File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/97-02-09.043, message 47


From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 14:26:43 +0000
Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: Nato contingency plans to occupy Russia 


>
> Nato does not excite much interest among list members. Perhaps the
> reasons are understandable. The issue of Nato-expansion often seems both
> remote and recondite.
> 
> It is neither.
> 
> As I have been saying on JRL for a while, Europe is on a glacis as it
> was before 1914. There is now a real danger of uncontrollable events
> cascading together to produce nuclear war. This is not my opinion alone.
> It is also a strongly-held view within the Central Intelligence Agency.
> 
> The gulf that separates official White House optimism from the alarm
> actually felt within the CIA and privately by the US Administration has
> never been wider. The reason is because most people in a position to
> make authoritative assessments believe that the final disintegration of
> the Russian 
> Federation is already irreversible and has actually begun.
> 
> Therefore plans are well in hand to safeguard the most urgent western
> interests. Hence the rush to expand Nato. The Clinto Administration's
> somersault on this -- it rejected the Republican congress's resolution
> to expand Nato earlier -- has happened because of the perceived ned to
> defend Europe at all costs from the final Russian implosion.
> 
> But the worst feature of all this is, of course, the fate of Russian
> nuclear weapon stockpiles.
> 
> Nato contingency planning, it is now clear, envisage that sometime in
> the near future it may be necessary for western military forces to be
> inserted into Russia, to take control of and 'safeguard' Russia's
> nuclear weapons bases and facilities. Otherwise the obvious danger is
> that as the country collapses, these will fall into the hands of
> criminals or warlords. There is the related danger of Russia being taken
> over by a completely irresponsible (in western terms) nationalist
> leader. There is a risk of  Lebed coming into power and making
> inflammatory 
> statements while Nato tanks and troops are entering Russian cities.
> 
> Once western armed forces invade  Russia -- and if they do, they will do
> so albeit in 
> the first instance only to safeguard nuclear stockpiles and missile
> bases, they certainly 
> will not leave, even after these facilities are disassembled and the
> nuclear
> materials (whatever has not already been stolen) have been removed to
> the West. I do not claim to have any idea how great the probability is
> of any of this 
> happening, but it is obviously real.
>

Mark,

Having brought the Russian revolution to its knees and now about to 
carve up the former SU, imperialism in crisis will no doubt cause 
wars including nuclear wars.  In many ways the situation today 
parallels that of the 1930's. Except today capitalism is much  more 
unstable,and the SU no longer exists. The  reality is the imperialist 
powers are forcing impossibleterms on  the former SU, EE and now China. 
The obvious solution is Balkanisation under bourgeois dictatorships, 
with the contending big powers picking up the pieces.

This is barbarism.  So what to do about it? Most of the left is still 
punch drunk from the collapse of stalinism.  They gave up on an 
independent left years ago to cheerlead whatever petty bourgeois 
current looked "progressive".  With the death and transfiguration of 
stalinism, today they are cowering behind bourgeois "democracy" as the 
allernative to prospective fascism. In their hearts they agree with 
the bourgeois that 1917 was a mistake which de-railed civilisation, 
and now we have to pay the price in re-civilisating humanity.

This is SD recycled with menshevik undertones. " History can only set 
itself the tasks it can acheive blah blah" - comrades this means 
democracy today. So in reponse to the threat of a new round of 
imperialist wars we can expect the same old capitulation to bourgeois 
nationalist/democratic anti-fascism we saw under the popular front 
period of the late  1930's. Many on this list push this menshevik line.

This can only lead to disaster in the former SU where some of us hold 
out hopes that the experience of the last 80 years is not lost and 
workers can organise against a barbaric capitalism given a 
revolutionary leadership. The danger will be the redbrown nationalism 
behind Zhirinovsky or Lebed against NATO,  and workers in NATO 
countries mobilised to defend `democracy' against Russian 
"totalitarianism/fascism".  Because the stakes are extremely high, 
and the difference between socialism and barbarism is a 
revolutionary vanguard, some of us on this list keep on flogging the 
need for a new international. 

There is no other way to be a Marxist and to fight against the 
destructive forces you and others have described.  We cannot stop a 
new round of imperialist wars, including the use of nuclear weapons 
unless the working class recognises that its main enemy is at home, 
and turns imperialist war into civil war, comandeering the [nuclear]
weapons and putting them under workers control.  

Dave.



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