With the acquiescence of the EU’s comprador elites, the US is de-industrializing Europe. Next on the agenda, to destroy European agriculture
We can be thankful that domestic electoral considerations sometimes lead to good outcomes on the foreign policy level, not only to the awful outcomes we see in Mr. Biden’s America.
I have in mind the dramatic spat between Poland and Ukraine over that country’s grain exports which was brought before the world media and diplomatic community at the United Nations General Assembly this week.
On the dais of the General Assembly, President Zelensky slammed unnamed East European countries which a week ago defied the EU’s lifting of a temporary ban on Ukrainian grain entering the EU on the 15th and said they will unilaterally continue to refuse entry of these commodities. Even before his UN appearance, Ukraine had said it will take the offenders, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, to court at the World Trade Organization for violation of trade rules.
For his part, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded on Polish television, saying that his country will no longer supply weapons to Ukraine. Jaws at the editorial board of The Financial Times and other mainstream Western media dropped upon hearing this decision. As we all know, Poland has been the most ardent supporter of the Ukrainian war effort, prodding other EU members to do their part.
Poland has taken in by far the largest number of Ukrainian refugees from the war. It has supplied substantial amounts of military materiel to Kiev from its own arsenal. And Poland has been the main transit country delivering NATO weapons and munitions to Ukraine from its domestic marshalling points across the border from Lviv.
No one had any doubts why the Polish government has done this policy reversal: it is facing a close election in less than a month and it needs the full support of Polish farmers to achieve a win. Those farmers have been demonstrating vociferously against the Ukrainian grain entering the country ostensibly for destinations abroad but de facto remaining on their home market and being sold at prices far below the Polish farmers’ production costs.
“Close election”? I mentioned this issue several weeks ago on these pages and one comment came back from a reader who insisted that the incumbent rabidly anti-Russian and nationalist Law and Justice Party is projected to win the elections handily. However, the latest polling information that I have heard on CNN yesterday indicated that the Law and Justice Party will garner just over 31% of the votes, while the leading Opposition party, Civic Platform will garner 28% of the votes. Law and Justice is tipped to form the next government only because it has in the wings a coalition partner with which they can put together a majority in parliament. Under these circumstances, I think it is fair to call the election “close” if Law and Justice were to lose the support of farmers, who are rather well organized politically in Poland.
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It is especially interesting that in his fury over the impertinent and insulting speech of Zelensky, Morawiecki let out an observation that you otherwise would not have heard or seen in Western media: namely that the grain Ukraine is exporting is on behalf of the Ukrainian oligarchs who own the farmland.
Though he was incensed, Morawiecki nonetheless did watch his words, because he omitted saying that the Ukrainian grain being exported is also substantially produced by American agricultural behemoths who now own about 28% of the farmland in Ukraine and are raising their stakes all the time.
It would be fair to say that the whole scandal over Ukrainian exports of grain via its EU neighbors is not that the grain does not end up in the ports of the world’s neediest countries, it is that the beneficiaries of the exports are US corporations and Ukrainian crooks, not the Ukrainian people and its small holding farmers in particular. The main losers are the farmers of small, medium and large holdings in the EU, who cannot compete on price with the Ukrainians both because of the natural advantages of their ‘black earth’ lands, the most fertile in Europe, and because of the industrial scale that has been introduced in Ukraine by the new corporate owners, domestic and foreign.
In the midst of the dispute over Ukrainian grain, Western media have picked up tidbits of information about other Ukrainian agricultural commodities that have raised heckles among EU farmers. The longest list probably has been compiled by Hungary, which seeks to ban virtually all produce from Ukraine. For their part, Bulgaria and Romania have complained over cheap Ukrainian honey.
And yet the complaints over predatory pricing of Ukrainian farm products have come from as far west as France, where the main issue is Ukrainian poultry meat, priced at less than half producer costs in France. In part, this is due to the same cheap grain issue, since chickens are walking sacks of grain: two kilograms of wheat give you one kilogram of broiler chickens. But the additional driver of Ukrainian export prices is scale of production. French television recently brought out the fact that the biggest exporter of poultry meat to France that is being purchased by the school lunch programs as well as by major retail grocery chains is a Ukrainian complex that raises one million chickens at a time and has vertical integration from the grain inputs, to the hatcheries, to the slaughter and chilled packaging of eviscerated chickens. By contrast, the average chicken farmer in France keeps just 50,000 birds. It would be interesting to know who exactly owns that industrial scale chicken complex in Ukraine.
If the French do not ban such imports, their domestic farming will suffer greatly. Simply put, farms will go bankrupt. Whether or not American capital is behind the chicken war on France, you can be sure Washington is not concerned over the damage to French agriculture that will result from the ‘free trade’ with Ukraine in all commodities that it and the EU institutions in Brussels are promoting.
The war in Ukraine has forced Germany to think seriously about its position in the world and its national interests, leaving behind the evasive pragmatism of the Merkel era. The Russian invasion of Ukraine compelled Germany on short notice to cut its trade relations with Russia and provide military support to Ukraine, following American and NATO policy. After a period of indecision, the German government, prodded by the United States, chose to seek a leading role in the western European war effort, and in western Europe generally. Its hope is that this will enable it to influence American and NATO strategic decisions, in particular to prevent any direct involvement of NATO in the war.
As an aspiring leader of the European Union, Germany is faced with a deep split between the new member states bordering Russia and the western European states, including Germany itself, that hope for a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than a military victory. There are also profound differences within western Europe with respect to the future role of the EU and its relationship both to its member states and to NATO. A severe additional challenge in the future will be how Germany, and the EU under its leadership, will position themselves in the building conflict between the United States and China, both major trading partners of German industry. A related question will be how to respond to American efforts to involve NATO in a potential war with China in the North Pacific.
Angela Merkel retired less than two years ago, in December 2021, after sixteen years as German chancellor. By the end of her tenure, she was also, effectively, the unofficial president of the European Union. Yet hardly anything is now remembered, let alone repeated, of the tributes paid to her at the time, celebrating her as one of the great political figures of the still-young twenty-first century. Her party, the Christian-Democratic Union (CDU), whose undisputed leader she had been for so long, no longer invites her to meetings, preferring not to talk about her, for fear of causing divisions in its ranks. When her successor as chancellor, her longtime finance minister and deputy, Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, let it be known that he sometimes speaks to her on the phone to seek her advice, this was considered bizarre by the mainstream media. The Merkel era, there can be no doubt, has ended. Its legacy, at least for the time being, has disappeared from the record1—a long error is being erased from memory, and here as everywhere else after the Zeitenwende2 (the term Scholz used for the turning point marked by the Ukraine invasion), things are no longer as they once were.
What has Merkel done, or not done, to deserve such a fate? And what more may come when the memory of the panegyric proclamations delivered by her party and her coalition partners, not to mention her legions of devoted mainstream journalists, has faded further? According to the know-it-alls of today, many of them until recently passionate Merkelians, Merkel failed to face the challenges of a Manichaean world in which a good empire must forever eliminate new evil empires if it does not want to be eliminated itself; in which it is necessary to take a stand and show it; to close the Western ranks under the leadership of the United States of America; and to establish not only peace but also justice, if necessary with arms.
It will be interesting to watch how Merkel will defend herself against the now dominant anti-Merkel narrative.3 To be sure, she has always kept aloof of public controversies—considered them unnecessary, in any case too politically risky. This was possible in a society that, unlike France or the United States, is not given to strategic discussions of its political destiny, at least not to controversial ones. The ultimate reason for this may be that the necessary anchor point of any such discussion—a concept of a national interest, and the best way to pursue it—was and still is absent in Germany. “Ideology” is considered obsolete, too; what counts is “pragmatism,” and under Merkel what pragmatism required from case to case was best left to the great pragmatist in office.4 Looking at Merkel’s political legacy, one feels reminded of Max Weber’s 1918 critique of Bismarck, the founder of the German state whom he otherwise admired. Bismarck, according to Weber, had left behind “a nation without any political will of its own, accustomed to the idea that the great statesman at the helm would make the necessary political decisions . . . a nation accustomed to fatalistic sufferance of all decisions” made on its behalf. Furthermore, wrote Weber, with remarkable parallels to today:
The great statesman did not leave behind any political tradition. He neither attracted nor even suffered independent political minds, not to speak of strong political personalities…..
US Civil War 1861-1865 – As Confederate troops march through US territory taking down US flags an old woman puts her head out a window to oppose the actions. J. G. Whittier wrote a poem for The Atlantic magazine memorializing the act to rally support for the US against the Confederate rebellion.
Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as the garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;
Over the mountains winding down, Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town, She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set, To show that one heart was loyal yet,
Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
‘Halt!’ – the dust-brown ranks stood fast. ‘Fire!’ – out blazed the rifle-blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash; It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will.
‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman’s deed and word;
‘Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on! he said.
All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet:
All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps sunset light Shone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er, And the Rebel rides on his raids nor more.
Honor to her! and let a tear Fall, for her sake, on Stonewalls’ bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave, Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
Peace and order and beauty draw Round they symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look down On thy stars below in Frederick town!
Striking United Auto Workers picket at Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Mich., shortly after midnight Friday, Sept. 15. (Photo: Paul Sancya/AP)
Restore Full Pensions and Health Coverage! Real COLA, Based on Union Figures!
Break with the Bosses’ Parties – For a Class-Struggle Workers Party!
A condensed version of this article was issued as an Internationalist leaflet (click on illustration below to download a pdf copy).
SEPTEMBER 14 – The working people who make this country run are hurting, bad, while the exploiters who live off our labor are making out like bandits. A showdown with the “Big Three” auto companies offers a chance to launch an offensive of militant class struggle to undo decades of union defeats that have led to the present obscene level of inequality, unparalleled since the late 1920s. But to wage and win such an offensive requires a program and leadership prepared to take on the bosses, their parties (Democrat and Republican) and their government.
Click on image on right to download.
Ever since the COVID pandemic, U.S. corporations have been raking in eye-popping profits as household incomes are slashed. Last year, the drop in real wages (deducting for inflation) was the largest since the 2007-09 economic crisis. It was the third year in a row that workers’ pay has fallen. This stark fact has driven demands for sharply higher wages in major union contracts. The big business press worried about – and many workers hoped for – a “summer of strikes.” It didn’t happen. Why not? A sellout labor bureaucracy that wants to play ball with the bosses.
The Hollywood writers and actors unions walked out, and are still out after months on the picket lines. But the Teamsters caved, settling with UPS for a contract that left part-time workers still toiling for poverty pay. ILWU West Coast dock workers, meanwhile, after working without a contract for a year, agreed to a deal that let maritime bosses introduce job-killing technology in exchange for union jurisdiction on the docks. Now a strike by the United Auto Workers (UAW) is posed as the contracts with the Big Three auto makers expire at midnight.
This is a tremendous opportunity for labor to strike back at the head-on assault on the living standards of working people throughout the country. But instead of calling for an all-out strike shutting down all three of the auto giants, the UAW leadership, headed by union president Shawn Fain, is calling for a token “strike” at just three (!) plants of different companies to pressure the employers. Instead of mobilizing the membership for a knock-down, drag-out battle with the bosses, the union tops are using pin-pricks to needle them. This “strategy” can never win.
We’ve said it many times, and it’s still true: if you play by the bosses’ rules, you’re sure to lose – labor’s gotta play hardball to win.
When the union demanded a 40% pay hike over four years, and then reduced it to 30%, Ford, GM and Stellantis (Chrysler) upped their insulting “offers” to 20, 18 and 17.5% respectively – 5% or less per year – which would barely cover losses to past inflation. Their proposals for a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA escalator) are a joke, providing zero wage protection for future price increases. Most importantly, all three companies rejected outright the UAW’s call to end tiers: for top pay rate after 90 days on the job, restoring full pensions and retiree health care.
On the picket line at Wayne, Michigan Ford assembly plant, September 15. (Internationalist photo)
For years, UAW workers have been demanding an end to the two-tier system in which workers hired after 2007 (the large majority) get starting pay of only $18 an hour, taking eight years to reach the top rate of $32.32/hour, which is itself outrageously low, not nearly enough for a family. “Temporary” workers start at $16 an hour (or less, at Chrysler) for at least two years. This system, key to the Big 3’s profits (up 65% since 2019), was agreed to by the super-corrupt Administration Caucus that ran the union since the late 1940s, almost three-quarters of a century.
The new leadership of the UAW headed by Shawn Fain is formally calling to end the tiers, and is making a show of openness about negotiations. But it is not mobilizing the ranks for the hard fight it will take to get rid of multi-tier wages that are key to the auto giants’ profitability, and a PowerPoint presentation in a livestream event or on Facebook is not democratic control by the ranks over bargaining. Bottom line: you won’t get rid of tiers by playing nice with the bosses.So don’t be surprised whenthe UAW tops jettison this key demand as bargaining “gets serious.”
What it will take to defeat the concerted action of the mega-corporations, and the cops, courts and capitalist politicians who do their bidding, is a mobilization of the union ranks in an all-out strike shutting down all the unionized auto plants across the country. The call to end the tier system must be made a non-negotiable demand, and to counter a bureaucratic sellout, auto workers should fight for an elected UAW strike committee, with hundreds of delegates representing every plant and shop, who can be recalled at any time by the members. As we wrote in the 2019 strike:
“key to any real victory is to insist that no one goes back until all go back equal: junk the tier system, make ‘temporary’ workers full-time, equal pay for equal work, now!”
–“For a Big 3 Nationwide Auto Strike!” The Internationalist, September 2019
Forge a Class-Struggle Leadership!
To win against the giant auto/truck corporations will require a struggle in which the almost 150,000 UAW auto workers, with a class-struggle leadership, connect this fight with that of all the oppressed sectors in this rotting capitalist system, and with our sisters and brothers internationally. Back when Detroit was Motor City, it was a powerhouse of the U.S. economy and a center of black culture. But after the 1967 upheaval over racist police repression and the failure of the civil rights movement to alter conditions in the northern ghettos, and the brutal suppression and occupation of black Detroit by the National Guard, the city was devastated.
Still, in the early 1970s, Detroit auto was a hotbed of labor militancy. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers took root in the plants, where many leftist activists were active. Then came the mass layoffs in the economic crisis after the end of the U.S.’ losing imperialist war on Vietnam. All the Big 3 shut their inner-city plants, conveniently getting rid of militant blacks and reds, and as Chrysler filed for bankruptcy in 1979, Democratic president Jimmy Carter stepped in to force union concessions, which the UAW bureaucracy willingly accepted.
As a result, black Detroit south of Eight Mile Road became a ghost town. With the auto plants gone, the city lost its tax base and tens of thousands of black auto workers lost their jobs. Municipal services were gutted. The Democrats had done the dirty work for the capitalist system by keeping the lid on during the urban upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s. As the racist regime of Republican Ronald Reagan went after the unions and black people generally, conditions in Detroit grew steadily worse.
Across the country, and particularly in the industrial heartland of the Midwest, once vibrant cities became a rustbelt of shuttered factories. Many companies shipped their production overseas as Democrats and Republicans embraced the mantra of “free trade” and “globalization.” We are still paying the price for the wrecking job on the black working class that was carried out by the capitalist ruling parties acting in tandem, as the pro-capitalist labor officialdom presided over the destruction of the unions while chaining workers to the bosses through the Democrats.
The bureaucracies that have blocked the power of the organized working class are not simply a bunch of corrupt sellouts, although there are plenty of those. It is a whole social layer, sitting atop the unions while seeking to “mediate” between labor and capital by keeping the workers down. This layer was installed in the late 1940s, as the Democrats spearheaded a “red purge” that kicked out the socialists and communists who had built the industrial unions in the class battles of the ’30s.
During and after the pandemic, the union tops blocked workers’ struggle with “no-strike” contract clauses at a time when they could have forced through their demands as the bosses were desperate to keep the supply chain going. The Wall Street Journal (12 September) reported: “Wages and benefits for nonunion workers were up 15.8% from the end of 2019 through June, compared with a 12.2% gain for unionized workers, according to the Labor Department.” Those figures are a stark condemnation of the sabotage of the unions by the labor bureaucracy.
Recently, as discontent was boiling in the rank-and-file, old-line bureaucrats have been replaced by newer leaders who have been posturing as militants. This was the case of Sean O’Brien in the Teamsters, who once was a vice president in the regime of James Hoffa Jr., and now of Shawn Fain in the Auto Workers. But as shown by O’Brien’s sellout of part-time UPS workers, who are the majority of union members there, installing new tough-talking leaders does not change the role of the bureaucracy in chaining workers to the bosses.
Fain was elected on the slate of Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), which had campaigned for direct election of UAW officers (president and executive board). In this, they were the continuation of the New Directions caucus in the 1980s and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) which backed O’Brien. Both of these “union reform” groups betrayed workers by running to the bosses’ courts and government to oust the entrenched bureaucracy. Class-struggle unionists condemned this appeal to the class enemy: Labor must clean its own house.
In the case of the UAW, a federal government investigation led to the convictions of more than a dozen union officials, including two former presidents, on charges of embezzlement, kickbacks and collusion as they negotiated sweetheart deals with the Big 3 bosses. This led to a December 2020 consent decree which allowed a direct vote for top UAW officials. The UAWD supported that government control of the union, and even went to court to demand a greater say in selecting the federal monitor who now oversees UAW finances and internal affairs.
Another outfit which has sued the union in the capitalist courts is the WSWS, which we have dubbed the World Scab Web Site, as these fake-leftists have literally sided with the bosses in opposing union recognition in votes supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).1 Although these scabs claim that the UAW is simply “a subdivision of the companies,” they ran a candidate, one Will Lehman, for union president in 2022. The WSWS also went to federal court to demand that the government further rewrite the union constitution, election rules and more.
