The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade’s Revenge

Douglas Greene

Routledge, New York, 2024. 244 pp. £135 bp
ISBN 9781032758787

Reviewed by Suryashekhar Biswas

Douglas Greene’s well-timed book comes in the context of a long-drawn debate on the legacy of Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) and his politics among scholars, activists and historians largely in the imperial centres of the USA and the UK. A founding leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and theoretician of the Second International, Kautsky has been largely rejected by the far-left and his works generally forgotten. Interventions from various quarters, such as those by Lars Lih’s scholarly works and Mike Macnair’s writings and polemics, make a case that there is a direct continuity from the politics represented by Kautsky to that of Lenin. They draw the conclusion that Kautskyian politics of the ‘golden age’ of German social democracy is therefore what needs to be revived by the left today. This view has also found currency in the political approach taken by organisations of varying shades such as the Communist Party of Great Britain, Provisional Central Committee (CPGB-PCC), the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and others. The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade’s Revenge breaks with this view and makes the case that such a return to Kautsky would do more harm than good in reviving the left in the direction of a transformative politics.

Greene’s book approaches the debate on Kautsky’s legacy by providing an evaluation of his political thought as it evolved through time. The analysis begins with Kautsky’s initial engagement as a propagandist of the German Social Democratic press and popularizer of Marx’s economic theories, and goes through his contributions to the Erfurt Program – a program adopted by the Social Democratic Party of Germany during the party’s Congress at Erfurt in 1891 and became a shibboleth of orthodoxy that was upheld by revolutionary social democrats across different nations. The Erfurt Program laid out the contradictions of capitalism and the concrete conditions of the different classes and their sections in capitalist society, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, the small producers, etc. While it was an advancement from the earlier program in many ways, it nonetheless limited the class struggle to the confines of the parliament and proposed that working-class intervention in the parliament would essentially change its class nature in favour of the working-class.

Greene further touches upon Kautsky’s moment of ‘radicalization’ as a response to the uprising of the Russian masses in 1905. The evaluation concludes with Kautsky’s eventual desertion of Marxist internationalism, compromising on the anti-war credentials of the Social Democratic movement and the denouncement of the gains of the Russian Revolution (1917) – which earned him the title of ‘renegade’ that is drawn from Lenin’s polemic against him. Greene covers the above trajectory in the first part of his book (‘Karl Kautsky’) which discusses Kautsky’s political journey through the ‘Left’, ‘Centre’ and ‘Right’ respectively.

The next part (‘The Anti-Kautskyians’) analyses the critical interventions of Kautsky’s contemporaries: Rosa Luxemburg, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky. This part aptly lays out the critiques of Kautsky during his lifetime, which are articulated by revolutionary activists who understood and responded to the needs of their time by making a radical rupture with Kautsky’s political legacy.

Rosa Luxemburg was a prominent leader of the German SPD representing its left-wing, whereas the right-wing was represented by Eduard Bernstein who promoted ‘evolutionary socialism’ for which he would be criticised thoroughly in Luxemburg’s famous pamphlet ‘Reform or Revolution’. Kautsky represented a ‘centrist’ position, which differed from the Bernsteinian right on several questions such as imperialism, the state, etc. However, his opposition to revolutionary strategy and tactics of the left-wing was more decisive and antagonistic, as was demonstrated by his practice and admitted by him in letters that Greene’s book quotes at length. Luxemburg was critical of the parliamentarianism that prevailed in the SPD and considered it to be a fetter to the further radicalization of the labour movement. She proposed the mass strike as a strategy that could help break away the dull routine of parliamentarism and prepare the working class for seizure of power. She also argued for raising the demand for a republic.

These views were debated in the various party congresses of the SPD, and Luxemburg’s position was defeated by an overwhelming majority. In 1910, Kautsky would go on to prevent the publication of one of Luxemburg’s articles that articulated the above mentioned views, representing a decisive moment of rupture between their politics. Other key differences included their views of the Russian Revolution, which Kautsky denounced, whereas Luxemburg upheld and presented it as an example for German Social Democrats to learn from, while also articulating her own criticisms of the Bolsheviks.

Kautsky had conceived of the Social Democratic Party as a ‘party of the whole class’, which meant that the various opposing viewpoints within the movement had to be accommodated within the party, and a split was to be avoided at all costs. It is this perspective that Luxemburg took the longest time to break from, in that while criticizing the centrist and rightist trends in the party for decades, she nonetheless did not call for a split from the party. She would only make the split in 1918, when Germany was in the midst of a revolutionary upsurge to form the Spartakusbund. Greene argues that this delay in forming a separate organisation was a mistake that, if avoided, could help the organisation play a decisive role in moving the revolution forward.

Lenin’s political relation with Kautsky’s politics is more controversial. Lenin started off as an explicit upholder of the Kautsky’s Erfurt Programme and repeatedly emphasised the German model of party-building, both of which demonstrate the dominance of Kautsky’s ideas in the revolutionary movement at the time. Prior to 1914, Lenin could not be found denouncing Kautsky. Lenin’s minor critiques of Kautsky from that period tended to posit the idea that, had Kautsky been more familiar with Russian conditions, he would certainly come to agree with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, rather than the Mensheviks. However, textual exegesis is insufficient to analyse the continuities and ruptures in the politics represented by these two men. Greene argues that in practice, Lenin had already broken with Kautsky’s centrism in 1903 with the Bolshevik-Menshevik split as factions – they would go on to form separate organisations in 1912. This was a decisive break with Kautsky’s conception of the ‘party of the whole class’. Lenin emphasised that revolutionaries and reformists cannot remain in the same organisation.

In 1914, Lenin, Rosa and other revolutionaries would denounce Kautsky, the German SPD and the Second International for rallying behind the bourgeoisies of the imperialist nations clashing with one another in the First World War. Trotsky, acutely aware of the conservative tendencies of the developing bureaucracy in the German SPD, decisively broke with the Kautskyian centre during the betrayal of 1914. He would also break with his own conciliatory politics – i.e., his former position that the Bolshevik-Menshevik split was not fundamental, and the two factions ought to conciliate – and join in with the wave of the Bolsheviks.

