By Thabang Maseko

Vladimir Putin seemed to have ruled out extending Russia`s occupation of Crimea to eastern Ukraine. And he was correct in his calculation that the West`s response would be feeble. The very limited package of measures agreed by the European Union (EU) would have been even milder were it not for the Crimean parliament`s decision to hold a referendum on independence.
 
The timidity of the response reflects the close economic links between Europe and Russia. These go far beyond the fabled Mayfair mansions of the Russian oligarchs, although the city is a magnet for anyone interested in dodgy deals. The EU is Russia`s biggest trading partner. Trade with Russia was worth £280 billion in 2012, while European companies account for 75 percent of the stock of foreign direct investment in Russia. By comparison US trade with Russia was a mere £24 billion, less than that of the Netherlands.
 
Not surprisingly, Netherlands along with Germany and Italy, actively opposed sanctions against Russia at an EU summit. A similar pattern followed Russia`s war with Georgia in August 2008. Of course economic interdependence doesn`t stop states going to war with each other. Britain was Germany`s biggest export market in 1914 during the First World War period. But presently there`s no sign of any real stomach for confrontation, even on the other side of the pond.
 
The Republicans in the US Congress may talk a good fight, but they aren`t suggesting anything very concrete that Barack Obama should do. Henry Kissinger weighed in a week before last to echo the call by Zbigniew Brzezinski, another ex-national security adviser, to propose that Ukraine be "Finlandized", that is, even if it draws closer to the EU, it should remain geopolitically neutral and outside the Western imperialist military alliance North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The crisis underlines how dangerous the policy of expanding NATO towards Russia`s borders has been. Membership of NATO allows the ex-Soviet republics in the Baltic to call on US military support if threatened by Russia. Obama issued a statement reaffirming enduring support for the security and democracy of Baltic allies.
 
Putin is no doubt seeking to discredit this policy through his intervention in Ukraine. More specifically, think tank director Ruslan Pukhov suggested, he will "strive to keep Crimea as part of Ukraine, but as a reinforced instrument of Russian influence over politics in Kiev and a powerful example for pro-Russian populations in other regions". Pukhov also predicts that Putin will back Yulia Tymoshenko for Ukraine`s next president. Despite being an opposition heroine, she was Moscow`s preferred candidate in the last elections in 2010.The net result of yet another Ukrainian revolution will be de facto Russian control of Crimea, and a Kiev government commercially and personally bound to Putin. A weaker and more destabilized Ukraine will continue zigzagging between East and West, until the next cycle of tumultuous Ukrainian politics arrives.
 
The Russian socialist Boris Kagarlitsky suggests that, "the authorities in Kiev are also satisfied. They are able to employ the ‘Russian threat` to consolidate the new regime, to explain away economic difficulties as the result of external pressure, and in retrospect, to justify their own steps that have brought Ukraine to collapse. The present situation of ‘neither peace nor war` thus suits both governments perfectly, at least for the moment."
 
It`s easy to guess who will be the victims here. Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in Europe, with a nominal per capita income in 2012 of £2,329, less than that of Jamaica, Tunisia or Paraguay. The new regime is entrenching the power of the oligarchs - for example, appointing them as provincial governors in eastern Ukraine. Acting Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatseniuk, a close ally of Tymoshenko, has already accepted of all the conditions demanded by the International Monetary Fund for financial aid - including drastic increases in consumer energy prices. War or no war, it will be ordinary people in Ukraine who pick up the bill for this crisis.

Cde Thabang Maseko is Young Communist League (YCLSA) of SA Spokesperson on the Eastern Cape, and writes in personal capacity

The MASKIROVSKI JAMES: Does WilmotJames have any mandate to speak for and on behalf of our people really?

By Sikhumbuzo Thomo

This is a response Wilmot James`s article that appeared on IOL media.

Wilmot James needs to appreciate that the majority of our people can never be taken as foolish voters that the DA can buy.

The people of this country vote the ANC in power because the ANC, NOT the DA, is the liberation movement on the side of the poor African majority and exploited workers. This is fundamentally and diametrically opposed to everything that the DA stands for.

The progress the ANC has made is NOT propaganda; which brings to the point on the legitimacy of Mr James and the DA. This is the real propaganda of falsehoods as the Russians call it Maskirovska (deception and misinformation). First they plagiarize everything the ANC is and the revolution in the hope to fool our people and now they have become the victims of their falsehoods.

