US-UK USING G-20
FOR WAR
MONGUERISM AGAINST RUSSIA
In a joint press conference
yesterday, Australian
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his British counterpart David Cameron set a tone
of confrontation for the G20 leaders summit due to start today in
the Australian city of Brisbane. Both leaders zeroed in on Russia, bluntly accusing Moscow of
expansionism, and, in the case of Cameron, threatening to impose further
economic sanctions over Ukraine.
In the lead-up to the summit, Abbott
had declared that he intended to “shirtfront”—that is, physically
confront—Russian President Vladimir Putin over the downing of Malaysian
Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. At this week’s APEC summit in
Beijing, Abbott demanded a meeting with Putin at which he insisted—without providing
any evidence—that Russia was responsible for the tragedy and called
for an apology and compensation.
The Australian Prime Minister kept up the attack yesterday,
accusing Putin of “trying to recreate the lost glories of tsarism or the old
Soviet Union.” “Whether it’s bullying of Ukraine, whether it’s the
increasing Russian military aircraft flying into the airspace of Japan or
European countries, whether it’s the naval task force which is now in the South
Pacific, Russia is being much more assertive,” he said.
British Prime Minister Cameron joined the attack.
In a barely concealed comparison of Russia to Nazi Germany prior to World War
II, he declared: “We have to be clear about what we’re dealing with here: it is
a large state bullying a smaller state in Europe and we’ve seen the
consequences of that in the past and we should learn the lessons of history and
make sure we don’t let it happen again.”
Cameron said he intended to let Putin know in a “brush-by”
meeting at the G20 summit that Russian actions were unacceptable. He bluntly
warned that “if Russia continues to make matters worse [in Ukraine], we could
see those sanctions increase. It is as simple as that.”
In reality, all of the leaders jetting in to Brisbane
understand that NO AGREEMENT is going to be reached on economic cooperation,
much less on meaningful action on climate change or any of the other myriad
international issues being touted. In the five years since the G20 first met in
the face of the 2008 global financial crisis, the world economy has been mired
in an intractable breakdown, signalled today by acute financial instability,
deepening economic slowdown and fears of further crises.
The limited economic cooperation of the first G20 meeting has
been replaced by an increasingly open resort to the beggar-thy-neighbour
policies accompanied by threats, provocations and the use of military force.
So obvious are the antagonisms that today’s editorial in the Australian
Financial Review commented: “Australia is hosting the G20 in a year
when old-fashioned geopolitics has made a stunning return.”
However, the chief responsibility for rising geo-political
tensions around the world lies with US imperialism, which has
ratcheted up a confrontation with Russia by engineering the fascist-led coup in
Ukraine in February and launching a new war in the Middle East, aimed primarily
at ousting Russia’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In a bid to impose
its dictates on Moscow, Washington, in league with its European allies, has
imposed sanctions on Russia that are crippling its economy.
At the APEC summit this week in Beijing, Obama
provocatively hosted a meeting of Trans
Pacific Partnership (TPP) members that pointedly did not include the host nation. Obama is also waging what US economic analyst Fred
Bergsten described to the Australian Financial Review as
“Washington’s jihad” to undermine China’s plans for a regional infrastructure
bank.
In other words, Obama will set out
in unmistakeable terms an aggressive, all-embracing strategy for ensuring the
predominance of US imperialism in Asia, through diplomatic provocation,
economic bullying and preparations for war.
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