US vetoes UN resolution for Palestinian statehood in favour of never-ending negotiations

 
The United States vetoed a resolution to accept the State of Palestine as a full member of the United Nations. Of the 15 members of the security council, 12 voted in favour, 2 abstained and the US opposed.

April 19, 2024

The US has vetoed a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution that would have paved the way for the State of Palestine to gain full membership at the UN. The vote, held during a lengthy session in New York yesterday, saw 12 countries vote in favour of the resolution, while Britain and Switzerland abstained.

Robert Wood, the US deputy envoy to the UN, defended the veto, stating that Washington believes the only path to Palestinian statehood is through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The US has overseen direct negotiations since the 1990s with the Oslo Accords marking the beginning of formal negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Direct negotiations failed to deliver Palestinians the dream of statehood and instead under US watch, Israel further entrenched its illegal occupation and annexed the very territory set aside for a Palestinian state.

The resolution’s failure was widely anticipated, as the US, a staunch ally of Israel, holds veto power at the Security Council and had previously expressed opposition to its passage. The vote comes amid the ongoing Israeli aggression in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of nearly 34,000 Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of whom are women and children, and created a humanitarian crisis in the coastal enclave.

Read: Slovenia, Spain prioritise recognition of Palestinian State

Currently, the State of Palestine holds non-member observer status at the UN. To become a full UN member, an application must be approved by the Security Council and then gain support from at least two-thirds of the General Assembly.

Ziad Abu Amr, the UN special representative for the State of Palestine, appealed for support before the vote, emphasising Palestinians’ longing for self-determination, freedom, security and peace in an independent state.

Some 139 countries have recognised the state of Palestine and a positive vote in the Security Council would have been an expression of the will of the international community. Israel, aided by the diplomatic cover of Washington, has been hostile to the international consensus.

Israel’s hostility was on display yesterday when the ambassador of the apartheid state to the UN, Gilad Erdan, slammed the council for even considering a resolution on the recognition of a Palestinian state. “If this resolution passes – God forbid – this should no longer be known as the Security Council but as the ‘terror’ council,” he said.

Abu Amr dismissed the US claim that the resolution would jeopardise political negotiations and prospects for peace, citing the establishment of the state of Israel through UN Resolution 181 as a precedent. Israel along with several other countries gained recognition through a vote in the General Assembly and according to one opinion Palestinians can bypass Washington’s obstruction in a similar manner.

Despite the setback, Abu Amr expressed hope that the international community would grant Palestinians the opportunity to become an integral part of the global effort to achieve international peace and security.

U.S. vetoes Palestinian bid for U.N. membership

Riyad H. Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting on the admission of new members. He spoke after a resolution on the admission of Palestine as a UN member state failed to pass due to the veto of a permanent member of the Security Council. 

Photo by Eskinder Debebe/UN/UPI


April 19 (UPI) -- The United States blocked a U.N. Security Council resolution on Thursday to recognize the state of Palestine as a full member state of the United Nations, arguing its acceptance by the intergovernmental body will not equal statehood for the Palestinian people.

The Algeria-submitted resolution received 12 votes in favor, two abstentions from Britain and Switzerland and a vote against by the United States, which is one of five permanent members of the 15-member Security Council with veto power.

The vote prevents the resolution from moving on to the 193-member General Assembly where another round of balloting would have been held on the admission of the state of Palestine, which is one of two non-member observers of the intergovernmental organization, along with the Holy See.

An emotional Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority's ambassador to the United Nations, choked back tears during his remarks following the vote.

"Our right to self-determination has never once been the subject of bargaining or negotiation. Our right to self-determination is a natural right, an historic right, a legal right to live in our homeland, Palestine as an independent state that is free and that is sovereign," he said.

"We we will not disappear. The people of Palestine will not be buried."

The state of Palestine first submitted its request to join the United Nations in 2011, which failed to get off the ground, but worked in the government receiving observer status in November the following.

Its application was revitalized amid Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, which began Oct. 7, when the Iran proxy militia launched a brutal surprise attack on the Middle Eastern country, killing 1,200 Israelis with another 253 taken hostage.

The war has put renewed attention on the lack of a Palestinian state, as the death toll of the war in Gaza has ballooned to nearly 34,000 dead, and more than 76,000 injured. Much of the enclave has also been razed by months of bombing, and as of Sunday, some 1.7 million Gazans, or more than 75% of its population, have been displaced, according to the United Nations Palestinian relief agency.

Both the United Nations and the United States back the creation of the two separate independent and sovereign states of Israel and Palestine as the answer to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and Washington defended its veto Thursday because acceptance into the intergovernmental body will not bring about this two-state solution.

"We also have long been clear that premature actions here in New York, even with the best intentions, will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people," Robert Wood, U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said during the meeting.

"It remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward statehood for the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the support of the United States and other partners."

He pointed out that the report the council received from the admission committee that the members lacked unanimity if the state of Palestine met the criteria for membership under the U.N. Charter.

"We have long called on the Palestinian Authority to undertake necessary reforms to help establish the attributes of readiness for statehood and note that Hamas -- a terrorist organization -- is currently exerting power and influence in Gaza, an integral part of the state envisioned in this resolution," he said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel further explained that they believe the most expeditious way for the Palestinians to achieve statehood is through negotiations.

He told reporters during the press conference that due to statutory requirements, admission of the State of Palestine would require the United States to cease funding for the United Nations.

"The U.S. is committed to intensifying its engagement on this issue with the Palestinians and the rest of the region, not only to address the current crisis in Gaza but to advance a political settlement here that we think can create a path to Palestinian statehood and membership in the United Nations," he said.

Israel commended the United States for downing the resolution.

"The proposal to recognize a Palestinian state, more than 6 months after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and after the sexual crimes and other atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists, was a reward for terrorism," Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

"Terrorism will not be rewarded."

Why did Biden block UNSC resolution for Palestine statehood? US stand Explained

ByVertika Kanaujia
Apr 19, 2024 

Why did United States block Palestine statehood bid at UNSC? Here's all you need to know


On Thursday, the United States stood alone in opposing a United Nations Security Council resolution to grant the Palestinian territories full UN membership and statehood. The U.S. vetoed the proposal put forward by Algeria on behalf of Arab nations, resulting in the resolution's failure. While twelve of the 15 council members voted in favour, Britain and Switzerland abstained.

The UN Security Council votes on a resolution allowing Palestinian UN membership at United Nations headquarters in New York, on April 18, 2024, during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question. (AFP)

Had the resolution passed, it would have moved to the U.N. General Assembly, where a two-thirds majority among the 193 member countries would be required for approval. Currently, around 140 U.N. members recognize the Palestinian territories as a state.
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Why did US oppose Palestine statehood at UNSC?

U.S. officials have argued that endorsing statehood at this time could jeopardize the chances of achieving a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It insists a mutually agreed-upon solution is essential.

“President Biden has consistently emphasized that a lasting peace in the region hinges on a two-state solution reached through mutual agreement,” U.S. representative Robert Wood told the council. “This is the only path that ensures Israel’s security and its future as a democratic Jewish state, while also guaranteeing Palestinians can live in peace and dignity in their own state.

