SENZA CENSURA n.9
Italy, october 2002

EDITORIAL

"The United States can do only a few lasting things in the world without the co-operation of their allies and friends in Canada and Europe. Europe is also the seat of two among the strongest international institutions in the world: the NATO that, since the beginning, is the heart of the transatlantic and European security and the European Union (EU), our partner in the opening up to the world trade"
(G.W. Bush, The strategy of domestic security in the US, September 2002)

Also with this issue of "Senza Censura", we're able to restart an almost regular publication. In spite of the difficulties of the editorial work, that confirms the efficacy of our efforts to keep open a field of political debate as a landmark in the process of autonomy of the working class.
After all, we can say that the level of discussion developed by "Senza Censura" last years - insisting over the necessity of finding a few trends in the analysis and political action adequate to the historical process of a re-alignment of hierarchies in the system of the imperialist States - has been confirmed by the latest events. But it's only a poor consolation, when considering the tragic crudeness of this development and the absence of analysis, organisation and political action inside the class today.
Therefore, it's worth reasserting, once more, a few basic points whose possible development we'll try to analyse, at our best, in the present issue of "Senza Censura".
Recently, after the abandon of the "little war" in Afghanistan (considered as happily ended by the imperialist propaganda in spite of the improbable parliamentary "itches" to send Italian troops without the smallest "noble trace" of peace-keeping), bourgeois mass media are trying to plug a "novelty" in order to get stronger mass consensus for the next war in the Middle East, under the ideological "covering" of the "world war against terrorism": the so-called Bush doctrine.
The attention was especially focused on the inter-imperialistic contradiction US-EU, as to the management of this "new" global political crisis, and on the statement made by the leading country among the imperialist States of the "new" concept of preventive war.
These false statements have the only aim of gaining mass consensus for the political and military action of the imperialist bourgeoisie and its governments and creating confusion in the areas that are trying to give substance and strength to an independent political action of their historical antagonist: the international proletariat.
As to the first point - as we've been repeating for years - the vital US interest of strengthening, after the end of the so-called bipolar world, strategical alliances for the preservation of the global domination of the imperialist bourgeoisie aims, in spite of the apparent contrasts, at setting off the transatlantic relationships not at putting them in crisis.

On the one hand, that implies the strengthening of its financial global control (through the introduction of the EURO), on the other militarism takes shape as the central aspect of its political domination on the working class and the oppressed people.
Moreover, in this context it should be underlined that the US administration has definitively abandoned Truman doctrine, which was at the basis of foreign politics of the US and its political allies during the "cold war" and that, with reference to the theory of the control of the "socialist block" and deterrence, took shape in the politics of the "arms race".
Today, clearly admitting its strategical inadequacy to the role of "unipolar command" of the imperialist bourgeoisie, the US administration, taking its responsibility as the leading country, takes again and decisively the initiative for the stabilisation of a new equilibrium in the system of the imperialist States, looking for a strategic consensus and the direct involvement of "friend" powers. In this perspective the partner in the opening up to the world trade (European Union) and the NATO, as the main clearing house of the strategical interests of the different fractions of the imperialist bourgeoisie, play a crucial role.

The same process of widening the European Union, decided while the works of the European convention are on, was preventively managed with the various treaties of adherence of the candidate countries to the NATO. That's why, also in the present issue of "Senza Censura", we've tried to analyse once again the development of the process of NATO strengthening in the various areas and the political initiatives of the imperialist bourgeoisie in this context (such as the summit in Prague).
As to the second point, it's known that the war against international terrorism is a strategy of preventive counter-revolution that was worked out by the National Security Council of the US government in the Sixties and generalised to the allied States in the Seventies, as a model of the counterrevolutionary intervention inside and outside those countries.
This strategy took shape in the management of war operations in low-intensity conflicts with overwhelming forces, based on the localisation of the conflicts and the great technological supremacy of the Unites States.
Since the Eighties this strategy, in order to calm down the defenders of internal and international legality, had ratified at the level of the international relationships and "right" the legitimacy of war actions of preventive defence in favour of the imperialist powers. The same right, for instance, was applied against the Lebanese and Libyan proletarians who were bombed by the US in that period.
Therefore, what should be underlined in the strategic lines worked out by the recent "strategy of domestic security of the US" is that, beyond the statement of the right to start preventive wars against "thousands of terrorists, who act in free groups in Northern America, Middle-East, Asia and Africa"(G.W. Bush, The strategy of the domestic security of the US, September 2002), there's a crisis of the operative system of war in low-intensity conflicts, as it was shown already in the war against Iraq and later in Somalia and Yugoslavia. They're trying to overcome this crisis.
Launching a war against "international terrorism" and with the new formulation of the article 5 of the NATO Treaty, the US want to rally the international institutions and the governments of the imperialist bourgeoisie to support and face together the next wars against the "rascal States". These wars differ a lot from those carried out in the Eighties of the XX century.
On the other hand, as it was already underlined, all the problems that the US Administration has tried to face by giving centrality to the "domestic interest" took shape every time in bigger problems at the supranational level.
Within capitalism, it's the unequal development to create crises and, in the different periods of accumulation, reproduce them in a wider form. That's why it's necessary continuously "revolutionising" the mode of production and the systems of political and military domination at the global level.
In the control and management of the manpower and the structure of the bodies and operations of preventive counter-revolution, these problems give rise to clear consequences in the imperialist metropolis.
The so-called flexibility of the manpower and the reduction of civil and social guarantees, which were the "pride" of "democracy" in the Western world, are more and more in the agenda of imperialist governments.
Also in this field, "Senza Censura" has tried to contribute to the process of a new autonomy of the working class. Finally, we don't forget that it's returning a phenomenon that the bourgeois propaganda, describing the introduction of the Euro and the stability guarantied by the parameters of Maastricht, had considered as averted in the middle period: stagflation.