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The problems posed by Puccini’s ‘Madame Butterfly’

Hari Kumar discusses “Madame Butterfly” and how to grapple with charges of cultural appropriation in opera.


25/08/2023

I was lucky recently that a relative gave me tickets to the Breganza festival to see ‘Madame(a) Butterfly’ by Giacomo Puccini. This stimulated thoughts on recent views on ‘Butterfly’. For example, that of Oliver Mears, the director at the Royal Opera House:

“We’re all very conscious these days that opera and race have had a complicated relationship and history. There is always a risk, when a Western opera house is portraying a different culture, that it can make missteps.”

After the 1941 attack by the Japanese air force on Pearl Harbor, the opera was banned in the United States until 1946. This suggests it depicted the “enemy Japanese” as having humanity and high morals. And yet: 

“The opera has long been criticized for its portrait of Asian women as exotic and submissive, and the use of exaggerated makeup and stereotypical costumes in some productions has drawn fire.”[1]

This article has three aims: Firstly, to consider Puccini and how he came to write it; Secondly to place it in relation to historical reality; finally, to consider charges of cultural appropriation and stigmatisation.

Giacomo Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) 

Puccini was born in Italy into a family known for producing composers. He had early fame and was considered the operatic heir of Giuseppe Verdi – the great nationalist composer. Stylistically Puccini was influenced by two strands. Firstly the late realistic ‘verismo’ school. This was: 

“a movement in Italian literature and opera (literally, ‘realism’).. influenced by the naturalism of Émile Zola. Verismo was introduced to Italy through the prose writings of Giovanni Verga (1840–1922), (and) his short story set among Sicilian peasants… an alternative to ubiquitous historicist settings of Italian opera.”[2]

Another motivating force for Puccini was internationalism, in the form of Art Nouveau. Applied to Puccini, he displayed in Butterfly: 

“an eclectic selection of national styles… Puccini had read voraciously about Japanese culture, had several meetings with the wife of the Japanese Ambassador and attended performances by the Imperial Japanese Theatrical Company… He incorporated a number of authentic Japanese folk songs into the finished score, made liberal use of the pentatonic scale and employed exotic percussion instruments, including the tam-tam and Japanese bells.”[3]

For his efforts, he was vituperated by right-wing artists alleging he was not nationalist enough.

Supposedly “left wing” artists also criticized him, such as F. T. Marinetti’s Futurists, who in later years became closely linked to the fascist regime.[4]  Puccini himself appeared mostly to have had little interest in broader politics. However, in 1919 he was paid to write the music for a poem by Fausto Salvatori in praise of Italy’s war victories during WW1 – Inno a Roma (Hymn to Rome). Puccini wrote about the poem that it was “a right load of rubbish”.[5]  The music and hymn was not intended for the fascist movement, but they adopted it. It is also true that Puccini hailed Mussolini after the March on Rome, writing that “Mussolini was undoubtedly sent by God for the salvation of Italy.”[6]

In 1923 Puccini met Mussolini twice, seeking support for a national theater. This was before the fascists took control of parliament by subverting the 1924 general election, by when Puccini had died.

The opera Madame Butterfly

Puccini’s mid-career opera Madame Butterfly was completed in 1904. It relies on the world of ‘small things’ and “moments of emotion and pathos”. It originates from a play by David Belasco based on a story by John Luther Long.[7] Its story is simple – if venerably old. Madame Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San) is a 15 year old geisha, who from poverty is sold into a ‘marriage’ with an American naval officer – Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. But she falls desperately in love with him, before being abandoned with a son. She waits three years in poverty, believing in his return for love. He does indeed return, but it is with his American wife in order to take the son. Butterfly gives up the boy for his future. She then commits suicide by hari-kari with a knife. 

Puccini was struck by the doomed heroine, whose dilemma is the heart of the opera. Underlying the tragedy is the ‘collision of cultures’:

“The underlying theme at the core of the tragic plight of Puccini’s geisha heroine, Madama Butterfly, or Cio-Cio-San, is the collision of cultures… or the incompatibility of Eastern and Western culture, forms the underlying engine of all of those dramas: the result of the white race’s arrogant superiority. The heroines belong to non-European races and fall in love with a white man, essentially offending their own racial customs and traditions; and all of their lovers desert them to return to their native lands.”[8]

Is the story of ‘Butterfly’ historically accurate?

The Japanese economy was forced open by the USA’s Commander Perry in 1853 with his armed naval incursion threatening destruction and demanding the right for trading. ‘Butterfly’, is set in that era. This ushered in the changes resulting in the Meiji “Restoration” dynasty (1868-1912). The USA had been eyeing Japan for some time as:

“Japan’s strategic location between California and China made it especially appealing because it could serve as a coaling station for merchant steamships on route to and from China; and for whaling.”

Perry’s kick was part of a chain of events that was to transcend feudalism. As Marx pointed out: 

“Japan, with its purely feudal organisation of landed property and its developed petite culture, gives a much truer picture of the European middle ages than all our history books, dictated as these are, for the most part, by bourgeois prejudices.”