“We also have long been clear that a premature action here in New York, even with the best intentions, will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” Wood said. The United States “fully shared responsibility with its Israeli allies for the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.”

Even before the vote it was widely anticipated that Biden would veto the resolution. The resolution needed nine out of 15 votes for passage and no veto from any permanent member, including the U.S. The administration had actively encouraged members to either vote against or abstain from the resolution to prevent a veto.
Council Members opposed US views on rejecting bid

Despite this stance, the majority of the council disagreed. Many argued that the U.S., due to its unwavering support for Israel, shares responsibility for the ongoing challenges faced by the Palestinian people. Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya criticized the U.S. veto as an attempt to resist the inevitable course of history.

Despite the U.S.'s strong stance, even its closest allies on the council did not support the veto. Britain, for instance, explained its abstention by saying that while they support Palestinian statehood, such recognition should be part of a broader process.

Algeria, the resolution's sponsor, remained resolute, declaring their commitment to the cause until it's achieved.
How Palestine called out US bluff at UNSC

Ziad Abu Amr, representing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, pointed out that the same 1947 UN resolution that established Israel also called for a Palestinian state. He questioned how granting Palestinian statehood could hinder peace efforts.

“How could granting the state of Palestine full membership of the United Nations ... damage the prospects of peace between Palestinians and Israelis” or international peace? Abu Amr asked. “To those who say that recognizing a Palestinian state must happen through negotiations and not through a U.N. resolution, we wonder again, how was the state of Israel established.”


Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan vehemently opposed the resolution, dismissing the idea of a Palestinian state meeting membership criteria.

US veto of Palestine's request for full UN membership 'shameful': Türkiye

Turkish deputy foreign minister calls for cease-fire in Gaza as soon as possible, Palestine's full UN membership and two-state solution

19/04/2024 Friday
AA

Türkiye's Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmet Yildiz

Türkiye's Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmet Yildiz on Thursday criticized reports of US plans to veto a draft resolution demanding Palestine's full membership at the UN, saying it is "shameful."

Speaking to Anadolu in an exclusive interview, Yildiz commented on the possibility of a US veto prior to a meeting of the UN Security Council to vote on the resolution.

"A cease-fire (in Gaza) should be reached as soon as possible. Palestine should become a full member (of the UN), and negotiations towards a two-state solution must be initiated with the help of the international community," Yildiz said.

Yildiz said full membership would be a good start for Palestine.


"But it seems that the US will veto it, and of course, it is a shameful situation."

He further expressed deep concern over the deteriorating situation in Gaza, citing widespread destruction and a staggering death toll of nearly 40,000.

Emphasizing the urgent need for international unity in pressuring for a cease-fire, Yildiz noted that while everyone criticizes Israel, there are countries that have reservations and objections when it comes to recognizing Palestine.

He highlighted discussions surrounding the vital role of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, in supporting Palestinian refugees and denounced attempts to defund or dismantle the organization.


"The (Israeli) occupation forces in Palestine consistently violate international law and fail to meet their obligations," he said.

"It is evident that the current occupation cannot continue. We advocate for Palestine's full membership and urge the international community to initiate negotiations for a two-state solution.”

As expected, the US later vetoed the UN Security Council draft resolution.

The 15-member Council gathered in New York to vote on a draft resolution authored by Algeria recommending the admission of the State of Palestine for UN membership.

The membership was blocked with a vote of 12 in favor and two abstentions, including the UK and Switzerland.

Palestine denounces US veto blocking full UN membership bid

Move ‘unfair, unethical and unjustifiable, challenging the will of the international community,' says Palestinian Presidency

19/04/2024 Friday
AA

File photo

Palestine strongly condemned a decision by the US to veto a UN Security Council draft resolution Thursday demanding Palestine's full membership in the United Nations.

In a statement, the Palestinian Presidency called the move ''unfair, unethical and unjustifiable, challenging the will of the international community.''

It emphasized that this aggressive American policy towards Palestine, its people and their legitimate rights constitutes a blatant violation of international law.

It also noted that the US veto encourages the continuation of Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem.


The Presidency underscored that the veto exposes the contradictions in US policy, which claims to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while preventing the international community from implementing this solution through its repeated use of the veto.

The 15-member UN Security Council gathered in New York to vote on a draft resolution authored by Algeria recommending the admission of the State of Palestine for UN membership.

The membership was blocked with a vote of 12 in favor and two abstentions, including the UK and Switzerland.

​​​​​​​Before the voting, Algeria's envoy to the UN Amar Bendjama said it is time for Palestine to take its rightful place among the community of nations, and seeking UN membership is a fundamental expression of Palestinian self-determination.


Palestine was accepted as an observer state of the UN General Assembly in 2012, allowing its envoy to participate in debates and UN organizations but without a vote.

States are admitted to membership in the UN by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council, according to the UN Charter.

A council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the permanent members -- US, Britain, France, Russia or China -- to pass.

Palestine's application for full UN membership comes amid a deadly Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, which has killed nearly 34,000 Palestinians.

UAE regrets Security Council failure to adopt full UN membership for Palestine

The Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, top centre left, addresses the UNSC meeting at UN Headquarters. AP

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

The UAE expressed its regret at the failure of the UN Security Council to adopt the draft resolution accepting full membership of the State of Palestine in the United Nations, and stressed that granting Palestine full membership is an important step to enhance peace efforts in the region.

Khalifa Shaheen Al Marar, Minister of State, explained in a statement on Friday, that the UAE is steadfast in its commitment to promoting peace and justice and preserving the rights of the brotherly Palestinian people, achieving the two-state solution and establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions and relevant agreements requiring an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

He said: The UAE has always called on the international community to strengthen all efforts made to achieve comprehensive and just peace, as this is the only way for the region to emerge from the cycle of tension, violence and instability.

Al Marar stressed the UAE’s position on the necessity of supporting all regional and international efforts to advance the peace process in the Middle East, as well as putting an end to the illegal practices that threaten the two-state solution and the right to self-determination for the brotherly Palestinian people, by supporting the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive solution that achieves security, stability and prosperity for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples and the entire region.

Also during the day, Saudi Arabia expressed regret over the failure of the UN Security Council to adopt a draft resolution accepting full membership of the State of Palestine in the United Nations.

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said in a statement on Friday that it expresses its deep regret over the inability of the Security Council to enable Palestine to become a full member of the United Nations, against the backdrop of the United States use of its veto.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favour, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. US allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.

Algerian UN Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission "a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice" and said that "peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”

Draft resolution demanding Palestine's full membership at UN

'Ireland fully supports UN membership and will vote in favour of any UNGA resolution to that end,' says Irish foreign minister

Burak Bir |19.04.2024 - 

Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin

LONDON

Ireland is "disappointed" at failure of Security Council vote demanding Palestine's full membership at UN, the country's foreign minister said Thursday.

"Disappointed at outcome of UN Security Council vote on Palestinian UN membership. It is past time for Palestine to take its rightful place amongst the nations of the world," Micheal Martin wrote on X.

His reaction came just after the US vetoes UN Security Council draft resolution that demanding Palestine's full membership at the UN.

