U.S.-EU RIVALRY
Top gun, bananas & executions
By John
Catalinotto
On March 4:
* A Marine court martial in North Carolina acquitted the
captain whose jet fighter-bomber snapped a gondola cable in the
Italian Alps a year before, killing 20 European tourists.
* The state of Arizona executed by lethal injection
German-American Walter LaGrand.
* Media worldwide announced that the Clinton administration
imposed 100-percent import duties on selected European-produced
goods.
These three seemingly unrelated events all express a now
more open and bitter economic competition between U.S.
imperialism and its former Cold War "allies" in Western Europe,
a competition carried out by the capitalist government. This
competition is complicated and contradictory because both the
U.S. and the European Union countries are predatory imperialist
powers that often work together to oppress the Third World and
the working class.
Washington acted with an especially arrogant display of
power in each event. This is nothing new. What was new was the
unusually strong protests from European capitals.
These events--especially the Marine pilot's acquittal--have
aroused honest mass sentiment among European workers against
U.S. militarism and bullying, a sentiment that deserves full
solidarity from workers on this side of the Atlantic. But they
have also aroused a more contrived protest from European
capitalists and capitalist politicians that deserves a careful
analysis.
Even before this analysis, however, workers here in the U.S.
can be certain they have no interest in supporting the U.S.
ruling class in its conflict with the European bosses. On the
contrary, they should actively protest Washington's arrogance
and attempt to build solidarity with workers in Europe to fight
the ruling classes on both sides of the Atlantic.
The `Banana War'
Some bourgeois political scientists have argued that in the
modern global capitalist economy, national states serve no
purpose. With ownership of industry spread around the globe,
they argue, no longer will owners turn to the national
governments--and their armies--to enforce their interests. The
"Banana War" shows how false this argument is.
Since 1993 U.S. and European agribusiness have been battling
over whose banana plantations will sell their products in
Europe. U.S.-based Dole and Chiquita--the latter company a big
contributor to Republicans and Democrats and a patron of
Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott--want to export their bananas to
the EU from Central and South America. The EU companies want to
export from ex-colonies in the Caribbean and Africa.
Agribusiness cannot claim its motive is to save jobs in the
U.S. or in Europe, since bananas are grown elsewhere. While
this business can be vital to the economy of a small Caribbean
state--and Caribbean governments have already protested the
U.S. action--for agribusiness it's strictly a question of
profit.
In periodic meetings since 1993 the U.S. government and the
European Union have been unable to reach a compromise
solution.
Calculating the lost banana trade as worth $520 million,
Washington came up with a list of European goods imported in
the U.S. valued the same, from Italian prosciutto to German
coffee makers, from French handbags to Scottish sweaters. Then
U.S. officials unilaterally imposed an 100-percent tax on these
goods, effectively pricing them out of the U.S. market.
The industries affected have nothing to do with bananas. The
U.S. government chose them to put pressure on European
governments to submit.
Even the British government--usually an obedient junior
partner to Washington--called in the U.S. ambassador to protest
this unilateral step.
And bananas are just the beginning. EU agencies want to bar
meat raised with hormones and freight planes that are too
noisy--U.S. products. The U.S. Congress wants to bar the
supersonic Concord--built by France and Britain--from landing
in U.S. cities.
The "Banana War" is the opening battle of an imperialist
trade war between the U.S. superpower and its EU rivals. It is
carried out by national states. Military force--especially the
Pentagon's--is always a threat.
Rambo rides again
Marine Capt. Richard Ashby was flying his EA-6B Prowler too
fast and too low when his plane's wing snapped a gondola cable
and hurled 20 tourists from Italy, Germany, Belgium, Austria,
Poland and the Netherlands to their deaths on the Cermis
mountainside at the Cavalese ski resort.
It was all too typical for the U.S. pilots at Aviano Air
Base in northern Italy to fly lower than the agreement with the
Italian government allowed. They regularly buzzed the towns in
the mountains and irritated residents and tourists alike. To
the Italians, Ashby and the three other crew members were
Rambo-like hotshots, looking to be "Top Gun."
The Italians asked to put the EA-6B crew on trial. But using
NATO regulations, Washington insisted on giving them a military
trial under U.S. jurisdiction--imposing extraterritoriality on
its Italian ally. That is, it treated Italy like a colony.
Aviano is the main NATO air base used to bomb Bosnian Serb
positions and now to threaten the former Yugoslavia. And Italy
is a full participant in the imperialist attempt to re-colonize
the Balkans peninsula. It has already sent troops along with
U.S. forces to Italian imperialism's former colony from the
fascist period, Albania.
The Italian ruling class and its government in Rome was in a
contradictory position. Rather than confront the U.S., Rome
allowed the Pentagon to try Ashby.
But Ashby's acquittal was too much of a slap in the face,
and it aroused massive anger in the population. Even the more
right-wing capitalist papers expressed outrage. "Cermis, the
day of injustice," read Il Giorno's front-page headline. "The
impunity of the powerful," said La Repubblica. Others read,
"Cermis: 20 dead, no one guilty."
Italian politicians from even the center and right-wing
parties joined the condemnations. While this creates a climate
of anti-Pentagon sentiment, no one should expect these
capitalist politicians to break with the U.S. and NATO if that
means giving up imperialist ambitions in the Balkans.
Anti-imperialist forces in Italy are already raising the
real issue to the Italian population: Get NATO and U.S. air
bases out of Italy. Anti-war activists in the U.S. should show
full solidarity with this demand.
U.S. executes German citizens
The LaGrand brothers were born in Germany to a German
mother, but moved to the U.S. when they were young. In 1982
they were convicted of a murder in connection with a
robbery.
The Arizona police had failed to inform the brothers that,
as German citizens, they were entitled to assistance from the
German consulate. The German government went to the World
Court, which appealed to the U.S. to delay the executions.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder appealed to Arizona Gov.
Jane Hull to stop the execution.
By March 4, they had both been executed. German Justice
Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin said Germany would continue to
object to the death penalty in talks with U.S. officials. "One
naturally has to make very clear that human rights are there to
be observed, and that means by everyone," she said. (Associated
Press, March 5)
Words like these sound good, but when capitalist politicians
start talking about lofty principles like "human rights" or
"free trade" or "protecting the environment," it's often only
to disguise the raw, unprincipled battle over profits and
markets the "Banana War" exposes.
When U.S. politicians expose German corporations that
profited from slave labor under the Nazis, it reflects
competition over the Balkans. When the German government calls
on the U.S. to end the barbaric death penalty, it's just
retaliating.
When Washington asks to expand NATO's use against so-called
rogue states, it really wants all the imperialist armies
following the Pentagon's lead. The EU wants a more limited
NATO, but they all want a piece of the Balkans.
It is true--as Karl Marx wrote--that the working class has
no nation. But the capitalists still use the national state for
their predatory interest.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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