1983 will be a decisive year in the struggle against the deployment of new missiles in Europe and for the development of the anti-war movement. Confronted with the escalation of the war drive by the United States and the other imperialist powers the mobilisation for disarmament has continued to grow. After the three million who took part in the 1982 demonstrations in Europe, United States and in Japan, this year's Easter actions were again spectacularly successful. We must do everything possible to build this mobilisation in order to defeat the criminal plans of Reagan, Thatcher and company by imposing the demand of unilateral disarmament.
Reagan can already push the button on a stock of nuclear arms with a firepower equivalent to nearly one million Hiroshimas. And he is still not satisfied! From 1980 to 1983 American military spending increased by 12 percent a year in real terms, going from 142 to 257 billion dollars. This mad race to the holocaust shows the true face of imperialists - which they have tried to mask by hypocritical declarations on human rights.
The true nature of imperialism is the escalation of militarisation and nuclear arms production. It is the all out mobilisation of economic resources, brains, and technology in the service of destruction. The neutron bomb alone incarnates the obscenity of decaying capitalism - its complex mechanism destroys people while protecting property. What a proof that in this system property rights always finish up overriding real human rights!
The West European capitalist states fall in behind the US government in the nuclear arms race. Great Britain has decided on an expansion programme equipping its submarines with Trident missiles which are first strike weapons like the Pershing II and Cruise missiles. The French government plans a shift in its military strategy towards a larger nuclear strike force. The generals call it 'forward defence'. This strategy also involves the creation of a 50,000-strong rapid action force, almost identical in conception to the US rapid deployment force. If the Roger's Plan for Europe is implemented, this would mean a massive build up of conventional weapons in all West European countries.
Imperialism is not just the potential Hiroshimas stocked in the silos, the submarines or the nuclear bombers, it is also the 'silent Hiroshimas' of misery and hunger caused by the plunder of the colonial and semi-colonial countries: 40,000 children die each day in these countries - mostly from malnutrition.
The real face of imperialism is the austerity programmes which are attacking the workers of the capitalist countries more and more sharply while their governments increase military spending. In France, a Socialist Party-Communist Party government is preparing the production of the neutron bomb and has just adopted a five-year military budget of 120 billion dollars. At the same time it attacks the sliding scale of wages, the social security system and employment. The slogan 'Jobs not Bombs!' which has been taken up in the big anti-nuclear mobilisations sums up the necessary link between the struggle against the arms race and the struggle against capitalist austerity policy.
Finally, the reality of imperialism is not only the threat of a nuclear apocalypse but is also, and above all, the war of aggression being waged at this moment by imperialism against the liberation struggles of oppressed peoples. Today the USA and the CIA are directly involved in armed aggression against revolutionary Nicaragua. The US government openly supports the Salvadoran and Guatemalan dictatorships. The Salvadoran regime is already responsible for 50,000 deaths in three years, i.e. the equivalent of 500,000 dead for populations the size of those in France, Germany or Great Britain...in addition to El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Grenada, which are also threatened, the Cuban revolution is in the firing line of Yankee imperialism. In the Middle East, Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister, was able to launch his invasion of Lebanon and his attempt to annihilate the Palestinian resistance because he had American material and political support.
THE REAL CAUSES OF THE ARMS RACE
The saturation media coverage given to Reagan or Thatcher's proposals and the large-scale diplomatic manoeuvres around the Geneva negotiations cannot silence the sounds of battle from these ongoing interventions and wars.
The roots of the arms race lie therefore first of all in the economic crisis of the capitalist system and the necessity to maintain imperialist order against workers struggles and the inevitable explosions of oppressed peoples driven to desperation. The often-argued Soviet military superiority, and the threat it is supposed to pose for the 'free' world, are only pretexts to justify the escalation of the war drive.
On the basis of the work of certain American experts, it can be established that:
— The United States still has more nuclear warheads than the Soviet Union.
— With the development of the new missiles, the US government is aiming for further qualitative superiority over Soviet nuclear armament. The Pershing II are to be used above all for a first strike surprise attack against the Soviet Union. Because of their more limited explosive power and because of their greater accuracy, they can be used for 'regionalising' atomic wars, that is to say, to make them 'limited, manageable and accessible'. They therefore reveal the aim of imperialism's new arms race - to exert its military power also in regions which are distant from the American continent. The logic of deterrence is thus proved to be a logic of blackmail.
— The difference in percentage of their respective Gross National Products spent on arms by the USA and the USSR, which the imperialists often use as an argument, is meaningless. While declared American arms spending is 7% of the GNP and estimated USSR spending 15% of the GNP, the American GNP is double the Soviet GNP. Thus, in absolute terms, imperialist military spending is greater than USSR spending. Soviet military expenditure is a great burden on the Soviet Union to the point of worsening economic and food supply problems. Furthermore, SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) statistics indicate that in 1980 NATO was responsible for 43% of world arms spending as against 26% for the Warsaw Pact.
