Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)
A world in decay
Imperialism is decaying. Even knowing of its inevitable fatal outcome, it will refuse to voluntarily abandon the stage of history. The decomposition of the world organized in NATO intensifies the policy of aggression of that warmongering organization to avoid an immediate collapse of the economies of its member countries.[1]
In their drive for expansion, fueled by the imperious need to avoid a colossal economic collapse that would ultimately mean the end of the hegemony of the imperialist countries, NATO[2] countries have for decades relentlessly tried to contain the development of Russia and China and since the dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance have in six waves, accompanied by wars of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, extended their presence and infrastructure to Russia’s borders. The NATO regularly conducts military exercises in which “defensive attacks” against Russia are rehearsed. The most recent were: Steadfast Defender 2024 (from April 8 to May 31 in Northern Europe) which became by far the largest exercise since the end of the Cold War and one of the largest since the organization’s existence, Immediate Response 2024 (from April 21 to May 31 in Sweden), Brave Warrior (from 1 to 22 May 2024 in Hungary), Swift Response 2024 (from 14 May to 14 June in Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland), Spring Storm 2024 (from 6 to 17 May in Estonia), Grand Quadriga (from 30 April to 30 July in Germany and Lithuania).
NATO’s preparations for war against Russia are accelerating and proceeding vigorously. It seems that NATO member countries are urging for a war against Russia. In January of this year, NATO Admiral Rob Bauer called on the people of Europe to prepare for a war against Russia within the next 20 years. So NATO is giving humanity nothing more than 20 years of certain peace.
On February 29 of this year, the overwhelmingly re-elected Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russian weapons could reach European territory.[3]
Two days later, on March 19, the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, reported that France was already preparing to send a contingent to Ukraine.[4]
Also on March 19, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin participated in a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he reiterated US policy that NATO would soon find itself at war with Russia if Ukraine were defeated. How ironic, because it would have been earlier if Russia had not prevented NATO’s advance precisely in that country… Extending NATO’s architecture to Ukraine would have directly nullified the nuclear parity between Russia and the United States to Russia’s detriment.
A day earlier, the German and Polish defense ministers, Boris Pistorius and Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, met at the gates of Warsaw and announced that the two countries would jointly deploy a rapid reaction force on the eastern border of the European Union (initially with 2,500 soldiers per country).
On March 1, an audio recording was made public revealing that high-ranking Bundeswehr officers were planning an attack on the Kerch bridge (Crimea) with some 20 Taurus cruise missiles. The authenticity of the recording was immediately confirmed by the German government. The bourgeois media and the German government were not shocked by the content of the conversation between high-ranking Bundeswehr officers, but by the fact that it had been leaked. As military strategist Scott Ritter pointed out, this was an act of aggression by Germany against Russia, and Russia could rightly have interpreted it as an open declaration of war by Germany against its country.
On May 6, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, due to “Russia’s increasingly aggressive behavior and the increasingly tense situation” decided to travel to Latvia and Lithuania. In the Lithuanian military training area of Pabrade, he visited the 10th Armored Division of the Bundeswehr, which is participating in NATO military exercises there. Scholz talked with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda about about 4,800 Bundeswehr soldiers that Germany wants to station on NATO’s eastern flank. This will “only” cost about 9 billion euros.
In Germany, the CDU[5] is likely to be the next government and, although it may seem hard to believe, on the basis of the signals it is giving it will surely outdo the present government in warmongering. For example, it has come out in favor of the gradual reintroduction of compulsory military service in Germany to “give a clear signal to Russia,” arguing that Germany would not currently be in a position to defend itself against foreign aggression. This is Kafkaesque, because Germany is a U.S.-occupied country, and has been since 1945, when it was not the U.S., the U.K. or France, but the Soviet Union that saved the country from fascism. It sounds schizophrenic, but it is real: Germany “must” militarize, not to expel the current occupiers from the country, but to wage war on those who liberated it from fascism…
The reaction of France, the United States, Germany and NATO as a whole to Russia’s repeated calls for reason is incredible. Instead of holding peace talks, they are escalating the war. First they sent weapons to Ukraine, then medium-range missiles, soon after Leopard and Abrams tanks, today they are discussing sending long-range Taurus cruise missiles, which can penetrate deep into Russian territory and deploying NATO troops to fight Russian soldiers.
It should not be forgotten for a moment that the governments of NATO countries are desperate, and rightly so, because their economic system is collapsing. All this seemingly irrational warmongering is ultimately an act of survival.