The final part of The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade’s Revenge places Kautsky’s thought in the context of contemporary debates. A chapter is devoted to the critical analysis of the Montreal-based scholar, Lars T. Lih, whose writings have been at the heart of contemporary efforts to reclaim Kautsky’s legacy. To his credit, Lih’s studies of Lenin and the Russian Social Democracy demonstrate well that Lenin was not an elitist who organised a conspiratorial sect, attempting to suppress the independent initiative of the workers. However, Lih’s perspective is wedded to the narrative that Lenin was merely a follower of Kautskyian wisdom embodied in the Erfurt Programme and never ruptured from Kautskyian orthodoxy. Lenin’s denouncement of Kautsky and the Second International in 1914 is interpreted by Lih as Lenin’s continuation of Kautsky’s politics when Kautsky himself failed to remain true to his former principles.

Greene argues that right from the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) held in 1903, where the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks came out as separate factions, Lenin was in practice breaking with the Kautskyian conception of a mass party that was supposed to represent the entire gamut of opinions and tendencies prevalent in the worker’s movement, including reformist ones. In every political question of the time, Lenin arrived at conclusions that were radically different from those of Kautsky, and were consistently revolutionary. In place of Kautsky’s ambiguities regarding the character of the state (indeed Kautsky did recognize that the state had a class character, yet his works maintained ambiguities that would amount to concluding that democratisation and winning of votes in the elections by Social Democrats, would in fact transform the character of the state), Lenin posited that the existing state would have to be smashed and a new one built based on worker’s democracy – consisting of institutions that would be more democratic than the bourgeois state. The Russian Revolution of 1917 would represent just this phenomenon. Rosa Luxemburg, despite her various contentions about specific policies of the Russian revolutionaries, would applaud the Bolsheviks and uphold the gains of the revolution, while condemning the German Social Democrats for their failure to take the lessons from the revolutionary upsurge.

Alongside the survey of the political debates surrounding Kautsky, Greene pays keen attention to the debates on ‘Marxist philosophy’. Approaches to the philosophy of Marxism often underlay the different political positions taken by the various currents and they are inseparable from one another. Right from his student years, Kautsky was greatly influenced by Darwin and his theories of evolution and planned to write a ‘universal history’ that would apply Darwin’s ideas of evolution to social phenomena. The evolutionary core of Darwinism persisted in Kautsky’s theoretical framework which was sceptical of the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Historical development therefore was understood to be gradual and evolutionary, and did not have the conception of ruptures and radical transformation as an integral part of the process of development. Evolutionary-positivist views, along with a fatalist assertion of the inevitability of revolution while remaining wedded to reformist practice, was the norm in the Second International and its approach to Marxism.

Dialectical materialist outlook implies: (1) primacy of matter, in that, all that really exists is matter, and consciousness is a special and unique manifestation arising from matter; (2) phenomena are best understood in motion and change, in interconnection and part of one unified reality rather than as isolated entities, and in contradiction. That an embrace of this outlook would lead to radical political conclusions was instinctively felt by the leaders of the bureaucratic party apparatus. Bernstein articulated it explicitly, denounced Hegelian dialectics as potentially ultra-left, and called for a return to Kant. Socialism ceased to be understood as material necessity and thereby transformed into an ethical question. The efforts towards a fusion of Marxism with Kantianism were fully realised in the work of the Austro-Marxists, who did not necessarily share Bernstein’s brand of reformist politics. With a rejection of dialectics, came also a wholesale rejection of Hegel. Kautsky expressed a sense of agnosticism towards these debates. He wrote in a letter that Bernstein’s revival of neo-Kantian philosophy did not bother him in the least. He also argued that Marxism did not have a unifying philosophy and that philosophical viewpoint was a personal matter, and did not concern the party as a whole.

While debates on this continue today, Greene’s coverage of the philosophical underpinnings of the politics of Kautsky, his contemporaries and successors illustrates the range of opinion existing in the Marxist tradition with different, and sometimes opposed political conclusions. It could be argued that this refutes the claim that the conception of Marxism and Marxist philosophy post-Marx was a monolith.

That the Marxism of Kautsky’s orthodoxy did posit a deterministic viewpoint is beyond question. But the Kautskyian impulse towards departing from revolutionary Marxism, is inseparable from the departure from dialectical materialist philosophy. That this interpretation of Marxism was miles apart from that of Lenin’s is demonstrated by the course of events. While Kautsky held that the question of philosophy was a personal matter, Lenin went to great lengths to analyse philosophical trends that departed from materialism and dialectics. From 1914, Lenin undertook detailed studies of Hegel and embraced dialectics with its ruptures and discontinuities, which were a far cry from the philosophy of gradual evolution.

5 August 2024


URL: https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/21615_the-new-reformism-and-the-revival-of-karl-kautsky-the-renegades-revenge-by-douglas-greene-reviewed-by-suryashekhar-biswas/

A TROTSKYIST ANALYSIS

Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky’s amazing Kursk adventure

Alan Woods

16 August 2024
In Defence of Marxism (marxist.com)  

“It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.16-27)

As the drumbeat of war grows louder by the day and the well-worn machinery of propaganda goes into a hysterical overdrive, one begins to lose one’s grip on reality. Day after day, with tedious monotony, the headlines scream at us from every conceivable angle, and some that are frankly inconceivable.

How fortunate those of us who live in the ‘freedom-loving’ West are that we have the opportunity to share different views about love, life and even politics! Just think of the poor people in Russia who have only ever heard one side of the story – that side which suits the interests of the government and the ruling circle!

Those unfortunate people have to believe whatever distorted news is placed before them on a daily basis. We, on the contrary, have a vast array of news outlets, which are free to print any opinion that they wish, on any subject whatsoever.

