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"YOU can see the disaster that disintegration brought to the former countries of the Soviet Union," Fidel Castro said on 29 September, marking the 50th anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China, "a disintegration allowing anyone -- basically the United States -- to come running to invest and establish its hegemony, its domination and its possession of the basic resources of those former republics, mainly natural gas and petroleum."
Referring to China's principled approach to Hong Kong and Macao, and the prospects for China-Taiwan relations, the legendary Cuban leader warned that when many people -- divided, he said, by borders, flags and anthems -- are fighting for integration, now is not the time for such a break-up. "Respect peoples! Respect their territorial integrity!", he declared in affirmation of China's chosen path.
Buying up Lithuania
Barely a month later and a telling demonstration of that logic is being played out in an all but forgotten, yet sensitively placed country in the Baltic -- Lithuania, once part of the Soviet Union. News of the resignation of its Prime Minister Rolandas Paksas on 27 October went virtually unreported.
Not so remarkable in these times perhaps (he lasted six months in the job), but for the fact that he lost a struggle to resist a US takeover and privatisation of its economy. His followed the resignations of two ministers, for economics and for finance, about a week earlier. Both were against signing an agreement with US company Williams International (WIC) which has taken almost two years to finalise.
Williams, which operates in 29 countries of Asia, Latin America and Europe, now has a commanding stake in the main oil and gas industry, the key mainstay of Lithuania's economy. Paksas opposed the sale of the state-owned Mazeikiai Nafta and its subsidiaries, and the contract conditions laid down by Williams. Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus broke off his Canada visit to replace Paksas with deputy speaker Andrius Kubilius just two days later.
Russian energy firm Lukoil had earlier given guarantees that six million tons of crude would be piped on the basis of a fifty-fifty partnership in running Lithuania's largest refinery. That ended when it transpired that Williams were favoured by the Lithuanian government. Initially, the US company was to receive $650m in loans, while Williams demanded that Lithuania pump $350m capital into the plant.
Opposition had a limited effect, but there is a groundswell of unpopularity with privatisation. Former Premier Paksas' objection to Williams is not only linked to its pressure, which he said would strain the country's financial resources, but also to an IMF agreement, which he maintains will be put at risk. "I disapprove of the contract and the terms of the deal as it is now. I do not want and cannot be responsible for the consequences of this decision."
The most overt demands in the deal, which was signed last Friday have, for the time being, been held back. WIC is to have a 33 per cent stake, with most of the rest of the shares being held by the government. The capital input from Lithuania has been lowered and staggered.
But that still changes little. It masks the crux of the matter: Williams wanted control, in one form or another, and it is expected to get it and take over the refinery's management. It is clear, with Russian partnership interests out of the way, that dominance has been secured. Russian crude deliveries are fine, to be encouraged; Russian oil interests in running the refinery is not.
The Williams company president John C Bumgarner now wants as many Russian oil compani es as possible to start supplying Mazeikiai as the infrastructure is uprated over several years.
But his real purpose is strategic: Not only is it about price control and market share in a world glutted with oil, it is also the act that core resources are to be re-oriented to Western demand. Hence: "The pipeline running from Butinge [oil terminal on the Baltic Sea] to Mazeikiai joins West and East. If for some reason Russian supplies are cut, we would find other suppliers to sell crude to Mazeikiai."
President Adamkus claimed to be opposed to some of the provisions in the agreement. But he argued, nonetheless, that the consequences would be dire for Lithuania not to go ahead with the deal. Lithuanians, meanwhile, are asking but not being heard: what is to happen to their petrol prices?
Even so, the mere possibility that he may waver, according to Respublika reports, brought swift action from Williams when crunch time came last Friday.
En route to sign the deal, Lithuanian news sources said Williams chief Bumgarner stopped off at Frankfurt to cancel a money transfer to Mazeikiai. President Adamkus was then said to have contacted Bumgarner and assured him of sup port; Bumgarner dully arrived at Lithuania's capital Vilnius to sign. The funds flowed immediately aftr.
Such is the "high diplomacy" of post-Soviet subservience and Western business muscle dangling dazzling carrots of privati sation dressed up as technology transfer and cutting edge competitiveness. Lithuania is just one example of many that is being drawn into the vortex of Western interests and hardly rates a few lines in the press these days for its pains, just like its sister Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia.
