October 2014

Bundeswehr and German Imperialism – Out of the Middle East!

Operation Kobanê in Germany

Thousands of Kurds and supporters marched in Kreuzburg and Neukölln sections of Berlin on October 12 for Kobanê and against the Islamic State jihadists. The German bourgeoisie, which for decades has armed Turkey to repress the Kurds, seeks to enlist the left in imperialist war using fear of massacre in besieged Syrian Kurdish city. (Photo: Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

HAMBURG, October 26 – Seems like it’s all Kobanê, all the time in Germany these days. Wall-to-wall media coverage of the fate of the besieged Syrian Kurdish city on the Turkish border: front and center every day in the newspapers, every night on the TV news. Thousands march in the streets for Kobanê and against the Islamic State: on October 11, 80,000 in Düsseldorf, on October 12,  the next day 5,000 or more in the capital marching behind a banner saying “Berlin is Kobanê.” But also: on October 9, Islamists attacked Kurds in Hamburg. And: today several thousand Nazis and soccer rowdies rampaged in Köln (Cologne), chanting “foreigners get out.”

The 1 million Kurds living in Germany, the largest Kurdish population in Europe,  above all workers brought here during the years of industrial boom, are traumatized by fear of a massacre should Kobanê fall to the jihadists of the I.S. Many coworkers and activists share their concern. But there is something else going on as well. Why all the interest in the capitalist press and among bourgeois politicians in the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which is banned in Germany? There is a political/military operation underway to line up the population, the left in particular, to support deployment of the Bundeswehr, Germany’s army. Keywords: “end of pacifism.”

Against this cynical campaign by German imperialism to exploit sympathy for the Kurds, it is necessary to underline that defense of the Syrian Kurds, in Kobanê and elsewhere, against the Islamic State jihadis, as well as the Islamist armed opposition and the Assad regime requires above all an intransigent opposition to imperialism.

German imperialism has had a strategic focus on Turkey going back to the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers in World War I. The large number of Turkish and Kurdish workers in Germany is another key factor for the ruling class. The government of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD), the so-called Grand Coalition, moved quickly to send arms, munitions and Bundeswehr “instructors” to northern Iraq last month. CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel, backed up by the SPD, used the atrocities of the Islamic State to justify the latest intervention. But the politicians worry that the Germans aren’t battle-ready.

Seventy years after the massive destruction of Germany’s cities and industry as a result of defeat in World War II, the expulsion of millions of Germans from East Europe, and the opprobrium of the Nazi Holocaust, much of the population is still gun-shy. To be sure, a German contingent has been part of the U.S./NATO imperialist occupation of Afghanistan from the start. Back in 2002, the SPD-Green government tried to sell that one also as a “humanitarian mission.” But that fiction was exploded by the 2009 Kunduz massacre (see Afghan Massacre Blows Apart German Occupiers’ Lies, The Internationalist No. 30, November-December 2009).

With the Afghanistan occupation as unpopular among Germans as it is with most Americans, Merkel, like Obama, is wary about sending troops. German ruling circles and the media worry about the lack of popular support for what they call “shouldering responsibility”, i.e., imperialist interventions around the world. And the lackluster Grand Coalition has even less traction than the SPD-Green government which broke down opposition to the first foreign war by the “new Germany,” in the Balkans in 1999, by labeling it “anti-fascist.” Still, they gained points by sitting out the Iraq war, which was viewed as defiance of Bush and “the Yanks.”

Not a few top politicians want to get “back in the game” by sending the Bundeswehr to  eastern Ukraine. As “peace troops,” naturally. What can they be thinking? That the Russian-speaking population of Donetsk won’t remember the last time German soldiers came to town? But there are splits in the German bourgeoisie. Merkel and SPD foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier are for the U.S. anti-Russia campaign, but other fractions (especially those with economic ties to Moscow) have reservations or are even opposed. Unbridled Putin-bashing by the media has provoked something of a backlash, fueled by exposés that some of the editors and journalists involved are members of U.S.-funded foundations and lobbies.

That hasn’t stopped federal president Joachim Gauck from intervening repeatedly over the last year in favor of deploying the Bundeswehr, anywhere and everywhere. (German presidents are supposed to be a moral authority above parties, but choosing the witch-hunting East German anti-communist Lutheran pastor Gauck sent a message.) And war minister Ursula von der Leyen is dying to be photographed with troops in the field. In an interview with Die Zeit (20 August), she opined: “More important than the question of whether and which weapons we send, is the readiness to set aside taboos and openly discuss things.” Dismissing distinctions between “humanitarian” and military aid, she also took the opportunity to push for sending arms to Kiev.

