Communist Party of Brazil
José Reinaldo Carvalho - Vice-president
and person in charge of International Relations

In the name of the Communist Party of Brazil I greet the board of the Communist Party of Greece for its great initiative on organizing this seminar. I am sure that the discussions carried out here will largely contribute to enhance the Labor and Communist Parties' understanding of the present international situation. Being among the participants and sharing the worries we have in common is a great honor to the Brazilian communists. The Brazilian delegation bring the following notes to the debate:

A situation characterized by imperialist aggressiveness and increased conservativeness.  Important changes are taking place in the world since the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 last year. More than ever crisis, lack of safety and instability prevail and threaten world peace, democracy and the independence of countries and peoples.

On the pretext of fighting terrorism, which is a dreadful phenomenon that communists and revolutionaries condemn, the US imperialism is carrying out an unprecedented offensive intended to affirm an imperial and tyrant superpower on a global scale based on raw power and military and nuclear superiority. It is necessary to stress that such tendency was already present before September 11 and even before the beginning of Bush administration. The fact that the nineties were marked by the war in Iraq and by the US intervention during the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo is a clear evidence of that tendency.

However the world has definitely changed after the attacks on September 11. And it has changed for the worse as the most aggressive traits of the US imperialism were enhanced. The US war on Afghanistan was a clear sign of that change. The United States have forced consensus and silence on the international community taking advantage of the impact of the events and manipulating carefully the local geopolitical interests.

The development of the events have shown that the excessive action taken by the most colossal war machine ever seen on one of the poorest countries in the world, a country exhausted by long internal conflicts, was intended to capture Osama Bin Laden and bring down the Taleban regime. The action involved the US imperialism's great economic and geopolitical interests regarding the control of energetic resources and of a region of strategic importance - Central and Southern Asia, where the different interests of Iran, India, Russia and China are present.

After the occupation of Afghanistan, the United States is revealing by means of the bellicose rhetoric of its president and concrete actions the true nature of its plans, making the political situation tenser and more dramatic. The North-American superpower has proclaimed that it will fight a long, hard and broad war that will be different from all others, implying the use of all necessary weapons. This war has very broad targets. After the attacks on New York and Washington, the US government has even listed more than 50 countries that would be 'terrorist or terrorist-permissive countries', therefore liable to being attacked at any moment. Its intelligence agencies have classified dozens of organizations as terrorists, among which organizations involved with revolutionary political movements. Then they coined the phrases 'outlaw states' and the so-called 'axis of evil', including Iran, Iraq, Syria, and two socialist countries - North Korea and Cuba. It was revealed lately that the Safety Council of the White House and other US government agencies are working on the details of a new military doctrine that will involve the principle of 'preventive' action in any part of the world against groups suspected to plan terrorist actions and/or countries that offer any kind of harbor or support to them. During a speech to cadets at the West Point Military Academy, President George Bush has defended the idea that the United States will fire first and ask questions later whenever they suspect the preparations for acts hostile to its territory or against US citizens. We can se that the United States are tending to substitute dissuasion - a characteristic trait of the Cold War era - for unilateral action with the right of using force. We have never seen before the dominant forces of the United States equaling 'national safety' to interventionism and the use of direct military power against other countries. These forces are convinced that a new imperial stage has come and are willing to do anything to exert their power.

The world is threatened by the creation of a state of global totalitarianism.
This threatening situation in which the democratic and social rights of the peoples are menaced is aggravated by the increasing strength of the right-wing forces in several European countries. A conservative tendency is taking hold of the continent, which now undergoes a political retrogression while the power is occupied by right-wing and reactionary forces.

The imposition of the US superpower is an unmistakable reality and political conservativeness thrives in an environment characterized by shallow political conscience and lack of clear alternatives to the peoples. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to think that the new world order is definitively established since it involves unsolvable contradictions and conflicts of different natures, including competitions between imperialist forces. There are tendencies and forces making moves to create several regional or international power poles that objectively conflict with the US orientation of exerting its unilateral hegemony over the world. The most of these tendencies do not go against the world capitalist system since they are manifested between imperialist nations of blocks, but they must be taken into account as we approach the present international situation. By the way, the importance of the role played by Socialist China among the international scenery is increasing more and more. It cannot put away the possibility of countries with continental areas and economical potentialities, as Brazil, to have their political orientation changed and to act in a differentiated way in face of USA in Latin America.

The results of a world order under the hegemony of the United States can be seen in the aggravation of conflicts that threaten world peace, such as the conflict between India and Pakistan, and in the repeated humanitarian crises and genocide acts. The best example of this world order is the Palestinian situation as Israel feels comfortable to commit all sorts of crimes against a martyr people that only wants the fulfillment of a right that has already been recognized by the United Nations - the right to have their own sovereign and independent National State. Israel, being supported by the United States, has transformed military occupation and individual terrorism into a routine act. Acts of State terrorism and genocide are legitimized in the name of fighting terrorist acts performed by individuals or groups. The fact that no voice is raised with vehemence to manifest indignation about the attempt at exterminating a people and no hand make a move to detain the murderous arm of Sharon government is actually terrifying.

