Speaking several days before the 56th anniversary of Washington's dropping of nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Sandler pointed out the U.S. rulers "couch their war efforts as paving the road to peace." In fact Washington justifies its use of the atomic bombs at the end of World War II by saying the action "saved American lives" and brought peace to the world.

Some who consider themselves radicals have bought into this argument, Sandler explained. But at the time the Militant pointed out the truth with its Aug. 18, 1945, banner headline: "There is no peace." Two weeks after the bombing SWP leader James P. Cannon gave a speech elaborating on this assessment.

"What a commentary on the real nature of capitalism in its decadent phase is this," Cannon said, "that the scientific conquest of the marvelous secret of atomic energy, which might rationally be used to lighten the burdens of all mankind, is employed first for the wholesale destruction of half a million people."

"In two calculated blows, with two atomic bombs, American imperialism killed or injured half a million human beings," continued Cannon. "This is how American imperialism is bringing civilization to the Orient. What an unspeakable atrocity! What a shame has come to America, the America that once placed in New York harbor a Statue of Liberty enlightening the world. Now the world recoils in horror from her name."

Today, the U.S. rulers are on a drive to expand their nuclear dominance through the development and deployment of an antiballistic missile shield based on land, sea, and in outer space, emphasized Sandler. This is one reflection of the fact that since Washington began its preparations for the imperialist assault on Iraq in the summer of 1990, U.S. imperialism has stepped up the use of its superior military might as a way to deal blows to rival imperialist powers in Europe--Germany and France especially--and Japan. The war against the Iraqi people was an extension of the employers' assault against working people in the United States, Sandler said.

In looking at this and all political questions, class-conscious workers begin with a historical perspective and the interests of the workers and farmers of the world, the SWP leader explained. "For us there is no 'we' called the American people. The United States is a class-divided society," he said. "The only 'we' is workers and farmers of the world and the only 'them' is the employers, the super-wealthy ruling class."

The Bush administration has taken up the mantle from the Clinton administration and is pushing ahead with the U.S. ruling-class drive to set aside the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (ABM)--signed by Washington and Moscow in 1972--and try to deploy a system capable of shooting down missiles, particularly in their "boost" phase. "Their goal is to distance themselves even further from all the other atomic powers--China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom as well as India, Pakistan, and Israel," stated Sandler. And this will put increased pressure on the U.S. rulers' imperialist competitors, as well as Russia, to try to close this gap.

Washington is undertaking extensive research with plans for testing and developing a broad array of weaponry to be stationed in outer space--from chemical lasers to interceptors to more sensor-laden satellites in orbit. Sandler pointed to one such project, as reported in The Observer published in the United Kingdom, to develop a "space-bomber," which "could destroy targets on the other side of the world within 30 minutes."

U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld describes this vehicle as being "valuable for conducting rapid global strikes." The Observer noted, "The craft,--which would set the scene for a new generation of stratospheric warfare--would be able to drop precision bombs from a height of 60 miles, flying at 15 times the speed and 10 times the height of America's current bomber fleet."

Sandler pointed to the attack recently launched on Bush's missile shield plans by Democratic congressman Richard Gephardt, the House minority leader. He charged that Bush's policy was "unilateralist" and undermines relations with European allies. "Gephardt argues that nuclear deterrence--sometimes called Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD--still works and urges the U.S. rulers to keep the MAD framework," said Sandler.

"This is the alternative those on the left of bourgeois politics present for humanity," he said. "No to missile defense; yes to MAD! But this is certainly not the framework working-class fighters should accept. Instead, workers and farmers can chart a course of revolutionary struggle to put in place a government of their own, one whose only interest is leading the fight to overturn capitalism and join with working people around the world in the fight for socialism. This is the only alternative for humanity and the only way to end imperialist war and disarm the war makers," he said.  
 
