01 March 2009 /International Bulletin / Special Issue 19

NATO, the military organisation of the imperialist states, will hold a summit this year on April 3-4 in Strasburg in France and Kehl and Baden Baden in Germany. This summit that will be held in the border of France and Germany which are both NATO members has two main characteristics: First is the celebration of the 60th anniversary of NATO. Second is the discussion of the strategy that NATO is to follow under the conditions of the economic crisis that the imperialist capitalist system suffers from.
NATO was founded on April 4, 1949 after the USSR, attacked by the fascists during the II War of Imperialist Re-share, had defended its socialist homeland in a heroic way and had saved not only the Soviet lands but also the Eastern Europe from fascism. The declared aim of this militarist organisation that was founded by 12 imperialist states under the leadership of the USA was to ensure the security of the Western Europe against the socialist Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe. But in fact, its aim was to form a military blockade around the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe. This military blockade was extended to the East in 1952 by the participation of Greece and Turkey.
NATO provided justification to its existence by the existence of the Eastern Block until 1990. Allegedly it was to protect the North-Atlantic countries from the Soviet threat. However, this traditional threat became invalid after the collapse of the Eastern Block including the USSR and after their military pact, the Warsaw Pact, became invalid.
After 1990, the European Union extended towards the Eastern Europe and included many countries of this region in the EU on the one hand and the USA included many Eastern European countries in the imperialist military block NATO in order to maintain its military hegemony on these countries through NATO. This year, the number of the members of NATO rose to 28 with the participation of Albania and Croatia.
As the traditional pretext of the existence of NATO became invalid after the 1990s, it found new pretexts of existence in this period. These pretexts have been "international terrorism", "instability", "indefiniteness", "risks caused of regional crisis and conflicts" etc. With these pretexts, NATO has authorised itself for attacking any country at any moment.
As a means of attack and occupation within the struggle of the imperialist forces for hegemony, NATO continues with its competition with Russia, whom it sees as a rival. NATO tries the way of dialog with Russian Federation and includes Russia in the NATO meetings and by this way tries to control its reactions on the one hand and it tries to include Georgia and Ukraine as a member of NATO in the Caucasus as a continuity of its tactic of encircling Russia from the south on the other hand. This step has been postponed for now after the reaction of Russia but it will probably come to the agenda again in the future. Besides military threats such as the case of Georgia-South Ossetia, Russia takes steps on the base of sanctions such as stopping the transportation of energy sources that it has, like natural gas, to Europe. It is possible that the renewal of the dialog between Russia-USA and Russia-NATO that has been quite weakened at the recent period will come to the agenda of the NATO Summit in April, too.
NATO is a war machine, a means of massacre of the imperialist countries, first of all of the US imperialism. It is the greatest terror organisation in the world. This terrorist organisation is a great threat for the world working class and peoples. Its aim is to make the working class denounce from the idea and struggle of revolution and socialism. For this reason, the organised and vanguard forces of the working class, first of all communist parties and organisations, have always been the target of NATO. Those forces that stand against imperialism and collaborating governments and those who struggle for independence have always been targets of NATO.
NATO has always been a means of the USA to carry out its imperialist policies. The US imperialism has mobilised the NATO forces according to its own interests and has turned it into a force to depend on during its imperialist aggression and occupations. It has suffered some fractures from time to time with the other imperialist forces within NATO such as Germany and France and it has failed in the beginning in mobilising all NATO forces in some cases such as the occupation in Iraq. However, it has always made them later this or that way a direct or indirect part of the imperialist occupation. The US imperialism has gained the direct collaboration of NATO in many attacks and occupations such as in Afghanistan.
Through NATO, the US imperialism tries to realise its strategy for managing or maintaining its control on the regions of energy sources. While it formulates the aims of NATO in accordance with its own expansionist interests, its definition of the Middle and South Asia, Middle East and North Africa as the "regions causing threat" for the Western World is nothing but the "Greater Middle East" project. So another main topic of the agenda of the summit will be the question of bringing the countries with energy sources on their knees and transportation of energy sources such as petrol and natural gas to their countries in a safe manner.
