Ukraine abandons plans for closer ties to the European Union

by Clara Weiss and Peter Schwarz

 

 Tymoshenko and Chancellor Angela Merkel at a March 2011 European People's Party summit in Brussels; General Prosecutor of Ukraine’s Office lifted the travel ban imposed on Tymoshenko after being officially invited to this event by U.S. Senator John McCain and European People’s Party President Wilfried Martens
(photo: Wikipedia)

Last Thursday, Ukraine suddenly abandoned the association agreement with the EU which was to have been signed at the November 28 Eastern Partnership conference in Vilnius. The 1,200-page wide-ranging agreement had been in preparation for seven years and ready for signing for a year.

The agreement was to have closely linked the Ukraine to the European Union (EU) politically and economically, undermining Russian influence. Its temporary failure is a serious setback for the drive of the EU, led by German imperialism, to expand its influence further east and isolate Russia.

The abandonment of the agreement calls into question the entire Eastern partnership, under which the EU intends to bring five additional former Soviet states under its influence: Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova and Belarus. Ukraine, the second largest state in Europe by area, with a population of 46 million, was by far the most important of these countries.

In opposition to the EU, Russia is encouraging these countries to join a customs union, from which a Kremlin-led Eurasian Union is to emerge. Until now, the customs union only consisted of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Armenia has decided against the eastern partnership, while Moldova and Georgia intend to sign agreements with the EU.

The failure of the EU agreement with Ukraine occurred after the Ukrainian parliament rejected a law freeing Julia Timoshenko Thursday morning. The EU had made the release of the imprisoned opposition leader a condition for the signing of the agreement.

Later in the afternoon, the Ukrainian cabinet released a decree cancelling the association agreement and advocating closer economic cooperation with the states of the former USSR and of the customs union. In addition, the decree suggested three-party discussions between Russia, Ukraine and the EU over Ukraine’s economic relations. Although Russian President Putin supports such talks, it is unclear whether Brussels will take part.

Ukraine formally has the option to accept the association agreement until November 28, but this now seems highly unlikely. The government in Kiev justified its retreat due to “the current economic situation” and “threats to national security.”

Comments in the western press have interpreted this as a capitulation under pressure from Moscow, which had imposed a temporary ban on Ukrainian goods and threatened a deterioration in economic relations if Ukraine signed the agreement.

In fact, it seems to have been the conditions demanded by the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) which made the government of Viktor Yanukovich retreat.

The IMF has only paid out 20 percent of a loan of $15 billion agreed with the Ukraine. It has linked the rest of the loan with drastic social austerity measures. Among other measures, the government is to increase gas and heating prices by 40 percent, cut state spending, and freeze the minimum and average wage at their current levels.

The EU supports the IMF’s conditions and has demanded major structural reforms, which will drive up unemployment in the extremely poor country.

By contrast, President Putin allegedly offered his Ukrainian colleague the prospect of cheap loans and a reduction in gas prices.

According to Vienna-based economist Peter Havlik, the EU and IMF conditions were the basic cause of Kiev’s rejection of the agreement: the government feared an uncontrollable social explosion that could have endangered Yanukovich’s reelection in 2015. Social tensions have visibly increased over recent months. Many of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed and social welfare claimants have received no money since June due to the budget crisis.

The Ukrainian opposition responded to the abandoning of the association agreement with large demonstrations. On Sunday, tens of thousands protested in Kiev and other cities in support of the agreement and demanded the resignation of the government. This was the largest pro-Western demonstration since the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004, which was politically backed and financed to a significant extent by the EU and US.

The demonstrations were led by three right-wing parties closely tied to Germany. They represent a section of the Ukrainian business elite and middle classes, who saw chances for social advancement through closer links with the EU.

The Fatherland Party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Julia Timoshenko has close ties to Germany’s Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and is supported by the CDU/CSU’s Konrad Adenauer institute. Since 2008, the party has enjoyed observer status at the European Peoples’ Party, the federation that brings together conservative parties from across the continent. The President of the German Federation for displaced people, CDU politician Erika Steinbach, has taken on the sponsorship of Timoshenko.

The Ukrainian Democratic Reform Alliance, led by boxing world champion Vitali Klitschko, is also supported by the Konrad Adenauer institute. Klitschko finished his professional boxing career in a German ring and was given the national service cross in recognition of his services for Ukrainian-German relations.

