US-Russia Nuke Agreement: Peace Is War Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 6, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- PEACE IT'S NOT: U.S.-RUSSIA NUKE AGREEMENT FREES PENTAGON FOR MORE WAR By Fred Goldstein A new act in the post-Sept. 11 ascendancy of U.S. imperialism has just been played out on the stage of NATO. Announcing Russia's new junior membership, President George W. Bush triumphantly declared that "two former foes are now joined as partners." In fact, this new step marks a further stage in the subordination of the Russian capitalist government to U.S. imperialism. The step of including Russia was only possible because Washington sponsored it, with the consent of the Pentagon. So-called membership is crafted so that Russia will be given a "consultative role in forging NATO strategy on nuclear nonproliferation, crisis management, missile defense and counter-terrorism," according to the New York Times of May 28. However, continued the Times article, "Moscow will not have a role in NATO's core military alliance, in which all members pledge to protect the others from attack. Nor will Russia have a veto over NATO decisions or a vote in the expansion of its membership, including NATO's plans to invite new nations to a Prague meeting in November." Bush came to the NATO meeting in Rome after having signed an agreement with President Vladimir Putin on the reduction of nuclear arms. This agreement was a defeat for Russia and a victory for the most militaristic forces in the Bush administration. AGREEMENT ON NUCLEAR WARHEADS Under the agreement, Washington got everything it wanted and the Russians got almost nothing, save to be allowed to sit at the table of the imperialist powers in NATO. The document, which was 475 words long, gives legal force to verbal agreements made by the two leaders for each side to reduce their stockpile of nuclear warheads from a level of 6,000 to somewhere between 1,700 and 2,200 within the next 10 years. It was basically a codification of U.S. government demands. The Russians wanted verification. Bush said no. The Russians wanted the warheads to be destroyed. Bush said no. The agreement, such as it is, allows both sides to decide what their nuclear forces will be. Either side can pull out at any time after 90 days'notification-meaning Washington only recognizes the weakest ties to the agreement. This comes on the heels of Russia yielding and accepting the U.S. pullout from the ABM treaty. Furthermore, Russia not only gave up its opposition to the Pentagon's plans for a Missile Defense System, but is going to collaborate in it. Putin also gave up his opposition to the expansion of NATO into the former Soviet republics that border Russia. And he left the Moscow meetings without any economic concessions, such as a timetable to bring Russia into the World Trade Organization, where it could avoid trade discrimination by the imperialists. Putin also swallowed the fact that the 1974 Jackson-Vanik law directed against the USSR, which restricts normal trade with the U.S., is still on the books despite Bush's suggestions that he would get it removed a long time ago. Bush rubbed it in after the meeting in Rome. According to the New York Times of May 28, he said, "I see no reason why any future Russian leader with a state that is only roughly 55 percent of the size of the Soviet Union would find it in its interests in any way to act in an aggressive manner." Of course, Bush left out the fact that the antagonism between socialism and capitalism has been eradicated--that the power of the USSR, a much poorer country than the U.S., was largely based on its centralized planning and socialist economic foundation, and that Russia has been reduced to the status of a satellite of the capitalist West. A GIFT TO THE PENTAGON It would be illusory to think that President Bush signed the nuclear reduction agreement in Moscow out of any desire to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons or to reduce world military tensions. The fact is that the nuclear agreement, should it ever be implemented, is fully in accord with the general designs of the Bush administration's plan for military "transformation." The USSR collapsed under the pressure of world imperialism. This pressure had caused drastic distortions in socialist construction and led to internal degeneration of the Soviet leadership. Since then a section of the U.S. military planning establishment has pressed very hard for a revamping of the U.S. arsenal and strategic planning in accordance with the new world relationship of forces. Such a transformation is calculated to serve monopoly capitalism's worldwide domination over oppressed peoples everywhere who do not confront imperialism with massive conventional or nuclear forces. The significant obstacles to imperialism abroad come from smaller states struggling to maintain their national independence, such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Cuba and Vietnam. To these will undoubtedly be added states in the future that attempt to break with imperialism. Challenges also come from liberation movements, which rely on mass organization, rural and urban guerrilla warfare, small-scale conventional warfare and various forms of people's war. Some current examples are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia battling the U.S.