Contribution to the 13th International Communist Seminar
Brussels, 2-4 May 2004
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
(abridged version – full text at www.lalkar.org)
Harpal Brar, Lalkar Magazine
Great Britain
Division of the world among imperialist countries
Sharpening inter-imperialist contradictions
EU Imperialism
The Creation of a EU Military and Industrial Complex
In the face of US bullying and domineering, the EU is taking a number of measures aimed at safeguarding the interests of the European bourgeoisie, reducing its dependence on the US and strengthening its position for the impending cut-throat struggle between the imperialist blocs, spurred on by the imperialist crisis.
In the field of armaments, just as the US has created, through a series of mergers during the last decade, three giant armament manufacturers - Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon - likewise Europe, for its part, also through rationalisation during the last five years, has created two giant defence corporations - BAe Systems in Britain and EADS in Europe, the latter created through the merger of the German Dasa, Spanish Casa and French Aero Spatiale. Each of these five monopoly armaments corporations have revenues in excess of $56 billion. BAe and EADS are in a position to compete with their US counterparts, and, if they were to merge, as could very well happen, they would be a position to give a jolly good run for money to their US rivals. They are already partners in the Airbus (with EADS owning 80% and BAe 20%) and collaborate with each other on a number of important civilian and military projects. EADS has 13,000 employees, it’s third largest, in Britain.
To match Lockheed Martin’s new C-13J Hercules and Boeing’s larger and more expensive transporter, C-17, the Airbus consortium is producing the A400M transporter. To match Raytheon-made Amram (advanced medium-ranged air-to-air missile) bought by 23 airforces including the RAF, the Meteor consortium is developing its own missile. More importantly, the British government, normally the most Euro-sceptic and most US-friendly, through a statement in Parliament on 16 May 2000 by the Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced a package worth £5 billion for equipping the Eurofighter, being developed by a European consortium, with the European Meteor missiles - all this in the teeth of pressure from the erstwhile US President Bill Clinton and his defence secretary, William Cohen, who were trying to persuade Britain to buy the Raytheon missile and offering all kinds of sweeteners into the bargain.
Remarkably, in the run up to the British government’s decision the Meteor consortium ran several advertisements. One of the ads, aimed at influencing the government’s decision, showed a pilot with the caption: "He risked his life for the Falklands, Kuwait and Kosovo. The last thing he needs is a threat from Arizona". The message was clear: that a Eurofighter armed with Raytheon missiles manufactured in Tucson, Arizona, was no match for Meteor in combat. Such suggestions are rare in the arms industry, just as makers of civilian aircraft do not normally question their rivals’ safety for fear of eroding public faith in the industry.
Europe is producing three fighter planes of its own. In addition to the Eurofighter, there is the Swedish Gripen and the French Rafale. On top of the belief that a European aircraft should be armed by a European missile, there was the worry that dependence on US missiles would put paid to prospect of exports for the Eurofighter. Hence the decision to equip the Eurofighter with the Meteor.
The US has become so alarmed by the EU’s attempts to create a force independent of NATO that it has drafted its own counter plans for a NATO military unit, to be called NATO Reaction Force (NRF) to rival the EU’s RRF, with the main aim of relegating the latter to mundane peace-keeping duties. The proposal was put forward by the US at the November 2002 summit of NATO.
Thus it is abundantly clear that, through streamlining procurement and massive restructuring of its defence industry, the European bourgeoisie, grouped in the EU, is busy creating a formidable Industrial Military Complex (MIC) to match that of the US and busy modernising its armed forces, equipping them with precision weapons, making them easily deployable, and eliminating those weaknesses of which it was made so painfully aware during the war in Kosovo. In other words, it is busy giving teeth to its common security and foreign policy by backing it with an efficient defence industry and new technology. Despite the temporary setbacks caused by divisions with the EU over Iraq, this course of development is set to continue.
Fierce competition in other spheres
Parallel with this activity in the military field, the EU is putting up a furious fight in every other field and challenging US hegemony. The European Union’s Airbus is locked in a fierce battle for leadership of the $65 billion (£45 billion) a year global civilian jet liner market with Boeing of US.
