Can You End NATO’s Wars While Filling Its War Coffers?

Posted on June 15, 2024

IN THIS POSTING:

Can You End NATO’s Wars While Filling its War Coffers? – by Mya Shone and Alan Benjamin

Joint Initiative by Ukrainian and Russian Internationalist Activists Against War and Exploitation

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Can You End NATO’s Wars While Filling its War Coffers?

By Mya Shone and Alan Benjamin

On July 9-12, a NATO Summit will be held in Washington, D.C., to celebrate 75 years of its existence. Presidents and top officials of NATO-member countries are expected to attend and to promote NATO’s war agenda, especially in Ukraine. Weapons dealers are among the event organizers.

In response to the official Summit, a Counter Summit is being held over the weekend of July 6-7, organized and endorsed by scores of peace and liberal groups. Its two main slogans are:

We say yes to peace and no to NATO!

We favor the abolition of NATO!

Among the Counter Summit organizers are Black Alliance for Peace, Code Pink, U.S. Peace Council, and the International Committee of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

When reviewing the list of Counter Summit organizers, antiwar activists need to ask the following question: Is it possible to stop NATO’s wars and abolish NATO by casting a vote in Congress in support of $61 billion in war funds to fuel the NATO-provoked war in Ukraine? The question arises because of the co-sponsorship of DSA’s International Committee of the Counter Summit.

DSA Members of Congress vote to support war funding for Ukraine

On April 20, when the U.S. House of Representatives approved the $61 billion war appropriation for Ukraine, DSA’s two Democratic Congresswomen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Corey Bush, voted unhesitatingly in favor.

Included in the package are: $14 billion to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, in which the Pentagon purchases advanced weapons systems for the Ukrainian military directly from U.S. corporations for new weapons purchases and $8 billion in non-military “economic assistance” in forgivable loans.

The Pentagon also will receive $23 billion to replenish its stockpile already sent to Ukraine — opening the door to future military transfers — and a further $11 billion to fund U.S. military operations in the region. [The U.S. has sent Ukraine approximately $113 billion since Russian troops invaded in February 2022.]

DSA is an organization that calls itself “socialist,” while being a junior partner of a capitalist party, Biden’s Democratic Party. As early as April 17, Ocasio-Cortez had stated: “For 738 days, Ukraine has been fighting Putin — a battle that global democracy cannot lose. … It’s time for Congress to vote on aid for Ukraine.”

Corey Bush, for her part, declared on April 20: “I refuse to allow the Ukrainian people to suffer, to be handed over to Putin’s murderous regime … . I voted to support the Ukrainian people in their fight against Russia’s illegal invasion.”

In fact, what Bush and Ocasio-Cortez did was vote to support the profits of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and other Wall Street-listed weapons dealers – profits made on the backs of working people in a war between Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and capitalists in which workers on both sides have no stake!

A reply to DSA activists

Many DSA supporters argue online that DSA is not a political party and therefore votes by DSA’s members of Congress are not binding for the entire organization. This is a bit hard to swallow.

DSA functions as a political party: It holds conventions, elects leadership structures and members, supports and canvasses for Democratic Party candidates, and adopts platform planks. Ocasio-Cortez and Bush are viewed widely as spokespersons for DSA.

There was total silence among DSA’s leadership when it came to the votes by Ocasio-Cortez and Bush. No public visible rebuke. No distancing DSA from the vote for the $61 billion for Ukraine. And where there is silence, there is approval.

Regarding the DSA’s International Committee the same can be said: It’s co-director, Jana Silverman, addressed a public rally in Paris on May 5 where she received a loud applause when she reported on the vote by the two DSA’s Members of Congress against additional funding for arms to Israel.

Silverman, however, was silent when it came to Ukraine. Not a word. Here she had come to a continent – Europe – on the verge of an all-out war. In just about every European country, the war drums are beating. Macron, the president of France, has been one of the loudest proponents of sending troops, not just arms, to the bloodbath in Ukraine.

But not a word by Silverman about the Pentagon’s and NATO’s strategy to weaken Russia as a first step toward waging war against China. Not a word about the slippery slope to World War III.

Any true antiwar rally would have stressed these points.

No, you cannot end NATO’s wars, and you cannot abolish NATO, while filling its war coffers. To claim otherwise is just sheer hypocrisy!

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Mya Shone and Alan Benjamin are members of the National Organizing Committee of Socialist Organizer. They can be reached at www.socialistorganizer.org. You can also subscribe to SO’s newspaper, The Organizer, via the PayPal link on our website. Subscribe TODAY!

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Joint Initiative by Ukrainian and Russian Internationalist Activists Against War and Exploitation

We, internationalist activists from Ukraine and Russia Living Abroad Are Writing to You.

Russia and Ukrainian activists address June 2 Paris antiwar rally

Each of us has our own political positions and our own organizations. We do not claim to be in competition with any other initiatives.

We have come together to help make concrete steps forward:

– against the imperialist war of the oligarchs and capitalists,

– for a just peace in the interests of the working majority,

– in the interests of the people, not the great imperialist powers,

– for the fraternal union of the peoples of the former USSR and the world.

We affirm that the main enemy of workers is to be found in their own country.

Our aim:

– support all forms of resistance to the war in Ukraine and Russia;

– organize solidarity with the resistance of mobilized soldiers, both Ukrainian and Russian, with draft dodgers and deserters on both sides, and with the struggle of women, sisters and mothers of soldiers for their demobilization;

– demand respect for democratic and workers’ rights in Ukraine and Russia, and organize campaigns for the release of political prisoners and imprisoned antiwar activists;

– strengthen links and solidarity with workers, young people and their organizations in all countries.

We stand in solidarity with the Russian political prisoner, left-wing sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, who said:

“Fortunately, support for political prisoners is becoming a mass movement in our country. Thousands of people are writing letters to the imprisoned, collecting parcels, sending food and warm clothes to prison.

“We must support unconditionally all those who, without resorting to violence, defend their point of view and are persecuted for doing so.”

We also stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian internationalists in Kharkiv, who said:

“The glorification of war as an opportunity to strengthen the nation and purify it of all sorts of undesirable elements, which is going on in both Ukraine and the Russian Federation, was already the policy of the belligerent states during the First World War. Given that the current war differs little from that one, it may also end in the same way. To the new Tsars Vladimir*, we wish a new 1917!”

Down with war and exploitation!

Long live international solidarity!