Four years after Perry’s mission broke the Japanese “isolation”, USA President Franklin Pierce signed a commercial treaty establishing formal trade relations. Shortly, an American naval force was based in Nagasaki Japan, including intelligence surveillance of the Chinese coast. This had huge social repercussions:

“To further encourage friendship with its European and American allies, the Japanese allowed foreigners to avail themselves of Japanese women by providing them with the same legal rights accorded Japanese men: foreigners could enter into temporary marriages with Japanese women with a convenient arrangement whereby the marriage could be terminated on the expiration of the “husband’s” leave.”[9]

Pinkerton, Puccini’s American character, is an expression of Perry-ism. In the opera, Pinkerton brags of his American machoism – with corresponding racist, imperialist toasts: 

“Pinkerton’s aria, “Dovunque al mondo lo Yankee vagabondo” (“All over the world, on business or pleasure, the Yankee scorns danger”), is a sort of male chauvinist ditty about macho American males who travel the world picking, choosing, and conquering women… Pinkerton concludes with a toast to the folks at home, “And to the day of my real marriage to an American wife.”[10]

This aria can be heard as sung by Jose Carreras; or by Richard Tucker with the Metropolitan Orchestra conducted by Max Roach. In the second version, note the opening phrase with its American echo. The predictable, but nonetheless tragic end of Butterfly’s suicide is heralded by a ‘motif’ of a pentatonic theme. Here as seen performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under conductor Mark Elder and as sung by Jana Smitkova (at 2 hr 25 minutes) from 1987. 

Actually the story of Butterfly was repeated endlessly – up to the Vietnam War and beyond. It rings true. But what of the wider political frame? Even there the story of Butterfly also mirrors real events.   

Marx described Japan as a feudal state. But by the 1850s it had entered a stagnation as comparatively progressive pro-democratic forces in Japan wished to further harness the potential of society for profits. By 1869, decrees were passed to abolish feudalism.

How do Marxists view Japan’s ‘Meiji Restoration’? 

Gavin Walker describes how the small warring feudatories had intensified exploitation of the peasantry, raising many peasant revolts:

“One of the motors for the development of the modern Japanese state was the intense agrarian struggle that existed at the end of the Tokugawa system of provincial city-states. That usually came in the form of peasant revolts, which increased radically in number between 1850 and the early 1860s, leading up to the Meiji Restoration of 1868.”

The problem faced by the ruling classes of feudal Japan by mid 19th century was to catch up to the development of Western capital:

“Much of the economic difficulties that Japan experienced during the Taisho period were directly related to its status as a late developer… the oligarchs ruling in the name of the Meiji emperor launched the Meiji reforms in the 1870s to strengthen Japan militarily enough to oppose external pressures from more advanced capitalist countries – ‘to expel the barbarians’.”[11]

This had to be done fast if the Japanese ruling class was to keep power and profits, as Walker explains:

“(Japan) compressed its development into a small space of roughly fifty years from 1868 and the Meiji Restoration, which broke the feudal power of the old Shogunal government and established the route toward a modern state in Japan, to the 1930s. Over the space of fifty or sixty years, Japan passed through the stages of being a dominated or peripheral country with a late transition from feudalism to becoming a very rapidly industrializing country, particularly in the 1880s and 1890s, when enormous investment by the state in munitions manufacturing and heavy industry prompted … modern Japan, which was the turn to imperialism.”

The concrete steps taken were thorough:

“massive industrialization under the slogan ‘fukoku kyohei’ (“enrich the country and strengthen the military”), its goal to match the achievements that England and France had required more than a century to produce.”[12]

“The 1868 Charter Oath eliminated the class restraints characteristic of the centralized feudalism of the Tokugawa period… and erased all legal arrangements that could be identified with feudal ‘backwardness’. The han (feudal domains) were abolished, and administrative prefectures were established, a single Imperial military force… and a conscription law destroying the former division of labour between samurai and commoner; … a single uniform currency, and a major reform in the system of agricultural land taxation..”[13]

However the Meiji Restoration of an Emperor was a sham – by which I mean that the restoration of an emperor to full power was simply to disguise the new rule – of a new ruling class aiming to modernize. The most powerful feudal rulers agreed to re-empower the previously displaced emperor. They then used war to force unwilling feudal potentates to do the same, erecting a constitutional monarchy, but with a theocratic mystical facet of an all-powerful Emperor:

“When, in the Meiji Restoration, the feudal government was toppled, one looked to the authority of the emperor for an ideal of national unity beyond the feudal regional subdivisions. The leaders of the new regime tried to secure their despotic power by giving to the emperor the position of an absolute ruler with spiritual authority and political power. … the maintenance of their despotic power and the stimulation of the free activity of the people, was solved, in the Constitution by divinizing the emperor and making him the supreme arbiter of the rights and duties of the people and, on the other proclaiming that every citizen can accede, according to his abilities, to any position except that of emperor. In this way, 1889 saw the birth of the Emperor System. This … combined a constitutional monarchy … (with) a theocratic system, whereby the authority of the state position to dominate also the inner mind of the people in the name of the emperor as a religious Absolute.”[14]

The class character of the state was that of a dominant capitalism:

“Under the guidance of such a state, Japanese capitalism was driven on along the lines of interest of big business and big industry and on the basis of a landlord system of land ownership. However, in this system, the social and economic antagonism of landowners and tenants, capitalists and workers did not appear except as private disputes. The opposition was palliated and disguised ; and, thus, the interests of the independent producers, the tenants, and the workers were, in fact, crushed.”[15]

The character of the state was the origin of a fundamental divide in Japanese communism. One side – the Rono faction – argued that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was completed. The tasks remaining were now those of socialism. The other side was the Koza faction – which argued the revolution had been incomplete. Both sides agreed that the Meiji Restoration targeted feudalism.  

Reverting to Puccini – Should “Butterfly” be amended to modernize it?

While unfashionable in today’s youth, we will not try to argue the virtues of operatic music. However, most opera commentators appear to agree that Madame Butterfly’s music remains captivating. But many people also argue that it reinforces the views of submissiveness of Japanese women. Some have proposed to change the ending so that Butterfly walks out of the final meeting with Pinkerton alive, with her child. 

