රති-සන්නද්ධ කිරීමේ වැඩසටහන් සමඟ තරඟකාරීවන මට්ටමේ ප්‍රමාණාත්මක ඉලක්ක නියම කරයි. එය 2021 දී යුරෝ බිලියන 218 සිට 2025 දී යුරෝ බිලියන 392 දක්වා යුරෝපීය ආරක්ෂක වියදම් ඉහළ යාම සමරන අතර තවදුරටත් වේගවත් කිරීමක් ඉල්ලා සිටී. “ReArm Europe” (යුරෝපය  ප්‍රතිසන්නද්ධ කරමු) න්‍යාය පත්‍රය යටතේ, SAFE මෙවලම වැනි නව අරමුදල් යාන්ත්‍රණ හරහා අවි ආයුධ සඳහා යුරෝ බිලියන 800 ක් දක්වා බලමුලු ගන්වනු ලැබේ. 2035 වන විට දළ දේශීය නිෂ්පාදිතයෙන් සියයට 3.5 ක ආරක්ෂක වියදම් ඉලක්කයක් කරා ළඟා වීමට ජුනි මස නේටෝ සමුළුවේදී කරන ලද කැපවීම් සඳහා වාර්ෂිකව අවම වශයෙන් වසරකට අමතර යුරෝ බිලියන 288 ක් අවශ්‍ය වේ.

මෙම අතිවිශාල මුදල් සම්භාරයට මුදල් යෙදවිය හැක්කේ කුරිරු කප්පාදු, සමාජ වැඩසටහන් විනාශ කිරීම සහ මහජන අරමුදල් කොල්ලකෑම හරහා පමණි. “ආරක්ෂක සූදානම” සඳහා මුදල් සහ ආයුධ පමණක් නොව යුද්ධය සඳහා සමස්ත මහාද්වීපයම ප්‍රතිසංවිධානය කිරීම අවශ්‍ය බව ලේඛනය පැහැදිලි කරයි. “යුරෝපා සංගමය පුරා හමුදා සංචලන ප්‍රදේශයක් කරා” වගන්තිය යටතේ එය යෝජනා කරන්නේ:

“2027 අවසානය වන විට, නේටෝව සමඟ සමීප සම්බන්ධීකරණයෙන්, සංගමය පුරා හමුදා සහ හමුදා උපකරණ බාධාවකින් තොරව ප්‍රවාහනය සහතික කරන, සංගත  කළ නීති සහ ක්‍රියා පටිපාටි, ගොඩබිම් කොරිඩෝ, ගුවන්තොටුපළ, වරාය සහ ආධාරක අංග ජාලයක් සහිත, යුරෝපා සංගමය පුරා හමුදා සංචලන ප්‍රදේශයක් පිහිටුවනු ඇත.”

ඉලක්කය වන්නේ යුරෝපය තනි යුධ පිටියක් බවට පරිවර්තනය කිරීමයි–එනම්, හමුදා සහ සන්නාහ බෝල්ටික් සිට කළු මුහුද දක්වා නිදහසේ ගමන් කළ හැකි ඒකාබද්ධ සැපයුම් කලාපයක් සැකසීමයි. සිවිල් යටිතල පහසුකම් මිලිටරි අවශ්‍යතා සඳහා යටත් කරනු ලැබේ.  දස දහස් ගණනක් නේටෝ භටයින් චලනය කරමින් යුද විරෝධී විරෝධතාකරුවන්ට එරෙහිව සොල්දාදුවන් යෙදවීම සිදු කළ හැම්බර්ග්හි, රෙඩ් ස්ටෝම් බ්‍රාවෝ වැනි අභ්‍යාස, මෙම මිලිටරිකරණයේ දේශීය මානය දැනටමත් අපේක්ෂා කරයි: එනම් අභ්‍යන්තර විරුද්ධත්වය මර්දනය කිරීම යි.

මෙම පරිවර්තනයේ පෙරමුණේ සිටින්නේ ජර්මනියයි.  හරිත පක්ෂයේ  සහ වාම පක්ෂයේ  සහාය ඇතිව, පාලක සන්ධානය ප්‍රති-සන්නද්ධ කිරීම සඳහා යුරෝ ට්‍රිලියනයක රාමුවක් නිර්මාණය කර ඇත. 2025 ආරක්ෂක අයවැය යුරෝ බිලියන 86.5 ක් වන අතර එය දෙවන ලෝක යුද්ධය අවසන් වීමෙන් පසු ඕනෑම අවස්ථාවකට වඩා වැඩි වේ. 2029 වන විට යුරෝ බිලියන 150 කට වඩා වැඩි වන මෙම වියදම දළ වශයෙන් දළ දේශීය නිෂ්පාදිතයෙන් සියයට 3.5 කි.  “මිලිටරි සූදානම”සඳහා යටිතල පහසුකම් වියදම් ඇතුළත් කළහොත්, යුද්ධයට අදාළ මුළු වියදම් දළ දේශීය නිෂ්පාදිතයෙන් සියයට 5 ක් දක්වා ඉහල යනු ඇති අතර, එය වාර්ෂිකව යුරෝ බිලියන 215 ක් පමණ වේ.

නව හමුදා සහ සිවිල් තනතුරු දස දහස් ගණනක් නිර්මාණය වෙමින් පවතින අතර අනිවාර්ය හමුදා බඳවා ගැනීම නැවත ස්ථාපිත කෙරෙනු ඇත. ප්‍රහාරක ජෙට් යානා, ප්‍රවාහන හෙලිකොප්ටර්, නව යුධ ටැංකි, සන්නද්ධ වාහන, යුද නැව්, ඩ්‍රෝන යානා, මිසයිල පද්ධති සහ ඒ සඳහා කැපවූ අභ්‍යවකාශ විධානයක් (මූලස්ථානයක්) පවා නිර්මාණය කිරීම සඳහා බිලියන ගණනක් මුදල් හරවා ඇත. චාන්සලර් ෆ්‍රෙඩ්රික් මර්ස් ජර්මනිය “යුරෝපයේ ශක්තිමත්ම සාම්ප්‍රදායික හමුදාව” බවට පත් කිරීමේ තම ඉලක්කය විවෘතව ප්‍රකාශ කර තිබේ.

මෙම ප්‍රතිපත්ති, යලි සන්නද්ධ කිරීම සහ ලෝක බලය සඳහා වූ තල්ලුව මගින් ෆැසිස්ට් තන්ත්‍රයක් ස්ථාපනය කිරීම, ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී අයිතිවාසිකම් විනාශ කිරීම සහ කම්කරු පන්තිය මර්දනය කිරීම සිදු කළ, 1930 ගනන්වල ජර්මානු අධිරාජ්‍යවාදයේ සූදානම සිහිපත් කරයි. එම තර්කනය නැවතත් තහවුරු වෙමින් පවතී. යුරෝපය පුරා, පාලක ප්‍රභූන් සමාජ කෝපය මැඩපැවැත්වීමට සහ යුද්ධයට සූදානම් වීමට ෆැසිස්ට් බලවේග–බ්‍රිතාන්‍යයේ ෆරාජ්, ප්‍රංශයේ ල පෙන්, ඉතාලියේ මෙලෝනි සහ ජර්මනියේ ඒඑෆ්ඩී–වගා කරමින් සිටිති.

වෛෂයික ප්‍රවණතා නිසැකවම පැහැදිලිය. යුරෝපා සංගමය, නේටෝව සහ අවි කර්මාන්තය ඒකාබද්ධ යුද යාන්ත්‍රණයකට බද්ධ කිරීම ඒකාධිපති පාලනයක් කරා හැරීම සමඟ අත්වැල් බැඳගනී. ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී අයිතිවාසිකම්වලට පහර දීම, ගාසා සංහාරයට එරෙහි විරෝධතා අපරාධකරණය කිරීම සහ පොලිස් බලකායන් මිලිටරිකරණය කිරීම යන සියල්ල මහජන විරෝධයට පාලක පන්තියේ බිය පිළිබිඹු කරයි.

අධිරාජ්‍යවාදය යුද්ධයට තල්ලු කරන එම ප්‍රතිවිරෝධතාම–සියල්ලටත් වඩා ධනේශ්වර ක්‍රමයේ ගැඹුරු අර්බුදය–විප්ලවවාදී නැගිටීම් සඳහා කොන්දේසි ද ඇති කරයි. ප්‍රති-සන්නද්ධ කිරීම, ජීවන තත්වයන් විනාශ කිරීම සහ  නිරන්තරයෙන් වර්ධනය වන න්‍යෂ්ටික සමූලඝාතනයේ අනතුර සඳහා මුදල් යෙදවීම සඳහා ධනය විශාල වශයෙන් නැවත වෙන් කිරීම කම්කරු පන්තිය පුරා ප්‍රතිරෝධය අවුස්සනු ඇත. එක්සත් ජනපදයේ, ඔක්තෝබර් 18 වන දින ට්‍රම්ප්ගේ ෆැසිස්ට් ප්‍රතිපත්තිවලට එරෙහි “රජුන් එපා” විරෝධතාවලට මිලියන 7 කට වැඩි පිරිසක් එක් වූහ. යුරෝපයේ අනෙකුත් ස්ථාන අතර, ග්‍රීසිය, බෙල්ජියම, ඉතාලිය, නෙදර්ලන්තය සහ ප්‍රංශය හි කප්පාදු පියවරයන්ට සහ මිලිටරිවාදයට එරෙහිව වැඩවර්ජන සහ විරෝධතා පුපුරා ගොස් ඇත.  මේවා පන්ති අරගලයේ පුපුරන සුලු ගෝලීය පුනර්ජීවනයක සලකුණු ය.