-backed death squads of the Colombian military; the New People's Army in the Philippines fighting the U.S. puppet government in Manila; the Palestinian national movement battling Israeli occupation. As exploitation by the transnational corporations expands on a global scale along with the expansion of the Pentagon, the CIA and other counter-revolutionary forces, the growth of national resistance is inevitable--and Washington knows it. That is what is behind the so-called drive for military "transformation." The massive nuclear forces capable of destroying the USSR are not only unnecessary when waging war against popular mobilizations for national liberation and small independent states struggling to maintain their sovereignty and independence. They are also difficult to use and very costly. The Moscow agreement signed by Bush and Putin allows Washington to redeploy funds tied up in maintaining an excessive nuclear stockpile into the further high-tech modernization of its conventional forces and the development of smaller, more "usable" nuclear weapons now on the Pentagon's drawing board. Putin had nothing to say about this. The agreement leaves the Pentagon with a still massive arsenal of nuclear weapons fully capable of large-scale nuclear attack if Washington deems it necessary--for example, to threaten the People's Republic of China. It insures that the only nuclear power that has been on a par with the U.S. will bring down its own nuclear arms level, and it gives the U.S. the right to tear up the whole thing whenever it sees fit. The Moscow agreement will actually contribute to the advancement of the U.S. imperialist military machine, including the development and eventually the testing of small-scale nuclear weapons. The Moscow agreement makes no mention of the Pentagon's recent Nuclear Posture Review leaked to the capitalist press in March. The NPR, as it is known, "proposes lowering the overall number of nuclear warheads, but widens the circumstances thought to justify possible nuclear response and expands the list of countries considered potential nuclear targets." (New York Times, March 12) These include Iraq, the DPRK and Iran. Nor was there any discussion of the NPR proposals to integrate smaller nuclear weapons with conventional weapons, including cruise missiles and nuclear "bunker busters." This agreement is no more a peace move than the decision by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to cancel the $11- billion Crusader tank project. The Crusader would be the most modern tank in the world, with a killing range of 30 miles and all the modern technology available. But it weighs 70 tons and as such is not deemed suitable to the task of mobile, high-speed deployment in difficult terrain, which is essential to the post-Soviet struggle against small states and liberation movements. NATO: TOOL OF U.S. COLONIZATION It is also clear that bringing Russia into NATO was in no way a military concession by Washington. Not only does Russia have no access to the inner military circles; not only does it not have a vote; but, in addition, the U.S. has relegated NATO itself to a completely subordinate role in its plans for global rule. The basis of the NATO alliance, founded in 1949 under U.S. auspices, was the need for a military, political and economic united front in the struggle against the Soviet Union, socialism in general, and the European working class. Once the USSR collapsed and the U.S. made enormous strides in military development, the basis for concessions by the superpower to its imperialist rivals dissolved. Their relations were reduced to undiluted domination. Washington has waged its war against Afghanistan and spread its forces all over Central Asia and fanned out elsewhere without so much as asking for one word of approval from NATO. After Sept. 11 the Pentagon almost refused to accept the invocation of the mutual defense provision in the NATO charter, by which the European members of NATO sought to express their solidarity with U.S. imperialism in a time of crisis. Rumsfeld and his cohorts did not want any gesture of solidarity that might require them to consult with NATO and thereby act as a restraint on the U.S. military. They only relented and accepted the gesture after they were convinced that NATO would not interfere. The New York Times wrote on May 19 that, "Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is said to have been unimpressed with the alliance when he served as ambassador to NATO in 1973-74. Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, has joked about NATO, the myth alive!'" Thus Russia has become a member without rights in an organization that has been reduced to a peripheral servant of its U.S. master. Washington is now putting a new emphasis on NATO as an arena to strengthen the colonization of the former Soviet republics and Eastern European countries. It is planning to go right to the Russian borders with a November meeting in Prague at which time Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and possibly Albania and Macedonia will be incorporated. They will all become training grounds and markets for the U.S. military and serve as forward bases to the east. The kind of colonial subservience that has developed is illustrated by the case of Hungary. "Hungary's officers were so eager to work with the United States," wrote the Washington Post of May 28, "that they even blasted a huge crater in the tarmac of the base [a former Soviet base in Kecskemet in central Hungary--F.G.] so U.S. Army combat engineers could practice patching it with earth-moving equipment dropped from a C-141 Starlifter. " 'Look at the access they've given us,' said Army Maj. Gen. Robert W. Wagner, who jumped in with the troops and took command of the exercise. 'They blew a hole for us to fix. I can't think of anywhere else you'd be given permission to do that sort of thing.' ... " 'It's the Eastern European countries that are desperate to have a relationship with the United States,' said retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the former supreme allied commander in Europe. 'They understand how difficult it is for the [Western] Europeans to do anything. They know it is the Americans that make things happen. They trust us.'" To be sure, the Eastern European counter-revolutionary capitalist governments know that it was the U.S. ruling class, its military and CIA that overthrew socialism and allowed the bourgeoisie to come back and establish capitalist exploitation. They are rushing to become military satellites and cash in on the largesse of the U.S. military- industrial complex. This is why Washington is not so quick to drop NATO altogether. - END - Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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