But by some quirk of fate, our free press chooses (of its own free choice, it goes without saying) to print exactly the same story about the war in Ukraine. By an even more remarkable coincidence, this story always closely coincides with the official views of NATO, Washington, and, naturally enough, the regime in Kyiv.

And so, we fortunate citizens of the democratic West, are free to choose between one and the same view, expressed with mechanical regularity on the same subject and repeated time and time again.

Yesterday morning, 15 August 2024, The New York Times lost no time to inform us of How Ukrainian troops invaded Russia.

We are initiated into the secret of how, on 6 August, Ukraine launched “an audacious – and highly secretive – military offensive, with the aim of upending a war it has for months appeared to be losing.”

The campaign of systematic misinformation thus gets off to a splendid start even in the first sentence. For anyone that is remotely acquainted with the realities of the war in Ukraine, it is surely no secret that Ukraine did not “appear to be losing it” at all. It is losing all along the front, and losing very badly.

In fact, it was no secret to any minimally informed observer that the war, from the point of view of the Kyiv regime, was already lost, and irreparably so. But now, according to the New York Times, together with CNN, The Washington Post, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 News, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Financial Times, Le Monde, El País, Bild, and numerous other famous news outlets, everything is suddenly turned on its head.

All of a sudden, Ukraine is no longer losing the war with Russia, but, on the contrary, it is winning it. Its troops are depicted in innumerable television broadcasts, advancing deep into Russian territory, seemingly without any significant opposition.

Ukraine's troops are depicted in innumerable television broadcasts, advancing deep into Russian territory / Image: Image president.gov.ua

They are shown laughing and smiling, as if on some kind of picnic. They occupy innumerable villages on the Russian side of the border, amuse themselves by tearing down Russian flags and hoisting Ukrainian ones in their place.

It is all very jolly, and absolutely splendid for morale.

The message from Kyiv comes across loud and clear in every television interview with triumphant men and women on the Ukrainian side. Now we will teach them a lesson!

Andrew E. Kramer, the bureau chief of the NYT in Kyiv, spoke to Ukrainians living in villages near the border with Russia. He said: “One Ukrainian woman who had been evacuated from a border village was saying that it was time now for the Russians to feel what war is like.”

In the meantime, the scene in the Kremlin is portrayed in the darkest colours. The unfortunate Russians seem to be unable to react to this audacious throw of the dice.

They are said to be paralysed, like some poor rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

Western journalists, and the self-styled, ever-present ‘analysts’, are busy studying every photograph or video of the man in the Kremlin, hoping to see indications of his psychological state in the slightest movements of his face muscles.

Since they are incapable of working out a rational hypothesis on the basis of the facts, they are reduced to resorting to the mysterious arts of divination, hoping to discover the truth in the same way as the ancient seers spent their lives endlessly examining the entrails of dead chickens.

Sad to say, the efforts of our present day investigative journalists yield approximately the same results as those venerable priests of old. Indeed, it would arguably be a more profitable enterprise studying the contours of chicken gizzards than to try to discover what is on the mind of Vladimir Putin by studying his face.

Whatever one might think about the man in the Kremlin, he is a past master of concealing his innermost feelings, maintaining the same deadpan expression that one would expect to see in an experienced poker player.

And as Shakespeare once said:


“There's no art

To find the mind's construction in the face”

(Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4)

Nevertheless, psychological warfare occupies a central role in wars in general, and has played a particularly crucial one in the present war.

The New York Times article boasts that:


“Ukraine has pushed seven miles into Russia along a 25-mile front and taken dozens of Russian soldiers as prisoners, analysts and Russian officials say. The governor of Russia’s Kursk region said on Monday that Ukraine controls 28 towns and villages there. More than 132,000 people have been evacuated from nearby areas, Russian officials said.”

The story does not lose anything in the telling. The dozens of Russian soldiers taken prisoner according to The Times immediately becomes inflated by a triumphant Zelensky to precisely one hundred. By the next day, his office informs us that the figure amounts to “hundreds”.

How many hundreds? 200, 900, a thousand? No one knows. It is better to leave the precise figure to the imagination, since imagination here has a very important role to play.
What has been achieved?

On the plus side, it is clear that the initial effect of the incursion beyond the Russian border was undoubtedly a Ukrainian success. But what does this success actually amount to? The answer to that question remains a mystery.

And what has actually been achieved by this offensive? All the media are unanimous in claiming that Ukrainian forces have “penetrated deep into Russian territory.” But how deep is deep?

The actual military significance of these gains is precisely zero / Image: public domain

The Times article says, “Ukraine has pushed seven miles into Russia along a 25-mile front.” This figure, which is taken from Russian sources, appears to be correct, although it also seems that the Ukrainians have now begun to spread out in different directions, without any clear idea of what the purpose of this is, other than sporadic acts of sabotage.

Now Russia, as we know, is a very large country indeed. We are talking about many thousands of kilometres. To penetrate 7 miles along a 25 mile front cannot be considered to be very significant penetration of Russian territory from any point of view.

Ukrainians claim that they have conquered a number of villages, although the photographs they have issued have clearly been doctored to falsify the position, at least in several cases. In any case, the villages mentioned are extremely small – barely hamlets – and have mainly been evacuated.

Apart from temporary propaganda value, the actual military significance of these gains is precisely zero. It will have absolutely no effect on the main war that is taking place in Ukraine – especially in the key area of the Donbass.

What is the point of mobilising valuable resources, which are needed for defensive purposes all along the front line, for the sake of occupying a few tiny villages on the Russian side of the frontier?

Even if we accept the most ambitious claims of the Ukrainian side, it is abundantly clear that the seizure of those villages will be very short lived. The Russian forces are already massing for a counter-attack, which will drive them out with very heavy losses in both lives and equipment.
So what was the point of it?

