The war in Ukraine is a bonanza for arms manufacturers, which are lined up to profit as the United States and its allies increase military spending.

Less than three full months into 2022, Lockheed Martin’s stock has surged by more than 25%, while the share prices of Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman have also risen by roughly 12%, 14%, and 16%, respectively.

 Historian Jonathan Ng, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tulsa, explained how “the spiraling conflict over Ukraine dramatizes the power of militarism and the influence of defense contractors. A ruthless drive for markets—intertwined with imperialism—has propelled NATO expansion, while inflaming wars from Eastern Europe to Yemen.” 

William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told The Hill that “there’s a lot of possibilities for ways that the contractors will benefit, and in the short term we could be talking about tens of billions of dollars, which is no small thing, even for these big companies.”

The U.S. Congress approved a record-setting Pentagon budget, and their counterparts in several European countries also vowed to significantly boost military spending to counteract Moscow.

The government funding bill that U.S. President Joe Biden signed provides $6.5 billion in military aid to Eastern European nations, including $3.5 billion worth of additional weapons for Ukraine. As The Hill reported, the extra support for Ukraine “comes on top of more than $1 billion the U.S. has already spent in the past year to arm Ukrainian soldiers with modern weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, and Raytheon’s anti-aircraft Stinger missiles.”

The U.S. is not the only country where military contractors are anticipating a bump in sales. Over the past few weeks, European countries including Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden have announced that they will boost military spending.

 Germany said that it would purchase up to 35 American Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, a major reversal from its previous plan to revamp its aging fleet with a combination of older, less expensive American- and European-made jets. That comes after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced late last month that the nation would invest $111 billion in a new military investment fund and increase defense spending above 2% of its gross domestic product.

U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said next year’s Pentagon budget is “going to have to be bigger than we thought,” he added—suggesting that far from being temporary, the recent spike in military spending may be a harbinger of what’s to come in the years ahead.

War in Ukraine a Windfall for Weapons Industry (commondreams.org)

Oil and gas companies are facing a potential bonanza from the Ukraine war, though few in the industry want to admit it.

 “There is going to be a very high price for oil for a very long time, and even the prospect of physical shortages.”  said Robert Buckley, head of relationship development at Cornwall Insight, an energy analysis company.

Oil prices have leapt dramatically, to more than $130 a barrel, sending petrol prices in the UK to more than 155p a litre, while gas prices have also surged.

Luke Sussams, of Jefferies investment bank, said: “The high-price environment is likely to last a long time…”

Big oil and gas companies are now awash with cash.

Green campaigners warned that oil and gas companies were using the Ukraine emergency to further their own interests, by encouraging governments to prioritise oil and gas production and make decisions now on investments that would have little impact on the current crisis but would vastly increase fossil fuel use for years to come.

Marc van Baal, of Follow This, a group of 8,000 green shareholders in oil and gas companies, said: “The leaders of oil and gas companies really have shown in the last years that they want to hold on to their old business model. This is what they understand – turning hydrocarbons into petro-dollars. So I am afraid this is what they are telling governments they should do.”

Tessa Khan, director of Uplift, which campaigns to end North Sea fossil fuels, said: “It’s shameful that oil and gas companies, some of whom have profited from their Russian partnerships for years, now seek to use this humanitarian crisis to further their interests. The fact that they are still being listened to by governments, the UK’s included, is beyond belief.”

Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power, a campaigning group in the US, said: “More drilling in more places isn’t a short-term fix, it’s a long-term problem that only makes oil and gas CEOs richer and locks us into more dependence on dirty, unreliable, expensive and volatile fossil fuels.”

Oil and gas companies are looking at a bonanza from the Ukraine war | Environment | The Guardian

 Since 2015, a fifth of the population has left the country, making Venezuela one of the largest displacement crises in the world, according to the UN Refugee Agency, not far behind Syria.

On average, 2,000 Venezuelans crossed into Colombia every day in 2021, according to the UN.

 The Brookings Institution has described the Venezuelan refugee and migrant crisis as “the most underfunded” in modern history. 

The flow of people may have slowed since Venezuelans first started to leave their country in droves in 2015, but it shows no signs of stopping.

Hunger is one of the main reasons people leave Venezuela. The Venezuelan Finance Observatory, an independent group of economic analysts, said that a shopping basket for a family of four cost 75% more in January 2022 compared to the same period two years ago.

Colombia has been generous to the 1.8 million Venezuelan migrants it hosts, which is equivalent to 32% of all Venezuelan migrants in Latin America, according to the World Bank. 