German war minister Ursula von der Leyen pushing to “set aside taboos” and intervene militarily.  (Photo: Reuters)

For warmongers eager to “set aside taboos,” the specter of the Islamic State was a gift. The  assault on Kobanê was an opportunity to soften up a hesitant public with a media barrage and, most importantly, to enlist the left as drummer boys for war. Instead of Karl Liebknecht’s slogan “Down with war” (Nieder mit dem Krieg), maybe they would even chant in demos “make peace with weapons” (Frieden schaffen mit Waffen). A typical example was a show on WDR regional public radio (23 October) titled, “End of the line for pacifism?” (The interviewee was of course a pro-war Green politician.) A couple of days later, Tagesspiegel (26 October) weighed in with a full-page essay cheering, “Even in the Left, many are retreating from categorical pacifism.”

Virtually the entire spectrum of the bourgeois press suddenly discovered the greatest sympathy for the Kurds. While vituperating against Putin’s Russia they even run sympathetic articles about life in Rojava. This German war media “coalition of the willing” ranges from the Green taz (Die Tageszeitung) to the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), which quite respectfully interviewed Kurdish PYD leaders such as Asya Abdullah and Salih Muslim. This is the same FAZ (10 September 2012) which editorialized only two years ago, after a police provocation against a Kurdish cultural festival in Mannheim, “If they bring their conflicts to Germany, they cannot expect indulgence.”

Some Green politicians quickly came out for “action” in Syria, just as they have been in the forefront of the anti-Russia campaign. Their model is former Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer, who pushed for war on Yugoslavia and German troops to Afghanistan. Parliamentary fraction head Katrin Göring-Eckardt came out for German participation in a force with U.N. blue helmets. Party chairman Cem Özdemir was for “ground forces” in Syria, but not for sending weapons to Kobanê, due to Turkish opposition. He also lamented the German army’s lack of preparation. (The plane carrying German trainers and weapons to Iraq broke down and couldn’t make it to Erbil in time for the photo op with the embarrassed war minister von der Leyen.)

But the target of the media blitz was the reformist Left Party (Die Linke), which gets 9% of the vote nationwide and nearly a quarter in the East, where it is the successor to the former Stalinist ruling party. For years, these “social democrats of the second mobilization” have stood aside from supporting German military action. Yet they are thirsting for government positions (perhaps via a “red-red-green” coalition with the SPD and the eco-militarists). Die Linke already participated in anti-working class, anti-immigrant, pro-capitalist austerity governments on the state level. The barrier at the national level is their refusal to swear 100% allegiance to NATO. So they are constantly challenged to support one “humanitarian” military mission after another.

In the case of Kobanê, the pressure on Die Linke has finally born some fruit. On October 7, no less than 14 Left Party Bundestag (parliament) deputies came out with a statement “Don’t Abandon Kobanê” calling for German military intervention under the aegis of the U.N. The driving force behind this was Berlin deputy Stefan Liebich, who happens to be a member of both the “Atlantik-Brücke” (Atlantic Bridge), a conduit for U.S. influence in Germany, and the pro-Zionist Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft (German-Israeli Association). The whip in charge of gathering party members’ is one Sascha Schlenzig, who after a previous incarnation as a fake “Trotskyist” tailing “social movements”  has graduated to full-blown reformism.

Semi-retired Left Party leader Oscar Lafontaine, who has been put out to pasture as fraction head in the state parliament of tiny Saarland, came back with a counterblast, “Against the Global Interventionism of the USA and NATO!” on the web site of the liberal bourgeois Tagespiegel (10 October). Lafontaine correctly pointed out that U.S. imperialism has killed thousands of times more people than the I.S., and pilloried the hypocrisy of those who are up in arms about Kobanê but indifferent to the drowning of refugees in the Mediterranean. But with his invocation of SPD chancellor Willy Brandt, the point man for capitalist reunification, Lafontaine made clear his was a nationalist manifesto against subordination of German imperialist interests to the U.S.

Meanwhile, Left Party leader Gregor Gysi did not sign up with the “Don’t Abandon Kobanê” campaign. For now. Nothing was offered in exchange for giving up Die Linke’s “antiwar” tradition. But should the German bourgeoisie makes a serious offer – ministerial seats in exchange for abandoning “principles” – it will be a different story. As we noted in 2009:

“Just as Die Linke wants to go back to the ‘good old days’ of the welfare state, it also wants to turn the clock back to the time when German imperialism was less openly militarized. It has openly declared its support for ‘national defense’ – the basis for the SPD’s historic betrayal of the working class by supporting the imperialist slaughter in World War I. Lafontaine wants the SPD and the Greens to ‘come to their senses.’ But these parties are not deranged: they understand that the interests of German imperialism are served by showing its willingness to militarily intervene, whether in Kosovo or even in the Hindu Kush. And when push comes to shove, Die Linke will fall in line as well. Although it pretends to be against German soldiers in Afghanistan, even wearing United Nations blue helmets, the party’s parliamentary fraction was ready to support sending German warships to the Red Sea with the right U.N. mandate.”

–The Internationalist No. 30

It was left to Lafontaine’s partner Sahra Wagenknecht to attempt to reconcile stand-by-Kobanê militarists with the pacifists in the Left Party, saying: “If you want to stop the I.S., you have to cut off its weapons and funds.” So this former spokesman of the Kommunistische Plattform now embraces Obama’s pre-August 2014 policy of imperialist financial pressure. 