Yet maybe this ignores the reality that a “Butterfly” then had only three free choices – of which her final choice was to turn her back on the two more submissive options:

“When she faces the realization that she has been abandoned, she faces three alternatives: first, marriage to Prince Yamadori; second, resumption of her former geisha profession, and third, death — her most courageous choice. It is Butterfly’s decision to resolve her conflict through self-annihilation that transforms the story into a grave tragedy that elevates her to the status of a true tragic heroine.”[16]

Another artistic question frequently raised is whether the art of one nation can be expressed fairly, or even adequately – by those not of that nation? For example in “Butterfly’ – should only Japanese or “Asian” performers present it, including Madame Butterfly? 

Speaking personally, this is simplistic and should be rejected in favour of individual approaches. For example, playing blackface evokes the racism of the deep South in the 19th century and is not performed with respect for Black Americans. In Butterfly, the portrayal is of humanity and respect for a culture. While Puccini was unlikely to have fully thought it through, his opera shows an empathy for the suffering of the ‘little character’, the woman so wretchedly treated. 

There are other considerations too – of the skills that a performer needs to have. In Madame Butterfly, the evocation of the despair and the humanity of the themes, is enhanced by the degree of musical accomplishment. If that is present, it perhaps may trump other considerations of the nationality of the singer.

For this viewer, the opera as it stands confirms several things. For example, the imperialist relations of the USA to Japan, the crumbling of feudal society in Japan after Commander Perry’s arrival, the absence of independent rights for women which still endures. Besides which it is a moving depiction, in musical and artistic terms of human – mainly women’s – suffering. 

To conclude: Modernizing the opera – for example changing the ending – is of course a legitimate choice for a director or artist. But the opera in its traditional form is both a true reflection of history, and has an artistic integrity that has proven powerful to audiences.

Citations

[1] Javier C. Hernández, “Reimagining ‘Madame Butterfly,”; July 24, 2023; NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/24/arts/music/madame-butterfly-asian-creators.html

[2] Dennis Kennedy (Ed); The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance; Oxford, 2003.

[3] Wilson, Alexandra, The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity, Cambridge University Press, 2001; p. 114.

[4] Wilson,.  p. 168; 171.

[5] Wilson,; 2001; p. 187.

[6] Wilson,; 2001; p. 193.

[7] Fisher, Burton D., Puccini’s Madama Butterfly: Opera Classics Library Series, Opera Journeys Publishing, 2001; p. 12-13.

[8] Burton D., 2001; p.15-16.

[9] Fisher, 2001; p.17.

[10] Fisher; 2001; p.17.

[11] Germaine A. Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan, Princeton 1986; p.5.

[12] Huston Ibid; p.5.

[13] Huston Ibid; p.5.

[14] Yoshitomo Takeuchi “La Philosophie Japonaise Contemporaine”; Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1974, Vol. 28, No. 107/108 (1/2), pp. 49-68.

[15] Takeuchi, Ibid.

[16] Fisher., Ibid; 2001; p.14.

The Corporate Battering Ram Against State Sovereignty

Better known as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement System


17/08/2023

In 1960 Ghana became the first colonised African nation to declare independence. Kwame Nkrumah was Ghana’s first president and a pioneering thinker and intellectual, contributing to the foundations of the theory of Neocolonialism. As more countries won independence (the UN grew from 51 Nation States to 144 between 1945-1974), new governments, such as that in Ghana and in Tanzania under its first president Julius Nyerere in 1964, began to enact their political programs.

Michael Manley arrived as President of Jamaica in the early 1970s. Manley wanted to utilise the numerical advantage the new postcolonial nations had in the UN, and together with Nyerere, Nkrumah and other heads of nations, they proposed the New International Economic Order (NIEO) which was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1974. This, among other things, secured sovereignty over natural resources.

“The first generation of nationalist independence leaders like Nyerere and Nkrumah had already learned a painful lesson regarding the limits of sovereignty. Resource-rich ‘independent’ countries still found the rules of international trade weighted against them.”

-Kojo Karam, Uncommon Wealth

Nkrumah, Nyerere and Manley saw federations as a way to combat and fix the structure of the economies of their and other countries, which had been built during the colonial period to exclusively serve metropoles; export oriented economies, whose main function and corresponding infrastructure existed for the extraction of raw materials. These raw materials were to be exported and processed outside their country of origin, reducing the need for infrastructure. Early attempts (and many later ones) to reshape their economies to serve the peoples of their respective countries were thwarted and systematically put down in many ways, ranging from bureaucratic and legal to outright military sabotage and (re-) invasion. Any hope of the NIEO functioning as planned were struck down by Thatcher and Reagan’s administrations.

The economic order formed during the colonial period was not to be challenged or changed in any way. In response to the solidarity and organising happening between decolonised and decolonising nations, the former colonial powers and global capital (in lockstep) acted in different ways to maintain the status quo ante and keep these economies subservient to those in power in the Global North. Much of this organising happened in the by then 20 year old World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

It was during this first phase of decolonisation (1940s around the war) that the Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank and the IMF) were set up. The World Bank was established to give loans to countries who are unable to qualify for commercial loans. The first loan the World bank issued was in 1947 to France to help reconstruct after the destruction of the second world war. In 1948, Chile received the first ‘Development Loan’ to help the country “grow its economy and better integrate” – no prizes for guessing what integration means in this context. Fast forward to 2002, and Chile receives a loan for the third ‘Road Sector Project’, partly to aid the maintenance of the roads financed under the first two projects, but also to “support the government’s privatisation efforts”.