At the end of March 2002, the EU decided to press ahead with the development of its Galileo satellite navigation system in the teeth of opposition from the US. The EU’s system, which will compete against the Pentagon’s Global Positioning System (GPS), aims to pinpoint objects on earth to within 10 metres from Antarctica to the North Pole, would ensure independence from the US system. Since the system has both commercial and military uses, the EU does not wish to rely on the goodwill of the US military, which suspended the GPS service during the first Gulf War. President Chirac of France has openly stated that without Galileo, Europe would be America’s vassal. Francisco Alvarez-Cascos, the minister who chaired the EU meeting which decided to proceed with its own satellite system, said: "What is really at issue is not whether this is a civil or military project but whether the EU is going to be fully sovereign or whether it will become a subordinated market of 350 million consumers", adding that Europe "had no complex" about defending itself. (see FT 23 March 2002). The US, on the other hand, has voiced concerns that the European project could present "serious challenges for the NATO alliance".
The combination of US unilateralism and the Afghan war provided the startling proof through the interrelated complex of predator planes, smart missiles and ground-based special forces - all using satellite technology - that space had well and truly come of age. This salutary lesson was not lost on the Europeans, for they realised that such was the significance of this technology that they must have independent access to it. And the only way they could acquire it was to combine their resources as no single European country has the means on its own to finance space technology. Apart from its obvious military uses, this technology will soon be, or rather, already is, crucial in air traffic control, road congestion management, tracking trains and rolling stock, and monitoring shipping lanes and the movement of ships on the high seas.
Such is the revolutionary potential of this technology that the US made every effort to eliminate all rivals in this area. It was in pursuit of this goal that in 1996, the then-US President Clinton decided to make available free of charge to anyone the radio signals from the US system, thus making it apparently futile for anyone else, in particular the EU, to create a rival network. The Europeans were not fooled, for if the GPS was to be the sole network all global positioning could only be effected by the US, with the result that if the US, for instance, decided to block a military or civilian aircraft sale by the Europeans, all it will have to do would be to forbid the use of GPS avionics in the aircraft’s positioning system. It would be tantamount to the Europeans and others being subjected to an economic, security and technological serfdom which unsurprisingly the EU are not prepared to accept.
The US failed to kill the Galileo project because of the existence of the rocket launching facilities that Europe had installed in French Guyana, and its own Ariane rocket and positioning technology, which is well in advance of America’s. These European facilities have methodically and painstakingly been built over three decades, just as the Airbus have been. Now that the Germans, the French and the British have given their backing to the project, the system can never be abused by the US.
At the end of May 2003, just one day after the final agreement by the EU governments to develop the Euro 3.4 bn Galileo satellite navigation network to rival the US GPS, the European governments unanimously decided the bail-out the Araine rocket programme with more than Euro 1 bn (£725 million) of funding over a five year period to guarantee Europe’s continuing independent access to space.
And so it is in every other field.
Further integration of the EU
28 February 2002 witnessed the inauguration of the Convention on the Future of Europe, which calls for a "constitutional treaty" and deeper integration to transform the EU into a global force equalling the US. The aim of this gathering is to reform the EU’s institutions so as to enable it cope with the entry of 10 new members (already agreed at the Copenhagen Summit, December 2002) in 2004, and make way for further waves of enlargement, which would include Romania, Bulgaria, the various countries which once constituted the Yugoslav Republic, as well as Turkey. At this rate it is hardly far-fetched to believe that Russia may apply for membership and be accepted as a member of the EU in the not too distant future. This is particularly so in view of Russia’s military might - one way in which the EU may easily match the US’ military strength. The leading actors in the unfolding EU drama are fully aware of the significance of the enterprise they are embarked upon.
Opening the proceedings of the Convention, which he chairs, former French president, Giscard d’Estaing, frankly stated that the Convention must knit Europe into a force which can stand up to the United States.
"If we succeed, Europe will have changed its role in the world. It will be respected and listened to, not only as the economic power that it already is but as a political power that will speak as an equal … with the biggest existing powers of the planets," said Monsieur d’Estaing, adding "if we fail, none of us, not even the biggest, would have sufficient weight to deal with the big powers of this world".
