LOS ANGELES, July 2—As thousands of teachers and other workers prepare for the biennial convention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), amidst sharpening attacks on students, teachers, and all workers, the AFT leadership is fighting the Cold War – now in Ukraine. 

Its stridently anti-Russian "Ukraine Democratic Governance" convention resolution, incredibly, denies the existence of fanatical anti-Semitism among Ukrainian nationalists.  It negates the historical reality of Kiev as an emblematic Russian city.  It proposes that "international solidarity" means supporting NGOs that are funded by, and take leadership from, the US State Department.

Real international solidarity means mobilizing for a communist world without borders, a world without capitalists or imperialists of either the "free-market" or the "state-capitalist" variety. 

AFT and the AFL-CIA

Nearly half of the activity of the giant US labor federation AFL-CIO is overseas.  The AFT plays a big part in this mainly ideological work.  As teachers are expected to train youth in capitalist ways of thinking and doing, the AFT pushes the US imperialist ideological agenda worldwide.

AFT President Randi Weingarten's racist and proudly anti-communist mentor, Al Shanker, was a shameless cold-warrior who brought actual CIA agents – notably Irving Brown — to AFT conventions. 

Shanker helped to lead the AFL-CIO's pro-capitalist American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which operated in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1962-1997.  AIFLD was funded partly by large corporations but mainly through the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID was a well-known CIA front.  In South Vietnam, for example, "USAID provided cover for CIA operatives so widely that the two became almost synonymous." (Washington Post, 4/26/2010)

When US imperialism wanted to dump an unfriendly Brazilian government in 1963, AIFLD trained 33 "labor activists" there, who then helped to overthrow President Joao Goulart.   Later, in Nicaragua, the AIFLD brokered the labor coalition that supported UNO against the Sandinistas. 

After the Soviet Union collapsed, USAID commissioned a report on the future of its labor activity that, noting AIFLD's reputation for corruption and CIA connections, advised reorganization.  It suggested that funds be channeled through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). 

From its founding in 1983 until 1994, NED was funded exclusively by the US government.  Now it also gets donations from oil companies and war contractors.  An NED founder, Allen

Weinstein, explained in 1991, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." 

The US Government Accountability Office passed USAID's instructions along to the AFL-CIO, which, in 1997, dutifully merged AIFLD with similar regional organizations into the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS or the Solidarity Centers).   ACILS gets half of its funding through NED, most of the rest from the US government, and only about 4% from unions. (Note to Boeing workers:  IAM president Buffenbarger is an ACILS trustee.) 

ACILS tries to obscure its sordid roots.  But George Nelson Bass's 2012 Ph.D. thesis shows in detail that ACILS continues past AFL-CIO foreign policy practices:

"…[T]he Solidarity Center closely tailors its operations abroad in areas of importance to the U.S. state … is heavily reliant on state funding via the NED … [and] that the Solidarity Center works closely with U.S. allies and coalitions."  (www.countercurrents.org/nelsonbass040313.pdf)

Ukraine is no exception (see below).

Another resolution before the AFT calls for "ending U.S. militarized foreign policy." It wants U.S. foreign policy instead to "prioritize the needs of working people everywhere and … negotiation and diplomatic means over military deployment" in Ukraine and elsewhere.  This is either astoundingly naïve or inexcusably deceptive. 

"Diplomatic means" are the State Department, USAID, NED, ACILS, and the NGOs they support.  So this resolution actually echoes the AFT leadership line on Ukraine instead of exposing the imperialist roots of US foreign policy. 

Uncritical talk about "national security" reinforces patriotic lies and an anti-class-struggle line.  It risks turning anti-war union militants into a "loyal opposition" to the worst butchers in world history. 

Let's face it:  capitalism-imperialism by its very nature prioritizes profits, meaning the exploitation of workers.  It can never meet the needs of working people anywhere. 

In the present period of a general crisis of world capitalism, ever-larger wars –including world war – are inevitable until the masses of workers, soldiers and youth rise up in a revolutionary mobilization for communism.

"Less money for war"?  We say:  No money! No capitalism! No nations! No war!

Working-class internationalism means supporting and spreading anti-capitalist revolts.  It means organizing one International Communist Workers' Party from Seattle's Boeing plants to El Salvador's maquilas to South Africa's industrial suburbs and schools everywhere.  Please join us in this historic task.

When the Mongols pressed into Europe, when Russia fought Sweden, when Napoleon and later Hitler invaded Russia, Ukraine was soaked with the blood of workers and peasants and their sons in uniform.  In between, it was soaked with the sweat of their exploited labor.  And it's happening again.

This rich, strategic region is an imperialist battleground.  We workers must not side with any group of capitalist butchers.  We must mobilize the masses for communism, to eliminate the bosses, their borders, and their deadly profit system.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, USAID stepped up its Ukraine operation to establish "independent media, an active civil society, and a broader entrepreneurial class."  USAID money helped to privatize agriculture, "better the business climate and draw foreign investment."  All this meant sharp attacks on workers in Ukraine.

Today, however, US capitalism is mostly shut out of the market system it helped to build there.  Almost 50% of foreign direct investment in Ukraine comes from Europe.  Russia accounts for 7% directly, plus much of the 30% that comes via Cyprus.  The US doesn't make Ukraine's "top ten" list of foreign investors. 

Last November, Exxon and Chevron signed an agreement with Ukraine to drill for gas in the Black Sea, challenging Russian dominance of Ukraine's energy sector.  Now they've been deterred by Russia's seizure of Crimea, an important military base and Black Sea port.  Still, Russia has not re-established its ability to control Ukraine's industrial base in Donetz. 

Ukraine and the European Union recently signed the pact that Russia desperately wanted to stop last December.  Germany in particular seems to be advancing its interests in spite of the continuing crisis.  US media exaggerate the damage that Putin's policies are doing to Russia, but Russia is still on the defensive.  Its attempt to lead a Eurasian customs union is faltering.

Meanwhile, US rulers are divided over their ineffective sanctions on Russia.  Oil and gas executives praise Obama's endorsement of US energy exports as a foreign policy tool.  But the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce have taken out full-page ads opposing new sanctions. 

The real winner may be China.  Last year, China became Ukraine's second-largest trade partner (after the EU).  Ukraine wants modern Chinese technology, while China looks to Ukraine for military technology, grain, and customers. 

Russia Times correspondent Andrew Leung says, "the Ukrainian crisis is likely to push Russia more towards China as a balance against America [and] America more towards China to balance against Russia."  China, he predicts, will choose Russia.  US sanctions push Russia toward China's currency and financial system.

Many are understandably disgusted with US imperialism.  But rival capitalist-imperialists in Moscow and Beijing are equally our enemy.  Their sharpening rivalry will mean world war.  We must prepare ourselves and our students (future soldiers) to turn that war into communist revolution.