Friday, May 27, 2022

Toufan condemns the May 22nd assassination of IRGC Colonel Hassan Sayad Khodayari

Below is a slightly edited statement from the Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan; www.toufan.org/ ) on the brazen assassination of Hassan Sayad Khodayari, a colonel in the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Tehran at the beginning of the week, similiar to the series of assassinations targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, also of the Quds Force, January 3, 2020 in Iraq.  Just as the US media doesn't give a sense of how many attacks the Israeli military and settlers carry out against Palestinians and other Arabs, the American public might also not realize the amount of terrorism and violence targeting Iran:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Israel_proxy_conflict 


Terrorist acts are against the national interests and the struggle of the people of Iran for democratic rights.  

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) strongly condemns them.  

The Supreme National Security Council of Iran confirmed Sunday’s terrorist act in Tehran and the killing of Colonel Hassan Sayad, according to a statement.  

Sayad Khodayari was serving as the Deputy of the Research and Technology Development section of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization.  

The public relations department of “Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps-IRGC” also announced in a statement that  

“This evening (Sunday, May 22), in one of the alleys in the east of Tehran, Colonel Sayad Khodaei was the target of a terrorist act by counter-revolution and elements affiliated with global arrogance."  

Israeli newspapers also wrote with the headline "Deletion in the heart of Tehran":  

"Hassan Sayad Khodayari, one of the senior officers of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, was shot by two motorcyclist killers in broad daylight yesterday."  

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of the Research and Innovation Organization of the Iranian Ministry of Defense, was assassinated in a similar way in a village outside Tehran in 2020. Iran's foreign ministry and military officials accused Israel of this assassination.  

The systematic terrorist operations on Iran's nuclear engineers and prominent military figures over the past few years leave no doubt that Israeli terrorist and intelligence teams have penetrated Iran. With the help of the US intelligence services, which has placed the IRGC on the terrorist list, Israel justifies these actions. Exploiting the internal crisis and public dissatisfaction, Israelis try to disintegrate the society from within by creating terror and political insecurity. Therefore, our party is of the opinion:  

First, this targeted terrorist act is the continuation of the past assassination of Iran's nuclear scientists and military leaders and is for the purpose of escalation of tensions and unrest in Iran and the region.  

Second, given that the United States is now in a position of weakness in the Region and in the nuclear negotiation in Vienna and Iran is in a strong position, the purpose of this adventurous and terrorist operation is to provoke Iran for a military response and confrontation with Israel and the United States. 

As we have repeatedly emphasized, Israel does not want peace in the region; its survival is tied to division, war and aggression. It is in the nature of Zionism to incite war.  

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) strongly condemns this terrorist act and considers it a form of a war of attrition against the Iranian people.  

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) condemns the assassination and tension-creating acts and economic sanctions against Iran. We consider them as opposed to peace, stability, security, and the interest of the Iranian people and of the people of the Region.  

Considering the growth of the people's struggle for their democratic rights, these terrorist acts narrow and overshadow the atmosphere of political and civil struggle of the Iranian people. Such an atmosphere of fear and intimidation gives the regime of the Islamic Republic an excuse to label any peaceful and democratic movement of the people as "alignment with Israel and foreign enemies" and suppress it.  

The Iranian organisations and currents that approve the blind and criminal assassinations or remain silent about them are practically accomplices of international and domestic reaction and are opposed to the national and class interests of the Iranian people.  

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan)  

WWW. Toufan.org  

May 23, 2022  


Saturday, May 14, 2022

Towards ML Unity May issue published

The May issue of Towards Marxist-Leninist Unity has been published and will be freely available online at:  redstarpublishers.org/TMLU.htm  (see also for TMLU's contact information and how to order print copies).  The next issue should come out in July, and any submissions should be sent in during June.



Contents


APL on Roe V. Wade: Defend Our Communities From Organized Reaction  

No to imperialist-capitalist wars! Death to fascism!  

Is U.S. dollar hegemony ending?  