An important offensive, involving several brigades of Ukrainian army, moreover, brigades drawn largely from Ukraine’s very limited reserves and including many of its most effective and elite forces, ought to have clearly defined objectives.

But to this day, no clear explanation of those objectives have ever been given by anyone in Kyiv. The reason for this mysterious silence will become clear to us later on. Meanwhile, it remains a matter of speculation in the western media.

The only half-reasonable explanation that has been so far provided is that the Kursk offensive was intended to oblige the Russians to withdraw forces from the central front in Donbass, thus relieving pressure on the Ukrainian defences, which are severely stretched and rapidly crumbling.

If this were so, then it has clearly failed in its purpose. Apart from a small number of Chechen fighters that have been sent to Kursk, the Russian forces that have been withdrawn from Donbass appear to have been negligible.

In fact, articles have already appeared in the Ukrainian media in which the forces attempting to resist the implacable Russian advance on places such as Pokrovsk, loudly complain that the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces has so weakened them that they are on the point of collapse.

Ukraine's National Guard spokesperson, Ruslan Muzychuk, on Thursday admitted that Kyiv's offensive in Russia's Kursk region has not slowed Moscow's advance.

“As seen from both official reports by the General Staff and accounts from units and fighters on the front line, the pace of Russia's offensive and the intensity of assaults are not decreasing,” Muzychuk told a local broadcaster.

Since Ukraine launched the Kursk offensive, “I would say things have become worse in our part of the front," said Ivan Sekach, spokesperson of Ukraine's 110th Mechanised Brigade, which is currently deployed in the Pokrovsk district in the Donetsk region. “We have been getting even less ammo than before and Russians are pushing,” he told Politico.

Over the past 24 hours, Russia occupied the villages of Zhelanne and Orlivka and made advances in New York (sic!), Krasnohorivka, Mykolaivka and Zhuravka in Donetsk, according to DeepState, a war-mapping project close to Ukraine's defence ministry.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not confirm or deny the report, saying only that intense fighting was under way in those areas, and that Kyiv was concentrating its efforts on the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.

Let us speak frankly. Contrary to the impression created by the Western media, the decisive front in the war in Ukraine is not the battle for Kursk, or even the Kharkiv front. It is Donbass, where the Russians are advancing slowly but implacably, driving the Ukrainians out of one key point after another.

Russia's defence ministry said that Russian forces had clocked up a host of wins along the front, from Kharkiv region to Luhansk and Donetsk.

The main Russian objective at the moment, however, appears to be the fortified point of Pokrovsk, which is the main logistical hub of the Donbass region, and also the last fortified line of defence before the Dnieper river. The fall of Pokrovsk would precipitate a collapse of defence lines across eastern Ukraine.

The frontline towards Pokrovsk has been rapidly disintegrating in the past days and the latest frontline is only 11 km from the edge point of Pokrovsk city itself. According to Ukrainian media, the head of the region's Pokrovsk military administration Serhiy Dobryak says the “enemy has almost reached the edge of our community”.

In a post on Telegram, the head of the city's military administration says it's important residents “don't delay” their evacuation, as Russian troops are “rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk”.
Zelensky’s military credentials

If he had the slightest grasp of tactics and strategy, Zelensky would immediately acknowledge that the Kursk adventure has ended in failure and order the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces, in order to preserve whatever could be preserved of those valuable and scarce resources. But he shows no sign whatsoever of doing that.

This is absolutely typical of the Ukrainian leader, a man who, we must remind ourselves, has absolutely no military experience or grasp of the art of war. He only appears to know one command – attack! The words ‘retreat’ or ‘withdraw’ does not enter his very limited vocabulary.

This fact has become clear at every decisive junction of the Ukrainian conflict. It has had extremely dire consequences, causing one disastrous defeat after another. And yet he does not learn.

Yesterday, reporting on a meeting of the Ukrainian general staff, Zelensky reported on the situation in Donbass, which has now become critical:


“Today at the Staff meeting, I received a report from Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi. Our key defence directions at the frontline: Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and others.

“These areas are currently facing the most intense Russian assaults and are receiving our utmost defensive attention.

“Priority supplies—everything that is needed—are being sent there.”

He does not mention the fact that the defence of these decisive areas has been seriously weakened by his orders to withdraw troops to support his offensive in Kursk!

If he had the slightest grasp of tactics and strategy, Zelensky would immediately acknowledge that the Kursk adventure has ended in failure / Image: president.gov.ua

It seems absolutely incredible that at such a critical moment, Zelensky still persists in his insane plan to invade Russia! Having devoted just a few words to the desperate position of his forces in “Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and others” (that is to say, all along the central line of the conflict), he immediately returns to his own personal obsession, which is devouring vital forces and equipment to absolutely no logical purpose.

The conquest of Pokrovsk by Russia will be of immeasurably more importance to the outcome of the war than any number of small villages that the Ukrainians managed to temporarily occupy in Kursk.

There is absolutely no hope that they will occupy them for any length of time. And their defeat – which is inevitable – will be accompanied with a staggering level of losses. Zelensky continued in his report:


“Separately, the Commander-in-Chief [Syrskyi] reported on the operation in Kursk Oblast. There has been new progress. Our “exchange fund” has been further replenished.

“Additionally, General Syrskyi reported the successful liberation of the city of Sudzha from Russian forces. A Ukrainian military commandant's office is being established there.

“Several other settlements have also been liberated. In total, more than eighty. I extend my deepest gratitude to every one of our warriors who has made this possible.”

In short, Zelensky talks like a man in a dream, completely divorced from reality.
Was Russia taken by surprise?

If it is true that Russia was taken by surprise by the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, that would undoubtedly represent a catastrophic failure of Russian intelligence. That is the interpretation that has been widely circulated in the western media. However, it is hard to justify this interpretation without further critical examination.

It is well known that Russian intelligence services are among the most efficient in the world. They have at their disposal a vast apparatus of surveillance, which they inherited from the KGB and the Soviet Union. This apparatus will have been modernised and updated to keep abreast of all developments on the war front.

