DANGER
OF GREAT GLOBAL DEPRESSION
AND
GROWING CRISIS OF WAR AND REVOLUTION
IN ASIA
by the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of Japan (Left)
The world capitalist economy is in the deepest
crisis since the end of World War II and is on the verge of another great
global depression far bigger than that of the 1930s.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the imperialist
bourgeoisie carried out a big propaganda campaign against socialism by
preaching the “end of communism.” However, the historical decay and decline
as well as unsolvable serious contradictions of world capitalism with U.S.
imperialism at the center have been brought into the daylight.
It has been also revealed that the conversion into capitalist market economies
promoted by the modern revisionists has gone bankrupt in the Soviet Union,
Eastern Europe and China.
These crises have produced extremely favorable
conditions for the international proletariat to launch an ideological counterattack
with the banner of truth of Marxism held aloft against the anti-communist
and anti-socialist campaign of imperialism. They have also
brought about conditions which are very advantageous to preparation for
new worldwide offensives of the proletarian socialist revolutionary movement
in the imperialist countries and, as its close ally, the anti-imperialist
national-liberation democratic revolutionary movement of the oppressed
peoples.
1. Chronic overproduction and huge idle money
capital help realize the danger of a great global depression
The prolonged economic and financial crisis in
Japan and Asia from last year has triggered a chain reaction of financial
crises in Russia and then in Latin America. They have also
rebounded on the markets in Europe and the U.S., thus accelerating their
own crises further. This is a chain reaction of the economic
crises in the world after this summer. It brings the danger
of a new great global depression into relief.
The Russian economy marked last year a positive
growth of the Gross Domestic Product for the first time after the collapse
of the Soviet Union. Such a growth was actually brought about
by the sudden increase in the influx of speculative funds from abroad.
However, under the influence of the Asian monetary crisis, there was seen
a sharp decline in international prices of the energy resources which are
the main exports of Russia. As a result, foreign funds standing
as the last hope of the Russian economy were withdrawn from the country.
This immediately threw Russia into the danger of a financial crisis.
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which feared for spread
of this crisis promised to provide $22.6 billion loans to Russia, but the
securities, the ruble and the bonds declined sharply last August forcing
the Russian government to suspend all transactions.
On August 17, the Russian government announced
devaluation of the ruble, suspension of repayment of the private foreign
debts and conversion of the short-term national bonds into mid- and long-term
ones—this is de facto default. As Russia entirely lost credit,
there resulted a sharp reduction of the exchange rate of ruble against
dollar to one third and the average prices of stocks to one sixth in comparison
with their highest ones in October last year.
The transformation into a capitalist market economy
has brought only anarchic devastation to the Russian economy. Privatization
has led to the plunder of social assets. With the speculative
investment overheating, foreign funds have flown into a non-productive
financial sector aiming at high profits in a short term. Therefore,
direct investment for production is not made. Most of consumer
goods depend on import. Tax payers by self-assessment occupy
only less than one tenth of the working population. The subsequent
shortage of tax revenues was covered by overissuing short-term governmental
bonds. As a result, the interest payment and redemption of
national bonds have occupied one forth of the national budgets (last year)
or a half (this year). The government is unable to duly provide wages for
public employees. This bankruptcy is the direct result of the transformation
of the Russian economy into a capitalist market economy, a transformation
which has been promoted by the U.S. and European imperialist powers.
The German economy was directly hit by the financial
crisis in Russia, because the former is the biggest creditor country against
the latter with claims of about $75 billion in both public and private
sectors. The index of the average stock prices in Germany dropped by more
than 19 percent from the highest one of last July. The Deutsche
mark registered an across-the-board fall in prices against principal currencies.
Stock prices fell sharply also in Hungary, Poland and other Central and
East European countries. Germany had pursued imperialist interests
with Russia and Central and Eastern Europe as strategically important markets,
so that its economy suffered a heavy blow. With Germany as
the driving force, the other West European imperialist powers had enjoyed
“economic expansion” in the process toward the European monetary unification
next year, but they also suffered a drastic decline in the stock prices.
The financial crisis in Russia spread to Latin
America as another so- called “emerging growth market.” Collapsing prices
of major export products in the region caused the deterioration of the
international trade balances of those countries. The prices of their dollar-denominated
bonds fell sharply. The stock prices plummeted as seen in 40-percent
drop of stock prices in Brazil from the month-earlier level.