The party “Freedom” (Svoboda) has openly far-right positions. They cooperate with the British National Party and Hungary’s Jobbik party. They also have contact with Germany’s Neo-Nazi NPD. The party’s representatives have repeatedly launched anti-Semitic tirades. Svoboda’s support comes above all from the west of the country, where Ukrainian nationalism is particularly strong. In the Lviv region, they received 38 percent of the vote in the 2012 parliamentary elections.

The EU’s aggressive attempts to bring the Ukraine under its influence and the leading role in this of Germany raise ominous historical parallels. Germany twice tried to bring Ukraine under its control. At the end of World War I, it forced the newly-formed USSR to give up control of the Ukraine under the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, installing a puppet regime led by Pavel Skoropatsky. In World War II, the Nazi armies overran the Ukraine and committed horrific war crimes against the population, including mass murder of Ukrainian Jews.

Ukraine is of immense strategic significance to Russia. From the end of the 18th century it was a key part of the Tsarist empire and later the Soviet Union. Both countries are closely connected economically. Russia is Ukraine’s largest trading partner, supplying around 90 percent of its gas needs. Ukraine is the most important transit for Russian gas to Europe and controls large deposits of raw materials.

Due to its geographical location on the Black Sea, Ukraine is a key country for gaining access to the Middle East and the Caucasus. In the Ukrainian city Sevastopol, Russia has its Black Sea fleet, providing Moscow with access to the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. Earlier this year, Russia deployed forces from its Black Sea fleet to the eastern Mediterranean to defend the Russian-aligned regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against a possible US attack.

After the EU and NATO drew closer to the countries in Eastern Europe, which had been part of the Soviet sphere of influence since World War II, a further push by the EU to the east would degrade Russia to a regional power. As a result, the tug of war over the Ukraine has extremely explosive potential.

This makes even more noteworthy the arrogance with which German media outlets are supporting the imperialist strivings of the German government.

The foreign affairs editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung accused the Russian President of conducting a divisive operation. “He wants confrontation, because only firm boundaries protect his regime,” wrote Stefan Cornelius. Cornelius compared Putin’s suggestion to hold three-party discussions over the future of Ukraine, which was supported by the Ukrainian government, with the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939.

Cornelius entirely ignores the fact that the EU and the German government are cooperating with extreme right-wing forces in Ukraine, and that Julia Timoshenko, who made millions in the oil industry in the 1990s, is anything but a democrat. She is supported in the media because she proved herself to be a reliable partner of the imperialist powers against the Ukrainian working class in the aftermath of the Orange revolution.

A glance at Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and other Eastern European countries shows where incorporation into the EU leads. In these countries, extreme poverty, cultural and social disintegration, and corruption are rampant, while far right forces are growing. Only the ruling elite and a tiny section of the middle class profit from EU membership.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 27 November 2013, and was republished with permission.

Why are the rulers of Saudi Arabia losing their cool?

by Ahmed E. Souaiaia
 

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (left) escorts Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz (right), the ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the U.S, through an honor cordon
and into the Pentagon for a meeting on Feb. 5, 2001.
Author: R. D. Ward (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Every time the Gulf States’ rulers justify their support for violent rebels in Syria or the military regime in Egypt by appealing to the unalienable right of peoples to basic rights and representative governance, they legitimize the Arab Spring in the eyes of their own peoples, too.

For more than seventy years, Saudi Arabia has cultivated the image of a state run by level-headed, moderate, wise, deliberate, and cool-headed leaders. Publicly, its diplomats gave the impression that the Kingdom would choose dialogue over confrontation, moderation over extremism, and reconciliation over antagonism. Wikileaks unveiled the true nature of the regime when it revealed that the rulers of Saudi Arabia were in fact leading two lives: one public and another private.

The ruling family of Saudi Arabia used public wealth (generated from sales of public natural resources) and strategic alliances with some western countries to create the Kingdom of virtual moderation. The alliance with the US provided the Kingdom with diplomatic, military, and political covers that have helped it project power and influence far beyond its actual size. Importantly, it was able to cloak its genocidal sectarianism, conceal its abusive treatment of women and foreign workers, and escape any expectation of representative governance.