Labor officials installed under the auspices of the capitalist government will never wage the hard-knuckle class struggle needed to defeat the auto bosses. Moreover, the UAW under Fain is appealing to the Democratic Party for support — the same strikebreaking government party that banned a rail workers walkout last December. Now Biden booster Bernie Sanders is to be the featured speaker at a union rally on Friday.
As for the Republican Donald Trump, he too is an enemy of the workers. The former president when he was in office bragged about how he got General Motors to sell a Lordstown, Ohio plant that it was shutting down to a non-union start-up that would build electric trucks. But the company hardly produced any vehicles, and is now filing for bankruptcy. While Trump works to turn working people against each other using racism, and to set American workers against their sisters and brothers in other countries, it is crucial that striking auto workers in the U.S. appeal for international solidarity action from Mexican workers at Big 3 plants located south of the border.
The UAW is facing enormous challenges, including the struggle to organize non-union plants in the South. A victorious strike against GM, Ford and Stellantis/Chrysler that abolishes the tier system and wins a major pay raise will go a long way to winning that battle. The fight for auto workers’ livelihoods, to escape from the low-wage misery they endure under decaying capitalism, requires forging a class-struggle leadership to oust the bureaucrats, break with the Democrats and all capitalist parties and politicians, and build a workers party, fighting for a workers government and international socialist revolution. ■
1. See “How the ‘World Scab Web Site’ Aids the Bosses,” The Internationalist, January 2021.
The bosses gutted the auto industry and left the workforce to die. For decades, once major industrial hubs have seen populations plummet and poverty rates soar. Remaining workers live in crumbling cities, working longer shifts in more dangerous conditions, while real wages stagnate and fall. Job loss and deindustrialization destroyed Midwest metropolises like Detroit and Flint and made life a living hell for their majority-black populations.
Now the UAW contract has expired, and a strike is underway to fight for what UAW president Shawn Fain calls “audacious” demands. He says he wants an end to tiers, restored benefits, a huge pay raise and lots of other things workers desperately need…but he’s already backtracking. He lowered the wage demands, and now has shut down only a few plants. This “strategy” is a dive that weakens the strike, minimizing the impact on the bosses. The question is: What strategy is necessary to win and why is Fain backing down?
What Fain said he’d fight for sounds good, and if the UAW wins it, it’ll be a victory for workers everywhere. But winning the things Fain promised will require a hard battle that strikes at the core of the American economy while the U.S. ruling class is desperately trying to restore its economic dominance, and the car companies are struggling to compete internationally. The bosses won’t give up easily. In this context, the fight to significantly improve workers’ living standards must be organized for what it is: a fundamental clash of class interests.
Biden and Trump bicker over EVs in the lead-up to the elections, trying to dupe voters in industrial swing states. Neither will do anything to make things better for workers. Their job is to make sure the bosses can compete by squeezing workers and sending jobs to the “open shop” South. Fain believes the companies and the workers can mutually prosper. He shares the bosses’ goal of improving U.S. competitiveness, and takes a side with one of their parties—the Democrats—on how to do it. This class collaboration is at the core of Fain’s capitulation. Contrary to his outlook, it is the success of American business on the backs of workers that led to today’s crisis.
The issue isn’t just that politicians are unreliable or corporations greedy, as Fain says, although they are. The problem isn’t just that companies price gouge and refuse workers their “fair share,” although they do. It’s not moral failing or mistaken policy. The bosses aren’t just greedy, malicious and dumb. They’re doing what they’re doing because capitalism requires it as the international situation gets more unstable. The acute pains felt by workers today are the sharpening class antagonisms of capitalism in decline. Fain builds illusions in reviving the “American Dream” and clings to a strategy that got us here in the first place. Instead, we need a leadership to organize struggles knowing the ultimate goal is workers rule and a planned economy—not the preservation of this irrational system.
The only way workers are going to get Fain’s demands in America’s sinking, uncompetitive economy is through a major confrontation with capitalist interests. But Fain’s perspective is to negotiate within the limits set by capitalism. Rather than strike hard at the core of the bosses’ power, he just seeks to re-balance the scales between the workers and the bosses.
To land the type of blow necessary to wrest concessions in this strike requires working-class political unity against the bosses. But the bosses intentionally sow disunity, fueling the racially charged climate that defines U.S. politics. To overcome racial and other divisions and forge genuine unity within the working class, the workers movement must fight against segregation and all manifestations of racial oppression.
However, Fain has avoided racial topics in the strike mobilization, for fear of being divisive. But the working class is already deeply divided along racial and political lines. By not taking on black oppression, Fain implicitly stands with the status quo, thus weakening both the labor movement and the strike. Either the union will cut through the racial and political divisions in the working class or the bosses will use those divisions to cut through the union.
To win, the UAW must organize the strike to provide a beacon for the whole working class to: End tiers! Reindustrialize the country! Fight for black liberation!
Racial Divisions and the Strike
For the bosses, oppressing black people isn’t just about profits—it’s also about power. The ruling class relies on racial divisions to maintain its political stability. This is obvious in the circus around Trump. Working-class misleaders endorse Democrats, which proves a rotten deal. The open bigot makes appeals to white workers fed up with empty promises from liberals who screw them. Then, Biden pretends to defend black people and minorities, with nothing to offer but platitudes. Workers see no alternative that corresponds to their class interests, so they end up divided, supporting one or the other of the bosses’ parties. Neither one advances the interests of workers or black people—they represent the bosses who need both economic and racist oppression. The cycle of “lesser evilism” only deepens the divisions among the oppressed.
While Fain has been reluctant to officially endorse Biden, he is currently sharing the stage with Bernie Sanders. This “progressive” has done nothing for workers all the years he’s been in office—except rope them back into the Democratic Party. Like Trump and Biden, Sanders works for the bosses. The instant the bosses feel that the union has gone too far and is encroaching on their profits (which is necessary to obtain any of its demands), Sanders will try to limit the struggle to what is acceptable to the bosses, no matter how “pro-worker” he may talk. In contrast, workers need to be trained in the methods of class struggle and the principle of class independence.
If there is a major confrontation that costs the auto bosses billions and jeopardizes Biden’s electoral bid, the pressure on the union to submit will be intense, for fear of the racist Trump getting back in office. Liberals will say the most important thing for black people and minorities is to keep Trump out, and that the strike isn’t worth it. They’ll admit that Biden isn’t the best, but argue he’s “less evil.” They’ll blame white working-class Trump supporters for racial oppression. Some workers will be swayed by the liberal argument, while others will be repelled by being baited as racist. A leadership like Fain’s will fold in the face of this pressure. His current backpedaling is just a taste.
The only way to improve things for workers and black people is to fight on the basis that the struggle for black equality is inseparable from the struggle for workers emancipation. Combating homelessness and unemployment requires: massive public works projects to build integrated housing and infrastructure, massive union hiring drives, organizing the unorganized, training and hiring programs that spread the available work among all and massive reindustrialization under workers’ control. The black community and workers need lots of the same things, and they all go against the capitalists’ interests. This will provide a much stronger basis for working-class unity than economic struggle alone.
Fighting for black people without a class-independent program leaves white workers fearful of liberal crusades that claim to “help” black people at their expense. Fighting for higher wages without fighting to improve the situation of black people leaves black workers at the bottom and ignores the need for real social change. White workers must have the understanding that, in order to advance their own interests, they must destroy the bosses’ most prized “divide-and-rule” scheme: keeping black people segregated at the bottom. Black workers must be won to the understanding that in order to get social, economic and political equality they need to unite with white workers to carry out this struggle.
Rust, Race and Tiers
The material foundation of black oppression in the U.S. remains segregation. The ruling class keeps black people ground down and separated in every aspect of their lives to more easily undermine workers struggle. The entire auto industry—the backbone of American capitalism—is built on racial segregation from the shop floor, to where workers live, to the “open shop” South. The horrors of the crumbling ghettos demoralize black workers and minimize the mixing between black and white.
The tier system is one way the bosses maintain segregation in the workplace. To abolish tiers requires taking on segregation by challenging the bosses’ right to hire and fire as they please. We must fight for union control of hiring and training and for programs that target chronic unemployment in the black ghettos! In contrast, Fain’s silence on segregation and acceptance of capitalist property undermine the fight against the tier system.
The bosses move production to the South because the workers there aren’t organized, and the reason they aren’t is because labor leaders won’t fight black oppression head on. Anti-union forces in the South make a practice of whipping up reaction against the UAW by portraying it as a force that will leave white workers worse off. The only way for the union to cut through this reaction is to unfurl the banner of integration as part of union organizing battles, while making clear that white workers have every reason to back the union as a fighting force for all workers against the bosses. The existential threat to the union in the “open shop” South should be reason enough for any decent trade unionist to fight for black liberation.
The UAW bureaucracy’s record of dismal failures in organizing the unorganized is a direct reflection of its losing class-collaborationist program, which has led to endless givebacks in recent years. Who wants to join a union that goes backward? On the other hand, a powerful and victorious strike now would lead hundreds of thousands of unorganized workers at Tesla, the battery plants and foreign automakers to want to join the UAW.
The workers movement must fight for black equality off the job as well. Black people are harassed, tortured and murdered by the cops every day. Liberal moral appeals to the bosses, their politicians and their cops to “care” about black people do nothing. The racist crimes of the cops must be exposed to all. The UAW and other unions must demand that the police archives be opened as a basic measure of self-defense not only for black people but also workers. These very same cops will be the companies’ strikebreaking thugs if the battle heats up. Fain does not see the capitalist courts and cops as a tool of class domination, and he is not preparing the strike with this understanding.
The UAW taking up the cause of the besieged black population would be a powerful lever to improve the situation for all working people. A union fight to force the auto bosses to fund quality, low-cost integrated neighborhoods could get decent housing for everyone from the homeless to UAW members. Such a struggle would not end black oppression, but it would begin to break down the walls of residential segregation. Workers should also seize the vast amounts of empty luxury real estate and office space for housing. These things all require major inroads against segregation and capitalist profits.
The standard of living in this country cannot be significantly improved through a militant negotiation with the bosses—which is Fain’s strategy. The bosses have hollowed out manufacturing and built an economy that is a debt-riddled house of cards. Back when they were economically strong, the bosses sought even higher profits abroad, and their offshoring devastated communities. This led them to slash social services, health care and education, which they saw as superfluous. The bosses poisoned Flint and destroyed Detroit when they no longer needed those workers.
Workers must fight to reindustrialize the economy in order to have good jobs with good pay instead of fighting over crumbs. To expand industry to its benefit, the working class must fight as one with the aim of taking over industry itself. The fights for industrialization and against racial oppression are inseparably bound up in the fabric of American capitalism today. The working class must confront them as intertwined in order to advance its interests.
Black oppression has crippled the workers movement since the beginning—“Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded” (Karl Marx). If it is to find a way forward, labor must put the fight for black freedom at the center of its struggles, which requires a leap in consciousness. That means there must be a leadership to bring this about—a revolutionary leadership. In order to be able to unite the class and win the UAW strike, we put forward the following program for auto and all other workers to fight for:
The 150,000 members of the United Auto Workers at the Big Three auto companies — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — voted by 97% to strike if their demands weren’t met by the bosses before their contract expired on 14 Sept 2023. The UAW is demanding an end to two-tier wages, a 40% hourly wage increase and restoration of cost-of-living clauses to compensate for inflation.
Other demands include higher pay for and restoration of medical benefits for retirees and a pension for all workers, which was cut in 2009 when the bosses demanded concessions while being bailed out of bankruptcy by the federal government. That’s also when COLA was eliminated.
The UAW is also demanding more paid time off for workers to be with their families and to be able to participate in political and union work.
The Big Three bosses raked in a combined $21 billion in profits in just the first six months of this year. That’s on top of the $250 billion in North American profits they pocketed over the last decade.
In Chicago hundreds attended two rallies outside the UAW’s headquarters. Union members said they’re signing up for strike benefits and to serve as picket line captains. “The cost of living is going up and our wages stay the same. That’s a good reason to strike,” Ford worker Georgette Johnson said at a Sept. 8 strike preparation rally. “When my father worked here, he could buy a house and car and pay for everything. Now you can’t.”
Another issue looming over negotiations is what will happen to jobs in the switch over to electric vehicle production, which takes fewer workers.
The bosses insist they need to plow the admittedly high profits they’ve been making into stepped-up retooling to make this shift. They claim they’ll face increasing pressure from competitors if they don’t do so. If the union doesn’t back off, bosses threaten to move new plants to the South, where the labor movement has been weaker.
So far the companies have refused to offer anything near what the workers are demanding. Last week, Stellantis, Ford and General Motors all put forward counterproposals to the UAW. Stellantis offered a 14.5% wage increase over four years. “That doesn’t make up for inflation,” the union responded, “let alone make up for past losses, and leaves workers even further behind.”
Ford demanded the union accept a 9% wage increase, and General Motors offered 10%, over four years.
All three companies insist they have to keep the divisive tiers. They rejected union demands to reestablish cost-of-living protection and to increase pay for retirees and reestablish retirees’ health care.
“I’ve worked for Ford for 17 years,” Eddie Jakes, a team lead in the paint department at the company’s Chicago plant, said. “Back in 2008-09 we gave Ford concessions. Now it’s time to pay us back. That blank check has come due.”
… AND THE DEEPENING CHINESE-‘ISRAELI’ TIES OF TODAY
You wouldn’t know it upon first glance, but China and the Jews are chum-chum-chummy. It’s a historical relationship that goes back to the very inception of Chinese communism. In a July 9th, 2012 piece entitled “A Jew In Mao’s China” by Laura Goldman for “The Schmooze” of the Jewish Daily Forward, she revealed, “In fact, 85 to 90% of the foreigners helping the Chinese at the time of the Communist takeover were Jewish. This included the daughter of the founder of the brokerage firm Goldman Sachs, who left the comfort of her Park Avenue home to assist the Chinese.” In conjunction with these startling anomalies, the US ZOG had a base in Tianjin from 1945-1947. Tianjin was home to a sizable Jewish community, particularly Russian communists. It was from the Tianjin base that the Dixie Mission of the OSS trained, financed and armed none other than Mao Zedong and his merry band of “revolutionaries” to fight the Japanese–which, contrary to popular opinion, weren’t “imperialists” nor “warmongers” but rather, liberators of Brown and Yellow peoples colonized by the ZOGs of Europe. That however is another story for another time.
The OSS itself was a den of Jewish and Judeophilic intriguers, set up for the sole purpose of infiltrating and ultimately destroying Germany and Japan. There were a multitude of Jewish operatives who were brought into the fold strictly because of their Jewishness and connections with businessmen and bankers in Europe who also sought the downfall of the Axis Powers. Leading this effort in organizing, coordination and recruitment was Nahum Amber Bernstein, the lawyer for the genocidal Jewish Agency and preeminent funder of the Haganah. Another key OSS operative was the notorious Major Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, a wealthy Montreal-based lawyer who was also connected to the Haganah as well as a main player in Permindex, the shadowy Jewish-dominated corporation that helped murder President John F. Kennedy. These are the types who the Chinese communists took assistance from. No dignity whatsoever as just a few decades earlier, the Sassoon family, known as the Iraqi-Jewish Rothschilds, crippled large swathes of the Chinese population with opium addiction. All of this, as well as what is about to be discussed, is extremely relevant as the Chinese-‘Israeli’ relationship of today unfolds at an increasingly expansive rate. Now allow us to delve into Red China’s Jewish patrons. And founders.
Grigori Naumovich Voitinsky (birthname: Zarkhin) – Russian Jew. One of the founders of Soviet Sinology. Handler of Chen Duxiu. Cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party, which he and his colleagues established in 1920. Bolshevik. The process of forming the party in its nascent stages can mostly be attributed to his strategic thinking. Bolshevik propaganda was disseminated through the Shanghai Chronicle–which he managed. He can indeed be identified as the godfather of Chinese communism as well as other branches of communism in the Asian world.
Manfred Stern aka Emilio Kléber aka Lazar Stern aka Moishe Stern aka Mark Zilbert aka General Kleber – Ukrainian Jew. Leader of the International Brigade in Spain. Bolshevik. Helped put down the anti-Soviet rebellion in Mongolia. Became the GRU’s chief spy in the US with his missions centered around stealing American military secrets. Would become the chief military advisor in the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet, with Mao, Zhu De and others reporting directly to him.
Solomon Adler – Jew with origins from Karelitz, Belarus. US Treasury Department economist, Treasury rep in China during WW2. Pegged as a Soviet spy by Whittaker Chambers, returned to China to spearhead translating Mao’s works into English. Was also with the International Liason Department, a vital organ of the CCP whose functions included foreign intelligence.
Jakob Rosenfeld aka General Luo – Austro-Hungarian Jew. Minister of Health in Mao’s provisional government and top Mao advisor. Served in the Chinese Communist Force from 1941 on and participated in the Chinese Communist Force’s march on Beijing. Settled in the Entity after the Communist takeover of China was complete. Statue of him was erected in his honor in Junan county, Shandong and a massive exhibit was named after him in 2006 in Beijing’s National Museum of China.
Sidney Rittenberg – Charleston, South Carolina Jew. Descendant of slave-owners. First American to join the CCP. Close advisor to Mao, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and other high-up CCP leaders. Trusted translator of the Chinese Communist “revolution”. Married into the Chinese family of Wang Yulin. Cultural Revolution supporter. Played a key role in transmitting Chinese Communist propaganda for Xinhua and Radio Peking. Ascended to the head of the Broadcast Administration – i.e. propaganda production – in an unprecedented move that nobody ever thought could be held by a foreigner. But in Communist China of course, Jews weren’t foreigners but “comrades”. Returned to the United Snakes of IsraHELL in 1980 to found Rittenberg & Associates, a company which became a vital go-between for American corporations and China.