Foreign funds flew largely out of those Latin American countries.
All these increase pressure upon those countries into devaluation of their
currencies and exert tremendous influence on their nonfinancial sectors
of the economy.
The spread of crises from Russia to Latin America
brought huge losses to the U.S. financial institutions which had colossal
claims in these emerging growth markets. These institutions
are composed of not only the hedge funds which make a killing in speculative
financial dealings, but also general commercial banks and investment banks.
As a consequence, the U.S. economy itself deepened the danger of “bursting
of economic bubbles.” The Dow Jones industrial average in the New York
Stock Exchange nose-dived from the highest level of $9,000 last July to
the 7,000-dollar level, registering continuously the third and second largest
drops in its history. This was a plummet of 20 percent. After
this, the Dow Jones industrial average has been fluctuating violently.
The stock prices of the high-tech companies, banks
and securities firms which played a central role in the “long economic
expansion” for eight years after the early 1990s also showed a drastic
decline, even much bigger than the average drop of all the stock prices.
This is a reflection of the fact that the performances of the enterprises
in the U.S. have been deteriorating.
In the second quarter of 1998, the average growth
rate of profits of the major 500 companies in the U.S. remained only a
single-figure number even less than 5 percent, consecutively from the previous
quarter. This was for the first time from 1992.
Those companies in the high-tech sector have also their profits reduced
in the settlement of their accounts in two consecutive quarters in the
first half of this year.
U.S. imperialism has used the dominant power of
the dollar and the advantage of the information and telecommunications
industries and the financial sector to get every corner of the world as
its capitalist market. This has been its strategy while at
home it has reduced production costs at the expense of workers through
large-scale restructuring and “rationalization” drives and carried out
the flexible labor policy to enormously increase the number of the low-paid
and underemployed workers. At the same time, it has expanded
a world market of new industrial sectors with the multimedia at the center.
With the aim of getting profits from this new
market, investment and speculation have been concentrated in the U.S.
Its “economic boom” was a result of these policies.
It is true that the unemployment rate in the U.S.
is the lowest in the past 20 years or more. This is, however,
a result of the increase in the number of low-paid and underemployed workers
in service industry and so on. The gap between the rich and
the poor has expanded unprecedentedly. The average real wages
of the workers and other toiling people have fallen into a level of the
mid-1960s. In comparison with the 1970s, the lowest group of
the workers (when they are divided into five groups according to their
wages) has suffered a 20 percent fall in their real wages.
Only a mere handful of ruling class get fat on their income, while the
overwhelming majority of the workers and other toiling people become poorer.
This is a reality of the “economic boom” in the U.S.
The U.S. stock prices which have continued to
renew a record high are a consequence of the inflow of speculative funds
from various parts of the world and are just an economic bubble far separated
from the substantial economy.
In the first place, the U.S. is the world’s biggest
“debtor country” with the net foreign debts of $1,322.5 billion as of the
end of 1997, equivalent to 15 percent of its GDP (according to the U.S.
Department of Commerce). The dollar has lost endorsement by
the gold, but it still has a dominant power as the key currency.
With this as a base, the U.S. economy has been supported by the inflow
of funds from other countries, particularly Japan as the biggest creditor
nation with net foreign claims equivalent to about 70 percent of the U.S.
net foreign debts. The U.S. has also produced a very gambling “fictitious
prosperity” of world capitalism with a huge amount of dollars floated by
itself, a prosperity in which not money for international trade but speculative
funds occupy an overwhelming majority of dealings in the foreign exchange
markets in the world amounting to $1.4 trillion a day.
As a consequence, last year’s financial crisis
in Japan and other Asian countries spread to Russia and Latin America recently
in a way like chain reaction and thus rebounded upon the economy of the
U.S. itself, which cannot be an “ace in the hole” any more to put on the
brakes to the spread of the crisis.
A major U.S. hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management
verged on bankruptcy, marking a great loss of 44 percent of its working
funds in August alone. Big U.S. financial institutions immediately decided
to supply over $ 3.5 billion in order to bail out the LTCM under the leadership
of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. That was because the
LTCM had borrowed $ 125 billion from major financial institutions on the
security of $ 2.2 billion of its original funds raised from investors,
bought bonds with the borrowed money, and invested in derivative dealings
with these bonds as mortgage. As a result, its total contractual
amount of these investments reached as much as $ 1,250 billion.
