Cody Urban | Resist US-Led War Movement
Warm and militant greetings of solidarity, comrades. My name is Cody Urban and I am a member of the secretariat of the Resist US-Led War Movement. Resist US-Led War is a global network of anti-war and peace organizations and individuals in many countries of the world united on two primary points of unity: “Resist US-Led War” and “Build Just Peace.” Our perspective is that every aspect of wars of aggression and militarism cannot be seen as separate from one another: military intervention, invasions, occupations, counterinsurgencies, sanctions, food blockades, land grabs, these must all be seen as elements of the same essential militarization that stems from the imperialist system attempting to maintain its parasitic existence. Given the primary nature of US imperialism as still the strongest and most vicious imperialist power, it is US-led war that remains the most significant threat to humanity and the planet today.
We would like to thank the World Anti-Imperialist Platform for inviting us to speak at this forum today, as the 75th NATO summit prepares to get underway tomorrow in Washington, DC. We would like to give a brief overview of the current state of US-led war today, the specifics of how NATO is still used as the primary tool of US-Led War, and how an anti-NATO front of the people must be formed to prevent the worst kind of destruction that modern technology is capable of in the hands of the imperialists and war profiteers.
Let us reflect on the current status of US-led war, and how NATO plays a significant role. The US is currently waging war on three main fronts:
In Europe, the US uses the NATO alliance to cement its strategy with fellow imperialist and reactionary states in the European Union and around the continent in general. This includes the most powerful Western imperialist countries making up the G7, and the so-called Eastern Flank of countries acting as a shield between the G7 powers and the borders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, NATO’s self-perceived frontier. On this front of US-led war, the G7 is the brain, NATO is the brawn and Russia is the chief rival. This has altered the face of Europe, with military spending skyrocketing and new bases being built from the Mediterranean islands, to the Carpathian basin, to the Baltic Sea. This year’s military exercise Steadfast Defender mobilized over 90,000 troops in the largest European military drills since the Cold War. With Sweden and Finland’s ascension to NATO, the US-led camp gains access to the vital Swedish airbase of Gotland and thus secures the entire Baltic for NATO and cuts off Russia’s Baltic Fleet at Kaliningrad, while the recent allowing of US troops to station at dozens of new outposts along Finland’s eastern border puts combined NATO troops within miles of being able to invade Russia’s only highway on the Kola Peninsula and cut off its Northern Fleet port at Murmansk. Sweden and Finland push Russia further into a corner by NATO, and this makes Ukraine that much more of a flashpoint where over 320,000 Ukrainians and Russians are suspected to have lost their lives. Should NATO’s summit this week bring Ukraine closer to NATO membership, this iron-hot tension will explode to levels we cannot even imagine.
In West Asia, Israel and the Gulf Monarchies make up the US’s preferred alliances in its war drive against Iran. The US relies on Israel’s ideology of Zionism to push its expansionist agenda and wage attacks against Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Horn of Africa to keep these
countries weakened. Palestine pays the harshest price with over 75 years of occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide to keep Israel, the US’s favored war dog, forever combat ready. The Gulf Monarchies of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait form a backbone of military bases crucial for US positioning. The ultimate dream of wedding Israel and the Gulf Monarchies diplomatically has met lukewarm response, with the Abraham Accords of a few years ago tying UAE and Bahrain to the Zionist entity but failing to secure the gargantuan Saudi kingdom, and the genocide against Palestine has dashed these hopes further. Nevertheless, the US continues to wield these two alliances against its primary rival in the region, Iran, which it has subjected to assassinations, cyber warfare and a massive sanctions regime. NATO remains a key player in this region too, with NATO members sending warships to protect Israel as it wages its genocide and positioning of NATO technology to fortify the US’s allies that surround key oil and gas fields.
