Antiwar protest planned for NATO Summit in Madrid

The most aggressive and powerful military alliance in the history of humanity, NATO is holding a summit June 29-30 in Madrid to plan its next confrontations with Russia and China — and to reinforce its domination of the world, despite contradictions within the imperialist camp.

In opposition to these plans, a coalition of international antiwar organizations will hold a countersummit June 24 and 25 and will march at the Atocha railroad station (Puerta de Atocha) in central Madrid Sunday, June 26.

The recent protest against Washington’s hemispheric “summit” in Los Angeles — where Biden refused to invite Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba — showed how progressive forces could highlight an imperialist flop.

Instead of disappearing at the end of the Cold War, NATO has been growing rapidly over the last 25 years, nearly doubling the number of member countries as it expands its area of operations. Despite U.S. promises to the Soviet Union’s leaders not to move an inch eastward, the U.S.-led military alliance has absorbed most former members of the dissolved Warsaw Pact, including some former republics of the USSR and most of the ministates from the former Yugoslavia.

Some 50 delegations, including 30 heads of state, are expected in Madrid. NATO has recently invited Sweden and Finland to join and opened the door to Ukraine.

NATO operates worldwide

NATO has increased its area of operations beyond Europe and North America to South America and the Caribbean, Africa, Central and South Asia and even to the Pacific. It has openly intervened with military force in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and fed wars in Syria and now Ukraine.

Top representatives of Colombia, Israel and Japan will attend the summit. Despite these countries’ lack of geographic connection with the North Atlantic, they already act as de facto members of NATO.

The U.S. and its closest imperialist allies plan to focus the hostility of the alliance on Russia and China. Washington has already used the war in Ukraine — which the U.S. and NATO provoked — to whip up war propaganda against Russia and whip its European allies into line against Russia, despite their contradictory interests.

While the competing interests of the various imperialist powers may undermine Washington’s plans at the NATO summit, workers and oppressed nations around the world have their own class interests in the outcome of the war talks. They have an existential interest in stopping the aggressive plans of the imperialist powers, for which the working class and all oppressed nations and people pay the greatest price.

That there exist contradictory interests between the U.S. rulers and those of Western Europe may open an opportunity for the working class on both sides of the Atlantic to intervene against their own ruling classes. For all workers in imperialist countries, the main enemy is at home — that is, the bosses and bankers of the state that rules them.

The first line of struggle is the protest planned in Madrid, which will expose the crimes of NATO and begin a struggle to get the individual countries out of NATO — and get NATO out of the world.