Sidney Shapiro aka Sha Boli – New York Ashkenazi Jew. Member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Council. Head of Communist China’s propaganda apparatus. Top translator, writer and publisher of works on China, as well as an actor in Chinese films focused on American villainy. Conducted extensive research into Jews in China and got the works translated into Hebrew and published in the Entity. In December of 2014, the China International Publishing Group announced it was establishing a Sidney Shapiro Research Center in his honor to investigate model criteria for translation between Chinese and English.
Israel Epstein – Polish Jew. Anti-Japanese spy. His father was a Bolshevik agitator. Member of the NKVD’s China divison. Mao’s Minister of Finance/Appropriations. Honored by Mao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Member of the CCP and editor of China Reconstructs/China Today. His wife was a top contributor to one of the most widely used Chinese-English dictionaries published in China.
Frank Coe – Richmond, Virginia Jew. Treasury Department official from 1934-1939 who worked with the Silvermaster spy ring that featured Harry Dexter White at the head of Operation Snow–the precusor to Pearl Harbor. Friend and co-conspirator of Solomon Adler. Key player in Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn – Jewish investment banker, Kissingerite and international corporate strategist with an “expertise” in China. He’s been advising the CCP on economic policy, science, technology, media, culture, US-Chinese relations and international communications for over 20 years.
Mikhail Borodin aka Mikhail Gruzenberg – Jew from Vitebsk, Belarus. Top lieutenant of Lenin. After the Bolshevik takeover, he engaged in spying activities in the UK ZOG, US ZOG and Mexico. Then led a group of Soviet advisors in Guangzhou. He negotiated the First United Front between the Chinese Nationalist Party of Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Communist Party. Under his guidance, both parties reorganized on Leninist dogma and organized training institutes for mass organizations, such as the Peasant Training Institute, where none other than a young Mao served, and the Whampoa Military Academy. He arranged shipments of Soviet arms and kept a balance between the radical communists and the “bourgeios” Nationalists.
David Crook – Staunchly anti-Russian Jewish supremacist from the UK. Fought with many other Jews in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Got recruited by the NKVD as a result of his actions in Spain and was sent to China where he also doubled as a British intelligence agent, working with communists against the Japanese. An architect of China’s foreign service and active in the CCP’s theft of private property, aka “land reform”.
Adolph Abramovich Joffe – Turkic Karaite Jew from Crimea. From a very wealthy family. Associate of Trotsky and Hungarian-Austrian Jew Alfred Adler. Ally and supporter of Lenin. Chairman of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee that overthrew the Russian Provisional Government. Ambassador to China, signing agreements with Sun Yat-Sen and overseeing the distribution of aid and weapons to the Kuomintang as well as cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Chinese communists.
Richard Frey aka Richard Stein – Jew from Vienna, Austria. Arrived in China in 1939 and joined in operations against the Japanese. Member of the CCP and took part in the 7th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Yan’an – the political and military base of the Communist Party of China– as a guest auditor. Pioneer of Integrative Medicine Treatment in China. He founded and managed the first computer database for the medical information center in Beijing. Chairman of the Information Institute and curator of the Medical Academy of Sciences of China. Helped build relations between Austria and China. Honored by Hu Jintao.
Shafick George Hatem aka Ma Haide – Syrian-Lebanese Jew often mistaken as a Maronite who lived in both upstate NY and Lawrence, MA. First traveled to China’s Shanghai with Jewish colleagues (and communist agents) Lazar Katz and Robert Levinson. Traveled to communist HQ in Bao’an (modern-day Zhidan) to directly assist Mao’s troops and personally examine Mao to dispel rumors of Mao’s impending death via a mysterious disease. Chief organizer for recruiting foreign medical personnel to treat Chinese communist forces fighting Japan in northern China. Became a public health official in China after the communist victory in 1949 and holds the distinction of becoming the first foreigner granted Chinese citizenship. Known as the “American Physician Savior to Modern China”.
Hans Shippe aka Morzec Grzyb – Jew from Krakow, Poland. Germany Communist Party member. Soviet journo. Joined Chinese communists in Guangzhou as a translator and interviewer, spreading interviews with top CCP leaders including Mao. Associate of Shafick George Hatem (Ma Haide). First Jew to fall on the battlefield in China’s war against Japan. Monument erected in his honor by Chinese communists in 1942 in Shandong province.
Ruth Weiss aka Wei Lushi – Jew from Vienna, Austria. Said to be the last surviving European eyewitness of the Chinese communist takeover of China. Top educator at the Jewish School in Shanghai, the School of the Chinese Committee of Intellectual Cooperation and West China Union University. Did propaganda work for the Publishing House for Foreign Literature and financial work at the China Welfare Fund. Named one of eleven foreign experts by the Communist Party of China that were part of membership of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 1983.
Rewi Alley – Crypto-Jew, homosexual and probable pedophile from New Zealand. Associate of Ma Haide, Ruth Weiss and Hans Shippe. Became a secret member of the CCP in the late 20s/early 30s and by 1932, was carrying out mission after mission for the communists. Set up the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives to bring in foreign and local high-born money for the war against Japan. Credited with introducing “guerilla industry” to China. Became a top propagandist for the new regime, writing works praising the CCP and its actions nationwide, including the Great Leap Forward. Bragged of his “familial” ties to the CCP’s top brass, including Mao. Rewi Alley Memorial Hall and Research Centre at Lanzhou City University College erected in his honor in 2017. Also honored with the Queen’s Service Order by the New Zealand ZOG and was instrumental in forging strong bonds between Beijing and Wellington.
Betty Chandler aka Chen Bidi – Jew from Manitoba, Canada. Close to Israel Epstein and Sidney Shapiro. CPPCC member. Active participant in the management of Red China’s state affairs. Worked as a medical professional on the front lines against Japan as well as a propagandist, disseminating pictures of alleged Japanese atrocities to US papers as a means of defending the Chinese communist narrative. Carried on the hasbara work at the Publishing House for Foreign Literature, serving as an English-language lecturer.
Hans Miller – German Jew. Came to China in 1939 and held the title of director in at least four different hospitals. CCP and CPPCC member. Trained with Mao and participated in fighting against the Japanese. Helped develop medical science in China and was appointed VP of Beijing Medical University. His contributions during the war against Japan were said to have been critical, especially in Yanan.
Gunther Stein – German Jew. Soviet spy and Red China spy part of the Sorge spy ring. Used his journalist credentials with AP, the Manchester Guardian and the Christian Science Monitor to mask his clandestine activities and deflect attention off the fact he was disseminating propaganda on behalf of the communists. Wrote the book “Challenge of Red China”, celebrating the defeat of Japan and new regime of communism. Today this book is touted by none other than the Rothschild-bankrolled CFR.
Philip Jacob Jaffe – Ukrainian-Russian Jew from NYC’s Lower East Side. Co-founder and policymaker of the Committee for a Democratic Far East Policy (CDFEP). Associate of Israel Epstein and Gunther Stein, who were both CDFEP members. Function of the CDFEP was to instill communism deep into Chinese society through anti-Japanese propaganda. Met with Mao as early as 1924. Published the journal “Amerasia” with money from the Judeophilic Vanderbilts. Amerasia was raided by government authorities for publishing classified materials and Jaffe along with his colleagues and his presumed source, a Jewish Office of Naval Intelligence officer named Andrew Roth, were arrested for espionage. Was a friend and financier of Thomas Arthur Bisson aka T.A. Bisson aka Arthur, a propagandist for Chinese communism in America, suspected Soviet spy who collaborated with Jewish agent of the Soviets Joseph Bernstein, and prolific anti-Japanese writer.
Eva Sandberg aka Eva Xiao – Polish-German Jew. Soviet citizen and spy. Known as the “Only White Western Woman in Yanan”, she married Chinese poet Xiao San, an old classmate and boyhood friend of Mao. She helped Xiao run the editorial department at the Lu Xun Academy of Arts and disseminate communist thought. Was also just one of three Soviet women in all of Red China.
Ursula Kuczynski aka Ruth Werner aka Ursula Beurton aka Ursula Hamburger aka Sonja (codename) – Prussian-German-Polish Jew. Her father, Robert Rene, was a well-known and wealthy economist. Her Yahoudling husband, Rudolf Hamburger, was an architect of the German Communist Party and also a Soviet spy who worked with her in China. Infiltrated MI5, the Royal Air Force and the OSS. Eulogized by the Jew York Times as a “Colorful and Daring Soviet Spy”. Attained the rank of Colonel within the Soviet military. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner for her espionage in China. She ran a spy ring in Shanghai and her missions prominently featured the interception of Japanese communications and sabotage of Japanese military positions in Manchuria. She stored weapons and secured bomb-making materials for Chinese communist guerillas. It is said that Japan would not have pulled out of Manchuria had it not been for her work. Collaborated with the Rosenbergs, David Greenglass, Harry Gold and Klaus Fuchs to get classified nuclear armaments info to the Soviet Union and is credited particularly with being responsible for ***the transmission*** that started the Soviet nuke program. Fuchs, for the record, was recruited into services for the Soviets by none other than her brother Jurgen Kuczynski, an internationally renowned economist.
Michael Menachem Greenberg – Polish-Romanian-British Jew. Managing editor of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) publication, “Pacific Affairs”, where he disseminated a heavily anti-Japanese line. He became a China specialist at the Board of Economic Warfare and an assistant to the agency’s head, Lauchlin Currie–who was revealed to be a Soviet spy connected to Jew Harry Dexter White and the Silvermaster espionage ring. Later worked as a Foreign Affairs Economist in the Administrative Division, Enemy Branch, of the Foreign Economic Administration. His tasks involved finding ways to economically squeeze Japan. Revealed to be a spy for Red China by the investigations of Joseph McCarthy, whose “red-baiting” wasn’t so immersed in paranoia, megalomania and bigotry as liberals (mainly Jews) would have the world believe. Ultimately escaped prosecution and imprisonment and returned to England where he wrote the hasbara book, “British Trade and The Opening of China”, attacking the British for colonially exploiting China in the Opium Wars but deliberately obfuscating the role of the actual opium traders–the aforementioned Mizrahi Jewish Rothschild lieutenants, the Sassoons.
Mark Gayn aka Mark Julius Ginsbourg – Russian-American-Canadian Jew born in Manchuria. Schooled in Russia’s Vladivostock, China’s Shanghai, California’s Claremont and New York’s New York City (Columbia). Writer/journalist for the Jew York Times, Washington Post, Time, Toronto Star and Newsweek. Worked for and passed info to the spy den masquerading as a journalism magazine of Philip Jacob Jaffe, Amerasia. His home was raided by the FBI and 60 classified documents were found. Declassified FBI files reveal that he was Soviet/Chinese spy who had stolen these OSS documents, which related to Chiang Kai-shek’s battle plans against Mao. The theft of this info proved crucial in the Chinese Communist Force defeating Chiang Kai-shek and attaining power. Inexplicably, despite the arrest following the raid on his home, he was let go under the pretext that he would serve as a double agent for America but this never materialized. More probably however, it was Jewish Lobby pressure and his importance to the Maoist cause that procured his release. Said to have obtained information that JFK was going to be assassinated–significant considered the Jewish-‘Israeli’ role in that crime. Traveled to the Soviet Union every year between 1964-1970, not to mention multiple visits to China and was able to get two sit-downs with Mao–more than likely because of his spying almost 20 years earlier.
In conclusion–and a damn clear conclusion at that–there’d be no communism in China without the contributions of these Jews and many others still to be discovered and documented. From the subversive efforts of Gayn and Kuczynski, to the state-building efforts of Epstein, Chandler and Shapiro, to the primordial efforts of Stern and the godfather of them all, Voitinsky. Also, China would not have become the world power it is today if Henry Kissinger hadn’t opened up the doors to trade. Moving further forward, as discussed at the start, we see China becoming disturbingly more ingratiated with the ‘Israeli’ entity in the fields of military, intelligence and technology cooperation as time goes on–no doubt an extension of Jewish-Chinese familiarity going back almost a century.
As it stands at this moment, ‘Israeli’-Chinese bilateral trade has reached a whopping $13 billion, about 260 times what it was in 1992when it was just starting to take off due to the military ties. Chinese students are flocking to the usurping Zionist entity in record numbers for studies, especially technology, which means, whether they know it or not–though you better believe that the ‘Israelis’ know it for certain–they’re being tapped as Talpiot fifth columnists when they return to China. There are extensive, regular direct flights operating between “Tel Aviv” and Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Hong Kong–which aeronautically links the Zio-Tumor to major cites of China’s north, south, east and west.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t nuances. Mao locked up several of the Jews mentioned in this piece for overstepping their limits and he went against the advice of those who still curried favor with him when he decided to provide arms and military training to Palestine’s PFLP–which ended due to pressure from who else but war criminal Henry Kissinger. He always seemed to be teetering on standing with the peasantry from which he came and the Jewish-led international hegemonists who sought to turn China into “theirs” since they couldn’t break it with the opium pandemic. And he always sold out to the latter.
But fighting back against imperialist meddling with ‘Israeli’ technology and military support doesn’t make you an anti-imperialist superstar nor will it endear you to millions of Muhammadi-Husseini revolutionaries seeking to liquidate the transhistorical framework of oppression led by Islam’s greatest enemy. Hell, it doesn’t endear you to revolutionaries PERIOD–Muslim or otherwise. What it makes you is a lollygagging fool. Because ‘Israel’ is playing every side while it further cements its global dominance and paves the way for its Dajjalic false messiah–we see it already with the previously noted Uyghurs. ‘Israel’ will discard China to the curb just like it does with all other Shabbos Goyim. So this piece, apart from its fact-finding nature, is also meant to serve as a warning to our Chinese brethren who have Anti-Parasitic vision and consciousness, not to mention a strong sense of patriotism. Get out while you still can before ‘Israel’ sucks you dry.
First it was Bolshevism. Now it’s Zionism. And in both instances, Red China means Jew China and the named-names evidence… the hard, direct, named-names evidence… proves it beyond all shreds of skepticism. The only question that remains now is… Will a nation with a history as vibrant as China allow itself to be nothing but a ZOG in service of a “nation” as accursed as the cancer calling itself ‘Israel’? Or will it reassert its civilizational glory as well as its place in the pantheon of Global South Resistance and disassociate itself from the Zio-Tumor? With Chinese tycoons like Jack Ma enamored with ‘Israel’ and China’s political leadership all the way up to Xi Jinping pushing to merge China and ‘Israel’ closer and closer centrally when it comes to technology, it doesn’t look good to say the least. God help the Chinese people. God help us all. And may God damn World Zionism and all of its tribalist agents as well as its collaborators past and present to the Naar.
Actors officially join screen writers on strike picket lines, Los Angeles, July 14. One out, all out, and stay out together until all Hollywood unions win big! (Photo: USA Today)
An abbreviated version of these articles was issued as an Internationalist Group leaflet.
AUGUST 29 – It was more than 100 days into the strike by 10,000 Hollywood screenwriters that the employers in the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) made a new offer to the Writers Guild of America (WGA), which walked out on May 2. It’s been over six weeks now since the 160,000 actors of SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) officially joined the writers on the picket lines, and the AMPTP has yet to respond to the union’s demands. Production at the major studios is basically shut down. But as the Hollywood cartel seeks to drag out the battle, bold action by the unions is needed to break the stalemate.
The studios are hard-lining it, seeking to starve out the writers and actors, and eventually to pick off one union at a time. That is a standard employer tactic, facilitated by the division of the workforce into many craft unions. But it comes at a time when technological change – the dominance of streaming, introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) – poses an existential threat to entertainment workers. And while Wall Street financiers are pushing to milk short-term profits from a notoriously fickle and unpredictable industry, tens of thousands of “below-the-line” movie crew workers in IATSE (stage hands), Teamsters, musicians and others whose labor is crucial to any production, are out of work. This is a crucial battle, and to win it, the dual strikeshould become one strike by all the entertainment industry unions together.
SAG-AFTRA finally declared a walkout on July 14 after negotiations collapsed as the movie industry bosses refused to engage on actors’ key demands, on residuals (payments for reruns of shows) for streaming and limits on AI. The AMPTP’s response to the union’s already pared-down wage demands (11% in the first year) was an insulting “offer” (5%), which after last year’s record inflation would amount to a wage cut. As thousands of actors joined with their WGA colleagues, there were large and energetic picket lines outside major film and TV studios, including Netflix, Amazon and Universal Studios. These have continued, week after week, and this show of determination and unity has not been lost on the media moguls.
But that alone is not enough to make them back down. The studios were gearing up for months for a strike, stockpiling scripts and shows. After the WGA had been out for over two months, a studio executive told Deadline (11 July), “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” The “plan to grind down the [writers’] guild has long been in the works,” the paper reported, quoting an industry insider saying “they’re going to let it bleed out.” Even if this was just scare talk, trying to intimidate strikers into submission, it hasn’t worked. Three days later, SAG-AFTRA went out. It is the first time actors staged a major walkout since 1980, over four decades ago, and the first time both unions struck simultaneously since 1960.
The New York Times (14 July) wrote, “the actors’ uncharacteristic resolve caught senior executives and producers off guard.” The SAG-AFTRA leadership had given plenty of indications it was ready to compromise, from the disclaimer on the bottom of its “solidarity” picket signs saying it wasn’t asking anyone not to cross1 to a video message to the members saying that talks had been “extremely productive” and suggesting a settlement was at hand. Alarmed actors put together a letter to the union tops saying “we are prepared to strike” and “we are concerned by the idea that SAG-AFTRA members may be ready to make sacrifices that leadership is not” (Variety, 27 June). Over 1,000 actors signed the letter, including Oscar winners Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Rami Malek.
