ON Monday, the Chief of the UK General Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, said in his speech at the Royal United Services Institute, a speech that was approved by Tory Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, that hostilities could begin with Russia a lot sooner than the UK expects.
In other words, his timetable to war has now been much shortened. He warned that ‘Russia could initiate hostilities sooner than we expect and a lot earlier than we would in similar circumstances.’ He warned of an attempt to ‘erode and undermine the credibility of NATO and threaten the very structure that provides our own defence and security,’ – saying that this is the divide and rule that the international order is designed to prevent.
For good measure he added: ‘It will start with something we don’t expect – we should not take what we’ve seen so far as a template for the future.’ His anti-Russian tirade was followed on Wednesday morning by the news that his political boss Williamson has been given five months by PM May to make the case for increased military funding and avoid the defence cuts that were about to be brought in.
As well, the Ministry of Defence is now to take control of the review, guaranteeing that it will recommend ending the military cuts and a massive bout of military spending. This will be a death sentence for the NHS, Social Care and the Welfare State.
The truth is that the UK military and the Tory party has been given a severe shock by the success of the Syrian, Iranian, Russian drive to prevent the Syrian government being removed and replaced by a pro-Western stooge.
Their failure to remove Assad, after their great success in organising the murder of Colonel Gadaffi and the reduction of Libya to a state of absolute chaos, has led to a major division amongst the imperialist powers in NATO. This has seen one NATO power, Turkey, attacking the Kurds in northern Syria who have been trained, financed, armed and guided by the USA.
NATO is now in extreme disarray, compounded by doubts that the USA under Trump, will be keen to sacrifice ‘America First’ for the benefit of the UK and other minor imperialist powers. The British ruling class is now about to whip up the most lurid propaganda scenarios against Russia to try and shock this country into engaging in a massive rearmament. It fears that if it doesn’t beat the war drums, another banking crash will be its end, as workers will refuse to make more sacrifices for bankrupt capitalism.
It aims to shock the mass of the people into accepting a new war drive against Russia, that will mean the definitive end of the NHS and the Welfare State as ‘unaffordable’. The attempt to stampede to arms is already under way and has seen in recent days both Syria and Russia charged with engaging in chemical and gas attacks against Syrian rebels, who as everybody knows have been well beaten.
This is an attempt to knife the Syrian peace process. Syria and Russia have rejected claims by the US and France that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons, and said that such accusations are merely meant to hinder efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in the Arab state.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian made the allegations on Tuesday in Paris, where Washington and 28 of its allies had gathered to decide on sanctioning the perpetrators of the purported attacks.
In a statement carried by Syria’s official SANA news agency, Damascus dismissed the allegations as ‘lies’, which are aimed at ‘obstructing any effort towards finding a way out of the crisis in Syria’.
Meanwhile, to try to repair the ‘defensive’ NATO alliance, the USA has told Turkey that it will not stand in its way and prevent its slaughter of Kurds in northern Syria.
The UK working class understands that in any new war drive the first casualty will be the Welfare State and the NHS. This war drive must be stopped. Only the working class can stop it with socialist revolutions to disarm the imperialist powers, expropriate the bosses and bankers, and replace the rat race of capitalism with a planned socialist economy.