The idea behind the Convention is to create an EU with a single currency, its own military arm, diplomatic machinery, with a delimitation of the powers of the member states and the role of the Council of Europe, the Commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament, assisted by a host of powerful regulatory bodies. The Convention builds on the launch of the single currency, the euro, which came into existence at midnight on 31 December 2001. At the time of the euro’s launch Romano Prodi, a former Italian prime minister and presently the president of the Commission, asked the rhetorical question: "Are we all clear that we want to build something that can aspire to be a world power - not just a trading bloc but a political entity?" Well, over a year later everyone ought to know, if they did not before, that this is precisely what the leading powers in the EU are aspiring to. Whether they will succeed in this enterprise time alone will tell.
Along with closer integration within the EU, far-sighted ideologues and representatives of the European bourgeoisie are urging the EU to get closer to Russia, while the US for its part is doing all it can to frustrate the EU’s attempts in this regard and to woo Russia to its own side. Christopher Langton, defence analyst at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, says that though the European Union bemoans its lack of military capabilities, it could easily lease from Russia airlift transportation, the key equipment it is short of. Whatever the present-day compulsions of the Russian bourgeoisie and its apparent desire to be on sweet terms with the US, its own long term interests and geographical position are bound to bring it closer to the EU rather than the US.
Three imperialist blocs being formed
Whether the above prognostication will come true, we have presently no means of telling with certainty for, in the words of J.A.Hobson "the situation is far too complex, the play of the world forces far too incalculable", to render any single interpretation of the future a certainty. What is certain, however, is that since the demise of the USSR and the eastern bloc of socialist countries the basic incompatibility of interests between the various imperialist countries has come to the fore; that three powerful, and competing, imperialist blocs are emerging - that led by US imperialism grouped around the North America Free Trade Area (NAFTA), the EU states under the leadership of German imperialism, and the Asia Pacific rim under the leadership of Japanese imperialism - as a prelude to encroaching upon each other’s patch and in the last resort fighting it out. A furious and frenzied struggle is taking place between these three blocs for world domination, which presently expresses itself in forms peaceful, but which may, indeed must, assume forms far from peaceful, for "war is politics continued by other (i.e. forcible means)", and "Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars and in their turn grow out of wars; the one conditions the other, giving rise to alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle out of one and the same basis of imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world politics" (Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, p.112).
Events are fast moving in a direction which makes an inter-imperialist trade war, as a preliminary to a real war, aimed at the redivision of the existing spheres of influence, sources of raw materials, and markets for goods and capital exports more and more likely, unless stopped by revolution. It is in this context that we must view all the imperialist-led and imperialist-inspired wars and armed conflicts raging all over the globe - from the murderous Gulf War, through to NATO’s genocidal war of aggression against Yugoslavia, to the present war against the people of Afghanistan, as well as the war by Anglo-American imperialism against the people of Iraq for the sole purpose of monopolising the fabulous oil riches of the vast region stretching from the Middle East to Central Asia. In all these wars not only are various combinations of imperialist countries fighting the peoples of these regions, but also each imperialist power is doing its best to secure for itself the most advantageous position.
In this context, it must be admitted that the US president George W.Bush, spoke like a Leninist, when he began his State of the Union message to the US Congress in January 2002 with the opening sentence: "Our economy is in recession and our country is at war". There is more Leninism contained in this single sentence than in the millions of words poured out by bourgeois liberals and other apologists of capitalism, full of hypocritical cant and pious wishes, assuring us of a peaceful world under the conditions of imperialism. Driven by the incurable crisis of overproduction, imperialism is in the throes of once again resorting to armed conflict, with the hope that the war, which while devouring tens of millions of human beings, destroying colossal amounts of wealth and productive capacity, will enable monopoly capitalism to rake in gargantuan war profits and restore the profitability of capital at the end of the conflict. Things may not turn out as smoothly for imperialism, for on the morrow of such a war, and out of the ashes of such a war, might emerge victorious proletarian revolutions even mightier than those which followed in the wake of the First and Second world war.
What is important at the present, however, is that the crisis of overproduction is driving imperialism to war. Instead of being lulled to sleep by the fairy tales and lullabies of the advocates of the Kautskyian theory of collective imperialism, the international communist movement has a duty to inform the proletariat of the imperialist countries, as well as the oppressed peoples, of the hideousness of imperialist reality, of the impossibility of ending all war without putting an end to imperialism. It is the duty of the communist movement to prepare the proletariat in every country for the coming war, to prepare it to take advantage of such a war to overthrow imperialism. In the present circumstances, it is the duty of the proletariat in all the imperialist countries to oppose by every possible means the war which Anglo-American imperialism is waging against the people of Iraq, to demand the withdrawal of imperialist forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and to render all political, moral and material support to the forces in these countries fighting against the imperialist occupation regimes.