Negotiations with Russia
At the recent meeting in Genoa, Italy, of leaders of the industrial nations from the Group of Eight, Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed to substantially reduce their nuclear warheads in exchange for Moscow not opposing Washington's plans for developing a missile shield. "This deal will certainly make many of the governments in Europe unhappy," which have been expressing their concerns over Bush's stated intentions to abrogate the ABM treaty, noted Sandler.

The tentative agreement between Bush and Putin marks a change over the past decades, but one that is not historically different in relations between the workers state in Russia and various imperialist powers. With the end of the Cold War that began in the 1950s, negotiations and treaties with Russia are now a greater part of the interimperialist conflict. The government in Russia that represents bureaucratic layers in the state apparatus and wealthy layers in the country, will seek accords with this or that imperialist power to advance their economic, political, and military interests, he said.

Washington's current convergence with Moscow on nuclear weapons is an example of this, Sandler said. For the Russian ruling layers, a massive reduction in the nuclear arsenal would be a big financial relief, since maintaining and updating nuclear weapons is an expensive proposition. In turn, Washington undercuts objections by Germany, France, an other powers in Europe to deployment of the missile defense shield. These European rivals of Washington oppose the plan because it gives Washington an even greater military edge in the world. And Washington gains these advantages while still maintaining what will still be a massive nuclear force.

Prior to World War II, Sandler noted, Joseph Stalin entered into negotiations and treaties with various imperialist powers according to the needs and interests of the bureaucratic caste he headed. The Stalin-Hitler pact, signed in 1939 on the same day the German government invaded Poland, was preceded by a trade agreement between the two countries. Leon Trotsky, a leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Communist International until expelled and exiled by Stalin, said at the time that the Stalinist regime, fearing war with Germany, "preferred the status quo, with Hitler as its ally."

Trotsky noted that without revolution, "the overthrow of Hitler is inconceivable. A victorious revolution in Germany would raise the class-consciousness of the broad masses in the USSR to a very high level and render impossible the further existence of the Moscow tyranny." With Russia as a source of raw materials needed for the German imperialist war machine, Trotsky said Stalin "acts as his [Hitler's] quartermaster."

Today, deals, temporary alliances, treaties, and trade with Russia have once again become part of the interimperialist conflict, one which Washington is exploiting to its advantage.  
 
Conflicts between U.S. and Europe
The nations in Europe conflict and compete both with the United States and with each other, said Sandler. The U.S. rulers try to take advantage of the disputes between these countries to promote their own interests and assert themselves as the dominant European power. "It's important to closely follow these conflicts," said Sandler, as tensions between Washington and European powers over economic and military questions are the sharpest conflicts in the world today, and this has been the case for a number of years.

As a point of contrast, Sandler asserted that the U.S. rulers are not going to fight a war with China over Taiwan. In fact ever since U.S. president Richard Nixon visited China in the early 1970s and subsequently recognized Beijing, the long-term direction is for Taiwan to become part of China once again. Leading officials from Dell Computer, which relies on cheap labor for assembling computers, has a sizable part of its operations based in Taiwan. With pressure on profits, rising wages in Taiwan, and potential to expand sales in China, Dell has warned the Taiwanese government it must move ahead with establishing normal trade and economic links with the mainland or else the company may have to shift more of its operations to Hong Kong. Another example of this is the defense minister in Australia telling U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that his government would not automatically side with the United States in a conflict with China over Taiwan.

In early July, the 20-member European Commission announced that they were blocking the merger of General Electric and Honeywell--two U.S.-based companies--on grounds that the new giant company would reduce competition in the aerospace industry in Europe. "This is an example of the kind of protectionist measures the rival imperialist powers will take," Sandler said. "The U.S. rulers will never accept this decision, in which European bureaucrats are telling GE what it can or cannot do in the world."

Similarly, the Bush administration has made clear its opposition to a new draft accord, being promoted by the European Union and others, designed to enforce a 1972 ban on biological weapons that calls for on-site inspections. As with a proposed treaty banning small arms and the Kyoto climate accords, Bush simply states that the treaties have nothing to do with their declared intent and that they are ineffective. He calls the bluff of Washington's imperialist rivals. In addition, Sandler said, "The U.S. government maintains the most massive stockpile of biological weapons in the world," and they're not about to back a protocol allowing foreign inspectors to have access to their industrial and military facilities, Sandler said.

The White House is also refusing to ratify the Treaty of Rome, which establishes an International Criminal Court that could potentially be used to prosecute U.S. political and military leaders. Washington is for an international tribunal as long as it runs and control it, like the one in The Hague, Netherlands, said Sandler, but the U.S. rulers will never agree to one where U.S. figures could possibly be indicted as war criminals.  
 
The Bush Doctrine
Sandler pointed to a recent article entitled "The Isolationist President?" by Frank Gaffney Jr., a contributing editor to the right-wing National Review, that argues that Bush is simply pursuing a course of action on all these questions aimed at protecting the interests of the U.S. ruling class.

The SWP leader pointed to a couple of other recent opinion columns that shed light on the course of action being pursued by the U.S. ruling class. Writing in June 4 edition of The Weekly Standard, conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer announced the advent of what he calls "The Bush Doctrine" in an article subtitled, "ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism."

"Today, the United States remains the preeminent economic, military, diplomatic, and cultural power on a scale not seen since the fall of the Roman Empire.... This wish to maintain, augment, and exploit that predominance is what distinguished the new foreign policy of the Bush administration," wrote Krauthammer.

In a July 16 article in the Jewish World Review Lawrence Kudlow, chief economist for CNBC, points favorably to the perspective being put forward by former Reagan Treasury official Craig Roberts on U.S.-Russian relations and sharpening conflicts with the EU. He wrote, "Roberts believes that in the post-Cold War period, the European Union will not be a U.S. friend--and may well be the enemy. He cites the EU's bureaucratic superstate of over-regulation, the Euro-whining anti-American rudeness toward President Bush, and the protectionist anti-trust shielding of Euro businesses from the marketplace rigors of the best U.S. companies. In other words the Eurocrats are on the wrong side of history. Dr. Roberts concludes that the U.S. should forge a new alliance with Russia based on mutual economic and political goals."

To help gain a longer-term class perspective on these questions, Sandler urged forum participants to read two speeches presented by Leon Trotsky in the mid-1920s that are contained in the Pathfinder pamphlet Europe and America. In these talks, Trotsky points to the "giant world shift of economic forces" coming out of World War I that led to the rising power of U.S. capital over and in Europe.  
 
Workers must be partisans of science
Sandler also commented on the controversy over genetically modified crops, which is among the major conflicts between the U.S. and French governments. There is opposition by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces on both sides of the Atlantic to these crops being produced and sold in Europe and elsewhere, despite the fact that there is not a shred of evidence that genetically modified organisms harm humans or the soil, said Sandler.

"It's important for working people to be partisans of science," he stated. "We know that the capitalist rulers take scientific developments that can benefit society--such as raising crop yields--and they use it to further destroy the soil and line their pockets with profits. But scientific knowledge can be harnessed by humanity to advance the cause of the toilers. What's needed is to chart a working-class road to power," he said.

As the world capitalist economic crisis deepens, and the employers and their government press forward their assault on working people, socialist workers are finding a greater interest in a working-class explanation of all political and social questions, he said. More workers and farmers want to read serious books by communist leaders on the history of the working-class movement, questions such as the need to build a worker-farmer alliance, and a Marxist analysis of current developments in world politics. There are greater opportunities to reach out to workers in struggle--not only in the United States but internationally as well, he said.

Sandler pointed to the recent rally of some 400 coal miners and their supporters in Powhatan Point, Ohio, against the bosses' drive against the miners union, safety on the job, and working conditions. "This struggle is just one example among many today of the working-class road to peace and a livable environment," Sandler said.
 
 
Related article:
Capitalist agriculture is the art of robbing the soil and the worker  
 
 
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