SENZA CENSURA n.10
Italy, february 2003

EDITORIAL

"In the capitalistic regime the United States of Europe are equivalent to an agreement to share out colonies" (N. Lenin)

Since the last autumn we are seeing an enduring and massive media campaign with the aim to direct people towards the always "imminent" attack to Iraq, for the interest of different factions of the imperialist and multinational middle class. Long times for this advertising campaign, which is preparatory for the third applicatory intervention of the "new strategic concept" worked out by NATO in Washington in April 1999, have allowed the main interpreters of the multi-centred equilibrium born after the fall of the "socialist block", to involve people in supporting their own interest; they have used as cover the respect of the international law (represented by the UNO) and the respect of the aspirations of a "spontaneous" pacifist movement, with an increasing popular participation. And inside the "no-global movement" they have referred to the international movement against the war in Vietnam as previous historical experience, similar for dimension and contents to the present movement against the attack to Iraq.
On the contrary, dimension and contents of these historical movements are different because of the context into which they developed.
The international movement against the war in Vietnam took place during a decolonization process began at the end of the 2nd world war, and as a more or less direct consequence of the missed revolutionary outlet of the 2nd great imperialist war of the last period of the capitalistic way of production. For this reason, the movement had an anti-imperialist feature.
Instead, the pacifist movement which is developing during these months is living (as we are trying to show since years) into an historical period quite different , in which people even in its main subjective expressions, is not able to express an autonomous direction. This is clear even in many passwords which reveal a deep ideological influence by imperialist middle class towards different parts of the movement itself (for example the longing for the being formed "social Europe").
The main aspect this movement is facing, beyond its aspirations, is the process of new definition and alignment of imperialist hierarchies, as since time we are saying to be the most important moment of reflection and action towards a reassembling of proletariat as subject, and to recover its political autonomy, given the temporary prevalence of social democratic and neo-reformist theories and organizations into the "global" and metropolitan class.
So, we are trying again to show and explain, with our capacity, which are the main features of the present historical movement, and what risk is hidden behind its wrong concept for the perspective of class liberation.
So, the "New Strategic Concept" worked out in the summit of Washington in 1999 and which has brought to the famous amendment to the NATO's art. n°5, on the unilateral initiative of the driving imperialist country (the USA) raised two important problems which could not be solved through negotiations, but they can be solved only "on the field". Dropped the "defensive" feature of the Alliance, the first problem was the definition of the intervention area of the euro-Atlantic war apparatus. In real terms, this problem has been faced and partially solved with many and cruel Peace-Keeping intervention (Kosovo, Timor, Afghanistan) and with a logistic "infiltration" inside new areas of influence. In this way, it has been shown clearly the will of the driving imperialist country to give the Alliance a "global" feature, that is to use the Alliance as a good instrument to establish again its own "global" supremacy.
The European diplomacy (in particular the French one), beyond the recent clash on mass-media about the war to Iraq which can represent an element into the adjustment among imperialist powers, in real terms has accepted this global perspective of the NATO during the following meeting in Prague.
But the problem to define the political-military projection area of the euro-Atlantic Alliance hides the most important problem raised by the "New Strategic Concept", regarding variable alliances into the alliance itself, and the concrete constitution of the ESDI (the Identity of European Defence). In this way problems are regarding "who decide to make war against whom" and what is the influence and political-military autonomy of the rising European imperialist pole. In this circle we have to put recent clashes about the intervention against Iraq.
The call of the European diplomacy to the primacy belonging to the UNO' s Security Council to decide about NATO's interventions into a global ambit, represents the will of the European imperialism to become a regional power , with autonomy to decide and an autonomous capacity of political-military projection into its own area . Thanks to the war made by the NATO in Kosovo, the driving imperialist country has confirmed its own autonomy to decide into the ambit of the Euro-Atlantic Alliance, while with the war to Iraq the rising European imperialist pole tries to formulate its own common foreign policy, and its own "Monroe Doctrine". To do this, it looks for allies everywhere: in the USA, in new rising powers, in its own classes and oppressed peoples.
Dazzled by a saint call to peace, by the imperialist propaganda and by old and new reformists, the metropolitan class is risking to lavish an "heroic pacifist activism" under someone else's flag: now for "peace" like yesterday for the "right war against the Serbian monster".
In this dramatic moment it's useful to remember that militarism and wars, inside a process of concentration and centralization of capitals peculiar to the monopolist and imperialist period of capitalism, are like the rain produced by the cloud of the capitalistic way of production; and we have also to remember that today the NATO military intervention in Iraq could have immediately a relative economic weight; so, in the effort to set up again the political autonomy of the class in the metropolis and in the world, it should be more useful to contrast the spin-off of this historical development inside the "internal front" and in terms of a greater worsening of formal and material conditions for more and more wide class sectors.
Even with this issue of Senza Censura we are trying to do this, aware that in a capitalistic reality "inter-imperialist or ultra-imperialist alliances are only a pause among wars, anyhow they are, whether they are an imperialist coalition against another or they are a general league among all imperialist powers. Peace alliances prepare wars and they originate from these; they determine each other and they produce, on the same field, imperialist links and relationships into world economy and policy, the succession of the pacific and not pacific struggle" (N. Lenin).