Beneath its surface unity, the 70th anniversary summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in London exposed the tensions and divisions between the U.S. bosses and the European capitalists. While the U.S. rulers openly view NATO as a tool to protect and advance their imperialist interests, the European rulers historically relied on it as a line of defense against the Soviet Union (and now Russia), and to protect them in the next world war.
The interests of the capitalist rulers are not only opposed to those of the working class, but are usually secured at our expense. As the rulers grab for their maximum profits, workers suffer from racism, sexism, wage exploitation, and imperialist war. The bosses’ relentless competition and their brutal oppression of workers will continue until nations are abolished under communism.
Big & Small Fascists clash over NATO
The splits between the two wings of the U.S. ruling class were obvious at the NATO summit. Both the Big Fascists (finance capital imperialists) and the Small Fascists (bosses who make most of their money from domestic business) are complaining that the U.S. bears an unfair share of NATO’s financial burden. With U.S. President Donald Trump leading the charge, the Small Fascists have gone a step further, calling into question the usefulness of the post-World War II alliance (National Public Radio, 12/3/19). The Cato Institute, funded heavily by the Kochs, the Small Fascists’ first family, argues that Russia is no longer a threat to U.S. interests, and that NATO is therefore obsolete (Cato Institute, 12/5/19).
To try to maintain their international dominance, the Big Fascists need to keep their multinational alliances in place. The New York Times, the Big Fascist’s leading mouthpiece, calls NATO the “most successful military alliance in history” and indispensable for U.S. national security (NYT, 7/8/18). At the moment, despite Trump’s calls for retrenchment, the Big Fascists are winning this fight; the Pentagon recently committed an additional 20,000 troops to European defense (Foreign Affairs, 12/3/19).
The European ruling classes have their own splits, making them less reliable as U.S. allies. A three-year conflict over Brexit has paralyzed the British ruling class. The divisions in Germany’s ruling coalition are growing more open and intense. France is facing massive strikes over pension cuts. Italy is in chaos, and its most popular party is the fascist League. In March, it became the first major European nation to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Other European powers may soon be moving in the same direction.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the U.S. retreat from Syria has left a political vacuum that Russia is looking to fill. Turkey used the partial withdrawal to attack its Kurdish rivals, provoking alarm among NATO members. France’s Emmanuel Macron has criticized Trump’s lack of leadership and is trying to rein Turkey in (NYT, 12/2/19). In response, Trump cut short his stay in London. Germany is doing its best to keep the peace within NATO, which Europe needs to counteract Russia and potentially China (NYT, 12/2/19).
Whatever their differences, all imperialist bosses continue to attack the working class by diverting resources into war preparations and away from healthcare, food, and education. Leaked documents show that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has pledged to Trump to increase NATO spending while privatizing sections of Britain’s National Health Service, which has already faced severe budget cuts under Conservative Party governments (Independent, 12/13/19). In Greece, the second-highest contributing member in percentage of gross domestic product (NATO, 6/25/19), workers suffered austerity measures that cut government services across the board. Though NATO claims nuclear disarmament to be one of its goals, three members—the U.S., Britain, and France—have amassed nuclear weapons, and five others, including Turkey, “share” U.S. bombs (Stratfor, 6/27/19). Workers will pay the price of any nuclear war, just as they did in the genocidal U.S. atomic strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
As the bosses intensify their attacks against our class, workers around the world are taking to the streets in protest. In Britain, there were massive demonstrations against Trump, NATO, and healthcare cuts. In 2017 and 2018, thousands in Brussels confronted NATO with demands to lower military spending (AP News, 7/7/18). These fightbacks are crucial. First, they give workers more confidence by showing them they are not alone. Second, they create opportunities to spread communist ideas.
At the same time, we shouldn’t overestimate the revolutionary content of this resistance. All of the European fightbacks are being misled by one section of the ruling class or another. All of them could set the stage for full-blown fascism. Workers’ anger is not enough. Without communist organizing, our class will be defenseless against the coming fascist crackdown and inter-imperialist war. The international working class must smash the capitalist system and turn World War III into a revolution for communism.
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In 1949, four years after the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States, Canada, and ten countries in Western Europe as a political and military alliance to block expansion by the Soviet Union. Electoral victories by communist parties in Italy and Czechoslovakia, along with Soviet control of East Germany, intensified the U.S. rulers’ fears that they could lose the Cold War and their place as the world’s leading imperialist superpower.
Although the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the U.S.-dominated NATO still aims to counter any threats to the now-29-member alliance, primarily from Russia and China. NATO currently has troops in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Iraq, Somalia, the Mediterranean Sea, and air space over Montenegro, Albania, Slovenia, and the Baltic region (NATO, 4/25/19). While NATO claims to defend “democratic values,” it has demonstrated over and again that it is nothing more than a tool of U.S. and Western imperialism.