NATO’s advance against Russia and China continues unabated. The era of political, economic and military interventions against largely defenseless countries is coming to an end, and a new one has dawned in which the US and its dominated NATO challenge countries with large nuclear arsenals and powerful armed forces. The fact that the US is withdrawing from its traditional theaters of war, such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, indicates that Washington wants to strengthen its economic and military presence in the Indo-Pacific region, i.e. around China.
NATO is moving away from being a North Atlantic alliance to become a global war alliance. With some 900 military bases (officially known, mostly American), it is capable of destabilizing not only countries, but entire regions.
As is well known, the US has formed alliances against China. The AUKUS and “Five Eyes”. She is expanding also in South America.[6]
US General Laura J. Richardson has blatantly exemplified the US colonialist and interventionist mentality by repeatedly pointing out that the sources of raw materials in our countries would be US strategic interests. In order to impose military, economic and political structures to benefit US interests, she constantly visits various Latin American countries. In Haiti, the US is preparing a “new MINUSTAH”, the MSSM[7], that is, a new military intervention, this time justified by the serious problems with criminal gangs that kidnap, terrorize and murder innocent people.[8]
NATO’s history shows that it does not only operate on a single front, that it imposes its policy of “peace” and war on the whole world and that in a large number of cases it has asserted its interests by military means. It forces Russia, China and other sovereign states to react to its destabilizing and belligerent actions. She forced Russia, with the threat of a massacre against the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, to make incursions into that country[9], just as she is dragging Iran into a war against Israel and China into a military conflict over Taiwan and Hong Kong. And it is the US that is provoking South Korea’s military confrontation with the DPRK. This grave situation has led the DPRK to conclude that the diplomatic track with its peer in the south is now exhausted. It is also the US that is stirring up a military conflict over Venezuela.
Despite the fact that the hegemonic NATO countries, especially the USA, currently hold the upper hand, despite the fact that NATO dictates economic, military and diplomatic policies to the whole world, despite the fact that NATO is becoming a global organization, despite the fact that NATO seems to be synchronizing the military conflicts in the world and that it is NATO which, in its eagerness to open a war against Russia and China, is dragging large parts of human civilization to death, at the end of the day there is no force that can save imperialism from death. Humanity will give an immeasurable, unimaginable and terrible sacrifice to bring capitalist imperialism, the ultimate society of exploitation and oppression, to its grave, but it (humanity) will prevail. The first foundations of such a collapse were laid in 1917, and what we are witnessing today is nothing other than the continuation of the long and painful death of the last human system of exploitation and oppression.
National liberation struggles worldwide
The struggle of Russia in Ukraine against NATO and fascism marks the beginning of the defeat of imperialism in the world. In the last two or three months, the Russian army has made an extraordinary leap from an army that made serious and elementary military mistakes to a disciplined army, capable of excellent military strategy and which, without losing its moral basis of focusing military action on military objectives and safeguarding the civilian population to the maximum, is increasingly prepared to confront a more powerful enemy. The Russian military, like the national policy of the Russian state, still needs to mature. I welcome the new Minister of Defense, Andrei Belousov, who was trained during the Soviet years and is an advocate of a strong industrial base in the hands of the state.[10] The advances Russia is making on the front and within its economy deliver a message very similar to that of the socialist revolution in Russia or the Red Army’s victory over fascism in Europe: David can defeat Goliath. And the peoples of the world are following the call:
In Africa[11] the people are taking up the path of struggle for national sovereignty with increasing determination, driving out the colonial powers of Western Europe and, more recently, the United States, which have been supporting and financing terrorism in the region for years in order to destabilize it.[12] The US is reluctant to lose its influence around the world (because it would collapse in the blink of an eye its economy based on plundering the sources of raw materials of other countries).[13]
The Yemeni people (and their resistance group Ansar Allah) and the Lebanese people (and their resistance group Hezbollah) have decided, in solidarity with the Palestinian people, to take up arms against Israel and all countries that support it.[14] In Syria and Iraq, armed resistance forces have intensified their attacks against U.S. military bases in Syria to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people and to weaken the U.S. military presence in the region.