The country is soon to be held in a vice between US corporate privatisation and control, and the IMF's stringent loan conditions. An IMF team is expected there as we go to press. If ever repaid, it will be done so by the majority of Lithuanians now rearing the "benefits" of US "recognition" since 1940.
The US attitude to the Baltic states of Lalvia, Estonia and Lithuania, demonstrate an historical precedent of undisguised imperialist ambition that couldn't be clearer. Forgotten now, but significant in the light of what Williams is doing in Lithuania, is the fact that the US never recognised the Baltic states as part of the Soviet Union.
In January 1998, the three Baltic states and the US signed a "charter of partnership". The charter says the US "never recognised the forcible incorporation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the USSR in 1940, but rather regards their statehood [to be] uninterrupted since the establishment of their independence, a policy which the United States has restated for five decades."
And the "principles of partnership" stated in the charter -- of "independence, sovereignly, territorial integrity and security" -- which their Soviet past allegedly failed to offer, is somehow now guaranteed, in the case of Lithuania, by a US energy company and the lure of "incorporation" into Nato?
Conflict in the shadows
Fidel's point objectively identifies the growing danger that disintegration poses in its different forms, as the claws of US imperialism sharpen. This is clear in all the former Soviet Republics, especially where major resources are to be found.
In a very short time we have seen countless changes in former Soviet Republics leaders, along with Russia and eastern Europe, to the point where most would be hard put to remember any of their names, or be able to attribute any particular quality to any among the "high office turnover."
The entire region of the former Soviet Union, especially from the Caspian, the Baltic, and on through to the Balkans, is increasingly pockmarked with unresolved post-Soviet, simmering and major open conflict. In the fighting between Russia and Chechenia, Russian defence minister igor Sergeyev said last weekend that their aim is to restore "constitutional order. " Yet constitutional disorder has obviously been the hallmark of Russia itself for several years under President Boris Yeltsin.
Attack in Armenia
None of the former Republics are free of conflict for very long. We learned that, again, with the attack in the Armenian parliament, in which the countly's leaders were killed just over a week ago.
The nationalist student leader of the gunmen, Nairi Hounanyan, said he wanted media access to tell the world that this was a necessary act in order "to stop the destruction of our country", and that it was a warning that leaders should "serve the people."
Russia is generally characterised in the negative now, while the former Republics barely get a mention unless disaster strikes on a big enough scale. This is an inevitable irony, given that Western Cold War propaganda presented just such an image -- supposedly a reflection of the realities of communism.
Of course, no effort is needed to construct a negative image today. It is more a question of how to limit too negative an image, not so much because the West might be blamed for what is now happening, but because it has a place in the US grand scheme of domination.
This is a factor very much on the minds ofthe US military. As Lithuania's Premier resigned last week, US Air Force General Ralston, who has been nominated as the next Nato supreme commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia needs increased international "security assistance".
He said Russia's military morale, discipline and cohesion could pose "the added dilemma that as conventional capabilities erode, they will rely more on their nuclear forces." The emphasis is clearly on "security assistance", something increasingly planned for in numerous military manoeuvres around Russia, and in conjunction with Russian forces in the recent past.
This has to be seen in relation to the US Republican war hawks who chalked up some points in the Presidential race by voting down the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But it has also been suggested that the more immediate signing of an amended Conventional Forces in Europe treaty on 19 November in Istanbul, Turkey is a date by which Russia aims to end the war in Chechenia, though that has been denied.
The CFE-Nato "security framework" is increasingly about protecting the West's grip on the oil and gas supply network to Europe. In July 13 countries -- the largest combination yet -- of central Europe, the Caucasus and central Asia met to begin co-ordination of oil and gas supplies to Europe. And an EU task group has since been set up to further consolidate and secure that infrastructure through eastern and central Europe.
Western promise, then the boot goes in
The disintigration factor is at work in eastern and central Europe, but with a definite goal -- albeit very unevenly -- of the incorporation of former socialist states into the established European capitalist sphere. To what extent that becomes fullfledged capitalist integration, has yet to be seen.
In large measure that depends on how well the European Union is able to maintain, in combination, its economic base, in-depth R&D military capacity (now streamlining its increasingly rapid action volunteer based structure), and a fully established government and legal system.
It also depends on how the EU-US linkage unfolds under those pressures. That uneven relationship, periodic clashes over trade interests, and the EU's process of restructuring eastern and central European states, are particular points of strain.
