Obama’s war summit in Europe

Obama with Merkel during European “summit” (April 2016). Two democracy usurpers leading the world to further calamities. The needs of US imperialism come first, which require endless wars and immiseration. Don’t expect the corrupt corporate media to alert you to it.

Barack Obama ended his six-day trip through Saudi Arabia, Britain and Germany Monday with what amounted to a mini-war summit in the northern German city of Hannover. The meeting was attended by himself, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Obama used the occasion to announce a significant escalation of the US intervention in the Middle East—the dispatch of 250 more special operations troops, a six-fold increase over the current deployment of 50. This follows on the heels of an escalation of troop numbers in Iraq and an authorization of the use of US Apache attack helicopters in combat there.

The Syrian escalation has been ordered under conditions where the White House has reportedly fashioned a “Plan B” to be put into effect once the shaky cessation of hostilities in the country is deemed to have failed. The plan calls for the CIA, operating in conjunction with Washington’s reactionary allies in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil monarchies, to funnel massive quantities of new arms, including surface-to-air missiles, to the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias that serve as Western proxies in the war for regime-change.

The American president’s message to his European counterparts was that they must stop being “complacent” and work to build up their own military forces for interventions in the Middle East, North Africa and against Russia to the east.

This appeal appeared to be in line with the policies already being pursued by Washington’s NATO allies. Britain, France and Italy are in the advanced stages of preparing another imperialist incursion into oil-rich Libya, having cobbled together a puppet regime that can formally request foreign intervention in a country already shattered by the US-NATO war begun five years ago.

Obama’s host, Chancellor Merkel, proudly declared, “We are ready and willing to be militarily engaged,” citing the German military’s participation in ongoing interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali.

“We have to put in more equipment, more personnel,” Merkel said at a joint press conference with Obama. “We know the targets NATO has submitted to us. We think that the whole positioning of our federal armed forces reflects fully our sense that we need to shoulder this international responsibility.”

Seven decades after the fall of the Third Reich, German militarism, recklessly promoted by Washington, is back in business.

There was a certain valedictory quality to Obama’s public statements in Germany, with his administration coming to an end in barely nine months. He pretentiously titled a 49-minute speech he delivered Monday “An Address to the People of Europe.”

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, described the Hannover speech to a group of businessmen as a “bookend” to a speech he delivered in Berlin in the summer of 2008 during his run for presidency. At that time, some 200,000 people poured into Berlin’s Tiergarten to cheer the Democratic candidate in the naive hope that he would put an end to the eight years of aggressive war, torture and criminality that characterized the Bush presidency.

This represented what was probably the high water mark of the phenomenon known as “Obamamania,” in which large numbers of people on both sides of the Atlantic were swept up in the cynical marketing of Obama, a junior senator and unknown political quantity, as the champion of “hope and change,” whose supposed sympathy for the oppressed and hostility to war would be assured by the color of his skin.

Playing a prominent role in this campaign were various elements of the pseudo-left both in the US and Europe, including the International Socialist Organization in the US, which described his election as a “transformative event,” and Germany’s Left Party, which praised his 2008 speech in the Tiergarten. These forces worked to channel antiwar sentiment behind the Democratic candidate, whose election served as a vehicle for their own move to open support for imperialist war.

At the time, the World Socialist Web Site described the speech as “a reactionary affirmation of Cold War anti-communism and an attempt to promote the new framework for US imperialist militarism and aggression, the so-called ‘global war on terror.’”

The speech, the WSWS continued, promised a more collaborative relationship with Europe’s capitalist powers and offered the prospect that “in return for their assistance in salvaging America’s neocolonial ventures in Afghanistan and elsewhere, they could anticipate a larger slice of the spoils.” To the American ruling elite, the speech signaled Obama’s “determination as president to prosecute US imperialism’s global hegemonic aims…”

Nearly eight years later, Obama addressed the “people of Europe” as a commander-in-chief who has overseen the continuation of the war in Afghanistan along with new military interventions in both Iraq and Syria. As president, he threw the US military into the war for regime-change that devastated Libya. He has provided military support to the Saudi assault that has driven the people of Yemen to the brink of starvation and personally directed a global campaign of drone murders and massacres that has killed thousands of innocent civilians.

