US DEFENCE Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the US fleet of warships to remain in the Mediterranean Sea, driving up the tensions between the NATO imperialist alliance and Russia with its plan to bring the Ukraine into NATO.
The USS Harry S. Truman, and the five American warships accompanying it, had been scheduled to sail from the Mediterranean on to the Persian Gulf.
The US strike force includes five US ships – the cruiser USS San Jacinto and the guided missile destroyers USS Cole, USS Bainbridge, USS Gravely, and USS Jason Dunham. Also with them is the Royal Norwegian Navy frigate HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen.
The need for their presence in Europe is to support the Ukrainian regime and to take action against Russia. Russia remains adamant that admission of the Ukraine to the NATO imperialist war alliance is a ‘red line’ that if crossed will lead to a Russian military response.
US President Joe Biden has pledged ‘unwavering support’ for Ukraine, including continuing military aid. Biden’s administration has urged European allies, especially France and Germany, that they must support the Ukraine provocation.
The US Congress has just agreed to a whopping US military budget for 2022. It is now $768 billion! This with the US wracked by mass unemployment and Covid-19!
Biden has signed the piece of legislation, formally known as the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), which authorises $768 billion for national defence programmes, which includes the Pentagon and nuclear weapons programmes overseen by the Department of Energy.
One of the vital aspects of the bill was the $300 million for the so-called Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. The NDAA also includes $4 billion for the European Defence Initiative and $150 million for Baltic security cooperation.
It is also designed to counter China on the issue of Chinese Taipei, by introducing $7.1 billion for the so-called Pacific Deterrence Initiative.
NATO is preparing itself for a large-scale armed confrontation with Moscow, says Russia’s deputy Defence minister Fomin, warning against the US-led alliance’s eastward expansion.
In his remarks at a briefing for military attaches and representatives of foreign embassies in Moscow on Monday, Alexander Fomin asserted that the alliance’s ‘targeted provocations’ near Russia’s borders are likely to escalate into an armed conflict.
The official said the bloc’s military buildup has been ‘completely re-orientated toward preparing for a large-scale, high-intensity armed conflict with Russia’, while pointing to the ‘30 major drills featuring scenarios for conducting military operations against Russia each year.’
The US and UK’s ruling classes’ war preparations are at the expense of the jobs and healthcare of the US and UK working class which are being sacrificed, with another 2008-type economic catastrophe approaching.
The US, the UK and their European allies are in a state of economic and social crisis. More than 440,000 new cases of Omicron were recorded in the US on Monday alone, health officials said, as unemployment rockets upwards. Workers are losing their jobs, while migrants seeking to enter the USA through Mexico are treated like criminals and are whipped by horsemen.
In fact, all over all over the capitalist world energy prices are rocketing, as is inflation, while even bourgeois economists are saying that another 2008-type economic crash and disaster are on the way.
In the US, cases recorded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rose by 441,278 on 27 December – by far the highest number of daily cases ever reported to the agency.
The CDC data tracker says US media reported the seven-day average rise in Omicron infections is now at its highest level since January 2021.
According to a report published by the WHO on Tuesday, the number of new Covid infections of all variants grew by 57% in Europe in the week before 26 December, and by 30% in the Americas. On Tuesday, France reported 179,807 new infections, Europe’s highest-ever number of daily cases. Capitalism is moving towards a major collapse, and is being driven by this prospect to make war with both Russia and China.
In this situation, workers know that their enemy is at home. They must now move forward to get rid of world capitalism with socialist revolutions. This is the only way out of the crisis!
Join the WRP and the YS today and build the International Committee of the Fourth International worldwide!