In February 2021, president Iván Duque announced a new ten-year Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for Venezuelans already in Colombia. 

Hunger and desperation: Venezuela’s huge displacement crisis | openDemocracy

Tactical nuclear weapons is a term generally applied to lower-yield devices designed for battlefield use, which can have a fraction of the strength of the Hiroshima bomb — reduced their lethality, limiting the extent of absolute destruction and deadly radiation fields. That’s also made their use less unthinkable, raising the specter that the Russians could opt to use a smaller device without levelling an entire city.

 Detonate a one kiloton weapon on one side of Kyiv’s Zhuliany airport, for instance, and Russian President Vladimir Putin sends a next-level message with a fireball, shock waves and deadly radiation. But the blast radius wouldn’t reach the end of the runway.

The Russians are thought to have roughly 2,000 such weapons — some so small as to be attached to artillery shells and land mines. The world might reel in horror at nuclear deployment of any size. But, if boxed into the right kind of corner, some argue, Putin could use one in Ukraine without necessarily triggering World War III.

Washington has downplayed the prospect of Russian nuclear deployment, suggesting it’s just Kremlin bluster. Plenty of observers believe Putin would not risk even a low-grade nuclear attack. Doing so could trigger deeper sanctions than the ones already crippling the Russian economy, increase war opposition at home, negatively impact his all-important alliance with the Chinese and change perceptions in nations still hedging their bets with Russia, including India, Brazil and South Africa.

Many in the West have questioned Putin’s state of mind. But a number of experts — including the director of the CIA — appear to have determined he remains more or less within the parameter of sanity. They estimate him, however, to be isolated and angry. 

Michael Gove, a senior British official, reasoned this week, Putin dwells in a “moral sphere the rest of us would find almost impossible to conceive of.”

However,  Matthew Kroenig, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, explained this week that he finds the highest risk of Putin deploying a low-yield nuclear device if the against-the-odds resistance in Ukraine shifts toward triumph, and Moscow is seen to be decisively losing the war.

“I find it hard to imagine Putin accepting a complete military defeat without him trying to use nuclear weapons first,” Kroenig said. “I think he sees limited nuclear use as more attractive than accepting defeat.”

He suggested if Putin went nuclear, he would almost certainly deploy a low-yield weapon with a narrow target. That would fit with what some experts view as a Russian military strategy of escalate to de-escalate — or bringing a crisis to a dramatic climax to force a settlement with the West that leans toward Russian terms.

“They could nuke a ship in the Black Sea, they could nuke a Ukrainian airplane, they could nuke tanks on the ground,” he continued. “They could nuke a small city, although that is probably less likely, and it’s less escalatory to go after a military target than a civilian one.”

“But the message in the West would be, ‘Oh my God, he’s just used a nuclear weapon.’ I mean, at least that’s what Putin would be hoping for. That we’d say, ‘this has gone too far. We’ve got to sue for peace,’ ” he said.

In the mind-set of Putin’s government, a nuclear option may not seem as taboo as it does to Western observers. During his 2018 state of the nation address, Putin, to loud applause, aired a concept video showing a storm of hypersonic, unlimited range nuclear missiles raining down on Florida.

The West might see nuclear deployment as unimaginable; that such weapons exist only for deterrent. But “I don’t think it’s so unimaginable for Putin and for the Russians,” Kroenig said. “I do think that there’s a big cultural difference here. The Russians often finish their major military exercises,” which serve as war simulations, “with nuclear strikes. … I think there is just, you know, a comfort with nuclear weapons as kind of big artillery shells, whereas we see them as categorically different weapons.”

Even if he holds fire now — Putin’s nuclear threat will loom beyond the Ukraine conflict, raising a ghost of destruction that many thought had finally dematerialized after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We were fortunate not to really have great power competition for 25 years after the end of the Cold War,” Kroenig said. “But now, it’s back.”

From the Washington Post

hat tip to Mike Browne

 Once again the socialist assertion that nationalism can never serve the interests of the working class is being attested to daily amidst the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Workers are butchering workers for the privilege of rearranging capitalist state borders. Needless to say, in this as in all wars it is the working people who suffer most. They do the fighting and the dying, they are raped and “ethnically cleansed”, and it is their lives and homes that count for most of the “collateral damage” whether or not they swallow the nationalist myths of their leaders. It is surprising to find how many workers are always ready to believe anything the media and their masters tell them.

