End US sanctions! For working-class solidarity – The Militant

End US sanctions! For working-class solidarity – The Militant

Maidan uprising strengthened the working class in Ukraine – The Militant

Maidan uprising strengthened the working class in Ukraine – The Militant

Putin: ‘Butcher’ of Aleppo and Grozny

....In just two months, the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine has shaken up alliances between imperialist governments worldwide as the capitalist rulers search for how best to defend their national interests. The invasion has disrupted trade and delivery of everything from wheat to oil and increased the volatility of financial markets. Every capitalist regime is beefing up its military capacity in anticipation of more wars to come.

Russian forces launched an attack on Ukrainian defensive lines dug in along a nearly 300-mile front in an arc from Kharkiv in the northeast through Luhansk and Donetsk to the still surrounded and besieged city of Mariupol in the southeast, to Kherson further west. “The battle for Donbas,” which is the main industrial and mining region in Ukraine, looms.

Amassed Russian troops and tanks are being hurled at Ukrainian defenses in a drive to conquer territory adjacent to the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk that Moscow-backed separatists, reinforced by Russian agents, seized in 2014. This covered roughly a third of the two Ukrainian provinces. While Putin claims the inhabitants there are all Russians, he is planning a massive war against them.

While the Russian military commands much greater heavy armor and air power, its growing number of troops there are weakened by earlier losses and morale problems. They also face determined resistance by 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers seasoned in battle since the 2014 conflict and today’s combat.

Moscow’s troops out of all of Ukraine now! – The Militant

Prime Minister of Pakistan toppled amid shifts caused by Moscow’s war

Economic turmoil and political conflicts are rising across Asia in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, as governments seek the best course to defend their interests in a shifting world. Alongside the rulers of China and India, the capitalist leaders of Pakistan are calibrating the best place for themselves.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted April 10 after a vote of no confidence in parliament and replaced with former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Military chiefs dropped their support for Khan after his trip to Moscow on the eve of the Putin regime's invasion, where he was caught on camera telling a Russian official, "What a time to come. So much excitement!"

The U.S. government congratulated Sharif on resuming office. It has long sought an alliance with the rulers of Pakistan. Since 2002 Washington has given the regime in Pakistan more than $14 billion in military aid. With support by U.S. special forces and drones, the Pakistani government waged deadly attacks on people in areas of the country controlled by the Taliban in 2009.

After Khan took office in 2018, he increased Islamabad's allegiance with the Chinese government. He refused to host U.S. military bases and welcomed last year's Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. In recent years Beijing has expanded its influence in Pakistan at the U.S. rulers' expense.

Like numerous capitalist governments across the region, Pakistan's has become more dependent on economic relations with Beijing. Since 2015 the Chinese government has invested $75 billion in roads, railways, energy production and pipelines linking China to the Pakistani port of Gwadar. Regular joint military exercises are carried out.

After his election Sharif told parliament, "We will make sure we make Pakistan a paradise for investment." He focused on extending collaboration with Beijing on China's Belt and Road Initiative.

After Khan was booted out, tens of thousands protested across the country. He began laying the groundwork for a political comeback with further rallies planed days after his ouster. Khan denounced the new government as "slaves to America," alleging he was removed in a U.S.-led conspiracy.

Army spokesperson Maj. Gen. Babar Iftikhar denied Khan's claims.

Full:

https://themilitant.com/2022/04/21/prime-minister-of-pakistan-toppled-amid-shifts-caused-by-moscows-war/ 

Sanctions block working-class unity needed to end Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine – The Militant

[....]sanctions, like the sweeping measures being imposed on Russia, are in fact economic warfare. History shows they can easily lead to wider war.

In 1940-41, as World War II began in Europe, President Franklin Roosevelt placed far-reaching economic sanctions on Japan, culminating in an oil embargo that deprived Tokyo of a key resource it had none of at home. In response, Japan’s imperial rulers decided they had no choice but to open a war with Washington and bombed Pearl Harbor. The Nazi government in Berlin joined in declaring war on Washington.

While all political questions are at root class questions under capitalism, none is more so than the question of war. What is decisive in defeating Putin today and future designs on Ukraine is uniting working people in Ukraine, Russia and beyond together to this end.

Sanctions block working-class unity needed to end Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine – The Militant

Under cover of war, Kyiv attacks political rights, unions

https://themilitant.com/2022/04/02/under-cover-of-war-kyiv-attacks-political-rights-unions/ 

We will have our chance

Below is a selection from New International no. 7, which features the article “Washington’s Assault on Iraq: The Opening Guns of World War III,” published just after the first Gulf War. Copyright © 1991 by New International. Reprinted by permission.
 

The war and its immediate consequences did not resolve, but rather exacerbated the economic and political contradictions in the United States and worldwide that increasingly drove Washington to use its military might in the first place. The war accelerated the rivalry between Washington and other imperialist powers and increased the likelihood of sharpening conflicts among them. …

The employers will try to take more out of the hides of the hundreds of millions of debt slaves in the semicolonial world. They will drive harder at home to lower living standards and step up the pace and intensity of production inside mines, mills, and factories. They will extend their efforts to chip away at rights and democratic liberties and seek to weaken and restrict the space open to the working class and its organizations for independent political action.

Washington’s war against Iraq was thus an announcement, a loud and clear one, of the conflicts that lie ahead as the imperialist rulers follow the historic logic of their declining world system of exploitation and oppression — a line of march that, willy-nilly, moves toward World War III.

For working people the world over, for vanguard working-class fighters, and for that section of the working-class vanguard who are communists, these political assessments are decisive in charting a course to advance the historic line of march of our class. The future of humanity depends on the independent political organization of the world’s toilers to resist the devastation the rulers seek to impose on us. It depends on our capacity to fight, to win revolutionary battles, and to take war-making powers out of the hands of the exploiters and oppressors by establishing governments of the workers and farmers. …

We will have our chance.

1991 Iraq war sounded opening guns of World War III – The Militant