The fight against opportunism
Conclusion
In the light of the foregoing, imperialism is sharpening to an unprecedented extent all the major contradictions - those between the oppressed nations and imperialism, between labour and capital, and between various imperialist powers.
It is facing humanity with the choice: either revolution or war and barbarism. It is our bounden duty to spread among the proletariat "… the grim and inexorable truth that it is impossible to escape imperialist war, and the imperialist world which inevitably engenders imperialist war, it is impossible to escape that inferno except by a Bolshevik struggle and a Bolshevik revolution" (Lenin, 14 October 1921).
The Leninist theory of revolution and Leninist tactics and methods of organisation offer the only road to salvation open to the proletariat faced with the stark choice: "Either place yourself at the mercy of capital, eke out a wretched existence and sink lower and lower, or adopt a new weapon - this is the alternative imperialism puts before the vast masses of the proletariat. Imperialism brings the working class to revolution" (Stalin, CW6, pp. 74-75).
In its bid to maintain its profits, imperialism is confronting humanity with the dilemma: "either sacrifice all culture or throw off the yoke of capitalism by revolutionary means, eliminate the domination of the bourgeoisie and win a socialist society and lasting peace" (Lenin, For Bread and Peace, December 1917). At the same time as imperialism sharpens all the contradictions to their extreme, as it rides roughshod over the vast masses of humanity, it is surely spurring the working class and the oppressed people to effect its revolutionary overthrow.
Notwithstanding the colossal reverses suffered by socialism during the past three decades, notwithstanding all the zigzags of the struggle and the tortuous course of events, nothing on earth can stop the victory of proletarian revolution on a world scale.
"Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat" (Lenin, Preface to the French and German editions of Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism).
ADDENDUM
"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world" Napoleon.
Most accounts, and analyses, of global economic and political developments ignore altogether, or fail to pay attention to, the developments in China and India, which together account for 38% of the world’s population and are, by all accounts, fast growing economic powers, and whose growing economic, technological and military prowess cannot fail to have an important imprint on the unfolding events on a world-wide scale.
China’s is the fastest growing major economy. It is on course to becoming the workshop of the world, with a rapidly rising technological prowess, of which it gave ample proof by putting satellites into space and a manned flight into orbit.
In 1980, the Chinese economy accounted for just five per cent of the size of Japan’s, the world’s second largest economy. Today China’s GDP is almost a quarter that of Japan. On the basis of the extrapolation of the rate of growth of these two countries, China’s economy could well outstrip Japan’s within 20 years. Go Chok Tong, Singapore’s prime minister, in his national day address in 2002, predicted that "China’s economy is potentially 10 times the size of Japan’s". He went on to say "Just ask yourself: how does Singapore compete against 10 postwar Japans, all industrialising and exporting to the world at the same time?"
Within four decades, China’s economy could rival that of the US in size. Between 1980 and 2000, the average annual growth rate of the Chinese economy was 9.7 per cent (see FT, 31 January 2002). In 2003, officially it grew by 9.1 per cent, however the real figure was nearer 11 or 12 per cent. During the last two decades, the Chinese economy quadrupled; in the coming two decades, it is expected to quadruple again. China produces 220 million tonnes of steel a year - more than the combined steel production of the US and Japan. Nevertheless, it imported 30 million tonnes of steel in 2003, thanks to the rising demand for steel products stemming from the furious tempo of construction and economic expansion. And, it plans to build an additional capacity of 80 million tonnes of steel a year. During the same year (2003), China consumed 40% of global cement production and surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest importer of oil after the US. In 2002, China consumed 21 % of the globally traded aluminium, 24% of its zinc, 28 % of its iron ore, 17% of its copper and 23 % of its stainless steel, according to Deutsche Bank’s research (see FT, 23 September 2003).