The George Soros-led Quantum Fund suffered a $ 2 billion loss due to its
failure in the speculation in Russia. Setbacks of hedge funds
including the LTCM will inevitably lead to bankruptcies not only among
hedge funds but also major financial institutions which have lent these
funds a huge amount of money and suffered big losses in their own speculation
in newly emerging markets. The U.S. economy can not play the
role of a “last breakwater” against the economic crisis anymore, but sees
itself falling into another crisis.
With the suspension of the U.S. dollar’s conversion
to the gold in 1971 and the simultaneous global depression in the mid-1970s,
world capitalism has entered upon a stage of its structural crisis featured
by chronic “overproduction.”
This crisis was brought about when the fundamental
contradiction between the socialization of production and the private appropriation
of production means and products by the monopoly bourgeoisie under the
capitalist mode of production had been accumulated and aggravated in the
U.S.-dominated world capitalist economy.
Nevertheless, the U.S. and other imperialist countries
changed their industrial structures from the labor- and resource-intensive
industries to knowledge-intensive processing and assembly industries and
then to high-tech industries with the aim of intensifying the exploitation
through “rationalization drives” in all industrial sectors and creating
new markets. At the same time, they invested “surplus” capital
in the “developing” countries to extend the capitalist market and unlimitedly
increased capitalist credit and speculation through financial liberalization.
As a result, the “overproduction” became more serious on a world scale,
leading to global overproduction crises in 1980 and 1990. The
same grounds now draw near the danger of a catastrophic financial crisis
under the existence of a huge amount of idle money capital.
2. Acceleration of economic and financial crisis
in Japan and Asia
The swift expansion of the financial crisis from
Russia to Central and Latin America and the sharp decline in the U.S. and
European stock markets have further accelerated the economic crisis in
Japan and Asia.
The Nikkei average in the Tokyo Stock Exchange
renewed its lowest record of August, 1992 after the collapse of the “bubble
economy,” and dropped below the level of Y14,000 for the first time after
March, 1986. In addition, this decline was led by the fall of the stocks
of big banks and the so-called international superior stocks of high-tech
companies. This indicates a sharpening vicious spiral of the crisis of
the substantial economy and that of the financial economy.
As a result, almost all big banks are plagued
with “latent losses” of their stock holdings and are forced to reduce their
lendable funds for improvement of their capital-asset ratio.
This invites, however, more serious credit crunch and makes sharper the
economic crisis which has hit Japan since the spring of last year.
The Japan’s GDP marked a minus 0.7 percent growth
in fiscal year 1997, the biggest drop in the postwar period. The first
quarter (April-June period) of fiscal year 1998 also registered a minus
growth, that is, the third straight quarter of economic contraction. It
is for the first time since the end of World War II. Among others, the
growth rate of investment in plants and equipment in this period recorded
minus 5.5 percent over the last quarter, the biggest fall in 33 years.
The mining and manufacturing production index showed the first fall in
the past 23 years from 1975, while the retail sales index recorded the
first 16-month minus growth from the start of the statistics as compared
with the corresponding period of the previous year.
In the half-year accounts last September, the
ordinary profits of the companies whose stocks are listed on the stock
exchange are expected to drop considerably by more than 27 percent from
the year-ago level.
Hitachi, Japan’s biggest general electric machine
maker, is estimated to go into a large deficit in the next half-year term
for the first time.
Thus, it announced a mass reduction of 3,000 to
4,000 workers. Due to large-scale restructuring and “rationalization”
drives or a series of big bankruptcies in rapid succession, the complete
unemployment rate has reached 4.3 percent, while unemployment has exceeded
three millions, the worst record since the start of the present statistics
in 1953 (With the unlisted permanent unemployment included, the jobless
rate exceeds 5 percent and 700,000 workers have been dismissed in the manufacturing
industry alone over last year).
Moreover, the prices of products in steel, petrochemical
and some other industrial sectors renew consecutively the record lows.
This brigs closer a crisis very much like the Great Depression in 1930’s,
which was intricately linked to reduction in demand, investment and production,
increase in unemployment, and decline in wages and prices (or with the
so-called deflationary spiral).
