The U.S. government is moving rapidly to complete the next stage of its first strike nuclear attack strategy. The moves threaten Russia, China, Iran and other potential targets of a U.S. nuclear strike. To promote the latest aggressive military policy, Bush toured six European countries before the recent G-8 summit in Germany.
The U.S. government is creating military zones in the Czech Republic and Poland to construct ballistic missile defense
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The systems would be linked to similar NATO systems throughout Europe.
In Poland and the Czech Republic, the U.S. proposal is highly unpopular. Polls have reported 60 percent opposition in the Czech Republic. In Poland, three in four people oppose the U.S. plan.
More than 2,000 people rallied against Bush before his stop in Prague. The protesters denounced the U.S. military’s policy of base expansion in Eastern Europe. The Czech Communist Youth and Communist Party organized the action.
Behind the missile defense system
The corporate owned mass media have concealed the real reasons behind the so-called missile defense system.
The United States government pretends to carry out a “defense” policy when it is really on the offensive. In its quest to remain the dominant imperialist power—the U.S. is seeking to bring Russia to its knees. The U.S. foreign policy objective is to grab all the areas of Eastern and Central Europe, and the energy-rich former republics of the Soviet Union located near the Caspian Sea. The United States is seeking to incorporate the Ukraine into a permanent U.S. sphere of influence. These efforts are being resisted by Russia.
Russia has registered its disagreement with the U.S. plan to deploy missile interceptors in Poland and radar units in the Czech Republic. But not for the reasons the bourgeois media have stated.
The media have been playing up old “Cold War” disputes as the reason behind what they characterize as a tactical military scuffle between two countries. This narrative is incorrect and misleading.
During the so-called Cold War, two social systems were in direct conflict—the capitalist system, led by the U.S. imperialists, and the socialist system, led by the Soviet Union.
While it emerged from gross underdevelopment to become the second or third largest economy in the world between 1917 and the 1980s, Russia in the post Soviet-era has been largely diminished.
The U.S. capitalists are upset that Russia is not doing everything they want even though Russia is now a capitalist country with economic ties to the United States. Russian president Vladimir Putin has tried to revive a domestic economic and foreign policy in its own perceived national interests, rather than being picked apart by the major capitalist western world.
The U.S. ruling class also wants to delink the former Socialist Bloc countries from Russia altogether. The Czech Republic and Poland already are tied much more closely U.S. imperialism than to Russia. These countries’ governments are virtually subordinate to western imperialism, much in the same way former Soviet Republics like Georgia and Ukraine more recently have become.
Placing missile defense bases in Eastern Europe is a provocation aimed at Russia and all the people of the region. The U.S. government wants to use nuclear threats to intimidate Russia as it gobbles up all of Russia’s neighbors in a new U.S. sphere of influence.
The Russian bourgeoisie understands the U.S. government’s actions and is reacting accordingly. Putin has attempted to deescalate the situation by countering the U.S. proposal. He has offered support for the U.S. to construct a jointly-administered missile defense base in Azerbaijan instead. This would keep the base in the hands of both parties, not just with the United States. The U.S. government is unlikely to agree.
Russia-U.S. antagonism
Russia has ties with China and has sold fighter jets and weapons to Venezuela and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. While these acts conflict with U.S. efforts to impose its own world empire, Russian foreign policy has nothing in common with the anti-imperialist political program of the early years of the Soviet Union. Russian policy today is based on narrow bourgeois nationalism. It does not have even a hint of internationalist solidarity with those around the world fighting for national liberation or socialism.
None of Russia’s nationalistic measures are meant to benefit the suffering workers in Russia. The capitalist government, led by Putin, has dismantled many of the social benefits that remained from the days of the Soviet Union. But it has also resisted the efforts by the United States to transform the once mighty Russia into a virtual neo-colony.
By jockeying to install these bases in Eastern Europe, the U.S capitalist class is taking further steps to diminish Russia’s influence in the region. The U.S. rulers want to maintain and extend hegemony while not-so-subtlely warning Russia against continuing to assert any modicum of economic or military independence from western imperialism.