Considering the actual record of the Kingdom in the area of human rights, civil rights, women rights, labour rights, and free speech, the squeaky clean image it has cultivated is astounding. The fact that Saudi Arabia, where women cannot drive a car or travel on their own and where individuals are executed in the most savage ways in the name of applying religious law (as they see it) is dubbed a moderate country, and Syria (before 2011), where women fly airplanes and serve in some of the highest institutions of governance is dubbed extremist, speaks of troubling cognitive dissonance in the ranks of the so-called democratic west. Today, Syrians are living under the most brutal conditions - but much of that brutality was instigated as part of the services of the Saudi and Qatari ruling families, wealthy individuals, and foundations under their control.

Together, the Arab Spring and Wikileaks revelations shook the Saudi rulers’ confidence in preserving power inside their country and maintaining influence outside of it. But three events have pushed the ruling family of Saudi Arabia to take off the mask of moderation and show its true face. First, the rulers failed to convince the US administration to save Mubarak and later support the military regime. Second, the ruling family failed to goad the US, Britain, and France into launching air strikes to bomb the Syrian military despite agreeing to pay for the cost. Third, Saudi rulers have demonstrated alarm at the slow and measured rapprochement between Iran and the US. This third event is especially important for Saudi rulers because their animosity towards Iran is not about nuclear disarmament but about history and ideology.

Today, the ruling family governs Saudi Arabia the same way the Umayyads governed the Islamic world for nearly one hundred years during the seventh and eighth centuries. In 750 CE, the Abbasids launched a violent revolution that overthrew the Umayyads and killed every male of the ruling Umayyads (except one who escaped to Spain). The Saudis fear a repeat of history and they are committed to reducing Iran’s status to a weak pariah state. That is a tall order given the resilience of governing institutions in Iran.

To achieve the above goals and assuage their paranoia, the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, officially and through vast networks of charitable organizations and wealthy individuals and foundations, has used petro-dollar wealth and takfiri Wahhabism to influence or blackmail other countries. The link between Jihadi Salafism, the dogmatic and ideological foundation of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and Saudi Arabia is well established. Salafi groups fighting in Syria could not have received the sophisticated weapons and financial support they did without Saudi consent and participation. One would think that a state that can ensure that no woman can drive a car should be capable of making sure that no support is extended to violent takfiris. But to deny Saudi rulers’ support of takfiris fighting in Syria is as credible as denying Saudi support of Afghan Jihadi Salafi groups in the 1970s and 1980s.

The problem is this: Saudi Arabia is now more dangerous than it was prior to 2011.

Before 2011, Saudi support for radical groups was given in coordination with its western allies, especially the US. That coordination was terminated when the US cancelled its ill-advised plans to bomb Syria and when President Obama made the historical phone call to President Rouhani. These two events are related even though they may seem independent of each other.

Although the US’s planned diplomatic rapprochement with Iran is portrayed as being limited to Iran’s nuclear program, the Saudis are worried that resolving the nuclear standoff with Iran will necessarily lead to the normalization of diplomatic relations between Iran and the west in general. If that were to be realized, Saudi Arabia will lose its status as the only “legitimate” regional power and Iran’s oil will start to flow again to Europe and possibly the US, ending the latter’s dependence on Saudi energy.

Moreover, the Saudis fear that if Iran’s diplomatic relations with the west were mended, Iran might play a stronger role in settling regional crises, including the ones in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Saudi Arabia, for sectarian and nationalist reasons, has always wanted to isolate Iran and diminish its influence in the region. An Iran-US rapprochement would end that strategy, and that is why the Saudi rulers have lost their cool and started to act like the extreme regime they really are.

Signs of this change were evident in three decisions the Saudi rulers made in the last five weeks or so.

First, after years of the Kingdom campaigning for a seat on the UNSC, the UN General Assembly voted to elect the Kingdom to occupy one of the non-permanent seats. The Saudi foreign ministry issued a statement in which it declared the Kingdom’s refusal to accept the seat, justifying its unprecedented action because of the UNSC’s inability to 1) solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 2) end the Syrian regime’s “slaughter” of Syrians, and 3) make the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone.

Second, the Saudi security chief, Bandar Bin Sultan, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that the Kingdom will stop coordinating its support to the Syrian opposition with the US government and will act unilaterally in support of the “Syrian people”.