Once again European cities are being bombed. Once again displaced persons are on the move. This has never ceased to be a lot of people in Africa and Asia but one of the claims of Western capitalism was that it had at least established peace and prosperity in Europe. Now full-scale war has returned to Europe. The illusion that permanent peace and prosperity is possible under capitalism has been shattered. When the capitalists of different nations fall out and go to war, they don’t do the fighting themselves but get their respective working classes to do it for them. This requires an appeal to patriotism, where politicians whip up enthusiasm for the war.

 The fact is the working people are impoverished and subjugated, whether under Putin or under Zerenskyy and consequently have no business to offer their blood and interest for the war service of either set of bloodsuckers. 

The interest of the workers everywhere is not in helping their rulers to grab or hold, but in the speedy overthrow of capitalism everywhere, the ending of the exploitation of one class by another. Let the workers of all countries apply that touchstone to the policies of their respective governments. Whether they call their wars offensive or defensive, struggles for colonies or to protect trade, for democracy or for independence, for religion or against it, the true purpose will be to hold or increase the wealth of the various sections of the ruling class. Workers have none of it.

Wars are inevitable under capitalism because of the economic competition between states that is built-in to it, but is normally only a last resort when a state’s “vital interest” is involved. Within a year of its founding the Socialist Party had published an article putting its view on war:

‘I do not think it will be questioned by any socialist that it is his duty to oppose the wars of the ruling class of one nation with the ruling class of another, and refuse to participate in them’ (Socialist Standard, August 1905)

We do not distinguish between “offensive” and “defensive” wars. In truth, no real distinction is possible. We do not attempt to distinguish between the relative merits of the conduct of capitalist governments at war with each other. Should wage slaves take sides when the slave-owners fall out? Obviously, no. We oppose working-class participation in wars between capitalist governments for reasons based directly on working-class interests and the interests of the socialist movement. In all countries, the workers are exploited by the owners of the means of production and distribution. There are no differences between the conditions under which exploitation is carried on in the different countries sufficient to make it worth the workers’ while supporting war in order to defend their subjection to one national group of capitalists rather than to another. 

For socialist propaganda to make headway, nationalistic prejudices have got to be struck at the roots, and that from the very beginning. As a practical policy, this means that socialists must carry on their struggle against the capitalist parties in their own country and must on no account allow it to appear, through political alliances or collaboration in capitalist governments, that they associate themselves with their own capitalists against the rest of the world.

In war, “Our duties as Socialists are clear enough, and do not differ from those we have to act on ordinarily. To further the spread of international feeling between the workers by all means possible, to point out to our own workers that foreign competition and rivalry, or commercial war, culminating at last in open war, are necessities of the plundering classes, and that the race and commercial quarrels of these classes only concern us so far as we can use them as opportunities for fostering discontent and revolution; that the interests of the workers are the same in all countries and they can never be really enemies of each other; that the men of our own labouring classes therefore, should turn a deaf car to the recruiting sergeant, and refuse to allow themselves to be dressed up in red and be taught to form a part of the modern killing machine for the honour and glory of a country in which they have only the dog’s share of many kids and few halfpence—all this we have to preach always. though in the event of imminent war we may have to preach it more emphatically” –  William Morris

About 75% of Russians and 60% of Ukrainians profess to be Orthodox Christians.

While the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has justified the war in Moscow, it has been condemned in the two Ukrainian Orthodox churches.

Patriarch Kirill presents Vladimir Putin’s war as legitimate resistance to Western values in his sermons in Moscow. In keeping with Putin’s line and in accordance with the president’s ban on reporting on the war or even calling it as such, the patriarch also did not use the word “war” for the invasion of Ukraine but spoke of “events” and “military actions.”

Each of the two Orthodox churches in Ukraine has referred to the “war” by name and condemned it emphatically.  while the  Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OKU) reaction was to be expected even the patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOK), which is an autonomous church within the Russian Orthodox Church,  a part of the Russian Orthodox Church, had spoken of an “invasion” of Ukraine on the very first day of the war and called on Putin to end it.

The synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church called on the patriarch in Moscow to use his influence on Putin and work for peace. But that was left out of the coverage in Russia. The Moscow patriarch’s failure to speak out for peace has led to many bishops of the UOK in Ukraine giving instructions to stop mentioning his name in prayer, as is customary.

