Confront Pentagon with global workers' solidarity

Sara Flounders WW photo: John Catalinotto

Excerpts from a speech by Secretariat member Sara Flounders to the WWP national conference on Nov. 17-18.

War criminal George Bush has called a “peace meeting” in Annapolis, Md., for next week. It is essential that we expose this phony meeting as part of a war against a heroic and continuing Palestinian Liberation Movement, fought under the most onerous conditions.

In his forthcoming book, “Colossus with Feet of Clay,” Fred Goldstein explains that there is an aggressive new organization of labor on a global scale that has transformed capitalist production and services in the almost two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of China to the world capitalist market.

Not since the Industrial Revolution has there been a transformation of this magnitude. This process was brutally imposed every step of the way—using every mechanism, political, financial and military—by U.S. imperialism.

The IMF and World Bank made unilateral demands on every developing country to open their economies to imperialist penetration. Some 1.5 billion new workers were dragged into the orbit of international finance capital.

How does the Pentagon see this development and its role?

These generals, their think tanks and military planners have looked at the changing political situation, new developments in technology and where the new centers of super-profit would be.

The collapse of the Soviet Union did not bring an end to militarism. With such a stupendous expansion of U.S. corporate power, there was no possibility of a “peace dividend.” New capitalist industries that are spread over the whole world must be protected by an unprecedented expansion of U.S. bases, troops and interventions.

Today there are more U.S. bases around the world than at any time in history. They are located in and surrounding the very countries where a super-oppressed working class has grown the most dramatically.

Pentagon planners busily making blueprints for future wars and threats to imperialist profit take note that these are many of the same nations and peoples where there is a history of revolutionary anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle.

At this moment the workers are not yet organized to take on the international capitalist bosses. But it is important to remember that in great proportion they have a recent history of revolutionary organization.

Does the Pentagon forget for a minute that China, despite all its dangerous capitalist market inroads, still has the largest communist party in the world and a revolutionary history? Aren’t they concerned that India, with its large communist parties, strong anti-colonial tradition, mass anti-imperialist movements and militant peasant movements, has millions of new workers in vital industries? Do they forget their own ignominious defeat in Vietnam at the hands of millions of organized workers and peasants? Don’t they remember Mexico’s own revolutionary traditions and recent massive demonstrations?

U.S./NATO bases have been established in every country of Eastern Europe and a growing number of former Soviet republics. Each country that joins NATO is forced to further indenture itself to equip its military with U.S. weapons and to send its troops as “volunteers” to fight U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. NATO bases now surround and encircle Russia.

Two U.S. wars against Iraq have resulted in a whole series of bases in the Persian Gulf, while the war on Afghanistan was an excuse for new bases in Central Asia.

There are new bases in South Asia, where there had not been any since the Vietnam War, and now the U.S. military is back in the Philippines. All this is part of the Pentagon plans to ring China.

These are now 700 U.S. bases around the world in over 100 countries. This means more bases and more deployment than at any time in U.S. history.

The Pentagon and the largest corporations considered the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq as a win-win undertaking, but they are losing.

The whole world has been enslaved by corporate power, backed up by U.S. military force. The whole world owes a tremendous debt to the courageous Iraqi resistance.

In Afghanistan, despite all the publicity more than six years ago, when U.S. forces moved in with barely a casualty, there is now protracted struggle. The entire world also owes a debt to the Afghan resistance.

The Pentagon’s problems don’t end in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Pakistan they armed and supported General Musharraf, providing $10 billion in aid. Now there is fear that their hold on Pakistan is slipping in every direction.

Today, solidarity is still our most powerful weapon in fighting the class that expropriates everything as its private property. Solidarity is an expression of class consciousness on a global scale.

Building solidarity is reflected in conduct, in organization, in focus and in attention. A working class party in the U.S. must give building solidarity the highest priority.