|
 I
want to thank your Party and its
international staff for your
invitation to take part in this
seminar: that is an honoring
invitation of great interest to me.
I have condensed
some thoughts on the new
international situation in 20 issues
that I submit to discussion. I will
not take much time in discussing the
international policy of the Bush
administration because it seems to
me that, at least among communists,
there is today broad convergences
and a broad and consolidated body of
works regarding that issue. A much
more complex issue, though, is how
that policy can be contrasted and
defied with credibility in the
present international correlation of
forces. It is the same old question:
WHAT TO DO?
1
– With the military occupation in
Iraq, a desire of world domination
by the most aggressive sectors of US
imperialism was organically
manifested. Controlling the Middle
East, the world’s largest reserve of
oil, means conditioning the whole
economic dynamic of the planet,
especially the European Union and
China, which are now highly
dependent on that region’s oil. It
was not mere chance that made Russia
and China, at the first summit
between Putin and Hu Jintao, decide
to intensify their cooperation in
energy.
2
– The scenario is one of
competition for world hegemony in
the 21st century. The
United States, due to its own
economic difficulties, with the
world’s largest foreign debt, facing
the emergence of new economic,
geopolitical and financial areas
that threaten its world rule, has
chosen “permanent” and “preventive”
war in an attempt to win the
international military competition,
where they are still the strongest.
And that is the field where it plans
to reach an overwhelming superiority
over the rest of the world,
searching to invert a growing trend
towards decline in its economic
prevalence. In 1945 the United
States produced 50% of the world’s
GDP. Now they detain 25% (as much as
the European Union). With the
present trend in the world’s
economy, research centers in the
most industrialized countries
predict a further decrease in that
percentage for the next 20 years. It
would be the end of US imperialism’s
world hegemony, the emergence of new
centers of power, capitalist and
non-capitalist ones, and an
authentic revolution in the world
balances. World wars were waged for
much less.
3
– The European Union,
Russia, China
and India are the main emerging
geopolitical economic powers that
detain military power. Eurasia is
the main obstacle to US domain over
the world.
Those that still have doubts should
reread Paul Wolfowitz, ideologist of
the Bush administration: “The United
States must rely on its overwhelming
military superiority and use it
preventively and unilaterally… Our
main objective is to impede the
emergence of yet another rival
(after the USSR—note of the author)…
It demands all efforts to impede any
hostile power that domains a region
which control may turn it into a
world power. Such regions comprise
Western Europe, Eastern Asia (i.e.
China—note of the author), the
territory of former USSR and
Southwestern Asia (India—note of the
author)”.
4
– It is not a matter of a trend
related to the circumstances,
something that could be easily
reverted by a change in presidency,
but a tendency that derives from the
deep strata of the most aggressive
and now prevailing sectors of US
imperialism. A strategic tendency
that comprises the great challenges
of the 21st century—not a
brief parentheses. There are
differences in the dominant groups
in the United States and in the
public opinion, even inside the Bush
administration. But more reasonable
positions are now exceptional and
are likely to remain so until the
present trend is confronted by
economic or military defeats (such
as the defeat suffered in Vietnam).
5
– As put by Fidel Castro, the United
States aspires to an “international
military dictatorship”. It is a
matter of a “different” threat but,
to some extent, greater than the one
represented by Nazi-Fascism in the
previous century. The United States
enjoys a military superiority over
the rest of the world that is much
greater than the one Germany, Japan
and Italy had at the beginning of
World War II. Not even the Third
Reich could think of ruling over the
whole planet as in the plans of some
figures of the Bush administration.
That explains why
the “preventive war” line sparks
such a broad opposition comprising
the vast majority of the countries
of the world. It is noteworthy
that the United States, after opting
for the war against Iraq, became a
minority in the UN General Assembly
and its Security Council, where it
not only suffered the opposition of
the greatest countries (France,
Germany, Russia and China), but also
was not able—even putting a very
heavy pressure—to “buy” the vote of
countries such as Mexico, Chile,
Angola and Cameroon, of which it did
not expect resistance.
With the war in
Iraq the United States suffered an
unprecedented political isolation.