The membership was blocked with a vote of 12 in favor and two abstentions, including the UK and Switzerland.

"Ireland fully supports UN membership and will vote in favour of any UNGA resolution to that end," he added.

Ireland is among a few European nations, including Spain that already committed to recognizing the Palestinian state.

 

Chinese envoy criticizes questioning of Palestine's eligibility for UN membership

Xinhua

2024-04-19       

A Chinese envoy on Thursday strongly criticized countries that question Palestine's eligibility for UN membership under the UN Charter, emphasizing that statehood is an "inalienable national right" of the Palestinian people.

During his statement following a vote in which the United States vetoed a draft resolution for Palestine's full membership to the UN, Fu Cong, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, expressed profound disappointment.

"Today is a sad day," because the US veto has ruthlessly dashed "the decades-long dream of the Palestinian people," he said.

Fu highlighted the contradiction in the arguments presented by some nations regarding Palestine's governance capabilities.

"The claim that the State of Palestine does not have the capacity to govern does not align with the reality on the ground," he said, noting significant changes over the past 13 years, including the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

"Palestine's survival space as a state has been constantly squeezed, and the foundation of the two-state solution has been continuously eroded," he added, condemning what he described as "gangster logic that confuses right and wrong."

Additionally, Fu condemned the implications made by some countries that questioned whether Palestine is a peace-loving state, a criterion for UN membership. "Such an allegation is outrageous and a step too far," Fu said.

He further criticized the political calculations behind opposing Palestine's full membership, suggesting, "If it is out of political calculation to oppose Palestine's full membership of the UN, it would be better to simply say so, instead of making excuses to re-victimize the Palestinian people."

On the broader implications of denying Palestine full membership, Fu argued that this action puts the cart before the horse, especially as "the Israeli side is rejecting the two-state solution more and more clearly."

He advocated for Palestine's full membership as a means to grant it equal status with Israel, which could help create conditions for the resumption of negotiations.

"The wheel of history is rolling forward, and the trend of the times is irresistible," Fu said, expressing confidence that "the day will come when the State of Palestine will enjoy the same rights as other member states at the UN, and the two states of Palestine and Israel will be able to live side by side in peace."

Fu reaffirmed China's commitment to continuing its efforts and playing a constructive role in realizing this vision, hoping for a future where "the Palestinian and Israeli peoples can live in tranquility and happiness."

Source: Xinhua   Editor: Li Jiaohao

War and the Market State

A tip o' the blog to bradspangler.com for drawing my attention to these articles.

Which led to inadvertent connections between two articles. Because again in the syncronistic universe that is the WWW, I was looking for his link to this, Counter-Economics: review of excellent book on smuggling and came across another article, which describes the actual nature of what folks mistakenly call globalization.

The creation of the new market states is the result of NAFTA, the EU, and other new evolving models of contractual corporate and state cooperation. They are the WTO, APEC , etcagreements and meetings that are occuring that have set in motion the evolution of the market state that Bobbitt speaks of below.

The War in the Balkans followed by the war in Afghanistan followed by the war in Iraq is not just the war of Empire and Imperialism but of private armies and private contractors, becoming in effect a state, since they provide privatized functions of the state as I have blogged about.See; War! What's it Good For? Profit

The attack on the Balkans was an attempt to end the last vestiges of State Capitalism and pound the Serbians into submissive acceptance of the privatization of the State through strategic bombing of industries.

It is the same with Iraq. It too was the last state capitalist country in the Middle East that had to be privatized. The other countries were less vulnerable since they are hierarchical societies that had opened their markets to capitalism, while remaining fuedalistic social constructs.

An interesting analysis of this concept of the War of the Market State can be found at Global Guerrillas which reviews this book;

The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History

by Philip Bobbitt

" A new form of the State — the market state – is emerging from this relationship in much the same way that earlier forms since the 15th century have emerged, as a consequence of the sixth great epochal war in modern history.

The “market-state” is the latest constitutional order, one that is just emerging in a struggle for primacy with the dominant constitutional order of the 20th century, the nation-state. Whereas the nation-state based its legitimacy on a promise to better the material well-being of the nation, the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen. The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy.

A state that privatizes most of its functions will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries-with equally profound strategic consequences. "

So if the exisiting nation states are using private armies, and further privatization due to the transformation of these new models of transnational corporate/state agreements creates the historic conditions for the development of market states then the current conflict called the War on Terror is a conflict between the black market states, such as Bin Laden Inc. against 'legitimate' transnational corporate states like Halliburton USA Inc.

In fact all of the current 'Stan states (Afghanistan, Kyhrigistan, etc.) which were once colonial outposts of the Soviet Union and were not fully developed state capitalist economies are now home to much of the black market. And while they are dictatorships still, they are ones that capitalism finds friendly, and able to do business with. But within these states exists another state, that is international in scope and is linked with organized crime, international intelligence agencies, terrorist networks, drug smugglers. etc. etc.

The way these black market states are funded is through what Libertarians call counter economics. Piracy by any other name. The very origins of the primitive accumulation of capital under fuedalism that gave rise to banking, trade and eventually full blown capitalism.

The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China

It is useful at this point to quote from the book review of Illicit from Global Guerrillas

Moises Naim, the editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, has an excellent new book called Illicit on the rise of global smuggling networks. It's a must read.

Globalization Melts the Map

Moises copiously documents how globalization and rampant interconnectivity has led to the rise of vast global smuggling networks. These networks live in the space between states. They are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He shows how these networks make money through an arbitrage of the differences between the legal systems (and a desire to prosecute) of our isolated islands of sovereignty. He also shows how their flagrant use of corruption can enable them to completely take over sections of otherwise functional states.

By all accounts the amount of money involved is immense. In aggregate, the networks that form this parallel "black" global supply chain, have a "GDP" of $1-3 trillion (some estimates are as high as 10% of the world's economy) and are growing seven times faster than legal trade. These networks supply the huge demand for:

• Drugs (both recreational and pharmaceutical).
• Undocumented workers (for corporations, home services, and the sex trade).
• Weapons (from small arms to RPGs, many come from cold war arsenals).
• Rip-offs of intellectual property (from digital content to brand named consumer goods).
• Laundered and unregulated financial flows.

This supply chain isn't run by the vertically integrated cartels and mafias of the last century (those hierarchies are too vulnerable, slow, and unresponsive to be competitive in the current environment). The new undifferentiated structures are highly decentralized, horizontal, and fluid. They specialize in cross border movement and therefore can handle all types of smuggling simultaneously. They are also very reliant on modern technologies to rapidly transport and coordinate their global operations.

I would also reccomend Robert Naylors Hot Money, though dated, from the 1970's, it was one of the first to talk about International Finance and the black market and its impact on the bank meltdowns like BCIC and the connection of the banking industry to the black markets and their involvement in the debt crisis in the developing world. It was published by Black Rose books. A new edition is out as well he has written another work along similar lines, critiquing international relations, crime and hot money, entitled the Wages of Crime.

Thus the War on Terror is a war on two fronts. One to smash and transform the last outposts of state capitalism in Europe and the Middle East, and a war on the unregulated market.