Book Review: Turn the Guns Around, by John Catalinotto  

Two Poems From A German War Primer  

Book review: “Mobilizing in Our Own Name”  [About the Million Worker March]

The Failure of Revisionism and the Need For a New Communist International  

The Colonial Presence of France in Martinique  

Richard Leakey (1944-2022)  


Sección en español  


¡No a las guerras imperialistas-capitalistas! ¡Muerte al fascismo!  

El fracaso del revisionismo: por una nueva Internacional  


Thursday, May 12, 2022

Black Alliance for Peace - Boycott the Summit of the Americas

Originally posted at:  blackallianceforpeace.com/bapstatements/boycottsummitofamericas


The Black Alliance for Peace Calls on Latin American and Caribbean Nations to Boycott the Summit of the Americas 

May 12, 2022

The failure of the U.S. to respect the sovereignty of nations in the region and its decision to exclude states from the Summit disqualifies it from being a credible host.


For Immediate Release                                                               Media Contact
                                                                        press [at] blackallianceforpeace [ ]
May 12, 2022                                                                                [ ]       
 

May 12, 2022, the arbitrary decision by the government of the United States to exclude Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela from participation in the regional Summit of the Americas - scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, June 6th to 10th - represents another example of imperial hubris and delusion. 

Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently announced that he would boycott the Summit unless all countries in the region are invited. Some member states of CARICOM and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, including Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and Grenadines, are also considering not attending the Summit. Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, stated that his country “does not believe in the policy of ostracising Cuba and Venezuela.”

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), however, believes that even if the U.S. reverses its decision and invites all countries of the region, the aggressive, illegal, and oppressive policies of the U.S. toward the region demands that these governments take a stand and reject the invitation to attend the Summit. 

The Summit of the Americas, taking place every three years, promotes “economic growth and prosperity throughout the Americas based on shared democratic values.” However, this rhetorical hypocrisy is evident with the Biden-Harris administration's subversion in Haiti and sanctions and attacks on Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba. “From support for autocracy in Haiti, the embargo against Cuba, and deaths in Venezuela as a result of U.S. sanctions, the U.S. continues to prove that it has no regard or respect for the peoples and nations of our region and should not be given the honor of hosting this summit,” states Jemima Pierre, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team. 

BAP understands the motivations and interests to expand U.S. hegemony across what the U.S. sees as its “backyard” are tied to a reassertion of the racist Monroe Doctrine. Democracy and human rights are no more than ideological props as the U.S. utilizes forces like OAS, CORE Group, and SOUTHCOM to ensure the interests of its capitalist oligarchy. Our call is, “U.S. out of the Americas,” and our goal is to work towards the establishment of the region as a “Zone of Peace.”

“As long as the U.S. operates as a hegemon instead of a partner in our region, the peoples and nations of Latin America and the Caribbean must consider the U.S. an enemy to national sovereignty and People(s)-Centered Human Rights. It is, therefore, an absurdity and a surrender of dignity to allow the U.S. to not only host this summit, but to determine who can attend,” said Erica Caines, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team.

BAP is committed to a democratic and independent “Americas” free from militarism and subversion. Toward that, we believe that rejecting the divisive and disrespectful politics of the U.S. is a moral and political imperative.  

 ##


Communist Platform (Italy): Lenin and Putin on Ukraine

Originally posted on Communist Platform's website:  piattaformacomunista.com/


Lenin and Putin on Ukraine  

Lenin wrote:  

 

He who justifies the capitalists who “are leading us into war in order to throttle Poland and the Ukraine,... (e.g. calls the throttling of Poland and the Ukraine a ‘defense of the fatherland’ of the Great Russians)... is a lickspittle and a boor, who arouses a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt, and loathing.  