In early March, Russian Orthodox clergy and priests published an open letter calling for an end to the war. Written in Russian, the letter reads: “We, the priests and deacons of the Russian Orthodox Church, appeal on our own behalf to all in whose name the fratricidal war in Ukraine will end and call for reconciliation and an immediate ceasefire.” They spoke of the “ordeal to which our brothers and sisters in Ukraine are undeservedly subjected” and referring to the future added, “We are saddened to think of the gulf that our children and grandchildren in Russia and Ukraine will have to bridge to become friends again, to respect and love one another.” As of March 8, 2022, 286 priests and deacons have signed the letter.  These clerics make up a relatively small group out of around 36,000 priests in the Russian Orthodox Church. But they are now being subjected to reprisals and persecution by the Russian authorities and the Federal Secret Service (FSB).

Ukraine War: The role of the Orthodox Churches | Culture | Arts, music and lifestyle reporting from Germany | DW | 09.03.2022

 Prima ballerina Olga Smirnova has quit the Bolshoi in Moscow to join the Dutch National Ballet, it was announced Wednesday, making her the first Russian to quit the fabled company over the war in Ukraine.

“Smirnova was outspoken in her recent denouncement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is making it untenable for her to work in her native country,” the Dutch company said in a statement. 

Smirnova is one of the biggest stars of the Bolshoi and had already expressed her opposition to the war on messaging app Telegram earlier this month. 

“I am against war with all the fibres of my soul,” she wrote. “It is not only about every other Russian perhaps having relatives or friends living in Ukraine, or about my grandfather being Ukrainian…It is that we continue to live as if this were the 20th century.”

 That the Russian Government is a menace to the peace of the world, is a fact as much recognised by socialists as by all those who support the war. No socialist will deny that all the Putin regime stands for is repugnant and revolting to every ideal. The suppression of free expression of opinion, the arrests and the persecution of dissenters arbitrarily deemed out of sympathy with Russian nationalism, are things indicative of a form of social life that must befoul the finer feelings of all those worthy to be classed as genuine human. Intellectual development cannot be where such conditions are prevalent. There must be no mistake of the Socialist Party’s hatred for Putin and his elite entourage. It stands out to us calling aloud for destruction. But when we have said all this we have but touched the outer edges of the problem presented by the existence of the present Russian government. That government, like that of any other throughout the world, owes its origin and maintenance to definite historical and social causes, in which we include such mass ideology as that upon which all governments largely depend for their existence.

The basic condition for the rivalry between modern states is the quest for profit on the part of those who own all such resources of the earth. The people who own these vital forces of human life are, in broad outline, represented by those who are in control of the machinery of government. Whether such government be democratic or a dictatorship in form, the above statement applies with equal force. It cannot be too often stated that the method of government in all capitalist countries is a sort of by-product of the same general mode of wealth production and distribution. We leave aside for the moment whether the democratic or dictatorship form of the state in capitalist countries is more favourable for working-class expression and development. One point here is, that in democratic Britain, France and America, as in dictatorship Russia and China, wealth is produced primarily for profit. Therein is to be found the secret of the world situation in modern times. Profit represents–is in fact–the unpaid labour of the workers. Every worker must realise that after he has spent his energy in producing things for the capitalist, and after all materials and other items have been provided for, there is a surplus above the amount he gets in wages. When this surplus fails to materialise, capitalist production normally ceases. We describe the surplus wealth taken by the capitalist as surplus value. The worker labours for the capitalist (when he is permitted to do so) for wages, and the capitalist puts him to work to realise the difference between the wages paid and the value of the worker’s product of labour. “It is this sort of exchange”, says Marx, “between capital and labour upon which capitalistic production, or the wages system, is founded, and which must constantly result in reproducing the working man as working man and the capitalist as capitalist.”

The perpetuation and expansion of the capitalist’s pursuit of surplus-value gave rise to the imperialism underlying modern war. For capital to grow to maturity it must break down national boundaries and seek the world for its sphere of activity and gratification. Hence the conflicts between national groups of capitalists are represented by their respective governments backed by armed force.

The phrase, “the workshop of the world”, at one time so aptly applied to this country, indicates an ideological landmark, not merely in the economic history and development of England, but also in that of the other leading capitalist powers. Those who were once the customers of “the world’s workshop” became, in the very nature of the capitalist process, its competitors for markets, trade routes, spheres of influence, and the occupation of strategic positions, or the acquisition of raw materials. The real issue before the working class of the world is one of ending its exploitation and all that such entails.

