Ukraine crisis here ♦ Don’t be the bosses’ pawns here ♦
We Need to Organize Soldiers, Workers and Youth for Communist Revolution
On March 24, Ukrainian President Zelensky signed decree No. 117/2021. It makes Kiev’s official policy the retaking by force of the Crimean Peninsula and its militarily strategic city of Sevastopol.
President Biden was quick to pledge his “unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” NATO was not too far behind, pledging similar support. The US and Russia have threatened each other with severe sanctions.
Russia responded to Zelensky’s declaration by mobilizing 80,000 troops to its border with Ukraine. Responding to the US and NATO’s military deployment in the Black Sea region and Eastern Europe, Russia is conducting nationwide military exercises throughout April. They will test Russia’s fighting capacity and readiness with over 4,000 separate events.
Whether there will be war now in Ukraine, possibly escalating into World War III, is not for us to guess. From dialectical and historical materialism, communists know that capitalist competition for natural resources, markets, and the cheapest labor force always leads to local, regional and world wars. That’s inevitable.
The Ukrainian crisis exemplifies this. Although most major imperialists have a stake in Ukraine, competing US, Russian and Chinese interests are its main drivers.
Ukraine: Crucial to Russia’s Resurgence as a World Power
For Russia, Ukraine in the hands of a hostile power becomes an existential threat as in World War II, when the Nazis used it to invade the Soviet Union.
Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea fleet has been based since the dissolution of the USSR, is crucial to Russia’s control of the Black Sea and to project power to the greater Mediterranean and the Middle East.
The US is trying to use Ukraine as a transit alternative for non-Russian gas going to Europe, to break Russia’s chokehold on Europe’s energy supplies. Russian energy prevents the European imperialists from completely aligning with US imperialism against Russia.
Therefore, the US imperialists are encouraging a Russian-Ukraine war. They hope to bury Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would carry an additional 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year to Germany, bypassing Ukraine.
Economically, a war would adversely impact the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The EEU is fundamental to Putin’s geopolitical strategy to become a dominant imperialist power.
BRI: China’s Ticket to World Supremacy
In 2018, Putin’s EEU and China signed a trade and cooperation agreement. It gave China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) access to most of the territories it crosses, from Central Asia to Europe.
Ukraine, bordering the European Union, Russia, and Turkey, complements this. It was the first European country to join China’s BRI.
A Ukrainian war – benefiting only the US – would destabilize the Black Sea region and Eastern Europe strike a major blow against the BRI, China’s ticket to world supremacy.
The Imperialists’ War Drums Sound Closer
Whether world war is imminent or not, our responsibility is to organize the working class to destroy capitalism. This murderous system enslaves us for a miserable wage, condemns billions of us to dire poverty, destroys the environment and constantly buries millions of us with their wars for profits.
The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) strives to win the masses to the vision of a communist society where we collectively produce for our needs and make all the decisions affecting our lives in a world without capitalists-imperialists, their money, markets, wage slavery, exploitation, borders or nations, racism, sexism or any other phobia.
For this, the ICWP is organizing to mobilize the world’s working class to fight for communism and nothing less. Our analysis of the sharpening contradiction among the capitalist-imperialist butchers should alert the working class and our Party of the urgency to create the subjective and objective conditions that will make possible a communist revolution before World War III explodes. If that’s not possible, then we will turn their war into an armed uprising for communism.
For this we need to organize tirelessly and patiently for a communist revolution, especially among industrial workers and in the capitalist-imperialist armed forces and among the youth who will be drafted to fight their war. Everyone has a role to play! Join us!
Workers: Don’t Be the Bosses’ Pawns! Organize for Communism in the Barracks and Factories
EL SALVADOR—”As workers we must be informed of the international situation and how we must be prepared for these war scenarios with our Party,” said a worker comrade.
“Yes, comrade, this is a reality that the bosses cannot hide, that first are their profits,” I replied.
We have been following the events taking place in the Donbass area of Ukraine.
The U.S. government does not care about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in a war between Russia and Ukraine, far from its borders. Such a war “would generate profits in arms sales, similar to those of World War II,” said a Germany-based Cuban analyst.
The war in the Donbass is a war between bourgeoisies that once again ensnares workers in their lethal butchery. We should not be their pawns on their geopolitical chessboard. It is urgent to organize more workers in the factories and barracks to massively oppose conflicts between workers, to bury all seeds of nationalism, through workers’ solidarity and the raising of class consciousness of millions of workers.
“The purpose of this possible war is economics. The US has been economically weakened against China in its balance of trade. It urgently needs to sell its gas to the European countries and in this case to the Germans, who buy cheaper and faster from their partner Russia. And also try to strike a strong blow against Russia and other emerging nations such as India, South Africa, Turkey,” argued an Argentine professor.
Our International Communist Workers’ Party is carrying out efforts to consolidate our forces. We must penetrate the armies and factories of these nations in order to lead the masses towards communism and not to go to Inter-imperialist wars.
Germany and Russia have consolidated their economic partnership and have done business for oil, gas, and minerals for billions of dollars, without the need for U.S. intervention. The route of the Nordstream 2 pipeline is similar to Nordstream 1. Why is it a problem now?
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the US was stronger economically strong, selling expensive gas to Europe. Now they have an overproduction of gas which they cannot sell. One of Gazprom’s major intermediaries is the former German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, who assures us that “The problem with Ukraine is the almost three billion dollars a year that they [the US] will lose because of the passage of gas through this country.”
The project of our Party must be to be on these battle fronts, giving the leadership that our working class is pressing for. We must not underestimate ICWP’s achievements in the US, denouncing that both Republicans and Democrats have the same warmongering agenda and will not give up carrying out massacres of millions of workers for their miserable economic gains.
Former combatants of the FMLN and part of the Salvadoran working class believed that the Democrats are friends of the workers. Biden and his entire cabinet, their role in the Ukraine crisis, shows (as Barack Obama also showed in practice) that there is no “good imperialist” for the world’s working class.
Let us defeat the seeds of nationalism with a strong and massive international communist party, with solidarity in our communist cells. To defeat the information siege with a massive diffusion of communist ideas reflected in the workers’ newspaper.
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