Playing with fire in the Himalayas…

India is playing a dangerous game in the Himalayas. Indian attempts to encroach into Chinese territory were beaten back in a skirmish in which at least 20 Indian troops were killed and 120 more wounded this week.

In the past India followed the path of independence and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies in Asia and eastern Europe. Leaders such as Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi were pillars of the non-aligned movement. Now it’s led by Narendra Modi, the leader of the BJP, a front led by the secret Hindu nationalist RSS militia, a fascist bloc of high-castes, landlords and industrialists.

The BJP leaders replaced India's traditional policy with one of support for Israel and partnership with US imperialism. Some of them even talk of joining NATO now.

The Modi government claims it wants to make India “self-sufficient”. Modi says a self-sufficient India would be fully integrated with the world economy whilst not dependent on anyone in strategic areas. In practice, all this means is privatising the country’s natural resources for the benefit of foreign and Indian big business.

The Indian government has proved totally incapable of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic that is sweeping across the sub-continent. The mostly privatised health service cannot cope and at least an additional 150 million people have been rendered unemployed during the lockdown period.

The needs of millions upon millions of Indians who live in abject poverty are ignored by the government that seeks to establish authoritarian rule throughout the country.

Despite being the country's largest religious minority, India's Muslims are frequently subjected to violent attacks by Hindu fanatics, like the riots in Delhi last February that forced many Muslims to flee the capital in terror.

India’s corrupt ruling class hopes to divert the masses down the barren road of sectarian violence whilst they dream of riches to come by squandering billions on weapons in a drive to become America’s chief enforcer in the region.

The hidden hand of US imperialism clearly lies behind the latest Indian provocation in the Galwan Valley, like it did when it covertly backed Indian support for the Dalai Lama’s futile revolt in Tibet in 1959 and the border war of 1962. On both occasions the Americans did nothing and the Indians got a bloody nose. Let’s hope wiser counsel prevails in Delhi this time round.

…and on the Korean peninsula

Democratic Korea dramatically countered recent south Korean provocations by blowing up the empty north–south liaison office in the border town of Kaesong this week. This dramatic piece of street art was clearly intended to send a message to the Seoul regime that has resorted to old Cold War tricks along the de-militarised zone that divides the Korean peninsula.

Helium balloons carrying anti-communist propaganda leaflets have regularly been launched into the DPR Korea by what the puppet regime calls “defectors”. But everyone knows that these people, more accurately called “riff-raff” and “human scum” by the north, are agents of south Korean intelligence, which itself is but an arm of the CIA.

During the height of the Cold War the Americans and their local lackeys used balloons to drop dollars and propaganda across the armistice line drawn up at the end of the Korean war in 1953. Donald Trump’s summits with Kim Jong Un raised hopes of a new page in inter-Korean relations. But despite the fine words, the Americans have done nothing apart from stepping up their blockade of the DPRK.

No Deal Trump not welcome here

Donald Trump’s minions tell the world that their boss is a great negotiator. Trump says in a book that he probably didn’t write that: “Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals.” But what has he actually achieved?

Absolutely nothing. Trump said he was going to make the Mexicans pay for the wall he’s building to keep out illegal immigrants. Well they didn’t.

He unilaterally pulled out of the international nuclear deal with Iran and stepped up sanctions in a bid to force the Iranians to renegotiate on American terms. That didn’t happen.

Despite three meetings with Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the nuclear issue, Trump’s put nothing concrete on the table and the whole process has stalled. So that’s been a waste of time.

Trump hiked up tariffs to force the Chinese to agree to a one-sided trade deal with US imperialism. All that’s done has been to spark off a trade war that could plunge the global economy into another recession.

And the worthless “Deal of the Century” that Trump’s men thought could bring peace to the Middle East by giving Israel all that it wanted and giving the Palestinians nothing in return died before it even got off the ground.

Whilst his Democrat rivals claim a moral high-ground they simply do not possess, Trump is no saint either.