I think one can positively evaluate what is happening today in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, where the Taliban expelled the US forces. Their current foreign policy is oriented towards Russia and China, an irony considering that all the misery in this country began when the mujahideen joined the Americans in driving out the Soviets, i.e. the Russian communists.[15]
Iran has always opposed US imperialism, NATO and Israel, has carried out actions of solidarity with national liberation struggles in West Asia and Latin America (especially Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela) and has expanded its relations with several African countries, China and Russia despite the economic sanctions and the continuous terrorist and interventionist actions of imperialism against it.[16]
Iran is the only country in the region that poses a real threat to Israel. Israel alone could not cope with it. The support of US and British imperialism (and other countries such as Germany and France) is essential for its survival.[17]
Demonstrating that Israel cannot act with impunity and that it is vulnerable was not the only positive consequence of this important event. What is more important was the fact that the gap between Sunnis and Shiites is narrowing. The statement by Hamas, which supported the Iranian response, is significant.[18]
Another important consequence of the “True Promise” is that, with this response, Iran has not only demonstrated that it can reach any part of Israeli territory, but also any part of the region where U.S. troops are stationed. Not for nothing has the United States asked Iran not to attack its troops in the region.
But perhaps the most important consequence has been the reaction of China[19] and Russia[20].
A new world is maturing
In my opinion, China and Russia are the only two countries that are in a position to stop NATO globally. By this I understand the ability to provide military and economic support worldwide to all nations that are attacked by this organization. The cases of Libya and Syria are exemplary in this regard. In Libya, Russia and China did not intervene after it had been agreed with NATO members that there would be no intervention from either side (i.e. NATO from one and Russia and China from the other). But, as is well known, the word of the imperialist countries is worthless. NATO members made sure that China and Russia would not react in Libya and catapulted the country “back into slavery”. China and Russia did not make this mistake again in Syria. And Syria could not be destroyed.
Being the only two countries capable of stopping NATO globally, they are also the ultimate target of NATO. This is the main dilemma of the present, from which derives the inevitability of a great confrontation between imperialism, on the one hand, and Russia, China and all the peoples of the world who want to be or remain sovereign, on the other.
Stopping NATO is one thing, defeating it is another. Russia’s special military operation has been the new beginning of the struggle against fascism, imperialism and its criminal instrument, NATO. But defeating NATO is a task that has to be carried out, if not by all, at least by a large part of humanity. Russia and China are not in a position to do it alone. They need all kinds of anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, patriotic, socialist, democratic, revolutionary, believing and non-believing forces, all communists in all parts of the world, all peoples, the vast majority of mankind. And all these forces need Russia and China. There is the DPRK, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Vietnam and Laos, Mexico and Bolivia, there is the African continent that is reborn, there is Palestine, Yemen and Lebanon, Afghanistan, there are the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation, the Belt and Road Initiative, there is a world in which non-imperialist capitalist and socialist countries cooperate in peace, there is also us.
In the late 1990s, Brzezinski[21] pointed out that the most potentially dangerous scenario for the United States and its goal of maintaining its hegemony over the world for as long as possible would possibly be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran[22].
The growing cooperation between Russia and China and Iran point to a promising future in terms of the defeat of imperialism, but not only in relation to this fact. The People’s Republic of China bases its strength on the vigorous economic and political development of its country, oriented towards the construction of socialism. Thus, the imminent clash between NATO and China will not only be a collision between two superpowers, but above all a confrontation between systems, between a dying imperialist capitalism and a socialism which, after the terrible defeat of 1989 with the liquidation of the USSR, is recovering its historical cause.
Therefore, in the national liberation struggle, in the anti-imperialist struggle, in the anti-fascist struggle, in the struggle against NATO, the class struggle that is being waged on an international scale is manifested. And these struggles harbor the seeds of socialist society. Thus, with the overthrow of imperialism, personified by the US, the EU and NATO, a new horizon opens up for humanity: the passage from human prehistory to socialist civilization.[23]
Notes
[1] Finance capital determines the political decisions of the world organized in NATO and directs the functioning of these economies by destabilizing them through speculation, while relentlessly pressuring member states to open up new markets in search of new investment opportunities and cheap access to sources of raw materials, labor, transportation and trade routes, as well as new centers of speculation to continue its heady casino economy.
The expansionist drive of finance capital is followed by military expansion. This leads to a growing political, economic and military threat to societies that resist this exploitation, while those that submit to it are impoverished by the unfavorable conditions imposed on them for the unfettered plunder of their economies.
[2] Particularly the USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada and Italy.
[3] “They must understand that we also have weapons […] that can attack and eliminate targets on their territory. […] All this is real and can provoke a conflict and lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Don’t they understand? These are people who suffered hard times. But now they have forgotten what war means.”