The existence of spy satellites and drones, which maintain a constant observation of every development on the front lines is undoubtedly supplemented by the presence of spies and informants who will be active at every level of political and military activities in Kyiv.

For the Russians not to have detected those movements, they must have been blind, deaf and dumb / Image: Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons

Such an apparatus is hardly likely to be taken by surprise by even the smallest movements in Ukraine. And what we have here is not a small movement, but a large-scale movement of troops, tanks and armoured vehicles on a very sensitive area of the front.

For the Russians not to have detected those movements, they must have been blind, deaf and dumb. This was clearly not the case.

There are other factors which are very hard to explain. In the area where the incursion took place, the Russians had conveniently cleared their minefields of mines. The reason for this may well have been in preparation for Russian advance across the border.

However, it presented a very tempting target for Ukrainians – too tempting for Zelensky to resist, in fact. It was almost as if the Russians were inviting an attack, like a man who places a tempting lump of cheese in a mousetrap.

Is it conceivable that the Ukrainians have in fact fallen into a trap? Such a hypothesis will be indignantly denied by all those western commentators who insist on presenting what was clearly a senseless adventure as an act of military brilliance.

But with due respect to our Western ‘experts’, such a hypothesis cannot be logically excluded. And in fact, it seems far more credible than the alternative explanation, according to which, for unexplained reasons, Russian intelligence was unable to detect something that would have been obvious to a six-year-old child of average intelligence.

If we exclude the possibility that some kind of trap was prepared by the Russians, then we are compelled to draw another conclusion, namely, that Zelensky fell into a trap of his own making. And he will now be compelled to live with the consequences of his mistake.
Was the West involved?

The next question which must be asked is: was the West involved in this move, or even informed of it in advance? The Times says the following:


“The operation surprised even Kyiv’s closest allies, including the U.S., and has pushed the limits of how Western military equipment would be permitted to be used inside Russian territory.”

The White House says Ukraine did not provide advance notice of its incursion and that Washington had no involvement. But these claims are met with scepticism in Moscow.

An aide to the Kremlin has claimed that NATO and the West were directly involved in the planning for Ukraine's attack on Russia's Kursk region and that denials of their involvement are lies.

And indeed, why should the Russians believe anything that is said by the Americans, since they have consistently lied and deceived public opinion from the very word go?

Actually, there is good reason to believe that the Americans were informed of Zelensky’s plans before the offensive took place – because it seems the Russians themselves may have informed them! One curious phone call stands out. On 12 July, Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov took the step of directly calling Pentagon chief, Lloyd Austin.

This in itself is unusual enough. Since the war began in February 2022, Austin has only had five phone calls with the Russian Defence Minister – almost all of which were initiated by the US in order to avoid escalating the conflict.

But according to three official American sources in The New York Times, it was Belousov who rang Austin on this occasion to warn him that the Russians had uncovered a Ukrainian covert operation against Russia.

The precise nature of that operation was not disclosed. What happened next remains unclear. Apparently, Pentagon officials were taken by surprise by news of the Ukrainian’s plans. When asked directly by Belousov if he was aware of the Ukrainians’ planned operation, Austin denied he had any knowledge of it, and furthermore said that he would warn Ukrainians not to carry it out.

The White House says Ukraine did not provide advance notice of its incursion / Image: president.gov.ua

In the light of subsequent events, it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the covert operation referred to was precisely the offensive in Kursk, which, with or without the permission of Washington, Zelensky was already planning.

The reason why this was regarded by the Russians as a serious threat was the following. The only military strategic target of any value in the Kursk region is the Kursk nuclear power plant on the edge of the town of Kurchatov, west of the regional capital, Kursk.

If the Ukrainians could seize that installation, it would undoubtedly have given them leverage to blackmail Russia in some way. This was without any doubt the real objective of the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, although this was never made clear by the Ukrainians.

The offensive has failed

The speed and ease with which the Ukrainians were able to advance into Russian territory in the first instance took many people by surprise – especially the Ukrainians themselves. This again demands some explanation.

Did the Russians not have sufficient forces to repel the invaders and drive them back over the frontier? They certainly have enough reserves inside Russia to make it unnecessary to withdraw forces from Donbass (another declared aim of the Ukrainians).

Yet the only forces known to be present in the area at the time were small groups of special forces (commandos), Chechens and members of the Wagner outfit. These have been engaged in ambushes and hit-and-run attacks which, together with air attacks and drones, have in fact inflicted very serious casualties on the Ukrainians – a fact which has been completely played down by the western press.

However, so far, the Russians have avoided an all-out battle with the invaders, preferring to minimise casualties on their own side, while maximising Ukrainian losses in both manpower and vehicles, which have suffered a very heavy toll for negligible results.

The Russians have built a heavily fortified line, which blocks further Ukrainian advance, compelling the Ukrainians to disperse their forces into small units, mainly devoted to sabotage.

However, the main target – the nuclear power plant – remains beyond their reach. It has been heavily fortified by the Russians, and this makes it all but unassailable by the invading forces.

Thus, the Ukrainians find themselves effectively in a trap, denied access to their most important target, remaining in possession of a number of mostly empty villages (the population has mainly been evacuated) and now condemned to more or less aimless activities, while awaiting a serious counter-blow from the Russian side.

How long it will take for the Russians to gather sufficient forces to launch a shattering counter-offensive, it is impossible to say. But troops are pouring in from all sides, and, when the commanders are satisfied that Ukrainians have been sufficiently weakened by bombing and shelling, they will move in for the kill.

The whole thing will therefore be exposed before the eyes of the world as a senseless and reckless adventure, which will only serve to weaken the already crumbling Ukrainian defences and prepare the way for ultimate collapse.
Kursk: a turning point in the war

It may be true that the Kursk adventure will be a turning point in the war in Ukraine, but not in the sense understood by Zelensky and his admirers in the West. On the contrary, it will have caused irreparable harm to Ukraine’s defences in the face of a renewed Russian attack, which is clearly in preparation.

