THE ‘peace talk’ that suggests Merkel and Hollande are seeking to organise a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis, acceptable to all, the imperialist powers, the Kiev junta, the workers of the Donbas and the Russian government constitutes a ‘velvet glove’ to try and fool the world as to what the essence of the current situation is.
This velvet glove contains a ‘mailed fist’ – the decision that Obama, Kerry and Biden are on the brink of making, that the US ‘has no alternative but to supply Kiev with the most modern weaponry as well as abundant instructors as to how to use them, beginning a major war in Europe.
Kerry has made the position clear, and the British Foreign Secretary Hammond got as close to the US as possible with his poisonous remarks on Sunday.
The Foreign Secretary started by saying: ‘Ukrainians can’t beat the Russian army, that’s not a practical proposition. There has to be a political solution.
He added: ‘This man (Putin) has sent troops across an international border and occupied another country’s territory in the 21st century acting like some kind of 20th century tyrant.’ In fact: the UK and Britain have been doing just this ever since 1914!
He continued: ‘Britain’s position is that at the moment we do not think that supplying arms is the right thing to do but obviously if the situation on the ground changes we’ll keep that position under review.’
Speaking about sanctions, Hammond pressed on: ‘When coupled with the catastrophic effect on the Russian economy of the decline in the oil price they are putting pressure on the Kremlin.
‘Putin is toughing this out but we all know in the end the economic facts cannot be ignored. If your economy is cratering you cannot support the kind of foreign adventures Putin is undertaking. He will have to trim his behaviour to reflect the decline in the Russian economy.’
And if Putin is unwilling to publicly bend the knee to imperialism and allow it to take over the Ukraine, what will Hammond do then? He will openly support the US sending arms to the fascist coupists in Kiev, thus touching of a major war in Europe!
However the essence of the situation is that the world crisis – that drove the EU and the US to organise the coup in Kiev in the first place, as a prelude to a repeat operation in Moscow – is now graver than ever, and deepening by the hour.
The Ukrainian working class has huge allies. It is under attack, and so is the Greek working class which has been subjected to super-austerity by the EU for a number of years. It has now elected the Syriza coalition to fight the EU, to fight the European Central Bank and to fight the capitalists and bankers at home.
The Greek workers will bring forward a revolutionary leadership as the Syriza coalition weakens to smash Greek capitalism and undermine the EU bosses and bankers.
Not far behind the Greek workers, the Spanish, Irish, French, and British anti-austerity revolutions are developing. In the period ahead the revolutionary resistance of the European working class to their own governments and to attempts by the USA to impose a new free trade privatisation treaty onto Europe, will unite with the growing mass movement of the working class in the USA, which is fighting for trade union organisation and a minimum age of $15 an hour.
In fact what is approaching is a massive leap of the world socialist revolution!
In the UK, the Tory Party and the bosses are getting hysterical at the prospect that the Tories will lose the general election and a weak Labour government will face a massive anti-austerity assault by the UK workers and youth to take back all that was stolen from them to prop-up the bankrupt bosses and bankers, by carrying out a socialist revolution and establishing a workers government.
The workers of the world must have a very clear policy for the revolutionary situation that is rapidly developing.
They must be for the defeat of the imperialist powers and their fascist agents in the Ukraine and for the victory of the Ukrainian and Russian workers.
That means the re-establishment of a soviet Ukraine and the re-establishment of the USSR. This will be a huge victory for the workers of the world.
The same EU bosses and governments that organised the Kiev coup have been bleeding the working class of Europe dry.
There is no doubt that the struggle of the Greek workers will advance forward politically as the centrist Syriza wavers, to establish a workers and small farmers government and take the power.
Alongside the struggle of the Ukrainian and Russian workers the workers of the EU must fight to bring down the EU, and the ECB and replace them with the Socialist United States of Europe.
This is a revolutionary, not a counter-revolutionary epoch. Now is the time to build sections of the Fourth International all over the world to lead the fast developing world socialist revolution to its victory, that is the smashing of capitalism and imperialism.