Global Guerrillas says; The similarity between these commercial networks and those of modern terrorism (my global guerrillas) is not incidental.

Nor is it incidental that the American Empire is sowing the seeds of its own self destruction, not only in expensive military operations that rack up thousands of corpses and trillions in deficits, but in the fact that like the British Empire before it in order to finance these wars, it too relies on the black market. The British Empire set itself up for decline as it persued its Opium Wars against China. The US set itself up in the 1980's providing stinger missles to the Mujahadin in Afghanistan who paid for them in opium money. Who transported them through smuggling routes, still with us today used by Bin Laden Inc.

And quoting Bobitt again;
The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy. States make war, not brigands; and the Al Qaeda network is a sort of virtual state, with a consistent source of finance, a recognized hierarchy of officials, foreign alliances, an army, published laws, even a rudimentary welfare system. It has declared war on the U.S. for much the same reason that Japan did in 1941: because we appear to frustrate its ambitions to regional hegemony.

Capitalism has outgrown the Nation State. It reguired it for its period of ascendency. Now that it is the real domination of everything , of all social relations it needs a new state, a market state. One that can continually destroy its overproductive capacities. As capitalism evolves better technonological production, increases productivity and reduces the need for real labour, it amasses capital, which becomes unproductive. It is here that the new market state can use this capital to create permanent war, small scale localized war, that does not threaten its global expansion, but allows it areas for wide scale destruction of productive capabilities to offset its cancerous growth.

If war is privatized and all state functions are privatized, then the individual is no longer identified as a citizen, or as a wage labourer, but as 'free' individual, a contractor in a market state. Capitalism will have evolved to its logical conlusion; that we remain wage slaves but no longer to a particular boss or business but to the market. Our alientation will be complete. And it will be a society of barbarism, of all against all.

Labour 'is and remains the presupposition' of capital (Marx, 1973, p. 399). Capital cannot liberate itself from labour; it depends on the imposition of necessary labour, the constituent side of surplus labour, upon the world's working classes. It has to posit necessary labour at the same time as which it has to reduce necessary labour to the utmost in order to increase surplus value. This reduction develops labour's productive power and, at the same time, the real possibility of the realm of freedom.

The circumstance that less and less socially necessary labour time is required to produce, for want of a better expression, the necessities of life, limits the realm of necessity and so allows the blossoming of what Marx characterised as the realm of freedom. Within capitalist society, this contradiction can be contained only through force (Gewalt), including not only the destruction of productive capacities, unemployment, worsening conditions, and widespread poverty, but also the destruction of human life through war, ecological disaster, famine, the burning of land, poisoning of water, devastation of communities, the production of babies for profit, the usage of the human body as a commodity to be exchange or operated on, the industrialisation of human production through cloning etc.

The existence of Man as a degraded, exploited, debased, forsaken and enslaved being, indicates that capitalist production is not production for humans - it is production through humans. In other words, the value form represents not just an abstraction from the real social individual. It is an abstraction that is 'true in practice' (cf. Marx, 1973, p. 105). The universal reduction of all specific human social practice to the one, some abstract form of labour, from the battlefield to the cloning laboratory, indicates that the separation which began with primitive accumulation appears now in the biotechnical determination to expropriate human beings. Capitalism has gone a long way. Indifferent to life, it 'was satisfied with nothing more than appropriating an excessive number of working hours' (Dalla Costa, 1995a, p. 21). It is now engaged in the production of human-workers.

The Permanence of Primitive Accumulation: Notes on Social Constitution

Aroused by Power: Why Madeleine Albright Was Not Right

by Binoy Kampmark / March 25th, 2022

When involved in war, those who feel like benefactors are bound to congratulate the gun toting initiators.  If you so happen to be on the losing end, sentiments are rather different.  Complicity and cause in murder come to mind.

The late US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will always be tied with the appallingly named humanitarian war in Kosovo in 1999, one that saw NATO attacks on Serbian civilian targets while aiding the forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).  It was a distinct backing of sides in a vicious, tribal conflict, where good might miraculously bubble up, winged by angels.  Those angels never came.

Through her tenure in public office, Albright showed a distinct arousal for US military power.  In 1992, she rounded on the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell for refusing to deploy US forces to Bosnia.  “What’s the point of having this superb military machine you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

Too many apologists have come out to explain why Albright was so adamant about the use of such force.  Biographical details are cited: born in Czechoslovakia as Marie Jana Korbelová; of Jewish roots rinsed in the blood wine of Roman Catholicism.  She fled with her family to Britain, eventually finding refuge in Notting Hill Gate.  She went to school, spent time in air raid shelters, sang A Hundred Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall.

The NATO intervention – and this point was never lost on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reiterated it in his February address – took place without UN Security Council authorisation.  For the law abiders and totemic worshipers of the UN Charter keen to get at Russia’s latest misconduct in Ukraine, this served to illustrate the fickleness of international law’s supporters.  At a given moment, they are bound to turn tail, becoming might-is-right types.  The persecuted, in time, can become persecutors.

NATO, in fact, became an alliance Albright wished to see expanded and fed, not trimmed and diminished.  The historical role of Germany and Russia in central and eastern Europe became the rationale for expanding a neutralising alliance that would include previous “victim” countries.  A weakened Moscow could be ignored.  “We do not need Russia to agree to enlargement,” she told US Senators in 1997.

Paul Wilson, considering the Albright legacy, wrote in 2012 about the danger of following analogies in history to the letter.  “Historical analogies are seductive and often treacherous.  [Slobodan] Milošević was not Hitler and the Kosovar Liberation Army was not a champion of liberal democracy.”

In fact, the KLA was previously designated by the State Department to be a terrorist organisation.  “The Kosovar Albanians,” wrote the regretful former UN Commander in Bosnia Major General Lewis MacKenzie in April 2003, “played us like a Stradivarius violin.”  In his view, NATO and the international community had “subsidised and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure Kosovo.  We have never blamed them for being perpetrators of violence in the early 1990s, and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today, in spite of evidence to the contrary.”

Such is the treacherous nature of the sort of perverse humanitarianism embraced by Albright and her colleagues.  Such a policy, Alan J. Kuperman remarks with gloomy accuracy, “creates a moral hazard that encourages the excessively risky or fraudulent behaviour of rebellion by members of groups that are vulnerable to genocidal retaliation, but it cannot fully protect against the backlash.”

One such encouraged individual, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, was all gushing over Albright’s legacy.  “She gave us hope when we didn’t have it.  She became our voice and our arm and when we had neither voice nor an arm ourselves.  She felt our people’s pain because she had experienced herself persecution in childhood.”

The first female Secretary of State will also be linked with the Clinton Administration’s sanctions policy that killed numerous citizens and maimed the country of Iraq, only for it to then be invaded by the venal architects of regime toppling in the succeeding Bush Administration.  This sickening episode sank any heroic notions of law and justice, showing that Albright was content using a wretched calculus on life and death when necessary.