There are rumours – the veracity of which I am unable to ascertain – that Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's top military commander, is attempting to distance himself from the Kursk affair, attempting to shift the blame onto the shoulders of Zelensky.

If it is true that general Syrskyi, who is considered to be a ‘yes man’ of the president, is trying to disassociate himself from his reckless and irresponsible Kursk adventure, it is an ominous sign of developing cracks within the ruling circles in Kyiv.

The Kursk adventure has removed any possibility for negotiations to take place / Image: Image president.gov.ua

The argument of Zelensky that the Kursk offensive was intended to provide the Ukrainians with a stronger position in future negotiations with Russia is now revealed as an empty dream.

Far from entering into negotiations with Russia, the Kursk adventure has removed any possibility for negotiations to take place. Putin has made this perfectly clear. And the action of ‘invading’ Russian territory has undoubtedly strengthened his hand and hardened Russian public opinion against the Kyiv regime.

Finally, some western commentators are beginning to wake up to the fact that this escapade will not only end in defeat, but in a complete and disastrous military collapse.

In one sense, the offensive has been a spectacular success. It has provided a major boost to the noisy media circus, which is always anxious to seize upon any and every Ukrainian success – whether real or imaginary is a matter of complete indifference – and exaggerate it to the nth degree.

The media reports have been overflowing with gushing coverage of the gallant Ukrainains fighting and inflicting humiliating defeats on an evil enemy. However, if you dig a little deeper beyond the media hype, a note of doubt and even scepticism is not hard to detect.

Even the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the offensive grudgingly admit that it was a “very risky gamble.” That goes for The New York Times itself. In analysing these events in the very same article, it says the following:


“This offensive is a major gamble for Ukraine. If its troops can hold territory, they could stretch the capacity of Russian soldiers, deliver embarrassment for Putin and get a bargaining chip for any peace negotiations. But if Russia manages to push back, Ukrainian military leaders could be blamed for giving the Russians an opening to gain more ground.”

Zelensky obviously hoped that his offensive would cause widespread demoralisation and panic among the Russian population. In reality, it has had the opposite effect. The spectacle of Ukrainian forces, armed with western-supplied weapons and tanks, will have convinced them that prospective Ukrainian membership of NATO indeed represents a direct and present threat to Russia.

Far from undermining Putin’s position, it will galvanise support for the war. It is already leading to an increase in the numbers of recruits to the Russian army. This at the same time as Ukraine finds it necessary to use brute force to drag unwilling recruits off the streets to be sent to what is increasingly seen as a slaughterhouse.

The people of Ukraine are rapidly waking up to the fact that their so-called friends and benefactors in the West are keen to fight to the last drop of their blood.

Union at BHP’s Escondida copper mine warns it could relaunch strike

Reuters | August 18, 2024 | 

Escondida mine camp. Credit: Bpierreb, Wikimedia Commons

The union at BHP’s giant Escondida copper mine in Chile said on Sunday in a memo to its members that it could relaunch a strike later in the day if the company does not “rectify its position” over contract talks as soon as possible.


An internal bulletin from the company, seen by Reuters, said it is complying with an earlier agreement and asked employees to keep working. “Our main focus is to end this process satisfactorily, to benefit everyone, especially the workers.”

The mine’s powerful union went on strike on Tuesday over payment disputes and came to a preliminary agreement on Friday to end the strike at the world’s largest copper mine that had threatened to hit global supply of the red metal.

(By Fabian Cambero; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Diane Craft)

VIDEO/PHOTOS

Aging Soviet Carrier Catches Fire on Yangtze

Minsk's superstructure collapsed in the heat of the fire. Soot marks can be seen above portholes forward, suggesting that the blaze also spread belowdecks (Chinese social media)

Published Aug 18, 2024 6:59 PM by The Maritime Executive

An aging Soviet aircraft carrier caught fire in a lagoon on the Yangtze River last week, and the blaze may have put her fully out of commission at last.

The carrier Minsk was a Kiev-class carrier built in Mykolaiv for the Soviet Navy in 1978. Along with sister ships Novorossiysk and Kiev, she served Russia's navy into the 1990s, when she was decommissioned and put up for sale. She was purchased by a South Korean firm in 1995 and towed to East Asia for scrapping. However, she was sold onwards to a Chinese enterprise for a low sum before she could go under the torch.  

Minsk was towed to China and refitted as a static display, and in 2000, she became the star attraction of a theme park in Shenzhen known as Minsk World. (Sister ship Kiev underwent a similar conversion and is still in service as a museum ship near the port of Tianjin.)

As a predecessor to China's first (secondhand) carrier, Liaoning, Minsk was given a matching pennant number and billed as a Soviet-era museum ship for visitors. The park stayed open under the management of Chinese holding company CITIC until 2016, when falling ticket sales prompted its closure. 

The Minsk was relocated to Zhoushan for repair work, then onwards to Nantong, where the owners had plans to restart the tour business. She was moored in a lagoon and enclosed by a levee, giving the impression that she had been transported into a small lake. There she has sat for at least six years, gradually deteriorating. 

Last week, a major fire broke out aboard the ship. Towering columns of smoke were captured on video by passers-by, and at least one person obtained footage of a large on the superstructure. By August 16, the blaze appeared to have subsided, though smoke still emanated from the ship's topsides in small quantities.  

  

 

The ship's superstructure appears to have collapsed in the blaze, and interior fire and smoke damage will likely reduce the odds of reopening the Minsk for public tours. 

In her heyday, Minsk was a curious hybrid of a cruiser and an aircraft carrier. She carried eight P-500 antiship missiles and four 76mm cannons, giving her reasonable punch as a surface combatant for her era. She also had a short angled flight deck on the waist, which could accommodate a small air wing of STOVL fighter jets and anti-submarine helicopters. 