The danger is growing of these various conflicts igniting a new world war, as the Pentagon executes its “pivot to Asia” with increasingly provocative military challenges to China, and the US and NATO carry out an aggressive buildup on Russia’s borders.

The election to choose Obama’s successor is notable for the virtual blackout by the two major parties, their candidates and the corporate media of the rising danger of world war.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, is the favored candidate of the US military and intelligence complex, described glowingly by the New York Times last week as the “last true hawk left in the race.” The Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has called for a major increase in military spending and the return of torture.

The “democratic socialism” and “political revolution” of Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders include no challenge to American militarism, and he has pledged to back Clinton should she win the nomination.

The Socialist Equality Party has launched its 2016 election campaign. Our candidates, Jerry White for US president and Niles Niemuth for vice president, are breaking through the conspiracy of silence of the capitalist parties and candidates and raising as the most critical issue confronting American working people the danger of war. Their campaign is focused centrally on the building of an international antiwar movement based on the working class and directed against the capitalist system, the source of militarism and war.

The lessons of Obama’s presidency are vital. Workers and young people can wage an effective struggle against war only to the extent that they organize their strength independently of and in opposition to the Democratic Party and the capitalist two-party system.

At the same time, this struggle must be international, uniting the working class across national boundaries in a common struggle against imperialism and for socialism.

Obama in Germany: New joint aggression and growing imperialist rivalries

By Johannes Stern

Dateline: 26 April 2016 / wsws.org

An extremely ominous development is concealed behind all of the mutual flattery and declarations of friendship between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama over recent days.

Obama’s fifth trip to Germany was not simply a visit to the 2016 Hanover Fair, or a farewell tour by a departing American president, but rather was aimed at escalating both imperialist aggression in the Middle East and NATO’s military build-up against Russia. At the same time, it initiated a new stage in the return of German militarism.

Already at the joint press conference in Hanover on Saturday, Obama and Merkel spoke very openly about their plans. Merkel stated early on, “We have used the opportunity to discuss the various challenges of the international agenda.” These were “of course Syria, Libya and Afghanistan, but also Africa and the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.”

They had been in agreement “that the issues of security in the area around Europe could only be resolved through joint Transatlantic efforts for which European engagement and also German engagement on many issues [was] necessary.” Merkel noted that Germany had “shown in recent months that it [had] undertaken additional efforts in many places,” such as in Iraq, the “struggle against terrorism” in Syria and “Mali or other regions where we are now active.”

In addition, Berlin was prepared to “further engage militarily” and strengthen its armed forces. Merkel said reassuringly, “Germany is in it for the very long term in several areas, in which we will continue.” Weapons had been sent to the Peshmerga and thereby “supplied to a tense region, which in light of our historical development [was] a completely new step.” “Assuming responsibility in Africa” was “apart from the Congo mission, which we had for a short time previously, a new area.”

Do people ever learn from history?

The question is: Where are the German people in all this? Do they fail to see, to comprehend the enormity of the betrayals concocted by these pseudo-leaders right under their noses? Have they learned nothing from history? One can forgive the American masses for their notorious obtuseness in connection with international affairs, but the Germans? This is truly hard to believe. Are Europeans so anesthesized by the American brand of brainwash that they do not recognize the clear signs of approaching catastrophe?

On Germany’s prior decision to increase the defence budget Merkel stated: “I know that we obviously have to make additional efforts as regards our possibilities to defend ourselves. We have to put in more equipment, more personnel.” She recognised “the targets set for us by NATO” and said she “believes that the overall deployment of the German army now fully reflects our sense that we need to shoulder this international responsibility.”

Obama, who repeatedly praised Merkel in the highest tones, hailed Germany’s new war policy. “Germany is a vital member of the coalition to destroy ISIL. German aircraft support the air campaign, and German personnel in Iraq are training local forces. German assistance is helping to stabilise Iraq and rebuild the areas it liberates from ISIL,” he stated.