The new Obuchi government gives top priority to
financial and economic reforms, by stressing that it would “take whatever
measures necessary to prevent Japan from starting a worldwide financial
meltdown and an ensuing depression.” The government asserted
introduction of the so-called bridge bank system and 6-trillion-yen permanent
tax cuts, but it has already suffered a setback in its efforts to use public
funds for relief and merger of the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan.
This spring, the government tried to carry out policies for the stabilization
of the financial system, among others, through allocating public funds
to deal with the bad debts. In spite of such efforts, the Japan
Long- Term Credit Bank has rekindled its management crisis.
In addition, other big banks are also in a similar crisis.
On one hand, the Obuchi government, is strongly pressed for “quick response”
and “use of public funds” by the U.S. government which fears that Japan’s
economic and financial crisis would trigger another great world depression.
On the other hand, it is undecided in the negotiation with the opposition
parties standing “against the use of public funds.”
As far as the economies of Asian countries linked
closely with Japan are concerned, Thailand, south Korea and Indonesia,
which have accepted the “structural reform program” of the IMF, have turned
into the black in their current balances. These countries, however,
are faced with scale-down of their economic activities and rising unemployment.
The GDP in south Korea recorded minus 6.6 percent growth while its unemployment
rate reached 8.6 percent or renewed the worst record. In Malaysia,
the GDP marked minus 6.8 percent, and Hong Kong experienced the first minus
growth since the start of the present statistics. A chain of
worldwide falls in stock prices triggered a big plunge also in the stock
markets of Asian countries. In this context, the Malaysian
government adopted heavier regulations on the outflow of foreign currency
and a fixed exchange rate system for defending its own currency and stock
prices.
The economies of the Asian countries rely on import
of basic parts of industrial goods from Japan. Therefore, they
have a common structural dependency under which the more manufactured products
they export, the far more goods they should import this—increases their
trade deficits. The overproduction in those countries has become enormous
in every industrial section including auto, electric and chemical ones.
The expansion of bubble economy through inflow of short-term speculative
foreign money accelerated this overproduction and brought the crisis to
the surface. Thus those speculative funds flew out and this
immediately invited a deep economic and financial crisis with the currency
crisis as a trigger.
This economic crisis has also affected the economy
of China which has promoted the market economy with its reliance on exports
and foreign capital. The country suffers a decline in exports and direct
investment as well as difficulties in raising money in foreign markets.
The decline in its economic growth further pushes up unemployment, which
has been already at a high level due to the “reform of state-run companies.”
It is producing fierce social unrest. In order to keep the
capitalist economic growth, the Chinese government does not devaluate the
yuan, by enjoying as support a large trade surplus and some 140 billion
dollars of foreign exchange reserves, which were yielded at the sacrifice
of local workers paid with fiercely low wages.
However, if China is forced to devalue the yuan,
the whole Asian economy will inevitably experience a much deeper crisis.
3. Aggravating basic contradictions of the
world and isolation of U.S. imperialism
As the global capitalist economy brings closer
the danger of a catastrophic great depression, it is severely aggravating
the fundamental contradictions in the world between imperialism and socialism,
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between imperialism and the
oppressed peoples and among imperialist powers and monopoly capitalist
groups. These increase unemployment and poverty among the proletariat
and toiling people and the danger of another imperialist war on a global
scale, and create conditions for new social revolutions.
A large-scale reorganization is going on beyond
the national boundaries in the fields of car, communications, energy, aviation
and finance. That sharpens the scramble among monopoly capitalists
who shift all the burden unto the backs of the working class.
Against such a background, the working class in
the U.S. and European imperialist countries rise up in struggle, while
social class contradictions are aggravating rapidly in the states of the
oppressed nations.
The imperialist powers scramble by force for the
market and spheres of influence in the world. The contradiction
between imperialism and the oppressed peoples has become extremely acute.
These create conditions for a new development of the anti-imperialist national-liberation
revolution.
The U.S. has attached importance to Japan and
other Asian countries as new markets. But the economic crisis
in these countries brings closer the danger of a great global depression
and even shakes the U.S. political and military rule there.
The rivalry among the U.S., Japanese and European imperialist powers escalates
for a giant market in China and other markets and spheres of influence
in Asia. There have emerged conditions for advancing again
the revolutionary armed struggle which suffered temporary setbacks in the
Asian countries except for the Philippines because of the degeneration
of China.