It is estimated that only 5% of the
world’s public opinion supported the
war. A new generation that, with the
fall of the Soviet Union and the
crisis of the communist ideal, has
grown in so many parts of the world
with the myth of the US model, now
begin to open its eyes and develop a
critical awareness that is
potentially anti-imperialist,
something unseen since the Vietnam
war period. It is a great asset that
will have a weight on the future of
the world.
6
– The impulse towards a
multipolar world cannot be
restrained, even though it takes
place gradually, because presently
nobody has the will and strength to
openly defy the United States.
In all continents
the trend towards the formation of
“regional poles” is growing, poles
that aim at economic, political and
military cooperation of one area’s
countries in order to mark their
presence in the world scene with a
greater power of competition.
All of them bear
in mind they need time to
strengthen. It may explain China’s
(and—with different terms—Russia’s)
prudence in its relations with the
United States: it intends to
postpone a possible rupture,
something that China is particularly
worried about. On the other hand,
France and Germany, with different
reasons, do not consider the end of
the transatlantic bond to be fully
accomplished.
Such inclination
to commitment was expressed in the
unanimous vote (Syria being absent)
for UN Security Council’s resolution
1483 on May 22, 2003, which, to a
certain extent, legitimates a
posteriori the military
occupation in Iraq and “recognizes”
the winners. The matter is addressed
once more in the deals taking place
in the present days that involve the
definition of the nature, role and
command of an eventual participation
of the UN in Iraq, a country that is
so far from normalization, where the
United States are stuck in a
quagmire, forced to expend
astronomic resources, being
militarily targets to an Iraqi
resistance that reveals to be more
tenacious and radical that expected.
The greatest
powers that opposed war according to
the most classic kind of
realpolitik try not to be
excluded from the influence exerted
on the Iraqi people and the gigantic
interests related to rebuilding the
country. They are also interested in
guarding their own interests in the
area, what spans form oil
concessions to the rescue of debts
contracted by the regime of Saddam
Hussein. They try to force the
United States, which is facing
difficulties, to accept the UN norms
it rejected in the last months.
The risk is
contributing to support and
legitimate the occupation and the
command of the United States in
Iraq, offering a way out that does
not include significant corrections
to its aggressive policy. We will
see on which grounds the commitment
is based.
7
– That war
sparked a strong popular movement
involving hundreds of thousands in
all continents. In February 15,
2003, more than one hundred million
people made simultaneous
demonstrations in all parts of the
world. Such a extensive mobilization
that took place all over the world
has not been seen since the end of
the 40’s, in the occasion of the
movement for peace.
It is a matter of
one of the most important new
factors in the international stage
since 1989. Although that movement
was still not able to impede the war
and now goes through a stage of
disillusionment and retraction,
important premises were set for the
future struggle and for the
reconstruction of a world movement
against an imperialist logic of war
that will not end.
Here there is a
fundamental work field for
communists and revolutionary forces
of all parts of the world. More than
never before, it lacks even the
minimal forms of international
coordination for that work; and that
limitation, which already lasts for
many years, still does not show
possibilities of solution while
great communist parties that could
have the strength and credibility to
take adequate initiatives do not do
so. It makes everything more
difficult and exposes the movement
against war, especially in some
regions of the world, to the
prevailing influence of social
democracy, the Church or some
Trotskyist groups (such as, to a
certain extent, in the case of the
movement in Porto Alegre up till
now).
The fact that the
next World Social Forum will take
place in India may present something
new to that respect and will broaden
the Forum in an unitary sense: in
the geopolitical sense with the
participation of Asia—another pole
based on Western Europe—the United
States and Latin America (then we
may turn our eyes to Africa, Eastern
Europe and Russia); and in the
political sense with the desirable
overcoming of a persistent
anti-party prejudice that up till
now has resulted in a deaf
hostility, especially in the
confront against communist parties.
That way there will only be
advantages for the movement with the
consolidation and intensification of
the bonds with labor movements in
the respective countries, resulting
in general benefits to the world
movement against war and the
interior growth of a more mature
anti-imperialist awareness.