Loans come with conditions and when there is no choice as to whether one accepts the loan or not, conditions become demands.

The rest of the article will focus on one aspect of the enormous legal framework built into the development industry. It is known as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system. One very destructive tool from the neocolonial toolbox.

Investor-State Dispute Settlement System

In December 2022, an Air Tanzania plane was seized in the Netherlands. Dutch authorities were acting on behalf of Swedish company EcoDevelopment, to whom the Tanzanian government owes $165 million dollars.

-The Investment Dispute Settlement Navigator entry of the EcoDevelopment vs Tanzania dispute

The company brought a case against Tanzania, suing for losses in profit, after the Tanzanian government revoked a land title for a sugar project on grounds of “concerns over the impact on local communities and a wildlife sanctuary.”

The case was heard at World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and came down in favour of the Swedes, declaring that Tanzania must pay EcoDevelopment for loss of potential profit. Such legal action is made possible through the Swedish-Tanzanian Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). One day after Tanzania put forward an appeal to annul the decision, the Dutch authorities seized the plane. The plane, incidentally, was released about a month ago.

This sounds absurd upon first reading.

Investor-State Dispute Settlement system is a legal mechanism written into many trade agreements and treaties to settle disputes occurring between nation states and companies. An investor from one signatory state can sue the other state for laws or regulations which may negatively affect its expected profits or investment potential. If the investors win, they will be awarded compensation in a binding arbitration tribunal. Cases are heard in one of two places, either at the United Nations Centre for International Trade Related Arbitration Law or at ICSID at the World Bank.

If the country disagrees with the ruling and refuses to pay, it may have its assets seized internationally. Even before there has been a chance to appeal, as we saw in the case of EcoDevelopment vs Tanzania.

Let us give one more particularly heinous example. In 2007 the two Italian owners of Finstone Ltd, a mining company in South Africa, brought a case against the South African government over the so-called ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ (BEE) policy. The BEE requires or offers strong incentives for South African companies to have 25% of shares in black ownership. BEE was introduced to redress the deep, persistent structural inequalities caused by the Apartheid regime.

“We are saying that these Italian investors are unfairly discriminated against in relation to BEE investors in South Africa,” said lawyer Peter Leon on the behalf of the investors. They sued the South African government for 266 million euros. The South African government settled for an unknown amount.

The BITs under which these suits were offered to the South African Government should be viewed with particular scepticism; South Africa emerging from the Apartheid era having suffered economic isolation and decimation was in desperate need to reintegrate into the global economy and to kick-start its own.

Often, these BITS or Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have so-called sunset clauses written into them. This means that if a given government chooses to revoke one of these agreements – which often contain far more than the ISDS clause – then one must wait 5-10 years before it loses its effect. The idea being that, in this time a more favourable government can come into power and undo the undoing.

An industry has formed around these disputes, and financial institutions will offer loans to companies against winnings to pursue ISDS cases. In cases where a country does not possess a BIT or FTA containing an ISDS clause, one can set up a shell company in a country which does hold such a clause and take legal action from that country.

At the time of writing 37% have resulted in favour of the state, 28% in favour of the investor and 19% settled. The remaining cases were discontinued or thrown out. The full breakdown and other stats can be found here. However, there is no ‘winning’ one of these disputes for a state. The legal proceedings are extremely expensive and legal fees have only been awarded in less than half of cases where the state won.

In Claire Provost’s and Mathew Kennard’s new book ‘Silent Coup’ the full story and history can be found, detailing celebrated German economist Herman Josef Abs (on the board of Deutsche Bank during the NZ and negotiator of the post war settlement with Israel – given this job by Adenauer) and the origins of ISDSs. In short, Abs’ proposed a legal framework in response to several events – such as the Mosaddegh’s nationalisation programme in Iran which saw the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s assets seized in 1951 – as a way to protect former colonialist’s assets and property. In its modern form, ISDSs provide legal protection for assets and ‘potential profit’ loss of international investors.

This is all shrouded in secrecy, and it’s very hard to gain access to documents concerning these cases. That which makes it to the public arena is collected and reported by the ‘ISDS Platform’ and can be found at the “Investor State Dispute Navigator”.

What can be done?

The discussion around ISDSs is increasing and there is a growing movement for abolishment, or at least for reform. In 2019 the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published a report on reforming the ISDS system. Some of the reforms documented there are promising, but progress is slow:

“The EU is proceeding with plans for establishing a multilateral investment court. Recent EU member States’ bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with third countries include certain procedural improvements, aligned with the EU’s broader investment policy approach. New policy documents have set a timeline for the termination of intra-EU BITs, which will remove access to the ISDS mechanisms contained therein.”

– International Investor Agreement (IIA) Issues Note, UNCTAD 2019

Here in Europe, we must increase the pressure on the EU to push reform further and make it happen faster. In the US however, contradictions are rife. While in the context of the IIA, the US is committed to a “wide spectrum of reforms” to the ISDS agreements in place, the State Department still see the presence of ISDSs as a requirement for economic relations (for example in the “2023 Investment Climate Statement for Zimbabwe”).

Conclusion

These institutions established in the aftermath of the second world war under the auspices of providing vital financial support have become one of the most unchallengeable, Goliath pillars in the international economic neocolonial, neoliberal order. This is what the established development industry is today. It functions to serve corporations. I don’t challenge the hearts of every person working within this system, however, that they can’t or won’t see that the system is causing immeasurable harm and is what empire and colonialism has morphed into today is only possible due to the same white supremacist ideology which existed throughout the colonial period and is a key, if often an invisible, component of the wider neoliberal ideology.