China’s trade has grown phenomenally, with its share of global exports and imports rising from 1.2 per cent and 1.1 per cent to 5.2 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively. In 2003, Chinese exports rose 34.6% to $438 billion, while imports rose 39.9 % to $412.8 billion - an overall surplus of $25.5 billion. In 2002, China replaced Japan as the country with the largest trade surplus ($100 billion) with the US, and in 2003 it had a trade surplus with the US to the amount of $125 billion. Today China is the world’s fourth largest exporter (after US, Germany and Japan) and very soon it will be the world’s third largest importer, after the US and Germany. By 2010, China’s exports would surpass those of the US at current trends. A quarter of the overall US trade deficit today is with China. In 2003, China became Japan’s and South Korea’s biggest trading partner.
In 2002, China was the biggest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), receiving $53 billion, as against $30 billion destined for the US. China holds the world’s second largest Foreign Currency Reserves (FCR) after Japan. Its FCR stand at $420 billion (as against Japan’s $777 billion).
Car sales in 2004 are likely to be 2.4 million - a 20% increase over 2003. By the year 2008, demand is expected to reach 4 million to 4.5 million cars a year. By 2007, Chinese capacity for the production of all types of vehicles will be 15 million, threatening an almighty global glut (see FT, 24 March 2004 and 26 November 2003).
Over the past 10 years, nearly 100 million peasant farmers have migrated to factory and other urban jobs. By 2020, China plans to shift 300 million to 500 million people from the countryside to urban centres - thus transforming the country from a rural into an industrialised one. If today, 40% of the Chinese people are urbanised and 60% live in the country, by 2020 these ratios will be reversed.
What is more, the economic transformation has begun to spread inland from the coastal areas. Cities such as Nanchang in Jiangxi province and Wahu in Anhvi province, at best improving backwaters a mere five years ago, have been transformed into transport hubs between the economically vibrant deltas of the Pearl and Yangtze rivers owing to the frenetic construction of motorways and railroads.
It is not merely in areas of low technology mass production that China has made progress. Far from it. Its rapid progress up the technology ladder is evident everywhere. Chinese enterprises can put satellites into space, undercut General Motors and Volkswagen in car production, build 600MW power generators, engineer a high-speed train, produce advanced sheet steel and manufacture sophisticated machine tools - an area in which, according to Peter Eelman, Vice-President of the Association for Manufacturing Technology, it would be an understatement to say that, technically, Chinese machine tool-makers have progressed 50 years in the past 10.
In the light of the foregoing, it would be no exaggeration to say that the emergence of China as an industrial country would have some profound consequences by shifting the balance of economic, political and military power away from the present-day dominant powers.
Although India’s industrial development does not match that of China, it too has made notable progress. In a recent report, Goldman Sachs predicted that by 2050, India would be the world’s third largest economy (after the US and China), overtaking the UK in 20 years and Japan in 30 years (see FT, 9 December 2003).
In addition, both India and China are busy modernising their armed forces, including their nuclear arsenal.
These developments, the emergence of China and India on the world economic and political stage, are causing serious worries on the part of the various imperialist powers, especially the US. While single-mindedly pursuing the goal of limitless military superiority, US imperialism tells others that the pursuit of military superiority is an outdated notion. However, others will do what the US does and not what it says, for by its actions, the US is likely to, nay, is already causing an arms race.
This being the case, the US is busy enlisting the support of Japan (through the Japan-US Security Treaty) and India in an endeavour to encircle China and put pressure on it. In other words, US imperialism is busy making preparations for a war against People’s China as a part of its plans to dominate Asia.
Asia is the largest prize. It is home to 60% of humanity; in 2002, it generated 24% of the global gross product at market prices, and a third at purchasing power parity (PPP). Together, Japan, China, India and South Korea, generate 85% of the GDP of each and south Asia. At PPP, a different picture emerges. At PPP, in 2002, China was the world’s second largest economy, followed by Japan and India. The region accounts for 24% of the world merchandise exports. In 2001, more than a third of the trade of these countries was with each other. Between January 1997 and June 2003, Asia contributed 83% of the increase in global FCR, which rose by $1,079 - 30% of this increase was accounted for by Japan and 22% by China. The region is a magnet for FDI inflows. While the total inflows of FDI into developing countries fell from $209 billion in 2001 to $162 billion in 2002, of these a huge $89 billion went to south and east Asia - China alone getting $53 billion.
Out of a total of $2,340 billion stock of FDI for all developing countries, the stock of inward FDI for the Asian region stood at $1,305 billion by 2002.