 

Electric Ships Could Be a Breakthrough for China

Battery-electric coal carrier charged with coal-fired power, 2017. Chinese battery-powered shipping has come a long way in seven years (CSSC)

Published Aug 18, 2024 3:17 PM by Dialogue Earth

 

 

[By Ted Zhang]

As the world’s biggest shipper and commodity trader, China could establish a mature business model for constructing electric ships. It could also build out better recharging infrastructure, bringing further climate, environmental and economic benefits.

This will require adequate government support. The country’s 15th five-year economic plan will soon be upon us. Covering 2026-2030, it will be the last before China’s 2030 deadline for peaking national carbon emissions.

The huge potential of e-ships

On 22 April, the world’s largest all-electric container ship arrived at Shanghai’s Yangshan port. Lv Shui 01 is 120 meters long and fitted with batteries of 50 megawatt-hours, which can be swapped out at ports. COSCO Shipping, which owns and operates the vessel, claims it will avoid almost 3,000 tonnes of carbon emissions over the course of a year – equivalent to taking more than 2,000 cars off the road for a year.

Shui 01 (Courtesy COSCO)

The vessel is a good example of how far electric ships can reduce shipping emissions. Last summer, the International Maritime Organization – the UN body responsible for controlling atmospheric pollution by ships – revised its strategy for cutting emissions from global shipping. According to a press release, the new strategy includes “an enhanced common ambition to reach net-zero … from international shipping by or around, ie close to, 2050”. Shipping’s green transition must gather speed.

Given that battery-powered vessels are set to be a part of global shipping’s green transition, there is huge potential for electric ships in China, both in terms of emissions reduction and economic success.

Climate, environmental and economic benefits

About 15% of China’s emissions are from transportation, with shipping accounting for 6%. Domestic shipping emitted 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2020, according to estimates from the China Waterborne Transport Research Institute, a part of the Ministry of Transport.

Between 2015 and 2020, the carbon intensity of Chinese shipping fell by 7.1%; in shipping, carbon intensity measures CO2 emitted while moving one tonne of cargo by one kilometre. However, emissions from the Chinese shipping sector are rising in absolute terms, and China’s 14th Five Year Plan, covering 2021-2025, and its Vision 2035 plan both call for cargo to be moved off roads and onto trains and ships. This means the shipping sector will struggle to hit peak carbon in 2030.

Electric ships could be the breakthrough needed. As these battery-powered vessels don’t burn any fuel, they don’t emit any carbon while sailing. They have more direct environmental and health benefits too.

In 2022, China’s shipping industry emitted 1.5 million tonnes of nitric oxide and 61,000 tonnes of particulates. Emissions of those atmospheric pollutants from electric ships are virtually zero, bringing them in line with the government’s cleaner air policies.

China has the industrial base to take advantage of this opportunity. With the shipping sector’s green transition speeding up, China has a chance to overtake other countries on the manufacturing of engines, key components and power systems.

For example, foreign shipping companies often use lithium nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries to power their electric ships, which are more energy dense than the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries China prefers. However, LFPs are safer, cheaper and have longer life cycles, and China already has the necessary infrastructure in place to manufacture LFPs. According to the China Classification Society, a standards agency that regulates shipping and offshore installations, 36 lithium battery manufacturers had obtained its certification as of July 2023, with 30 of those specifying that they produce LFPs. Furthermore, two of China’s leading lithium battery makers (CATL and Eve Energy) make LFPs.

Though a single LFP battery cell is less energy-dense, China has developed LFP battery systems for ships that are denser than the NMC systems used overseas. That’s according to a speech by Tang Wenjun, deputy head of the Wuhan Chang Jiang Ship Design Institute, delivered in March at the Yangtze River Green Shipping Forum. China’s battery supply chains are also second to none. Electric shipping could therefore become a route to high-quality development for the country’s shipping industry.

Three challenges

Despite batteries’ huge potential for reducing emissions, and their climate, environmental and economic benefits, currently far less than 1% of China’s 121,900 cargo vessels are running on them. If electric ships are to take off as electric cars have, three challenges must be overcome.

The biggest of these is cost. The power systems required by an electric vessel are hugely expensive, pushing up its overall cost to two or three times that of a traditional, oil-fired alternative. Take the Jiangyuan Baihe as an example. In October 2022, it became China’s first all-electric domestic cargo vessel with a capacity of 120 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit), meaning it can carry 120 containers of 20 foot in length. It has three lithium batteries, which cost CNY 3.8 million (USD 520,000) each. The batteries have a combined capacity of 4.62 megawatt-hours and together cost more than an entire diesel vessel of equivalent capacity.

Moreover, those batteries are only warrantied for eight years. The vessel would be expected to last three decades, meaning three or four battery replacements must be budgeted for. These costs will hamper the introduction of electric shipping.

Another challenge to the widespread uptake of electric ships is recharging. Development of the ships might be steaming ahead, but the planning and construction of infrastructure for swapping or recharging these batteries lags far behind.

Recharging is usually incorporated into port infrastructure, with the connection made either manually or automatically to a junction box and then managed by a recharging-control system.

A port needs to have a sufficient electricity supply, be compliant with high-voltage safety standards, and have the capacity for smart or remote management.

Take the Wuxi Xin’an Shipping Service Area. It uses low-voltage shore power on land, with sockets of 220 volt 8 kilowatt and of 380 volt 20 kilowatt. These are not powerful enough to charge large-capacity, shipborne batteries.

At the Yangtze River Green Shipping Forum in March, Dai Chenlin of Yangtze Gold Cruises suggested the government increase its oversight of planning and building battery charging and exchange infrastructure, to ensure its deployment and standards are uniform.

“The boats move between areas with different levels of development. Richer areas have better infrastructure. But in poorer areas the local government can’t provide the same facilities, which could mean electric ships can’t go there,” Dai said.