"‘No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations,’ said Marx and Engels, the greatest representatives of consistent nineteenth century democracy, who became the teachers of the revolutionary proletariat. And, full of a sense of national pride, we Great-Russian workers want, come what may, a free and independent, a democratic, republican and proud Great Russia, one that will base its relations with its neighbours on the human principle of equality, and not on the feudalist principle of privilege, which is so degrading to a great nation. Just because we want that, we say: it is impossible, in the twentieth century and in Europe (even in the far east of Europe), to ‘defend the fatherland’ otherwise than by using every revolutionary means to combat the monarchy, the landowners and the capitalists of one's own fatherland, i.e., the worst enemies of our country. We say that the Great Russians cannot ‘defend the fatherland’ otherwise than by desiring the defeat of tsarism in any war, this as the lesser evil to nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Great Russia. For tsarism not only oppresses those nine-tenths economically and politically, but also demoralises, degrades, dishonours and prostitutes them by teaching them to oppress other nations and to cover up this shame with hypocritical and quasi-patriotic phrases.  


The objection may be advanced that, besides tsarism and under its wing, another historical force has arisen and become strong, viz., Great-Russian capitalism, which is carrying on progressive work by economically centralising and welding together vast regions. This objection, however, does not excuse, but on the contrary still more condemns our socialist-chauvinists, who should be called tsarist-Purishkevich socialists (just as Marx called the Lassalleans Royal-Prussian socialists). Let us even assume that history will decide in favour of Great-Russian dominant-nation capitalism, and against the hundred and one small nations. That is not impossible, for the entire history of capital is one of violence and plunder, blood and corruption. We do not advocate preserving small nations at all costs; other conditions being equal, we are decidedly for centralisation and are opposed to the petty-bourgeois ideal of federal relationships. Even if our assumption were true, however, it is, firstly, not our business, or that of democrats (let alone of socialists), to help Romanov-Bobrinsky-Purishkevich throttle the Ukraine, etc.... our home-grown socialist-chauvinists, Plekhanov, etc., etc., will prove traitors, not only to their own country – a free and democratic Great Russia, but also to the proletarian brotherhood of all the nations of Russia, i.e., to the cause of socialism.." ("On the National Pride of the Great Russians", Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, pp. 104-105)  


"The independence of the Ukraine has been recognized both by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of the R.S.F.S.R. (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic) and by the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). It is therefore self-evident and generally recognised that only the Ukrainian workers and peasants themselves can and will decide at their All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets whether the Ukraine shall amalgamate with Russia, or whether she shall remain a separate and independent republic, and, in the latter case, what federal ties shall be established between that republic and Russia."  


"If a Great-Russian Communist insists upon the amalgama- tion of the Ukraine with Russia, Ukrainians might easily suspect him of advocating this policy not from the motive of uniting the proletarians in the fight against capital, but because of the prejudices of the old Great-Russian national- ism, of imperialism. Such mistrust is natural, and to a certain degree inevitable and legitimate, because the Great Russians, under the yoke of the landowners and capitalists, had for centuries imbibed the shameful and disgusting prejudices of Great-Russian chauvinism." ("Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine Apropos of the Victories Over Denikin", Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, pp. 292 and 295)  



Putin in his speech to the nation on February 21, 2022 said:  


"So, I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia – by separating, severing what is historically Russian land....  


“When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples, Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991....  


“Lenin criticised this plan and suggested making concessions to the nationalists, whom he called ‘independents’ at that time. Lenin’s ideas of what amounted in essence to a confederative state arrangement and a slogan about the right of nations to self-determination, up to secession, were laid in the foundation of Soviet statehood. Initially they were confirmed in the Declaration on the Formation of the USSR in 1922, and later on, after Lenin’s death, were enshrined in the 1924 Soviet Constitution.”  


Comparing Lenin's thought and Putin's statements, as well as exposing all the lies on which contemporary Great-Russian nationalism is built, shows the profoundly reactionary, chauvinistic and imperialist character of today's Russia and its anti-communist "leader" Putin.  


Those who still place their hopes in Putin are pinning their hopes on the old tsarist prison-house of nations, which Putin and the capitalist-imperialist class of which he is the current representative glorify and dream of.  


Capital is an international force, and to overcome this force it is necessary to create an international alliance, the international brotherhood of the workers and of all working people of the world.  


The oppressed proletarians and peoples of all countries must fight together against all the great imperialist powers, be they the USA, NATO, the EU, Germany or China and Russia. Only those who fight against their own ruling class and its war preparations are fighting for peace!  


