Van Genua naar Muenchen
x - 14.01.2002 16:53
From Genoa to Munich - Stop NATO/EU war politics!
Oppose the meeting of the world war-elite!
This year´s annual Munich Conference on Security Policy takes place between
1st and 3rd February. Thirty foreign ministers and war ministers of NATO and EU states are due to take part, including a delegation of US senators and congressmen, as well as a number of top military strategists, generals and arms experts. Delegations from Russia and China are also expected, although this will not alter the fact that NATO and EU states will determine substance and policies.
Official organiser of the security conference is BMW´s own Herbert Quandt foundation. The alliance between capital and the military can hardly be better demonstrated. For the participants of the Conference on Security Policy the central themes are the planning of current and future wars, the establishment of powerful, mobile strike forces, and the development of new billion-dollar weapons systems.
Themes of the security conference 2002 are ´international terrorism´ and ´global security´. With such aggressive epithets the so-called civilised world will deem itself more able to wage war wherever it considers its interests are endangered. The Conference on Security Policy is also an occasion for the military-political powers to negotiate spheres of control. Even within the last few years quite explosive war-planning matters were discussed. In 1998 for example US military operations in Iraq were on the agenda and the question of using German air force bases. During the last conference, as part of their National Missile Defense System, US plans for the militarisation of space were discussed, and the participation of EU states. Massive contradictions of interest became apparent between the USA and their European NATO allies who increasingly call for their own EU-military block. At the Conference on Security Policy 2002, the German Federal Republic will use the opportunity to push its major-power demands within the ´anti-terror´ war coalition. However, whether competitively or in collaboration with each other, under the heading of the discourse on ´global security´ and ´international terrorism´, EU and NATO member states will continue to plan strategies for war.
The military arm of capital - NATO and its new strategic concept
Combined with the new NATO strategies exists the US concept of ´Joint Vision 2010´. With this concept the militarily assured dominance of the US is sustained in the entire air, land and sea combat-spheres, and in space. Enemies are those who act against the interests of the US or against the interests Of their European allies. Whereas at the time of the Gulf War, many people sniggered at US President George Bush´s much used phrase ´A New World Order´; it now seems it´s more obvious strategic meaning has become clear. No one may depart from the ´New World Order´ or criticise it. Those who nevertheless dare to oppose it, risk militarily backed consequences or sanctions.
"The great wars of the 20th century took place between wealthy nations. In the next century those prosperous nations now living peacefully with each other will have to defend their wealth from the people of the poor countries and regions of the world" (Lieutenant Reinhard Herden, Truppenpraxis / Wehrausbildung Nr. 2+3/96)
NATO´s new concept is distinguished by its contrived intimidation scenarios, whereby NATO legitimises its own actions: Interruption to the supply of vital resources, the threat of terrorism and acts of sabotage, even the weakening of internal security through movement of refugees.
The military reorganisation of Europe - Military policy beyond NATO
In November last year, within the framework of European security and defence policies, the EU foreign and defence ministers of NATO member states took over all important functions from the West-European Defence Union. Their tasks will in future be taken over by the EU ´rapid deployment force´. By 2003 this new intervention strike force of 60,000 soldiers is due to be available for assignment and deployment anywhere around the globe. No other EU project is currently being prepared with so much intensity and energy.
The creation of an independent European strike force, a necessary development of the experience of dependence on the USA during the Gulf War and during the war against Yugoslavia, is a definitive move on the road to military independence. Seen in the long term, it is an attempt to extract itself from the military embrace of the superpower and to assert itself in its worldwideinterests, even where it is in opposition to the US. It would be a misconception to view the strengthening of Europe simply from military-political aspects. The ´conquest´ of Eastern Europe on an economic level in terms of the enlargement of the EU, is already taking place, forexample with the help of the ´eastern expansion´ of NATO, or the ´protectorate´ of the former Yugoslavia.
The internal and external role of the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr)
Once the decision had been made 46 years ago to reinstate German military forces and their possible deployment within the Federal Republic according to Article 87a, the restructuring of the Bundeswehr became the second historical turning point of German military and foreign policy. The Bundeswehr will now receive, in the form of this intended strengthening of its so called ´crisis reaction forces´ (rapid deployment units), a structural offensive capability.
For ten years or more the military have been working on new strategic concepts in which the proposed deployment of the Bundeswehr would be for commercial purposes, and in which its need is justified by continually growing military assignments far away from Europe. The intention of adapting the Bundeswehr to carry out two large war assignments each year (as in Kosovo) is nothing more than representing armed conflict as a normal occurrence.
