Dear Comrades,
On behalf of the entire Chilean Communist Party (Acción Proletaria), the Central Committee and our first secretary Eduardo Artés, I offer my sincere congratulations on the holding of this important international conference. I also extend my thanks to all the organisations that have decided to attend, and especially to those who have made great efforts to organise and convene this conference. At a time when we are witnessing a growing warmongering aggression by the countries organised by NATO, led by the United States of America, against more and more countries, an aggression that threatens to plunge humanity into an international military conflict, this activity is of the utmost importance.
A systemic crisis of the capitalist mode of production is sweeping through the countries. Unemployment, misery and hunger are on the rise again, almost all the economies of the world started to shrink more or less simultaneously since 2019, in the monopoly banks an enormous surplus of fictitious capital is accumulated which exceeds the real international capital by tens of times, the health systems collapsed in almost all countries in the face of a virus which is not yet of the greatest danger, energy is becoming scarce even in the central countries, and behind all these and many other problems, the imperialist centres are planning a war to save themselves from the collapse of their international hegemony.
The imperialist nations organised in NATO have been preparing a war against Russia and China at least since the balkanisation of Yugoslavia.
Today, NATO has opened a new front of aggression directed against Russia in Ukraine. What is happening today in Ukraine started more than 30 years ago. Since that time, Russia has been trying to make NATO countries understand that it has security interests on its borders that should be respected. All of Russia’s appeals were ignored by NATO members and since 1991, that is, since the dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, NATO’s infrastructure has continued to expand right up to Russia’s immediate borders.
Capital expansion is followed by military expansion in the form of NATO. In five waves of expansion, accompanied by wars of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and (albeit covertly) Syria, etc., this war alliance has grown from 16 to 30 states. In March 2018, Ukraine was officially granted candidate status. In November 2021, the United States signed a new military cooperation agreement with Ukraine. This development was only made possible by the 2014 coup d’état (also known as the Maidan) against former president Viktor Yanukovych. Since the coup, NATO countries have supported a fascist regime, which has committed horrendous crimes and destroyed hundreds of Soviet memorials from World War II.
The beginnings of the Maidan date back to November 2013, after the then president Yanukovych refused to sign an Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU in September of that year. The agreement was presented in the Western press as an economic agreement. The Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, in Title II, Article 4, point 1, states that it is mainly about ‘convergence in the field of foreign and defence policy’ and that the aim of the ‘political dialogue is to increasingly integrate Ukraine into the field of European security’. After the violent overthrow of the elected President Yanukovych, the coup government of Yatsenyuk signed the political part of the Association Agreement already on 21 March 2014 (which entered into force shortly after, in November 2014). Only later, in June 2014, the economic part was signed, which in turn did not enter into force until a year and a half later, on 1 January 2016. This shows that Ukraine’s political insertion into the West’s security policy took priority over economic integration and was therefore at the centre of the West’s interest in Ukraine.
The Maidan coup d’état of 2014, which could only be brought to a successful conclusion by neo-fascist forces, triggered an enormous resistance in Ukrainian society. In some regions, such as Donetsk and Lugansk, the population was able to arm and defend itself against the neo-fascist paramilitary groups “Right Sector” and later also against the regular Ukrainian army. In Kharkiv, this did not succeed and the resistance was brutally crushed. Where protests against the coup government were more peaceful, they ended in a massacre. In the Donetsk and Lugansk regions a war began that year that claimed, until the start of the “Special Military Operation”, some 14,000 lives.
Russia’s incursion into Ukraine was forced by the West. In an article published by German-Foreign-Policy.com on 21 February 2022, i.e. before Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the following can be read: “According to New York politics professor Nina Khrushcheva, the Biden administration has ‘a much greater interest in an invasion than Putin’: if it can incite Moscow to invade, it can hope to topple President Vladimir Putin”.
In 2019 Oleksiy Aerstovych, an advisor to Selenzki, was interviewed. The interviewer asked him whether there would be peace negotiations and an end to the war in eastern Ukraine if the country joined NATO. Aerstovych flatly denied: “We will not talk about any end date for the war. On the contrary, Russia will most likely launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine because it will have to turn everything here into a devastated territory for NATO to be reluctant to accept us. They must do this before we join NATO so that we become uninteresting to it. With 99.9% probability our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia. And if we don’t join NATO, it is absorption by Russia in 10 to 12 years. That’s the range we are facing now”. Asked when all this would happen, the interviewee’s answer was: “After 20. 2021 to 2022 are the most critical years”.
