Editorial
October 2000

Inhuman nature of global capitalism

The disaster which took the lives of 118 sailors on a Russian nuclear submarine in August reveals more than the decrepit state of the Russian military, the lies told by its political leaders, and the total disregard for human life on the part of both. The sinking of the Kursk was the kind of human tragedy that puts the spotlight on the very nature of the global capitalist system.

Though Putin has come under intense criticism for his handling of one of the worst submarine disasters in Russian history, relatively little has been said in the U.S. so far about what actually led to the catastrophe. It was reported that the Kursk was on a training mission when it went under. But this was no normal training mission. The naval exercises which began Aug. 10 were the largest held by Russia in years and were largely prompted by Putin's effort to play catch-up with the West.

Putin has been trying to reorganize and build up the military since he took office. First, he ordered the genocidal invasion of Chechnya, which led to tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of over 300,000. Then, in response to anxiety over the U.S.'s near-total military hegemony, shown clearly by the war in Kosova, he declared that Russia must again become a world-class naval power.

RUSSIAN MILITARY BUILDUP

Just a week before the ill-fated naval maneuvers in the Barents Sea, Putin held an emergency meeting with his national security council to outline the most significant restructuring of the Russian military in two decades. The centerpiece of the plan calls for the navy, with its missile-equipped submarines, to play the main role in Russia's nuclear strike force. The Kursk was rushed off to sea to show that the navy was up to the challenge.

One wonders how anyone can think that Russia-with a Gross Domestic Product equal to that of The Netherlands and which contributes as much to world trade as tiny Denmark-is in the position to re-establish a "world-class navy." How could anyone think Russia can compete with the West, when it spends $5 BILLION a year on its military compared with $300 BILLION by the U.S.?

The only way even the pretense can be maintained is by sending men out in poorly equipped and maintained vessels lacking the most basic safety features. In a word, the disaster involving the Kursk is a direct result of Putin's ill-fated effort to restructure and build up the Russian military.

At the time the Kursk went down, the U.S. was conducting its own naval "training" exercises-at Vieques. The three weeks of live-fire exercises took place despite heated protests. Clearly, Russia is not the only power working to "modernize" its military.

U.S. forces are now engaged in hot spots ranging from Kosova (where, as in Bosnia, it has not managed to arrest any of the war criminals responsible for the genocide) to Iraq. The city of Samawa was bombed by U.S. and British planes on Aug. 15.

U.S. AND LATIN AMERICA

The passing of the Cold War has not changed the fact that U.S. imperialism still views Latin America as its "backyard." Nor has the end of the Cold War halted the most threatening form of militarization-nuclear proliferation. This underlines the U.S.'s push for a nuclear missile defense system. A "highly classified" U.S. intelligence report leaked on Aug. 10 said the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system will lead China to increase its nuclear arsenal tenfold-which, it added, will prompt India and Pakistan to greatly increase their nuclear forces. It concluded that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan is a growing possibility.

U.S. rulers may not suffer from quite the same illusion as Putin when it comes to their drive for ever more militarization-after all, unlike Russia, the U.S. controls the world economy and so is in a far better position to modernize its military.

This does not mean that the creation of a missile defense system is a preordained conclusion. In early September Clinton decided to postpone a decision on whether to go ahead with it, in light of the many technical and political problems associated with it. Yet the DIRECTION in which U.S. politics is moving clearly favors the development of new military hardware at the expense of anything that can aid the development of the American people.

As the expression of the domination of means of production over means of consumption, of dead labor over living labor, capital's tendency for destruction has always been as real as its drive for self-expansion. Today's "globalized" capitalism has not changed that one bit.