U.S. imperialism shows its ambition for world
domination openly at a time: when Russia and Eastern Europe are plagued
with a deepening economic and social turmoil; when the U.S. and European
imperialist powers sharpen their confrontation over the unification of
Europe and the natural resources in the Middle East and Central Asia; and
when nations and peoples in the world increase their opposition to the
U.S. imperialist invasion.
U.S. imperialism made public its reviewed global
military strategy, namely the Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review
in May, 1997, its revised nuclear policy through a Presidential Decision
Directive in November, 1997 and its new war scheme in the Annual Report
of the U.S. Department of Defense this February. The first
feature of these military policies is that the Clinton administration unilaterally
defines that the U.S. national interests are threatened by a “menace of
weapons of mass destruction” and the “danger of terrorism” which are brought
about by states and forces opposing U.S. dictates such as Iraq, Iran and
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)—the U.S. has labelled
them as “rogue states,” and classifies them as main targets of its military
attacks. The second feature is that the Annual Defense Report
openly expresses a sense of danger regarding the Chinese threat.
It says that there is the possibility that a regional great power or global
peer competitor (which is able to counter the U.S.) may emerge at the beginning
of the 21st century. In this context, the Report also asserts
establishment of military readiness to fight and win simultaneously two
“Major Theater Wars,” supposedly, in the Middle East and East Asia.
The Clinton administration officially recognized in its new nuclear policy
that the modernized nuclear weapons regarded as a decisive factor in the
U.S. military strategy can be preemptively used against non-nuclear powers.
The U.S. has exposed its aggressive and brutal
character by practically pushing forward with this new war scheme for global
domination. It, however, has been faced with people’s counterattacks
in various parts of the world, reached an impasse and found itself more
isolated.
The U.S. planned military attacks against Iraq
at the beginning of this year. But this plan was frustrated
by people’s protests in many countries including Arab countries and the
U.S. itself. There are growing contradictions between the U.S.
and other powers like France, Russia and China over the oil resources.
The U.S., moreover, resorted to an unprecedented
violence by launching as many as 100 missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan
under the pretext of “retaliation” for terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania. In protest against this, the League
of Arab States issued a strong statement while militant demonstrations
were organized in various countries.
The peace process in the Middle East which the
U.S. has tried to handle at its own initiative has come to a standstill.
The U.S. and European countries intervene in
the conflict in Kosovo, aggravating the fight for leadership among them.
They have aimed to disintegrate new Yugoslavia by means of subversive activities
of the “Kosovo Liberation Army” and bourgeois nationalists as well as large-
scale threatening military exercises with NATO forces as main.
But the KLA does not comply with the U.S. dictates and suffers setbacks
from the counterattacks of the Serbian armed forces.
In the meantime, the U.S. military and political
rule over Asia was shaken because of the crisis as seen in the collapse
of the Suharto regime in Indonesia and the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan.
The “launching test of an artificial satellite” by North Korea had an impact
upon the U.S. Fanning the so-called “threat of ballistic missiles of North
Korea,” the U.S. tries to accelerate cooperative research with Japan on
the Theater Ballistic Missile Defense system along the new Guidelines and
spur Japan to establish a total mobilization footing for logistical regional
support to the U.S. forces according to a law on emergent situations surrounding
Japan.
The political roots of the issue in the Korean
Peninsula, however, consist in: division of the Korean nation and military
occupation of south Korea by U.S. imperialism for 50 years; unilateral
deployment of U.S. forces to Japan and the Asian region on presupposition
of a preemptive nuclear attack against North Korea; and the “status of
belligerency” which has been imposed even after the ceasefire (in 1953)
of the Korean War up to now. U.S. president Clinton openly
declared that the U.S. would erase North Korea by nuclear attacks if the
latter would not accept the former’s demand. The U.S. provoked
an explosive situation in the spring of 1994 with its military threat including
the use of nuclear bombs. The U.S.-south Korea Forces Joint
Headquarters dared to make public the “New Operation Plan 5027” which was
aimed to bring North Korea under control with one rush, by committing in
a concentrated way U.S. troops including ones from the mainland and Japan.
The objectives of such a war scheme of the U.S.
are to subjugate the North Korean government opposing the U.S. imperialist
rule, in order to place the whole Korean Peninsula under its control and
absorb the northern part into the capitalist market economy, and to gain
a vast market in China, by preventing it from emerging as a “new threat”
on the basis of the U.S. strategy of “Engagement and Enlargement.”