WGA and SAG-AFTRA join with hotel workers of UNITE-HERE in march of striking unions, Los Angeles, July 21. If all Hollywood unions struck together they could win, hands down. For a single union of all media workers! (Photo: Megan Jamerson/KCRW)
Its spine stiffened, the actors union leadership went back to its 48-page list of proposals, whose key demands the studio bosses either rejected outright (revenue-sharing on streaming) or didn’t address (AI). But even as the studios haven’t budged, inside of a couple of weeks SAG-AFTRA began making “interim agreements” with smaller studios and independent productions (currently 286 and counting) granting permission for actors to work on them. This provoked a lot of heat, including from comedian Sarah Silverman who called this by its right name: “It’s scabbing,” at a time when “writers, actors, crew people” are “sacrificing their livelihood for this cause.” After the WGA raised a stink, the SAG-AFTRA tops said no future interim agreements would be made for projects being struck by the writers – but nothing about rescinding the already granted permissions.
On top of which, the whole pretense that these are productions independent of the top studios is a hoax. The list of “indie” productions going forward in the middle of a strike include such big-budget movies like the sci-fi horror show The Watchers, which will go to Warner Brothers for theatrical release; and 15 series including the Israeli spy thriller Tehran, whose first season featured a Mossad agent tasked with preparing an Israeli air force strike on a nuclear plant. This piece of blatant war propaganda is being shot in Greece and will be broadcast, like the previous two seasons, on Apple TV+. Various other “interims” will also be broadcast and distributed by AMPTP majors, who in this way can keep production rolling, strike or no strike.
The interims undercut the impact of the strikes, which should shut downall film productionsolid! Although the AMPTP restarted talks with the Writers Guild – perhaps figuring it is the weaker of the two unions – to give the appearance that bargaining is going on, it hasn’t agreed to key demands. The WGA now says it wants the right to honor other unions’ picket lines as provided for in Teamsters contracts. Yes, the WGA – and SAG-AFTRA – should demand contract language affirming members’ right to refuse to cross a picket line. They should also get rid of no-strike clauses. It will take an all-out strike to win such demands. But for one of the unions to go back before the other would be a huge betrayal. Enforcing the labor principle that picket lines mean don’t cross requires collective action.
When studio bosses summoned WGA negotiators to talk on August 22, it was not to respond to the union’s counterproposal, given to them a week earlier, but instead to announce that they were going to bypass the union leadership and try to stampede the members into accepting the AMPTP offer. It was, the WGA said in a statement, “a meeting to get us to cave.” The companies’ strategy is “to bet that we will turn on each other.” Yes, and it is the responsibility of the union leaderships to see that doesn’t happen.
As the networks gear up for the fall season with plans to draw on backlogs of completed series, plus a slew of unscripted “reality TV” shows, the unions, rather than hinting at settling on their own, should escalate the striketo include television, radio and digital media, programs covered by the Network TV Code, and then on to broadcast news. That would violate no-strike contract provisions? You bet – shred them with militant union action! Above all, with two unions fighting the same bosses over many of the same demands, it is critical that the actors and writers stay out together until both unions’ demands are won. That means a fight against the WGA and SAG-AFTRA union bureaucrats who are preparing to hang separately. Militant strikers should insist: No one goes back until everyone goes back!
And that would point the way to a single media workers union covering the entire industry. More on that below.
Wall Street Puts the Screws to Hollywood
In her press conference announcing the strike, Fran Drescher gave what was widely deemed a fiery performance. To many labor activists it sounded more like the star of the TV series The Nanny was reading a script for her latest role, as militant union leader: “The jig is up, A.M.P.T.P. We stand tall. You have to wake up and smell the coffee. We are labor and we stand tall…. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us.”
Any class-conscious trade-unionist knows that capitalism without greed is impossible. And the idea that the workers in the industry are “in business” with the bosses speaks volumes about the SAG-AFTRA leader’s consciousness, though not unexpected for someone whose latest gig was as a “brand ambassador” for the luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana. But, to be fair, when Drescher denounced “employers [who] make Wall Street and greed their priority,” she was pointing to something real. And it’s not just that “they plead poverty … when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs.”
There has been a significant change in the entertainment industry of late as the traditional studios are dwarfed by, or have been swallowed by, media monsters like Apple (market capitalization, $2.8 trillion, owner of Apple Studios), the e-commerce giant Amazon (market cap $1.4 trillion, owner of Amazon Studios/Amazon Prime Video and MGM), conglomerates like Walt Disney Company ($238 billion) and Comcast ($214 billion, owner of NBCUniversal), streaming king Netflix ($184 billion), etc. These mega corporations are not focused on filmmaking; they produce and distribute “content” – often having a “chief content officer” – and making movies is only a small part of their businesses. In fact, some writer-producers report that they have been told their work isn’t “second screen enough” – i.e., that it is too compelling, and would distract from viewers scrolling on their phones. So in the quest for “content,” the bosses are demanding the visual equivalent of Muzak, or elevator music!
Know your enemy. A dozen entertainment industry unions (and a half-dozen IATSE locals) bargaining separately with a cartel of some of the richest corporations in the U.S. (right, with a market capitalization of almost 5 trillion dollars) is a ticket for defeat. For a single union of all media workers! (Photo: Megan Jamerson/KCRW)
Moreover, during the pandemic, when streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime exploded as millions watched while stuck at home, many studios borrowed heavily from Wall Street to launch a wave of mergers and quickly expand production, at a time when interest rates were rock bottom. In the center of international banking, the particular sector that latched onto media production was private equity capital, the far-less-regulated financial and investment houses known for ruthlessly shuttering properties deemed insufficiently profitable. In the middle of the current strikes, Insider (26 July) reported “17 private-equity players making big bets on Hollywood, even as economic uncertainty and strikes roil the entertainment business.”
The players and some of their assets in this freewheeling market include major investment firms such as BlackRock ($8.6 trillion in assets under management; funding Macro TV/film studio); Blackstone ($991 billion; investments in Candle Media, Westbrook, Hello Sunshine and ATTN:; Apollo ($600 billion; backing HarbourView, Legendary Entertainment and North Road Company); KKR ($510 billion; Skydance, Plan B, UFC, WME talent agency); Carlyle ($381 billion; Content Partners), and a whole bunch of smaller multibillion-dollar funds. These are cutthroat capitalists, and some are pushing AI big time. Like the venture capitalists of Kyber-Knight Capital, which says that generative AI (creating new text and images by mining all accessible existing material) “will let filmmakers work faster and cheaper” (Variety, 16 August).
That is the point, isn’t it? Return on capital. Not that Hollywood hasn’t always been focused on the bottom line, but these behemoths are only interested in short-term profits. Early in 2023, the Wall Street analysis firm MoffettNathanson issued a research note concluding that “streaming is, in fact, not a good business.” It went on: “Cash flows are sorry ghosts of their former selves. Balance sheets are loaded with debt in a higher interest rate environment.” It concluded: media companies must introduce “a new age of rationalization” with “a focus on driving profitable growth” (Hollywood Reporter, 19 January). A Morgan Stanley analyst declared that the industry was embarking on a new phase of “cost rationalization” and consolidation, with some firms exiting “direct-to-consumer content delivery.”
It’s no secret that the media moguls haven’t yet figured out a way to make oodles of profits out of streaming. Consulting company Deloitte’s “2023 Media & Entertainment Industry Outlook” calculated that “streaming generates one-sixth as much revenue per home as pay TV.” When Disney announced it had lost half a billion dollars in its streaming operation in April-June 2023, this was judged “encouraging” by analysts, as it was only one-third of its losses in 4th quarter 2022. In this fight, WGA and SAG-AFTRA are going up against both Hollywood and Wall Street. That is precisely why, as studios try to drastically cut production costs, the striking unions have to hang tough in demanding a huge increase in pay. Otherwise, writers’ and actors’ livelihoods will end up on the cutting room floor.
The response of the unions has been vaguely “anti-corporate” rhetoric from SAG-AFTRA, and from WGA, appeals for more government oversight and regulation of the top streaming companies (Disney, Amazon and Netflix).2 But asking for more stringent anti-trust enforcement won’t produce more competition in the media industry, any more than the 1911 Sherman Anti-Trust Law did. At that time, the Standard Oil monopoly became the Seven Sisters oligopoly, and oil prices were controlled by a cartel instead of a single producer. “Anti-monopoly” laws never work, or at most only for a brief period, as concentration and centralization of capital are inherent in the capitalist system.3 Only sharp class struggle for socialist revolution can defeat the monopoly power of the media giants. ■
As Studios Hard-Line It, Unite the Strikes!
SAG-AFTRA and WGA pickets outside Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, July 14. Unite the strikes to win! (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
A Hollywood strike is different in many ways from a Teamster trucker, auto worker or hotel worker strike. In this petty-bourgeois sector, you have A-list stars walking a picket line (or not), bizarre pay formulas and vast differences in income between those with a steady gig or role in an ongoing continuing series, for example, and background actors whose pay amounts to minimum wage, if that. There are also the thousands of workers – stage hands, camera crews and other categories in the TV and film industry toiling behind the scenes to bring the production to life. They live paycheck to paycheck and are now out of work. Plus there’s a whole lot of nepotism and not a lot of diversity at any level. But at bottom, this strike is a showdown between capital and labor.
A key issue for the Writers Guild is minimum staffing levels. The union had proposed a minimum of six writers for ten weeks in writers rooms for TV series as they develop episodes prior to receiving a go-ahead (“pre-greenlight”). The AMPTP’s counteroffer agreed to the ten weeks, but no staffing minimum. The WGA had demanded that AI not be used by the studios to write/rewrite literary material or as source material. In their August 11 offer, the bosses trumpeted “landmark protections” on “generative artificial intelligence” (GAI) material. Which are? Written material generated by AI “will not be considered literary material,” and writers would be paid and credited as before for the material they produce. So the studios would use GAI scripts however they want, just not call them “literary”! It’s even possible that the AMPTP language would enable studios to copyright GAI scripts, which under present court rulings they can’t do.
The WGA proposed to establish weekly pay during pre-greenlight and post-greenlight writers rooms, a big issue for writers being paid the minimum, who depend on this income to cover rent, food and other necessities. The AMPTP has refused outright to even discuss this. For both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, a key demand was to establish residuals based on viewership of streaming videos. Until now, the studios have refused to release any information at all about viewership. In their counteroffer, the bosses now say they will let a handful WGA staffers view limited streaming viewer data (which the studios produce) for three years, and only then would they discuss residuals! So for now, the studios would continue to pay next to nothing to writers on streaming videos and series. The unions should demand that the studios and streaming platforms open their books to workers inspection, on viewership, subscriber/advertising income and other financials.
The grotesque injustice of the present Hollywood pay system has been highlighted by the hit series Orange Is the New Black, which aired for seven seasons, from 2013 to 2019. It was the longest-running, most-watched original series on Netflix, whose “runaway success” built the brand and the streaming model that now dominates the industry. Yet while some actors eventually received $200,000 per episode, many earned a pittance. One cast member, Beth Dover, reports that she lost money in her first two seasons, because she was cast as a “local hire,” and therefore was responsible for her own airfare and lodging. Residual payments were no better. Actress Kimiko Glenn (who appeared in seasons 2 through 5 as a recurring character, and as a one-episode guest star in season 7) posted a video of herself in 2020 looking over a statement of foreign streaming residuals for over twenty episodes, adding up to a grand total of $27.30 (“‘Orange Is the New Black’ Signalled the Rot Inside the Streaming Economy,” New Yorker, 12 July).
In face of that reality, the weak-kneed response by the WGA to the AMPTP “offer” that offers zilch or close to it on key issues of staffing, weekly pay and streaming residuals was that the “counteroffer is neither nothing, nor nearly enough” (WGA on Strike,24 August). Meanwhile, the union tops tallied up the cost of their proposal for each studio, ranging from 2/10ths of 1% of annual revenues for Netflix to less than 1/100th of 1% for Amazon and Apple. This, and illusory talk of “real discussions” and “movement” by the studios on AI protections, suggests that WGA leaders are just looking to hold on to the present system, in which writers make chicken feed, and would be ready to settle for very little indeed. The SAG-AFTRA tops, meanwhile, are begging the AMPTP to talk with them.
SAG-AFTRA president Drescher got rave reviews for her July 13 press conference in part because it was what the ranks and a lot of people wanted to hear, especially against the smug disdain of Disney studio chief Bob Iger (annual salary $27 million), who dissed strikers’ demands as “unrealistic.” Yet, as the press noted, the actors union leader’s own remark, that “everybody else tinkers around our artistry,” was a put-down that “firmly distinguished the actors’ cause and claim from the ongoing WGA strike”4 – and from all others who make the show go on. The fact is, Drescher (net worth $25 million) and SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland (annual salary $1,014,939 last year!) inhabit a different world than the working and auditioning actors who are the large majority of the union’s membership.
SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher and national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland announce actors strike at July 13 press conference. (Photo: Chris Pizzello / AP)
That is not just true of the actors union leaders personally but of the labor bureaucracy overall, which is a privileged petty-bourgeois social layer that seeks to mediate between labor and capital. They do this mainly by clamping down on union militancy, although they are sometimes forced to go through the motions in order to preserve their position atop a workers organization. At an appearance at the New York City Council, Drescher made the point that 86% of SAG members do not even make the $26,470 annually from screen acting required to qualify for the union’s health insurance. And now a number of strikers are reporting that they are on the verge of losing their health care coverage.
It is high time for the ranks to take charge and unite the strikes. One reason the WGA leadership reacted sharply to the AMPTP publicizing its “offer” was that the union tops haven’t even told their members or the public what their counteroffer was. They want to bargain behind closed doors, in order to hide their concessions to the bosses. Strikers should demand to know the unions’ current demands, and should insist on elected mass strike committees of several hundred delegates, recallable at any time, to organize the struggle and decide on demands. Such committees could meet together (along with reps from IATSE and Teamsters) to give a united response to the AMPTP’s divide-and-conquer tactics, and declare that the strikes will go on until both unions have settled.
This should be a prelude to a struggle to build a single trade union of all media workers. The guild mentality of each profession jealously guarding its bailiwick (and restricting its membership) is an obstacle to defeating the trillion-dollar e-commerce giants and media conglomerates worth hundreds of billions. In 2021, IATSE voted overwhelmingly to strike – and would have if it weren’t for a sellout union leadership – over miserable pay and killer job shifts, demanding the right to a good night’s sleep and a weekend5 IATSE members, as well as Teamsters, animators, make-up artists and other guilds also depend on residuals to fund motion picture industry health plans, so bring them into this strike now, to lay the basis for common action (including simultaneous expiration of contracts) in the future.
In the meantime, class struggle militants can act together to set up joint union safety committees at every studio and on every shoot to avoid tragedies like on the set at Rust,where IATSE Local 600 director of photography Halyna Hutchins was killed shortly after camera operators walked off the set complaining of dangerous conditions (and just after scabs had arrived to replace them).
Break with the Democrats, Oust the Bureaucrats – Build a Class Struggle Workers Party!
Leaders of both striking unions have said workers in the industry are facing “existential threats.” They got that right, and those threats are coming not only from the studios but from the top levels of international finance capital. To win a brawl against powerful forces who are trying to drag things out in order to starve strikers out, chanting “one day longer, one day stronger” won’t cut it. It’s necessary to sharply increase the intensity of the struggle, extending the strike to close down broadcasts and enlist the power of the labor movement as a whole in a broad-scale class-struggle against the movie moguls and titans of commerce, finance and industry. And that means, like any class struggle, it must be fought politically, against all the parties and politicians of capital.
When the WGA balked at the studios’ proposal, what was the AMPTP’s response? It hired a new crisis response public relations firm, The Levinson Group, one of whose senior advisors is Matt McKenna, former spokesperson for Democratic president Bill Clinton, for the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. And the WGA? It hired Precision Strategies, led by Stephanie Cutter, who was deputy campaign director for Democratic president Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign (Hollywood Reporter, 25 August). As for SAG-AFTRA, Fran Drescher is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton and even eyed her vacated Senate seat in 2008. While Drescher has proclaimed herself “anti-capitalist,” this whole fight is being waged within the confines of the capitalist Democratic Party.
(Above) Rally for Hollywood 10 screenwriters and actors in Los Angeles as they are being sent to jail, June 1950. (Below) Democrat Ronald Reagan, then head of SAG, testifying before Democrat-led House Un-American Activities Committee that witch-hunted leftists in Hollywood. (Photos: Zinn Education Project; Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation)
Hollywood studio bosses are kingmakers in the Democratic Party, Hollywood stars are prominent campaigners for Democrats. The last time screenwriters and actors were on strike at the same time, in 1960, when Ronald Reagan (who went on to become one of the most notorious union-busters in history) headed SAG, he was a Democrat. (After getting residuals and health care on the strength of the dual strike, Reagan left the writers hanging out to dry.) And the anti-communist witch-hunting of the Hollywood Ten actors, writers, directors was spearheaded by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), led by Democrats, while Reagan named names and the blacklisting was carried out by the studio bosses, also Democrats. This was all long before Republican senator Joseph McCarthy’s name became synonymous with “red” purges in the anti-Soviet Cold War.
Today, Hollywood strikers are tremendously popular, as working people are ground down by rampant profiteering driving up gas prices and food prices and driving down living standards. But that popularity needs to be mobilized. To successfully wage an all-out battle against capital, we need to oust the union bureaucrats, who see themselves as “in business” with the bosses, a bourgeois concept that is sold to even the most hard-pressed actors; to break with the Democrats, who pass strikebreaking legislation against rail workers while waging an ever-escalating proxy war in Ukraine that is careening toward World War III against Russia and China; and to build aclass-struggle workers party, to lead all the oppressed in the fight for a workers government.