The US’s most active front of war is the Indo-Pacific where it actively prepares for open conflict with China and the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. Japan, the Pacific member of the G7, has volunteered as the clear imperialist partner of US-led war, rearmed its military to exponential proportions and solidified trilateral military agreements between the US on the one hand, and South Korea and the Philippines on the other hand. The so-called QUAD alliance with Japan, Australia, the US and India seeks to win India away from economic and military partnerships with China and Russia, which it has failed to do. The Hiroshima Accord of 2023 stations British aircraft carriers, from a NATO country, in Japan for regular use. The Washington Declaration stations US nuclear armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in 40 years. New US bases and missile systems placed in the Philippines solidify the country and its people as a shield and launching pad in the so-called First Island Chain. Australia becomes a storage site for NATO technology, with nuclear submarines from the US and UK placed under the AUKUS deal while surveillance technology from the US, UK and Canada is utilized as part of the Five Eyes alliance. This combined front, this “Pacific NATO” as this iron web of military alliances has been called, enacts some of the most intense military exercises such as the Rim of the Pacific happening as we speak on US occupied Hawaii, mock “decapitation” exercises over the Korean Peninsula simulating invasions of the DPRK, and even urban warfare training in Taiwan, the US’s most sought-after resources for control of semiconductor markets and military positioning just miles from China. NATO’s upcoming Indo-Pacific forum this week exposes just how intertwined these alliances are to US-led war strategy.
This is the chess board the US has set with its allies and puppet states to wage all-out war against the up and coming states it sees as its most existential rivals. One only has to look geographically at the three most dedicated trade and infrastructure deals the Biden administration has worked to bring into place to see the economic incentive in breaking the rise of these rivals: the European Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, the India-Middle East-Corridor, and the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Prosperity.
To maintain its reserve of resources for war preparations against these three fronts, the US wages constant counterinsurgency wars against people and nations all over the world, and NATO ensures its ability to do so. In Africa, the Americas, South Asia and Oceania, the US and its allies continue their resources wars by destabilizing nations like Haiti, the Congo, Sudan, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, New Caledonia, and many others. Whispers of Argentina and possibly even Kenya joining NATO should warn us of how far the US is willing to go to hold onto its dying and desperate empire. NATO goes far beyond the North Atlantic. NATO is everywhere, and NATO is first and foremost a tool for counterrevolution.
This preparation for all-out war that NATO is laying the plans for this week in Washington, DC, is of course not just all-out war on China, Russia, Iran or the DPRK. It will be all-out war on all of humanity. In fact, the people of the colonies and semi-colonies and the poor and working class people of all capitalist and imperialist countries are experiencing the impacts of rural bombings, paramilitary violence and abductions, disappearances, police violence, forced migration and border militarization, and more surveillance than ever before. Especially impacted are rural and peasant communities in the countryside and working class people whose entire livelihood is uprooted by war. Women and children make up 75% of displaced people in conflict areas where they face increased gender based violence, experience food insecurity, human trafficking and displacement. Preparations for war therefore amount to a state of war for the masses, even if some are experiencing it more than others based on which part of the US’s global military chessboard they happen to live.
But this, essentially, is the basis for building our broad, international united front against war and militarism. The conditions of crisis and desires for a just peace are the biggest driver that push people to struggle against the system that oppresses them. And if no country is untouched, then we can find unity with the people in each country in the fight for a just and lasting peace, a peace beyond the imperialist system that unendingly keeps US-led war alive.
The people must be awakened to see their conditions of war and militarism as not individual experiences, but collective experiences. Only then can we raise their consciousness to see that collective suffering can be solved with collective, systemic change. We must raise the militancy of the people, in each of our respective countries, to fight and win their rights and achieve economic, social, political and environmental justice. As we gather in fora like this one hosted by the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, we are able to share the experiences of our mass organizing against war and militarism in our countries and how we are coming closer to breaking the hold imperialism has via our own countries’ ruling classes. It is even possible to collaborate on long-term and globally-reaching campaigns together, such as this one against the 75th NATO Summit, of which Resist US-Led War was a proud member of the Resist NATO Coalition with other organizations, putting our efforts together to unite and organize the people against the root cause of NATO and US-Led War itself, the imperialist system.
Resist US-Led War is a network of peoples’ organizations and so puts the biggest emphasis on organizing a mass movement of the people as the key solution that will change this war-ridden society. While people’s organizations can and should form a united front with whatever institutions and states that make sense at a given time and circumstance in the anti-imperialist struggle, we still assert that it is the people themselves that are the true makers of history and the most important factor of the movement for just peace.
The people may seem devastatingly desperate today, but it is US imperialism that is desperate. This 75th NATO Summit is an act of desperation. Unlike the war profiteers, the people have a world to win. The people have something that’s worth fighting for.