A restructuring of the Bundeswehr is a component of the reorganisation of Europe, an objective whereby Europe realises its bargaining power as a Global player. Germany is in a leading position in this process of reorganisation. The drive for economic, political and ultimately also military might is Clearly combined with a European process of amalgamation as well as eastward expansion.
The 11th September and the ´War against Terror´
The attack on the World Trade Center on 11th September was a reactionary act, for which no emancipation movement on earth may use as a point of reference. Neither the choice of non-participant people as weapons, nor the objective of thousands of dead may be considered for a revolutionary movement.
If however the alleged civilised world now speaks of nothing being the same as before the attacks, then this represents quite clearly the differencesaround the world. The reaction to the attacks from people of the poorer southern nations was principally that nothing had changed in their daily reality. The scenes of rapture from peoples of the so-called third world, either passed over in deadly silence or condemned by the western media, were not simply mockery of the dead. Such reactions are not conceivable without consideration of worldwide class disparity. That which is represented as epoch breaking in the USA, the nation considered worldwide as the leading representative of the capitalist system, is for millions of people in the nations of the south just an everyday reality.
The real change to the situation for people in these southern nations is insignificant, and the change to the role of the world´s western military powers is equally small. Here, everything remains as it was: The USA with ist allies, makes war on the so-called rogue states, now known as ´States of concern´. The UN Security Council assigns its approval of this war of ´self defence´ and once again Europe attempts to distinguish itself by cooperation.
A number of interests are being served by this war: The USA is able to assert its world military predominance and clearly demonstrates once and for all that such an attack upon itself will never occur without fatal consequences to the aggressor. Additionally, such things as ´national interests´ such as access to resources, are stabilised. NATO member states decided the case for the war-alliance with USA in record time, without actually becoming involved in decisions or actions of the US. The German government seeks to acquire a stronger image in its role as ´new world power´, and countries such as Pakistan or India, by their entry into the ´Anti-terror coalition´ once again relish their general acceptance.
The only real danger in this new situation is the threat to the development of liberation movements, and this must be our main concern. Not least because the term ´terror´ may be easily manipulated and applied to whatever opposes the ruling world order. The reactions of the ruling elite are aimed at whatever might call their rule into question, whether reactionary or liberating movements. Clearly this does not mean we must support reactionary movements, but it does mean that we will be subjected to such methods. We must therefore denounce this war for what it is; a mechanism to further secure the ruling world order.
Their ´security´: Severe poverty and exploitation
The external and internal wars of the so-called ´civilised´ world is attended by an ideological discourse of security matters by which each crime of the ruling powers is portrayed as a defensive act against a monstrous rival, threatening the security of its metropolitan inhabitants from the outside.
Consider the term ´security´ from the perspective of military and police strategists and we may then ask; what ´security´ within current prevailing conditions, is actually extended to the mass of the people? What security does this system offer a Bolivian small farmer who, due to IMF restructuring conditions can no longer pay the inflated fuel and bread prices?
What is the meaning of security for a woman working whose bare survival is assured only by a 16-hour day in a Philippine famous-label textile sweatshop?
Or for a person in Sierra Leone where the only commercial activity which still functions is participation in the civil war for diamonds for the European market?
What form of security exists for an Afghan refugee who may choose only between the restrained charity of the International Red Cross and the pious promises of an Islam preacher? How secure is the future for the unemployed youth in the suburbs of Paris? ...or for a refugee in a deportation gaol at Frankfurt Airport? ...or for the homeless in Munich? What security does European social democracy offer the unemployed who may choose only between low-wage jobs or cuts in social assistance? What do we stand to gain from security if we must continually work more, with more ´flexibility´, and for less money?
What security does a woman in this society have from domestic violence? What security exists for migrants and refugees against the manhunts that regularly take place along EU borders, or racist laws affecting foreigners and murderous nazi-terror? The answers to all these questions are in reality somewhat feeble.
External Warfare...
During the last few decades more and more economic and political might has been concentrated into the hands of the richest and most powerful nations and multinationals. Their ´opening´ of world markets, the new technologies and the collapse of the competing real-socialist system have brought about a world-wide scramble for human and material resources as never before.
This development, also called globalisation, enables the administrators of the capitalist state of affairs to smooth over the contradictions within society without resorting to state-social minimum-guarantees. In Asia, Africa and Latin America as well as in the rich metropoles, more and more people have simply become surplus to capitalist production requirements. At the same Time whole nations in Africa and Central Asia have been connected to the world market. Without of course offering their inhabitants any alternative.