8
– The opposition to “preventive war”
is not presented only by traditional
peace forces, but also by
imperialist powers such as France
and Germany, which are part of
the new dominant world order.
“Non-pacifist” powers, as we have
seen in Africa (in Congo, for
instance, where the imperialist
competition between France and the
United States for the control of the
region’s immense mineral resources
cost the lives of 4 million people
in a few years…); or NATO’s war
against Yugoslavia, when France and
Germany were fully involved.
Those countries
do not accept submission to the
dominance of the United States, but
proceed carefully in that process
towards autonomy: presently, they do
not have the power to openly defy
the USA and do not count with the
consent of other countries in the
European Union to openly debate the
“transatlantic” equilibrium.
9
– The contradictions that
most countries of the world oppose
to the militarist and single-sided
project of the United States are of
a different nature:
-
There are contrasts
between imperialism and developing
countries that aspire to peace and a
fairer world order as long as
distribution of the world’s wealth
is concerned;
-
There are
disagreements between imperialism
and progressive countries (China,
Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cuba,
Venezuela, Brazil, Libya, Syria,
Palestine, South Africa,
Byelorussia, Moldavia, …), which, in
different ways, aspire to a society
model that is different from the
dominant capitalism.
In that case, there is an evident
contradiction with China, a great
socialist power (a power also in
economic and nuclear terms), led by
the world’s largest communist party,
a country emerging as a great
antagonist to the United States in
the 21st century
according to the open declarations
made by several US officials who
consider that, in the next 20 years,
China’s GDP could equal that of the
United States in case the present
development rates are maintained,
while the military difference could
decrease and, therefore, “it is
necessary to think before it is too
late” if they do not want China to
become in the 21st
century what the USSR was in the
previous century.
-
There are contrasts
with great countries such as Russia
and India (nuclear powers) that,
although they do not present a
coherent progressive posture in the
international scene, are not part of
the dominant imperialist system and
have national interests and
geopolitical positions that
contradict the hegemonic aspirations
of the United States.
In its document
on national security issued in
September 2002, the White House
defines them as countries with
“uncertain transition” that could
evolve towards an increasing
homologation (adaptation) of the
interests of the United States and
its social and political model
(destruction of all state-owned
enterprises in the economic field,
liberal democracy in the political
and institutional field,
renouncement to the strengthening of
their own military and nuclear
potential and to all sorts of
“non-alignment” in foreign
policies…). Nevertheless, they could
also evolve in the opposite sense
and, therefore, represent a “threat”
to the hegemony of the United States
and the present dominant world
order.
10
– There is an trend, in many
continents, towards the formation of
regional bodies that are more
independent from the
United States
and
lead their way independently in the
international scene:
-
In Europe:
the European Union and its relations
with Russia;
-
In the former soviet
region; the Community of
Independent States (CIS);
-
In Latin America:
Mercosur and the progressive
convergence of Brazil, Cuba and
Venezuela;
-
In Africa:
the African Union and the Southern
African Development Coordination,
being developed by the new South
Africa and the progressive
governments of the region (Angola,
Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe,
Congo, Tanzania, …)
-
In Asia:
the development of the relations
between China and ASEAN and China
and Vietnam. In 2010 the 10 ASEAN
member countries and China will
constitute the world’s largest
common market; the trend towards the
reunification of Korea on the
grounds of neutrality,
denuclearization and withdrawal of
all foreign military bases; the
strengthened role of the Shanghai
Group (Russia, China, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan):
based on China and Russia, with the
recent significant request made by
Putin to India with a view to make
the country join the group. The
process of approximation between
China and India has an enormous
weight on the world’s equilibrium.
11
– The United States are hostile to
the creation of such “regional
poles” and try to favor their
“disintegration” or support the
hegemony of internal forces that
are under its influence. It results
in disagreements of different
natures in the main
international bodies (UN, IMF, G-7,
WTO, European Union and even NATO).
The most recent example of that was
the failure of WTO’s summit in
Cancun, where an alignment
“South-South” appeared with the
efforts of China, India, Brazil and
South Africa (with the significant
presence of countries such as Cuba
an Venezuela), an alignment that
became the interpreter of the
interests of developing countries
against the hegemonic intents of the
great imperialist centers.
