Dear comrades,
The forces led by the US are directly involved in initiating and escalating events that strongly impact the conditions of working class people in the whole world, threatening global peace. Today this menace is rising again.
Let us remember the first shots of World War 2 that were actually made before the official commemoration date of September 1st of 1939 – the day of the German invasion of Poland. The beginning of the war could be the attack of militarist Japan on China’s Manchuria in 1931 as well as the military confrontation on the Lugou bridge on July 7th 1937. There’s no guarantee that today’s events do not contain the similar potential of a beginning of a great war.
The rising threat of the global war is attributed to the attempts by the US to maintain its hegemony over the rest of the world. With this in mind, they start regional military conflicts, form new military blocks, use other country territories for military biological research, fuel the world energy and food crisis, and threaten to break down the world finance and payment system by printing more paper dollars used as a world reserve currency.
We would like to reiterate the danger of a rising imperialistic conflict to the working people of minor and less powerful bourgeois states. Their corrupt governments sell national sovereignty in order to serve foreign interests, forcing the countries to join one of the conflicting imperialistic camps and making their own populations hostages of a potential military conflict. In order to protect this policy from protests of workers and the public in general, they enforce control mechanisms and restrictions of freedom of speech and expression without any hesitation.
We consider it of utmost importance to inform workers on the aggressive actions and intentions of imperialistic forces and on the prevention of new conflicts that could lead to a world war.
The struggle of workers against international imperialism and local capitalist exploitation should be united.
Polls show that in many countries the majority of people do not support weaponizing and weapon export to other countries. There’s a fear that the war in Ukraine will spill out. People, especially working people do not want wars. We should be supportive of actions and strikes against military rhetorics of our governments.
Some countries have strong peace movements. We need to support them.
We call on our governments to call back all our troops from foreign so-called missions. Deploying NATO troops everywhere is part of aggressive policies.
We demand withdrawal from NATO and the end of sanctions and economic warfare.
Talking about NATO itself, let me remind you of the two crucial quotes. “NATO goal is to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”, – a quote by Lord Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General. “We are experiencing the brain death of NATO,” – a quote by Emmanuel Macron, the president of France.
As we know, Article 5 of the NATO Treaty talks about the defence of its members. It was invoked only once – right after the attacks of September 11. The guilty was found in an extremely quick period. However, it’s still hard to believe that some inhabitants of Afghanistan mountain caves could organize an attack on a country with the largest military budget in the world. More than twenty years we have been waiting for a proof that the Afghan government or people are somehow responsible for this tragic event. However, the proof will not be presented. As there is none and it never existed.
We have experienced recent attacks on the territories of NATO states in Europe, such as a Nord Stream pipeline. This time, it seems no one is guilty.
Let me also point out the island conflict between Greece and Turkey. There is a constant military threat in the region and both countries are NATO Member States. It’s still not clear which country is going to be protected according to Article 5. In case one of the countries where Turkey had intervened military in the last few years, like, Lybia, Syria or Iraq, would respond, there is no clear answer as to whether other NATO member states would hustle to help Turkey. Some of them are even calling it a dictatorship. Furthermore, let me remind you of the occupation of part of Cyprus, which is an EU Member State. Turkey now claims some of the new territories there and Cyprus has the right to defend itself. It seems that no one in NATO countries has problems with the support of the occupation since 1974.
NATO claims to support democratic values. There is no indication that NATO is doing it at all. It would be interesting to learn what democratic values exist in Turkey, Albania, Montenegro and Northern Macedonia. There is no raise of democratic standards after the accession.
Untitled document
Even NATO Treaty’s Article 1 is not being implemented. The text says that the member parties “settle any international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force.” NATO’s history of settling the conflicts peacefully is non-existent. On the contrary, NATO is fuelling conflicts by sponsoring the so-called moderate opposition, in other words – terrorists, third countries involved in a conflict, etc.
The Baltic Platform deems that ever rising confrontations are the result of a policy of imperialism of the US and NATO. Our task is to inform people about the real reasons and to support the protests. It’s important that those protests should be linked to continuous protests against rising prices for energy and food. In our opinion, those things are intertwined since the policy of imperialistic war includes also the economic war of sanctions against the countries that have a course independent from imperialism. Those sanctions worsen the social conditions of workers considerably.
The aggression of confronting blocks is rising day by day. The leading force behind this dangerous situation is the structural crisis of world capitalism. One-polar model of the world with the US hegemony has become unacceptable for a range of countries that comprise a significant part of the world population.
The United States have engaged in full scale political, information, economic and military actions in order to destabilise the situation. The perfect examples of such actions – economic sanctions, military conflict in Ukraine, rising tensions around Taiwan, the energy crisis in Europe, preconditions for the food crisis in African nations, fuelling conflict zones in Central Asia and Caucasus.
The European Union is following the policy of sanctions directed by Washington. This, together with other actions, has caused exorbitant energy prices and inflation. European industries are losing their competitive advantages. The representatives of the big businesses of Europe have announced the moving of their production facilities to the United States. It seems that Europe’s economy follows the path of the disintegrated Soviet Union in order for the US imperialists to survive the crisis.
Logically, the European workers are experiencing deteriorating living conditions. Rising food prices and new waves of unemployment push the workers on the streets to protest against the policies of their respective governments. Workers are slowly coming to a conclusion that the ruling class is using them to overcome the crisis. The crisis that creates a real danger of a global confrontation. We should recognize the necessity of solidarity against rising aggression of imperialism. The struggle against the barbaric nature of capitalism is the only possible way to win over the imperialism that creates global wars.
