Artículos Relacionados en war Armenia Azerbaijan former workers' states

• Let’s Organize a working-class response to the NATO-Russia conflict

  

  February 24, 2022

  Putin's government carried out a military action called "special military operation" in Ukraine, claiming a defense in the pro-Russian region of Donbass. Russia bombed military and strategic targets in Ukraine and threatens with an invasion of its troops from different flanks into a besieged Ukraine.

  Putin justifies the attack by saying that he seeks to guarantee the independence of the self-proclaimed "people's republics" of Donetsk and Lugansk, which for the last 8 years have been attacked by the Ukrainian army. In this way it is trying to destabilize the Ukrainian government, which is a NATO ally.

  The response of US imperialism and the EU is greater economic sanctions so that Putin desists from his warlike advance. On the other hand, China is trying to balance this situation of chaos.

  Faced with this scenario, revolutionaries must intervene by proposing a workers' solution to the crisis that has opened up, to intervene independently in a world situation marked by the economic crisis and accelerated by the pandemic. We must agitate among the workers as a whole that this is not our war, that it is totally contrary to the historical interests of the proletariat. The interests pursued by NATO and imperialism are those of assimilating the former workers' states as a semi-colony. On the side of Putin's government, they seek to sustain a restorationist bureaucracy at the service of a proto-bourgeoisie that is not willing, in its transition to capitalism, to be a plain semi-colony.

  The "severe economic sanctions" posed by imperialism will be paid for at the cost of greater exploitation of our class, not only in its own countries, but of the plundering of the semicolonies. That is why we must unite the workers against the governments in office and prevent, with workers' methods, the military machine from being set in motion to defend imperialist interests. In the region in conflict, we must seek unity between the Ukrainian and Russian proletariat to stop the capitalist restoration in course, expropriate the proto-bourgeoisie and complete the revolutionary tasks that were left unfinished. This, starting from recovering the most advanced lessons of the revolutionary process of October, such as the formation of federations as the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, lessons that -not by chance- both, imperialism and Putin and the Russian restorationists hate and want to erase from history.

  This conflict is taking place in the midst of a decomposition of imperialism and a process of assimilation of the former workers' states. American imperialism is trying to recover world hegemony, showing its historical weakness, while the bureaucracies in command of the former workers' states of Russia and China are trying to maintain the place conquered within the capitalist system in crisis.

  Those of us who claim to be revolutionary Marxists make an urgent call on the currents that still uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat to an International Conference to discuss a common internationalist program and actions. 

   

  COR Chile - LOI Brasil - COR Argentina

• Guerra entre Armenia y Azerbaiyán por Nagorno Karabaj

  

   

    La disputa por el territorio de Nagorno Karabaj, o Alto Karabaj, entre Azerbaiyán y los independentistas armenios que controlan la zona ha desatado un enfrentamiento bélico que se ha llevado puestas 2 treguas desde su inicio el 27 de septiembre.
    Los actuales territorios de Armenia, Azerbaiyán y Georgia, en el Cáucaso meridional, eran parte del imperio zarista y tras la revolución de Octubre fueron incorporados a la URSS. El territorio de Nagorno Karabaj mantuvo un estatus especial dentro de la federación soviética, como territorio autónomo de mayoría armenia integrado al territorio de la República Soviética de Azerbaiyán. La descomposición de la URSS llevó a que se desatara un enfrentamiento entre Armenia y Azerbaiyán a partir de 1988, y tras la caída de la misma, comenzó una sangrienta guerra que, a partir de la intervención de Rusia y el imperialismo, llegaría a un alto el fuego precario en 1994. Azerbaiyán es una potencia petrolera y de la extracción del gas, ligada a Turquía por el idioma y la historia. Armenia es un pequeño país montañoso de un poco más de 3 millones de habitantes, cuya industrialización avanzó con su integración a la URSS y luego retrocedió abruptamente con su caída, y recibe cuantiosas remesas de la llamada diáspora, unos 10 millones de armenios que viven fuera de esta república, luego de ser expulsados de Anatolia oriental por el imperio Otomano durante la 1º Guerra Mundial, a través del genocidio de más de un millón de personas.