If “mainstream” Left Party deputies want to become foot soldiers in the imperialist war against the Islamic State, with the fascist “Hooligans Against Salafists” providing some street muscle, various pseudo-socialist groups prefer the role of extra-parliamentary water boys, giving themselves a little “critical” wiggle room. Among them is the Marx21 network (formerly Linksruck), co-thinkers of the British Socialist Workers Party, of the Tony Cliff school of “state capitalist” anti-Sovietism. Liquidating into Die Linke, the German Cliffites have built a comfortable niche for themselves, including parliamentary deputies. Marx21 most recently attracted attention for publishing apologetics for the fascists dominating the Kiev Maidan protests.

In an October 21 article titled “Put Erdogan Under Pressure” (in the Cliffite “hydraulic” version of left politics, everything is reduced to pressure tactics), Marx21 writes: “The demands coming out of Kobanê itself for anti-tank weapons are understandable and justified, given the situation there.  But the relationship of forces in the German parliament is insufficient for the Left Party to be able to adequately oversee military intervention and weapons deliveries and must therefore be opposed.” So if the Left Party Bundestag fraction was a bit larger, the German state could supposedly be pressured into fighting a “justified” imperialist war?! Under “oversight,” of course. This would have given even arch-revisionist Eduard Bernstein pause.

Beyond pressuring Erdogan to permit a supply corridor to Kobanê, Marx21 calls for an end to the ban on the PKK in Germany. Revolutionary Trotskyists have always opposed this repressive measure, but coming from these reformists it is simply a barometer reading of the increasing respectability of the PKK and PYD. Even a few CDU politicians are toying with this idea. Marx21 is mainly perturbed by the rush of some on the left to line up behind the secular PYD as a bulwark against “Islamo-fascism.” The Cliffite opportunists cut their teeth as apologists for Islamic reactionaries, from Iran and Afghanistan to Egypt, Gaza and Lebanon. But they have always had a little trouble reconciling this with bourgeois “public opinion.”

Along with the Cliffites there is a whole gamut of “left” groups who supported the mythical “Libyan Revolution” and have been doing the same in Syria, while claiming to be independent of the imperialists who are arming their “revolutionaries.” Another initiative from this milieu is a campaign to collect money for weapons for Kobanê initiated by the Neue Antikapitalistische Organisation (NaO – New Anti-Capitalist Organization). This is a heterogeneous collection of “antifa” activists seeking to move beyond mere street fighting and some ostensible “Trotskyists,” notably the Revolutionäre Sozialistische Bund (RSB), followers of the late Ernest Mandel, who with their apologies for Ukrainian fascists could well be the right wing of this lash-up.

In an October 22 statement against “war-mongering and pacifism,” the Berlin NaO says, “On the other hand, taking an internationalist position nonetheless means supporting any delivery of weapons to Kobanê and Rojava.” Undoubtedly, some supporters of the NaO sincerely believe that their “independent” financial campaign is different from those directly calling for imperialist intervention. But recognizing that forces on the ground may be obliged to get weapons wherever they can is one thing, for leftists in imperialist countries to “support” this is hardly different from those who call openly for U.S./NATO delivery of arms. And we wonder what the NaO attitude would be toward Russian, Iranian or Syrian government arms to Kobanê.

Calls for the imperialists to arm the Kurds are particularly grotesque when applied to Germany, which for decades has supplied Turkey with Leopard tanks and weapons that have been used for murderous repression of the Kurds, and the Turkish working class as a whole. Rather, the workers movement should demand an end to all imperialist intervention in the Middle East, including bombs, planes, arms and soldiers.

Another component of the NaO, the Gruppe Arbeitermacht (GAM – linked to British Workers Power), which calls for “material and military support without any political and other preconditions” (Infomail No. 768, August 2014). As if the imperialists are in the business of handing out heavy weapons, no strings attached! Again, this is nothing but sleight of hand, a semantic subterfuge to disguise their de facto support of imperialist military intervention in Iraq and Syria, as previously in Libya. Where the Left Party deputies want to make themselves regierungsfähig in its exchange for backing Bundeswehr intervention, this bunch only wants a fig leaf to hide their betrayal. 

The battle in Kobanê has sharpened political tensions in Germany. For the police as well as fascists, right-wing and even Social Democratic racists like former Bundesbank executive Thilo Sarrazin, Kurds and Turks are all the same, “foreigners,” no matter how many generations have been born here. To the German racists, “integration” means segregation and even expulsion of “Muslims.” In the face of marauding immigrant-hating thugs, the workers movement is duty-bound to physically defend all immigrants and ethnic minorities, whatever their politics. And genuine communists insist that solidarity with the Kurdish people requires an unflinching struggle against imperialism, which has denied them their rights, from Kobanê to Köln.

For that what’s needed is to build a truly internationalist, Trotskyist vanguard party of the working class rather than a pot pourri of pressure groups on imperialism. Bundeswehr and German imperialism – out of the Middle East! ■