Miguel Ángel | Unión Proletaria
Western governments and hegemonic media constantly repeat NATO’s big lie about Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine and the danger it represents for Europe. By means of it, imperialism tries to make the peoples resign themselves to impoverishment, fascism and world nuclear war.
The truth is diametrically opposite: it is NATO that threatens the existence of Russia by expanding into the countries adjacent to it, militarizing them, raising anti-Russian revanchist Nazis to power, provoking proxy wars, deploying missiles and withdrawing from disarmament agreements, violating the Minsk agreements, imposing sanctions on it, etc. And all this, since long before the Special Military Operation and even before the reincorporation of Crimea into the Russian Federation. After that, NATO has not ceased to raise the stakes: 300 billion euros in arms for the Ukrainian army which is already 80% dependent on Western supplies, tanks, aircraft, long-range missiles, attacks on early warning radars of Russia’s nuclear forces and declared intention to defeat it strategically.
The European Union has chosen to align itself with the United States, rather than develop mutually advantageous relations with Russia. Historically, eastward expansion has been a necessity for European imperialism, particularly German imperialism, when it is not allowed to exploit other continents. However, at present, it has been the US that has been driving the confrontation with Russia: the 2014 anti-constitutional coup in Kiev and the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines that directly supplied Russian gas to Western European powers have made this clear.
The prevalence of U.S. interests in the countries of the European Union began after the Anglo-American victory on the Western front in World War II and was underpinned by the subsequent installation of military bases and submission to NATO and the European Union. The Report presented by A. Zhdanov to the Kominform in 1947 masterfully explains the origin of the present situation. The revisionist turn in the USSR and its Eastern European allies and the final implosion of these socialist states favored the Americanization of the continent. Only the Republic of Belarus and, later, the Russian Federation resisted.
In the first decades after the Soviet victory in World War II, the Western European capitalists had been forced to make extensive concessions to the working population.
However, the structural crisis that began in the 1970s forced capitalism into a growing process of neoliberal counter-reforms. Their implementation was facilitated by the degeneration of many communist parties following the revisionist line of Khrushchev. Each stage of this process increased the economic advantage of the United States over the European Union, triggering a flight of capital from the old continent. This is the current case, following the sanctions against Russia, the interruption of the direct supply of its gas, the increase in the prices of this and other raw materials and the growth of expenditure for the purchase of mostly Yankee armaments.
Within the European bourgeoisies, the financial oligarchies are highly dependent on the economic, monetary, political and military strength of the United States. And they can relocate their investments to North America, improving their profitability. For this reason, they docilely submit to the interests of U.S. imperialism.
On the other hand, the business of the industrial and agrarian middle bourgeoisie is harmed. As a consequence, the employment and living conditions of the majority of wage earners worsen. Thus, the contradictions between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the other classes of society are sharpened. These tend towards protectionism and nationalism, as opposed to the globalism and cosmopolitanism of the elites of the USA and the European Union.
The oligarchic sectors try to divert this conflict abroad: against Russia, China and the other truly independent States, and also against the population that emigrates to Europe because of the imperialist exploitation of their countries of origin. They foment national hostility to weaken the working class and its struggle to win allies among the people.
The growth of the right-wing and ultra-right parties in the last elections held―in particular, those for the European Parliament on June 9―is due to this systematic campaign of the dominant ideological media to present these parties as “patriotic”. But, in most cases, they will further reinforce imperialist oppression as did the fascist general Franco who boasted of being “national” while selling Spain to the governments of Germany and Italy; and, later, to that of the United States.
However, the popular demand for sovereignty is not reactionary but democratic. And only by fighting for it, together with the other democratic demands, will we be able to contribute to the defeat of imperialism and the victory of socialism.
Comrade Stalin warned us that the feudalists and bourgeois oppressed by imperialism help the cause of socialism more than the “socialists” who collaborate with imperialism. And, at the end of his life, he advised communist parties to take the lead in the struggle for democracy and national sovereignty:
“Now the bourgeoisie sell the rights and independence of their nation for dollars. The banner of national independence and national sovereignty has been thrown overboard. Without doubt, you, the representatives of the communist and democratic parties must raise this banner and carry it forward if you want to be patriots of your countries, if you want to be the leading powers of the nation. There is nobody else to raise it.”
It is the fulfillment of this recommendation that will enable us to defeat NATO and its insatiable imperialist war.