I’m not here to say that the transfer of money from the global north southwards is a terrible thing and should be stopped, exactly the opposite; we need a huge redistribution of wealth extracted and stolen. We need to redress the underdevelopment of Africa by Europe. The ISDS system is a tool actively underdeveloping Africa. We must fight to nullify ISDSs between countries where they are not wanted and to cancel debt incurred.

This is the first of a series of articles by Dominic Bunnett on theleftberlin.com. Future articles will examine how ISDSs play a role in Zimbabwe’s land reform program and debt and how they are crippling efforts to globally fight climate change.

Why did the USA drop its Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? A Remembrance

Contrary to USA mythology, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima did not prevent masses of further US troop deaths. 


09/08/2023

Foreword:

This month marks the anniversary of the USA dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6th) and Nagasaki (August 9th). We should recall that these were dropped when it was quite clear that Japan was defeated and on the verge of accepting Allied war demands to surrender. Contrary to USA mythology, they did not prevent masses of further USA troop deaths.

The real reason to drop the bomb was simply to stop any incursion of the USSR into Japan – as had been previously – and jointly – agreed by the Allies at Yalta.

This article reprises the history. A version was first printed by Alliance ML in 1998.

Prior USSR knowledge about the bomb

As early as March 1942, the Soviet government became aware of the activities in the West towards the bomb. The secret British Maud Report of July 1941 concluded that:

“It will be possible to make an effective uranium bomb which, containing some 25 Lbs (pounds) of active material, would be equivalent as regards destructive effect to 1,800 tons of T.N.T.; and would also release a large quantity of radioactive substances which would make places near to where the bomb exploded dangerous to human life for a long period”.

David Holloway:”Stalin and the Bomb”; New Haven, 1994; p.79

Details were obtained by Anatolii Gorskii (codename Vadim), the NKVD London resident, John Cairncross and Klaus Fuchs, and transmitted to Beria. Details of the Manhattan Project in the USA were also known to the USSR. However these became known during the siege of Stalingrad. Therefore USSR progress to counter the threat was slow.

Allied Agreement on USSR and Japanese relations at Yalta

By February 1945, the imminent defeat of Germany raised joint Allied intervention against Japan. The Yalta meeting took place between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, to draw up plans after the war.

In the section entitled “Agreement Regarding Japan”, it was made clear that after Germany’s surrender (“in two or three months time”), the USSR would enter into war against Japan on the condition that the USSR regained its rights in the border zones with Japan, and was granted the Kurile Islands.

February 11, 1945. USA Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

These claims of the USSR were to “be unquestionably fulfilled after Japan has been defeated.”

President Truman flourishes the new atomic threat – bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki

By the Potsdam (July 1945) meeting of the Allied leaders, the USA had exploded a test device at Alamogordo on July 16th. In the interim Roosevelt had died.

Marshall Zhukov relates a “casual” probing statement of the new US President – Harry Truman, to Stalin that the USA had a “new weapon of unusual destructive force”. To which USSR leaders responded:

“They’re raising the price,” said Molotov.
Stalin gave a laugh, “Let them. We’ll have to.. speed up our work”.

(Holloway; 1994; p. 117)

Obviously Stalin and Molotov understood the implications of Truman’s remark. Soon the USA exploded the first nuclear devices used in warfare. First on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 and then on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945.

The Japanese had been on the verge of surrendering, and had no longer posed a significant military threat. But if the USSR entered the war-theater – as the Yalta accord had agreed – the USA worried that concessions would have to be made to it. Hiroshima was therefore both a pre-emptive strike against the USSR presence in the Japanese-Pacific arena, and a threat for the future post-war realpolitik.

Nonetheless the Soviets entered the Far Eastern war there as they had promised. From August 9th the Red Army attacked the Japanese in Manchuria. Thus the USA did not fully achieve their goal of completely shutting the USSR entry out of the Far eastern war. (Holloway; p.128).

USA possession of the atomic bomb was a potent threat, as both American and Soviet leaders understood. Yuli Khariton, one of the Soviet creators of the bomb said:

“The Soviet Government interpreted Hiroshima as atomic blackmail against the USSR, as a threat to unleash a new even more terrible and devastating war.”

Vladislav Zubok & Pleshakov, Constantine “Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War-From Stalin to Khrushchev”; Cambridge Mass; 1996; p.43

The British Ambassador to the USSR, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr agreed, writing to Foreign Secretary Eden:

“The victory over Germany had made the Soviet leaders confident that national security was at last within their reach.
“Then along came the Atomic bomb.. At a blow the balance which had seemed set and steady was rudely shaken. Russia was baulked by the West when everything seemed to be within her grasp. The three hundred divisions were shorn of much of their value.” (Holloway, p.154).

This atomic possession grounded a new threatening approach of the USA. This was manifested when Truman demanded the “right” of safe entry to any world port they “needed for security”. This threat was specified in Truman’s Navy Day Address (October 27, 1945) announcing “12 Principles” for the USA state:

“Although the US was demobilizing rapidly.. It would still retain the largest Navy in the world, and one of the largest air forces. It would retain the atomic bomb. The US needed this vast peacetime force.”

Resis A: ’Stalin, the Politburo & Onset of the Cold War. 1945-1946″, no.701, Carl Beck papers, Pittsburgh 1988; p. 4.

Truman’s Navy Day speech was an assertive speech that:

“Plainly coupled implicit threat with explicit friendliness”.

Resis; p. 5.