In the summit that will be held on the border of Germany and France in April 2009, NATO will celebrate its attacks, occupations and massacres that it has carried out for 60 years. It will celebrate the barbarity, torture, exploitation and plunder that it has taken to every country that it has gone to, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. It will celebrate the barbarity of Israel in Palestine and its last barbarity in Gaza that cannot be treated as something independent from the USA and NATO and it will celebrate the operations and massacres of the Turkish State in Kurdistan. However, the will of the peoples that resist heroically against these attacks and massacres in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Kurdistan and puts the occupation forces in a desperate situation with their resistance continues to frighten NATO in its 60th year.
Another topic of the agenda of NATO will be Afghanistan that it has on its agenda for some time. The USA and NATO forces that are in trouble in face of the resistance of the Taliban forces in Afghanistan suffer from the nightmare that the resistance will increase when the spring comes and they want to send more troops numbering in tens of thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan. However, neither the transport of a part of the US troops from Iraq to Afghanistan not the increase of the troops of the NATO members such as Germany will bring them the control of Afghanistan. Despite that the number of only the US soldiers in Iraq has been increased to 160.000; the USA already fails at controlling Iraq and continues to lose soldiers every day. The USA and NATO are condemned to defeat both in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the topics that will be discussed the most at the NATO summit will be the economic crisis that shakes the imperialist capitalist system and its consequences. The fact that the financial crisis of the imperialist capitalist system that began in 2007 has been followed by the economic crisis in 2008 and many banks and imperialist monopolies have been bankrupted or face with the threat of bankruptcy has been a great problem for all the imperialist states, first of all the US imperialism. The bailouts of hundreds of billions of dollars that has followed one another in order to rescue the banks and monopolies were not enough to get over the crisis. Besides the banks, many sectors, the automotive sector at first, are in the grip of the crisis. It is estimated that 50 million people will lose their jobs only in this year. The imperialist capitalist system tries to invoice the bill of the bailouts of hundreds of billions of dollars launched in order to rescue the monopolies to the workers and labourers on the one hand, but on the other hand, it fears from social explosion.
It will also be discussed at the summit how to suppress the developing struggle of the working class and labourers who do not want to pay the bill of the economic crisis of the system and fight against this. However, the situation is unbearable for the working class and labourers. Fast increasing of unemployment, poverty and misery accumulates a deep anger which is ready to explode. The working class and its vanguard forces will see their own power as far as they develop the organised and united struggle against the economic crisis and against the bourgeois system that causes the crisis. As the crisis is in the nature of capitalism, the only way to get rid of the crisis is to get rid of the capitalist system. The only alternative of capitalism is socialism. The struggle against the crisis and the struggle against NATO have to be bound to the struggle against the capitalist system. The working class and the labourers will get rid of the crisis and the imperialist war machines such as NATO only when they overthrow the imperialist capitalist system which is the system of oppression and exploitation and establish the socialist system.
It is a common task of the progressive, revolutionary and communist forces to increase the united struggle against the imperialist war apparatus NATO which has brought nothing but occupation, exploitation, plunder and torture to peoples. The progressive, revolutionary and communist forces will respond the celebrations of the 60th year of NATO with protests and turn their celebration places into a nightmare for them.
As it has done during the NATO Summit of 2004 in Istanbul, as its actions at the places which were announced to be "zero-risk areas" and as its participation in the demonstration against the other imperialist summits, the MLCP will continue to show a militant posture at the actions against the NATO Summit April 3-4, 2009 both in Turkey and on the border of Germany and France.
The imperialists will not be able to move freely neither in Strasburg-Baden Baden-Kehl nor on any part of the earth.
Down with the imperialist war machine NATO!
Long live international solidarity!
Long live revolution and socialism!