China has been thrown into a deeper economic crisis
and social disorder since its revisionist leadership called the Fifth Congress
of the Communist Party of China last year to adopt a policy of incorporating
the state-run firms on a full scale and accelerating the capitalization
of the Chinese economy. The U.S.-Chinese relations develop
in the direction of a deepening strategic confrontation in spite of a facade
of “cooperation.” Especially, regarding the Taiwan issue, the
Chinese government openly asserts that it does not allow tendency for division
of the country and interference by some foreign forces and can not promise
to abandon the use of force along the policy of “one China” and “peaceful
reunification and two systems in one country.” We have to pay
attention to the U.S.-Chinese relations which, also in connection with
the domestic crisis in China, may exert decisive influence on the whole
Asian situation.
What is important is that U.S. imperialism consolidates
the “military iron links” in Asia, by strengthening its military alliances
with south Korea, Australia and Southeast Asian countries with the “Japan-U.S.
Security Treaty” as main. This can be seen in enforcement of
the new Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation, deployment of U.S.
Marine units in dealing with an emergency in Indonesia and attempts to
turn the whole territory of the Philippines into a U.S. base through the
“Visiting Forces Agreement” and construction of a big airport in Mindanao
island. This way, U.S. imperialism pushes forward at a high
pace with its new war scheme for invasion and control of the Korean Peninsula
and China and for oppression of the anti-imperialist national- liberation
struggles in Asia. This new war scheme is also aimed to suppress
the Japanese people’s socialist revolutionary movement for overthrow of
Japanese and U.S. imperialist rule.
4. U.S.-initiated “chain of military iron links”
in Asia with the Japan- U.S. alliance as key
Southeast Asian countries have increased their
military budgets in the last decade in order to cope with the sharpening
national and class contradictions. However, all of them are
now forced to reduce drastically their war expenditure by the serious economic
crisis continuing from last year.
Against such a background, there is a growing
tendency for the governments of these countries to depend on the U.S. military
strength in suppressing the people’s revolutionary movement although they
are increasing contradictions with the U.S. They have this
tendency because the people’s discontent is rising at home, so that political
control is unstable and the conditions for people’s war are growing. Needless
to say, it takes a certain period of time for the people’s war to be waged
against U.S. and Japanese imperialism and IMF in the Southeast Asian countries.
In the first place, it is required to reestablish strong vanguard parties
which arm themselves with Marxism- Leninism, inherit the positive and negative
lessons of the people’s war and link up with the broad masses.
Nevertheless, the conditions for people’s war are steadily growing.
This is for the first time since the 1970s when the Communist Party of
China submitted to the Nixon Doctrine and turned to a pro-U.S. line and
when the communist parties in the Southeast Asian countries and the armed
forces under their leadership collapsed except for some in the Philippines
and others. In the Philippines, the communist party and the
people’s army have recovered mass bases lost in the 1980s because of “left”
opportunism.
This was achieved through the rectification movement
under the circumstances of rising anti-U.S. feeling, wavering political
control and growing conditions for people’s war. Under the
guidance of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army
has undertaken tactical offensives in correct proportion to the built or
rebuilt mass base and scared U.S. and Japanese imperialism and the Estrada
government.
The U.S. Marine Corps trained Thai troops in the
street fighting in the last year’s exercise code-named “Cooperation Afloat
Readiness and Training” (CARAT) which was joined by the armed forces of
Southeast Asian countries. U.S. military policemen practiced
a drill for putting down anti-U.S. demonstrations in January this year
in the U.S. military base Camp Carol in south Korea. These
exercises show that the U.S. has adopted a military program of intervening
by force to suppress revolutionary movements and attacking the footholds
and bases of revolutionary forces to annihilate them. The spokesman
of a U.S.
Marine Corps battle institute said, “We will surely
wage street fightings whether we like them or not. We
will put ourselves in the utmost readiness to accomplish our tasks in case
of such a situation.”