NO to the war of inter-imperialist division fought on the backs of the Ukrainian people!  


Fight against Italian imperialism and its warmongering policy hitched to the chariot of the USA and NATO!  


Eternal glory to the Red Army and the Red Navy, to the partisans who fell in order to defeat Nazism, under the banner of the struggle against capitalism and imperialism, of freedom and peace among peoples, for socialism!  


May 8, 2022 (77th anniversary of the capitulation of Nazism)  


Communist Platform – for the Communist Party of the Proletariat of Italy  


Ukraine: One step closer to world war! (CNCP)

This is a statement from the National Council of Popular Committees (CNCP) in the French Caribbean colony of Martinique.  During the recent French presidential election it was said that French territories in the Caribbean, I can't remember if Martinique was mentioned specifically, tend to vote left or socialist in protest, but voted for Le Pen in the final round.





The Position of the CNCP


(National Council of Popular Committees)  



UKRAINE: One step closer to world war!  


Western media empires have massively mobilized to persuade the public that what is happening in Ukraine is the result of the wickedness of a mad dictator named Putin who wants to prevent an innocent democratic country from joining the peaceful European family. Everyone should realize that in reality this is another premeditated step towards a third world war. This means that supporting one or the other of the camps that are clashing without having been validly informed is a guilty irresponsibility.  


Positioning NATO bases against Russia  


For several decades the imperialist powers have been preparing to confront each other. After the collapse of the Soviet Union that put an end to the "balance of terror" (the two main powers being endowed with a powerful nuclear arsenal), the camp of the Western imperialists, led by the US, was convinced that its hegemony was definitively guaranteed in a unipolar world.  


Except that nothing can stop the wheel of history. China has developed its potential in a dazzling way and is on its way to becoming the world's leading economic power; Russia has reconstituted itself as a rival power that must now be counted on. At the same time, the popular movements in the dominated countries have continued to grow, undermining the stranglehold of the Western imperialists on their sources of supply of raw materials and weakening the points of support of their military domination. On the other hand, their maneuvers of subversion aimed at overthrowing "hostile governments" are proving increasingly ineffective.  


This explains why, on both sides, the adversaries are preparing for war. All of them are significantly increasing their capital expenditure and positioning themselves strategically in anticipation of the decisive confrontation.  


The real Ukrainian challenge  


It is in this context that the situation in Ukraine must be analyzed. The Western camp set out to encircle Russia by setting up NATO bases and calling on NATO's neighbors to join its military pact. However, this is contrary to the commitments made at the time of the thaw between the two blocs and after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Since then, the Russian power has also embarked on a war strategy to impose itself in the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine and block the country's accession to NATO. This is a conflict between rival powers and for both sides, the Ukrainian stakes are decisive.  


If Ukraine emerges victorious, strong, on the one hand, from the massive military and financial support provided by the US and the European Union, and thanks, on the other hand, to the "sanctions" taken by these powers to sabotage the Russian economy, the Western camp will have a solid base to attack Russia head-on. Any provocation would suffice as a pretext.  


If Russia succeeds in its bet, it will benefit from a buffer zone and will emerge strengthened, especially since , to face the sanctions, it is consolidating its ties with other countries such as China.  


But in both cases, the Ukrainian people and the other peoples of the world will lose.  


Because, in this case, the Ukrainian people are taken hostage  


By setting in motion their huge propaganda machine designed to pity the whole world about the suffering of Ukrainian civilians, the Western imperialists are showing repugnant cynicism. Their hands are still dripping with the blood of the civilians they have massacred around the world and they know well that, in history, there has never been a "clean" war.  


After a bombing in Yemen  [A photo caption?]


Since 2000, the Israeli army has killed 1800 children in the occupied Palestinian territories. Since 2014, 10,000 children have been killed or injured by bombs in Yemen. What media has ever interviewed a desperate mother? In seven years of conflict in that country, 377,000 civilians were killed. What call for solidarity has been launched? How many refugees have Western countries decided to take in? In this war involving a coalition led by Saudi Arabia – to which France sells arms – who has called King Salman a dictator and had his property seized?  