නමුත් ස්වයංසිද්ධ විරුද්ධත්වය ප්‍රමාණවත් නොවේ. යුද්ධයට සහ ආඥාදායකත්වයට එරෙහි සටන, ඒවායේ මූල හේතුවට, එනම් ධනේශ්වර ක්‍රමයටම එරෙහි අරගලයට සම්බන්ධ කරන සවිඥානික දේශපාලන වැඩපිළිවෙලකින් එය සන්නද්ධ විය යුතුය. හතරවන ජාත්‍යන්තරයේ ජාත්‍යන්තර කමිටුවවේ (හජාජාක)”සමාජවාදය සහ යුද්ධයට එරෙහි සටන”-2016 ප්‍රකාශය දැන් දැවෙන හදිසිතාවයක් අත්කර ගන්නා මූලධර්ම ඉදිරිපත් කර ඇත:

  • යුද්ධයට එරෙහි අරගලය, සමාජයේ මහා විප්ලවවාදී බලවේගය වන කම්කරු පන්තිය මත පදනම් විය යුතු අතර, ජනගහනයේ සියලු ප්‍රගතිශීලී කොටස් කම්කරු පන්තිය පිටුපස එක්සත් කළ යුතුය.
  • නව යුද විරෝධී ව්‍යාපාරය ධනවාදී විරෝධී සහ සමාජවාදී විය යුතුය, මන්ද, මූල්‍ය ප්‍රාග්ධනයේ ආඥාදායකත්වය අවසන් කිරීමට සහ මිලිටරිවාදයේ සහ යුද්ධයේ මූලික හේතුව වන ආර්ථික ක්‍රමය අවසන් කිරීමට කරන සටනකින් තොරව යුද්ධයට එරෙහි බරපතල අරගලයක් තිබිය නොහැකි බැවිනි.
  • එබැවින්, නව යුද විරෝධී ව්‍යාපාරය, අවශ්‍යයෙන්ම, ධනපති පන්තියේ සියලුම දේශපාලන පක්ෂ සහ සංවිධානවලින් සම්පූර්ණයෙන්ම සහ නිසැකවම ස්වාධීන විය යුතු අතර ඒවාට සතුරු විය යුතුය.
  • නව යුද විරෝධී ව්‍යාපාරය, සියල්ලටත් වඩා, ජාත්‍යන්තර විය යුතු අතර, අධිරාජ්‍යවාදයට එරෙහි ඒකාබද්ධ ගෝලීය අරගලයක් තුළ කම්කරු පන්තියේ දැවැන්ත බලය බලමුලු ගැන්විය යුතුය.

යුරෝපය පුරා සහ ජාත්‍යන්තරව කම්කරුවන්, තරුණයින් සහ බුද්ධිමතුන් [oppressed middle class] මුහුණ දෙන කර්තව්‍යය පැහැදිලිය: සෑම වැඩබිමකම සහ අසල්වැසි ප්‍රදේශයකම ස්වාධීන ක්‍රියාකාරී කමිටු ගොඩනැගීම, ඔවුන්ගේ අරගල දේශසීමා හරහා සම්බන්ධ කිරීම සහ සමාජවාදය සඳහා සටනේදී සවිඥානික විප්ලවවාදී නායකත්වයක්–හතරවන ජාත්‍යන්තරයේ ජාත්‍යන්තරයේ කමිටුවේ කොටස් ලෙස සමාජවාදී සමානතා පක්ෂ–වර්ධනය කිරීම. ධනේශ්වර ක්‍රමය පෙරලා දමා, පෘථිවියේ සම්පත් ලාභය සඳහා නොව තාර්කිකව සහ ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදීව මානව අවශ්‍යතා සඳහා භාවිතා කරන සමාජවාදී ලෝක සමූහාණ්ඩුවක කොටසක් ලෙස යුරෝපීය එක්සත් සමාජවාදී රාජ්‍යයක් මගින් එය ප්‍රතිස්ථාපනය කිරීමෙන් පමණක්, මානව වර්ගයාට ලෝක යුද්ධයේ ව්‍යසනය වළක්වා ගත හැකිය.

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Gold price surge continues, passing the $4,000 mark

economics, english, News, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, World Economy /

By Nick Beams.

This article was originally published in the World Socialist Website on 08 October 2025.

After hitting record highs throughout this year, the price of gold continues to surge and has now passed $4,000 an ounce, taking its rise this year to more than 50 percent after a 12 percent increase for September alone.

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Gold bars are shown stacked in a vault at the United States Mint on July 22, 2014 in West Point, New York [AP Photo/Mike Groll]

The gold price surge is a sign of growing uncertainty and doubts over the stability of the international monetary system based on the US dollar as the global currency. As a Wall Street Journal article noted, the gold price “has surged this year more than it did during some of America’s biggest crises” including the 2007–2009 recession and the onset of the pandemic.

Back in June, as the gold surge was accelerating and it had become the second-largest reserve asset held by central banks after the dollar, surpassing the euro, an article in the Financial Times (FT) described it as the “world’s refuge from uncertainty” and pointed to the broader implications of its rise.

Bullion, it said, had “made a roaring comeback, not just among speculators and so-called gold bugs who mistrust paper currencies, but even among the most conservative investors in the world” and that “in a febrile political era, when many of the core assumptions about the global economy are being questioned, gold has once more become an anchor.”

In the four months since these lines were written all the processes it identified have intensified.

The key “core assumption,” not only being questioned but increasingly eroded, is the capacity of the US state and its financial institutions to provide a stable foundation for the international monetary order based on the US dollar as a fiat currency after US president Nixon removed its gold backing in August 1971.

While this process has accelerated under the second Trump presidency it was already well underway before he arrived on the scene.

It has been fueled by the ongoing crises in the US financial system, expressed most sharply in the financial crisis of 2008 and the freezing of the US Treasury market in March 2020 when, for a number of days, no buyers could be found for US government debt, supposedly the safest financial asset in the world.

A central factor in the latest gold surge has been the escalation of US government debt. It now stands at more than $37 trillion. For more than a decade the rise in debt—used to finance wars, tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations as well as government bailouts—was able to proceed almost unnoticed because of the ultra-low interest rates maintained by the Fed.

But after the rate rises started in 2022, the interest bill has become an increasing drain on government finances, such that it has risen to almost $1 trillion annually and is set to become the biggest item in the US budget, surpassing even military outlays.

This has meant that the global monetary system is based on the currency of the most indebted country in the world, whose credit rating has been downgraded by all the three major rating agencies and which needs to borrow money just to pay the interest bill on past debts.

The policies of the Trump administration are working to exacerbate these underlying tensions within the global financial system.

A major blow came with the so-called “reciprocal tariffs” of April 2, through which the Trump regime upended what had remained of the post-war international trading order. The “liberation day” measures led to a spike in Treasury yields combined with a fall in the value of the dollar—a rare occurrence.

Since then, in the trade “deal” with Japan and the proposals of the Trump regime for South Korea, the tariffs have been revealed as the mechanism for standover demands by the US for the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in the US under the direct control of the administration.

As part of his drive to establish a personalist dictatorship, combined with the moves to establish martial law in major US cities, Trump has moved to try to take direct control of the Fed. This has sparked concerns that its political independence will be effectively ended, sparking concerns in international markets about financial stability leading to an increasing turn to gold as a safe haven.

And the latest surge has been spurred on by the US government shutdown initiated by Trump as part of a drive to sack hundreds of thousands of government employees and axe whole departments.

As Mark Sobel, a former US Treasury official and now the US chair of the think-tank OMFIF told the FT back in June: “Gold’s rise in part reflects the administration’s undermining of the properties underpinning dollar dominance.”

Sobel said that attacking institutions such as the Fed and the courts while “threatening to add massively to debt and deficits through the ‘big, beautiful bill,’ and being an unreliable partner to our allies and partners” had all undercut the dollar’s status.

Others have gone further in their analysis, describing the shift into gold as a move “back to the future.” As the latest surge was getting underway in the middle of the year, Randy Smallwood, chief executive of a precious metals company, told the FT: “It wouldn’t surprise me if, in 20 years, when you take an economics course, there will be a discussion about the 60-year experiment from 1970 to 2030 on fiat currencies, and how it failed.”

In an earlier period, such comments might have been dismissed simply as the outlook of “gold bugs.” Not so today.

Even before the latest actions by Trump, central banks had begun to move. In each of the past three years, they have bought more than 1,000 tonnes of gold, hitting record levels. The bulk of the purchases have been by countries not closely aligned with the US such as China, India, and Turkey. But the rise of gold to be the second-largest reserve asset is an indication that other central banks are heading in the same direction.

