G7 Leaders Escalate War Threats Against Russia

During their sec­ond day of dis­cus­sions in the resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the German Alps on Monday, the lead­ers of the major impe­ri­al­ist pow­ers affirmed their com­mit­ment to a pol­i­cy of

esca­lat­ing strate­gic and mil­i­tary pres­sure against Russia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It is time to stop point­ing fin­gers at one anoth­er and it is time that we do our job,” he said.
G7 Leaders Escalate War Threats against Russia