Imperialism is still the principal warmonger and the main threat to peace.
SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEACE MOVEMENT IN EASTERN EUROPE
For its part, the military policy of the bureaucracy in power in the USSR and the East European countries has a reactionary dimension which is a consequence of its domestic and foreign policy:
— A foreign policy based not on militant internationalism, on solidarity between workers and peoples throughout the world but on pacts and agreements of coexistence or division of the world with imperialism.
— A domestic policy anchored not in the democratic mobilisation of the masses but on the negation of the most elementary political, trade union or national rights as shown by the Soviet intervention in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Jaruzelski's tough crackdown on the Polish workers (1981).
That is why we are in solidarity with the currents of opposition to the arms race which have appeared in East Germany, and in a more limited way in other East European countries. The development of such currents would be an enormous encouragement for the antiwar movement in Western Europe and would strike a blow against imperialism a thousand times more deadly than a few more Soviet missiles. By demanding public and democratic control over defence and foreign policy, a mass antiwar movement independent of the state in East Europe would inevitably take on an anti-bureaucratic dynamic.
ONLY MASS ACTION CAN FORCE THE WARMONGERS TO RETREAT:
Nuclear war looms as an unprecedented danger for humanity. Neither protests nor maintaining the balance of terror are guarantees against the outbreak of such a war.
As long as imperialist governments have such murderous instruments at their disposal the danger of nuclear holocaust will continue.
The only chance of preventing war is to disarm the warmongers by overthrowing capitalism where it is strongest. This is the task and duty of workers inside these countries.
The struggle against the war drive is everybody's affair - workers on the receiving end of austerity policies and unemployment, women suffering exploitation and oppression, and young people condemned to unemployment and military service. It is far too serious a question to be left in the hands of diplomats or sorted out between governments in secret summit negotiations. Only mobilisation can hold back the warmongers.
In 1982 and spring 1983 millions of workers, women, and youth mobilised throughout Europe in demonstrations against the deployment of nuclear missiles, as in Great Britain, West Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy and Denmark, and for the rejection of NATO and the removal of its bases in the Spanish State and Greece.
But demonstrations are not enough. To mobilise the masses, the struggle has to be organised in the workplaces, in the schools and factories. Often local, or even regional, trade-union bodies have passed motions and supported this spring's demonstrations. Many trade- union leaders have spoken out in these actions. We must build on this, proposing actions that can mobilise the mass of workers - proposals like a one hour or 24 hour strike as are being discussed today in the Dutch workers movement.
Agreement on the broadest and most united basis can be reached in Western Europe against the deployment of nucclear missiles scheduled for the end of the year.
1. From Comiso in Sicily to Greenham Common in Great Britain say no to Pershing and Cruise Missiles!
2. Remove the NATO bases! Dismantle American forward bases in Europe! Down with the Turkish dictatorship which is making Turkey a fortress for imperialism in the region!
3. No to French and British nuclear weapons which are an integral part of the imperialist military apparatus!
4. For a nuclear-free Europe from Poland to Portugal, from Sicily to Scandinavia!
5. For massive cuts in military spending, total nationalisation and reconversion of the arms industries - Jobs not Bombs!
6. Full support for democratic rights for soldiers enrolled in the bourgeois army and for workers subject to the special laws which place restrictions on hiring or on trade unions in the arms industries!
7. Stop imperialist intervention in Central America!
The Fourth International and its sections are fully engaged in the battle against the war drive and austerity. Throughout Europe one united voice must be raised to say no to the deployment of the missiles and to military spending, to oppose the effects of the crisis (unemployment, cuts in wages and social services, racist agitation of rightwing forces). On each important occasion this voice should be heard. For the Autumn the mobilisations which have developed in different countries should take a new step forward in coordination by the organisation of a large European-wide demonstration.
The European sections of the Fourth International will commit all the forces at their disposal to this battle.
GIM (Gruppe Internationale Marxisten - FDR) — GRM (Gruppe Revolutionaere Marxisten - Austria) — IKB (Internationale Kommunistenbond - Netherlands) — LCR (Liga Comunista Revolucionaria - Spanish State) — LCR (Ligue communiste revolutionnaire - France) — LCR (Lega Comunista Rivoluzionaria - Italy) — LRT/RTL (Ligue revolutionnaire des travailleurs/Revolutionaire Arbeidersliga - Belgium) — PSO/SAP/PSL (Parti socialiste ouvrier/Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei/Partido Socialista dei Lavoratori - Switzerland) — SAP (Socialistik Arbejderparti - Denmark) — SL (Socialist League - Great Britain) — SP (Socialistiska Partiet - Sweden)
United Secretariat (USEC) of the Fourth International 5 May 1983