This Maskirovska is to protect the minority white monopoly capital while misleading everyone else to believe that in fact the likes of rented (i.e. politically labour brokered) blacks are for the people. All for an organization that has overlooked him choosing even none DA members to lead their campaign as presidential candidate.

What about the protest that have occurred in the recent past?

Well, some of the protests are genuine and many others are not; some were instigated by the opposition, factionalism and even some by so-called xenophobic attacks.

And then, what about DA`s funders?
 
In the mining sector for instance, at what point shall the funders of the DA meet the transformation charter requirements? Why has the honourable member forgotten to mention this fact when they have exploited this country more than trillions of Rand since the beginning of time?

It`s wrong to be short-sighted as the vision of the ANC shifts to a more radical transformation to begin to engage monopoly capital. Why is the silence on SASOL`s multi-billion investments in the US and why it never re-invests locally, as a company that was created on state funds? Why the silence on Arcillor-Mittal? Just to name two.

The disrespectful behaviour towards the ANC and its allies needs to stop. What does "binded" mean really, Mr James? I mean at some point the DA spoke of the NDR. Mr James, the National Democratic Revolution is the programme of the Alliance as led by the ANC. It derives its existence from the Communist Party, to be precise the Communist International`s resolution in 1923 after the great Lenin posed the question on the role of National Liberation Movements that were fighting against imperialism but were not necessarily socialist in character: What was the role of the Communist Party in these countries? The Communist Party in South Africa in its own congress resolved on this question, leading to what now is the Alliance - a real one - in South Africa. It is this Alliance, including organized workers in the progressive trade union movement that have driven this programme from as far back as 1928 and the revolutionary programme that led to a democratic breakthrough in April 1994.

A copy and paste organization would not know anything about that, Maskirovska.

So what is problematic about the structure of our economy? Why do we need to move to a different growth path Mr James?

At the heart of our problems is that even when our economy has been growing, as it did in the recent past, this growth has tended to reproduce (and in some cases worsen) racialised inequality and under-development.

In 1994 unemployment was around 24%. Just before the global recession began to bite locally, in the latter half of 2008, after some fourteen years of "unprecedented" growth, we had barely managed to return the unemployment level back to the same crisis level of 24%. After 15 years of democracy, and notwithstanding many important efforts, we succeeded in going round in a circle! The rich got richer, but our country was not transformed.

In the recessionary conditions the unemployment rate obviously rocketed up, with nearly 1 million jobs lost, and that is a fact I am not pulling a Maskirovska. But the ANC-led government worked hard, recovering the jobs lost and adding new ones. As things stand, there are now more people working in South Africa than at any time in the past.

Mr James we are still locked into basically the same semi-colonial economic growth path that was first forged in the imperialist-dominated mining revolution in SA over one hundred years ago. Something your handlers in the DA have not been too open about, otherwise the status quo that the DA is defending.

Our economy remains excessively dependent on primary commodity exports. On the other hand, we are excessively dependent on imports of capital goods (machinery), technologies and luxury goods. Even relative to many developed capitalist economies, we have extremely high levels of corporate concentration ("monopoly capital"), especially in the minerals and energy complex, in finance, chemicals, and increasingly in agro-processing. These high levels of concentration continue to shape our economy in many problematic ways. Yet that`s what the DA stands for.

All of these and other features, including collusive, monopoly pricing practices by the dominant monopoly capital sectors, serve to throttle any organic growth of more labour-intensive, medium and small-scale light manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors - not to mention cooperatives. High levels of unemployment and skewed infrastructural and spatial development narrow our national market, and further entrench our export-oriented dependency. Historically, big capital in SA has also acted aggressively as a sub-imperialist power, undermining a more balanced approach to regional development and production and further weakening our potential regional market.

As such, it can be asserted that the history of the ANC is in essence about the struggle of the South African people for self-determination to achieve a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society - the ideals that are now codified in the country`s Constitution and are part of South African society`s DNA. NOT the DA, NOT the DP, NOT the NP before you.

People like yourself, Mmusi and others should not take a political point scoring gap?

Sikhumbuzo Thomo, SACP and ANC member based in Tshwane, and writes in his personal capacity.