By Cristina Mas, journalist and militant of Internationalist Struggle, the Spanish section of the IWU-FI
NATO summit in Madrid
On 29 and 30 June the NATO summit will be held in Madrid, the aim of which is to approve what they call the new Strategic Concept 2022, with which the imperialist military alliance plans to increase all its military capabilities, be they nuclear, conventional or cybernetic. NATO, the imperialist apparatus against the peoples, is rearming for military confrontation against state or non-state actors in any region of the world.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has created the perfect context for the resurrection of NATO. The tide has turned since 2019 when French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that the block was in a “brain-dead state”. Even Finland and Sweden, traditionally advocates of military non-alignment, have called for membership, with top levels of support among their populations. The Russian imperialist attack began under the pretext of “Finlandising” Ukraine and will end with Finland in NATO. This is a masterstroke by Putin, who greases the tool of US imperialism to act as a world gendarme, as he has done in Iraq, the Balkans, Somalia, Libya and Afghanistan. From the defence of the people against all imperialist aggression, we demand the dissolution of NATO, as we call not to Putin, and all support for the resistance of the Ukrainian people.
The Madrid summit will discuss this new strategic concept, which should update what was adopted at the Lisbon summit in 2010. And it does so after a decade that began with the intervention in Libya and ended with the war in Ukraine, including the humiliating withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan, the military rise of China and cyber-attacks.
The NATO summit should also modernise nuclear arsenals, introducing artificial intelligence and new prototypes, though last year anti-militarist organisations got the UN General Assembly to approve the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which has not been signed by any country that has them and neither has the Spanish government, which proclaims itself to be the “most progressive in history”.
Now the PSOE (Workers Socialist Party of Spain) is commemorating the 40th anniversary of Spain’s entry into NATO thanks to the treachery and manoeuvring of Felipe Gonzalez with a referendum trap that it won by the skin of his teeth. If then it was the PSOE who betrayed its commitments, now it is the “new hope” of IU (United Left) and Podemos (We Can), Yolanda Diez, a militant of the PCE, who could star in her own “NATO no entry”, and take part in the summit. At the gates of the PCE (Communist Party of Spain) congress, some people are nervous.
But beyond who wants to be in the photo, the “most progressive government in history” is continuing to deepen its followership of US imperialism in security and defence matters. On 28 December last year, they quietly approved the new National Security Strategy. The document governing security policy for five years states that ‘Spain’s strategic alliance with the United States is based on a relationship of mutual trust with political, economic, cultural and military dimensions’. It adds: ‘Spain, a member of the EU and NATO, will support cooperation between the two organisations as a central axis of collective security in the face of major global challenges. On 28 December, Congress approved the General State Budget with a record increase in military spending. The Delàs Centre for Peace Studies denounced that the “most progressive government” had set a record of 22,796 million euros: 1 out of every 5 euros spent by the central administration. The 16.2 per cent increase in arms investment is spectacular. Not to mention the authorisations for Spanish arms exports to Saudi Arabia, which uses them to commit war crimes in Yemen, as revealed by the centre itself, in collaboration with Amnesty International and other NGOs. And at the event marking 40 years of NATO membership, Sanchez committed himself to more military spending before Secretary General Stoltenberg.
Nobody who supports this government should give us lessons in pacifism or anti-imperialism. And let them stop filling their mouths with proclamations about social spending. The PSOE-IU/Podemos government is subordinate, like everyone else, to the United States and NATO and squanders public resources that should be used for pensions, health and education to increase military spending.
Dissolve NATO and dismantle its bases!