On May 12, 1996, Albright was asked by Lesley Stahl on the CBS program 60 Minutes about the impact of the sanctions that served to profitlessly kill hundreds of thousands.  “We have heard that half a million children have died.  I mean, that’s more children than have died in Hiroshima.  And, you know, is the price worth it?”  Then US Ambassador Albright did not flinch.  “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

In September 2000, she was still crazed by the sanctions formula against Iraq, telling the United Nations in an absurd address that Baghdad had to be stood up to, being “against the United Nations authority and international law.”  Meek acknowledgment was given to the fact that “the hardships faced by Iraq’s people” needed to be dealt with.  What came first was “the integrity of this institution, our security, and international law.”

Albright could be sketchy on sanctions.  In instances where Congress imposed automatic sanctions, Albright could express furious disagreement.  When this happened to both India and Pakistan in 1998 in the aftermath of nuclear weapons testing, she could barely conceal her irritation on CNN’s Late Edition.  “I think we must do something about it, because sanctions that have no flexibility, no waiver authority, are just blunt instruments.  And diplomacy requires us to have some finesse.”

The hagiographic salutations have been many.  One, from Caroline Kelly at CNN, is simply too much.  Albright “championed the expansion of NATO, pushed for the alliance to intervene in the Balkans to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing, sought to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, and championed human rights democracy across the globe.”

As Secretary of State, she presided in an administration of the world’s only surviving superpower, uncontained, unrestrained, dangerously optimistic.  There was much hubris – all that strength, and lack of assuredness as to how to use it.  The Cold War narrative and rivals were absent, and the Clinton Administration became a soap opera of scandal and indiscretion.

In her later years, she worried about the onset of authoritarianism, of power going to people’s heads, the inner tyrant unleashed in the playpen of international relations.  She had much to complain about regarding Donald Trump, Putin and Brexit.  In encouraging the loud return of the US to front and centre of international politics, she ignored its previous abuses, including some perpetrated by her office.  When given such power, is it not axiomatic that corruption will follow?

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Madeleine Albright dead at 84: American imperialism mourns a war criminal

Patrick Martin

WSWS.ORG

The death of Madeleine Albright on Wednesday was the occasion for an outpouring of praise by the American political establishment and the corporate media, glorifying her role as the first female Secretary of State and covering up her close identification with some of the worst imperialist crimes of the 1990s—and today.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, center, gets briefing on the situation around the border between two Koreas from American Sgt. Tim Ingoldsby, left, during her visit to guard post Ouelletle in the border village of the Panmunjom, north of Seoul, Feb. 22, 1997. (AP Photo/Pool, File)

In the context of the ongoing claims that the US and NATO are leading a worldwide campaign against Russian war crimes in Ukraine, the celebration of Albright’s bloody record is a demonstration of grotesque hypocrisy. Albright was an advocate and apologist for much more brutal actions than any taken so far by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

Perhaps the most notorious episode in her career came in 1996, when she was asked on the CBS program “60 Minutes” about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children because of severe economic sanctions imposed on that country as part of an effort to undermine the regime of Saddam Hussein. More children had died in Iraq than in Hiroshima, interviewer Lesley Stahl said. “The price was worth it,” Albright responded.

It is noteworthy that none of the admiring obituaries of Albright which have appeared in the corporate media makes any mention of this comment or of Albright’s role in enforcing and promoting a policy that resulted in death on such a massive scale.

The colossal death toll among Iraqi children would be repeatedly cited by Islamic fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden as a reason for their shift from an alliance with the United States—during the US-backed guerrilla war against Soviet military forces in Afghanistan—to targeting the US for terrorist attacks on 9/11. The US massacre of innocents became the pretext for Al Qaeda’s.

This comment became a political black eye for the Clinton administration when it began a campaign at college campuses to build support for US airstrikes against Iraq in February 1998. A trio of top foreign policy officials, Secretary of State Albright, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and Secretary of Defense William Cohen, traveled to Ohio State University, where they addressed a large and—they thought—thoroughly vetted audience.

Some dissenters challenged Albright, however. She was asked how she could justify US support for dictators like Suharto in Indonesia and Israeli repression of the Palestinians and then claim to be opposing Saddam Hussein on the basis of universal human rights concerns. Wasn’t this just a double standard, excusing the crimes of US allies while highlighting those of US targets?

Albright tried to beat down the critics, asking them, in typically McCarthyite fashion, why they were so concerned with the rights of Saddam Hussein. She was booed down by the crowd, which responded enthusiastically to the exposure of the hypocrisy of US foreign policy. That was the end of what had been dubbed, from the officials’ initials, the “ABC” tour. This episode was reported by the WSWS but is again not mentioned in any obituaries of Albright in the media.

Albright is most closely identified with US policy in the former Yugoslavia, which was dismembered under the pressure of German and US imperialism beginning in 1991, when Germany recognized the breakaway republics of Slovenia and Croatia, followed by the German and American recognition of the secession of Bosnia.

Serbs, the largest ethnic group in Yugoslavia, were transformed overnight into persecuted minorities, particularly in Croatia and Bosnia. Tensions skyrocketed as the Stalinist bureaucrats in each republic transformed themselves rapidly into nationalistic demagogues and, ultimately, into fascistic advocates of “ethnic cleansing,” with the majority in each republic seeking to suppress or drive out those of the “wrong” ethnic background.

Albright, then US ambassador to the United Nations, was a fervent advocate of US and UN intervention in the various civil wars that broke out within Yugoslavia. She initially was unsuccessful in convincing her colleagues in the Clinton White House and the Pentagon that US military forces should be deployed into the region, particularly air power.

In one notorious confrontation with General Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, she declared, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

Ultimately the US did intervene with both air strikes and economic sanctions, forcing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and leaders of the Bosnian Serbs to accept the Dayton Accords, a tripartite division of Bosnia into zones dominated by Muslims, Croats and Serbs, under the supervision of a UN peacekeeping force.

In 1997, Clinton named Albright as Secretary of State for his second term in office. So right-wing and militaristic was her record that she was confirmed by a 99-0 vote in the Senate, a unanimous bipartisan vote which included such reactionaries as Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond and the arch-militarist John McCain.

One of Albright’s main priorities was the expansion of NATO, which admitted three former members of the Soviet Bloc, Poland, Hungary and Albright’s birthplace, the Czech Republic, in 1999. This was a brazen repudiation of undertakings Washington had given to Mikhail Gorbachev during the break-up of the Soviet Union, that NATO would not expand into the territory of the former Warsaw Pact.

When a new crisis erupted in Kosovo in 1999, with clashes between Albanians and Serbs, Albright spearheaded a campaign for military intervention, depicting the ethnic strife as a genocide directed by Milosevic, in what turned out to be a gross exaggeration. At a conference at Château de Rambouillet in France, she browbeat the Serb delegation with the threat of US-NATO bombing, while presenting an ultimatum that included accepting the right of 30,000 NATO troops to go anywhere in what remained of Yugoslavia, essentially turning the country into a colony of imperialism.

When the Serbs and Russians walked out, Albright proclaimed the Albanian delegates—drawn from the Kosovo Liberation Army, a gangster outfit linked to drug and organ trafficking—to be freedom fighters deserving international support. Within days, an intensive bombing campaign began which lasted 78 days and killed thousands.