In the light of the above figures, it is not surprising that Martin Woolf, from whose article the figures in the above two paragraphs are taken, should assert that "Asia’s rise is the economic event of our age", adding that "Europe was the past, the US is the present and a China-dominated Asia the future of the global economy" (FT, 22 September 2003).
Even allowing for the hyperbole, Asia’s importance, in particular that of China, as big players in world economics and politics cannot be exaggerated. And this increasing importance of Asia, especially of China, is hardly to the liking of US imperialism, the present-day dominant power - both economically and militarily.
Nor is China’s emergence as a strong economic and military power to the liking of Japanese imperialism, which has taken several small, but significant, steps over the past few years, with active encouragement from and support of the US, to counter China’s growing influence. It is competing with China in the race to secure Russian oil supplies; it has been increasingly involved in international ‘peace-keeping’ operations (the despatch of a heavily-armed 550-strong contingent to Iraq being the latest example); it has decided to develop a missile defence system along with the US, and it is in the process of rewriting its post-war pacifist constitution - all in the name of becoming a "normal" nation. Ichiro Ozawa, a prominent conservative politician has even argued that Japan, in response to the growing power of China, may develop its own nuclear weapons. The US, the very country that, in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat, imposed upon her the constitution, which prevents the latter from having an army, navy and air force, is pushing Japan to break free of its post-war constraints. As a matter of fact these constraints were broken long ago at Washington’s instigation whereby Japan established strong ‘Self Defence Forces’. However, these forces cannot fight abroad. Hence the efforts at rewriting the constitution.
Under prime minister Koizumi, who has taken to visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to Japan’s 2.5 billion war dead, including Class-A war criminals such as Hideki Tojo, the Japanese government has been pushing for the acceptance by the world of Japan as a "grown up" nation shorn of the stigma of a defeated country. In these endeavours, it has the full support of the US, for the obvious reason that the latter hopes to mobilise Japan on its side to fight against China.
A report of the US Congressional Panel in 2002 sounded the alarm that China’s rise could pose a threat to regional stability. The US-China Securities Review Commission came to the conclusion that it was a mistake on the part of Washington to help China build up its economic might unless Beijing undertook reforms to its political system, failing which, "in the worst case, this could lead to military conflict" (quoted in the FT, 2 December 2002).
At the present, no one can foretell whether Japan, or the US, or both of them together, or any other combination of imperialist states and their satellites will go to war against China or not. And who is to say that China will not be able successfully to enlist the support of India, Russia and the EU in the struggle against the combined forces of US and Japanese imperialism. One thing alone is certain, the deepening crisis of overproduction engulfing imperialism, which in turn is made worse by the emergence of China (and to a lesser extent India) as a huge economic power, is driving the various imperialist powers, in particular the US, towards war - both as a means of re-dividing the world and as a ‘solution’ to the problem of glut in the world markets consequent upon overproduction characteristic of capitalism.
The Iraq war came in the midst of a world economy mired in the wake of three years of recession and below-trend growth. Even though the stock markets have recovered somewhat over the past 12 months and the housing market is booming, there is little solid economic reason to believe that the world economy is on the eve of a sustained economic growth. The US debt - both private and government, external and internal - is unsustainable, as are the US fiscal and current account deficits. The willingness of foreigners to finance US deficits has made it possible thus far for the US authorities to pursue a policy of low interest rates, low taxes, huge deficits and a total reliance on a speculative stock market and a housing bubble to generate growth. Both the willingness and ability of foreigners have their limits. Besides, the markets could well react to the parlous state of US finances, causing a precipitate fall in the dollar, followed by a sharp rise in interest rates - all ending up in the ditch of a devastating slump, not only in the US but right across the global capitalist economy, with fearful consequences for the entire capitalist system. The war in Iraq, far from providing a solution to the problems of the crisis-ridden, and crisis-driven, imperialist system - in particular US imperialism - is merely serving to exacerbate it further still. But like a losing gambler going for the last throw, US imperialism is only too likely to resort to further war adventures. A war in the Far East should not be regarded as an impossibility.
To conclude, while keenly observing the developing contradictions between the three principal imperialist blocs - US, EU and Japan - the international communist movement must seriously study the economic and political developments in Asia, which are fraught with dangers and opportunities alike, to get a clearer and fuller picture of the fast-approaching world developments.
Harpal Brar, Editor, LALKAR
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