As U.S. troops and heavy armor continue to move into Bosnia, the Clinton administration has won grudging support among capitalist politicians for its military deployment against Yugoslavia. With the initial U.S. forces now in Bosnia, Democratic and Republican congresspeople alike are joining the chorus to "get the job done" in the U.S.-led drive toward war against Yugoslavia by the imperialist powers that make up NATO. The White House has used the first U.S. military casualty, from a December 30 mine explosion, to ratchet up the bipartisan war propaganda another notch.
"Stop NATO's war drive: Emulate the Cuban revolution!" was the title of talks opening the New Year's weekend socialist educational conferences in the United States.
Putting in practice the spirit of that title is what all who are opposed to imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation should place at the center of their activity over the coming weeks.
Working-class fighters must stand up to the war pressures and clearly explain to fellow fighters the enormous stakes in the growing European conflict. This is a prerequisite to building a working-class movement that can mount a revolutionary struggle to take political power out of the hands of the wealthy rulers and their governments, who are organizing a war on working people at home and abroad.
Europe has moved to the center of world politics. The sharpest class conflicts are now unfolding there. Their motor force is the intensifying rivalry between Washington, Paris, Bonn, London, and other imperialist powers as they vie for control of markets to boost their sagging profit rates. This interimperialist competition - like that proceeded World War II - will only get more fierce as world capitalism descends further into the depression signaled by the 1987 stock market crash.
The brigands in Washington, Bonn, Paris, and London are simply fighting over spots on the feeding chain of the imperialist system of robbery. In Europe, Washington stands on top of the feeding chain. Bonn is unquestionably second. But Paris is fighting London for the third place. This is what the Juppé plan of austerity was all about: slashing the social wage and cutting the value of labor power enough to gain a competitive edge over the British crown. One's particular place in this feeding chain brings with it more loot from the competing predators. Bonn's push to bring Turkey into the European Community's fold, for example, is another not-so-subtle attempt by the German imperialists to scrape off more of the surplus value produced by the working class in that country.
The trouble for all the imperialist scoundrels is that working people keep upsetting their plans. This is what the labor revolt in France last fall's strike wave in Turkey signified.It is this working-class resistance that is at the center of why imperialism will not have an easy time accomplishing its goal of reestablishing capitalism in Yugoslavia - with all its army divisions and heavy armor. Reflecting the imperial arrogance of the top brass of the U.S. occupying force, the Wall Street Journal quotes a U.S. colonel who likens the "mission" to 19th century "expeditions to enforce treaties, keep the Indians quiet, keep open supply lines, [and] keep settlers out of the Black Hills." Adds the colonel, "I consider this Indian Country." "Keeping the Indians quiet" and "subduing the American West" is language, as even a casual reader of American history knows, used to cover over the brutal genocidal war against the Native Americans and the replacement of their primitive society and social relations with that of rising capitalism. The NATO forces will also run into resistance from workers and farmers in Yugoslavia as imperialism seeks to mount another war. This war is aimed at returning the domination of capital and doing away with the nationalized property relations and social expectations that grew out of the powerful Yugoslav revolution.
The stated goal of the NATO warlords is to bring peace to those uncivilized people in the Balkans who have supposedly been fighting each other for centuries. Their real aim is to bring Yugoslavia back to the imperialist system of exploitation, and set a powerful example for reestablishing capitalism through naked military force throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Those who are engaged in struggle today, such as striking workers in Detroit and elsewhere, fighters for Black freedom and the independence of Quebec, youth and workers involved in mobilizations to stop the French government's drive against the social wage, those protesting to defend affirmative action and abortion rights, and others have a vital stake today in digging in and learning the truth about imperialism's war aims. These struggles are at the center of the resistance to imperialism's march toward fascism and war.
Members and supporters of the Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party have mapped out plans to carry out a working-class campaign against imperialism and its war drive against Yugoslavia. Readers of the Militant can join with them in this effort. Central to this is deeper involvement in the working class and its struggles, participation in social protest action by youth and the oppressed, selling revolutionary books and literature, establishing weekly plant-gate sales, and getting to picket lines. Socialists who are in industrial unions will be holding national meetings over the next month to discuss experiences in taking this campaign to unionists, and reaching out from there to others in struggle.
Revolutionary-minded workers and youth have important tools to use in order to get out the truth in this campaign: Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, by Ernesto Che Guevara; New International no. 7, with the article "Opening Guns of World War III," which describes the working-class campaign against the assault on Iraq; The Truth About Yugoslavia - Why Working People Should Oppose Intervention; and a range of titles advertised in this week's Militant.
Now is the time to tell the truth about the Yugoslav revolution and fight NATO's war drive uncompromisingly!