Molotov replied ten days later in a speech to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. He stated that the imperialists were “exploiting the atomic bomb in international affairs”, and predicted the USSR would obtain atomic energy also (Resis, p. 6).

Kaganovich warned in a speech (Feb 8, 1946) that:

“Our country still finds itself in capitalistic encirclement.”

Resis, p.10.

Molotov warned of the need to “overtake and surpass” the economically most developed countries of Europe and the USA,” in per-capita industrial production in the near future.

Later Stalin said in February 9th 1946, that although there had been an alliance of “freedom loving states”, including the USSR, UK, and USA, the process of uneven capitalist developments had continued unabated. Inevitably there would be another war, although this would be some time off – some 15-20 years. (Resis Ibid, p. 16).
George Kennan’s inciting Long Telegram 

The rulers of the USA were in a bellicose and belligerent mood. The USA Charge d’affaires, George Kennan in Moscow, analyzed Stalin’s speech, writing his infamous “long telegram”. This insisted that the USSR was preparing to go to war for expansion.

But other interpreters of events included the British Charge d’affaires in Moscow, Frank Roberts. He cabled both London and Washington, that Moscow really did want peace at this juncture (Resis Ibid, p.19). And Stalin’s actions fully corroborated this.

Resis points out the “conciliatory deeds” of Stalin made in order to convey peaceful intent:

“In September 1945, despite Soviet claims on Bear Island and Spitzbergen, Moscow had announced the withdrawal of the Soviet Command from Norway without any quid pro quo and before the Western Allies withdrew their troops. This action was followed on April 6th 1946, when Moscow announced the withdrawal of the Soviet Command from the Danish Island of Bornholm, leaving no Soviet troops in Scandinavia. On the same day Moscow stated that it would complete evacuation of Soviet troops from China by the end of April. Moscow also announced… that it would complete evacuation of all troops from Iran within one-month and a half. On May 22, 1946, Moscow announced that Soviet troops had been completely withdrawn from Manchuria, and on May 24 that the evacuation of Soviet troops from Iran had been completed. At the Paris Peace Conference the Soviet Union abandoned its request for a trusteeship over Tripolitania in favour of its passing to Italian trusteeship under United nations control.”

Resis A; Ibid; p. 25.

Breaking of the Atomic Monopoly

However all such signals to assure the imperialists of the USSR‘s peaceful intentions were in vain. The USSR was again being isolated. Therefore, on August 20th, ten days after the bombing of Nagasaki, the USSR State Defence Committee struck a special committee to:

“direct all work on the utilization of the intra-atomic energy of uranium”.

Holloway D; Ibid; p. 129.

This Special Committee succeeded in developing the bomb for the USSR and closing the USA military superiority. The scientists on the committee were Khurchatov and Peter Kaptisa. Beria reported to Stalin weekly. The mandate of the Committee was broad, including special dispensations for all matters related to the production of uranium.

The USSR atomic bomb followed the design of the USA bombs, and were termed the RDS systems. By August 1949, RDS-1 was successfully exploded. The speed of the USSR catch-up of the atomic gap surprised the USA imperialists. No doubt, this was owed in part to espionage. However, even authors hostile to Marxism-Leninism recognise the achievements of Soviet science, and industry which had to overcome the appalling devastation of Nazi invasion:

“The short duration and arrangement of the parallel works became possible thanks to… intelligence materials about the designs of the U.S. atomic bombs … It should be emphasized that the availability of the intelligence materials could not substitute for independent experimental, theoretical, and design verification of the Soviet atomic bombs which were being prepared for testing. Owing to the extraordinary responsibility of the leaders of and participants in the Soviet atomic project, RDS-1 was tested only after thorough confirmation of the available information and a full cycle of experimental, theoretical, and design studies whose level corresponded to the maximum capabilities of that time.”

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a38.htm

On December 25th, 1946 the first Soviet nuclear reactor started a controlled chain reaction – this began to return some agency back into the hands of the USSR.

Continuing USSR Weakness After Acquiring the Bomb

The temporary military and political weakness of the USSR in countering the atomic intimidation of the USA was partially ended in August 1949, with the USSR atomic bomb. But imperialist observers of the USSR noted continued military weaknesses. The USA had already stockpiled over a hundred atomic bombs.

The highest levels of the US officialdom knew very clearly how affected the USSR had been by the war. In fact, the Western imperialists remained confident that the German Nazi invasion had left the USSR significantly weakened. As the USA ambassador to the USSR, Admiral Alan G. Kirk, commented at a meeting of U.S. ambassadors at Rome, March 22-24, 1950:

“There were certain weaknesses in the Soviet Union which should be considered. The two basic shortages in terms of raw materials were those of rubber and petroleum. It was generally believed that there were no more large unexploited oil reserves available to the Russians. The other important weakness was that of the transportation system which in all respects, rail, highway, and water, was not highly developed in a modern sense.” (FRUS 1950-, Volume III, p. 823).

Colonel Robert B. Landry, Air Aide to President Truman in 1948, reported the weakness of the Russian mobilisation capability when directed at the West:

“I was told at the G-2 [intelligence] briefing that the Russians have dismantled hundreds of miles of railroads in Germany and sent the rails and ties back to Russia. There remains, at present time, so I was told, only a single track railroad running Eastward out of the Berlin area and upon which the Russians must largely depend for their logistical support. This same railroad line changes from a standard gauge, going Eastward, to a Russian wide gauge in Poland, which further complicates the problem of moving supplies and equipment forward”.

Frank Kofsky: “The War Scare of 1948”, London; 1993, 1995. pp. 293-94.

