Significant changes are taking place in the international scene. The attacks on New York and Washington two years ago sparked a colossal crisis that poses a severe threat to democracy, peace, civilization and the fate of humankind. The events on September 11th served as pretexts for the United States to affirm harshly its unilateral foreign policy based on the use of force and aimed at expansionism and the imposition of the its hegemony.

Facing the impact of the tragedy caused by the terrorist acts, the Bush administration was able to create a formidable international coalition supporting the war to overthrow the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, when the American goals became clear, the divergences between the United States and other powers inevitably prevailed again, while inter-imperialist contradictions and the growth of the vast majority of countries and peoples’ opposition to the American empire may increase. The new concepts introduced by the Bush administration of infinite war and the strategy deriving from it, the preventive war, meant the abandonment of diplomacy, demoralizing the multilateral means and organizations and the collective defense system.

Those concepts are inexorably prone to clash with other powers and with the majority of countries and peoples. After two years, Bush’s declaration of war to the peoples resulted in an unforeseen isolation of the United States’ positions and in the open refusal of its hegemony, as the recent meeting of the United Nations made evident as unilateralism was condemned.

According to the United States’ hegemonic statement, the war must be “lengthy and hard”, implying the “use of every necessary weapon of war”. Such aggressiveness created a new situation. The power of the empire, exerted by the political leadership of the United States, is being ostensibly and intensively disputed, causing the collapse of the world “order” introduced in the 1990’s. The trail of imposing a hegemony based on the use of brute force ruined Afghanistan, which is subject to an administration forced upon the country by the United States, which now finds itself in a tight corner, not even being able to leave the capital, Kabul.

Iraq was also invaded and occupied with the use of a gigantic and modern war machine­ as the United States and Great Britain presented a false and puzzling justification that is still fully unproved for the belligerent act. The unilateral action was taken by the Bush administration in flagrant disrespect to all diplomatic norms, rejecting UN’s role (which he proclaimed to be “irrelevant”), striking a heavy blow on the multilateral organization. It resulted in generalized horror and insecurity and started the reconfiguration of the world “order”.

The United States trampled on UN’s Safety Council and isolated itself from the body’s permanent councilors. The country has faced stern opposition from France, Germany (an unprecedented attitude shown by the German administration in the post-war era), China and Russia. Those countries’ positions regarding the path to be followed in Iraq after the occupation, when compared to the United States’ and Britain’s, denote the persistence of divergences among those powers on the reconfiguration of the world “order”, on the United States’ geopolitical, strategic and economic interests in controlling the region and the existence of two distinct policies on UN’s role, on the duration of the transition and the degree of sovereignty to be granted to the Iraqi people.

The aftermath of the occupation in Iraq is proving to be a huge fiasco to the expansionist pretensions and the infinite war sought by the United States. The country is ruined; American soldiers die every day due to the growing resistance of the Iraqi people against the invader; rebuilding the country demands a very high price. Therefore, the American government finds itself before a dead end, desperately searching for the support of other countries by means of blackmail, what becomes increasingly difficult due to its political and diplomatic isolation. That situation constitutes a major hindrance in the aggressive and expansionist escalade designed by the Bush administration, preventing him to execute new belligerent adventures for a long period of time. The domestic support to Bush is entering a downward spiral. The manifestations against the war and the occupation in Iraq are growing even in the United States. The forecasts for the electoral dispute for presidency next year are increasingly unfavorable to Bush.

The international system’s new outline, manifested by the evolving geopolitical course, is not only present in the threat to the economic leadership of the United States that results from the formation of other centers of economic power (which are historically taking place) and the crisis in the dollar standard. It is also due to the growing dispute on its political leadership and the isolation of its hegemonic positions. Moreover, sooner than expected, the imperial rule, increasingly supported by the military supremacy, becomes unable to constitute multiple war fronts according to its strategic design and, above all, to control growing conflicts resulting from the loss of sovereignty of countries occupied by the imperialist military aggression.

In short, the world political scene is characterized by a situation where the predominant superpower, the United States, causes insecurity all over the international system, becoming the source of an improbable and unbalanced order imbued with uncertainty and instability. The background to that unbalanced scenario is the dimension of the impasse of the present capitalist system, the grounds to the growing manifestation of the contradictions of the contemporary world. The structural crisis that integrally reaches the whole system has historically led to extreme solutions: the exacerbation of the use of force, the promotion of tension spots and war—the military solution. The war of aggression is seen as the only way imperialism finds to face its lengthy crisis. The world economy is characterized by growing instability and frequent crises, with undefined and irregular economic cycles, with a mixture of financial and overproduction crises and the increase of parasitism.