In truth, the war that is being waged in Ukraine today is certainly not intended to defend the interests of the people of that country.  


Let us repeat: the rival powers are on the way to an all-out war that will be devastating for all the peoples of the world. We are already suffering the effects of the economic war waged against Russia by the Western imperialists. The latter do not care about the collateral effects on their own populations. The multinationals and the big capitalists will continue to do well. Massive arms deliveries to the Ukrainian authorities will further inflate the profits of "arms dealers ". People will be crushed by the spectacular rise in prices, but the speculators who control world trade will get richer than ever. As for the "Russian oligarchs" whose yachts and bank assets have been seized, they must sneer because most of their financial cushion continue to prosper – alongside that of the Western oligarchs - in tax havens including In England!  


Let us add that one of the objectives of the "sanctions " is to make the Russian population turn against its government by making their lives deteriorate. Depriving nationals of the use of their bank cards, prohibiting athletes from participating in Paralympic competitions, this has nothing to do with an alleged defense of Ukraine!  


But when it comes to "economic warfare", we must also talk about the one that  the US is waging against its own allies. By demanding, for example, the blocking of Nordstream gas pipelines, they intend to enrich themselves by selling their shale gas, put obstacles in the way of the "competitiveness" of European countries and strengthen their dependence on them.  


Don’t Give Someone a Stick with Which They Will Beat Us!  


It will be understood that to support one side or another would be to give those who are the enemies of all peoples the means to dominate them. It is therefore essential to counter any propaganda that aims to manipulate public opinion.  


In all wars, the control of information and the battle of the image have always been decisive issues. We have denounced above the use of the suffering of Ukrainian civilians. But more generally, it is necessary to deconstruct the mechanisms aimed at demonizing Russia and idealizing Ukraine. 

 

Personally targeting Vladimir Putin and only talking about the damage caused by the Russian military intervention is intended to condition public opinion and above all to prevent it from obscuring the real understanding of the war, which we have exposed at the beginning of the article. At the same time, the Western camp is doing everything to hide the nature of the Ukrainian government.  President Volodymyr Zelensky has magically become the symbol of peace and democracy! Yet it is proven that he is in cahoots with far-right militias and that he has already bombed civilians in the Donbas region. (The weapons given to him also land in the hands of neo-Nazis.)  


Why, then, has the European Union denied the existence of the racist blockade of non-whites on the Polish border, when multiple testimonies attest to this reality, so much so that the African Union has risen to the occasion to denounce it.  


Speaking of information warfare, note that the European authorities censored all media that gave information contrary to their propaganda (RT, Sputnik, etc.)... while condemning the intolerable attacks on freedom of expression by the Russian government in that country. Because the opponents of the Westerners are also waging the information war and unfurling their propaganda.  


Ultimately, information warfareeconomic warfareand military confrontations in Ukraine bring us one step closer to a possible world war.  


There is no question, therefore, of being complicit with any imperialist, whoever he is !  


On the contrary, everything must be done to stop this infernal dynamic that would lead the world to a total war in which, as Paul Valéry would say, people who do not know each other would massacre themselves "for the benefit of people who know each other and do not massacre."  


That is why we say that the struggle of the Ukrainian people against the invader is legitimate. It is up to them not to allow themselves to be used either by the fascists or by a government in the pay of the Western imperialists. Likewise, it is up to the Russian people to fight against the war strategy of their government. In this regard, it should be noted that, while the media only give a voice to pro-Western opponents, the Russian socialist and communist parties, which are representative forces, have expressed their opposition to the war.  


In a context where all the imperialist countries have undertaken to fascisize their society, they subject their populations to the worst repressive measures, where the power of the multinationals and speculators is undivided, where governments in their pay sabotage all public services and all social gains, in the name of a barbaric ultraliberalism.  


At a  time when the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report dated February 28, 2022 tells us that "between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people (almost half of humanity) already live in situations that are highly vulnerable to climate change" the interests of the people are different !  