Conclusion

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki obliterated the cities and many of their peoples. Long-term cancerous effects were also sown. All to threaten the USSR, and to prevent its entry into Japan. That Stalin tried hard to remain at peace with the Western imperialists was even accepted by a High Priest of ‘The Cold War’ Warrior Academics, John Lewis Gaddis:

“What is often forgotten about Stalin is that he wanted, in his way, to remain ‘friends’ with the Americans and the British: his objective was to ensure the security of his regime and the state he governed, not to bring about the long-awaited international proletarian revolution; he hoped to do this by means short of war, and preferably with Western cooperation.”

John Lewis Gaddis: “Intelligence, Espionage and Cold War Origins”, DH, Spring 1989, 209.

Other academic Cold War historians agree with Gaddis’ view, including V. Mastny; and Zubok and Pleshakov. As we remember the anniversaries of the bomb drops, we cannot forget the true reasons for their occurrence.

EU for the few

We need freedom of movement for all. Until then, Mediterranea Berlin explain why they will continue to protect the lives of drowning refugees.


08/08/2023

In April 2020, a few months after the sea refuguee rescue organisation Mediterranea Berlin was born, one of our activists received a WhatsApp message from an unknown Libyan number. It was asking whether the “Ocean Viking” was close to Tripoli. The “Ocean Viking” belongs to another maritime refugee rescue organisation SOS Mediterranee. Our rescue boat is called “Mare Jonio” but was not at sea at that moment. The inexperienced activist had no clue how to answer this message, but knew they could not forward such sensitive information due to “aiding irregular migration” accusations.

Their immediate and rough answer read “It doesn’t work like that. We don’t have information, we don’t give information.” Yet, this made them feel guilty and powerless. There was a person in need asking for help, they felt compelled to do something. Thus, with further question, Mediterranea Berlin came to know the story of a 23 year old father who had sent the WhatsApp.

Salim Nyariga had left The Gambia and his unaware pregnant wife in January of the same year with one thing in mind:

“I was in school and I couldn’t stop worrying about the money for my wife and my future child. That Friday was the day I had this sudden idea: if all my friends have used this journey to help their family, why not me?”

At the beginning of the Corona crisis, even the human traffickers were afraid of the pandemic and would barely leave their homes. The departures from Libya were diminishing, the prices had increased and the weather conditions at the beginning of the year were even more discouraging. Crossing the Mediterranean had become more dangerous than ever.

At the time Salim sent the message he was waiting for his turn at the “connection point” in the Garabulli neighborhood, one of the places where people on the move wait for the moment to sail off. Many of his “brothers” met during his journey to Libya had already lost their lives trying to reach Europe. Salim’s greatest fear was not for his own life, but for the future of his newborn daughter that he saw for the first time on a photo sent by his wife while crossing the Tassili mountains in Algeria.

Salim wanted to go back home, but he was afraid to admit it. The 6000 km back to The Gambia would have meant he was defeated. Our activist encouraged him to follow his heart, there was nothing to be ashamed of. A repatriation through the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was a concrete option. Salim felt relieved and after a year of waiting he caught one of the few available flights back to his home region where he could start over beside his family.

This particular happy ending was not what the activist was expecting on a first mission. Meanwhile, a year had gone by, in which Mediterranea Berlin had been taking to the streets shouting out loud “Refugees Are Welcome Here!”.

None of us will ever have the power to decide if, when and where to be born. It is the duty of the privileged ones to actively help whoever takes the first step to change their destiny. Whether going back home or in search of a new one, freedom of movement is a universal right. Crossing borders is the political act necessary to claim that right.

Mediterranea was born with the goal of helping people on the move, political actors claiming this right by crossing borders on land and at sea, in the Mediterranean as well as on the Balkan route and in Ukraine.

In the same spirit, we have been supporting the self organized movements born during the inspiring protests at the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) offices in Tripoli and Tunis. In the night between the first and second October 2021, the Libyan militias violently raided all houses in the Gargaresh neighborhood, arresting thousands of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The ones who managed to escape had no other choice but to gather in front of the UNHCR headquarters, the UN agency supposed to protect them.

More than 4000 people started a movement, Refugees in Libya, asking to be recognized as human beings, the closure of all the detention centers financed by the EU and the evacuation towards safe countries. Instead of resorting to violence as a political means, they chose words. They opened a Twitter account through which they shed light on the Libyan black hole, thereby reaching international media and institutions, the African Union, the European Parliament, the Pope, human rights organizations and movements. They elected 2 representatives for each of the 11 national communities. Their assemblies would last for days on end practicing democracy and the values Europe keeps professing at home, while excluding the ones bearing the consequences of the colonial past and present.

The struggle of Refugees in Libya resisted for more than 100 days, until another brutal eviction by the militias resulted in a mass arrest and imprisonment of 600 people in the Ain Zara jail.

It was not the end though. On the contrary, the movement kept growing. Some made it to the other side of the Mediterranean and continued to fight alongside the European movements. The first joint initiative was organized in October 2022, on the occasion of the Italy – Libya Memorandum renewal where funds were promised in return that boats where stoped leaving Libya’s shores. Thousands of activists taking to the streets in 20 different cities.

As a result, 300 women and children were released from the Ain Zara detention camp. It was only the first step. The second was taken in December of that same year, in front of the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva. 50 more detainees were then freed. The last step brought the movement to Brussels in July 2023, at the center of European decision-making. The protest was directed towards the EU institutions responsible for the endless suffering and death at the European borders (EU-Council, EU-Commission and Parliament) as well as the UNHCR, IOM and Frontex (European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders) offices, involved in migration and refugee “management”. The remaining 250 prisoners were consequently released from Ain Zara.