  Las bases sociales del desorden

    Lo que caracteriza el actual período histórico es, por un lado, un tortuoso proceso de asimilación de los ex-Estados obreros al sistema capitalista y, por el otro, el avance de la descomposición imperialista que a la vez determina las dificultades para completar esa asimilación. En la coyuntura, esto se ve exacerbado por la desorientación del imperialismo yanqui, que no ha tenido ninguna política coherente en la región y está más bien sumido en su propia crisis económica y social interna y en la disputa electoral. Por su parte, la UE, que era la estructura supra estatal que supuestamente estaba destinada a organizar la asimilación de los ex Estados obreros de Europa oriental, está, en cambio, sumida en la negociación de la salida de uno de sus principales socios con el Brexit. Y ha quedado paralizada en su política para su frontera sur-oriental, por posturas divididas en cuanto a su relación con Turquía, cuya burguesía definió dejar de pelear por el ingreso al bloque europeo (lo que llevó a un intento de golpe de Estado en 2016). Esta división queda expuesta por las diversas posiciones en relación al avance turco en las prospecciones hidrocarburíferas en el Mediterráneo oriental, su política en Chipre, sus intervenciones en Libia y Siria y finalmente su posición de abierto apoyo al gobierno Azerí en la actual guerra en Alto Karabaj. Mientras el francés Macron pretende encabezar una política de mayor enfrentamiento al gobierno turco de Erdogán, con el apoyo del gobierno derechista griego, Merkel y el gobierno alemán prefieren una política de apaciguamiento. Sin embargo, es necesario decir que los obstáculos para la asimilación de los ex Estados soviéticos no están dados por una falencia en la política exterior, sino por el desgarramiento del proyecto imperialista europeo en sus bases materiales capitalistas, sobre todo a partir del estallido de la crisis de 2008. Actualmente, podemos hablar de una nueva crisis que es continuidad de aquella, pero no lineal, exacerbada por la pandemia y por las funestas consecuencias de la destrucción de conquistas obreras de las décadas anteriores, que utilizó la burguesía imperialista europea bajo la bandera de la austeridad para intentar dar una salida burguesa.
    Frente a esta descomposición imperialista y a la errática política exterior de los Estados metropolitanos, la burguesía turca intenta diseñar su propia hoja de ruta como potencia regional, lo que podría llamarse un “imperio de opereta” con bases totalmente semicoloniales, no por ello menos brutal y asesino. A su turno, el bonapartismo de la protoburguesía rusa encabezado por Putín debe enfrentarse a las contradicciones que explotan en la periferia de su dominio estatal, como es el caso de la crisis en Bielorrusia, de la semiinsurrección en Kirguistán y de la guerra a que nos referimos en esta nota. Acá, nos parece interesante tomar la hipótesis de León Trotsky en relación a la restauración capitalista, que planteaba que la dirección contrarrevolucionaria que dirigiera los procesos de restauración, en su contradicción de no poder conformarse en clase, generaría, en su relación con las leyes tendenciales de la economía mundial, un caos capitalista. En este caso, se extiende a la periferia de la ex- URSS, donde los sectores provenientes de la burocracia estatal y la pequeña burguesía de estos países pujan por el control territorial bajo el ropaje de argumentos de derecho internacional e ideologías nacionalistas para intentar establecer nuevos Estados, sin duda semicoloniales, buscando un equilibrio entre las diferentes fuerzas internacionales circundantes (tanto Armenia como Azerbaiyán pertenecen a un sinnúmero de coaliciones internacionales de posguerra) en un período de decadencia capitalista y, por lo tanto, de decadencia de la forma estatal de dominación burguesa, el Estado-nación.