Internationalists at SAG-AFTRA picket line in NYC, August 18. Break with the Democrats, build a workers party! (Internationalist photo)
Motion picture making is a cruel industry. As generations of talented young people follow their dreams to the dream factory, they audition for bit parts and eke out a precarious existence waiting on tables, or other gig work, trying to make ends meet while endlessly hoping to be “discovered” and have their shot at the big time. Hollywood has always been a dictatorship, as the studio system monopolized production and used the star system to promote and control the headliners. It is where sexual exploitation was not an aberration but an industry standard, as the road to stardom (or just a steady gig) was often via the director’s couch. To break out of that mold, to build a system of cultural creation through collaborative effort, making possible artistic works of all kinds far superior in every way to a lot of the garbage being churned out today, will require nothing less than a revolution.
Today we are in the middle of a strike that may go on and on as the bosses threaten to starve out writers, actors and all who join them in solidarity. In our May 15 Internationalist leaflet, we emphasized “the urgent need for united action across the industry to shut down all the production companies in the AMPTP.” This is all the more true today, as we say: One Out, All Out, and Stay Out Together Until All Hollywood Unions Win Big! ■
1. See our May 15 leaflet, “To Win the Strike, All Out to Shut Down Hollywood!” in The Internationalist No. 69-70, January-May 2023.
2. Writers Guild of America West, The New Gatekeepers: How Disney, Amazon, and Netflix Will Take Over Media (August 2023). Earlier, the WGA West issued another report, Broken Promises: Media Mega-Mergers and the Case for Anti-Trust Reform (December 2021) on the biggest media mergers of the previous decade.
3. Karl Marx, Capital,Vol. 1, Chapter 25: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.
4. “Fran Drescher Delivered the Performance of a Lifetime as SAG-AFTRA President,” Variety, 13 July.
5. See “IATSE Members Voted to Strike: Let’s Do It,” The Internationalist, October 2021.
Starting in 1981 I helped distribute the Spartacist newspaper and organizational tool Workers Vanguard on street corners, at workplaces, at rallies, at picket lines, in front of colleges and down at the shipyards in Quincy and Connecticut where they built boats. I helped sell Workers Vanguard for almost forty years. I was not a member of the Spartacist; I was a working class supporter of the Spartacists. Some weeks I went out for two different sales events in two different neighborhoods around Boston, or New England. I left my factory job sometimes and went for an hour and a half sale and then back to the plant. So… I am one acquainted with Workers Vanguard.
A new document from the Spartacist details some of the events of the last years that led to the implosion of the Spartacist who aspire to be the Communist Fourth International in the genuine tradition of Lenin.
During the ‘lockdowns’ the Spartacists went ‘radio silent.’ An issue of the newspaper Workers Vanguard in April 2020 notified readers that the newspaper would be irregularly published and posted during the COVID crisis.
During the lockdowns I was publishing up to ten articles a day on my personal blog. Most of what I post is reposted work of others, so that is easier to produce. I post articles I disagree with and do not add comment and let the reader decide for themselves.
While in NYC over ten years ago with a Spartacist activist I noted that many articles in Workers Vanguard where “the last story I read on the issue” because often the story was about news from two months ago. I was implying that a topic of discussion had been played out and the public had moved on. “We want to get it right,” she had responded. The issue in question is debated and argued and then finally an article can be written that the Spartacist can stand behind on principle.
So…. why is everything now being questioned and pointed to as obviously flawed and poorly thought out by honest but misguided militants?
I just read through the document for a second time. Slowly. I am disappointed at the speaker skipping over of the ‘boring’ details of the various ‘regimes’ that fought over the last thirty years.
The speaker goes through the last thirty years as the Spartacists tried to spread ideas in East Germany in 1990 and got a bit of a hearing and helped spark a large demonstration resisting the collapse of the East German workers state. No mention was made of the brave Spartacist woman Martha who left the Spartacists to go on her own to Russia and protest at Lenin’s Tomb. Martha was killed by a stealth assassin. What was she doing? Providing ‘leadership?’ Seeking an audience for ideas.
The speaker talks about the Spartacists telling workers or interested militants that they were keeping Marxist ideas alive. At every strike picket line I went to with the Spartacists to help distribute Workers Vanguard or just walk the picket line we said “Picket lines mean don’t cross!” There was no accommodation to ‘liberals’ whatever that’s supposed to mean.
While protesting or selling Workers Vanguard or on workers defense teams or alone I have been pushed, punched, arrested, handcuffed, put in a cell, sent to court, admonished, told to move to another corner… et cetera. What does this have to do with a passive adaptation to liberalism? I did not storm the stage and push the liberal Democrats and their bureaucrat Labor Union allies off the stage at labor union rallies; I worked the edge of the crowd and sought a sympathetic audience. Every time.
The fact that the workers did not rally to Workers Vanguard did not mean the news paper was ‘sterile.’
……………
When the City of Boston declared a ‘shelter in place’ alert after the Boston Marathon Bombing I heard the news in the afternoon. I was at home reading news online all day, but I was reading world news. As soon as I bumped into the ‘shelter in place’ order I went outside. The government has no legal right to order the city to shelter in place. I live on the southern edge of the city and when I went outside traffic was moving and people were moving around the area normally. I went to the food store and things looked normal. Plenty of people had the same impulse I had.
But look at the Spartacist discussion of the COVID era. The implied message was that the COVID disease caused great harm to the working class. Did COVID harm workers significantly? Or did the illogical lockdowns and mask madness and vaccines that didn’t work cause the problems. Are vaccines giving lots of healthy working age people heart attacks? Who knows, the Spartacists simply require vaccination if my reading of one article was correct.
There are many medical professionals in my family. I ask them if any of the ‘vaccines’ developed around the world actually work and could be called a ‘vaccine’ in the traditional sense. They have no idea and the question never occurred to them.
Two different times I was driving to a picket line with a Spartacist team and the young woman comrade in charge spent the entire twenty-five minute car ride to the early morning picket line on the phone getting advice and directions. Why?
Picket lines mean don’t cross! Everyone understood that simple position. Break with the Democrats, Build a workers party! Many workers, especially on a picket line would have a reaction to that idea that was not hostile, at least.
So, what was she getting instructions to do?
At a Boston Gas workers picket line I was with three Spartacists as we walked on a labor union strike picket line at about five in the morning in the dark. I was not selling Workers Vanguard, or talking to union workers. I was there as security and support for the Spartacist and being able to speak the local accent. The line of workers was moving silently in front of the gas company driveway in a tight circle. We could see our breath in front of us in the cold air that seemed to magnify sound as a truck driven by a replacement worker ‘scab’ drove towards us. No one said anything. The truck came closer slowly humming.
It wasn’t my place. I wasn’t a member of that union, I wasn’t a Spartacist. The truck was getting closer and no one said a word. I yelled out, “Stop the scabs!”
The line took up the chant. What was to be done? The police parted the line with the bureaucrats help.
Was that ‘leadership?’ Or just the right word of propaganda at the right time. But, I was ‘freelancing.’ How come the leading comrades half hour on the phone did not prepare her to yell the picket line defense call first? Didn’t occurred to them to plan for that?
…………………..
So, what happened in the Spartacist League. The few clues seem to indicate that some young and vigorous Quebequois comrades joined with some justified noting of Anglo flavored ideas in the Spartacists.
There is a kind of implication that if the Spartacist didn’t have such an obsession with the US, where most of them live, the workers of the world would have answered an appeal from the Trotskyists.
In the early days of the COVID lockdowns I wondered if a significant number of Spartacists had died or something. I published more during lockdowns, not less. Having internet access surely meant that Spartacist writers for Workers Vanguard could collaborate or be edited. I posted articles, wrote a few things, recorded videos, made numerous Mp3 audio recordings, put classic Marxist and leftist works online. What the flock where they all doing?
I got messages from people telling me I was the only one publishing Spartacist material currently that they found searching asking me what was going on. I wrote back that I did not know and was waiting for what ever came out publicly eventually.
I used a blog platform to make some classic Marxist works available and also started to make audio Mp3 recordings of Spartacist historical articles about the Paris Commune of 1871, The French Revolution, and The Kronshtadt Anarchist Uprising Against the Bolshevik Revolution and other works. I set up a Workers Vanguard subreddit on Reddit and made numerous audio file links available and got a large number of downloads. I was shut down. I posted elsewhere.
Think of the political parties wiped out in the past by wars and government crackdowns. Were the Spartacists blown away by COVID? That’s all it took?
When I think of all the hearty militants I have known in the Spartacist… workers who climb poles in storms and walk through tunnels under water… Did you have nothing to say? Dangerous jobs require ‘risk assessment’ almost every minute. Being a socialist revolutionary militant worker against capitalists is dangerous. So… why be so afraid of getting a mild flue?
Some people seemed to embrace the narrative of the End of Time COVID more than others. As time passed I wondered if the Spartacist were having an internal dispute because an important person or two who held a balance of power had been sidelined. While not massive, the Spartacist publishers and related organizations do have some assets worth controlling.
Finally, the Spartacists put out a statement about COVID and the political situation. The organization had not collapsed. Someone else was in charge. The leaflets and articles had a strange new wording indicating to me that there were new writers or new editors or a new collective.
The speaker refers to a criticism from a former Spartacist in France’s Ligue Trotskyist de France who notes the takeover of the Spartacists by Quebec comrades. I have no idea.
The Spartacists are now alive and the Communist International holds meetings and issues new documents and revolutionary statements.
The Spartacists put out several leaflets supporting militant labor union action by the drivers of the Teamsters union; the Spartacists called for the unionization of Amazon. I posted the leaflets on my blog, I made audio Mp3 recordings of the articles and videos. I posted the audio on Reddit and Gab… I’m banned on Twitter now X. I posted a video with the Spartacist call for a militant strike by the Teamsters on Rumble video site. So… I’m still spreading Spartacist ideas. But, I am ‘freelancing.’ I also copied and shared the Internationalist Group’s militant appeal for a Teamsters strike; I made an audio Mp3 recording and shared posted the links on many sites.
Hundreds, occasionally thousands of people are exposed to these words and ideas through my efforts. Propaganda may lead to propaganda circles.
It is now clear that Ukraine’s eagerly anticipated counteroffensive has been a colossal failure.[1] After three months, the Ukrainian army has made little progress pushing back the Russians. Indeed, it has yet to get beyond the so-called “grey zone,” the heavily contested strip of land that lies in front of the first main line of Russian defenses. The New York Times reports that “In the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, as much as 20 percent of the weaponry Ukraine sent to the battlefield was damaged or destroyed, according to U.S. and European officials. The toll included some of the formidable Western fighting machines — tanks and armored personnel carriers — that the Ukrainians were counting on to beat back the Russians.”[2] According to virtually all accounts of the fighting, Ukrainian troops have suffered enormous casualties.[3] All nine of the vaunted brigades that NATO armed and trained for the counteroffensive have been badly chewed up on the battlefield.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive was doomed to fail from the start. A look at the lineup of forces on both sides and what the Ukrainian army was trying to do, coupled with an understanding of the history of conventional land war, make it clear that there was virtually no chance the attacking Ukrainian forces could defeat Russia’s defending forces and achieve their political goals.
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Ukraine and its Western supporters hoped that the Ukrainian army could execute a classic blitzkrieg strategy to escape the war of attrition that was grinding it down. That plan called for punching a large hole in Russia’s defensive lines and then driving deep into Russian-controlled territory, not only capturing territory along the way, but delivering a hammer blow to the Russian army. As the historical record makes clear, this is an especially difficult operation to pull off when the attacking forces are engaged in a fair fight – one involving two roughly equal militaries. The Ukrainians were not only involved in a fair fight, but they were also ill-prepared to execute a blitzkrieg and were facing an adversary well-positioned to thwart one. In short, the deck was stacked against the Ukrainian counteroffensive from the start.
Nevertheless, there was pervasive optimism about Ukraine’s battlefield prospects among Western policymakers, pundits and editorial writers in the mainstream media, retired generals, and other experts in the American and European foreign policy establishments.[4] Retired General David Petraeus’s comments on the eve of the counteroffensive capture the prevailing zeitgeist: “I think that this counteroffensive is going to be very impressive.” He then effectively described the Ukrainians executing a successful blitzkrieg against Russian forces.[5]
In fact, Western leaders and the mainstream media put significant pressure on Kyiv to launch the counteroffensive in the months before it began on 4 June. At the time, Ukraine’s leaders were dragging their feet and showing little enthusiasm for starting the planned blitzkrieg, probably because at least some of them understood they were being led to the slaughter. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later said on 21 July that, “We did have plans to start it in the spring, but we didn’t because, frankly, we had not enough munitions and armaments and not enough properly trained brigades.”[6] Moreover, after the counteroffensive began, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Ukrainian military’s commander in chief, angrily told The Washington Post that he felt the West had not provided Ukraine with adequate arms and that “without being fully supplied, these plans are not feasible at all. But they are being carried out.”[7]
Even after the counteroffensive bogged down, which happened shortly after it started, many optimists continued to hold out hope that it would eventually succeed, although their numbers have declined over time. Retired US General Ben Hodges, one of the most enthusiastic advocates of launching the blitzkrieg, maintained on 15 June, “I think the Ukrainians can and will win this fight.”[8] Dara Massicot, a prominent expert often cited in the mainstream media, opined on 19 July that “For now, the Russian front lines are holding, despite the Kremlin’s dysfunctional decisions. Yet the cumulative pressure of bad choices is mounting. Russian front lines might crack in the way Hemingway once wrote about going bankrupt: ‘gradually, then suddenly’.” Michael Kofman, another expert frequently cited by the mainstream press, claimed on 2 August that “the counteroffensive itself hasn’t failed,” while The Economist ran a story on 16 August that proclaimed: “Ukraine’s counter-offensive is making progress, slowly: Ten weeks in, the army is starting to figure out what works.”[9]
A week later, on 22 August, when it was hard to deny that the counteroffensive was in serious trouble and there was hardly any chance of rectifying the situation, Jake Sullivan, the US national security advisor, stated: “We do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate. We are seeing Ukraine continue to take territory on a methodical, systematic basis.”[10]
Sullivan’s comments notwithstanding, many in the West now recognize that the counteroffensive has failed, and Ukraine is doomed to fight a war of attrition that it is unlikely to win, chiefly because the conflict is slowly morphing from a fair fight into an unfair fight. But it should have been obvious to Ukraine’s Western cheerleaders beforehand that the blitzkrieg they embraced was doomed to fail and that it made little sense to push Ukraine to launch it.
UKRAINE’S THEORY OF VICTORY
The Russian and Ukrainian militaries have been engaged in a fair fight since the war began in February 2022. The Russian invasion force, which was comprised of 190,000 troops at most, conquered a substantial amount of Ukrainian territory, but soon found itself overextended. In other words, it did not have sufficient troops to defend all the Ukrainian territory it controlled. Consequently, the Russians withdrew most of their forces from the Kharkiv oblast, which allowed the Ukrainian army to overwhelm the remaining few. Subsequently, the overstretched Russian army was forced to withdraw from the slice of the Kherson oblast that lies on the west bank of the Dnieper River, which the Ukrainian army then occupied without a fight. Before the Russians withdrew, however, they inflicted massive casualties on the Ukrainian forces that were trying to drive them out of Kherson. One battalion commander reported that his casualties were so high that he had “to replace the members of his unit three times.”[11] These two tactical defeats took place in the late summer and fall of 2022.
In response to the events in Kharkiv and Kherson, Putin mobilized 300,000 troops in September 2022; they would need a few months of training before they were fully ready to fight. The Russians also scaled up their ongoing effort to capture Bakhmut in November 2022. The Ukrainians responded to the challenge in Bakhmut, and the two sides engaged in a long and grinding battle for control of that city, which finally ended with a Russian victory in late May 2023.
Bakhmut was a serious defeat for Ukraine, in part because Zelensky publicly said that he and his generals were determined to hold the city and because he committed many of Ukraine’s best units to the fight.[12] More importantly, Ukraine suffered huge losses in the months-long battle.[13] To make matters worse, the war was likely to turn into an unfair fight in the months ahead, because the Russians had gained about a 5:1 advantage in population size in the wake of the early fighting, which meant they could mobilize a much larger army than Ukraine, giving them an advantage that matters greatly in attrition warfare. Furthermore, the Russians already enjoyed a significant advantage in artillery, the most important weapon in a war of attrition like the one being fought in Ukraine. Neither Kyiv nor the West had the capability to rectify that imbalance, which was estimated to be somewhere between 5:1 and 10:1 in Russia’s favor.[14]
Indeed, there was reason to think that the West might not remain fully committed to supplying Ukraine with the weaponry it desperately needed, which included other kinds of arms besides artillery, like tanks, armored fighting vehicle, drones, and aircraft. There was growing evidence of war fatigue in the West and plus the US faced a threat from China in East Asia that was a greater danger to American interests than the Russian threat. In short, Ukraine was likely to lose in a protracted war of attrition, because it would be an unfair fight.
Both Ukraine and the West therefore had a powerful incentive to find a clever strategy that would quickly produce a military victory that would end the war on favorable terms for them.[15] This meant Ukraine would have to employ a blitzkrieg strategy, which is the only way of avoiding or escaping a war of attrition in a contest between two equally-matched land armies facing each other across a continuous front.[16]
THE ABC’S OF BLITZKRIEG
A blitzkrieg relies on the mobility and speed inherent in an armored strike force to defeat an opponent without engaging a series of bloody and protracted battles.[17] That strategy is predicated on the assumption that the opponent’s army is a large and complex machine that is geared to fighting along a well-established defensive line. In the machine’s rear lies a vulnerable network, which comprises numerous lines of communication, along which information and supplies move, as well as key nodal points where the various lines intersect. Destruction of this central nervous system is tantamount to the destruction of the defending army.