The intensification of the economic globalization based on financial liberalization and deregulation sharpened as never before the logic of increasing centralization of wealth and the aggrandizement of fictitious speculative capital, heavily diminishing investments in the productive sphere and devaluating the labor force. The present recessive trend that takes place simultaneously in the main capitalist countries is causing massive unemployment and indebtedness of governments, enterprises and the population. It leads the world economy to a stall and aggravates the situation of the so-called peripheral countries.

The situation became more serious since, in the last three years, the United States, the world’s greatest economy, retracted with the burst of the “bubble” of the American stock exchange, the bankruptcy of great economic and financial groups and accountancy scandals in great enterprises. The false concept of the “new economy”, coined by US imperialism’s think-tanks, proclaiming the end of the economic cycle and its inevitable result—crisis—was completely exposed. The deterioration of the macroeconomic fundaments in the United States, which already registered gigantic trade and current account deficits in the last three decades, deepened after 2001 with the retraction in the income of foreign capitals that previously compensated the deficit, leading to the fall of the dollar and the aggravation of the dollar standard. The outcome of that situation is burdened by great uncertainties regarding the economic future of most peoples and countries.

The ultraliberal policies implemented especially by the end of the 1970’s within the scope of the capitalist globalization caused heavy social damages and economic drawbacks to dependent (peripheral) countries, deepening the inequality between those and the advanced capitalist countries. That is an old story: wherever those policies where applied, the countries have paid and still pay very high costs, being hostages to the free flow of the financial capital, multiplying their debts, becoming more impoverished and vulnerable to foreign forces.

Latin America is particularly marked by the crises and by growing perplexity. The Latin American peoples have suffered and still suffer with the hardships caused by the application of neoliberal policies prescribed by the Washington Consensus throughout the 1990’s. In face of such reality, the democratic and anti-imperialist movement grew and was expressed by an extensive clamor for changes all over the subcontinent, manifested in South America by means of important political turns—Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina and others.

The search for an alternative of changing the neoliberal project in South America became the most important issue in the agenda, especially where new democratic political forces won the national administration. However, the outcome of the struggle between the forces for continuity (which rely on the heavy inheritance of feeble national states with a huge amount of public debt bonds in the hands of great creditors, being unable to define their own economic policies) and the forces for change (which defend a new democratic project of national development that is presently being defined and discussed, in a search for the construction of a new political majority to create a democratic national power) is still uncertain.

Nevertheless, in Latin America’s present conditions, the transition to a new democratic economic system of social progress may take place in the long term. Despite the broad growth of the anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal resistance, politically speaking, a path of an anti-revolutionary character is still being followed, while there are not yet elements of resistance able to invert the general trend. The revolution is not in the present agenda (the strategic defeat suffered with the end of the Soviet Union is still a burden).

The United States, at the same time as it reinforce its military presence in Latin America in the logic of preventive war, is intensifying the political and economic pressures on government to fulfill its plan regarding the FTAA. They make maneuvers and pose threats with a view to weaken free trade agreements of South American countries, especially Mercosur.

In face of such international and Latin American realities, the definition and the continuity of president Lula’s foreign policy and procedure, conducted patriotically by the Ministry of Foreign Relations, are very auspicious. That policy consists in developing a foreign relation that preserves sovereignty and national interests before the world’s capitalist powers, based on the pacific coexistence of all countries. That new guideline is based on the defense of multilateral bodies and agreements, on uplifting the role of the UN’s international collective defense system (Lula advocates the need for restoring UN’s political authority), on reinforcing the world’s multipolar trend, on condemning unilateral foreign policies based on the use of force and the war waged against Iraq. The president is consonant with a broad national feeling as his speech in the UN made clear.