Third, the Saudi rulers refused to meet with the UN special envoy to Syria and declared their intention to sabotage Geneva-2, or at least delay it for one year as they pump more destructive money and weapons into Syria.

These developments indicate that the Saudi ruling family will now openly use terror to achieve its goal of regime change in Syria. But if they do so, the squeaky clean image they have cultivated for seven decades will lead to unmasking the true face of the Kingdom’s rulers.

If the Syrians convene in Geneva and reach a tentative agreement on a road map for a political solution, such a road map will likely include a call to fight terror groups and cut off their support. Russia and the US are likely to formalize such an agreement through the UNSC. This process will then lead to criminalizing any form of support to groups involved in terrorist activities, which will undercut Saudi influence.

It is not in the interest of Saudi Arabia to oppose a political solution and bet on armed groups. There is some indication that the same groups on which the Kingdom relies are also ideologically and dogmatically opposed to the form of governance practiced in Saudi Arabia. It is only a matter of time before the Kingdom faces the threat of terrorism it exports to Syria, Iraq, Libya, and other countries around the world at home. This fact is underscored by the rise in the number of armed attacks on security installations, churches, and public installations in Egypt despite the Saudi rulers’ support for the military regime in that country. In other words, the Kingdom may have control over some Salafi groups, but not all of them. Equally important, even those groups currently under the Kingdom’s control will not remain there should circumstances change, because their alliance is one of convenience.

Despite claims to the contrary, the Arab Spring was a true historical moment. It has profoundly changed the relationship between the masses and the rulers in the Arab world. The ruling family in Saudi Arabia thinks and hopes that the Arab Spring will not sprout in its land. It has. Trying to divert the course of the Arab Spring to other countries Saudi Arabia wishes to weaken (like Syria) or reverse course (as in Egypt) are short term attempts at a solution. In the end, every time the Gulf States’ rulers justify their support for violent rebels in Syria or the military regime in Egypt by appealing to the unalienable right of peoples to basic rights and representative governance, they legitimize the Arab Spring in the eyes of their own peoples, too. When the ruling families excuse the use of crude violence to achieve the goals of the Arab Spring in Syria, they are in effect writing their own destiny: those who rule by the sword die by the sword. That too was the fate of the Umayyads.

These opinions are the author’s, speaking on matters of public interest; not speaking for the university or any other organization with which he is affiliated.

Ahmed E. Souaiaia teaches at the University of Iowa. He is the author of the book, Contesting Justice (State University of New York Press, 2010).

This article first appeared on openDemocracy 4 November 2013.

Iran’s government criticised over nuclear talks

by Peter Symonds

 L-R: Iranian Police Chief Ismail Ahmadi-Moghadam, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the IRGC Hossein Salami, Iranian Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi, Military Advisor to the Supreme Leader General Rahim Safavi, and Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Hassan Firouzabadi watch the National Army Day military parade on April 18, 2011.

Photo: UPI/Maryam Rahmanian.

In the aftermath of international talks in Geneva last week on Iran’s nuclear program, open divisions have begun to emerge in Tehran’s ruling circles over the efforts of President Hassan Rouhani to reach a deal with Washington to end the punitive US-led sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.

Rouhani won June’s presidential election and was installed in August. At the UN last month, he and his ministers engaged in what has been dubbed a “charm offensive,” speaking widely to the US media, business groups and think tanks, and mooting a possible rapprochement. Just before his return to Iran, Rouhani had a 15-minute phone conversation with Barack Obama, the first contact between the presidents of the two countries since the 1979 Iranian revolution ousted the brutal regime of US ally, Shah Reza Pahlavi.

At the Geneva talks last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif made a PowerPoint presentation, entitled “Closing an Unnecessary Crisis, and Opening New Horizons,” which outlined the basis for negotiations to end the decade-long US-led confrontation with Iran over its nuclear programs. Details of the discussions have not been made public. The next round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 group (the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany) has been scheduled for November 7-8.

Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cautiously gave the green light for Rouhani’s diplomatic efforts, which were also endorsed by the Iranian parliament. Nevertheless, elements of the “Principalist” faction have begun to publicly criticise the negotiations.