Such a development does not take place peacefully. Forcing increasingly more nations into the capitalist world means that people who oppose such development must be forcefully pushed aside. This happens in Colombia forexample when small farmers and landless peasants are driven off or murdered by military forces and the paramilitaries, to clear the way for oil concerns and agrarian multinationals. Where states and alliances of states fight over markets, raw materials and geo-strategic benefits, they will, where necessary, make war, whether in Yugoslavia, in the Caucasus or dirty wars with the help of death-squads or The support of ´contra´ forces. Where state systems economically and politically brake down, and a social alternative does not seem to be at hand, they will be superseded by economic plunder by warlords fighting among themselves.
Wherever capitalism no longer has anything to offer the people, a potential for social struggles will appear, but also for reactionary wonder-cures or for destructive violence. In any event there exists a potential for unrest, which the ruling elite are obliged to bring under control. That is to say, the USA, Germany and the other members of NATO and the EU have many reasons, their global power claims as well as ensuring further functioning of the capitalist exploitation apparatus, to resort more increasingly to military force. This secures nothing for us. On the contrary, we should in future prepare ourselves for a diffuse, permanent state of war, as pronounced by Bush and Chancellor Schröder as a "long enduring war against terror".
Internal repression and racism
External warfare finds its inner-political analogy in the build-up of state repressional apparatus, which has overshadowed all other developments in the last few years. These include biometric identity cards, use of thoroughgoing genetic information, ideological tests for workers in hospitals and transport services, combining police and secret service functions, domestic functions and duties for the military, not to mention wide-area camera surveillance, increased police presence and suspicion dragnets. In the USA the legalising of torture is already being openly discussed. The increase in internal security leads to further racist phenomena within state and society. According to the new set of laws proposed by German interior minister Herr Schily, refugees and migrants in future will be expelled on simplistic ´suspicion of extremism´ grounds. The final abolition of the basic right of asylum is also foreseen, as well as further restrictions to freedom of movement and new internment camps for ´deportation´ cases.
The provisions for ´internal security´ are concerned with much more than just terrorism panic. The state is able to create in record time that which would normally have taken a couple of years to realise. The more social insecurity increases, and the more this system marginalises a growing number of people, the more a state makes use of repression. Internal security makes people invisible. Those who have no place in society, for example the ´undesirable´ migrants or people who become socially marginalised through poverty. Internal security is preventative rebellion control in a number of ways:
Ideologically, it creates a unification with the state and its apparatus, which manifests itself as the strong protecting the weak against the ´corrupt´. The impression of complete control prevents people from even thinking about defending themselves by opposing the established norms. Movements of migrants should be controlled with respect to each separate location. In no small way is the state perfecting the means to react with all necessary might against possible future social disturbances, mass strikes and revolts.
Our security means fighting together against war, exploitation and repression, worldwide!
It is certainly not the first time that the armed wing of the imperialist states is the root cause of resistance and protest. Following the background of NATO´s ´double standard´ (stationing US Pershings), acts of civil disobedience were on the agenda, e.g., blockading Mutlangen US air base. Even the disbanding of NATO was part of the German Greens´ party programme until their participation in the present coalition.
In the eighties fierce, militant resistance to NATO policies was a particular expression of radical left politics. Even today we still need to overcome the loss of orientation following the fall of the real-socialist block and the diffuse behaviour during the Yugoslavian war. A continuation of past struggles would be to squarely defy capital´s henchmen, and Munich would be a suitable occasion.
Worldwide social and revolutionary movements have strategies and initiatives for all such questions of security and have possibilities on their agendas that the ruling system can never offer. The manifestations in Seattle, Prague and Genoa give us, in the face of all difficulties and contradictions, perspectives for a new worldwide resistance which is able to bring all the various struggles together. Today, our objective must be to create a new, international movement, which is able to represent radical alternatives to an economically, politically and socially unjust world order whose protagonists rely on repression and military interventions. This aspect we must also consider, that the state´s war on terror is not least aimed at us. The response to resistance by 300,000 people in Genoa was with confinement, tear gas attacks, brutal police skirmishes, arrests and torture, even the murder of Carlo Giuliani. It is clear to us that capitalism cannot ever be civilised. Worldwide exploitation and ist sustenance via military force and repression are two sides of the same coin, two aspects of a system that, in times of peace or war, shows no mercy at all.
The answer to capitalism and war is social revolution worldwide!
No peace for the war planners!
This time the Munich war conference will not take place undisturbed!
Fight NATO´s war policies
We are calling for massive protest!
Globalise anti-capitalism!
Abolish capitalism!
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