The urgency is for each people to fight for its true sovereignty, for everyone to turn their back on ultraliberal globalization, to embark on the path of independent and self-centered development, aimed at guaranteeing the well-being of populations, respect for the environment and living things, the interest of future generations and peace between peoples.  


US Peace Council: A manufactured crisis in Ukraine is victimizing the world's peoples

[This May 10th statement was originally posted at:  uspeacecouncil.org/a-manufactured-crisis-in-ukraine-is-victimizing-the-worlds-peoples/  A related article:  newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/return-of-the-king?pc=1440 ]



With the conflict in Ukraine entering its third month, the likelihood of a successfully negotiated peace — an immediate necessity — is becoming ever more remote. This proxy war by the United States is designed to use the Ukrainian people to mortally disable Russia. Those who profit from war benefit, while those most vulnerable suffer: Ukrainian civilians, but more broadly working people internationally and especially in the Global South.

It was expected that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 would put an end to the first Cold War and the threat of world nuclear annihilation. Instead, the world’s remaining superpower continued its imperialist quest of global “full spectrum dominance” to prevent the emergence of “any potential future global competitor.”

Domestically, instead of a “peace dividend” in 1991, the bi-partisan consensus of Democrats and Republicans has been a policy of relentless military expansion. The U.S. military now consumes over half of the federal discretionary budget, which is 12 times the size of Russia’s defense spending. The Ukraine war has been used to justify Congress’s most recent obscene additional $29 billion in war appropriations over what the Pentagon itself had requested, $800 billions of which will go directly to Ukraine in the form of hi-tech military weapons.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine is providing convenient cover for the current administration to renege on promised social programs such as COVID protections, full student loan debt relief, free community college, or the public option for Medicare, and the promised seven days guaranteed paid sick leave for the workers. The war has been used to encourage fossil fuel production and blocking fracking on federal land has been forsaken.


A U.S.-Manufactured Conflict


Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine could have been avoided if the U.S. had not relentlessly provoked it. The U.S. provided weapons and military training to the fascist-infiltrated Ukrainian army that has targeted ethnic Russians in Ukraine since the U.S.-orchestrated coup in 2014. Some 14,000 people had died in the conflict before Russia directly intervened.

Russia repeatedly called for respecting the ceasefire outlined in the Minsk Accords. The 2015 Minsk II Agreement called for autonomy for the separatist Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where the majority are Russian-speaking, along with release of prisoners of war and withdrawal of heavy weapons.

Instead, the Ukrainian army increased its attacks on its own citizens, although the peace agreement had been signed by representatives of Ukraine along Russia, the separatist provinces, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for western Europe. Then in late February, a planned full-scale assault by the Ukraine army on the separatist region immediately precipitated the Russian invasion (need citation to support this).

The conflict could not have continued without weapons and intelligence openly provided by the U.S. In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reported that the U.S. and NATO had supplied 60,000 anti-tank and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to the Ukrainian army. In recent weeks, the Biden administration ordered another $1.6 billion of “lethal aid” to Ukraine further escalating the conflict.


NATO — the U.S.-Dominated Global War Machine


Contrary to its claims, NATO is not a defensive organization. Its purpose from the start has been to act as an instrument for U.S. world domination and to prevent all challenges to the U.S. hegemony. That is why it was not dissolved in 1991 after the dissolution of the Socialist Camp’s Warsaw Pact. On the contrary, despite the promises made by high U.S. officials to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would expand “not one inch east,” it was expanded into fifteen new countries. This relentless eastward expansion of NATO during the past decades has been an existential threat to a nuclear-armed Russia and the main cause of the present military conflict in Ukraine. Now, driven by the war in Ukraine, NATO may be able to add Sweden and Finland in western Europe and Ukraine and Georgia in eastern Europe to its list of members.

NATO is not a true alliance. It is in fact an integrated imperialist army under direct U.S. command. Its constituent states are bound to dedicate significant portions of their national budgets to maintaining this war machine and to offer up their youth as soldiers.