In a comment entitled “Why is the enemy satisfied?” the editor of the Kayhan newspaper, Hossein Shariatmadari, questioned the secrecy of the talks, saying that it raised “suspicions in public opinion that [Iran’s negotiators] might give an ‘inappropriate’ concession.” He declared: “The unprecedented excitement of [the US] … shows that we have not gained any concessions in return for all the concessions we have given away or promised to give away.”

Other “hardline” newspapers targeted Foreign Minister Zarif and “the New Yorkers circle” of Iranian officials, accusing them of being responsible for “damaging the national interest” in the past. Zarif was educated in the US and was based in New York as Iran’s UN ambassador for five years.

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani came under fire for suggesting that the slogan “Death to America” would no longer be appropriate if relations between Tehran and Washington were normalised. General Masoud Jazayeri, a senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, announced a “Death to America committee” to organise a major anti-US rally on November 4, the anniversary of the takeover of the US Embassy in 1979 by protesters.

Rouhani is closely aligned with Rafsanjani, a billionaire businessman who served as president between 1989 and 1997. Rouhani served as Rafsanjani’s national security adviser, continuing in that role under “reformist” president Mohammad Khatami. Both Rafsanjani and Khatami sought to end the standoff with the US over the country’s nuclear programs as part of a program of pro-market restructuring aimed at opening up the economy to Western investment.

Rafsanjani speaks for layers of private businesses who have not only been hard hit by the international economic sanctions but have been squeezed by state-owned monopolies and particularly the extensive economic empire of the Revolutionary Guards. A Financial Times article last week pointed out: “The Guards have become the country’s commercial powerhouse by taking assets in privatisations as well as big energy and construction projects. It is almost impossible to estimate the force’s total wealth because of its opacity. Nonetheless, some analysts reckon the Guards’ companies and banks generate income of about $US100 billion annually.”

During the presidential election campaign, Rafsanjani bluntly declared that the Guards’ “now control the country’s pulse in the economy, foreign and domestic politics and would not be happy with anything less than the whole country.” Many of the so-called hardliners have close connections to the Guards, whose business interests would likely suffer if foreign investors began to compete after sanctions were lifted.

The US-led sanctions have cut Iran off from international banking and drastically reduced its main export—oil, compounding the country’s economic crisis and opening up divisions in the conservative faction. Political commentator Fereydoun Majlesi told the Wall Street Journal: “Many conservatives are also suffering under the present circumstances. They, too, prefer to enjoy the benefits of the business opportunities provided by normalisation of the Iran-West relations.”

In a speech last week, General Hassan Firouzabadi, second-in-command of Iran’s armed forces and a member of the National Security Council, endorsed Iran’s initiatives in the Geneva talks, saying it was a unique opportunity to end hostilities with the West. “America should seize this chance, which won’t last forever,” he said.

The Iranian bourgeoisie as a whole is deeply fearful that worsening social tensions will produce an eruption of opposition by the working class and rural poor. The latest official statistics reveal that the economy shrank by 5.4 percent over the past year, youth unemployment hit 28 percent and inflation rose to 40 percent. The prices of staple food items soared: rice by 70.4 percent, grain by 79.7 percent, vegetables by 83.7 percent and sugar by 43.2 percent.

According to the Financial Times, the government confronts a budget deficit estimated to be as high as $28 billion. Mahoud Ahmadinejad, the previous president, began the process of reining in public spending by slashing price subsidies on fuel and other basic commodities—a move that was praised by the International Monetary Fund. The subsidies were replaced by limited handouts, which the Rouhani administration is now looking to slash, either directly or indirectly by raising energy prices.

Such a step would rapidly generate opposition. Economics professor Hossein Raghfar told the FT that the subsidies cut had already hit working people hard. “During the past eight years under Ahmadinejad, the poor have increased from 22 percent of the population to more than 40 percent,” he noted.

For the time being, Rouhani appears to have the guarded backing of Supreme Leader Khamenei and a majority of the ruling elite to try to cut a deal with the US to ease the present economic impasse. The new government’s critics have been relatively muted, and protests against the “charm offensive” remain small by Tehran’s standards. But the present general consensus could rapidly fall apart if Rouhani’s overtures are rebuffed, the US fails to offer any significant concessions and the negotiating process drags out, plunging the country into a deeper economic and social crisis.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 24 October 2013, and was republished with permission.