Both intended and unintended consequences, of the last 10-12 years in particular, are objectively causing the consolidation of Europe to drag out. This impels the US to take more direct action in its relations on the economic and military fronts in dealing with Europe. In a sense, it represents a phase two Cold War position.
US involvement in Europe is, in part, designed to ensure that EU "security" and its capitalist "environment" moves on with its aim of privatising, creating Western administrations and preparing the ground for military realignment -- eventually for all eastern European nations to be within Nato.
In the process, any forces resisting the re-creation of diminished eastern statelets, and any of them attempting to retain vestiges of real independence, have been neutralised. As we saw in Yugoslavia, that was the worst case of capitalism-equals-war to date: bombing, privatisation, and then subservient admission to the Western club.
The human and material loss of redivision, described as "freedom"; the war and it's consequences combined with the costs since 1989 of moves to incorporate eastern Europe -- all of this continues to fragment what remains of the ideological basis of the socialist past.
The cost of the capitalist restructuring into the European Union has already been borne by millions of workers in the West. Social benefits and allowances, public spending, jobs and pensions, trade union powers, and civil and legal rights have all been severely curtailed. It harbours as yet unknown reactions to come if the levelling down process across Europe persists.
Regional disparities in the West, as a result of weaker, limited commodity and natural resource based economies surrendering to the Euro market, have grown between and within nations. And ethnic break-up is fuelling racism and fascism. This is not something that in the West is deemed a problem for business progress.
But the questions are obvious: For how long will the majority of people bearing the burden of those costs continue to pay for this in lives and living standards? Will current eastern European generations choose to ignore or entirely reject the meaning of the immediate past indefinitely?
Western propaganda tells us in more and more strident anti-Communist terms, that socialism is a low, spying, murdering police-state that never did and never will work in Europe. The same agencies that tell us this, omit to mention in whose interests this barrage has turned out to benefit.
Many therefore realise the link between being told that nothing of past socialism worked, yet since they were told that present-day capitalism would bring riches, the opposite -- and worse -- has resulted.
Instead, they have reaped massive jobs losses, inadequate or no housing, paltry social security benefits, exposure to conflict, racist fascist violence, bombing and up-rooting? Whatever conclusion new generations come to, they certainly now know who kicked them after the carpet was pulled from under them.
At some stage in the process of EU development, there are going to be more militant demands for change that will aim to reign in capitalist power in order to rejuvenate the social basis and address peoples needs. In that there would be an increasingly common identity across Europe.
But we can also perhaps see that China's role in the world today, as it develops economic links, and as the socialist countries continue to defend and advance their interests, is a force for harnessing a restructured global economic democracy.
China: path of integration
China's more equitable approach is clear from its growing role in combining hard-headed economic growth with expanding priorities in social programmes and infrastructure. This is explained in a way that shows one is dependent on, and integrally linked, to the other.
Because of the balancing of those priorities through China's international trade, it demonstrates in practice a way forward away from human exploitation, territorial plunder and wars within and beyond its national boundaries.
They have and have had their problems, but the prospect now of leaping through, not only into, the 21st century is an unparalleled collective ambition.
And this is being achieved in the context of today's political re-assessment of the recent past, of efforts to create greater economic democracy and improve international trade standards, and of deepening scientific and technological innovation and production.
It represents the essence of their long-term liberation -- the real bedrock of human rights -- that is being created in a developing country. A far cry from India, where the population trend, mid-2lst century, is presently projected to overtake China's.
That has to be judged against the relatively smooth manner of Hong Kong's transition, amid China's so far successful efforts at preventing the financial crisis that hit Asia from undermining its markets or seriously affecting China's growth rate.
It is an important indication of how the recklessness of Western capitalism can be resisted, even at China's present stage of development. And that process is headed by the Communist Party of China.
Such a dynamic is anathema to the West. And it is chietly this that capitalism is ultimately opposed to, because it presents a major obstacle to the endless quest of increasing private profit for a powerful international minority of ruling class interests, in the longer term.
It fully perceives the potential change in the world strategic economic balance. This is what it intensely dislikes, and why US war hawks are making more and more propaganda noises about China's supposed growing superpower status.
And that increasingly arrogant posturing is intensifying in the West. The struggle against international privatisation, for trade union and civil rights, must therefore lead to social revolution if this is to fundamentally change.