Article by Albano Nunes, member of the Secretariat of the CC
Among others, the recent international situation has been marked by two events: the announcement of the USA’s commitment of more than 30 000 soldiers to Afghanistan and the coming into force of the European Union Lisbon Treaty. These are emblematic events of the current times one is living and the dangerous paths, for which the capital is dragging the world, in its insatiable run for the maximum profit. Behind the mediatic costly staging expenditures and the cynical intemperate statements on "human rights", "security"," peace", "humanitarian help", what moves forward is militarism, the military aggressive alliances’ reinforcement, a complex directorate establishment of the great powers, with the USA’s hegemony, which do not respect either law nor boarders, on what concerns workers’ exploitation, peoples’ oppression and their resources’ pillage.
Obviously, such a path is confronted with growing difficulties, before the workers ’and people great resistance, as in Afghanistan, the development of processes and alliances of anti-imperialist and progressist nature, as in Latin America, capitalism crisis itself, which deep recession’s ending, nobody can tell. But capitalism’s nature is what it is, and both the communist movement and the anti-imperialist front, not having recuperated from socialism’s defeats, nobody can expect it might give up its aggressive aims.
The Afghanistan war is the proof of the international situation development dangerous tendencies. Even within the USA, where the war opposition hastily grows, more and more consider the non-possibility of a military victory, and the Vietnam‘s humiliating disaster, is a phantom lying over the White House and the Pentagon. However, considering the great geostrategic importance of Afghanistan in Central Asia (including the boarder with China, Russia, Iran and the Proximity with India), the North-American Administration, assumes, shamelessly, the gigantic Hamid Karzai scam, and hurls, unto a military escalade, to which it tries to drag its "allies", while looking , desperately for agreements, including the "Taliban" themselves, in order to allow a graceful way out, from the bogged down situation the USA has been falling into.
It is a complex and dangerous game to which, Socrates, by anticipation, has given out his servile agreement, announcing the commitment of a new Portuguese military contingent, at the end of January. To which NATO promptly gave its blessing, on deciding to join the North-American commitment, about 7000 soldiers, from several countries, despite the German and other great powers’ lack of enthusiasm, which have their own ambitions and contend towards the USA, the greatest possible part of the imperialist stake.
It is necessary to demask the current militarist escalade and its concrete expression in Afghanistan, close to the workers and the people. What Obama will say when he soon will be formerly enthroned as the Peace Nobel Prize will probably be another hypocrisy monument. Because facts are stubborn and what they show is the non-stop growth of militarism and the USA, which already has scattered, throughout the world, hundreds of military, terrestrial and aero naval bases, carries on nourishing an unprecedented gigantic war machine, in "times of peace". The struggle for disarmament, against Portugal’s involvement within the bellicose spiral and the return of the Portuguese troops from Afghanistan, is a patriotic and internationalist task of major importance. One must struggle so that Portugal’s name, where the taking place of an important NATO summit is announced, towards the end of next year, does not become attached to imperialism’s aggressive policy new leap, as, unfortunately happened during the "Iraq war summit" in the Azores and the new neoliberal, federalist and militarist European Union Treaty.