NATO forced Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. Either Ukraine would become a new NATO military base right on the border with Russia and Russia would accept the genocide of the Russian-speaking population, or it would heed the call of that population who wanted to be part of the Russian Federation since 2014, and prevent NATO’s presence directly on the border with Russia (which is especially risky because of NATO’s war preparations against Russia).
NATO’s history has shown that it does not operate on a single front and is capable of extending warfare to virtually every latitude on earth. With some 900 military bases (officially known, mostly American), it is capable of destabilising not only countries but entire regions.
Thus, the US and its allies are forcing China to act militarily in Taiwan, as they did with Russia in Ukraine. The US has formed partnerships that openly target China, notably the AUCUS alliance, which currently includes Australia, the UK and the US. These countries from distant latitudes are joining together to counter China’s alleged and growing maritime aggression in front of their own borders. What kind of national security are the US and the UK seeking hundreds of miles away in the South China Sea?
The aim of the AUCUS does not appear to be to protect the national borders of its member states, but to contain China economically and militarily, probably to force the separation of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and no doubt to reposition the imperialist nations (US and UK) in the region.
At a time of increasing tensions in global security politics, it can be assumed that the AUCUS will become a NATO-like military alliance, a kind of Indo-Pacific NATO or even directly or indirectly part of it, with the aim of confronting the People’s Republic of China (PRC). For example, the AUCUS pact allows Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines with US-supplied technology. Already, Australia is said to receive some 18 nuclear submarines from the US by the end of the 2030s.
The Quad alliance (US, Japan, Australia and India), AUCUS and the emerging Indo-Pacific cooperation, especially against China, will in all likelihood trigger a major conflict in the region that can easily escalate into an international conflict.
It would seem that the days of political, economic and military intervention against weak and largely defenceless countries are over and a new phase has begun in which the US challenges nations with a remarkable nuclear arsenal, powerful militaries and great technological and industrial development. The fact that the US is rapidly withdrawing from its traditional theatres of war such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (which is not yet clear) indicates, in our view, that Washington is seeking to strengthen its economic and military presence in the Indo-Pacific region. This region is the most dynamic of all the world’s international sea lanes. And it has been America’s traditional domain for decades, with allies such as Japan, South Korea and now India and Australia.
On the Korean peninsula, the US is preparing the South for a direct confrontation with its sister to the North, the socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Officially, the US has 15 military bases and more than 30,000 troops in occupied South Korea (unofficially, it has more than 70,000), more than enough military potential not only to keep the country occupied, but also to force an apparently imminent war against the North and even pose a threat to China’s national security. South Korea’s armed forces are under supreme US command. In addition to US troops, Japanese and Australian troops are currently stationed in South Korea for military exercises to simulate an invasion of the socialist DPRK. In the face of these military preparations for a possible invasion of the DPRK, the DPRK has responded with absolute legitimacy and determination. With enormous effort, the DPRK has waged a determined anti-imperialist struggle, overcome all obstacles to strengthen socialism and achieved remarkable industrial and technological development, despite the most brutal economic and political siege.
NATO has not only expanded eastwards to Russia’s borders, but also northwards, integrating Finland and Sweden into NATO (whose status as full NATO members has not yet been ratified) and is making inroads into Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2017, Colombia, which shares a border of more than 2,200 km with Venezuela, became one of NATO’s global partners and its first Latin American partner. At present, NATO and Colombia cooperate with rather modest results on global security issues such as cybersecurity, terrorism, corruption, the maintenance of the Amazon, maritime security and the strengthening of the Colombian armed forces.
In 2018, preparations began for Chile’s application to join the NATO Non-NATO Level 2 Classification System. In October, the Multinational Combined Air Exercise Salitre 2022, one of the largest and most important military exercises in the Southern Cone, took place in the north of Chile under NATO regulations.
The hegemonic country par excellence is the USA and the concentration of its imperialist power has reached such a level that it is capable of subjugating all other imperialist countries. At present, the hegemonic countries of the EU do not have the power to act politically independently of the USA. Ultimately, however, they are part of the political forces of imperialism. The peoples will have to rise up against NATO, because all the imperialist nations of the world (those countries which have finance capital, which control the big international banks and dominate practically all trade routes) are organised in it: the USA, the UK, France, Germany and Japan (perhaps Spain, Canada and Italy could be considered as imperialist countries), and they know nothing better than to protect the interests of finance capital in their countries, and in this sense they are ready to plunge the whole of humanity into a war without historical precedent.