[4] “Initially it will be composed of about 2,000 soldiers. [….] This will make them a legitimate priority target for the Russian armed forces. This means that they will suffer the fate of all Frenchmen who have ever invaded the Russian world with a sword.”
[5] The CDU will probably have to form a coalition government with other parties that are not yet foreseeable (perhaps the AfD and SPD).
[6] The NATO website reads:
“NATO has a number of ‘partners across the globe’ or ‘global partners’, which the Alliance cooperates with on an individual basis. NATO’s global partners include Afghanistan¹, Australia, Colombia, Iraq, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand and Pakistan. NATO’s engagement with global partners is taking on increasing importance in a complex security environment, where many of the challenges the Alliance faces are global and no longer bound by geography.”
In a footnote it states:
“The partnership with Afghanistan is currently suspended following North Atlantic Council decisions related to the security environment.”
In 2017, Colombia became one of NATO’s global partners and its first Latin American partner. In 2018, preparations began for Chile’s application to be included in Tier 2 of the classification system for non-NATO states. This should be completed before the end of this year. This year Argentina applied to NATO for global partner status.
[7] MSSM: Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti.
[8] It is hidden that these criminal gangs are supported by the country’s national oligarchs, who in turn are supported by the US, and that they are targeting the only one fighting against them: Jimmy “Barbacoa” Cherizier, leader of the G9 Revolutionary Forces, who enjoys broad popular support and has a solid social and anti-imperialist conscience.
[9] NATO wanted to create “living space” in eastern Ukraine by “cleansing” the “insurgents.” This would have ultimately paved the way for NATO to militarize Ukraine and, as mentioned above, would have directly broken nuclear parity between Russia and the United States to Russia’s detriment.
[10] Putin has nominated Andrey Belousov as the head of the Russian Defense Ministry. Andrey Belousov was born on March 17, 1959. He graduated in 1981 from Moscow State University with a degree in cybernetics and economics. He was Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation and Director of the Department of Economics and Finance of the Russian Government. From 2012 to 2013, he headed the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. From 2013 to 2020, he was Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation for Economic Affairs. On January 21, 2020, he was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government. Deutschland Funk reads:
“This Moscow-born economist is considered an advocate of state industrial and economic policy. In terms of economic theory, he is therefore more a follower of the teachings of John Maynard Keynes (state control of macroeconomics) than of Milton Friedman (the market regulates everything). ‘Beloussov was one of those who saw the state as the main driver of everything, and at the same time he analyzed the same data as we do, unlike most other pro-state economists, who just juggled with abstractions,’ says Konstantin Sonin, an economist and professor at the University of Chicago.”
[11] A particularly interesting case is Algeria. TSA quotes Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune:
“If you are in debt, you are finished: you cannot defend Gaza, Western Sahara, human rights or the rights of the oppressed in Africa or anywhere else as long as you are a slave to debt and to those who have lent you money! That is why we are not indebted and have not become indebted, even if we have been set up, said the Arab president.”
Algeria is one of the last countries in the world to be completely free of foreign debt and even of foreign military bases.
The Arab state’s leaders decided in the 2000s to get rid of its foreign debt after the then government had accumulated loans and debts during the rebellion of religious radicals in the 1990s.
Since gaining independence in a bloody armed war of national liberation, the leadership of the ruling Arab socialist party, the National Liberation Front (FLN), has pursued a long-term strategic policy of completely renouncing foreign loans and foreign military installations on Algerian territory. It has set itself the goal of absolute self-sufficiency in all areas.
[12] The current anti-colonial uprisings in e.g. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which brought patriotic military governments to power, are encouraging evidence of the revitalization of the fighting spirit of the peoples of the African continent. The recent decision by Niger and Senegal to end their military cooperation with the United States and demand the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from their countries is a significant step toward national sovereignty for the countries and a great signal to the continent and the world. Niger established a new military agreement but this time with Russia. U.S. troops must leave, Russian troops must come. And that’s pretty much what happened. At least the part about Russian soldiers going to Niger to support the fight against terrorism was fulfilled, and they were welcomed with a standing ovation by the Nigerien population. Shortly after their arrival in the country, the Russian soldiers entered the U.S. military base in Niger, which since their arrival is supposed to be their new home, while the U.S. troops, who are taking inordinately long to leave the country, are still there. So it happens that the Russian soldiers are camped at one end of the military base that the Americans are reluctant to leave while the latter are stationed at the other end, with no words exchanged between the two groups. A comical scene in the midst of a serious international situation.
