Address to the World Parliamentary Forum

Twenty years ago humanity was under the nightmare of a nuclear holocaust. A dozen years ago, some political forces claimed that the overthrow of socialism in Europe and the disappearance of the Soviet Union would end international confrontation and bring eternal peace on earth. However, today we are facing the bitter reality of local wars that follow one another, among which the aggression against Iraq is only the latest incident. This mere fact proves the role of the Soviet Union in limiting the imperialist aggression and the contribution of the socialist system to global peace.

There is a widespread assertion that the dangerous situation of today is only the result of unilateral action on the part of the U.S. Still this argument does not take into account that previous aggressive actions, e.g. against Yugoslavia and against Afghanistan, which caused tremendous loss of human life and severe destruction of infrastructure and the environment, took place with the full support of the EU and the active participation of many of its member states, ruled both by conservative and social-democratic governments. Even in the case of Iraq, the division between the US and its allies and those EU member states that opposed the attack was not as deep as some want it to appear. As a matter of fact, they all agreed that the problem was the disarmament of Iraq; they all made clear that force could be used as a last resort to disarm Iraq; the only thing they disagreed about, as EU Commissioner Patten pointed out in his address to the European Parliament on the very first day of the aggression, was about when the point of using force had been reached. Moreover, it is more than clear that this disagreement was not out of desire to protect peace, but out of their desire to protect their particular interests in the region.

Those who advance the concept of US unilateralism also strongly criticize the US for attacking Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council. However, the UN charter provides for military action only under very concrete circumstances, such as in response to aggression; thus whatever resolution the Security Council might have adopted, would not have legitimized the war against Iraq. Those that have unlimited confidence to the UN institutions should not forget that there is a qualitative difference in the balance of forces between now and 20 years ago, and no institutional reform can change that.

It is no secret that the EU is in a process of rapid militarization, with no apparent enemy in sight; they have gone as far as adopting the US doctrine of preventive military action, on the pretext of terrorism. It is clear that they are not doing this in order to confront the US, since both the EU and the US start form the same principles and have similar goals; they are not doing this in order to support popular struggle either. They are doing it in order to enhance their role in the global scene, to demand, on behalf of European monopoly capital, a fair share of the global markets and global wealth. They want to be an equal partner to the US in their imperialist aggressive adventures, to become a second rank world “gendarme”, but still a world gendarme. The EU cannot do otherwise because it does not represent the peoples of Europe, as some political forces wants us to believe; it represents the consolidated interests of the European capital and this character cannot change unless the EU is destroyed.

Under these circumstances, the idea that a common EU defense policy would advance peace is not simply an illusion; it is a very dangerous illusion. The same with the idea of a bi-polar or multi-polar world, instead of a unipolar. The difference between now and twenty years ago is not simply the second pole, but the fact that the USSR and the socialist countries in Europe had nothing to gain from war. Hence their stabilizing action, hence their contribution to the world peace.

It is of utmost importance for our generation and our duty towards the generations to come to build a world of peace. The US cannot build a world of peace. The EU cannot build a world of peace. Imperialism cannot build a world of peace, simply because it is aggressive by nature. This is a good thing to remember, two days before the 80th anniversary of V. I. Lenin’s death, who was the first to analyze the various facets of advanced capitalism.

If people want peace, they have to fight for it. There is a huge task in front of the peace movement: to avert the next war, whatever the target might be (Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria). We have the duty to strengthen even more the peace movement, both at the national and at the international level.

The struggle for peace is more efficient when combined with the struggle against oppression, the struggle against poverty and for a better life, the struggle for democratic and civil rights, the struggle for better education and health care, the struggle for the protection of the environment, the struggle for the rights of women and minorities. After all, the obstacle is the same, the enemy is the same: capitalist exploitation and the global interests of capital. At the end, all struggles are in one way or another associated with the basic struggle, the class struggle.

Permanent peace cannot be achieved unless imperialism, the more advanced and, at the same time, the last stage of capitalism is destroyed. And it can be only destroyed by a revolutionary social change that will bring socialism to the forefront.