The shift is extending to the private sector with the move by investors into gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The World Gold Council has reported that $13.6 billion flowed into these funds in September, bringing the total so far this year to $60 billion—a record.

The significance of this shift is reflected in an analysis by Morgan Stanley. The traditional benchmark for investor allocations is 60 percent of funds in equities with 40 percent in bonds. But it suggested that the split should be 60/20/20. That is, gold should have an equal weight with bonds.

Significantly, such is the uncertainty around the financial position and indebtedness of all the major economies—the debt-induced turmoil in France is a case in point—that the move out of the dollar is being accompanied by growing uncertainty about other currencies. As one analyst at a metals trading firm told the FT: “People are looking to short the dollar, but they are not quite sure what currency to purchase—that uncertainty leads you straight to gold.”

And while the gold issue may appear to be simply a market phenomenon—investors trying to capitalize on the surge, others seeking a hedge in times of uncertainty, on top of the concerns of central banks, it goes deeper than that.

The entire fiat monetary system that has prevailed for the past 50 years and more—the foundation for the functioning of the global capitalist order—is starting to unravel, and that will have major economic, financial and political consequences.

Gold price surge continues, passing the $4,000 mark Read More »

Summit

Leaders of China, Russia and India gather for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit

english, News, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, World War /

By Peter Symonds

Reposted below is the article of the World Socialist Web Site published on 02 September 2025.

The two-day gathering of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) leaders finished yesterday in the Chinese city of Tianjin. The host, Chinese President Xi Jinping, put forward his vision of a multi-polar world in opposition to “hegemonism and power politics”—a barely veiled criticism of the US.

Summit
Putin, Modi and Xi. [AP Photo/Suo Takekuma]

The grouping has its roots in what was dubbed the “Shanghai Five,” formed by China and Russia with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 1996 to counter US interventions in Central Asia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The SCO was formally established in 2001 and expanded to include Uzbekistan. India, Pakistan, Belarus and Iran have subsequently been included as full members, while 14 other countries including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt are dialogue partners.

While the attendance of many of the 20 leaders at the summit was unremarkable, the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—his first visit to China in seven years—triggered alarm bells in Washington. US imperialism has carefully cultivated economic and strategic relations with India for well over a decade, as it has accelerated its preparations for war with China, which it regards as the chief threat to US global dominance. 

Modi had previously signalled that he would not be attending the summit, citing his necessary attendance at a sitting of India’s parliament, in what could only be construed as a calculated snub to China. Although a thaw had begun, relations between the two countries were frosty following military clashes along their disputed border in 2020 that left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.

Modi abruptly changed his plans amid a standoff with the Trump administration over India’s purchase of oil from Russia. In early August, Trump attempted to bully India into submission by doubling tariffs on Indian exports to the US to a massive 50 percent. Modi refused to cave in and the final 25 percent of the tariff hit came into effect last week. Indeed, Reuters reported last Thursday that India plans to increase purchases of Russian oil by between 10 and 20 percent. 

Trump had been pressing India and China to end imports of Russia oil as a lever to strongarm Russian President Vladimir Putin into making concessions to Ukraine as part of negotiations over a ceasefire in the ongoing war. The fact that Trump had not imposed a similar tariff punishment increase on China to that on India was no doubt doubly galling for Modi, given India’s longstanding strategic partnership with the US.

Modi’s presence in China this week was something of a diplomatic coup for Xi, who effusively welcomed him on Sunday, saying the two countries must not let the border issue define overall relations, and should be development partners not rivals. Modi, in turn, declared that there was now an “atmosphere of peace and stability” between them. 

Modi and Xi met in Russia last October on the sidelines of the BRICS summit shortly after reaching a border patrol agreement. Over recent weeks, a further warming of relations has been evidenced by the re-establishment of direct flights and a lifting of Chinese export restrictions on India including on rare earths. Yesterday, according to Modi, the two leaders discussed reducing India’s huge trade deficit of $99 billion with China, the country’s largest trading partner.

Xi clearly used the SCO summit as a platform to demonstrate China’s ability to counter US efforts to isolate it internationally and encircle it militarily. “Global governance has reached a new crossroads,” he said. 

In another swipe at the US and Trump, without naming names, Xi criticised “bullying practices” and declared: “The house rules of a few countries should not be imposed on others.” 

The meeting agreed to Xi’s proposal for a new SCO development bank in a move to further undermine the dominance of the US dollar in world trade and finance. Beijing is to provide 10 billion yuan ($US1.4 billion) in loans to the new banking consortium and another 2 billion yuan in aid to member states this year. China also plans to build an artificial intelligence cooperation centre for SCO nations. 

Putin also used the opportunity to call for “genuine multilateralism” to lay the groundwork for “a new system of stability and security in Eurasia.” In an obvious reference to the US and NATO, he added: “This security system, unlike Euro-centric and Euro-Atlantic models, … [would be] truly balanced, and would not allow one country to ensure its own security at the expense of others.”

Putin also lashed out against the US and NATO over the war in Ukraine, saying it “did not arise as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, but rather as a consequence of a coup d’état [in 2014] in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West.” He praised the efforts of China and India in facilitating a resolution to the crisis and said he would inform SCO members of details of last month’s negotiations with Trump in Alaska in bilateral meetings. 

Both China and India have called for an end to the war, but at the same time pointedly refused to condemn Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Efforts were made to present an atmosphere of conviviality and bonhomie. Modi and Putin arrived together in Putin’s vehicle to yesterday’s meeting after a lengthy discussion and joined Xi for a photo opportunity holding hands in a close circle. The Indian and Russian leaders also publicly praised their own discussions. 

An editorial in the Washington Post entitled “Trump’s white-knuckling with India could backfire” expressed the alarm in US ruling circles that the White House’s crude attempt to use hefty tariffs to bludgeon New Delhi into submission and break up longstanding Indian ties with Russia had failed. 

“Beijing remains Washington’s most powerful rival. In purely economic terms, China is already a far more formidable adversary than the Soviet Union ever was,” it noted, then concluded:

“Trump’s zero-sum approach is to not leave any money on the table in negotiations. Even in business, that’s arguably a mistake. Goodwill has value. Trump’s talks with China might yet turn out to be every bit as bruising as those he is having with allies. Maybe that’s when he might appreciate better relations with friends.”

Trump officials, however, have shown no signs of heeding the advice. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the SCO summit as “performative” and denounced India and China as “bad actors” that were “fuelling the Russian war machine”. Trump’s anti-China trade adviser Peter Navarro condemned India as “arrogant,” declaring that the “Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of the Indian people” with the Russia oil trade. In a fit of exasperation, Navarro branded the conflict in Ukraine as “Modi’s war.” 

Modi has no intention of immediately rupturing relations with the US. On his way to the SCO summit, he stopped in Tokyo where he praised the work of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad—a quasi-military pact with Japan, the US and Australia. Speaking to Nikkei Asia, Modi repeated stock standard US propaganda, declaring: “As vibrant democracies, open economies and pluralistic societies, we are committed to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific”—directed against “authoritarian” China.

Like the other SCO members including China and Russia, India aggressively pursues its economic and strategic interests amid worsening international economic turmoil, exacerbated by Trump’s trade war measures, along with heightened geo-political tensions and an emerging world war. Wracked by social tensions at home and divided by many unresolved disputes, none of them has a progressive solution to the global eruption of imperialist violence and deepening crisis of the capitalist system.

Leaders of China, Russia and India gather for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit Read More »

Trump Putin

The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska and the shift in American geostrategy

News, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, World Economy, World War /

By WSWS Editorial Board

We repost below the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board Statement of August 17, 2025, published Here.

Trump Putin
President Donald Trump meets with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. [AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson]

The heads of all the major European powers are heading to Washington today for emergency meetings with US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, following Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. That meeting, in which Trump warmly embraced Putin and called for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, has set off a political crisis across Europe.

Attending the talks in Washington are German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. They aim to present a united front as they confront the fallout from Trump’s shift in US support for the Ukraine war, hoping they can prevent Trump from abruptly pulling the plug on their entire operation.

In advance of Monday’s talks, debate within the media and among officials in both the United States and Europe centered on whether any settlement would involve binding “security guarantees” for Ukraine and, at the same time, compel Ukraine to surrender territory to Russia. On Sunday, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN that for the first time Russia had agreed to allow the United States and European powers to extend “Article 5-like protection” to Ukraine, a reference to NATO’s mutual defense clause. 

Zelensky called it “a historic decision,” writing on X that the guarantees must provide “protection on land, in the air, and at sea” with Europe’s full participation. At the same time, however, Trump has diverged from Ukraine and the major European powers by backing Putin’s demand that Kiev cede territory, including sections of the Donbas region not currently under Russian control.

That such a change was coming had been evident for some time. The Alaska summit made it official, and the reaction in European capitals has bordered on hysteria, augmented by the fact that Ukraine has suffered a series of military defeats. Whatever they declare publicly, the reality is that without US backing the prosecution of the war in Ukraine becomes untenable. The NATO alliance has been held together until now by Washington’s ferocious hostility toward Russia, a policy spearheaded by the Democratic Biden administration. 

