Fight Imperialism! Against the NATO summit on April 3-4, 2009!

At the beginning of April we are going to see a showcase of those who organize misery and death all around the world. NATO wants to celebrate its 60th anniversary in Strasbourg and Baden-Baden. The bourgeois media will faithfully report which head of state and which top-ranking general prattles about what in front of the press. We will hear about „worldwide terrorism“, „stabilisation“, about „peacekeeping operations“ and „global security“. In fact, NATO is no guarantee of security. Instead, it stands for the aggressive enforcement of the interests of the most powerful governments and the capitalists standing behind them.

Right from the start

This was already its task when it was founded in 1949. After the conflicts between the capitalist powers had come to it’s climax in the inconceivable massacre and enormous destructive frenzy of the Second World War, the future enemy for the capitalist powers was clear: Stalin’s Soviet Union. Although the Stalinist leadership was interested in peaceful coexistence with imperialism, too many areas were removed from the direct circulation of capital. This problem, sooner or later, had to be solved by the capitalists and their governments. This was the reason for the creation of NATO.

For about forty years NATO functioned as an alliance against the working class. With its military power this alliance ensured a constant, extreme menace to the bureaucratically deformed workers’ states. By building up „secret armies“ with the forces of the far right NATO ensured that unofficial armed forces stood by in case of a radicalisation of the workers in the West as well, for example in Italy.

No red danger

After the collapse of Stalinism the propagated “red danger”, the official reason for the existence of NATO, disappeared as well. But the organisation was in no way dissolved; instead it was adjusted to fit the new circumstances. Since the 1990’s NATO has been an „alliance for preventive intervention“, i.e. a structure for enforcing profit interests around the globe – or in the language of the ruling class: for global security based on “peace, values, free trade and stability”.

In a world of growing contradictions in the competition between the enterprises, between poor and rich, between labour and capital, there is an increasing necessity for warlike aggression. NATO is one tool for that, as the bloody war against Yugoslavia or the colonisation of Afghanistan and Iraq show. People who defend themselves against the occupying forces are labelled as „terrorists“ who threaten „stability“, meaning that they disturb the Western corporations which are plundering the resources and exploiting the population.

We support the „anti-colonial“ struggles against the policies of NATO. At the same time, it is our task to sharply criticise the methods and goals of some liberation fighters – it is by no means a task that can be left to the imperialist „colonial masters“, who use such criticism to legitimise their systematic oppression. They, the most ruthless slaughterers of the planet, gossip viciously about the methods of resistance. „Shut up!“ has to be our answer!

Many contradictions

The NATO is only one of many institutions enforcing imperialist interests. And within these institutions there are contradictory tendencies, for example within the EU. For the most powerful parts, namely France and especially Germany, the European Union is a project of competition against the more powerful US, which today, after the collapse of the Stalinist states, become more and more a rival for goods and markets. The EU has also begun to operate militarily beyond US-led structures; with an EU Intervention Force it has set a course towards its own imperialist war policy. However, these tendencies are distinctly weakened by contradictions within the EU itself, whose members partially have close ties to NATO and the US.

What is certain is that even if the NATO became meaninglessness or even were to be dissolved, this would neither end the profit interests of the imperialist corporations nor the brutal practice of the armies enforcing those interests. The global rule of capital has to be replaced by the leadership of the workers! NATO, an alliance of the big imperialist powers, is and remains an important point of attack.

• For the destruction of the NATO throughout the collective action of the oppressed, both inside or outside the imperialist centres!
• For the support of anti-imperialist struggles, also and especially through direct mass action like blocking of the delivery of arms to occupation powers and their puppets!
• Everyone onto the streets against the NATO, in Strasbourg, Baden-Baden and anywhere else!

REVOLUTION International Coordination, March 6, 2009