Declaration of support for the Communist Party of Norway
On 25 October, a large-scale NATO exercise called “Trident Juncture” will begin, scheduled to run until 23 November.
This exercise, which is scheduled to take place in the North Atlantic, Iceland and Norway, involves nearly 50,000 soldiers, 150 aircraft, 65 ships and more than 10,000 land vehicles! This is the largest exercise of its kind since 2002.
“This realistic exercise is based on a scenario involving military intervention under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which establishes the principle of collective defence.
Contributing to the Alliance’s long-planned and defensive posture, Trident Juncture 2018 will host several observers.”
(Army General Staff)
Despite statements about NATO’s “defensive” nature, the multiplication of this kind of exercise is an additional step in the escalation leading to imperialist war!
These declarations and exercises serve to promote acceptance of the possibility of war, increasingly affirming the possible use of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which allows all its member countries to take “immediately, individually and in agreement with the other parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force”. History shows us that the formation of so-called “defensive” alliances has always been a preparatory element for major imperialist wars, these alliances now waiting only for the pretext to enter into war!
In addition, the Trident Juncture 2018 exercise will also take place in Sweden and Finland, which are not members of NATO and therefore not in principle concerned by its famous Article 5 on collective “defence”.
This exercise is yet another provocation against Russia, with the stated aim of training for combat in cold and humid environments, with some exercises taking place within 500km of the Russian border. This comes after many other manoeuvres near various Russian borders, after countless economic sanctions and political provocations, after the establishment of NATO bases all around Russia.
NATO’s war against Russia, and potentially against other countries, has been under preparation for a long time. Intense propaganda is being developed to make us accept the idea that this war would be in our interest, as workers and members of the working classes. The imperialists are trying to scare us by using Putin’s image as a nuclear-armed madman that the free world should get rid of for its own safety. In this way they seek to make us accept war.
But this war is only being prepared in the interest of the Atlantic monopolies. It is the natural product of the general crisis of capitalism that has reached its imperialist, i. e. monopolistic, stage. The development of productive forces, of economic exchanges, is confronted with the limits of the market, unable to absorb all production. Investments no longer have outlets. To this must be added the crises in raw materials such as oil and gas, but also certain minerals essential to entire branches of the economy.
It is for these reasons and none other that NATO forces are seeking war: it is the imperialist monopolies that are seeking new markets, new opportunities, new manpower. They are also seeking to destroy part of the capital they have amassed, and to win the post-war reconstruction market!
We are not on the side of one or another imperialism. Refusing the war against Russia does not mean supporting Putin, the Russian government or the Russian monopolies. On the opposite, we support the workers of Russia, in particular the Russian Communist Workers’ Party, who are now fighting against the pension reform imposed by the government and the country’s monopolies, which is destroying one of the last legacies of the Soviet Union. Nothing separates the interests of workers in Russia, France and other countries. On the contrary, they have no interest in the war prepared by the imperialists on behalf of the monopolies and with the blood of the people!
We do not accept rhetorical comparisons with the Cold War put forward by the NATO side, which seek, through misleading analogies, to confuse people’s consciences, to equate communists and those fighting the war with supporters of the Russian government. We are also fighting the lies of the latter, who seeks to regain the prestige of the Soviet Union by appropriating the image of its leaders, by multiplying nostalgic statements about it while attacking the most elementary workers’ rights, acquired precisely through the construction of real socialism.
We denounce NATO as an imperialist war alliance, we demand a rupture with NATO, and then its dissolution!
France is the second largest contributor to the Trident Juncture exercise, behind the United States. This is in line with the logic of the French monopolies, which have chosen in recent years to operate more aggressively against workers in France and to advance their interests internationally. Since he came to power, Macron has systematically strengthened the French state’s involvement in NATO, developed imperialist interventions… All its international action has been aimed at strengthening the position of the French monopolies in the imperialist pyramid. We make no distinction between the increasingly frontal attacks on workers’ rights, the intensification of repression and the serious setbacks of democratic rights on the one hand, and the manoeuvres to facilitate capital exports, gifts to monopolies, imperialist interventions on the other! Against the workers and the working classes of France or against the peoples of other countries, we find the same enemy, with the same interests: the French monopolies seeking by all means to maintain their profit rates!
Contrary to a myth conveyed in particular by some left-wing forces, including the so-called “radical” ones, France is not a second-class imperialist country. It is one of the major pillars of the imperialist world system, a system that oppresses peoples and enslaves workers, that is at the root of wars, poverty, refugees, mass unemployment, that generates crises and endangers even the existence of humanity.
We denounce the capitalist class as the real cause of imperialist provocations and preparations for war, as well as all attacks on our rights! We recall that “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, and that the only policy of the French State is the policy of the imperialist monopolies!
We address our internationalist support to the Communist Party of Norway (NKP), which is today organizing a demonstration against the Trident Juncture exercises, against NATO, against war, and against imperialism. The struggle of our comrades is ours because we have the same enemies, the same interests and the same goals.
The real enemy of the workers is the imperialist system. We are fighting against monopolies, for the overthrow of capitalism through revolution and the establishment of workers and people’s power. Only the construction of socialism will make it possible to meet social needs, through the socialization of the means of production and the planning of the economy, while working for a world of peace, free from the capitalism that generates crises and war.