The damage inflicted on major Yugoslav cities, particularly the capital Belgrade, was later estimated at more than $30 billion, which included more than 20,000 homes, many government buildings, dozens of hospitals and other health care facilities, and much of the country’s basic infrastructure—roads, bridges, water treatment and sewage facilities and airports.

Both in its savagery and its brazen violation of international law, the US-NATO attack on Serbia makes a mockery of present-day claims that Putin’s reactionary attack on Ukraine is an unprecedented breach of international norms that have prevailed in Europe since the end of World War II.

The imperialist powers dismembered a sovereign country, Yugoslavia, and redrew its borders, recognizing the independence of Kosovo—long a part of Serbia—and endorsing the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, first from Croatia, then from Bosnia, later from Kosovo. The unprovoked military assault on a major European city did not begin with Kiev in 2022 but in Belgrade in 1999 (to be followed by Donetsk in 2014, when Ukrainian forces shelled pro-Russian secessionists).

There is not space and time enough to explore every crime to which this “feminist icon” of American imperialism is linked. She was an adamant defender of bloodstained dictators aligned with the United States, like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Suharto of Indonesia. While UN ambassador, she cast the US veto against any outside intervention to halt the genocide in Rwanda. As Secretary of State, she advocated American supremacy on a world scale, describing the United States as “the indispensable nation,” which had to be the focal point of all major global undertakings.

Albright was the product of a bipartisan foreign policy elite dedicated to the promotion of US imperialism’s world domination. Her father, after leaving Czechoslovakia following the Stalinist takeover, taught international relations at the University of Denver, where one of his graduate students was Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State for George W. Bush, and one of the principal architects of the Iraq War.

Albright herself studied at Wellesley and then Columbia University, where she took her Ph.D. under the tutelage of Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1976. When Brzezinski became Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor in 1977, he brought Albright with him to the National Security Council, where she was his liaison with Congress.

Independently wealthy through her marriage with publishing millionaire Joseph Albright, she became a top fundraiser for the Democratic Party and moved up in Democratic foreign policy circles, advising Carter, then presidential candidates Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992. It was Clinton who named her UN Ambassador in 1993 and Secretary of State in 1997.

After leaving the White House in 2001, she founded the Albright Stonebridge Group, a management consulting firm specializing in overseas risk assessments, and became the godmother of a slew of foreign policy operatives for future Democratic administrations. As columnist David Ignatius observed Thursday, “Albright’s proteges surround us. Wendy Sherman, her devoted colleague for decades, is Deputy Secretary of State, and nearly every member of the Biden administration foreign policy team can trace a lineage to Albright.”

Even more significantly, Albright became chair of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in 2001 and held that position until her death. The NDI is an arm of the capitalist state, CIA-financed to promote pro-imperialist political forces and to subvert any radical or oppositionist trend that might threaten US corporate interests in countries around the world.

In that capacity, Albright was deeply involved in every crime of the US military-intelligence apparatus in the first two decades of the 21st century, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Ukraine. The celebration of her life and work by the corporate media, and by Democratic and Republican politicians alike, is a demonstration of the bipartisan consensus that anything goes, no matter how undemocratic and bloody, in the defense of the profits and worldwide global interests of the American financial aristocracy.

TURKIYE'S REICHSTAG FIRE

KCK: Istanbul attack shows that AKP-MHP are pursuing new malicious plans

“Our movement has nothing to do with this attack. The attempt to blame our movement shows that the AKP-MHP are pursuing new malicious plans. We call on everyone to be sensitive, careful, vigilant and make all necessary efforts to understand the truth.”

ANF

BEHDINAN
Tuesday, 15 Nov 2022, 12:04

The Co-Presidency of the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) Executive Council released a statement about Sunday’s deadly bomb attack that killed 6 people and injured 81 others in Taksim, Istanbul.

While Turkish officials were quick to blame the Kurdish freedom movement for the deadly attack, claiming that the attacker had come from northern Syria, the Headquarters Command of the People’s Defense Center (HSM), the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), denied involvement in the incident, making it clear that they were against attacks directed at civilians.

The General Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Mazlum Abdi said, “Our forces have nothing to do with the Istanbul attack and deny the allegations that blame our forces.”

The People’s Defense Units (YPG) also refuted the Turkish state’s allegations, saying, ““We strongly reject these groundless allegations. We have no connection to the terrorist Ehlam El-Beşîr who carried out the attack. The whole world knows that the principle of our forces is based on the protection of human rights and counter-terrorism. We condemn any form of attack directed at civilians. Our forces struggle within the context of democracy, human and women’s rights, and the fight against terror and dictatorship.”

The statement released by the KCK Executive Council Co-Presidency on Tuesday includes the following:

“On November 13, 2022, many people were killed and injured in an explosion on Istiklal Street in Istanbul. We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and injuries as a result of this attack. As the Kurdish Freedom Movement and on behalf of our people, we would like to express that we share their sorrow and express our condolences. We extend our condolences to the people of Turkey and the families of those who lost their lives and wish a speedy recovery to those who were injured. We strongly condemn this attack, which was clearly organized under a dark guise and targeted the democratic future of the peoples of Turkey. Although the HPG Central Command [Hêzen Parastina Gel – People´s Defense Forces] announced that they have no relation with this attack and that it is out of the question for them to carry out attacks targeting civilians, the fascist AKP-MHP state and its supporters are persistently trying to blame this attack on our movement. We would therefore like to state once again that the Kurdish Freedom Movement has nothing to do with this attack. The fascist AKP-MHP state insistently wants to blame this attack on our movement in order to hide the truth and to create the necessary conditions for them to carry out their malicious plans. We therefore call on everyone, especially the democratic public and media, to make all efforts necessary to expose this attack. The statements and slanders of the fascist AKP-MHP state accusing our movement do absolutely not reflect the truth. To the contrary, they only serve to conceal the truth of the incident. Even based on a preliminary evaluation, it is not difficult to understand that this constitutes a plot by the AKP-MHP. That is why we strongly urge Turkey’s intellectuals, democrats, democratic press and political forces that seek the democratization of Turkey, to disregard the statements of the fascist AKP-MHP state aimed at concealing the truth and to make efforts to reveal the truth of this incident.

The fascist AKP-MHP alliance pursues a policy that is based on enmity towards the Kurdish people. It has vowed to realize Kurdish genocide and to destroy the Kurdish Freedom Movement, which struggles for the freedom of the oppressed, exploited and denied people of Kurdistan. The fascist AKP-MHP alliance spends all of Turkey’s wealth and all the values of society on the annihilation of the Kurds. No means have been left unused, all kinds of inhumane methods have been applied and massacres and occupations have been carried out. The AKP-MHP alliance, which knows no bounds in enmity towards the Kurds, has resorted to the most despicable and inhumane weapons of mass destruction when it could not achieve its goals despite having used all kinds of dirty and ugly war methods. The AKP-MHP has not only wasted the values of the people for the anti-Kurdish war, but has also committed crimes against humanity by using chemical weapons and has thus put the whole society of Turkey under suspicion. However, despite all inhumane practices, including the use of chemical weapons, the fascist AKP-MHP alliance has not been able to achieve its malicious goals. On the contrary, due to the revelation of the use of chemical weapons, its true face has been revealed even more. This has caused it to experience serious problems and has made its plans fail. No matter what methods the fascist AKP-MHP alliance resorts to, it cannot succeed against the resistance of the guerrilla and the struggle of the peoples, women and democratic forces, especially the Kurdish people. Today, everybody knows that the AKP-MHP alliance aims to eliminate democracy by destroying the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the Kurds and to establish a religious, nationalist, authoritarian and fascist order in Turkey. However, as a result of the resistance and struggle, the AKP-MHP has realized that they cannot not realize this goal. They now know that they have lost the support of society and that they will lose their power in the case of elections. The AKP-MHP alliance has not only failed to realize its fascist and genocidal plans, but has been exposed, blocked and ended up in a helpless situation due to its crimes against humanity.