Trump, reviving the tradition of the far-right “America Firsters” of the World War II era, speaks for layers of the American ruling class oriented toward war in the Pacific and the confrontation with China. He has coupled this outlook with tariff and trade war measures directed against the European powers. For this faction, disengaging from the conflict with Russia over Ukraine offers potential advantages: securing access to vital resources in Russia and Ukraine, loosening Moscow’s alignment with Beijing, and weakening European imperialism.

Particularly since Trump’s re-election, the US foreign policy establishment has discussed a “reverse Kissinger” strategy. Faced with China’s economic rise, they aim to invert the policy championed in the 1970s by US President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of allying with China against the Soviet Union. In an article titled “A ‘Reverse Kissinger’?,” the American Enterprise Institute think-tank endorsed attempts to ally with Russia against China, but noted that the Ukraine war was an obstacle to winning over Putin. It wrote:

Moscow and Beijing have been forced together by the war in Ukraine. Ending that war, and mending ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, could slow the Sino-Russian convergence—and perhaps even make Moscow a partner in containing Beijing. The aspiration is admirable. … It didn’t work, because Putin was less interested in stability than in swallowing Ukraine.

At the same time, any shift in Washington’s policy toward Russia will provoke bitter conflicts within the American state apparatus. For powerful sections of the ruling class, the defeat of Russia remains non-negotiable—not only to salvage the credibility of American imperialism after pouring vast sums into the Ukraine war, but also because they view concessions to Moscow as weakening the broader confrontation with China.

The heads of European imperialism converging on Washington are not only seeking to pressure Trump directly, hoping to play for time if not shift course, but also to rally allies within the American political establishment to block any retreat from the NATO war drive.

However the situation develops, certain fundamental issues must be stressed. First, Trump’s shift on Ukraine is not a “peace policy.” His support for the genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Iran make this clear. The divisions within the American ruling class center on tactical issues related to a shared project of global domination.

Second, Trump’s maneuver takes place within the framework of an escalating global war and intensifying conflicts between the United States and the European imperialist powers. The costs of this conflict will be imposed through a massive assault on the working class.

Across Europe, governments are carrying out a vast program of remilitarization that can only be financed by dismantling what remains of social protections and diverting trillions into a military build-up. In the United States, Trump is spearheading a social counterrevolution and dictatorship against the working class, tearing down every constraint on the accumulation of wealth by the rich. One element of his calculations is undoubtedly the need to redirect military resources toward the “near abroad” in Latin America and against workers within the United States itself.

Third, Putin’s fawning praise for Trump at the summit on Friday underscores the thoroughly reactionary character of the Russian government. Putin’s ludicrous flattery recalls Stalin’s infamous toast to Hitler in August 1939, as the Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact was being concluded: “I know how much the German nation loves its Führer. I should therefore like to drink to his health.” Within a week, World War II had erupted; two years later, Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union, at the cost of 27 million Soviet lives.

Like Stalin, Putin seeks deals with imperialism that can only end in disaster for the working class. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was provoked by the US and European imperialist powers, through the relentless expansion of NATO to the east and the refusal to negotiate over Ukraine. The invasion, however, was the action of a bourgeois state defending its own interests. It had nothing in common with the independent mobilization of the Russian or Ukrainian working class against imperialism.

The reactionary character of Putin’s rule is underscored by his alignment with far-right forces across Europe and the United States—including Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, and Alternative for Germany. They will be strengthened by the realignment now underway.

The outcome of today’s talks in Washington remains uncertain, but what is beyond doubt is that the fundamental tendencies driving the world toward catastrophe remain. There will be no progressive resolution to this crisis without the independent intervention of the international working class.

The Trotskyist movement completely rejects the opportunist mantra that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Neither the maneuvers of Trump, nor the intrigues of the European powers, nor the reactionary calculations of Putin offer a way forward. The struggle against genocide, austerity, dictatorship and war requires the building of a conscious, international socialist movement of the working class, fighting irreconcilably against all the capitalist governments and their political agents.

The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska and the shift in American geostrategy Read More »

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යුරෝපීය සංගමය-චීන සමුළුව: බීජිං සහ බ්‍රසල්ස් අතර තියුණු ආතතීන්

economics, english, politics & economics, Trade War, World Economy /
පීටර් ෂ්වාස් විසිනි.

මෙහි පලවන්නේ ලෝක සමාජවාදී වෙබ් අඩවියේ (ලෝසවෙඅ) 2025 ජුලි 25 දින ‘European Union-China summit: sharp tensions between Beijing and Brussels’ යන හිසින් පලවූ පීටර් ෂ්වාස් විසින් ලියන ලද ලිපියේ සිංහල පරිවර්තනය යි.

එක්සත් ජනපදයේ ආක්‍රමණශීලී වෙලඳ යුද්ධ ප්‍රතිපත්තිය අනෙකුත් කාර්මික රටවල් සහ කලාප වඩාත් සමීප කරනු ඇතැයි දිගු කලක් තිස්සේ අපේක්ෂාවන් පැවතුනි. කෙසේ වෙතත්, චීනය සහ යුරෝපා සංගමය (EU) අතර බ්‍රහස්පතින්දා සමුළුව ප්‍රතිවිරුද්ධ දිශාවට යොමු කරයි. බීජිං සහ බ්‍රසල්ස් අතර ආතතීන් වසර ගණනාවක් තිස්සේ මෙතරම් ඉහළ මට්ටමක නොතිබුණි.

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චීන අගමැති Li Qiang, වමේ සිව්වන , යුරෝපීය කොමිසමේ සභාපති Ursula von der Leyen, දකුණ තුන්වන , යුරෝපීය කවුන්සිලයේ සභාපති Antonio Costa, දකුණ දෙවන , සහ විදේශ කටයුතු සහ ආරක්ෂක ප්‍රතිපත්ති පිළිබඳ ඉහළ නියෝජිත සහ යුරෝපීය කොමිසමේ උප සභාපති Kaja Kallas, දකුණට, 2025 ජුලි 24 බ්‍රහස්පතින්දා , චීන මහජන මහා ශාලාවේදී රැස්වීම ආරම්භයේදී සවන් දෙයි. [AP ඡායාරූපය/Andres Martinez Casares]

එක්සත් ජනපදය සිය තීරුබදු මගින් සෑම පාර්ශ්වයකටම හානි කරන බවට නිරන්තරයෙන් චෝදනා කරන යුරෝපීය සංගම් කොමිසමේ (EU) සභාපති Ursula von der Leyen,  ට්‍රම්ප් පන්නයේ වෙළඳ සම්බාධක මගින් චීනයට තර්ජනය කලාය. චීනය සහ යුරෝපා සංගමය අතර සබඳතා “හැරවුම් ලක්ෂයක” පවතින බවට ඇය අනතුරු ඇඟවීය. වෙළඳ සබඳතාව “අතිශයින් අසමතුලිත” වූ අතර, ද්විපාර්ශ්වික සබඳතා නැවත තුලනය කිරීම “අත්‍යවශ්‍ය” බව ඇය පැවසුවාය. චීනය රාජ්‍ය සහනාධාර ලත් අධි-ධාරිතාවෙන් ලෝක වෙලඳපොලවල් තුළට තල්ලු කර ගැනීම දිගටම කරගෙන යන්නේ නම්, “යුරෝ සංගමයට එහි වත්මන් මට්ටමේ විවෘත භාවය පවත්වා ගැනීම ඉතා අපහසු වනු ඇත” යි ඇය පැවසුවාය. 

එවන් ආකාරයේ 25 වැන්න වූ සමුළුව, යුරෝපා සංගමය සහ චීනය අතර රාජ්‍ය තාන්ත්‍රික සබඳතා පිහිටුවීමේ 50 වැනි සංවත්සරය සැමරීම සඳහා අරමුණු කරන ලදී. මෙම සබඳතා කිසිදා ආතතියෙන් නිදහස් ව නොතිබුණි. යුරෝපීය ආයෝජන සහ භාණ්ඩ සඳහා චීනයට ප්‍රවේශය, ප්‍රකාශන හිමිකම් සහ පේටන්ට් බලපත්‍ර සදහා ආරක්ෂාව, ප්‍රපාතන මිල ගණන් (dumping prices- විශේෂයෙන් විදේශ වෙළඳපළවල තරගකාරී වීම සදහා මිල බොහෝ අඩු කිරීම) සහ සහනාධාර සහ තවත් බොහෝ ගැටලු සම්බන්ධයෙන් ආරවුල් ඇති වී තිබේ. චීනයට පීඩනය යෙදීම සඳහා යුරෝපා සංගමය ටිබෙටයේ සහ ෂින්ජියැන්ග්හි වාර්ගික සුළුතරයන්ගේ තත්ත්වය ද ප්‍රයෝජනයට ගෙන ඇත.