If the present war is allowed to run its course until one or other of the combatants is crushed, are we likely to witness, if we are still alive, the downfall of the autocratic form of government in Russia or the restoration of some form of democratic social life in Ukraine?  

The Russian workers must, it seems, be the means of effecting the downfall of the Putin government.

For ourselves, we, as socialists, would render them any service which would assist in their accomplishing the overthrow of their despotic ruling gang if only to gain for them the immediate means of being able to give expression to their social and political aspirations without fear of being murdered or placed in a concentration camp.

Until the working-class movement in Russia or anywhere else can gain the means of emerging from underground into the daylight, their chances of finally freeing themselves from capitalism through socialism are well-nigh hopeless. To assist in the war against Russia is not the way by which this can be accomplished, we should be slaughtering the very people we desire to liberate from the yoke of the oligarch dictatorship. Moreover, our action then would assist Putin and his accomplices to bury still deeper the opposition to his rule. We find no valid reason for the support of this war, as we found none for in previous wars, which left us, of the Socialist Party, more isolated in our opposition than we are today.

THE WAGE SQUEEZE

 Average wages in Britain have fallen at the fastest rate since 2014 as annual pay growth fails to keep pace with rising inflation amid Britain’s cost of living crisis.

The Office for National Statistics said that annual growth in regular pay, excluding bonuses, fell by 1% in the three months to January after adjusting for its preferred measure of inflation – the biggest fall since July 2014.

Average total pay including bonuses rose slightly by 0.1% amid a bumper bonus season in the finance sector.

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, said, “Working people deserve financial security and a wage they can live on. But instead, they are facing the steepest decline in real pay for eight years, and a cost of living crisis that will get worse if the government doesn’t act now. Energy bills will rise at least 14 times faster than wages this year. Household budgets are already stretched to the brink and can’t take any more.”

“It doesn’t matter that a record number of people are now on UK payrolls or that there is still a record number of job vacancies, people in work are feeling the pinch and it’s going to get worse,” said Danni Hewson, a financial analyst at the stockbroker AJ Bell.

Nye Cominetti, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said the pay squeeze was unlikely to end soon. “Overall surging inflation will wipe out any wage gains in 2022,” he said. “Britain’s real pay squeeze, which started as far back as summer 2021, will get deeper in 2022, and is unlikely to end until summer 2023.”

UK wages fall at fastest rate since 2014 as cost-of-living squeeze bites | UK unemployment and employment statistics | The Guardian

Half of low-paid workers in the UK are given less than a week’s notice of their shifts, according to a study highlighting an “insecurity premium” for employees paid close to the minimum wage.

The Living Wage Foundation said 50% of people earning less than £9.90 an hour around the UK or £11.05 in London were told details of their work schedules with less than seven days before they were due to begin.

In contrast, about 32% of all UK workers in full or part-time jobs are given less than a week’s notice of their shifts.

Lower-paid workers were, therefore, more likely to pay a financial price – an “insecurity premium” – because of the added costs of childcare and travel when shifts were cancelled or changed at short notice.

Almost half of shift workers lose out on £30 or more a month because of last-minute changes, according to the study, leading almost a third to increase their reliance on credit cards and borrowing to make ends meet.

“We’ve long known that it costs to be poor, but this research shows it’s even more costly to be both poor and in insecure work,” said Katherine Chapman, the director of the Living Wage Foundation. “In an unfolding cost-of-living crisis with energy bills set to rise even further, low-income households are facing ‘heat or eat’ decisions.”

A separate study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank showed a growing proportion of Britain’s lowest earners are missing out on stronger earnings growth for employees on the minimum wage in recent decades.

It found pay growth for the lowest-paid tenth of workers in the country had been twice as fast as for a worker on average pay between 2011 and 2019, helped by inflation-beating increases in the “national living wage”. However, it warned a quarter of the lowest fifth of earners are self-employed and not covered by the legal pay floor.

It said median earnings for those born in the 1980s were no higher than they were for those born in 1960 by the same point in their careers, spelling the end of steady growth in median living standards through the 20th century.

Mark Franks, the director of welfare at the Nuffield Foundation, which funded the research, said: “Policies such as the minimum wage and tax credits have helped many low earners, but they have not been sufficient to fully protect all low-paid workers, including those among the growing number of self-employed. This, in combination with sluggish pay growth and factors such as rising prices and a lack of access to stable housing, has left many individuals and families in vulnerable circumstances.”

Half of UK low-paid workers given less than a week’s notice of shifts | Business | The Guardian