Contradictions
tend to continually become present:
it is enough to remember the
tensions and threats on Iran, Syria,
Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian
crisis, North Korea, Venezuela and
Cuba; in Iraq’s non-normalized
internal situation; in the permanent
economic and financial competition
between the United States and the
European Union, between dollars and
euros…
But there is also
a diversity of interests, political
projects and social models among the
forces that oppose the United
States’ unilateralism.
For instance:
China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela etc.
do not hold the same strategic
position as Schroeder’s Germany or
Chirac’s France that, to the
contrary, defend a certain economic
model and a world order based on the
dominance of great capitalist
powers. What happens to Cuba is
emblematic since it is supported by
capitalist and progressive countries
but antagonized by Russia, which is
shamefully close to the United
States in relaunching a hostile
campaign. The class struggle has
not disappeared, as it has not
disappeared in the 40’s when forces
that were as dissimilar as their
social and political references
found a convergence point against
Nazi Fascism, parting once more in
the Cold War years because they bore
interests and society models that
mutually exclusive.
12
– The fact that the opposition to
war by great countries such as
Russia, China, France and Germany
has not surpassed a certain limit of
roughness (or the contrast would
tend to change into open—even
military—confrontation); the fact
that moments of great divergences
turn into situations where the
search for mediation and commitment
prevails do not derive—according to
Toni Negri’s theories on the new
empire—from the existence of
homogeneous interests of a
supposedly “global capital” and
“world directory” where organic and
unitary political expression could
be found, but from international
correlations of forces that, in
military terms, do not presently
allow any country or group of
countries to openly defy, beyond
certain limits, the US superpower.
13
– How can we build an
international counterweight that is
able to condition the foreign policy
of the
United States?
This is the main problem for all
forces that do not want global
tyranny. The convergence of more
forces of diverse natures is
necessary:
-
First, the resistance
of the Iraqi people and the Middle
East forces that support it (Syria,
Iran, the Palestinian resistance…)
in order to keep the “internal
front” open against the military
occupation and discourage new
adventures. International support to
that resistance is necessary as it
is now almost inexistent outside of
the Arab world; unconditional
support to the Palestinian cause
that undergoes serious difficulties
in a political and diplomatic
dynamic that is increasingly
conditioned by the United States,
which, along with Israel, want
complete control of the Middle East;
-
Retaking the peace
movement in the United States and in
global scale, reorganizing its most
dynamic and determined components in
order to impede its division and
retraction;
-
The consolidation of
broader political and diplomatic
convergences among States, against
the United States’ unilateralism
without which retaking UN’s role is
unthinkable (an objective that
should not be abandoned with the
appearance of more advanced
alternatives that do not exist now).
A more important role of the General
Assembly regarding the Security
Council and a more representative
composition of the Council is
necessary;
-
The development, in
the United States, of an opposition
to Bush’s policy and in Great
Britain to Blair’s policy, both
presently lacking consent.
The intransigent defense of the
right that Cuba, Syria, Iran, North
Korea and any other threatened
country has to protect its own
sovereignty from any kind of
external interference is an
integrant part of the struggle
against the war system regardless of
judgments any country makes on the
internal situation of another
country.
14
– How
Europe will
evolve?
Divisions that
are not easily overcome emerged
between the United States and the
European Union, inside the European
Union and NATO (that is, among
traditional allies of the Atlantic
bloc) in an unprecedented level
since World War II.
In the European
Union (and in NATO) the discord
between those who are pro-USA and
those who support a more autonomous
Europe in the face the United States
will remain, something that is based
on preferential relations among
France, Germany and Russia. That is
also the reason why the United
States want Turkey and Israel to
become members of the European Union
as they are its trusted allies
(especially Israel, since even in
Turkey there is an emerging new
dialectics, as we have seen in the
conflict in Iraq).
A possible
electoral defeat of right-of-center
governments in Italy and Spain would
favor a more autonomous position in
Europe.