The Clinton administration concluded the Acquisition
and Cross- Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with the Japanese government in April,
1996, issued subsequently the “Japan-U.S. Joint Declaration on Security”
and reviewed the “Guidelines for Japan-U.S Defense Cooperation” in September,
1997. It has designed a new war scheme that is the reviewed
Guidelines. It urges the Japanese government to enact a package
of bills on Japan’s logistic support for the U.S. forces in emergencies
around Japan, or establish the wartime legislation, in the coming session
of the Diet (Japanese National Parliament). The ACSA of 1996
is expected to be altered into a wartime ACSA. U.S. imperialism
forms a “chain of military iron links” in Asia by combining the Japan-U.S.
military alliance based on the bilateral security treaty with other military
alliances with south Korea, Southeast Asian countries and Australia.
It conducts bilateral and multilateral military exercises in various parts
of the Asia-Pacific region.
The main military agreements which remain in force
in Asia-Pacific are: the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty; the U.S.-South Korea
Mutual Defense Treaty; the Pacific Security Pact or ANZUS (New Zealand
seceded practically from it in 1986); the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense
Treaty; the Southeast Asia Treaty (Its organization SEATO was dissolved
in 1977 and it exists merely as a treaty); and the agreement on U.S.- Pakistan
cooperation. Other military agreements in which the U.S. is
not involved directly are the defense agreement among the U.K., Australia,
New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia and the security agreement between
Australia and Indonesia.
Among these countries in the Asia-Pacific region,
it is only Japan and south Korea where U.S. military bases are located
(45,500 and 36,400 military personnel respectively). So, the
U.S. has concluded the Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines which
allows the entry into any Philippine port of U.S. warships to embark and
disembark armed troops, civilian personnel, military aircraft, equipment
and supplies for joint military exercises and other activities.
The U.S. uses the ACSA in place of military bases to form practically a
collective military support network which enables it to receive logistic
support, military supplies and services whenever and wherever it needs
for its operations. Actually, the U.S. has signed the ACSA
with Japan, south Korea, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
This is a part of the entire world-wide network of the ACSA which the U.S.
has established with nearly 20 countries.
In addition, the U.S. has made agreements with
its allies on access to military facilities, joint exercises and prepositioning.
After the U.S. was compelled to give up its military
bases in the Philippines, it made agreements with the Philippines, Singapore,
Malaysia and Indonesia on access to airports, seaports and other facilities.
It also signed with Singapore a “memorandum on the use of Singaporean
military facilities by the U.S. forces” in November, 1990.
On the basis of this memorandum, the U.S. Navy
has been able to redeploy its supply units, formerly stationed in the Subic
base in the Philippines, to Singapore and repair and supply its warships
there.
The U.S. made another agreement with Singapore
in January this year, an agreement that allows the U.S. warships including
aircraft carriers to enter the new Changi naval base in the east of the
city which is under construction and will be completed in 2000.
A new bilateral agreement was signed in March, according to which the Singaporean
forces can receive training in the U.S. in handling refueling tanker aircraft.
The U.S. and Malaysia have a forum for bilateral
drill and consultation which was established in 1984. They
have carried out their mutual military cooperation through this forum,
and concluded an agreement on joint military exercises of land and sea
forces in January, 1997.
The U.S. has established the prepositioning system.
It means that heavy weapons like tanks or missiles, drinking water, food
and ammunition which require much time for transportation are previously
loaded on the marine prepositioning ships and are sent directly on the
spot in case of emergency to join with marines who are airlifted later.
Used as “mobile arsenals” in place of military
bases, these Marine prepositioning ships are stationed in Saipan (western
Pacific), Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean) and Singapore.
This is a “chain of military iron links” formed
by U.S. imperialism.
The Japan-U.S. military alliance based on the
mutual security treaty, as well as the U.S. bases in Japan which are the
military core in the alliance play the key role in this chain.
The U.S. and Japanese imperialists take new steps to strengthen their bilateral
alliance and build up the U.S. bases in Japan in connection with the military
situation in the whole Asia.
The U.S. naval base in Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture,
for example, has become the home port of a U.S. amphibious assault ship
Belleau Wood, while the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka is used as the home
port of 11 main warships of the U.S. Naval Seventh Fleet including aircraft
carrier Independence. The Yokosuka base contains the headquarters
of attack nuclear submarines of the U.S. Naval Fifth Fleet which cover
the Persian Gulf and escort Independence. The U.S. base in
Hiroshima is composed of three armories in Kawakami, Akizuki and Hiro which
belong to the Akizuki U.S. weapons battalion. This base has
the biggest storage capacity in the East. The headquarters
of the U.S. Armed Forces in Japan is placed in the U.S. base in Yokota,
Tokyo metropolis which also works as transportation center of the U.S.
forces in the Asia-Pacific region. Big transport planes fly
regularly twice a month from the Yokota base to Diego Garcia where prepositioning
ships are on the sea.