චීනයට එරෙහි වෙලඳ යුද පියවර පිලිබඳ වොන් ඩර් ලේයන්ගේ තර්ජනය පෙන්නුම් කරන්නේ තීරුබදු පැනවීම එක්සත් ජනපද ජනාධිපති ට්‍රම්ප්ගේ පුද්ගලික විකාරයක් නොව, ධනේශ්වර පද්ධතියේ ගෝලීය අර්බුදයට ප්‍රතිචාරයක් බවයි. පළමු හා දෙවන ලෝක යුද්ධ ආසන්නයේ දී මෙන්, අමුද්‍රව්‍ය, වෙලඳපොලවල් සහ ලාභ සඳහා අරගලය තවදුරටත් සාමකාමී තරඟයකින් නොව, බලහත්කාරයෙන්, බ්ලැක්මේල් සහ මිලිටරි බලය හරහා ගෙන යනු ලැබේ.

කෙසේ වෙතත්, ආර්ථික සබඳතා විශාල ලෙස වර්ධනය වී ඇත. 2024 දී, යුරෝපා සංගමය සහ චීනය අතර භාණ්ඩ හා සේවා වෙළඳාමේ වටිනාකම යුරෝ බිලියන 845 කට වඩා වැඩි විය. මෙය ලෝක වෙලඳාමෙන් සියයට 30කට යන්තම් අඩු ප්‍රමාණයකට අනුරූප වේ. EU යනු චීනයේ වැදගත්ම වෙළඳ සහකරු වන අතර චීනය යුරෝපා සංගමයේ හි දෙවන විශාලතම වෙලඳ ගනුදෙනුකරු වේ.

චීන අපනයනය, ආනයනය මෙන් දෙගුණයකටත් වඩා වැඩි ය. 2024 දී යුරෝපා සංගමය චීනය සමඟ යුරෝ බිලියන 300 කට වඩා වැඩි වෙළඳ හිඟයක් වාර්තා කළේය. විශේෂයෙන්ම චීනය තවදුරටත් යුරෝපීය සංගත සඳහා අඩු වැටුප් වේදිකාවක් සහ විකුණුම් වෙලඳපොලක් ලෙස පමණක් සේවය නොකරන අතර, විදුළි මෝටර් රථ, දුර්ලභ ඛනිජ (rare earths) සහ වැඩි වැඩියෙන් AI වැනි තාක්ෂණයන්හි ලෝක ප්‍රමුඛයා බවට පත් වී ඇති බැවින්, පරතරය පුළුල් වෙමින් පවතී.

2020 දීත්, Volkswagen සියයට 19 ක වෙළඳපල කොටසක් සතුව චීනයේ ප්‍රමුඛතම මෝටර් රථ නිෂ්පාදකයා වූ නමුත් එතැන් සිට එම කොටස සියයට 12 දක්වා අඩු වී ඇත. අනෙක් අතට, චීන වෙළඳ නාම පසුගිය වසර පහ තුළ ඔවුන්ගේ වෙළඳපල කොටස සියයට 36 සිට 69 දක්වා වැඩි කරගන ඇත. මෙයට ප්‍රධාන වශයෙන් හේතු වී ඇත්තේ මිල අඩු, උසස් තත්ත්වයේ විදුලි මෝටර් රථ නිෂ්පාදනය කිරීමයි.

පසුගිය ගිම්හානයේදී යුරෝපා සංගමය චීන මෝටර් රථ සඳහා මූලික සියයට 10ක තීරුබදු මත්තෙහි සියයට 17 සිට 35 දක්වා අමතර අධිභාර පැන වූයේ  ඒවා යුරෝපීය වෙලඳපොලද ජයගැනීම වැලැක්වීම සඳහාය. බොහෝ නවීන තාක්ෂණයන් සඳහා අත්‍යවශ්‍ය වන දුර්ලභ ඛනිජ මත චීනයට ගෝලීය ඒකාධිකාරයක් බදු තත්වයක් ඇත.

චීනයේ ආර්ථික නැගීම කෙරෙහි යුරෝපා සංගමය අතිශය ආක්‍රමණශීලී ලෙස ප්‍රතිචාර දක්වයි. ඒ අතරම, ආර්ථික බැඳීම් සම්පූර්ණයෙන් බිඳ නොදැමීමට උත්සාහ කරයි. යුරෝපා සංගමයේ විශාලතම වෙලඳ සහකරු වන එක්සත් ජනපදය පැනවීමට තර්ජනය කරන දණ්ඩන තීරුබදු සමග එක් වූ කල මෙය විනාශකාරී ආර්ථික ප්‍රතිවිපාකා ඇති කරනු ඇත.

චීනයේ පාර්ශ්වයෙන්, එහි නායකත්වය වැඩිදුර ආර්ථික සහයෝගීතාව සඳහා තම උනන්දුව අවධාරනය කර ඇතත්, යුරෝපීය බ්ලැක්මේල් තර්ජන වලට යටත් වීමට එය සූදානම් නැත. යුරෝපා සංගම් නායකයින් සමඟ පැවති සාකච්ඡාවකදී ජනාධිපති ෂී ජින්පින් ප්‍රකාශ කළේ චීනය සහ යුරෝපා සංගමය අතර බැඳියා ගැටුම් (conflicts of interest) හෝ භූ දේශපාලනික ප්‍රතිවිරෝධතා නොමැති බවයි. යුරෝපා සංගම් වෙලඳපොල විවෘතව පවතිනු ඇතැයිද, යුරෝපීය පාර්ශවය “සීමාකාරී ආර්ථික හා වෙළඳ උපකරණ භාවිතා කිරීමෙන් වැළකී සිටිනු ඇතැයිද ” යනුවෙන් බලාපොරොත්තු වන බව ඔහු පැවසීය.

චීනයට එරෙහිව දැඩි ආස්ථානයක් ගැනීම මගින්  යුරෝපා සංගමය එක්සත් ජනපදය සමඟ ඇති තීරුබදු ගැටුමේ දී වාසිදායක එකඟතාවයකට එළඹෙනු ඇති බවටද බීජිනය බිය වේ. යුරෝපා සංගමය දැනටමත් චීනයට දේශපාලන හා මිලිටරි පීඩනය වැඩි කරමින් සිටී.

යුක්රේනය සමඟ යුද්ධයේදී, චීනය රුසියාවේ  තෙල් මිල දී ගෙන, බටහිර සම්බාධක මගහරිමින් ද්විත්ව භාවිත සංරචක (dual-use components), එනම් ආයුධ නිෂ්පාදනය සඳහා ද භාවිතා කළ හැකි සංරචක සැපයීමෙන් රුසියාවට සහාය දෙන බවට චෝදනා කිරීම සමුළුව පුරාවටම පුනරාවර්තිත තේමාවක් විය. රුසියාවේ මිලිටරි-කාර්මික පදනමට ද්‍රව්‍යමය ආධාර ලබා නොදෙන ලෙසත් යුද්ධය අවසන් කිරීමට එහි බලපෑම භාවිතා කරන ලෙසත් යුරෝපා සංගමය චීනයෙන් ඉල්ලා සිටියේය.

බීජිංහි සමුළුවට පෙර දින, යුරෝපා සංගම් නියෝජිතයෝ ටෝකියෝ හි පැවති යුරෝපා සංගම්-ජපාන සමුළුවකට සහභාගී වූ අතර ආයුධ කර්මාන්තයේ සමීප සහයෝගීතාව සඳහා සහ තීරණාත්මක අමුද්‍රව්‍ය ක්ෂේත්‍රයේ උපායමාර්ගික යැපීම් අඩු කිරීම සම්බන්ධයෙන් එකඟ වූහ. මෙම තීරණ දෙකම චීනය ඉලක්ක කර ගත් ඒවාය. ජපානය, නේටෝවේ ද සහාය ලබන, චීනයට එරෙහි යුද්ධය සඳහා එක්සත් ජනපද සූදානම සමග  දැඩි ලෙස සම්බන්ධ වී සිටී.

ඒ අනුව යුරෝපා සංගම්-චීන සමුළුව කිසිදු දැනෙන ප්‍රතිඵලයකින් තොරව අවසන් විය. මුලින් එය දින දෙකක් පැවැත්වීමට නියමිතව තිබූ අතර, එය එවිටමත් දිනකට කෙටි කර තිබුණි. ඒකාබද්ධ අවසන් ප්‍රකාශයක් නොවුණි. තීරණාත්මක අමුද්‍රව්‍ය බෙදා හැරීම ප්‍රමාද වූ විට උපදේශන යාන්ත්‍රණයක් සහ දේශගුණික ආරක්ෂාව සඳහා බැඳීමක් නොමැති කැපවීමක් පමණි එකඟ වූ සියල්ල වූයේ.

විරැකියාව, සමාජ වියදම් කප්පාදුව සහ වෙඩි උණ්ඩ සදහා ගොදුරු ලෙස භාවිතාව වැනි බර පැන කරගැසීමට සිදුවන කම්කරු පන්තියේ උරමතින් වෙලඳ යුද්ධ සහ යුද්ධ දියත් කෙරේ. එය බෙදීමට ලක්වීම හා ජාතිකවාදී උද්ඝෝෂණ විය ගසට  යොදා ගැනීමට ඉඩ නොදිය යුතුය. එය ජාත්‍යන්තරව එක්සත් වී ධනවාදය පෙරලා දැමීම සඳහා සටන් කළ යුතුය. දැවැන්ත තාක්‍ෂණික වර්ධනයන් විනාශ කිරීමේ මාධ්‍යයක් බවට පත් කිරීම වෙනුවට සමාජ ප්‍රගතිය සඳහා සේවයට යෙදවිය හැක්කේ මේ ආකාරයෙන් පමණි.