The Democrats like to portray Trump as a vulgar, corrupt racist unfit to hold public office. But he is so much more than that. The property tycoon turned president represents those who no longer want to pay for wars they cannot win – which has been virtually all of them since the Second World War. They too want US hegemony over the world but they believe it can be won through trade wars and unequal treaties, which was the preferred form of US overseas expansion in the 19th century. This is what Trump means when he says he wants to “Make America Great Again”.

The US president wants to cut his losses in conflicts he did not initiate in Afghanistan and Syria. He doesn’t believe in ‘globalisation’ or the ‘new world order’ of past Democrat and Republican administrations that tried to use US might to establish American hegemony throughout the world.

Trump represents the American capitalists who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe, Afghanistan and south Korea so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s control over south America.

Trump’s coming to London again in early December for a NATO summit. He wasn’t welcome the last time he came. He isn’t welcome now. It isn’t just because he’s a moronic climate-change denier with sexist, chauvinist and bigoted anti-immigrant views. It’s because he is the Supreme Commander of the most oppressive country in the world.

No US president should be welcomed here until US imperialism ends its occupation of south Korea and closes its ring of bases that target Russia and People’s China. No US president should be welcomed in Britain until the USA ends its support of the fascist regime in Kiev and the Saudi intervention in Yemen, pulls out of Syria and Iraq, and drops sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Democratic Korea. No leader of US imperialism should be fêted in Britain until America ends its support for Zionist Israel and recognises the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

Blowing one’s own trumpet

Donald Trump provoked laughter at the United Nations this week when he claimed that his administration had “accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country”. His rambling address to the General Assembly sought to justify his “America First” policies that threaten to plunge the world into a destructive trade war while justifying US imperialism’s support for America’s lackeys across the globe.

 Trump is by no means the worst post-war US president. He has still to plunge America into another disastrous war like his predecessors did in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Libya and Iraq. To be fair, Trump did not initiate the US intervention in Syria. That was down to Obama and the Democrats. And the maverick Republican leader did move to ease tension on the Korean peninsula with a historic summit with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore last summer.

But the new American war-lord has achieved little else over the past two years of his watch. He told the assembled leaders and diplomats at the UN that America’s “new approach is also yielding great strides and very historic change” in the Middle East. What that really means is encouraging the Saudi Arabians and the other feudal Arabs to step up their brutal intervention in Yemen and confront Iran,

At the same time the Trump administration continues to pursue its “deal of the century” on Palestine which gives Israel everything it wants. All the Palestinians are offered in some paltry blood-money which will come from Saudi coffers and from the money the Americans have saved by stopping their contributions to the UN’s Palestinian refugee relief fund. Needless to say this absurd plan, that has no takers apart from America’s Israeli and Saudi pawns, is going nowhere.

Trump, of course, is largely the prisoner of those who propelled him into the White House in the first place. He clearly does represent bourgeois American circles who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe and north-east Asia so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s hegemony over south America. But they are not the dominant force within the US ruling class and they may not even be in control of the party Trump currently heads.

The dominant force within the US ruling class still dreams of the “new world order” that the Americans proclaimed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. While their public face may have been that of the late Senator John McCain, the “deep state” that represents the most reactionary and aggressive sections of the American ruling class cuts across all parties in the United States.

  They are bitterly opposed to “America First”, They are doing their best to sabotage the current rapprochement between north and south Korea and undermine any hope of a future understanding with Russia. Shamefully, the May government is collaborating in their campaign of anti-Russian provocations that are designed to prevent Trump from reaching any meaningful agreement with the Kremlin.

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are now taking the first tentative steps towards developing an independent foreign policy for Labour in government with renewed calls for global peace and justice for the Palestinians.

We are suffering unemployment and economic stagnation. We want major cuts in military expenditure including the scrapping of Trident and the withdrawal of all British troops from the Middle East, Afghanistan and northern Ireland. The money saved should be the switched to peaceful and civil purposes and creating jobs. These are the demands that must be taken up throughout the peace and labour movement today.