Release # 14
After 70 years, NATO and its "zones of influence".
Already over 70 years ago was NATO created to, according to its apologists, defend Western Europe and the United States from a possible aggression by the Soviet Union. This was already a hoax at the time of its founding and it is even more so today.
In fact, the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991 and at no time was NATO dissolution considered, once the supposed threat had disappeared. On the contrary, its geographic area of operation was expanded. Thus, we have seen NATO intervene in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. All of them criminal interventions, justified with lies and whose imperialist character there can be no doubt.
And the lies go on. These days, at the end of January 2022, NATO is moving troops to Ukraine to defend this country from an alleged Russian aggression. But what is the evidence of the danger of this alleged Russian aggression? Maneuvers conducted within the borders of the Russian Federation but close to the borders with its neighbor. But has NATO never conducted maneuvers near Russian borders? Moreover, one of the points that Russian diplomacy has historically put forward in European institutions has been the limitation of this type of maneuvers, which has always been scorned by NATO.
We are also told that Russia's claim to guarantee Ukraine's non-membership in NATO is unacceptable because it limits the sovereignty of that country and because it means dividing Europe into "zones of influence".
Would the United States accept that, for example, Venezuela, exercising its sovereignty, should seal a military alliance with Russia, or with China, which would include the possibility of installing Russian strategic weapons in that Latin American country? What about the sovereignty of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to decide what weapons to equip itself with for its defense? What about Iran's sovereignty to decide its energy policy?
Regarding the alleged zones of influence, Russia is not asking Ukraine to join a military alliance with it, but not to join one at all. Which means demilitarizing the borders between Imperialist Europe and Russia. In this regard, the Russian Federation follows the doctrine of the former USSR of favoring neutral states in Central and Eastern Europe. This was done, for example, in Austria and nobody found it a disgrace and the USSR made repeated attempts to agree on a German reunification based on the same principles which were rejected by the United States and its allies. It was not socialism that divided Europe, but imperialism.
Similarly, the militaristic drift of NATO members is not the result of any Russian threat to Ukraine, but it is the result of the nature of imperialism. It is that nature that leads it to want to encircle Russia with its military bases, to push it into an arms race that will bleed it economically. To end up achieving a "regime change", either by means of a "color revolution", or by means of an armed intervention.
It is well understood that imperialism is not a policy that bourgeois states can choose among others. In other words and more concretely: it is not a question of choosing between an "isolationist" and an "interventionist" U.S. president or between a reactionary and a "liberal" one. It makes no difference whether Ford or Chevrolet, as Carlos Puebla used to say. And the same is true for subordinate imperialisms.
That is why imperialism and, more concretely for the present historical conjuncture, the imperialist bloc led by the United States needs bourgeoisies in the states of the periphery. As the cases of Ukraine itself, the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq …etc. demonstrate. Regardless of the fact that in some cases it has worked out well for them and in others it has backfired.
And this is the key to understanding the conflict between NATO members and Russia, in general, as well as the current crisis in Ukraine, in particular. The nationalist character of the currently hegemonic fraction of the Russian bourgeoisie makes it difficult for imperialism, in the first place, to gain access to the imperialist profits that could be obtained thanks to the resources that the immense territory harbors. Especially its natural resources. Secondly, it is a "bad example" both for the bourgeoisies and for the peoples of other oppressed nations. And thirdly and lastly, it can lead the Russian state to establish alliances with other states facing similar conflicts with US imperialism and its allies, thus making things more difficult for them elsewhere on the planet.
In conclusion, NATO is not defending international law and democracy in Ukraine. It is carrying out an imperialist intervention. Which the working masses from a truly classist, and therefore internationalist, position can only reject. But it should not be difficult to understand even for the working classes in the present imperialist countries especially for those in Europe -corrupted by crumbs of the imperialist superprofits and alienated by the mass manipulation media- that a NATO aggression against Russia would have very serious consequences and none favorable for the workers.
In any case, we call on the class conscious proletarians to give all support to a broad mass movement against NATO and the war that can have some practical effectiveness in blocking the militarist-imperialist drift, using for this all the legitimate concerns of the popular masses, but without renouncing to take advantage of this conjuncture to raise the consciousness of those masses to class, anti-imperialist, revolutionary levels.
This entails not renouncing the ideological struggle with other currents that can oppose the warmongering dynamic, but from positions that are neither anti-imperialist, nor class-based or, much less, revolutionary. In this release we will limit ourselves to two.
On the one hand, there are those who oppose Europeanism to the Yankees and NATO. And, along that line, they demand a common European "defense" and foreign policy. In the face of this we have to say that a European imperialism, if it were possible, would not be better in any sense.
On the other hand, we have those who, with left-wing and even "socialist" rhetoric, propose to revitalize the "national" states, that is to say, states like the French and the Spanish, second and third category imperialist states respectively and prisons of peoples, as an alternative to both the European Union and Yankee hegemony. This is obviously a reactionary utopia that we revolutionary anti-imperialists must fight against.
To conclude, we reiterate the call to the workers with class consciousness to organize themselves in the face of the situation denounced here, as well as against all the threats to humanity generated by this agonizing, but by no means dead, capitalism. These are times to train, organize and fight. Because, as the poet said, to those who:
“seeing already approaching the bomber squadrons of capitalism, some still continue to ask how we will solve this or that thing and what will become of their piggy banks and their Sunday pants after a revolution… to those, we have little to say”.
Bertolt Brecht
International Conference:
Agora Galiza-Unidade Popular
Nación Andaluza
Herritar Batasuna