15
– It is true that the United
States are now likely to act
militarily in an unilateral manner
without being conditioned neither by
the UN nor by NATO—but the United
States will not renounce to NATO,
which is still a precious tool it
has to control Europe and the
political, military, security and
intelligence structure, not only the
military industry and technology of
European countries that take part in
the alliance. It also allows the
United States to maintain military
bases in the continent under its
control, even when those bases are
moved, and create new ones in more
submissive and faithful European
countries, such as some Eastern
countries.
The United States
rely on a military presence in 140
of the world’s 189 countries (while
it has agreements for military
cooperation with other 36
countries)—there are 800 military
bases and 200 thousand soldiers
abroad (apart from those in Iraq).
It grants a
timely and exceptional character to
the strengthening of the movement
for peace and for closing US
military bases in the respective
countries, for the withdrawal of all
troops abroad supporting war actions
and military occupation and for the
activation of dynamics and
initiatives for disarmament in the
international level.
16
– A British intellectual close to
Tony Blair wrote after the war that
in Europe the conflict is “between
Euroasians, who want to
create an alternative to the United
States (a long axis covering
Paris-Berlin-Moscow-New
Delhi-Beijing) and the
Euroatlantics, who want to
maintain privileged relations with
the USA”. Tony Blair expressed
clearly his euroatlantic line
in an interview to the Financial
Times (May 28, 2003) affirming that
“Some want a multipolar world with
several power centers that would
soon become rival powers. Others,
and I am one of them, think that we
need a unipolar power based
on a strategic partnership between
Europe and America”.
That is the
question then: “Euro-America” or
“Eurasia”?
17
– Those who want
an Europe truly autonomous
in the face of the United States
and its society model must have an
alternative project that goes beyond
the present European Union and the
grounds upon which it has evolved,
comprising all countries of the
continent (also Russia, Ukraine,
Byelorussia, Moldavia…), a project
that:
-
In the economic level,
contrasts the privatization policy
and designs the formation of
supranational public poles (an
interesting proposal—in a different
context—was presented by President
Hugo Chavez to President Lula for
the creation of a continental public
pole to manage energy resources that
is connected to a public regional
bank that would finance development
and social projects);
-
In the political and
institutional level, contrasts the
federalist hypothesis aimed at
annulling the sovereignty of
national parliaments, supporting the
hypothesis of an Europe based on the
cooperation among sovereign States
that are not submissive to the
strong powers of the great
imperialist powers that rule the
present European Union;
-
In the military level,
includes a Pan-European security and
defense system, an alternative to
NATO with the participation of
Russia (a sort of European UN)—a
system that, from day one,
considering the nuclear potential of
France and Germany, could make use
of a defensive force that would be
able to dissuade whoever intended to
attack Europe militarily. Therefore,
a project that is opposite to
rearming the European Union and to a
militarization with an imperialist
character aimed at persecuting the
United States in its own ways.
It is true that
now the German and French
imperialism is much less dangerous
to the world peace than the American
imperialism, though it can play the
role of a counterweight. But it does
not mean defending a line supporting
the rearmament of the European
Union: the labor movements and the
European peoples—and whichever is
the project of a social and
democratic Europe—would suffer a
deadly blow by a policy of
militarizing the continent on
neo-imperialist grounds. It would
spark an arms race of global scale
and an exponential increase in
military expenditure in a neoliberal
Europe where social expenditure
already suffered heavy blows,
destructing all that is left of the
welfare state in Europe.
18
– The European Union cannot do
anything by itself alone. If it
wants to get hold of the conflict
against the United States and leave
the submissive role it plays in the
Atlantic, it must be open to
cooperation and security agreements
with Russia (that is part of
Europe), with China, India and the
most modern and non-aligned forces
of Africa, Middle East and Latin
America.
Only a network
of regional unions that are not
submissive to the United States (of
which Europe takes part) can change
the correlations of global forces
and condition the policies of the
United States.
The United States cannot wage war
against the whole world.
19
– In countries such as Russia,
China and India—military powers
where half of the world’s population
live, countries that could represent
one third of the world’s wealth
within 20 years (countries that the
Bush administration defines as
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