All the detainees were finally freed. However, they are now in the same position as they were in more than one and a half years before. They are still in need of what they were demanding in front of the UNHCR headquarters in Tripoli in October 2021.

Libya is still not a safe place, but the battlefield of a civil war, ruled by warlords financed by Italy and EU. A hell for all the people on the move in search of a second chance.

The same goes for Tunisia, a land governed by a dictator who blamed the people on the move for his own economic failures. Kais Saied’s racist speech on the 21st of February 2023 incited and legitimized anti-black persecutions. Nonetheless, refugees in Tunisia risked their lives and reacted strongly, organizing protests in front of the UNHCR offices in Tunis where they appealed to the international and European institutions, asking to be evacuated. A desperate cry for help left unheard as shown a few months later. The EU – Tunisia Memorandum signed in July consolidated the dictator’s anti-migrant policies which escalated with the abandoning of almost 2000 people on the move in the desert at the Algerian and Libyan borders.

At the end of May 2023, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, made a statement which was soon confirmed by the CEAS (Common European Asylum System) reform restricting freedom of movement: “Having no inner borders in Europe means that external borders must be protected”.

The message is clear, the EU is for the few. And yet the Ukrainian crisis proved otherwise. So we ask ourselves: are African wars less deadly than Russian ones?

The right to safety and pursuit of happiness belongs to every human being. This can be reached only through freedom of movement as a universal right. Until then, Mediterranea will continue to exist.

Read more about the work of Mediterranea Berlin.

German State Collusion with the Sisi Regime: An Overiew

Tagesschau may criticise Sisi in hushed tones but to Germany he is a pivotal ally in the Middle East.


07/08/2023

At the beginning of July, the German news agency Tagesschau reported under the headline “Power apparatus of Egypt’s President Sisi is getting stronger” about the political and economic situation in Egypt ten years since the reign of military strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi began.

The report explains that Sisi’s so-called “stability” is only possible through the oppression of all political opponents. The Tagesschau shows that in the political landscape any opposition has been and is actively being suppressed. The Muslim Brotherhood has been hit hardest, but leftists and other oppositional figures are also being imprisoned,  tortured or forced into exile.

In 2021, Egypt was the largest arms buyer from Germany… armaments exports from Germany to Egypt were worth more than 4,3 billion euros.

In the segment, Tagesschau interviews an MP from the party “Future of the Nation” (Hizb Mustaqbal Watan), Sisi’s political front. The MP utters state propaganda upholding the narrative that without Sisi Egypt would be in chaos and there would be “terrorists” running around everywhere. However, interviews with members of the opposition or people on the street would sound more like: “Abdel Fattah el-Sisi rules with an iron fist.” Not only the suppression of any political opposition through arrests, censorship, lack of free elections or the ban on demonstrations causes sharp criticism, the intensifying economic situation has led to more and more resentment among the general population. The Egyptian pound has lost more than half of its value in the previous year, inflation in Egypt is rising daily and most Egyptians can no longer afford meat.

However, Tagesschau neglects a central point in its report: Germany’s material role in stabilising the regime.

The German federal government supports the Egyptian dictatorship in various ways. Most central is the role of arms exports. In 2021, Egypt was the largest arms buyer from Germany, at that time under the government of the SPD (Social Democrats) and CDU (Christian Democratic Union). In that year, armaments exports from Germany to Egypt were worth more than 4,3 billion euros.

Germany also delivered arms to Egypt in 2022 under the current government coalition of SPD, Die Grünen (Greens)  and FDP (Free Democratic Party). In the same year, the German industrial manufacturing company Siemens signed a deal with the Egyptian regime worth 8,1 billion euros for the construction of high-speed railways – the biggest order in Siemens’ history.

In all, both the German government and German private capital are making substantial profits by collaborating with the Egyptian regime. When Sisi visited Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in Berlin in the summer of 2022, Scholz emphasized at the joint press conference how pleased he was about economic relations with Egypt.

Scholz also pointed out why the close relationship between Egypt and Germany is so important and stated:

“With a look to the Middle East peace process, in which, as is well known, we [the German and Egyptian states] have been working together for a two-state solution for a long time, we traditionally coordinate closely. Egypt plays a prominent role in this process, helping to stabilize the situation in the Gaza Strip. I would like to thank you [Sisi] for that too.”

In plain language this means: the role of the Egyptian state in oppressing the Palestinians and stabilizing the Zionist state is very useful for the geopolitical and economic imperialist interests of Germany and the West in general.

In addition, the European Union paid Egypt 80 million euros in 2022 to better guard its borders on land and water with the purpose of preventing refugees from fleeing over its borders.

While the EU drowns refugees in the Mediterranean sea, lets them starve in torture camps in Libya, or deports them from Germany to war zones, or beats and kills them with police violence and barbed wire in Croatia, Poland or Hungary, another pillar of the EU’s murderous “closed-border” strategy is financing the Egyptian regime.

From time to time, the German government may complain that there are human rights violations in Egypt; however, these “concerns” serve merely as pretext to maintain the economic and political interests of the German state and German capital in Egypt – be it through arms exports, economic deals, stabilizing the Zionist settler colonial state or “containing” refugees. This is the foundation of Germany’s cooperation with Egypt. “Stability”,  at any price,  is the highest priority. 

Any German media report on ten years of the Sisi regime is incomplete if the role of Germany and the EU in maintaining said military dictatorship is not examined.