BREAK THE US IMPERIALIST WAR DRIVE!
Statement of Commission 4 of the International League of Peoples’ Struggles
The International League of Peoples’ Struggles thoroughly condemns the global gendarmerie known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the brutal enforcer of US-based monopoly capitalism and interests world wide. A member of the International Coordinating Network which just launched the “Fight against Imperialist War” on May 21st, the ILPS has joined the united international mobilization to confront and expose NATO with calls to have member states withdraw and the entire Organization to be dismantled.
NATO is meeting in late June to launch its new global strategy and execute plans for expansion. The people are protesting the proposals to have more countries join NATO (Finland, Sweden and Ukraine).
Faced with the profound crisis of monopoly capitalism, an imperialist system of exploitation, plunder and domination, and the loss of its status as top dog in the multipolar world today, the US is dragging its closest allies in Europe and Canada into stepped up expansion and militarization, demanding more state funds and development and trade of arms. It is aligning more profoundly with fascism and terrorism in a desperate attempt to achieve its anti-social and destructive goals. It has even renewed a commitment to the use of nuclear weapons rationalized by the deterrence argument.
NATO’s support for the extreme right of Ukraine and interventions to use Ukraine against Russia is a case in point. The US is draining its taxpayers’ treasury instead of addressing its own internal problems and providing for its people to the point where its financial commitment to the war in Ukraine exceeds Russia’s yearly military budget. Through NATO, it is demanding that its military allies follow suit. NATO is also having its members commit to more donations of arms for Ukraine while it pushes arms production and trade. NATO is an institution of the military industrial complex serving the big arms producers such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing. In fact, Lockheed Martin executives were expressly activated to hussle European states and Canada to form NATO in the first place. NATO activity guarantees markets, which motivates NATO to extend and perpetuate conflicts.
Arguments that NATO defends democracy and human rights are totally bankrupt. Neither does it intervene to save lives and end conflicts. NATO is an apparatus intended to thwart democracy and liberation struggles. That is one of its intentions in the Ukraine conflict: overcoming the independence struggles and controlling all of Eastern Europe while it seeks to bring Russia to its knees. An instrument to curb communism from the post-WW2 period through the Cold War, it was later mobilized to marshal Eastern European nations as the Soviet Union collapsed. One aim has been to break imperialist Russia’s influence and markets in Europe and beyond.
NATO member countries have long been deployed to defend US-led imperialism around the world, despite NATO’s ostensible label as a “European and North American organization”. It and its members run bases in the Caribbean and South America. It plays a role in aggressive interventions and US military expansion in Africa. Recently, NATO formally announced it was engaging in confronting China. This follows its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan and its aid to Saudi Arabia’s campaign to destroy Yemen, its involvement in attacks on Syria and its support to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. It has mainly aimed to conserve the international imperialist world order since its formation in 1949. All its activities and policies contribute to sharpening rivalries, militarism, military interventions and perpetual war; it is thus a factor for war setting the stage for another world war.
The ILPS, especially Commission 4, fully supports the people’s counter summit and other mass meetings in Madrid on June 25 and their mass demonstrations to oppose NATO there and at locations around the world that are planned from June 26 to 30th. ILPS organizations and allies should join in or organize their own local mass actions and other expressions of opposition.
No to NATO! End the arms trade!
Stop the US war machine! No war in Ukraine!
Stop wars of aggression and counterrevolution! Negotiations, not military action!
Support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons!
JUST PEAce COMMITTEE 