By Darrell Rankin
A comment for Hiroshima Day

“I think that a new, repugnant form of fascism is emerging with notable strength, at this time in human history when more than seven billion inhabitants are struggling for their survival.”
– Fidel Castro, August 5, 2014 in Granma

The encroachment of the NATO military alliance towards Russia since the setbacks to socialism 23 years ago has reached a new milestone with the West’s take-over of Ukraine. The West – which often calls itself the ‘international community’ – is imposing harsh sanctions on Russia.

NATO is sending troops, ships and warplanes to Eastern Europe. Canadian and other NATO planes will soon be patrolling the edge of Russian airspace, directly confronting Russia and its nuclear arsenal.

As a result, the threat of a nuclear war is looming more dangerously. Such a war could be triggered accidentally or because of the lowered thresholds allowing the use of these weapons in the military doctrines of both NATO and Russia. NATO military doctrine, for example, allows for a nuclear “first strike.”

On August 1, Russia’s Foreign Ministry charged that “Washington is systematically carrying out a plan to dismantle the global strategic stability system,” referring to the U.S.’s continued development of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems, including space-based weapons.

“Americans started this process in 2001 by unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty. Now it is aggravated by… elaboration of a provocative strategy of Prompt Global Strike and an excessive build-up of conventional weapons…”

Another reality of modern imperialism is the influence of ‘neo-con’ war theorists in imperialism’s capitols. Divorced from reality and truth, these neo-cons are responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are behind the push for war with Syria and Russia.

The most reactionary and bellicose class forces of imperialism – finance capital, the military-industrial complex and the biggest oil monopolies – are the real power behind the neo-cons. These are powerful forces in modern capitalism.

The shift towards militarism and reaction in imperialism’s politics is not a question of personalities or subgroups within classes. Understanding it requires knowing the class forces involved in shaping history today.

We see non-imperialist countries like Russia and China defending their sovereignty. The world’s largest-ever protest and strike took place last year (Eqypt – 28 million; India – 100 million). In 2011, protests shook the entire Arab world. People in South America are leaning more towards socialism.

The common thread in all these struggles is the grassroots resistance of working people. The international working class is waking up to international imperialism’s dangerous effort to maintain world domination.

The response of imperialism to all this is war and reaction, combined with arrogance and deception. Neocon politics are the corrupted and dangerous logic of a system in crisis, of imperialism justifying by violent means the status quo of privilege and exploitation.

It is a common saying that war is the continuation of foreign policy by violent means, and that is the role of neocons today.

Traditional Western (nonMarxist) game theory required both ‘sides’ to be rational. Nuclear weapons would be used only if one side was going to lose a ‘conventional’ conflict.

The old ‘balance of terror’ created by game theory to cover up imperialism’s role in the Cold War simply no longer exists because neocons base their policies on unrealistic and arrogant views.

The ‘terror balance,’ if it ever existed, has been replaced by a high degree of uncertainty about what will trigger a nuclear war.

The rare voices of reason and disarmament in imperialism’s parliaments are rarer still. Modern militarist culture justifies crimes and re-writes history, even the Vietnam War. It promotes a thoroughly false aura of invulnerability and superiority, a fairy tale world of superb military leadership and soldiers who can duck bullets and defeat fat generals with ineffective armies.

People who live in imperialist countries today are not being told the truth about the horrors and hardships of a truly global war. The whole purpose of imperialism’s war culture and propaganda is to ‘educate’ people with the arrogance and strategic fantasies of imperialism’s leaders.

At what cost? Modern civilization – both capitalist and socialist – could easily and instantaneously perish in a full-scale nuclear war, along with most life on earth.

For socialists, the source of the war danger is the capitalist system. Our view is that humanity is moving from capitalism to socialism because our present social system is in a large, general crisis of its own making. Such is nature of our historical epoch.

Capitalism has no hope or ability to resolve its many problems such as poverty, environmental destruction, unemployment and a host of ‘democratic deficits.’ Growing militarism and reaction are imperialism’s main responses.

Russia is a country not completely under the sway of Western imperialism. Moreover, Russia has enormous energy resources. One of the aims of U.S. and Canada is to ‘cut off’ Europe from Russia’s resources.

Historically, we experienced something like this before during the world wars of the last century. War in Europe has always benefited capitalism in North America.

If war breaks out, North America would gain a great deal because Europe will lose access to Russia’s resources. Russia, also weakened, would become more of a target for U.S. and Canadian corporate take-over.

What we see in Ukraine is imperialism trying to spark a war or a very serious confrontation with Russia. This is far more dangerous than the war imperialism wanted with Syria last fall, a war the West tried to start by falsely blaming the Syrian government for using chemical weapons.

Denied a war in Syria because of Russian diplomacy, imperialism is lashing out at the main reason no war took place. Western imperialism carefully prepared for war and the coup in Ukraine.

We see Western imperialism using fascist forces to carry out a coup d’etat in Ukraine and to launch a genocidal war against Russian-speakers in the country’s Eastern provinces. There is strong information that the downing of the Malaysian airliner was another false flag operation.

The West’s furious attempts to deepen the conflict against Russia testify to the overall aim: to tilt world politics towards war and reaction, if not fascism itself. The danger of nuclear war is on the rise.

On this Hiroshima Day, we need a peace movement who mobilizes people against imperialist militarism, who educates people about the danger of imperialist militarism, who understands the threat posed by NATO and its relationship with the fascists in Kiev. War will create a worse situation for all who want to create a better society, and if history is a guide, in the first place socialists.