The Military Sealift Command (MSC) is one of the
U.S. Navy Commands. It is responsible for sealifting all war materials
of the Department of Defense. It supplies the worldwide-deployed
U.S forces with equipment, ammunition, fuel and daily necessities.
More than 95 percent of what they need in the wartime depend on marine
transportation. Under the MSC, the world is divided into four
regions (IP(J Pacific, Atlantic, Far East and Europe. The MSC
has its headquarters in every region. The Far Eastern headquarters
(MSCFE) is based at Yokohama North Dock and has offices in Okinawa, south
Korea, Diego Garcia and Guam. The U.S. Navy shifted the home
port of a vessel transporting war materials to Diego Garcia, a supply and
relay station to the Middle East, from Guam to Yokohama North Dock in January,
1997. This proves that the U.S. military started to center
its marine transportation on Japan in order to turn Japan to a transportation
base in advance of the new Guidelines.
The new Guidelines is carried out also through
buildup of the U.S. bases in Japan and U.S. military equipment, and their
closer cooperation and integration with the bases of Japan’s Self-Defense
Forces.
For example, there have been schemes of building
a new U.S. on-sea military heliport in Okinawa and extending the U.S. base
in Iwakuni on a large scale. In the case of Iwakuni, the project
is already under way to extend the base by 1.4 times through reclamation
and construct a long runway and such a huge pier as an aircraft carrier
can come alongside.
New and powerful warships and warplanes were deployed
in March this year to the SDF bases as follows: amphibious assault ship
Osumi with landing-craft air-cushion (LCAC) aboard and minesweeper tender
Bungo to the Maritime SDF Kure base, Hiroshima prefecture; AEGIS missile-guided
destroyer Choukai to the Sasebo base as the fourth one for the MSDF; and
two airborne warning and command system (AWACS) planes to the Air SDF base
in Hamamatsu, Sizuoka prefecture for the first time in the history of the
SDF. Both of the AEGIS warships and the AWACS planes called
“flying command” are needed for the Theater Ballistic Missile Defense system
which the U.S. is pushing and are directly linked to the U.S. military
information and communications network.
The Japanese government announced in June this
year that it would not make any reduction in its “consideration fund” for
paying part of the cost of stationing the U.S. troops in Japan, by appropriating
about 250 billion yen in the budget for fiscal 1999, almost the same amount
as the previous year. If we add to this amount the expenses
that the Japanese government should shoulder as obligation stemming from
the bilateral security treaty, it already spends more than 64 billion yen
(as of fiscal 1997) for the cost of the U.S. forces stationed in Japan.
Japan’s payment for the cost of supporting the
U.S. military activities will increase because the new Guidelines will
increase use of the SDF bases by the U.S. forces, obligate the SDF to transport
them and allow them to utilize civilian facilities like airports, seaports,
docks and so on.
A Japan-south Korea consultation on security policy
was held in Seoul in June this year for the first time. It
was designed to strengthen the military collaboration among the U.S, Japan
and south Korea along the new Guidelines. The U.S. steps up
the combination between its forces stationed in south Korea and the local
forces. The command of the U.S. Army VIII Corps stationed in
south Korea was changed into the field army-type Army Structure Corps Command
(ASCC) same as the III Corps in the U.S. mainland and the VII Corps in
Europe, in order to increase the effectiveness of the combat power and
the operation capability in case of emergencies. In correspondence
with this, the south Korean armed forces have taken measures to make joint
operations with the U.S. forces more efficiently. The south
Korean Defense Ministry revealed a five-year program of defense reforms
in July this year. One of the important reforms is to consolidate
the three armies into two and the tree commands of the land, sea and air
forces into one, and centralize the intelligence.
This is the “chain of military iron links” which
the U.S. has formed and tries to strengthen in Asia with its military alliance
with Japan as key.
There are sharpening contradictions and fights
between U.S. imperialism and peoples in the Asian counties while the danger
of another war is deepening. In Asia, it is an important task
to build solidarity and joint struggles among peoples in Japan and other
countries against the domination and war scheme of U.S. imperialism on
the basis of proletarian internationalism. #