At the same time, Obama warned of the need to retain the “strength of our NATO alliance” and to strengthen it against Russia. With a threatening undertone, which was certainly aimed at those sections of the German ruling elite who prefer a closer strategic orientation to Russia, he declared, “We continue to augment, on a rotational basis, NATO forces in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states. As I’ve said from the very beginning of my presidency, we have a treaty obligation to defend every NATO ally—and we will.”

These are not empty words. According to a news report by Der Spiegel, Obama called on Merkel at a so-called G5 meeting on Monday involving the prime ministers of Britain and Italy and the French President, to participate “significantly in the planned stationing of permanently rotating NATO units on the eastern border of the alliance.” Berlin had thus far taken a back seat in the planning and pointed to the German army’s significant participation in NATO’s new rapid reaction force.

It now appears increasingly likely that the government is ready to further strengthen its forces in Eastern Europe. Already at a 20 April press conference in Berlin with visiting Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, Merkel reaffirmed that the “decisions from Wales” would be “further developed” at the coming NATO summit in Warsaw, and “we will do our part in accordance with this.”

Journalist Thomas Wiegold, who has close connections to the military and security establishment, commented on his blog “Eyes front!”: “The question is therefore not now whether the German army is to be present with troops on the eastern flank of NATO (and that means in part: practically on the Russian border). They have been for a long time. The question is much more if this presence is to be significantly strengthened. And if the German army will operate in continuous rotation with other troops at battalion strength, not company strength or less.”

Since the federal government announced that Germany would again play a role in world politics “corresponding to the importance of our country,” (Federal President Gauck on October 3, 2013), it has used Washington’s aggressive foreign policy to build up its own military and advance its own imperialist interests.

Significantly, it was announced on Monday that Germany would establish its own military base for Tornado fighter planes in Turkey. According to information from Spiegel Online the German government reckons “with a very long German intervention against the Islamic State” and is therefore planning a long term deployment at the Turkish Air Force Base in Incirlik. According to internal documents, a total of around €65 million is to be made available for a separate airstrip, accommodations for German soldiers and a fully equipped command post. In addition, the Bundeswehr is negotiating a long-term agreement with the Turkish government for the long-term stationing of German soldiers.

The much-vaunted close economic relations between the US and Germany are also increasingly marked by rivalry when it comes to profits and markets. At the industrial fair in Hanover, both Obama and Merkel made remarks with critical undertones. When they mounted the podium in Hall 3, Obama declared, “Now is another opportunity for me to say, ‘Come to us and buy American goods.’” Merkel had already stated at the opening of the fair on Sunday evening: “Buy German would also be very good” and added: “We love competition. But we also like to win.”

In a commentary titled “Obama and Merkel in Hanover: Each with their separate view,” Spiegel Online wrote, “The World’s Largest Industry Fair with host country USA is more than ever a test of strength between the largest and the fourth largest economy in the world.”

It is against this background that one can understand the ongoing tensions around the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreements (TTIP) that the EU is currently negotiating with the United States. Despite all the claims that the US wanted “to hurry” (Merkel), all the nations involved are seeking to negotiate the best conditions for their own interests and thereby make as few concessions as possible. Die Zeit wrote succinctly that “TTIP will not happen so fast” because each side is worried “they will not be able to rewrite the rules for other markets to benefit their own business lobby.”

What lies behind the German-American axis, which appears to take the form of close military and economic cooperation but where explosive tensions are developing ?

One indication is the interview given by the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) in the weekend edition of the Handelsblatt. Under the heading “The situation is more dangerous than in Cold War,” he stated, “The old order has not yet been replaced by a new one,” and he continued “This struggle for influence and hegemony is not taking place in a peaceful seminar environment, but is exploding violently.”

In other words, just as was the case prior to the First and Second World Wars, a new race for “influence” and “hegemony” is taking place between the imperialist powers that will once again “explode violently” if the working class does not intervene on the basis of an international and socialist program.