Electric ships are also facing competition from alternative fuels, such as hydrogen, ammonia and methanol. Last October, China’s first vessel powered by a hydrogen fuel cell made its maiden voyage in Yichang, Hubei province. The river cruiser will avoid the burning of 103 tonnes of fuel oil a year, cutting carbon emissions by 344 tonnes, as reported by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Meanwhile, six of the world’s biggest shipping firms, including Maersk, CMA CGM and COSCO Shipping, claim to be building or refitting vessels to run on methanol, according to a 2023 China Energy News report. Two hundred orders for methanol-fuelled vessels have already been made globally, making it the first choice for container shipping firms, the report added.

The industry hasn’t yet reached a consensus on which options – batteries, green ammonia, green methanol, green hydrogen – are best suited for which types and sizes of vessel. However, there is a preference for batteries when it comes to small and mid-sized vessels on short and mid-range journeys. At the Yangtze green shipping forum, Tang Wenjun said: “Over 50% of China’s almost 110,000 domestic shipping vessels are of a small or medium size.” The potential to refit those vessels with batteries, or replace them with battery-powered vessels, gives an idea of the size of the market.

Carrots and sticks

China’s local governments are pushing ahead with electric ships. Fujian was the first to support the industry, by promoting demonstrations and pilot projects and offering subsidies for battery-power systems, recharging infrastructure and battery-leasing services.

Meanwhile, some of China’s big international trading partners are also taking action. The EU and US are passing legislation to increase the costs for fossil-fuelled shipping. In May last year, the EU announced that the shipping industry would be included in its carbon-trading scheme. That means shipping firms working in the EU – including Chinese firms – need to pay for their emissions, starting at 40% in 2024, then 70% in 2025 and 100% in 2026.

According to the consultancy Hecla Emissions Management, this will increase costs for the industry by EUR 17.2 billion (USD 18.5 billion) across the three-year period. Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, CMA CGM, ONE and Evergreen are already passing those costs on to their customers in the form of surcharges. China’s domestic shipping is not covered by emissions-trading rules, but Shanghai does include shipping within its local carbon market. In 2023, the sector accounted for 770,000 tonnes (34.5%) of Shanghai’s total local carbon trade.

Ted Zhang serves as climate analyst at Pacific Environment, an international NGO with permanent consultative status at the International Maritime Organization. This article appears courtesy of Dialogue Earth and may be found in its original form here. 

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

 

Saudi Arabia Orders its First Deep Sea-Capable Research Vessel

RV Thuwall II (Rendering courtesy Glosten)

Published Aug 18, 2024 3:43 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

 

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulla University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has tapped the Spanish shipyard Freire to build its new research vessel, RV Thuwall II. The new ship will deliver in 2026.

Glosten-designed RV Thuwal II will be the flagship of the Saudi research vessel fleet and will serve all marine research interests of the nation, including use by government ministries. In addition, it will be the first regional class research vessel for Saudi Arabia, enabling access to the Red Sea, as well as research expeditions in coastal waters and the deep sea.

Since 2009, KAUST’s Red Sea Research Center (RSRC) has been carrying out extensive studies to understand the Red Sea’s ecology. RSRC’s research has shown that corals in the northern Red Sea could have acquired high-temperature tolerance, making them resistant to bleaching up to a certain extent in warming seas. The acquisition of the research vessel will boost KAUST’s capacity to study these coral reefs, as well as help attract more international partners.  

RV Thuwal II will be 50 meters long, 12.8 m in width and will have a draft of 3.6 m. It will be designed for a 30-year lifespan, with its modular design allowing for multiple types of experimental laboratories to serve existing and future marine technology for Red Sea exploration. Further, this modularity allows for retrofitting of new green propulsion technologies to lower the vessel’s carbon footprint over the years. The vessel will have capacity for 30 people, 12 of whom will be crew.

Besides its primary function, RV Thuwal II will also be able to support national responses to emergencies such as oil spills and marine accidents.

“RV Thuwal II symbolizes KAUST’s commitment to enhancing Saudi Arabia’s research infrastructure and the exploration of the Red Sea. The ship will be accessible to partners with a shared interest in understanding the Red Sea and unlocking its vast potential,” said KAUST Vice President of Research Pierre Magistretti.

India Launches Roadmap for Green Tugboat Transition

Tug at Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Mumbai (iStock / Boggy22)

Published Aug 18, 2024 3:51 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

Last week, as part of its Green Shipping Policy, India's government launched new guidelines for the Green Tug Transition Program (GTTP). This initiative is set to phase out conventional fuel-based harbor tugs operating in major Indian ports and replace them with green ones powered by cleaner and more sustainable alternative fuels.

The Green Shipping Policy program was announced in May 2023 and consists of five major initiatives focusing on green shipping and digitization of Indian ports. One of the landmark initiatives under the program is the 30 percent financial support by the Ministry of Ports and Shipping for the promotion of green shipping in India.

The GTTP will be implemented in phases, with phase one scheduled to begin in October and continue until December of 2027. During this phase, four major ports - Jawaharlal Nehru, Deendayal, Paradip and V.O. Chidambaranar - will procure or charter at least two green tugs each. The designs and specifications of the tugs will be issued by the Standing Specification Committee (SSC).

However, Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Shri Sarbananda Sonowal clarified that the first set of tugs will be battery-electric, with capacity to adopt other emerging green technologies such as hybrid, methanol and green hydrogen. The minister projected that phase one of the program will cost about $119 million.

“The GTTP is a pivotal initiative towards realizing our vision of a sustainable and green maritime sector in India. The program also strengthens our commitment to ‘Make in India’, promoting domestic innovation and manufacturing in the maritime industry,” said Shri Sarbananda.

The tugs will be built in Indian shipyards as part of the government initiative to support the domestic shipbuilding industry. This will also help to create employment opportunities.

In addition, the government has set a goal for all tugs operating in major Indian ports to transition to green fuels by 2040. This is in line with India’s Green Port Guidelines, which target a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions per ton of cargo by 2030 and 70 percent by 2047.