A blitzkrieg involves two major operations: winning a breakthrough battle and executing a deep strategic penetration. To be more specific, the attacker aims to surreptitiously concentrate its armored forces at a specific location or two along the front line, where the defender’s force-to-space ratio is low and where the attacker can achieve numerical superiority over the defender. A defense that is thinly spread out and outnumbered is relatively easy to break through. After opening a hole or two in the defender’s front line, the attacker seeks to move rapidly into the depths of the defense before the target state’s forces can move to cut off the penetration. Although it may be necessary to engage in a set-piece battle to accomplish the initial breakthrough, a high premium is placed on avoiding further battles of this sort. Instead, the attacker follows the path of least resistance deep into the defender’s rear.
The tank, with its inherent flexibility, is the ideal weapon for making a blitzkrieg work. Artillery, however, does not play a major role in blitzkrieg, in part because it requires significant logistical support, which interferes with the rapid movement of second-echelon forces into the expanding salient and more generally is a drag on mobility. Furthermore, engaging in large-scale artillery exchanges would waste valuable time and slow down the advancing armored forces. Close air support, on the other hand, presents none of these problems. Given the inherent flexibility of airplanes, drones, and helicopters, this flying artillery is an excellent counterpart to fast-moving armored forces.
As should be obvious, a blitzkrieg demands a flexible command structure peopled from top to bottom with soldiers capable of exercising initiative in combat situations where the fog of war is sometimes thick. A blitzkrieg is not based on a rigid plan that commanders must follow closely. In fact, the opposite is true. Before launching the attack, an overall objective is set, and detailed plans for the breakthrough battle are prepared. But there are no rigid guidelines for the commanders to follow as they conduct the deep strategic penetration. The underlying assumption is that no one can predict with any degree of certainty how the battle will develop. Uncertainty will be commonplace and therefore risks will have to be taken. In essence, a high premium is placed on a commander’s ability to make rapid-fire decisions that will enable the armored forces to maintain a high speed of advance in the wake of winning the breakthrough battle. Boldness is essential, even when information is incomplete, so that the attacking army can maintain the initiative.
Finally, some words are in order about the objectives associated with blitzkrieg. The usual aim is to decisively defeat the defender’s military forces. It is possible, however, to employ a blitzkrieg to win a limited victory, where the defending forces are encircled and clobbered but not completely defeated, and where the attacker captures a significant amount of the defender’s territory. The problem with not scoring a decisive victory, however, is that the fighting is likely to continue, which almost certainly means a war of attrition. Modern wars, it should be emphasized, not only tend to escalate, but they are also difficult to end. Thus, leaders have a powerful incentive to employ a blitzkrieg to win a decisive victory over the defending army, and not to pursue a limited victory.
Bringing in The Defender
The focus up to now has been on how the offender executes a blitzkrieg. But to fully understand the workings of a blitzkrieg and the likelihood of one succeeding, it is essential to consider the defender’s capabilities as well as its strategy for thwarting a blitzkrieg.
The key issue regarding capabilities is what the balance of forces between the defender and the offender looks like. Is there rough equality in terms of the quality and quantity of both their troops and their armaments? If so, a fair fight is in store. If one side, however, has clearly superior fighting forces in terms of either quality, quantity, or both, it will be an unfair fight. The difference between a fair and an unfair fight matters greatly for determining a blitzkrieg’s prospects of success.
For starters, it is much more difficult to make a blitzkrieg work in a fair fight, because the defender is not outmatched from the get-go. It is a tangle between two formidable fighting forces, not a mismatch, which makes it difficult for the attacker to be confident of success. Additionally, the consequences of a failed blitzkrieg are markedly different in the two types of fights. If a blitzkrieg fails in a fair fight, the result is likely to be to be a protracted war of attrition where the outcome is difficult to predict. After all, the conflict is between evenly matched opponents. But if a blitzkrieg comes up short in an unfair fight, the attacker is almost certain to win the ensuing war rather quickly and easily, simply because it enjoys a marked material advantage over the defender.
The defender’s strategy for thwarting a blitzkrieg also has a profound influence on the outcome.[18] At the most basic level, the target state can deploy its forces in three different ways: forward defense, defense-in-depth, and mobile defense.
With forward defense, most of the defender’s forces are placed on the line separating the opposing armies to prevent the attacker from making a breakthrough. The defender also locates a reasonable number of its fighting forces behind the front line in mobile reserves that can move rapidly to shut down a potential breakthrough. The emphasis, however, is on defending in force along the initial line of contact. This is not to deny, however, that the defender can be tactically flexible in how it handles the attacking forces along the front line. For example, it might attempt to draw them into controlled zones where they can be pummeled by artillery.
Defense in depth is comprised of a series of well-defended lines – one a good distance behind the other – which are designed to wear the attacking army down as it fights its way through each defensive belt. Not only is it difficult for the attacking forces to break through the first line of defense, but even if they do, there is no possibility of outrunning the defender’s reserves and executing a deep strategic penetration. Instead, the attacker must fight a series of set-piece battles as it attempts to punch through the defender’s successive lines of defense.
Defense in depth is ideally suited for thwarting a blitzkrieg; it is probably the best of the three strategies for that purpose. Its major drawback is that it usually requires an especially large number of troops. It also calls for the defender not to maximize the number of troops and obstacles that it places at the front line, but instead to make sure that each line of defense is thickly populated with barriers and soldiers. Of course, defending troops along the line of contact can retreat to lines of defense behind them. Many commanders, however, will be inclined to defend the forward edge of the battle area with as many troops as possible.
Finally, there is mobile defense, which is the boldest of the three strategies. The defender locates a small portion of its troops in forward positions, where they can hinder the attacking forces somewhat, but otherwise allows them to penetrate deep into its rear area. At the appropriate time, the defender uses its Sunday punch – a large body of its own mobile forces – to strike into the flanks of the penetration and cut the attacking forces off from their base. In effect, the invading forces are encircled and isolated, making them an easy target for destruction. Mobile defense is a highly demanding and risky strategy, especially compared to the other two defensive strategies, which simply aim to wear down the attacking armored forces by forcing them to fight their way through well-fortified defensive positions.
THE HISTORY OF BLITZKRIEG
Let us now consider how the historical record fits with these analytical frameworks describing the ABC’s of blitzkrieg. There have been 11 blitzkriegs since the arrival of the tank on the battlefield, four of which involved fair fights, seven of which were unfair fights. The attacker succeeded in one of the four fair fights and in all seven of the unfair fights.
Germany launched five major offensives in World War II: against Poland in 1939, France in 1940, the Soviet Union in 1941 and then again in 1942, and against the Allied armies in 1944. The Wehrmacht did not employ a blitzkrieg strategy against Poland, although substantial tank forces were engaged in the operation.[19] It simply steamrolled over the Polish military in what was clearly an unfair fight. One year later in the spring of 1940 the Germans launched a blitzkrieg in France and won a decisive victory. It was the first case of a blitzkrieg, and it was a fair fight. The following year, Hitler’s forces invaded the Soviet Union, engaging in another fair fight. They employed a blitzkrieg, which aimed to inflict a decisive defeat on the Red Army west of the Dnieper River. They failed to achieve that objective and the offensive eventually stalled outside Moscow in early December 1941. Seeking to avoid a war of attrition, the Wehrmacht launched a second offensive against the Red Army in late June 1942, this time driving deep toward the oil-rich areas in the Caucasus and southern Russia, hoping that capturing them would deliver a fatal blow to the Soviet Union. Despite impressive victories in the early months of the campaign, the 1942 blitzkrieg came up short and the Wehrmacht ended up in a war of attrition on the Eastern Front. Lastly, the Germans launched a blitzkrieg in the Ardennes Forest in December 1944, hoping to split and seriously weaken the American and British armies, capture the important port of Antwerp, and hopefully compel the Allies to surrender. Despite an initial breakthrough, the German offensive failed.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched blitzkriegs against the Egyptian army in 1956 and 1967. In both cases, the Israelis decisively defeated the Egyptians, but neither was a fair fight as the IDF was a superior fighting force. There have been five other blitzkriegs besides the four German and two Israeli cases: the 1945 Soviet offensive against Japan’s Kwantung Army in Manchuria; the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950; the Indian offensive against East Pakistan in 1971; the Vietnamese strike into Cambodia in 1979; and the US-led attack against the Iraqi army in Kuwait in 1991. These cases, like the two Israeli cases, were unfair fights.[20]
This brief history points up that the fall of France in 1940 is the only case where a blitzkrieg succeeded in a fair fight. And while that German victory is one of the most impressive campaigns in military history, it was a close call.[21] The Wehrmacht probably would have failed to achieve a quick and decisive victory if the French forces had been deployed somewhat differently or if the defending forces had reacted more quickly and effectively to the critically important German breakthrough at Sedan. The other three fair fights also involved the Wehrmacht; in each case either the Red Army or the Allies thwarted the German blitzkrieg. The other seven cases were all unfair fights in which the attacker unsurprisingly scored a decisive victory. In no instance was a blitzkrieg employed to win a limited victory. The aim in all eleven cases was to decisively defeat the target state’s military.
Turning to the defender’s strategy, a forward defense strategy was employed in all eleven cases. It is not surprising that there is no case of a target state employing a mobile defense, as that strategy s the most demanding and the riskiest. There is also no case of a defender relying on a defense in depth to thwart a blitzkrieg, which is surprising as it is well-suited for that purpose.[22] It seems clear that given the available resources, commanders preferred to place the brunt of their forces well forward and not worry much about thickly populating the follow-on lines of defense.
In the eleven cases of blitzkrieg, all of which involved striking against an opponent employing a forward defense strategy, the attacking forces broke through the initial line of defense every time. In eight of the eleven cases, the ensuing deep strategic penetration led to a decisive victory.[23] The three exceptions are the German blitzkriegs against the Red Army in 1941 and 1942, and against the Allies in 1944. In all three cases, the defender was able to create new lines of defense in their rear and wear down the Wehrmacht. In effect, both the Red Army’s and the Allies’ forward defense strategy morphed into a defense in depth, which, as emphasized, is ideally suited for defeating a blitzkrieg.
UKRAINE’S DOOMED OFFENSIVE
This brief history of blitzkrieg, coupled with an understanding of how that strategy works, sheds much light on the prospects of the Ukrainian counteroffensive succeeding. In fact, the evidence shows Kyiv’s blitzkrieg stood virtually no chance of succeeding. For starters, Ukraine was engaged in a fair fight, which meant that almost everything would have to go right for the strategy to work as intended. The Ukrainian army, however, was poorly suited for launching a blitzkrieg and, to make matters worse, it was striking against a formidable defense-in-depth. Ukraine’s only hope was that the Russian army would collapse once the counteroffensive was underway. But there was an abundance of evidence, which indicated that Russians were becoming better fighters who were likely to put up fierce resistance. Still, even if the Ukrainians were able to pull off a miracle and make the blitzkrieg work, the war would still go on, because Kyiv’s blitzkrieg did not aim to decisively defeat the Russians, who would survive to fight another day. Simply put, there was no way Ukraine could avoid continuing its war of attrition with Russia.
A Fair Fight
To determine whether Ukraine was engaged in a fair or unfair fight going into the counteroffensive, it is necessary to compare the quantity and the quality of the troops as well as the weaponry in the opposing armies.
Regarding the number of soldiers each side had ready for the fight, it is impossible to get precise figures. Nevertheless, the available evidence indicates that the size of the two forces going into the counteroffensive was roughly equal. I estimate that each side had roughly 250,000 soldiers who were prepared for the fight.[24]Tellingly, I cannot find evidence of anyone claiming that either side had a meaningful numerical advantage on the eve of the counteroffensive. Ukraine’s real problem was the future, not the present, as the balance of soldiers is going to shift against them over time. Russia has a much larger population to draw from – a 5:1 advantage –and its military is growing larger by the day. In addition to the 300,000 reservists mobilized in October 2022, the Russian Defense Ministry, reports that 231,000 people enlisted in the military during the first seven months of 2023.[25]
In terms of the quality of those fighting forces – to include their resolve – it appears that there is little difference between the two sides. One often hears the claim in the West that the Russians are “suffering serious morale and other systemic problems” and thus there was a good chance they would crack in the face of the counteroffensive.[26] But that is not the view one usually hears from the Ukrainian military (which is doing the fighting), where it is widely acknowledged that the Russian army has become a more formidable fighting force since the war started and is not about to collapse anytime soon.[27] Indeed, the fact that Russian forces were able to wear down the Ukrainians, who fought bravely and tenaciously, in the fiercely contested battle for Bakhmut – which happened in the months before the counteroffensive began – shows that the Ukrainians did not have a meaningful qualitative edge on the battlefield by the late spring of 2023.
Turning to the weaponry available to both armies, Russia surely had an advantage, simply because it had much more artillery than Ukraine. Although some of Ukraine’s Western-supplied artillery was qualitatively superior to Russia, it did not come close to making up for the quantitative imbalance. Nevertheless, Ukraine had enough artillery to wage a breakthrough battle. For purposes of executing the deep strategic penetration, artillery is less important because of the important role that close air support is expected to play in that phase of the campaign. Regarding tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and other weapons in the opposing armies there was rough equivalence in terms of their quality and quantity. As with troop numbers, that situation would change to Russia’s advantage over time.
In brief, given the Russian advantage in artillery, it is not an open and shut case that this was a fair fight. But given the rough balance of soldiers and other kinds of weaponry, and the fact that artillery is not as important for the attacking forces in a blitzkrieg as it is for attrition warfare, it seems reasonable to call it a fair fight. Still, if one wants to make the case that this was an unfair fight, it was the Russians – not the Ukrainians – who held an advantage when the counteroffensive started on 4 June.
As emphasized, the Wehrmacht’s 1940 victory in France is the only instance of a blitzkrieg succeeding in a fair fight. How likely was the Ukrainian counteroffensive to add a second case to the historical record? To answer that question, it is essential to assess how capable the Ukrainian army was of executing a blitzkrieg and how well-prepared the Russians were for preventing that outcome.
Ukrainian Capabilities for Launching a Blitzkrieg
There is no question that blitzkrieg, to quote Barry Posen, is “one of the most daunting of military tasks.”[28]The attacking Ukrainian forces, as he notes, had to “break through dense, well-prepared defensive positions, find some running room, and then either move quickly toward an important geographic objective such as the Sea of Azov, hoping to unravel the remains of the defending Russian army along the way, or quickly attempt to encircle a portion of Russia’s sizable forces in hopes of annihilating them.” The deep strategic penetration, in other words, had to be executed quickly, while the defending Russian forces were on their heels. That meant the breakthrough battle also had to be won quickly, so that the Russians would not have time to move their reserves to seal off any penetrations of their front line.[29]
This demanding task naturally requires highly trained and experienced soldiers organized into large-size armor units – be they brigades or divisions – that could operate together on the battlefield. The key units in the Ukrainian army that were tasked with making the blitzkrieg work were poorly trained and lacking in combat experience, especially as it relates to armored warfare. The main striking force was comprised of 12 brigades, nine of which NATO armed and trained for 4-6 weeks.[30] Many of the 36,000 troops in those nine brigades were raw recruits. It is worth noting that only 11 percent of the 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers that Britain has trained since the war began had any military experience.[31]
There is simply no way a recruit can be turned into a highly competent soldier with 4-6 weeks of training. It is impossible to do anything more than teach the basics of soldiering in such a short period. To compound the problem, the emphasis in the training was on turning recruits into soldiers who could fight together in small units, not on training and molding the 9 or 12 brigades in the main strike force to operate together on the battlefield.[32] Moreover, there is evidence that in some cases, the three battalions that were in those brigades were trained in different countries.[33] Unsurprisingly, two Western defense analysts who visited the war zone after the counteroffensive began, remarked that: “we are convinced that although Ukrainian forces can fight in a combined-arms fashion, they cannot yet do it at scale.”[34]
Much is made of the fact that the US and NATO more generally are committed to training the Ukrainians to engage in “combined arms operations,” which was supposed to go a long way toward preparing them for the counteroffensive.[35] The fact is that the Western armies of 2023 had little experience in armored warfare – the Iraq war took place 20 years ago in 2003 and the Iraqi army quickly disintegrated. And they had no experience fighting a war that was a fair fight. As retired US General Ben Hodges, who had once commanded the US Army in Europe, noted, “I certainly was never involved in a fight as large, violent and disorienting as the battles underway in Ukraine.”[36] Or as one Ukrainian battalion commander remarked about his American trainers: “They fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the enemy there is not like the Russians.”[37]
To make matters worse, not only was Ukraine’s armored fist poorly trained for the difficult task it was being asked to perform, but it was also filled with soldiers who had little combat experience. This problem had two related causes. First, many Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or seriously wounded during the first 15 months of the war, which limited the number of combat veterans available for the counteroffensive. Second, Ukraine needed to keep most of its best fighters who had survived on the front lines to wage the continuing war.[38]The battle for Bakhmut, which took place in the months leading up to the counteroffensive and which Kyiv was determined to win, was especially important in this regard, as it was like a vortex that sucked in many of Ukraine’s best fighting forces.