යුරෝපීය සංගමය-චීන සමුළුව: බීජිං සහ බ්‍රසල්ස් අතර තියුණු ආතතීන් Read More »

US attack Iran

American imperialism’s bombardment of Iran: A day that will live in infamy

english, Fascism, lead article, News, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, World War /

By WSWS Editorial Board

We repost below the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board statement published on wsws.org here on June 23, 2025

US attack Iran
A B-2 stealth bomber conducts a flyover on the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, July 4, 2020, in Washington. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

June 22, 2025 is a day that will live in infamy. In a massive and unprovoked assault, the United States launched a sneak attack on Iran, dropping the most powerful non-nuclear bunker-buster bombs ever used in combat on Iranian nuclear energy facilities. This act of aggression is the continuation and escalation of the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, and threatens to engulf the entire Middle East and set the world on fire.

Codenamed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” the assault involved more than 125 aircraft, including at least eight B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, backed by fighter jets, refueling tankers and surveillance aircraft, in what was the largest B-2 strike operation in US history. 

The centerpiece of the attack was the deployment of the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 13.6-ton bunker-busting bomb—the most powerful non-nuclear weapon of its kind ever used. Twelve MOPs were dropped on the heavily fortified Fordow uranium enrichment site, and two more on Natanz. These were accompanied by numerous 2,900-pound Tomahawk missiles, which rained down on both facilities as well as the Isfahan research complex.

US President Donald Trump justified his attack in a four-minute homicidal, lying rant, delivered Saturday night. Announcing that US forces had struck three nuclear facilities, he claimed they were part of a “horribly destructive enterprise” which was supposedly necessary to “stop the nuclear threat” posed by Iran. 

In fact, these sites are part of Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program, developed in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and subject to international inspection. For years, the United States’ own intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran was not actively pursuing nuclear weapons. But in the tradition of the Bush administration’s lies about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Trump once again invoked fabricated threats to justify extraordinarily reckless acts of unprovoked aggression.

Trump boasted of the “spectacular military success” of the attack, which he intended to serve as a message to the entire region, declaring that “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.” 

The reference to Iran as the “bully of the Middle East” turns reality on its head. For over a third of a century, US imperialism has been at war and carried out regime change operations throughout the region, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Over the past two years, the Israeli government has waged a genocidal war in Gaza with continuous US support, slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians. This has been merely a dress rehearsal for a broader campaign of mass murder. 

Having just launched an unprovoked military strike against a sovereign nation in flagrant violation of international law, Trump now demands “peace”! By this, he means “unconditional surrender,” as he demanded last week—that is, the turning over of the country to direct imperialist dominance. On Sunday, Trump explicitly called for “regime change” in Iran, following his threat last week to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei.

Trump declared, “For 40 years”—since the overthrow of the US-backed Shah—“Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel,’” and proclaimed that “hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East … have died as a direct result of their hate.” The carnage Trump blames on Iran is in fact the outcome of successive US wars and interventions, under Democrats and Republicans, that have devastated entire societies. It is not Iran that has inflicted “hundreds of thousands” of deaths—it is the United States.

The strikes were directly coordinated with the fascist Israeli government, which is continuing to launch missile attacks on Iran. As Trump stated, “We worked as a team as perhaps no team has worked before.” Just prior to Trump’s remarks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement hailing the US airstrikes and thanking Trump, declaring that the two were pursuing a policy of “Peace through strength: First comes strength, then comes peace.” In other words, slaughter and terror must precede submission.

Trump concluded with a naked threat of further violence: “There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran. … Remember, there are many targets left.” The logical next step in this campaign of destruction is the use of tactical nuclear weapons—an option the Trump administration has repeatedly declared is “not off the table.” 

Saturday’s attack makes clear that there are no red lines for American imperialism, which will stop at nothing. Its criminality knows no limits. No government has so openly and flagrantly violated international law since the Nazi regime.

The bombing of Iran is a central component of an escalating global war. It is not a question of warning of the danger of a new world war—it has already begun. American imperialism is seeking to resolve its deepening internal social and political crisis through military aggression. Having targeted Iran, the logic of imperialist war is leading inevitably to confrontation with China. Regime change in Iran is aimed at securing unchallenged control over the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the broader Eurasian landmass—regions rich in oil, gas and critical trade routes.

Trump hailed the strikes as a “spectacular military success,” but in reality, he has embarked on a catastrophic and utterly reckless course of action. Whatever short-term calculations were made by the White House and Pentagon, they have now launched a war whose consequences they cannot control. They have sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind. As with the war against Iraq launched in 2003, American imperialism has a rendezvous with disaster, but on a far larger scale.

It remains to be seen how Iran will respond, as well as its close allies, Russia and China. Iran’s parliament has moved to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant share of the world’s oil supply passes—an action that will send global energy markets into turmoil and could trigger a global recession. For years, the passivity of the Iranian bourgeois government—marked by appeals for negotiations and the avoidance of direct confrontation—has emboldened US imperialism. 

Whatever the immediate response of Iran, Russia and China, however, the decisive issue is the reaction of the international working class. The most significant and far-reaching impact of Saturday’s attack will be on the consciousness of billions of people throughout the world. This act of imperialist aggression is already provoking mass outrage, expressed on all social media platforms and through initial protests that took place throughout the US on Sunday.

The war on Iran follows nearly two years of expanding global opposition to the genocide in Gaza. It exposes beyond any doubt the thoroughly criminal character of American foreign policy. The United States is increasingly seen by billions of workers throughout the world as a criminal government that operates outside of all legal restraint. The myth that American imperialism defends “freedom” or “democracy” lies forever in the past.

The war will pour gasoline on the already raging social and political crises in the United States, across Europe and around the world. It is the action of a regime ruled by and for the financial oligarchy. As it bombs and murders abroad, the Trump administration is dismantling democratic rights at home and erecting a political dictatorship. The Democratic Party, the so-called opposition, is paralyzed and complicit—paralyzed by its fear of the working class and complicit in the aims of imperialism.

Mass opposition is emerging. Just one week before the bombing of Iran, millions participated in the largest anti-government demonstrations in American history. The question is not whether opposition exists, but how it can be organized, directed and armed with a political perspective. The immense anger and revulsion provoked by the bombing must be transformed into a conscious political movement of the working class, linking the fight against war and dictatorship to the struggle against capitalism.

The working class is the social force that must be mobilized to stop imperialist barbarism. The criminal war being waged against Iran is not an aberration, but the product of the entire capitalist system. It must be halted through the unified global struggle of the working class, organized across all national boundaries. 

The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties call for an immediate end to the US-Israeli war against Iran and the dismantling of the entire imperialist war machine. We urge workers and youth to organize protests, walkouts and strikes in every country.

Imperialism is plunging the world into barbarism and criminality. It is not a matter of reforming a bankrupt system, but of overthrowing it through the conscious and organized struggle of the working class for power. The alternative to war and dictatorship is socialism. What is needed is the building of a new revolutionary leadership to lead this movement forward, and to make socialism—the democratic control of the economy by the working class in the interests of all humanity—the guiding principle of a new social order.

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Missle

යුරෝපීය ප්‍රතිසන්නද්ධ කිරීමට එරෙහි වන්න!

Democratic Rights, Fascism, lead article, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, World War /

ඇලෙක්ස් ලැන්ටියර් විසිනි.

මෙහි පලවන්නේ ලෝක සමාජවාදී වෙබ් අඩවියේ (ලෝසවෙඅ) 2025 මැයි 26 දින ‘Oppose European rearmament!’ යන හිසින් පලවූ ඇලෙක්ස් ලැන්ටියර් විසින් ලියන ලද ඉදිරිදර්ශන ලිපියේ සිංහල පරිවර්තනය යි. 

Missle
ATACMS මිසයිලයක් M270 MLRS වලින් දියත් කෙරේ.

යුරෝපීය රටවල් සාමූහිකව යුරෝ බිලියන සිය ගනනක් මිලිටරි වියදම්වල වියරු ආවේශයක   ගිල්වා දමයි. සම්පත්, සමාජ වැඩසටහන් හා රැකියා වලින් දැවැන්ත ලෙස යුද යන්ත්‍රය වෙත හරවා යැවීම, යුරෝපීය අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී බලවතුන් කම්කරු පන්තිය සමග ගැටීමේ මාවතට යොමු කරයි.