Nor is it serving the interests of Europe, where U.S. nuclear weapons are stationed — in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey — making them immediate targets if the cold war turns hot; likewise for Poland and Romania, which now host the U.S. “missile defense” facilities for NATO aimed at Russia.


Severing Russia from Europe Through Weaponizing Ukraine


Not only has the Ukraine conflict been used to oblige NATO members to buy more weapons from U.S. military contractors, but the larger U.S. objective of economically severing Russia from Europe is being advanced. Precluded is an integrated Europe with peaceful commerce between Russia and its neighbors. Instead, Germany, for instance, is being compelled against its economic self-interest to buy U.S. liquified natural gas rather than getting supplied from Russia via the Nord Stream II pipeline at a fraction of the cost.

The eventual peaceful integration of Russia with the rest of Europe has now been forestalled for the foreseeable future. Such a potential integration could have served in the long-term as a counterbalance to U.S. hegemony. Thus, severance of Russia from Europe has been a paramount strategic geopolitical objective for the U.S. And forget about pledges to restore engagement with Cuba, rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, or negotiate with North Korea for a denuclearized zone.

Weaponizing Ukraine as a part of NATO is the key to, in the words of the semi-governmental Rand Corporation, “overextending and unbalancing Russia.” Early on, U.S. strategic planners, such as President Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, put into play the elements that would eventually precipitate Russia’s military response on February 24th.

For all the reasons stated above, the U.S. government has pursued trapping Russia in the Ukraine conflict and has every incentive to prolong the conflict. Ukraine’s hands are tied, as it cannot negotiate a settlement without permission from the U.S., which is unlikely to be forthcoming.


Global Consequences


The reverberating consequences of the conflict and the associated sanctions by the U.S. and its allies on Russia have been devastating, causing food and fuel shortages globally and an ensuing inflation in the cost of living most impacting those who can least afford it.

Climate chaos, the ongoing pandemic, and inflation are all exacerbated by the conflict. Instead of international solidarity and cooperation to combat these threats, the opposite is occurring with global fragmentation. The U.S. is threatening to sanction countries such as China and India, home to 35% of the world population if they do not cut economic ties with Russia. Pakistan recently experienced a U.S.-backed coup, in part for continuing to have a friendly relationship with Russia.


Call for Peace


With the U.S. imperialist thrust to prolong the proxy war to weaken Russia, the voices for peace are regrettably few. Liberals in the U.S. supporting the Democratic Party are reluctant to take a principled stand for peace. Rather, they fully call for the overthrow of Putin and punishing the Russians for their transgressions.

Although liberals were quick to invoke the specter of fascism when it could be associated with President Trump, they exhibit little concern about aligning with real self-avowed fascist elements in Ukraine. Yet the resurgence of a radical right is directly tied to the capitulation of liberals to a failed neoliberal agenda (along with an embrace of a neoconservative outlook on foreign relations), which has alienated and victimized many workers who previously supported liberal and social democratic alternatives.

The Republicans, viewing the upcoming midterm congressional elections, have taken the tactic of advocating for an even more adventurous jingoism. Meanwhile, many alternative views to the imperialist narrative have been de-platformed from social media leaving the U.S. public with a steady diet of Russophobia.

Even the left is not entirely unified on a peace platform. Some view the conflict as simply an inter-imperialist rivalry between a capitalist U.S. and a capitalist Russia primarily over natural resources in which the working class has no stake. While there are elements of truth in such a view, it ignores larger and far overriding issues, especially the destructive impact of NATO’s success in Ukraine on the lives of the working people throughout the world.

On the basis of this assessment of the present situation in Ukraine, the U.S. Peace Council reiterates its statement of March 24 calling for rapidly de-escalating the violence and negotiating a peaceful resolution. Analysts across the political spectrum agree that never has the world been so close to nuclear holocaust.

We call upon the Biden Administration to stop fueling the fire and prolonging the war by sending billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine. It is time for these funds to be spent on critically-ignored human needs instead of waging imperialist wars against other nations.


U.S. Peace Council
May 10, 2022