It is hardly surprising that after the counteroffensive began, The New York Times reported that Ukrainian “soldiers along the front-line blamed commanders for pushing raw recruits into battle and using untested units to spearhead the counteroffensive. Others criticized the inadequacy of a few weeks of basic training in various NATO countries.”[39]
The Ukrainian counteroffensive faced another huge problem: lack of close air support for the attacking forces. It is almost impossible for a blitzkrieg to work without close air support, especially for the deep strategic penetration, but it matters greatly even for purposes of winning the breakthrough battle. As John Nagl, a retired colonel who teaches warfighting at the US Army War College, put it: “America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority. It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”[40]Similarly, General Hodges said, “These Ukrainian troops are being sent to do something we’d never do—launching a counteroffensive without total air superiority.”[41]
Finally, although Ukraine had received a substantial number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles from the West, they did not receive as many as they requested, and they were provided a variety of different kinds, which led to problems with interoperability and maintenance. The Ukrainians also had a shortage of mine-clearing equipment, which is a necessity in a major conventional land war. It is unsurprising, given all these deficiencies, that The Wall Street Journal reported after the counteroffensive had begun that “Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.”[42] In addition to this wishful thinking, there is substantial evidence that many in the West foolishly believed that the Russian army would perform poorly, if not collapse, in the face of the counteroffensive.
Russian Capabilities for Thwarting a Blitzkrieg
Ukraine’s prospects of making the counteroffensive work look even worse when Russia’s capabilities for defending it against are factored into the equation.
First, there was virtually no chance that the Ukrainians would surprise the Russian defenders regarding the location of the main attack – as the Wehrmacht had been able to do against France and Britain in May 1940. It was clear from media accounts, the comments of Ukrainian and Western officials, and just looking at a map, that the main attack would come in the Zaporizhzhia region, and that Ukrainian armored forces would aim to drive from the area around Orikhiv to the Sea of Azov, capturing the town of Tokmak and the city of Melitopol along the way. In effect, the large swath of territory that Russia held in eastern and southern Ukraine would be cut in half, which meant Russia would no longer have a land-bridge to Crimea.
Ukraine was expected to attempt one or more additional breakthroughs along the front line, also ultimately aimed at reaching the Sea of Azov.[43] One possibility was to penetrate the Russian defenses south of Velyka Novosilka and drive to Mariupol. Another was to break through near Gulyaipole and push toward Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov. Still, the main attack was expected to come in the Orikhiv area and head toward Melitopol. Regardless, the Russians recognized all these possible lines of attack and were well-prepared for each of them.
Furthermore, the Russian military had an abundance of drones and other ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) assets that made it almost impossible for Ukraine to assemble a large strike force without being detected. All of this meant there was hardly any chance that Ukraine could use surprise to gain a significant force advantage at the main point of attack. Instead, the Russian military would be waiting for them in force with a deadly array of highly accurate weapons.[44]
Second, Russia employed a defense-in-depth, which is the ideal strategy for stopping a blitzkrieg. It was comprised of multiple lines of defense that had infantry trenches, tank ditches, minefields, concrete barriers, and prepared firing positions. Moreover, these defensive fortifications were erected to channel the attacking forces into killing zones, where the Russians would be well-positioned to destroy them. In addition, the Ukrainians would probably have to fight in urban areas like Tokmak and Melitopol, where the going would be slow and the casualties would be high.
The Russian defenses were clearly stronger at some points along the line than others, but they were especially strong in the Zaporizhzhia region, where Ukraine was expected to attempt to make the main breakthrough. The Russian army also had mobile forces in reserve that could be quickly moved to reinforce any points along the fortified lines that were weakening. Finally, the Russian forces were prepared to seriously engage with the attacking forces in the so-called “grey zone,” which is the open area that lies in front of their first prepared line of defense. The basic idea was to wear down the Ukrainian brigades before they reached the initial line of fortifications, or maybe even prevent them from getting there. General Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general, put it well when he described Russia’s defensive architecture as “much more complex, and deadly, than anything experienced by any military in nearly 80 years.”[45]
Third, to make matters worse, the Russians had a variety of capabilities that made it extremely dangerous for Ukrainian forces to move out in the open, which they had to do almost all the time since they were on the offensive and had to be constantly moving forward. For starters, the Russians had significant ISR assets that would allow them to detect Ukraine’s mobile brigades. And they had an abundance of systems that could strike the attacking forces. The Russians had a huge arsenal of artillery and multiple rocket launchers, which they had shown they could use to deadly effect over the first 15 months of the war. They also had the capability to quickly deploy large numbers of mines, creating instant and deadly minefields in front of attacking forces. Finally, the Russians controlled the skies, which meant they could use their arsenal of helicopters, killer drones, and tactical aircraft to target Ukraine’s ground forces.
As one highly knowledgeable blogger on military affairs (“Big Serge”) put it: “Western observers do not seem open to the possibility that the accuracy of modern ranged fires (be it Lancet drones, guided artillery shells, or GMLRS rockets) combined with the density of ISR systems may simply make it impossible to conduct sweeping mobile operations, except in very specific circumstances. When the enemy has the capacity to surveil staging areas, strike rear area infrastructure with cruise missiles and drones, precisely saturate approach lines with artillery fire, and soak the earth in mines, how exactly can it be possible to maneuver?”[46]
In short, there is little doubt the Russians were well-positioned to stop a blitzkrieg in its tracks. Thus, given that the counteroffensive would be a fair fight and the Ukrainians were ill-prepared to launch a blitzkrieg, it is hard to see how they could succeed. The only hope was that the Russian army would fall apart once the shooting started, but there was little reason to think that would happen.
Let us assume I am wrong, and there was a serious chance the blitzkrieg would succeed, as almost every policymaker, pundit, and strategist in the West argued. Even so, the war would not end, and Ukraine would still find itself in a war of attrition that it could not win. Remember, the blitzkrieg did not aim to decisively defeat the Russian army in Ukraine, take back all Ukraine’s lost territory, and end the war. Instead, the goal was to seriously damage the Russian forces in Ukraine, take back some territory, and drive Moscow to the negotiating table, where Ukraine and the West would be in the driver’s seat.
The Russians, however, were hardly likely to go to the bargaining table and cave into Ukrainian and Western demands. After all, Putin and other Russian leaders believe they are facing an existential threat, which would surely lead them to double down and do whatever is necessary to defeat the enemy at the gates. In short, the Ukrainian blitzkrieg was doomed to fail, but even if it had succeeded in achieving its limited goals, it would not have succeeded in ending the war on favorable terms for Ukraine and the West.
THE RESULTS SO FAR
The counteroffensive has been an abysmal failure, contrary to the expectations of almost everyone in the West. Ukraine has suffered huge casualties and lost large amounts of weaponry in three months of fighting.[47] In the process, its army has yet to reach the first line of Russia’s defense-in-depth; it remains bogged down fighting in the grey zone located in front of Russia’s main defense lines, where, as one Ukrainian soldier put it, “They were just waiting for us…prepared positions everywhere. It was a wall of steel. It was horrendous.”[48] As noted, Western officials report that Ukraine lost about 20 percent of the weapons it employed on the battlefield during the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, which included a good number of the tanks and armored fighting vehicles that the West had provided.[49]
The Ukrainian military quickly changed tactics after its initial setbacks and instead of trying to fight through the grey zone with armored forces, they decided to try wearing down the Russian forces by attacking them with small infantry units backed up by massive artillery barrages. These were sometimes called “mosquito tactics” in the West.[50] While this new approach reduced Ukraine’s casualties somewhat, the attacking forces made little progress and were frequently the target of withering fire. In late July, Ukraine launched another major strike with tanks and armored fighting vehicles.[51] Again, the attacking forces made little progress and lost large numbers of men and equipment. It was then back to mosquito tactics. As The Wall Street Journal put it after two months of fighting, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is “a slow and bloody advance on foot.”[52]
In effect, Ukraine had given up on executing a blitzkrieg, which can only be accomplished with a large body of armored forces, not with infantrymen moving on foot and backed up by artillery. Of course, it makes little sense to even treat blitzkrieg as a serious option when the Ukrainian forces had not been able to reach Russia’s first fortified line of defense, much less break through it. Simply put, there was no chance of Ukraine replicating the feat the Wehrmacht pulled off against French and British forces in 1940. Ukraine was instead destined to fight a war of attrition like World War I on the Western Front, where its heavy losses in the counteroffensive would put it at a major disadvantage moving forward.
It is worth noting that while the Ukrainian army was waging its unsuccessful counteroffensive along the southern and eastern parts of the line of contact, the Russian army was on the offensive in the north, pushing toward the Ukrainian-held city of Kupiansk. The Russians were making slow but steady progress, such that Ukraine’s commanding general in the theater announced on 25 August that “we must promptly take all measures to strengthen our defenses on the threatened lines.”[53]
It is now widely recognized that the counteroffensive has failed and there is no serious prospect of Ukraine suddenly achieving success before either the fall rains or Ukrainian leaders shut it down.[54] For example, The Kyiv Independent recently ran a story with the title: “Inching Forward in Bakhmut Counteroffensive, Ukraine’s Hardened Units Look Ahead to Long, Grim War.”[55] Relatedly, The Washington Post published an article on 10 August that emphasized the dark mood in Ukraine: “Two months after Ukraine went on the attack, with little visible progress on the front and a relentless, bloody summer across the country, the narrative of unity and endless perseverance has begun to fray. The number of dead — untold thousands — increases daily. Millions are displaced and see no chance of returning home. In every corner of the country, civilians are exhausted from a spate of recent Russian attacks…. Ukrainians, much in need of good news, are simply not getting any.”[56]
Western elites are now scrambling to find a way to rescue the deteriorating situation. Some still hold out hope that giving Ukraine one or another new weapon will magically turn things around on the battlefield. F-16’s and ATACMS are mentioned most frequently in this regard. But as General Milley put it when throwing cold water on the idea that a handful of F-16’s would reverse Ukraine’s fortunes, “There’s no silver bullet in war. The outcomes of battles and wars are the function of many, many variables.”[57]
Others focus on how Ukraine fights. Some maintain that Ukraine must become more proficient at conducting “combined arms operations.”[58] But it is never made clear how that can be done, since Western trainers tried once to teach that skill and apparently failed. Moreover, it is never spelled out how combined arms operations, which are not a strategy, get Ukraine out of the present war of attrition. Relatedly, some argue that Ukraine needs to place more emphasis on maneuver, which is often contrasted with attrition. But maneuver is a battlefield tactic, not a strategy for defeating an opponent. For sure, maneuver matters greatly in executing a deep strategic penetration, although it is of limited use in winning breakthrough battles.[59] One can also have a war of attrition in which both sides regularly engage in mobile battles that place a high premium on maneuver. But the key question, which proponents of greater maneuver never address, is how does it work at the strategic level to allow Ukraine to escape the grinding attrition warfare it now faces?
It appears that most Western elites and most Ukrainians are resigned to the fact that there is no escaping a bloody war of attrition with Russia.[60] It also seems that many doubt whether Ukraine can prevail in that fight, which of course is one of the main reasons why the foreign policy elites and policymakers in the West pushed so hard for the counteroffensive. They understood that Ukraine would be in deep trouble in a long war. After all, Russia has a 5:1 advantage in manpower and the ability – at least in the short to medium term – to produce more artillery and other key weapons than Ukraine and the West combined. Moreover, it is not clear that the West, especially the US, will remain fully committed to backing Ukraine when there is little hope of victory. So, Ukraine – with the West pushing from behind – gambled that blitzkrieg would provide the means to escape attrition warfare and ultimately prevail over Russia. But the strategy proved to be a dismal failure. Now, it is hard to tell a story about Ukraine’s future that has a happy ending.
THE DARKNESS AHEAD
What happens next? Two points are in order.
First, there will be a blame game in the months ahead regarding who bears responsibility for the disastrous counteroffensive. Indeed, it has already started.[61] Few will admit that they were wrong to think the counteroffensive stood a reasonable chance of succeeding or was sure to succeed. That will certainly be true in the US, where accountability is an obsolete concept. Many Ukrainians will blame the West for pushing them to launch the blitzkrieg when the West had failed to provide them with all the weaponry they had requested. Of course, the West will be guilty as charged, but Ukrainian leaders have agency and could have stood up to American pressure. After all, their country’s survival is at stake, and they would have been better off staying on the defensive, where they would have suffered fewer casualties and increased their chances of retaining the territory that they now control.
The coming recriminations will be ugly and will hinder Ukraine’s efforts to stay in the fight against Russia.
Second, many in the West will argue that the time is now ripe for diplomacy. The failed counteroffensive shows that Ukraine cannot prevail on the battlefield, so the argument will go, and thus it makes sense to reach a peace agreement with Russia, even if Kyiv and the West must make concessions. After all, the situation will only get worse for Ukraine if the war continues.
Regrettably, there is no diplomatic solution in sight. There are irreconcilable differences between the two sides over security guarantees for Ukraine and territory, which stand in the way of a meaningful peace agreement. For understandable reasons, Ukraine is deeply committed to getting back all the land it has lost to Russia, which includes Crimea and the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. But Moscow has already annexed those territories and made it clear that it has no intention of returning them to Kyiv.
The other unresolvable issue concerns Ukraine’s relationship with the West. For understandable reasons, Ukraine insists that it needs a security guarantee, which can only come from the US and NATO. Russia, on the other hand, insists that Ukraine must be neutral and must end its security relationship with the West. In fact, that issue was the main cause of the present war, even if American and European foreign policy elites refuse to believe it.[62] Moscow was unwilling to tolerate Ukraine joining NATO. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see how both sides can be satisfied on either the territorial or neutrality issue.
In addition to those obstacles, both sides view each other as an existential threat, which is an enormous obstacle to any kind of meaningful compromise. It is hard to imagine, for example, the US taking its gunsights off Russia in the foreseeable future. The most likely result is that that the war will go on and eventually end in a frozen conflict with Russia in possession of a significant portion of Ukrainian territory. But that outcome will not put an end to the competition andconflict between Russia and Ukraine or between Russia and the West.
[1] This piece benefitted greatly from comments by Ramzy Mardini and Barry Posen.
[4] As best I can tell, the only Western policymaker or establishment pundit who argued that the counteroffensive would fail was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He said it “would be a bloodbath” and that Ukraine would not win a meaningful military victory. https://www.rt.com/news/577355-orban-hungary-ukraine-counteroffensive/ It is worth noting that General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued in November 2022 that Kyiv should negotiate a settlement, because its prospects on the battlefield were only going to deteriorate moving forward. His advice, which was rejected by Ukraine and the White House, would seem to argue against launching the counteroffensive. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/26/ukraine-counteroffensive-negotiations-milley-biden/ Finally, there are several individuals who operate on alternative media who argued that the counteroffensive would fail before it was launched. They include Brian Berletic, Alex Christoforou, Glenn Diesen, Douglas Macgregor, Moon of Alabama, Alexander Mercouris, and Scott Ritter.
[16] One sometimes hears criticism of the British generals in World War I for not finding a smart strategy for avoiding the deadly attrition battles on the Western Front. They were “donkeys,” so the argument goes, who were content to send huge numbers of British soldiers to their death. The truth is that those generals tried hard to find a clever way to win a quick victory – Britain invented the tank for this purpose – but there was none at the time, as blitzkrieg was then not a viable option. See John J. Mearsheimer, B.H. Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), chapter 3.
[17] My thinking about blitzkrieg and conventional land war more generally are laid out in greater detail in, John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (New York: Cornell University Press, 1983); John J. Mearsheimer, “Assessing the Conventional Balance: The 3:1 Rule and Its Critics,” International Security, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Spring 1989), pp. 54-89; John J. Mearsheimer, “Correspondence: Reassessing Net Assessment,” International Security, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Spring 1989), pp. 128-44; John J. Mearsheimer, “Numbers, Strategy, and the European Balance,” International Security, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Spring 1988), pp. 174-85; John J. Mearsheimer, “Maneuver, Mobile Defense and the NATO Central Front,” International Security, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Winter 1981/1982), pp. 104-22; and Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History.
[18] The terrain over which a blitzkrieg is contested also influences the outcome in important ways. But I do not elaborate on that element of the equation because of space constraints.
[19] The Anglo-American campaign against the Wehrmacht between the Normandy breakout in late July 1944 and the final collapse of Germany in May 1945 fits the same pattern. Although the Allies employed substantial armored forces and made some significant tactical penetrations, they effectively steamrolled the opposing German forces.
[20] To further illustrate my point about the difference between fair and unfair fights, consider that if the IDF had been fighting against the Wehrmacht instead of the Egyptian army, the Israeli blitzkriegs probably would have failed.
[21] See Robert A Doughty, The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940 (Stackpole Books, 2014).
[22] The Red Army employed a defense-in-depth against the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Kursk (1943) to great effect. But I do not consider that German offensive to be a case of attempted blitzkrieg, but instead view it as a local battle of annihilation.
[23] It is worth noting that seven of those eight cases were unfair fights.
[24] Ukraine appears to have had about 38 combat-ready maneuver brigades available for the counteroffensive. Assuming there were roughly 4,000 soldiers in each maneuver brigade, that would mean a total of approximately 150,000. In addition, Ukraine had substantial numbers of support troops outside those maneuver brigades, to include 9 artillery brigades. It would be reasonable to assume there were 100,000 support troops prepared to engage in the counteroffensive, bringing the overall total for Ukraine to 250,000. The Russians on the other hand, appear to have had somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 combat and support troops in Ukraine organized into about 40 brigades that were prepared to deal with the counteroffensive. These calculations are based largely on:
[27] As one Ukrainian deputy brigade commander put it: “You cannot underestimate the enemy. The enemy is strong and cunning. So this counteroffensive requires steady preparation.”
[29] For excellent discussions of the difficulties the Ukrainian strike forces would face in the breakthrough battle as well as the deep strategic penetration, see:
NATO had trained a total of roughly 60,000 Ukrainians before the counteroffensive, which includes the 36,000 in the nine brigades that formed the core of Ukraine’s main strike force. The US trained more than 11,000 of those troops.
A Compassionate Spy is an important documentary film. Bringing to life events from 80 years ago that changed the nature of warfare, it focuses on the story of how one young physicist working on the Manhattan Project took action to prevent the United States from having a monopoly on the atomic bomb. Ted Hall was only 19 years old when he passed classified secrets to the Soviet government. His role was not discovered until more than 50 years later, only a few years before his death in 1999.