It is obvious that the AKP-MHP alliance plans to resort to new and malicious methods in order to change this situation and to get out of its crisis. The attack in Istanbul constitutes the first step of this plan. Once again, we would like to stress that this is a new and malicious plan. We call on everyone to be vigilant in this regard and to make efforts to reveal the truth by not relying on the statements made by the AKP-MHP state. With this attack, the AKP-MHP alliance aims to create an environment that resembles the situation after the massacre on October 10, 2015 [in front of Ankara's main train station]. It is important for everybody to realize that this is a malicious and despicable plan targeting the future of Turkey and the efforts of the Kurdish and Turkish peoples to live together. Everyone in favor of democracy and coexistence must take the right and necessary attitude and thus defeat this malicious plan, just as the previous plans of the fascist AKP-MHP alliance have been defeated.

The fascist AKP-MHP state’s attempt to blame this attack on our movement and to claim that it was carried out from Rojava constitutes a highly deliberate manipulation. Everyone knows that one of the most important parts of the fascist AKP-MHP alliance’s Kurdish genocide is the occupation of Rojava. It is very obvious that the AKP-MHP aims to create the necessary environment for an invasion by targeting Rojava with this plot. The timing of this attack is also very telling. It was carried out at a time when it has been revealed that the AKP-MHP uses chemical weapons and burns soldiers’ bodies, when Turkish society is struggling with serious economic problems, when the war against the Kurds and the religious, gangster, mafia-oriented order are being questioned and demands for democracy are being voiced more and more loudly, and when the AKP-MHP is losing the support of society. It is clear that this is a diversion of the political agenda and that it aims to initiate malicious developments again. Whenever malicious developments are wanted, massacres are organized and Kurds are blamed. The latest attack in Istanbul also has such a purpose. Everybody must therefore be sensitive and vigilant. This is a deliberate effort to portray the perpetrator of the attack as being from Rojava or Syria. By doing so, they want to create a certain environment. Regardless of who carried out the attack, Kurdish or not, this attack and the individuals mentioned have nothing to do with our movement or the Rojava revolutionary forces. The Rojava forces have already declared that they have nothing to do with this attack. Everyone should be aware of this fact and should not become a tool for the AKP-MHP’s plan that involves malicious ambitions. Our movement can never be linked to attacks targeting civilians. We would never plan and carry out such attacks. We are a movement that resists the genocidal attacks of the fascist AKP-MHP alliance, seeks a democratic solution to the Kurdish question and struggles for the democratization of Turkey. Everyone in Turkey knows this. It is very clear that any attitude that is not based on such an approach will support the AKP-MHP alliance and serve their malicious plans.

The fascist AKP-MHP alliance has reached a stage of collapse as a result of the resistance and struggle of the Kurds, the peoples, women and all democratic forces. It now has difficulties carrying out its genocidal fascist plans and surviving. The use of chemical weapons has also been exposed, which has caused even more difficulties for the AKP-MHP. Turkey’s future, well-being and democratization depend on the destruction of this fascist alliance that aims to darken the future by organizing malicious plans and that commit crimes against humanity. Due to this malicious plan, it is now necessary for everyone to see the reality of the AKP-MHP alliance and its horrible and malicious goals even better and to fight against it. The AKP-MHP alliance even burns soldiers’ corpses in order to hide what they are doing and to prevent anyone from knowing what is going on. This is the reality of the AKP-MHP. Everyone who claims not to be fascist, to care about Turkey, to not be an enemy of the Kurds, to be human, in short, to not be an AKP-MHP member, needs to acknowledge this reality, make an effort to make this reality known to the public and stand against the AKP-MHP’s plan to make the facts invisible by silencing the press with the help of the disinformation law. Being human, democratic, steadfast and moral requires this.

We would like to once again condemn this attack, which has deeply saddened our people and the people of Turkey. We share the sorrow for the loss of lives and the injured. As the Kurdish Freedom Movement, we reiterate our promise to our people and the peoples of Turkey to realize the goal of democracy and freedom, and once again promise to continue the struggle for this. We state clearly once again that our movement has nothing to do with this attack. The attempt to blame this attack on our movement shows that the AKP-MHP are pursuing new malicious plans. Therefore, we call on everyone to be sensitive, careful, vigilant and make all necessary efforts to understand the truth.

HSM denies involvement in Istanbul explosion, calls for its exposure
The Headquarters Command of the People’s Defense Center (HSM) released a statement denying any involvement in the deadly explosion at Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue on Sunday.While Turkish officials ...

SDF Commander-In-Chief: Our forces have nothing to do with the Istanbul attack
The General Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Mazlum Abdi announced on Monday that their forces had nothing to do with Sunday’s attack in Istanbul that claimed the lives of six people...

YPG denies connection with the Istanbul attack and the perpetrator
A bomb attack killed 6 people and injured 81 others in Istanbul’s busiest street, Istiklal Avenue, on Sunday. Turkish officials were quick to blame the Kurdish freedom movement for the deadly attac...

War for Profit: Implications of the Growing Private Security Industry

They not only work regarding battlefield operations, but also offer knowledge and strategies on how to attack and defend in different types of conflicts.

BYMARTHA GARCIA
DECEMBER 6, 2023


The private security industry mostly entails Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC) which offer military services all around the world to national governments, international organizations and non-state actors in exchange for monetary profits. They engage in various activities, from conducting small training missions to deploying combat units comprising several hundred trained soldiers armed with some of the best weaponry, including tanks and attack helicopters. However, they not only work regarding battlefield operations, but also offer knowledge and strategies on how to attack and defend in different types of conflicts.

For most of the 20th century, the privatization of war was not a viable option and nearly all of the use of military power was restricted to state agencies, yet the Cold War changed it all. By the end of 1991, the market was full with military specialists and armament with no immediate use anymore. Additionally, several small-scale wars and civil armed conflicts erupted around the globe, mainly in Africa. Consequently, Private Military and Security Companies gained strength and became popular. Companies from the U.S. and United Kingdom, such as Sandline International, even gained popularity worldwide. Today, more than 150 private military companies exist and offer their services in around 50 countries. The size of the industry is quickly evolving: by 2020, 223 billion dollars worth of services were sold; an amount estimated to double by 2030.