ඉරිදා, ජර්මානු සන්නද්ධ හමුදා අණදෙන නිලධාරි කාර්ස්ටන් බෲවර් 2029 වන විට ජර්මානු හමුදාව නවීන උපකරණවලින් සම්පූර්ණයෙන් සන්නද්ධ කරන ලෙස නියෝග කළේය. බර්ලිනයේ යුරෝ ට්‍රිලියන 1 ක නැවත සන්නද්ධ කිරීමේ අරමුදලෙන් අරමුදල්, ඩ්‍රෝන් යුද සූදානමට, දිගු දුර මිසයිල සහ අභ්‍යවකාශ යුද හැකියාවන් වෙත යෙදවීමට නියමිතය. ජර්මානු චාන්සලර් ෆ්‍රෙඩ්රික් මර්ස්, යුරෝපයම අලලා ගත්  සමස්ත යුද්ධයක පුපුරා යාමට තර්ජනය කරනා රුසියාව ඉලක්ක කර ගත් නව මිලිටරි උත්සන්න කිරීමක් නිවේදනය කරමින්, එවැනි අරමුදල් භාවිතා කරන්නේ කෙසේදැයි පැහැදිලි කළේය.

රුසියාව පුරා ප්‍රහාර එල්ල කිරීම සඳහා, බර්ලිනය දැන් යුක්රේනයට එහි ටෝරස් කෲස් මිසයිල වැනි දිගු දුර මිසයිල ලබා දෙන බව හඟවමින් මර්ස් මෙසේ පැවසීය:

“යුක්රේනයට ලබා දෙන ආයුධ පරාසයේ තවදුරටත් සීමාවන් නොමැත – බ්‍රිතාන්‍යයන්ට, ප්‍රංශ ජාතිකයින්ට හෝ අපට එසේ සීමාවන් නැත. ඇමරිකානුවන්ටත් එසේමයි.”

ජර්මනියේ සහ එහි නේටෝ සහචරයන්ගෙන් මිසයිල “රුසියානු භූමියේ මිලිටරි ස්ථාපනයන්ට එරෙහිව” වෙඩි තබන බවට මර්ස් දිව්රුම් දුනි. මෙය, පාලනය කළ නොහැකි සර්පිලාකාර උත්සන්නියක් මුදා හරිමින් ජර්මනියේ ඉලක්ක වෙත රුසියානු මිසයිල වෙඩි තැබීමේ අවදානම මතු කරයි.

කෙසේ වෙතත්, ජර්මානු ප්‍රතිපත්තිය යනු, සමස්ත යුරෝපීය ධනේශ්වරයම අල්ලා ගන්නා යුද උණ පිලිබඳ වඩාත්ම නිර්දය ප්‍රකාශනය පමනි. 2014 සිට 2024 දක්වා යුරෝපීය වාර්ෂික මිලිටරි වියදම් යුරෝ බිලියන 147 සිට යුරෝ බිලියන 326 දක්වා දෙගුණයකටත් වඩා වැඩි වූ අතර එය 2022 සිට පමණක් තුනෙන් එකකින් වැඩි විය. ජර්මනියේ මිලිටරි වියදම් 2024 දී සියයට 28 කින් ඉහළ ගොස් ඩොලර් බිලියන 88.5 දක්වා ඉහළ ගිය අතර, පෝලන්තයේ මිලිටරි වියදම ඩොලර් බිලියන 38 දක්වා සියයට 31 කින් වර්ධනය වී ඇත. මේ අතර  ප්‍රංශය 2030 වන විට යුරෝ බිලියන 100 දක්වා තම මිලිටරි වියදම් දෙගුණ කිරීමට ප්‍රතිඥා දී ඇත.

එහි පිරිවැය හෝ ඉලක්ක පිළිබඳව මහජනතාවට කිසිදු පැහැදිලි කිරීමකින් තොරව යුරෝපයේ මහජනතාවයට වහංගු කරමින් යලි සන්නද්ධ කිරීම බොහෝ දුරට සිදු වේ. පසුගිය සතියේ, යුරෝපා සංගමය (EU), යුරෝපා සංගමය සඳහා ආරක්ෂක ක්‍රියාමාර්ග (SAFE) වැඩසටහන සක්‍රීය කරන ලදී. මාර්තු මාසයේ දී එකඟත්වයට පැමිණි එහි යුරෝ බිලියන 800 ප්‍රතිනිර්මාණය කිරීමේ සැලැස්මේ කොටසක් වන එය, යුරෝපා සංගම් රාජ්‍යයන්ට සහ බ්‍රිතාන්‍යයට ඒකාබද්ධ යුරෝපීය ආරක්ෂක ව්‍යාපෘති සඳහා නය වශයෙන් යුරෝ බිලියන 150 ක් සපයයි. මෙම තීරණය බොහෝ දුරට වාර්තා නොවූ අතර, එයින් අදහස් වන්නේ අවසානයේදී බදු ඉහල දැමීමෙන් හෝ සමාජ වැඩසටහන් කප්පාදු කිරීමෙන් යුරෝපීය රාජ්‍යයන්ට යුරෝ බිලියන 150 ක් ආපසු ගෙවීමට සිදුවනු ඇති බවයි.

මේ වසරේ ට්‍රම්ප් බලයට පැමිණීම කෙරෙහි යුරෝපීය අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී බලවතුන්ගේ ප්‍රතිචාරය, නාසීන් යුරෝපය පාලනය කළ දා සිට නොදුටු පරිමානයේ මිලිටරිවාදයේ පිපිරීමකි. යුක්රේනයට මිලිටරි ආධාර නතර කරන බවටත්, යුරෝපයට එක්සත් ජනපද ආරක්ෂක සහතික අත්හිටුවන බවටත් ට්‍රම්ප් තර්ජනය කරද්දී, ස්වාධීනව, යුරෝපය පුරා මහා පරිමාන යුද්ධ කිරීමේ හැකියාව –  න්‍යෂ්ටික සන්නද්ධ රුසියාවට එරෙහිව පවා – වර්ධනය කිරීමට ඔවුහු උත්සාහ කළහ.

වොෂින්ටනය සහ එහි යුරෝපීය නේටෝ “සහචරයින්”, ලෝක බලවතුන් අතර දිගහැරෙන වෙලඳපොලවල් හා මූලෝපායික වාසි පිලිබඳ කටුක අරගලයේ එදිරිවාදීන් ය. ට්‍රම්ප් යුක්‍රේනය පිළිබඳ සාකච්ඡාවලින් යුරෝපය කපා හැරීමට උත්සාහ කිරීමෙන් සහ යුක්‍රේනය වොෂින්ටනයට ඩොලර් බිලියන 500 ක දුර්ලභ ඛනිජ අමුද්‍රව්‍ය ලබා දෙන ලෙස බලකර ඉල්ලා සිටීමෙන් පසුව, බ්‍රිතාන්‍යය සහ යුරෝපා සංගමය යුක්‍රේන ඛනිජ කොල්ලකෑමේ තරඟකාරී සැලසුම් දියත් කළහ. යුක්‍රේනය “යුරෝපයට අවශ්‍ය තීරනාත්මක ද්‍රව්‍ය 30න් 21ක්” සපයන “වින්-වින් හවුල්කාරිත්වයක්” සඳහා EU කොමසාරිස් Stéphane Séjourné ඉල්ලා සිටියේය.

යුරෝපයේ යලි සන්නද්ධ කිරීම රුසියාවට හෝ ට්‍රම්ප්ට එරෙහිව ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදය ආරක්ෂා කිරීමක් නොව, වෙන කවරදාකටත් වඩා එළිපිටම ආක්‍රමණශීලී, ෆැසිස්ට්වාදී ස්වභාවයක් ගැනීමයි. යුරෝපීය පාලක පන්තියේ ස්ථරයන් තමන් ප්‍රධාන බලවතුන් අතර ගෝලීය යුද්ධයකට සම්බන්ධව නොසිටිනා බවට හෝ ඔවුන්ගේ ආර්ථික හා මිලිටරි අවශ්‍යතා හඹා යාමේ මෙවලමක් ලෙස සමූල ජන සංහාරයේ පිහිට ප්‍රතික්ෂේප කරන බවට හෝ  වන දේශපාලන ප්‍රබන්ධයන් අත්හරිමින් සිටිති.

ඉරිදා, එක්සත් රාජධානියේ කොන්සර්වේටිව් පක්ෂයේ නායක කෙමී බඩෙනොක් Sky News හිදී, ඉරානය සහ හමාස් ඉලක්ක කරන බැවින්, බ්‍රිතාන්‍යයට වාසිදායක වේ යැයි කියා, ගාසා තීරයේ ඊශ්‍රායල සමූල ජන සංහාරය නිර්ලජ්ජිත ලෙස ආරක්ෂා කළාය. ඇය තවදුරටත් මෙසේ පැවසුවාය. 

“යුක්රේනය බටහිර යුරෝපය වෙනුවෙන් රුසියාවට එරෙහිව සටන් කරනවා සේම ඊශ්‍රායලය එක්සත් රාජධානිය වෙනුවෙන් ප්‍රොක්සි යුද්ධයක් කරමින් සිටී.“

යුරෝපීය යලි සන්නද්ධ කිරීම සඳහා දැන් සූදානම් කර ඇති සමාජ කප්පාදුව මෙන්ම ගාසාවේ සමූල ජන සංහාරය කම්කරුවන් අතර ප්‍රගාඪ කෝපය අවුලුවා ඇත. පුපුරන සුලු පන්ති අරගල න්‍යාය පත්‍රය තුල  ඇත. එසේ වෙතත්, තුන්වන ලෝක යුද්ධයක් කරා ඇදවැටීම වැලැක්වීමට නම්, එක් එක් යුරෝපීය රටක් තුල මධ්‍යම පන්තික ව්‍යාජ-වාම පක්ෂවල සහ ඔවුන්ගේ මිත්‍ර වෘත්තීය සමිති නිලධරයන්ගේ ප්‍රතිගාමී උපාමාරු සමඟ තීරනාත්මක දේශපාලන ගනුදෙනු බේරා ගැනීමක් සිදු කළ යුතුය.