[13] While more and more African countries are deciding to end “cooperation” with that country, the US is preparing to find a way to recover what has been lost. The maneuvers being carried out by the United States in West Africa are part of Washington’s “offensive” and are “a little suspicious” because of the large number of military personnel taking part in them, Professor Francis Onditi, associate professor of conflictology and head of department at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Riara University in Nairobi, Kenya, told Sputnik Africa. This shows us that the defeat of imperialism is far from being consolidated and that there will be hard battles against it.
[14] Ansar Allah, which has won the de facto war against Saudi Arabia, has been attacking any ship flying an Israeli flag, coming from countries allied with Israel or calling at Israeli ports. At the time of writing Ansar Ahllah was in the midst of the forth phase of retaliation in support of the Palestinian people. The United States, in its usual cowardice towards weaker countries, did not hesitate to attack Yemen directly. The latter has repelled such attacks with astonishing success.
[15] Having paid a heavy price for its alliance with U.S. imperialism, Afghanistan is now building its major economic and manufacturing ties with Russia and China, i.e., the Russians and the communists. Afghanistan has come a long and painful way to get to where it started. It just goes to show how strange the twists and turns of life sometimes are. Despite this history, it is to be appreciated that the country has managed to convert its agricultural production from opium production to food production, that it is taking firm steps to reindustrialize the country, or that it has managed to expel US troops from the country and take steps to exercise national sovereignty over the sources of raw materials in the national territory.
[16] Iran’s confrontation with US imperialism and its lackeys and its open support for national liberation struggles around the world strengthen regional and global resistance. Iran’s “True Promise” reaction to Israel’s attack on the Iranian diplomatic establishment in Syria was inevitable, forced and desired by Israel and the US and welcomed by the vast majority of the peoples of the region. Iran did not intend to attack Israel on a large scale, but to leave a message: Israel must know that its actions will no longer go unpunished. Undoubtedly, it would have suited Israel if Iran had attacked its country in such a way that the United States would have been forced to intervene in its defense against Iran.
The proof that Iran never intended to launch a full-scale military attack against Israel is the fact that if US and Israeli intelligence had actually had information about such an attack by Iran, they would have moved warships from the western Mediterranean to the eastern Mediterranean and many more aircraft to bases near Iran, if not in countries in the region, because Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and even Turkey have denied the US NATO bases for a confrontation with Iran, at least in countries like Cyprus, for example.
[17] Iran’s first real response to Israel’s constant and vile provocations led to the flight of more than 300,000 Zionist settlers. This shows that large sections of the Israeli population have no confidence in the ability of their army or their government to protect them from possible Iranian wrath. If more than 300,000 settlers left Israel because of a single attack, one can only imagine how many of them would have left the country if Iran had responded seriously.
[18] On Sunday, April 14, Hamas declared:
“We, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), consider the military operation of the Islamic Republic of Iran against the Zionist occupation regime as a natural right and a deserved response to the crime of attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus and assassinating a number of Revolutionary Guard leaders there.”
[19] China has supported Iran with its characteristic diplomatic posturing, as it did with Russia and the special military operation in Ukraine. Reading between the lines China’s support and positioning on Iran’s side is clear. The Global Times, for example, states:
“The main cause of the current Israel-Iran conflict is the Palestine-Israel conflict. But the United States has turned a blind eye to the real causes of the Middle East crisis. Worse, since the beginning of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the United States has not done enough to stop Israel’s actions. On the contrary, it has provided Israel with large-scale military aid and political support, making it an absolute accomplice and co-conspirator in the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.”
[20] Russia’s support for Iran’s “True Promise” was, as usual, more direct. Putin noted:
“What the Islamic Republic of Iran did in response to this criminal act and in the face of the UN Security Council’s inaction was the best way to punish the aggressor and a proof of the tact and wisdom of the Iranian authorities.”
[21] Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński was an American diplomat and political scientist. He was an advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
[22] Brzeziński said:
“Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘antihegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”
[23] In the preface to the text “On the Critique of Political Economy,” Marx wrote:
“Bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social production process, antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of an antagonism growing out of the social living conditions of individuals, but the productive forces developing in the bosom of bourgeois society simultaneously create the material conditions for resolving this antagonism. This social formation therefore concludes the prehistory of human society.”