The film, which premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, became available for streaming and opened at movie theaters in the US August 4. Steve James, the writer and director of A Compassionate Spy, first became prominent for co-directing Hoop Dreams, the acclaimed 1994 film about two African-American youth in Chicago who dream of a professional basketball career. Since then James’s subjects have included various social and political themes (Stevie [2002], Abacus: Small Enough to Jail [2016]). His latest documentary, presented in a straightforward style that allows the subjects to tell their own story, is his most outspoken yet, and will certainly not please those who defend the “right” of US imperialism to dictate the fate of humanity.
Theodore Hall’s badge at Los Alamos
The most prominent elements of A Compassionate Spy are interviews with both Ted and his wife Joan Hall. Ted Hall died in 1999, suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and also a cancer that was likely caused by his work on the bomb. The documentary makes skillful use of interviews he made soon before his death, as well as interview footage with Joan Hall (who died last April at the age of 94), both in the late 1990s as well as more than 20 years later.
There are other interviews, including with Ted and Joan’s two surviving daughters (a third daughter died in a road accident), and archival footage dealing with the atomic bomb, the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the US and many other events over a period of decades. Supplementing the interviews and other material are reenactments of events, which are understandably less successful, but fill in many elements in the life of Ted Hall over a period of decades.
Theodore Holtzberg was born into a Jewish family in Queens, New York in 1925. His brother Ed, 11 years Ted’s senior, concerned over the difficulty of getting an engineering job with an identifiably Jewish name, took the initiative in 1936 of changing both his and Ted’s last name to Hall, when the younger brother was only 11 years old.
Both brothers were brilliant students, and Ted was accepted to Harvard, from which he graduated in 1944, when he was only 18 years old. He was immediately recruited to join the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he worked alongside J. Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists in the secret effort to build an atomic bomb before the Hitler regime was able to. The story of the Manhattan Project has been told before, most recently in Oppenheimer, the 2023 biographical film on the physicist who led the Los Alamos Laboratory.
Hall soon realized that Nazi Germany was headed for defeat and was unlikely to achieve its own atom bomb. Instead, preparations were made for use of the terrible new weapon against Japan. Meanwhile, the research at the Manhattan Project was kept secret from Washington’s Soviet ally, despite the appeals by scientists such as Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard and Niels Bohr that knowledge of atomic weapons be shared.
Hall feared the consequences if any one country, particularly the United States, had a monopoly of the bomb. He had been exposed to left-wing ideas at Harvard, and, as he later explained, considered the danger and the possibility of fascism in the US. He later elaborated on his hostility to nationalism, explaining in footage included in the documentary that, although the test of the atom bomb in July 1945 “was a rather awesome sight,” he “was peeved by the reaction of my colleagues…the mood was one of celebration. I didn’t go to any of the parties.”
With the impetuosity and perhaps the fearlessness of youth, Hall proceeded to act. He enlisted the service of his old college roommate Saville Sax as a courier, and passed information to the Soviet regime on the implosion device that made the explosion of a fission-type atomic bomb possible. As he later recalled, “I can’t remember being frightened” as he carried out his espionage. His motive was “compassion…In my mind this was a question of protecting the Soviet people, as well as our own people…and preventing an overall Holocaust.”
After the war, Hall went to graduate school at the University of Chicago. It was there that he met his future wife. He confided in her, and she immediately assured him that she would keep his secret. Soon, however, as the Cold War between the US and USSR intensified, and especially after the Soviet Union carried out its own successful test of an atomic bomb in August 1949, Hall came under suspicion. The decryption of secret Soviet communications, part of the US military’s Venona counterintelligence program, turned up Hall’s name.
The problem for the US spy-catchers was that this evidence could not be used without tipping Moscow off that its encryption codes had been broken. The FBI therefore needed either a confession, or other admissible evidence. The documentary uses reenactments to illustrate the intensive interrogation of Hall, as well as the surveillance, both physical and through telephone wiretaps, carried out without success for many years. Meanwhile, Ted and Joan Hall got rid of all their left-wing literature and left the Communist Party, which they had briefly joined in the postwar period. They watched telephone conversations and even conversations inside their own home.
Another factor in Ted Hall’s avoidance of prosecution was that his older brother Ed, in an extraordinary twist of historical fate, had become a leading engineer for the US military and the real architect of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)—ironically enough, the same instrument developed to deliver atomic bombs. The authorities faced acute political and security embarrassment, Ted Hall suggests, if his arrest led to the exposure of this family connection.
As the documentary points out, there was no comparison between the valuable information Ted Hall passed to the USSR, and the relatively inconsequential efforts of Julius Rosenberg. The latter, guilty at most of small-scale espionage, was executed in 1953, and his wife Ethel, guilty of nothing but her refusal to testify against her husband, met the same fate. Joan Hall reports the anguish she and Ted felt at this time—Joan had to convince Ted that there was no point in giving himself up to the authorities in what would have been a vain effort to save the Rosenbergs from the electric chair.
Ted Hall’s career later took him to Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York for a decade, and then, in 1962, to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, where he worked on electron microscopy and spent the rest of his life. Finally, after the dissolution of the USSR and the revelations of the Venona transcripts, Ted Hall’s secret became known. It was the subject of much media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, but he never faced any other repercussions.
The interviews with Ted and Joan Hall are, understandably, the heart of the documentary. Ted is quiet and reflective, a “compassionate” man, whose lifelong passion for classical music is illustrated by the film’s background music, most prominently Gustav Mahler’s 9th Symphony. In the 1990s, considering the later revelations of Stalin’s crimes, Ted appears to wrestle somewhat with his youthful decisions to pass secrets to Moscow. Joan, decades later, says that Ted sometimes wondered, if he had known the future, “that he wouldn’t have had the stomach to pass information to them…but if he hadn’t done it, it would have been a misfortune for the world.”
Joan Hall in A Compassionate Spy
As interesting as are the comments of Ted and Joan Hall, even more revealing are some other interviews in A Compassionate Spy. These include conversations with Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel, the authors of Bombshell, the 1997 book in which Ted Hall speaks at length for the first time on his actions. Also appearing is Daniel Axelrod, the co-author, with Columbia physicist Michio Kaku, of To Win a Nuclear War, published in 1999.
Axelrod’s exposures completely vindicated Ted Hall. As he explains, by 1945, before the surrender of Germany, in Washington “the main enemy was viewed to be Russia.” Top Wall Street lawyers and industrialists, advising the Truman administration long before Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech of 1946 officially inaugurated the Cold War, drew up plans which included the preemptive use of atomic bombs on Moscow and other targets throughout the Soviet Union. The bipartisan group included future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, future CIA head John McCloy, future ambassador to Moscow Averell Harriman and Defense Department official and veteran imperialist strategist Paul Nitze.
Axelrod also explains that leading scientists at Los Alamos addressed a letter to President Truman explaining that they didn’t “sign up to bomb Japan.” The letter was addressed to Truman through General Leslie Groves, the military officer in charge at Los Alamos. Truman never saw the letter—not that it would have made a difference. Washington propagandists falsely claimed that the atom bomb was needed to save the “American lives” that would have been lost in in a ground invasion. Japan “was seeking some way to surrender” before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Axelrod says, but the city of Hiroshima, with 340,000 population, was obliterated.
The Cold War was directed, not so much against the Stalinist regime, as against the traditions, the living example and the surviving conquests of the Russian Revolution that Stalinism had betrayed. Hall, despite his undoubted courage and self-sacrifice, understood little of this. To a great extent, he was motivated by a wish for the continuation of the wartime alliance between Stalinism and American capitalism. There is even a reference in the documentary to the execrable Mission to Moscow—the filthy pro-Stalinist propaganda film of 1943, based on the book of the same name written by US Ambassador to the USSR Joseph E. Davies.
Much later, Ted and Joan Hall are repulsed by the crimes of Stalinism, but without understanding their source in the anti-working class privileged and nationalist bureaucracy. Joan does grasp, as she says, that “the Russians didn’t seem to give much support to revolutionary tendencies elsewhere,” and she calls the 1968 Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia “really traumatic,” but no socialist alternative to Stalinism is seen. To the extent that Ted wrestled with regrets, it was due to his inability to understand the contradictory character of the Soviet Union, and consequently why, while the crimes and betrayals of Stalinism could not be minimized in the slightest, their meaning had to be understood. The war danger stemmed from the crisis of world capitalism, with US imperialism at its center, and Stalinism was the agency of imperialism.
None of this detracts from the courage of Hall’s actions in seeking to alleviate the threat of nuclear war, but it does shed light—although the documentary does not discuss this topic—on the role of Stalinism in miseducating and confusing an entire generation, including people like Ted and Joan Hall.
A Compassionate Spy could not be more pertinent today, and not only because it happens to coincide with the release of Oppenheimer. Of course the Soviet Union has been dissolved, and Russia today is the outgrowth of the degeneration of Stalinism that produced an oligarchic capitalist regime. Nevertheless, imperialism is driven inescapably toward new adventures and new wars. The endnotes to A Compassionate Spy include the following: “The United States remains the only nation to have used nuclear weapons in warfare.”
The United States has broadened restrictions on the export of high-performance artificial intelligence chips by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), extending them beyond China to other regions, including some countries in the Middle East, amid rising concerns about Beijing’s access to critical AI resources.
Reuters reported Thursday that a regulatory filing by Nvidia stated that its state-of-the-art A100 and H100 chips, which speed up machine learning on AI apps such as ChatGPT had been put on a “no-export” list.
The attempt is to prevent ‘leaks’ of chips from countries like the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia to Russia and China. But, as I noted yesterday, China is already making chips of equal capacity:
Huawei’s compute GPU capabilities are now on par with Nvidia’s A100 GPUs, Liu Qingfeng, founder and chairman of Chinese AI company iFlytek, said at the 19th Summer Summit of the 2023 Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum (via IT Home).
Liu Qingfeng stated that Huawei has made significant strides in the GPU sector, achieving capabilities and performance comparable to Nvidia’s A100 GPU.
China’s etching equipment giant Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) has reported hefty growth in earnings and revenue in the first half of 2023 thanks to strong demand for local tools as a result of US tech export controls, the company’s founder and CEO Gerald Yin Zhiyao said on Friday. … AMEC’s market share of China’s capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) etching equipment market is expected to reach 60 per cent in the near future from 24 per cent last October, Yin said. In the inductive coupled plasma (ICP) tool market, Yin said its share could rise to 75 per cent from almost zero after once-dominant Lam Research from the US saw its share drop sharply. … As China deepens its semiconductor self-sufficiency drive to include chip-making equipment and key components, Yin said that 80 per cent of restricted, imported parts at AMEC can be replaced domestically by the end of this year, with 100 per cent replacement following in the second half next year.
The New York Times resume of Secretary Raimondo’s and other’s trips is somewhat amusing:
Batteridge’s law responds with “No!” There were obviously no ‘favors’ from either side:
When Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, left China this week, it marked the end of a three-month diplomatic blitz by the Biden administration to try to stabilize ties with Beijing and arrest a free fall in the relationship that had raised concerns about the risk of conflict.
President Biden had bet that high-level dialogue could help manage an escalating rivalry over trade, technology and the status of Taiwan. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was the first to make the trip to the Chinese capital in June, followed by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and the presidential climate envoy, John Kerry, in July.
After logging all those miles, the question now is whether China will reciprocate by sending senior Chinese ministers to Washington.
The people Biden sent on visits in China had nothing to give and were given nothing. The U.S. attempt to deceive China by holding useless talks while it ramps up its cold war cordon around China have failed.
As long as that policy continues there is nothing of substance that China could gain by sending people to Washington DC. Holding talks just to keep talking about nothing does not make sense. So evidently no Chinese envoy will come.
Patrick Lawrence is trashing Biden’s strategy as he finds that the travels to China are not designed to talk with Chine but to deceive Americans:
Proposing to conduct routine business while sabotaging China’s competitive position in advanced technologies is prima facie a ridiculous idea. … The Biden administration’s China strategy comes down to parrying, in a word. All the pointless talk is intended to obscure a concerted effort to undermine China’s economy because the U.S. cannot compete with it in various strategic sectors, while — part two — buying time to move maximum U.S. military hardware as close to the mainland as possible under the program the Defense Department named a few years ago the Pacific Defense Initiative, the PDI. … The Chinese know this and have said so many times. I no longer think Blinken, Yellen, et al. have any thought of persuading them otherwise on these journeys. That only looks like their intent.
Their true purpose is in the way of theatrical, and Americans are their true audience: They must make sure Americans do not understand Gina Raimondo’s efforts to punch the Chinese, well below their belts, for what they are: an uncompetitive nation’s attempts to hold back a rising economic power. … The Biden regime is buying time as it remilitarizes the western end of the Pacific.
The only people who are supposed to understand otherwise are Americans, who are not supposed to watch as Washington provokes and prosecutes Cold War II. Americans are supposed to watch as U.S. officials — reasonable, constructive, well-intended —make all efforts to talk to the Chinese in the face of their stubborn reluctance to cooperate.
This is my revised take on the Blinken–Yellen–Kerry–Raimondo cavalcade across the Pacific. These people are not clods. They are purposefully malicious and, it should go without saying, are making the world even more dangerous than it already is.
Peter Lee has just come back from a visit to China. He is reporting of of a new, someone snobby to hostile attitude towards Americans. It is justified:
After all, America and Americans are suspect for good reason.
As I’ve pointed out on my twitter several times, US aggression against the PRC, misleadingly packaged as US-China tensions, is a virtual full-spectrum assault, only stopping short, for now anyway, of direct military action. The US is determined to degrade the PRC’s military, economic, and international security and domestic social and political stability in all available dimensions. Concessions are tactical; attacks are strategic. … The CCP perhaps hopes Western failure in Ukraine will slake the G7 thirst for anti-authoritarian jihad and hopes economic relations and foreign direct investment with China will recover but hope is not a plan. Not with the United States pumping hundreds of billions of dollars to finance global anti-PRC economic, military, diplomatic, political, soft power, and media initiatives.
I believe this increasingly plausible worst-case scenario is driving a lot of PRC decision-making (and drives the barrage of resentful criticism of PRC policy choices in the Western media). … Will the CCP succeed?
The product it’s pitching to its citizens and to the world—that’s multilateralism via economic engagement—is fundamentally more attractive to a lot of countries than the deficit driven global War to Save Democracy that the US is peddling. Given money, perseverance, luck, and time the PRC might be able to thread the needle.
But … there’s that “time” thing. There’s the rub.
My opinion is, if the CCP is succeeding, in other words if it shows significant progress in establishing a robust parallel international order that can shield it from US economic aggression, the US will start a hot war to see if it can truly f*ck China up.
Because the only US response to failure is escalation.
And that’s why my profile says “pessimist”.
As Peter had noted last year China’s government has for quite some time prepared for this.
Well, let’s hope that it does not come to another war.
But Peter is right. The U.S. is typically willing to double down in its aggressions.
It continues to play dirty games in Asia to get what it wants (h/t Carl Zha).
On August 24 the Defense Minister of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, visited the Pentagon. After the meeting the U.S. issued a:
Minister Prabowo and Secretary Austin agreed that the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific and the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy share fundamental principles, such as a commitment to maintaining peace, security, stability, and prosperity in the region through ASEAN Centrality, and that we should work alongside partners who share these goals and a commitment to an open, inclusive, and rules-based order. They shared the view that the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea are inconsistent with international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
That however has not been Indonesia’s position. China noticed that the Pentagon was lying. It protested:
JAKARTA, KOMPAS – The Chinese Embassy in Jakarta has objected to the press statement issued by the United States Department of Defense regarding the defense cooperation with Indonesia in the South China Sea. The press statement stated that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto both agreed that China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea were inconsistent with international law.
“After comparing the US press statement with the press statement released by the Indonesian Ministry of Defense, the sentence that accuses and corners China only appears in the US Ministry of Defense press release,” said the objection response signed by the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta, Monday (28/8/2023).”
Today the Indonesian defense minister confirmed that the U.S. ‘Joint Press Statement’ is fake (machine translation):
Jakarta, KOMPAS – Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto confirmed that there was no joint statement with the US Defense Ministry when he met US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin last week. Prabowo said that Indonesia is in principle friendly to all countries and adheres to a free and active foreign policy.
“Indonesia’s position is very clear. We are non-aligned. We are non-aligned, we are friendly with all countries. So I think that’s what matters, ” Prabowo said after handing over an electric trail bike for the TNI and Polri at the Ministry of Defense, Thursday (31/8).
Prabowo stressed that there was no joint statement with the US Defense Ministry. The Pentagon said in a joint statement that the two ministers shared similar views on China’s maritime claims and expansionist actions in the South China Sea. In this regard, in line with the principle of active freedom, Prabowo again emphasized that Indonesia has good relations with China, the United States and Russia.
The Pentagon’s diplomatic faux pas, issuing a ‘Joint Statement’ when none had been agreed upon, may well become costly. Indonesia and other will surely take note of it and will be prepared to loudly dismiss any recurance.
WGA and SAG-AFTRA join with hotel workers of UNITE-HERE in march of striking unions, Los Angeles, July 21. If all Hollywood unions struck together they could win, hands down. For a single union of all media workers! (Photo: Megan Jamerson/KCRW)
Know your enemy. A dozen entertainment industry unions (and a half-dozen IATSE locals) bargaining separately with a cartel of some of the richest corporations in the U.S. (right, with a market capitalization of almost 5 trillion dollars) is a ticket for defeat. For a single union of all media workers! (Photo: Megan Jamerson/KCRW)
xenagoguevicene 