Within this framework, many politicians and government officials seem to support the precision and effectiveness of PMSCs, but there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered and situations to be acknowledged for this to be true. For starters, Private Military and Security Companies are bound by the laws of the country where their operations are established. Nonetheless, the legality of their actions becomes a subject of scrutiny when they operate in regions beyond their home country. Some of these companies are no strangers to violating international humanitarian and human rights laws, as long as they meet the needs of their clients so they can get paid.

For example, in 2004 muslim prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison in the hands of personnel from the United States’ contractor CACI International were brutally tortured; soldiers even took pictures with the detainees making fun of them. Despite that, CACI International received no punishment, asked the accusers for a refund due to legal expenses, and continued to carry out contracts with the U.S. worth 23 million dollars. In the same context, the privatization of the United States army itself is a confusing and concerning issue. There are no concrete laws still, hence, it is difficult to prosecute those who commit crimes; and even so, it is rarely done. In 2019, it was reported that around half of the Department of Defense allocations were spent in paying private contractors. In like manner, it is widely unknown the backgrounds, context, locations and activities of Private Military and Security Companies even though they outnumber soldiers. On numerous occasions, there were several PMSCs active in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the same time employing over 200,000 private contractors’ personnel. These contractors originated from various countries, including Nepal, Serbia, South Africa, Fiji, Chile, and nearby nations in the Middle East. Limited information was available regarding their past training, employment background, or criminal records.

Likewise, another concerning inquiry is the known employment of mercenaries by PMSCs as soldiers and strategy personnel. The international market for mercenaries and private military contractors is exceeding 100 billion dollars, and discerning a clear difference between the two is becoming more and more difficult every time. Mercenaries are more powerful and organized than state officials would like to admit. Nowadays, groups of mercenaries are called private armies and they possess the same skill set as PMSCs; the main difference is who they agree to work for, but even then there is no clear line. As a result, in April of 2005, the United Nations came up with Resolution 2005/2 on the use of mercenaries within armies or as soldiers. The document urges all states to be vigilant regarding the employment of mercenaries done by private companies offering international military consultancy and security services. Also, in September of 2008, the Montreux Document was published by Switzerland and the International Committee of the Red Cross with recommendations so states can regulate PMSCs properly.

As a case point, Sierra Leone is one of the countries with the most negative consequences due to the intervention of Private Military and Security Companies. This case study demonstrates how self-interested the private security industry truly is. Executive Outcomes and Sandline International were both involved in the civil war of the country, which took place from 1991 to 2002, employed by the government. Their operations were executed on the beliefs of working regarding seven sectors: competence, effectiveness, flexibility, field cooperation with regular forces, cost efficiency, impact on national military and political control over contractors. The government wanted to fight off rebel forces, nevertheless, the methods employed and taught by the private sector personnel and soldiers were, questionable at best, inhumane at worst. Serious ethical concerns were signaled by those involved in the armed conflict, but what caused the most commotion was the use or mercenarism. Mercenaries fought against rebel groups as part of the PMSCs soldiers, and paramilitary groups as well. So much so, that some scholars even called and referred to PMSCs at the time as mercenary companies.

Partially, due to what happened in Sierra Leone, and many other countries around those years such as Papua New Guinea also with Sandline International involvement, the International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries was published by the United Nations (UN) in 2001. Even so, the United States, along with other nations possessing substantial military forces such as China and Russia, dismissed the characterization of Private Military and Security Companies’ activities as mercenary and refrained from endorsing and ratifying the convention. As a result, still today, the employment of PMSCs creates a situation where states can engage in otherwise illegal warfare activities, while assigning accountability for such actions to the growing private security industry. Private Military and Security Companies particularly those operating in Africa, continue to be implicated in several human rights violations.

Furthermore, Private Military and Security Companies, impose a huge challenge for international law and international relations. Most of international diplomacy bets for law prohibiting the use of force within international relations, but traditionally is only addressed to states. There is still no proper regulation for PMSCs as worldwide actors and their entire sector. The predominant trend is spearheaded by four countries, collectively constituting approximately 70% of the market: the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and South Africa. Correspondingly, the U.S. is home of the largest Private Military and Security Companies in the world, as well as a major client, and still, there is no individual law in the United States that comprehensively addresses the complete range of services provided by these companies. Therefore, American contractors often market their services overseas with minimal supervision. It is urgent for laws to cover the entire sector, but mainly three aspects of this industry: limitations and implications for contracting states (countries hiring PMSCs), territorial states (countries where PMSCs operate), and home states (countries where PMSCs are headquartered).

Private Military and Security Companies are becoming so relevant that even the United Nations have employed them. From 2012 to 2017, the UN self-reported a total of 166 million dollars paid for PMSCs services. The United Nations frequently justifies its dependence on PMSCs by pointing to gaps in both quantity and quality within traditional peacekeeping forces. It is believed that private military contractors’ services compensate for internal incapacities and these faults to be addressed by the expertise and efficiency of private companies. However, since there are no clear laws neither for PMSCs and international organizations’ relationship, this becomes dangerous, mainly by challenging the legitimacy of the United Nations within the international arena.

In nations such as Afghanistan and Somalia, the UN is cautious about depending on local police forces. Hence, the organization turns to PMSCs to safeguard its personnel and facilities, while helping with combat strategies. Regardless, this decision did not turn as expected, nor resulted as wished. Peacekeeping operations are starting to turn into a lobbying industry for military powers and civilians’ wellbeing is getting caught in the middle. Similarly, in 2011, the UN Department of Safety and Security began crafting a policy proposal that provides suggestions for adopting more responsible and unified contracting practices with Private Military and Security Companies. The extent to which this initiative, once completed, will find acceptance and support across the international organization remains uncertain.

Governments and international organizations or non-state actors frequently employ PMSCs motivated by factors like cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and the ability to tap into specialized expertise and advanced technology. This alters the distribution of military power, moving it away from conventional state-centric frameworks, thereby prompting worries about accountability and adherence to international standards. The increasing dependence on private entities adds intricacies to decision-making processes, potentially aligning state interests with corporate interests. Primarily, the services offered by these companies are distinct from any other industry. Comparable to firearms, they pose significant dangers and can be highly destructive when misused. For instance, the U.S., Russia, China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have employed the private military industry to carry out ruthless regimes bypassing all legal restrictions. The rapid expansion and normalization of the use of PMSCs has allowed numerous bad actors to exploit it, as it essentially trades not just in weapons but also in knowledge. They offer a scapegoat for governments and non-state actors to surpass domestic and international laws to obtain their personal bidding. As a result, there is a dangerous gap and huge incomprehension regarding this evolving threat.


Martha Garcia Torres Landa has a bachelor's degree in International Relations at the Tecnologico de Monterrey University in Queretaro, Mexico. During her undergraduate degree she has specialized in conflict and peace studies. Likewise, she has taken several creative writing courses and workshops in both Mexican universities and abroad. Her research interests include feminism, social activism, World History and Human Rights.

SEE

Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater

IRAQ- THIS WAR IS ABOUT PRIVATIZATION

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: War! What's it Good For? Profit 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for GANGSTER STATE 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CONTRACTORS 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY