An explanation of the true roots of imperialism's current militarization drive can be found in the articles featured in the first issue of Nueva Internacional, the Spanish-language sister magazine of New International. The featured article "Los cañonazos iniciales de la tercera guerra mundial: el ataque de Washington contra Iraq," published as "Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq" in English, provides a blistering condemnation of the brutality of the military force used by the U.S. government during the Gulf War. The article points out that Washington conducted the most intensive bombing assault in the history of warfare, provides an analysis of why U.S. imperialism is driven to launch such wars, and offers a line of march for working people in light of the consequences of the course of the propertied rulers.

The Gulf War "was the first war since the close of World War II that grew primarily out of the intensified competition and accelerating instability of the crises-ridden...imperialist world order," wrote Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party and author of the article.

The goal of the 1990–91 war drive and assault on Iraq, stated Barnes, was to "bolster U.S. dominance in the Arab-Persian Gulf region, which has some 65 percent of the world's known oil reserves."

Washington hoped to establish a regime in Baghdad that would be politically subservient to the U.S. rulers and give them an advantage over their imperialist competitors in Europe and Asia. But instead Washington "broke its teeth on the war," Barnes said, setting into motion uncontrollable social forces and opening up new conflicts and struggles throughout the region.

"As the political consequences of Washington's military 'victory' in the Gulf continue to unfold, we need to recognize that this is not primarily a postwar period, but a prewar period," he wrote. "It is in this context that we say that the slaughter in the Gulf is the first in a number of conflicts and wars that will be initiated by the U.S. rulers in the 1990s, and the opening of a new stage of accelerating imperialist preparations--at home and abroad--for those wars."  
 
Line of march of working class
Barnes explains that working-class resistance will also mark the coming period. "Intertwined with the historic war logic of the imperialist rulers, however, is the class logic, the historic line of march of the working class: to resist and react, to fight and in the process become revolutionary, to organize independently of the exploiters and identify as a part of a worldwide class, and to wrest the war-making powers out of the hands of the exploiters and oppressors."

Nueva Internacional is available at a 25 percent discount to members of the Pathfinder Readers Club and at 60 percent off to local Pathfinder bookstores. The titles are republished with newly formatted pages with more readable type, and with improved graphics and photographs.

A second featured Pathfinder title this month, The Founding of the Socialist Workers Party, contains the minutes and resolutions of the first two national conventions of the SWP held in 1938 and 1939. Today, new generations of workers and farmers beginning to resist imperialism will find this book to be especially timely.

At the SWP's founding convention, veteran communists who were determined to build on the Bolshevik continuity of the Russian Revolution, and who rejected the course of the Stalinized U.S. Communist Party, joined newer members who had been recruited out of the class battles of the 1930s to form the new party. They discussed and adopted resolutions that addressed the "opening guns of World War II"--the civil war in Spain and Japan's invasion and occupation of China. They charted a course to fight against the bosses at home; drew lessons for workers on the victory of fascism in Europe and how to effectively fight it; the need to defend the Soviet Union against imperialist attack; the right of Blacks to self-determination; the struggle against Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism; support for the independence of Puerto Rico; and the organizational principles of a revolutionary party.

"Since war is inevitably bred by capitalist society, the only genuine struggle against war is precisely the struggle against the social system which breeds it, the struggle against capitalism and for socialism," stated the resolution adopted on the fast-approaching war. "Only through the elimination of the causes for war will war itself be done away with. Through socialism alone can mankind establish the foundations for enduring peace."  
 
Peace is possible only under socialism
"The SWP is against every imperialist war, and opposes all wars fought by any and all imperialist states, whether fascist or democratic, since such wars can only be reactionary in character and counter to the interests of the masses and of the revolution. In the imperialist United States, the SWP fights against war preparations and militarization; but at the same time always makes clear that war cannot be permanently prevented unless the imperialist government of the United States is overthrown and its place taken by a workers state, that lasting peace is possible only under socialism."

FBI on Trial, Pathfinder's third featured book of the month, contains the decision handed down in favor of the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance suit against the FBI and the CIA, charging them with "illegal acts of blacklisting, harassment, electronic surveillance, burglary, mail tampering, and terrorism." The book also contains portions of testimony of SWP leaders Farrell Dobbs and Jack Barnes. It will be a valuable tool for anyone interested in defending workers' rights today.

The final featured book this month is To Speak the Truth; Why Washington's 'Cold War' against Cuba Doesn't End. It contains four speeches given before bodies of the United Nations over a 20-year span by Cuban revolutionary leaders Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara. As resistance deepens on a world scale to Washington's assaults, from Afghanistan to the United States, the place of Cuba's more than four decades of resistance to imperialism will grow in importance on a world scale.

While U.S. president George Bush may claim that he is fighting "terrorism," workers and farmers will be able to more clearly understand Washington's real aims by reading the speeches by Castro and Guevara.

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly in 1960, Fidel Castro explained, "The government of the United States cannot be on the side of peasants because it is an ally of the landowners. It cannot be on the side of workers anywhere in the world who demand better living conditions because it is an ally of the monopolies. It cannot be on the side of colonies that want to free themselves because it is an ally of the colonizing powers."

Four years later Che Guevara told the United Nations, Cuba "is one of the trenches of freedom in the world, situated a few steps away from United States imperialism, showing by its actions, its daily example, that in the present conditions of humanity the peoples can liberate themselves and keep themselves free."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home