ස්ටැලින්වාදයෙන් සහ ට්‍රොට්ස්කිවාදයෙන් පලා ගිය සුලු ධනේශ්වර ද්‍රෝහීන්ගෙන් පැවත එන මෙම බලවේග, යුද්ධ කිරීමේ දී සහ කම්කරු පන්තියේ විරුද්ධත්වය අවහිර කිරීමේ දී ප්‍රධාන භූමිකාවක් ඉටු කරයි. ජර්මනියේ වාම පක්ෂය, කාමී මර්ස් තනතුරට පත් කිරීම සඳහා පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ ප්‍රධාන ඡන්ද ලබා දුන් අතර, ජීන්-ලූක් මෙලන්චොන් විසින් නායකත්වය දෙන ප්‍රංශයේ නව ජනප්‍රිය පෙරමුණ (New Popular Front), යුක්රේනයට ප්‍රංශ හමුදා “සාම සාධක භටයන්” ලෙස යැවීමේ මැක්‍රොන්ගේ සැලැස්ම පසුගිය වසරේ සිය මැතිවරණ වැඩපිළිවෙලේ සටහන් කළේය. ස්පාඤ්ඤයේ Podemos (දැන් Sumar) පක්ෂය සම්බන්ධයෙන් ගත් කල, එය ඉතිහාසයේ ස්පාඤ්ඤයේ විශාලතම මිලිටරි අයවැය සම්මත කරන ආන්ඩුවල අසුන් ගත්තේය.

එපමනක් නොව, මෙම පක්ෂ සහ ඔවුන්ගේ සහචරයෝ ගාසා සමූල ජන සංහාරයට හා යුරෝපයේ කප්පාදුවලට එරෙහි විරෝධතා, පිලිවෙත් වෙනස් කිරීම සදහා අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී ආන්ඩුවලට ආයාචනා කිරීමේ බංකොලොත් ඉදිරිදර්ශනයට ගැටගැසීමට කටයුතු කරති.

මෙම ඉදිරිදර්ශනයේ කුණුකම වසර දෙකකට පෙර යුරෝපීය මහා වර්ජන ව්‍යාපාරය තුල ඔවුන්ගේ භූමිකාව මගින් පෙන්නුම් කෙරුනි. ජර්මනිය, බ්‍රිතාන්‍යය, ප්‍රංශය, තුර්කිය සහ යුරෝපය පුරා උද්ධමනය හා කප්පාදුවලට එරෙහිව මිලියන ගනනක් කම්කරුවන් වැඩ වර්ජනය කරද්දී, හතරවන ජාත්‍යන්තරයේ ජාත්‍යන්තර කමිටුවේ (හජාජාක) යුරෝපීය  ශාඛා නැගී එන ව්‍යාපාරය පිලිබඳ ප්‍රකාශයක් නිකුත් කලේය. “මහා වැඩ වර්ජන ව්‍යාපාරය, යුද්ධය සහ යුරෝපයේ විප්ලවවාදී අර්බුදය” [The mass strike movement, war and the revolutionary crisis in Europe, 2023 පෙබරවාරි 10] යන මාතෘකාවෙන් එය පැහැදිලි කලේ:

“දිග හැරෙමින් පවතින්නේ එක් හෝ වෙනත් ධනේශ්වර ආන්ඩුවක් සමග හුදකලා සාකච්ඡා මගින් විසඳා ගත හැකි ජාතික වෘත්තීය සමිති අරගල මාලාවක් නොවේ. ඒ වෙනුවට, කම්කරුවන් සෑම රටකම සමාන ඉල්ලීම් මතු කරමින්, අපකීර්තියට හා පුලුල්ව පිළිකුලට පාත්‍ර කරන  ලද ආන්ඩුවල පොලිස් මර්දනයන් හා නීතිමය තර්ජනවලට මුහුණ දෙන බැවින්, එය ජාත්‍යන්තර දේශපාලන අරගලයකි. …

යුරෝපය පුරා මතුවෙමින් පවතින්නේ වෛෂයිකව විප්ලවවාදී තත්වයකි. ශතවර්ෂයකට පෙර පළමු ලෝක සංග්‍රාමය පුපුරා යාමේදී මෙන් විකල්ප පැහැදිලිවම ඉදිරිපත් ව ඇත. එක්කෝ ධනේශ්වර පන්තිය යුරෝපය හා ලෝකය න්‍යෂ්ටික සන්නද්ධ රාජ්‍යයන් අතර ගෝලීය යුද්ධයකට ඇද දමයි, නැතහොත් කම්කරු පන්තිය යුදවාදී පාලක ප්‍රභූව අතින් බලය ලබා ගනී.”

කෙසේ වෙතත්, වැඩ වර්ජන ඒකාකාරව පාවා දෙනු හෝ දේශපාලනික වශයෙන් ගෙල සිර කර දමනු ලැබිණි. වැඩි කරන ලද මිලිටරි වියදම් වලට අරමුදල් සැපයීම සඳහා පිලිකුල් කෙරුණු විශ්‍රාම වැටුප් කප්පාදුවලට එරෙහිව ප්‍රංශයේ සිදු වූ මහා වැඩ වර්ජන වලදී තරම් වෙන කොතැනකවත්  මෙය පැහැදිලිව නොදිස් වුණි.

මිලියන සංඛ්‍යාත කම්කරුවන් වැඩ වර්ජනවල නිරත වූ අතර, 1968 මැයි මහා වැඩ වර්ජනයෙන් පසු ප්‍රංශයේ ඇති වූ දැවැන්තම දේශපාලන අර්බුදය තුල රටපුරා කැරලි ඇවිල ගියේය. එහෙත් මැක්‍රොන් පහ කිරීම සඳහා දේශපාලන අරගලයක් සඳහා වූ කිසිදු ඉල්ලීමක් මෙලෙන්චොන් මගහැරී අතර, අතිමහත් මහජන විරෝධය උල්ලංඝණය කරමින් කප්පාදු කිරීම් ප්‍රකාශයට පත් කිරීමෙන් පසු වෘත්තීය සමිති නිලධරයන් වැඩ වර්ජන සහ විරෝධතා වහාම අවසන් කළහ. පසුගිය වසර දෙක තුළ ප්‍රංශයේ සහ යුරෝපය පුරා මිලිටරි වියදම් වාර්තාගත ලෙස වැඩි කිරීම සඳහා  ඔවුන් මෙසේ වේදිකාව සැකසූහ.

යුරෝපීය අධිරාජ්‍යවාදය ඊටත් වඩා දැවැන්ත යලි සන්නද්ධ කිරීමේ ධාවනයක් දියත් කරද්දී, අද දින එවැනිම ව්‍යාපාර න්‍යාය පත්‍රයට ඇතුල් වී ඇත. නමුත් පාඩම් උකහා ගත යුතුය. පන්ති අරගලය මත ව්‍යාජ වාම බලවේගවල ග්‍රහණය බිඳ දැමිය යුතුය. මෙයින් අදහස් කරන්නේ පළමුවෙන්ම, ජාත්‍යන්තරව පන්ති අරගල සම්බන්ධීකරණය කිරීම සඳහා, නිලධරයේ කඩාකප්පල්කාරී ක්‍රියාවලින් ස්වාධීනව, කම්කරුවන් හා තරුනයින් අතර ක්‍රියාකාරී කමිටු ගොඩ නැගීම හා ජන සංහාරයට, ෆැසිස්ට්වාදයට හා යුද්ධයට එරෙහිව වඩාත් පුලුල්, අඛණ්ඩ බලමුලු ගැන්වීමක් ගොඩනැගීමයි.

සියල්ලටත් වඩා, එහි අර්ථය වන්නේ, එවන් අරගලයක අවසානය ලෝක සමාජවාදී විප්ලවයක් තුල කම්කරු පන්තියට බලය පැවරීම අවශ්‍ය වන බවට වන විඥානයෙන් කම්කරුවන් හා තරුනයන් සංතෘප්ත කිරීම සඳහා දේශපාලන ව්‍යාපාරයක් ගොඩනැගීමයි. එවන් ව්‍යාපාරයක ජීව රුධිරය වන්නේ ස්ටැලින්වාදයට සහ සියලු ආකාරයේ ජාතික අවස්ථාවාදයට ජාත්‍යන්තර කමිටුවේ (ICFI) සමනය කළ නොහැකි විරුද්ධත්වය සහ ට්‍රොට්ස්කිවාදය ආරක්ෂා කිරීමේ නොබිඳුණු අඛණ්ඩ පැවැත්මයි.

යුරෝපීය ප්‍රතිසන්නද්ධ කිරීමට එරෙහි වන්න! Read More »

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