International Initiative for Peace
«Before the spark reaches the dynamite, the fuse must be cut».
Walter Benjamin
For a brief moment in history, with the scheduled demolition Soviet Union in 1991, it seemed that the United States of America had finally reached the level of undisputed universal power. It turned out, however, to be only a fleeting moment, which the U.S. exploited to the fullest, both by strengthening geopolitical alliances with its vassal and/or client states (primarily through NATO) and subjugating nations that resisted and peoples who rebelled, using bloody wars of aggression or by proxy wars, coups and false flag operations. The “Project for a New American Century; was stillborn.
The historical epoch marked by the global expansion of capitalism has confirmed four historical facts in the most devastating way: unless imperialism and capitalism are eradicated, conflicts and wars are inevitable; periods of peace are only truces between one conflict and the next; a permanent monopolar order, i.e. world domination by a single great power, has never existed and never can; and a world based on reconciliation and perpetual peace is a utopia.
That the dominance of U.S. imperialism is waning, that the balance of power is unfavorable to Washington in the long run, should not lead us to make the mistake of underestimating its extraordinary power. The U.S. remains the leading power — economically, technologically, scientifically and militarily. In the new global arms race ($2.4 trillion in 2023), the U.S. is by far the country that has spent the most ($916 billion; more than twice as much as Russia and China combined). The U.S. has emerged stronger from the subprime financial crisis, including at the expense of the European Union — in 2008, European and U.S. GDPs were similar, while today the former is only two-thirds the size of the latter. While the US tech “magnificent seven” (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla) dominate the world, the financial cartel of BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard is the most powerful in the history of capitalism. To this must be added the possession of the world’s most powerful military (deployed in every corner of the world, uniquely equipped with an all-encompassing arsenal forged over a century of wars) and thus the most powerful military alliance in human history (in the western quadrant NATO, in the eastern quadrant Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand).
Did the First World War really begin in July 1914? Or did it really begin two years earlier with the Balkan Wars? And wasn’t World War II triggered by the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, and in Europe by the Spanish Civil War in 1936? World War III does not have to start; it is already underway. We have been in it for at least a decade, ever since the decision in Washington to arm Ukraine and turn it against Russia, then to support the grand rearmament of NATO and Israel in the West, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan against China and North Korea in the East. Faced with the inability to control globalization and the impossibility of continuing to derive comparative advantage from it, the central planners of U.S. strategy decided to cross the Rubicon, beyond which an unlimited and prolonged general war would become inevitable. A pre-emptive general war would not give the enemies, first and foremost Russia and China, time to prepare for the task at hand and would prevent a strategic alliance between Russia, China and the so-called “Global South”; from taking final shape. The deep internal fragmentation of the United States, the risk of this fragmentation escalating into a full-scale civil war, and the tendency of the European Union to disintegrate are factors that have accelerated and strengthened the U.S. decision to attempt a direct confrontation.
An unlimited and prolonged general war could lead to an ultimate nuclear conflict that would wipe out humanity and thus the U.S.-led imperialist bloc itself, even if the latter were to launch a first strike. But the Pentagon is not thinking of acting like Samson, who pulled down the building he was in with all his enemies, causing not only their deaths but his own. No, the strategists in Washington, convinced that war is the surest way to impose Pax Americana, determined to exploit their current military superiority, want to draw their enemies into a massive but still “conventional” conflict. Do not be misled by the word “conventional”. Today “conventional” arsenals and devices, which in some ways include the use of tactical nuclear weapons, have unprecedented destructive power. An all-out conventional war between the great powers and their allies will be fought in different parts of the world and on different levels: land, transoceanic, submarine, air, space and cyberspace. Those who rule out total conventional war because of the risks of ultimate thermonuclear escalation and who therefore consider that the only possible form of war is hybrid warfare (political, ideological, economic, financial, media, techno-scientific, cyber, false flag terrorist actions) to destabilize and weaken enemies from within without frontal military attacks are mistaken. One form does not preclude the other. The war that will be waged, if the imperialist warmongers are not forced to retreat, will be a struggle of annihilation, which implies not only the political decapitation of the enemy, but also the destruction of its military capabilities through the military occupation of its viable territorial space by military means.
It is still possible to avert the slaughter if we can force the imperialists, in other words the US and their closest allies, to back down and accept a multilateral order in which the great powers do not exercise their power by oppressing peoples and plundering nations, and in which these nations can fully exercise their right to self-determination. That requires the defeat of the imperialists in the current wars, which they provoked, and in the wars they intend to provoke in the near future. Our struggle is not for an alternative imperialist order but for a multilateral international order of equal & sovereign states. However, we cannot stop WW3 by standing on the sidelines, but by making popular and national resistance the main actors. Preaching will never be enough to force Washington to retreat, but only by changing the balance of power, by weakening its imperialist bloc from within and without, by disrupting its deadly political and war machine, by forming a counter-bloc for peace that includes popular movements, governments and nations. While powerful states like Russia and China will defend themselves by all means, while nations will have to fight not to succumb, a key role will fall to the popular resistance, which will necessarily be multifaceted and diverse. For those of us who live and struggle inside the imperialist camp, the struggle is political; the absolute priority is to build a mass movement for peace and against NATO. In the different countries, this means building an extensive network of local grassroots committees that are capable of setting in motion a lasting and tenacious popular resistance for the liberation of each country from US control exercised via US military bases, NATO alliance, EU block and puppet governments. This requires a movement that can activate people, even those of different ideological orientations, and unite them in the common defense of peace, democracy and social justice, that is impossible to achieve with imperialism and capitalism.
This act of fighting for real democracy, civil rights and social justice is crucial, because as international and internal turmoil intensifies, poverty and social inequalities will increase and authoritarian turns will be inevitable. The ruling oligarchies will not hesitate to lead the various countries to war and take public opinion with them (as they are already doing today against Russia), to militarize societies, even to the point of declaring a state of emergency and suspending constitutional orders. These oligarchies wave the bogeyman of old fascism at the gates, but they are precisely the greatest and most subversive threat, the main enemy of the working people, of democracy and freedom; in short, the new fascism in the name of antifascism. In fact, the danger of plunging society into armed militaristic dictatorial regimes and cybernetic surveillance comes not from below but from above, from those who now command and resort to war as a last resort to stay in power and defend the shaky supremacy of the collective West. Antonio Gramsci said that “history teaches, but has no pupils”. Let us learn from history instead: Only a popular uprising, only the overthrow of the rulers, can stop the slaughter. An uprising that, while winning peace, will pave the way for a constituent assembly tasked with laying the foundations of the new society. Front of
STOPWW3 – Initiative for Peace
September 22, 2024