United States rule over Latin America
The present situation of Latin America is also an emblematic example of that new world order. The consequences of the US offensive are particularly rough here. The US policy regarding the region maintains its conservative and reactionary traits. The United States used its influence on puppet governments in the region in order to approve a resolution against Cuba in the United Nations. The Bush administration follows a path that was historically abandoned even by sectors of the US establishment. The embargo on the revolutionary Caribbean island is a countersense and now is used more as an accusatory act of Bush's reactionary policy than as an effective weapon to defeat Cuba. The CIA prepared a coup against the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, repeating the worst moments of a period that the Latin American peoples thought was past. The continuation of hostile acts of a retrograde right that is broadly-supported abroad confirms that the United States are still willing to bring down the legitimate Venezuelan government.

The political interventionism is accompanied by military action. The Colombia Plan acquires now a different form and new contents after the election of a president that defends extreme positions regarding the solution for the armed conflict that has developed during four decades. Uribe speaks the same tongue as Bush. In this situation, the United States has strengthened its positions not only in Colombia, where it maintains military bases and specialists, but also in Ecuador, Peru, Suriname and Panama. Its objectives are the revolutionary movement and the occupation of strategic positions in the Amazon, affecting the Brazilian interests in full.
Along with its efforts and its political and military presence in Latin America, the United States intensify the pressure for the implantation of the FTAA, the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas. The FTAA shall become effective in three years and is much more than a commercial integration of the formation of a 'common market' of the Americas, as well as it has a much deeper sense than a mere juncture-related economic orientation. It is, in its essence, a strategic project of the US imperialism with a view to increase its dominion over Latin America as the United States faces an economic and commercial competition with Europe. It is the most ambitious and broadest plan of Panamericanism and submissive integration ever conceived by the United States since its ascension as an imperialist country. It is a project of servitude, of neocolonialist domination, in which countries that take part in it - and it be will all of them according to the 'agreements', except Cuba - will become appendages of the United States. The FTAA project is part of the neoliberal globalization that constitutes the prevalence not of free market, but of monopoly and protectionism where economic policies are formulated by international economic organizations that translate the will of the great multinational industrial and financial enterprises for making huge profits. The block policies that are objectively based on the present stage that capitalism undergoes demand bringing down national barriers, denationalization of economies, adoption of neoliberal policies regarding the free flow of multinational financial capitals, all sorts of deregulations, reduction of public expenditure for social ends, liquidation of the rights of the workers and fiscal responsibility for the religious payment of debts. All these measures take each dependent country to an unbearable situation of foreign vulnerability as we can see in the dramatic situation of Argentina. This is something that tends to be repeated in Brazil, where the public debt increased five times in the last decade and now corresponds to 60 percent of the Gross Domestic Production. All this politics is in detriment of sovereign and independence of Latin American countries and peoples.

The struggle for an alternative
The aching contradictions of the contemporaneous world engendered by the imperialist world order and by globalization create immense dissatisfaction all over the world and inevitably will raise revolt, protest and the struggle of peoples and working masses. Although we still live in a period where the unfavourable correlation of forces is marked by the defeat of socialism and the revolutionary movement, a moment marked by the exercise of the huge power of the US imperialism and futher conservative forces, determining a differentiated and prolonged process involving the accumulation of forces by the revolutionary movement, the present moment is characterized by the appearance of struggles - whether spontaneous or not - for social rights, democracy, development, peace, sovereignty and independence. Historically, the capitalism in its phase of imperialist globalization, it is unable to solve the serious problems of humanity. Only the renewed and reinforced socialism with the knowledge got with the lively experience is able to promote the advent of a just world order.

From the perspective of a Party which action takes place in a so-called third world country that is chronically dependent and extremely vulnerable to the ups and downs of the international financial crisis, we concentrate our efforts on the struggle for sovereignty and national independence. This struggle is obviously connected to the struggle for democracy and social progress which main objective is the social emancipation of workers and opening new paths to achieve socialism under the concrete circumstances of our country.

We think that it is necessary to make efforts with a view to build a broadly-based anti-imperialist unit in a global scale in order to detain the aggressive US policies and develop international solidarity with countries that are victims of interventions or aggression. Therefore, Brazilian communists add themselves to the fraternal struggles of the Latin American peoples from Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador among others, and reiterate the solidarity with the socialist countries; strongly denounce the genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government with the American imperialism blessing and grant their total support to the Arabian-Palestinian cause; and incorporate themselves top the movement against globalization and to the Social World Forum demonstrations such as those that took place in Seattle, Prague, Nice, Davos, Porto Alegre and Genoa, among others, as one of the components to the struggle of workers and peoples for another world order involving peace, development, sovereignty and social progress.

The people ask themselves - how long humankind will remain in the present trance and if it would be possible to avoid the barbarism that the international potencies engender. Maybe it will be painful, but not long-standing and definitely not infinite. There are sovereign countries that resist, there are socialist countries that keep developing, there are popular, socialist, revolutionary and communist moving forces. That is where our trust, hope and reasons for being optimists lie.

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