Moreover, the priority that the Brazilian policies granted to the integration of Latin America reached great dimensions as Mercosur was relaunched with the intent of broadening its scope to reach the entire continent by means of agreements with the Andean Pact. The recent agreement made with Peru and the advance in settlements in that sense with Venezuela—both made within the scope of Mercosur—the commercial and economic support to socialist Cuba and the development of strategic partnerships with China (which is the second greatest buyer from Brazil), India, South Africa and Russia–all of them reflect that orientation. The government intends to create a three-sided forum involving Brazil, India and South Africa. The foreign policy prioritizes also Africa and the Arabian countries.

The present policy is centered on the integration of South America and the strategic partnerships known as South-South. According to a statement made by Minister of Foreign Relations Celso Amorim, such orientation is granted precedence and priority before the FTAA proposed by the United States.

The redefinition of the Brazilian policy regarding the FTAA is also noteworthy due to what it represents to the country’s strategic interests: the so-called policy of the “three tracks”, where the negotiation takes place with a view to national interests and the joint cooperation among the members of Mercosur in face of the United States’ proposal–the 4 + 1 agreement being the second track. The effort also consists in bringing the negotiation of issues of great interest, “delicate” issues, back to the agenda–within the scope of the World Trade Organization–where Brazil may achieve a better correlation of forces, which is the third track.

As a consequence of prioritizing the “South-South” policy (the Third World and developing countries) applied by president Lula’s government, the formation of a new negotiating bloc led by Brazil (the G-22, including major nations such as China, India, South Africa, Argentina and Mexico) gained importance in the international scene. That group imposed limits to the pretensions of Europe, United States and Japanese regarding the WTO in the recent meeting held in Cancún.

The great economic powers, despite meeting an agreement, were not able to force their rule upon the others, an unprecedented fact in that kind of event. It represents a new situation that expresses the developing countries’ new form of articulation, as they were able, for a brief period, to gather around the defense of common interests in face of more powerful countries.

The latter governments wanted to secure concessions in core issues–the “Singapore issues”–and impose rules that were wholly disadvantageous to G-22 countries, such as the protection of investments (reliving the Multilateral Investment Agreement), the competition policy, governmental purchases etc. But they did not admit agreements on issues that are vital to the countries of the new bloc, such as agriculture, anti-dumping etc. The reaction of the governments of the United States and the European Union to the G-22’s independent attitude has been a furious one. They even affirmed that such procedure meant the return of the “ideological” rupture that characterized the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The G-22’s action, despite the impasse resulting from the meeting in Cancún, is an open path to the development of a multilateral trade system. That, along with Mercosur, the Andean Pact and the regional economic cooperation–strengthened in Asia by means of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), added to China or South Korea–may lead to the creation of poles that reinforce the world’s multipolar trend. In the Brazilian case, given the country’s leading role, it may favor the political and diplomatic work, benefiting the national interests.

The Communist Party of Brazil, due to its responsibilities deriving from the participation in Lula’s administration and its programmatic commitments, is certain that, regionally, the struggle for democracy, sovereignty and social development and progress, besides requiring an autonomous economic policy and the strengthening of the national state, depends also on a sovereign and affirmative foreign policy, on regional integration and the realization of mutually beneficial strategic partnerships among great nations aiming at a multipolar world and a new world order characterized by peace, development and the social emancipation of the peoples.

The peoples are increasingly longing for peace, democracy, sovereignty and development. The struggles for peace and against the imperialist war mobilized the masses all over the world on February 15^th and March 15^th last year. They have taken the anti-imperialist struggle to a new stage while the great international struggle acquired a character that is at the same time broad and radical, a gigantic leap in the feeling against barbarism. The peoples are increasingly understanding and resisting to the mindless designs of the United States’ imperialism of ruling the world.

The struggle for economic development also achieved a great political dimension. The modern standard of capitalist accumulation not only is incapable of promoting social progress, but is even unable to further its own economic development in a fast and sustained way, something that is fundamental to social development, especially in dependent countries.

The Communist Party of Brazil waves high the banner of the struggle for peace, democracy, sovereignty and development and for the solidarity and active support to all the peoples’ struggles for social emancipation, especially at this time the Palestinian peoples’ in their heroic and fair struggle against the fascist administration of the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and for their self-determination with the objective of creating the Palestine national State.

The Communist Party of Brazil is certain that the anti-imperialist struggle against neoliberalism, for national sovereignty, will become inconsequent if it is limited to the level of partial and juncture-related changes and loses sight of the alternative of fighting for a superior society–the socialist society. Such is our strategic commitment.