Russell Peace Foundation and the European Nuclear Disarmament movement (END)
in Berlin for May 9-14
The following declaration by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International and the sections present, was distributed at the Berlin conference.
1983 will be a decisive year in the struggle against the deployment of new missiles in Europe and for the develop.
ment of the anti-war movement.
Confronted with the escalation of the war drive by the United States and the other imperialist powers the mobilisation for disarmament has continued to grow. After the three million who took part in the 1982 demonstrations in Europe, United States and in Japan, this year's Easter actions were again spectacularly success-
We must do everything possible to ful.
build this mobilisation in order to defeat the criminal plans of Reagan, Thatcher and company by imposing the demand of unilateral disarmament.
Reagan can already push the button on a stock of nuclear arms with a firepower equivalent to nearly one million
Hiroshimas.
And he is still not satisfied! From 1980 to 1983 American military spending increased by 12 percent a year in real terms, going from 142 to
257 billion dollars. This mad race to the holocaust shows the true face of imperialists - which they have tried to mask by hypocritical declarations on human rights.
The true nature of imperialism is the escalation of militarisation and nuclear arms production. It is the all out mobilisation of economic resources, brains, and technology in the service of destruction. The neutron bomb alone incarnates the obscenity of decaying capitalismits complex mechanism destroys people while protecting property. What a proof that in this system property rights always finish up overriding real human rights!
The West European capitalist states fall in behind the US government in the nuclear arms race. Great Britain has decided on an expansion programme equipping its submarines with Trident missiles which are first strike weapons like the Pershing II and Cruise missiles. The French government plans a shift in its military strategy towards a larger nuclear strike force. The generals call it 'forward defence'. This strategy also involves the creation of a 50,000-strong rapid action force, almost identical in conception to the US rapid deployment force. If the Roger's Plan for Europe is implemented, this would mean a massive build up of conventional weapons in all
The real face of imperialism is the austerity programmes which are attacking the workers of the capitalist countries more and more sharply while their gorernments increase military spending. In France, a Socialist Party-Communist Party government is preparing the production of the neutron bomb and has just adopted a five-year military budget of 120 billion dollars. At the same time it attacks the sliding scale of wages, the social security system and employment The slogan "Jobs not Bombs!' which has been taken up in the big anti-nuclear mobilisations sums up the necessary link between the struggle against the arms race and the struggle against capitalist austerity policy.
Finally, the reality of imperialism is not only the threat of a nuclear apocalypse but is also, and above all, the war of aggression being waged at this moment by imperialism against the liberation struggles of oppressed peoples. Today the USA and the CIA are directly involved in armed aggression against revolutionary Nicaragua. The US government openly supports the Salvadoran and Guatemalan dictatorships. The Salvadoran regime is already responsible for 50,000 deaths in three years, i.e. the equivalent of 500,000 dead for populations the size of those in France, Germany or Great Britain...in addition to El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Grenada, which are also threatened, the Cuban revolution is in the firing line of Yankee imperialism. In the Middle East, Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister, was able to launch his invasion of Lebanon and his attempt to annihilate the Palestinian resistance because he had American material and political support.
THE REAL CAUSES OF THE ARMS RACE
The saturation media coverage given to Reagan or Thatcher's proposals and the large-scale diplomatic manoeuvres around the Geneva negotiations cannot silence the sounds of battle from these ongoing interventions and wars.
continued on page 27
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