Re: Baltics: NATO membership "inevitable"
>[From Johnson's Russia list. The Russians wouldn't be feeling
>surrounded, would they?]
Yes they would.
However the article shows an interesting management of the process of struggle and unity. It is not just sabre-rattling.
>"The challenge for many years to come is going to be to manage the
>disagreements and maintain total clarity about the (alliance's)
>driving principles, one of which is that no sovereign state can be
>declared ineligible for NATO membership because of geography."
The statement that geography is not a bar to any country to join, is ominous for the entire world.
The remark about managing the disagreements, signals the sophisticated use of a mix of politics and economics. Russia is clearly not out of the frame: the relations with Russia are being managed.
We need to update the criticism of the theory of ultra-imperialism. Unfortunately having taunted me on this list with having promoted a theory of ultra-imperialism, Louis Proyect did not accept my offer to discuss it on his own marxism list.
I suggest that it is essential to continue to see rivalry between different imperialisms, but also to recognise the complex ways they inter-relate, contend, threaten, warn, compromise, and cooperate. Ultimately what matters is the differential in the accumulation of capital.
The process of contention does however imply moves towards global governance, in that the politics of contention include appeals to values like safety, human rights and economic development. The US clearly wants this all under its hegemony.
Russia itself is deeply penetrated by this agenda, and dependent on loans from the IMF. It still struggles, and has a motive for doing so, as Doug points out. But it may also be assessing how much, like the EU, it is to Russia's advantage to accept a subordinate, regional role in a wider global network dominated by the US.
Extracts from these articles from right-wing think, "Stratfor", which produces its "Global Intelligence Updates" not for the media, but for big US companies, shows some of the inside thinking of the key class forces.
>2030 GMT, 14th June 1999
> CONFLICT THREATENS CAUCASUS PIPELINES
>
> Besides Kosovo, the Baltics, and Ukraine, another area of heated contention
>between Russia and the West is in the Caucasus. There, Russia is
increasingly
>cooperating militarily with Armenia and is believed to be cooperating
>politically with Abkhaz separatists, to counterbalance NATO influence in
>Azerbaijan and Georgia. Complicating matters, the wild card Chechnya is
>forging its own path with the aid of Middle Eastern interests. Caught in the
>middle are international oil companies, who are attempting to cash in on
>Central Asia’s oil wealth.
>
and again:
>1939 GMT, 21st June 1999
> RUSSIA FLEXES MUSCLES IN CAUCASUS
>
> In the wake of a series of clashes between Armenian and Azeri forces last
>week and over the weekend, Baku has charged Moscow with destabilizing the
>Caucasus in a deliberate attempt to keep Azerbaijan under Russian influence.
>The Azeri Defense Ministry specifically condemned Russia for supplying arms
>to Armenia, arguing that this helped fuel the recent clashes. As if to
>underscore Baku’s charges, four Russian MiG-29 fighter aircraft arrived in
>Yerevan on June 21, part of a Russian fighter group that, according to
>Armenian officials, is being deployed to Armenia in the context of a CIS air
>defense framework.
<>
> Russia may have been treated as politically and militarily impotent by the
>West throughout the Kosovo crisis, and have been successfully marginalized
in
>the crisis’ waning days, but Moscow is not ready to let the same thing occur
>on its own immediate periphery. Russia’s current concern and area of direct
>competition with Western interests is the Caucasus region. There, CIS
members
>Georgia and Azerbaijan have been daily sliding farther from Moscow’s sway,
>while eagerly reaching to NATO to support them in their move. Both countries
>opted out of the CIS Collective Security Treaty and both are part of
GUUAM, a
>regional organization of Western-oriented CIS members increasingly evolving
>from an economic cooperation forum to a NATO-affiliated security alliance.
>
The GUUAM block consists of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova.
Belarus BTW may be more likely to reunite with Russia.
The person who sent me these Statfor articles added an interesting commentary. He noted that the US is letting EU companies a free hand in the reconstuction of the Balkans, but emphasised that US bombing of Iraq had continued through the Kosovo war. He takes this as a signal that the US global strategy was not only to tie the Balkans into an EU sphere of influence operating under US hegemony, but "as a stepping stone towards total control of the Caspian Basin energy resources and the key geo-political region of the Eurasian land mass."
"Russia’s elite want to be partners alongside the EU, in a bloc with China and India (all Eurasia) - against US interests. In smoke filled rooms the Euro-countries' leaders are uncertain, as many are not sure of their strength to challenge US might.....but ...in the long run EU and US competing imperialist conflict will travel well beyond trade wars."
The battle lines are not too complicated to be clear. The US of course does have a global agenda. The EU, Russia, China, and Japan, have regional agendas. It is not clear how much they want to unite globally to thwart US hegemonism in the process towards world governance. But the economic roots of conflict will not die away under capitalism. The ultimate battle, that we should focus on, is for the control of global finance capital.
Chris Burford
London