The intention of the USA and the other countries organised in NATO seems to be clear: to wipe all vestiges of socialism from the face of the world, whether in the form of a legacy as in Russia or in the form of a concrete society as in the DPRK, China and Cuba. Especially the DPRK and Cuba have maintained a titanic struggle against US imperialism in defence of socialism and have been an example to the world. But the intention to destroy nations is also directed against any country that strives to achieve political independence from imperialism in one way or another. Nicaragua and Venezuela have maintained an anti-imperialist struggle, for their national sovereignty and to build a social system according to their own reality and the needs of their peoples. Bolivia and Mexico have also advanced to increasing levels of political independence from the hegemonic countries of the world. Syria has managed to resist NATO aggression. And Iran faces increasing destabilising attacks by the Western world.
Since 1945, there has been an incredible history of US operations that have violated international law, including interventions, coups and instigated wars around the world[1] . No country, with the exception of Germany, can boast of such a level of aggressiveness against the peoples of the world.
At a time when imperialism is heading for a full-scale military conflict, we believe it is necessary to take sides:
- For Russia, because if Russia is destroyed, not only is the whole Soviet past destroyed, but more lifeblood is given to imperialist capital.
- For socialist China because it is the largest socialist country in the world.
- For the socialist DPRK, because its existence ensures the vitality and proves the invincible character of socialism.
- For Iran because it is an anti-imperialist bulwark in the region.
- For socialist Cuba, for Nicaragua and Venezuela because in Latin America and the Caribbean they are also anti-imperialist bulwarks.
- For Syria, which has fought a titanic struggle against NATO and its fundamentalist mercenaries.
- And in general for any country or people who dare to challenge the imperialist nations. We support the integration of the Donbass Republics with Russia and their struggle against the ukrafascist regime, Palestine for confronting Zionism and Yemen which is confronting a powerful NATO lackey country.
We believe that at this moment one is either for or against NATO and its criminal ruling country, the USA. In this sense, we believe that it should not be a limitation to support and realise unitary political work that the countries or organisations that oppose imperialism are not socialist or popular. The guiding criterion for building an alliance with countries and organisations of all latitudes must be the distinction between those who are imperialist or support them and those who fight for peace and national sovereignty of the peoples.
We think that it is imperative to form a great anti-imperialist front to which not only those political organisations and countries of a socialist character should be invited, but in general all forces (from political and social organisations to states) of a popular and patriotic orientation, who fight for national liberation, who seek to preserve their own national sovereignty and who, of their own free will or because history has imposed it on them, lead an anti-imperialist struggle, regardless of the mode of production ruling in the country or defended by the organisation. We want to stress the need for unity and permanent mobilisations in the different countries of the world in order to raise the consciousness of the masses about what imperialism means and what it means to defeat it or, if the imperialist war against the peoples of the world should become inevitable, so that our peoples are able to transform this war into a struggle for national sovereignty and socialism.
In our view, this international alliance cannot be understood without the two countries against which NATO’s aggression is essentially directed: China and Russia. As Fidel Castro said:
“[…] Russia and China, the two countries called to lead a new world that would allow human survival if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal and exterminating war.”
In the name of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action), of the Central Committee of the party and of our first secretary Eduardo Artés, I reiterate our congratulations on the holding of this important international conference and commit our party to the fulfilment of the guidelines indicated here.
[1] China in 1945, Italy in 1947, Greece in 1947, Philippines in the late 1940s, Korea in 1945, Albania in 1949, Germany in the 1950s, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1953, Costa Rica in the mid-1950s, Syria in 1956 and again from 2011, Indonesia in 1957, British Guiana in 1953, Italy in the 1950s, Vietnam from the 1950s, Cambodia from 1955, Laos from 1957, Haiti from 1959, then from the mid-1980s and again in 2017, Cuba from 1959. Then from the 1960s Guatemala, Algeria, Ecuador, Congo, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Ghana, Uruguay, Chile, Greece, Bolivia, Guatemala. Then Panama 1969, Costa Rica from the 1970s, Iraq 1972 and 1990, Australia 1973, Angola 1975, Jamaica 1976, Nicaragua 1978, Seychelles 1979, Grenada 1979, Afghanistan from 1979, Morocco 1983, Libya 1981 and 2011, Suriname 1982, Bulgaria 1990, Albania 1991, El Salvador from the 1980s, Yugoslavia 1990 and Ukraine from 2014. And so many other actions.