  La experiencia trunca de la URSS

    Frente a la guerra actual, que ya cuenta decenas de muertos, cientos de refugiados y el bombardeo de importantes ciudades de Alto Karabaj y Azerbaiyán, algunos grupos e intelectuales proponen volver a los “valores cosmopolitas e internacionalistas” del Estado soviético como solución para conquistar la paz entre los pueblos. Las bases marxistas del programa revolucionario, que guió a los bolcheviques a tomar el poder y desarrollar la experiencia de la URSS como forma estatal de la dictadura del proletariado, niega que un programa se base en ideologías. Porque es el ser social el que determina la conciencia y no al revés. El problema de las minorías nacionales que estaban atrapadas en la entonces llamada “cárcel de los pueblos”, el imperio Zarista, fue tomado con mucha seriedad por Lenin. Estas naciones oprimidas vivían bajo condiciones de atraso en su desarrollo económico y social. El llamado de los comunistas, materializado en los Congresos de la III Internacional, era a integrarse a una Federación de Repúblicas Socialistas en una alianza revolucionaria con el proletariado ruso para superar ese atraso a través de formas socialistas de organización económica y social, comprimiendo las etapas históricas. La transición del capitalismo al socialismo bajo la dirección del proletariado a través de su dictadura, esas fueron las bases materiales que permitirían la reorganización democrática de los pueblos en el seno de la federación. Un futuro socialista plantearía nuevos problemas, pero sin dudas permitiría liquidar las luchas fratricidas sembradas por el atraso y las necesidades posteriores de territorialización de la ganancia propias del capitalismo.
    De hecho, la experiencia de la URSS permitió una convivencia entre las naciones del Cáucaso y un relativo desarrollo industrial. Sin embargo, la experiencia fue truncada por la contrarrevolución burocrática dirigida por Stalin, que estableció el dominio de esta casta sobre el proletariado y sobre las minorías nacionales de la URSS, fortaleciendo el aparato estatal en lugar de sentar las bases sociales para su extinción. El pasaje de la burocracia a las filas de la restauración capitalista abierta a principios de los noventa liberó todas las tendencias centrífugas del capital, llevando a guerras como la de los Balcanes y este proceso continuará desarrollándose por un período determinado de tiempo, cuya duración no podemos definir a priori,  al no poder encontrar una salida capitalista estable dada la descomposición imperialista. Y tampoco una salida progresiva, dada la crisis de dirección revolucionaria. Esta condicionalidad estará determinada, a su vez, no por “valores e ideales” al gusto de los nostálgicos, sino por la lucha de clases, por el choque entre las fuerzas proletarias de la revolución mundial y de la contrarrevolución burguesa. “Definir al régimen soviético como transicional o intermedio es descartar las categorías sociales acabadas como capitalismo (incluyendo al "capitalismo de Estado"), y socialismo. Pero esta definición es en sí misma insuficiente y susceptible de sugerir la idea errónea de que desde el régimen soviético actual solo es posible una transición al socialismo. En realidad, un retroceso hacia el capitalismo es totalmente posible. [...] Naturalmente, los doctrinarios no quedarán satisfechos con una definición tan hipotética. Quisieran fórmulas categóricas: sí y sí, no y no. Los fenómenos sociológicos serían mucho más simples si los fenómenos sociales tuviesen siempre contornos precisos. Pero nada es más peligroso que desechar, en nombre de la integridad lógica, los elementos de la realidad que hoy contrarían nuestros esquemas, y que mañana pueden refutarlos por completo. En nuestro análisis hemos evitado, ante todo, violentar las formaciones sociales dinámicas que no han tenido precedentes y que no tienen analogías. La tarea científica, tanto como la política, no es dar una definición acabada de un proceso inacabado, sino seguir todas sus fases, desprender sus tendencias progresivas de las reaccionarias, exponer sus relaciones recíprocas, prever posibles variantes del desarrollo ulterior, y encontrar en esta previsión un punto de apoyo para la acción.” (L. Trotsky, La Revolución Traicionada)
    Los revolucionarios nos oponemos a la guerra fratricida entre armenios y azeríes, dirigida por los sectores que pretenden la creación de pequeños Estados vasallos del imperialismo en la región. Es parte del militarismo general al que llevan las tendencias bonapartistas que recorren el mundo ante la decadencia burguesa. Peleamos por una salida obrera, a partir de un programa de expropiación de los expropiadores, la derrota de las protoburguesías que dirigen las repúblicas de la Ex Unión Soviética y por una Federación Socialista del Cáucaso. La clase obrera rusa está llamada a apoyar a los trabajadores azeríes, armenios y georgianos en esta tarea, comenzando por la paralización de las fábricas de armas y pertrechos militares y del transporte de los mismos, destinados a armar a ambos bandos para beneficio de Putín y sus acólitos. Así como llamamos a los trabajadores de Turquía, los países europeos y Estados Unidos a acciones obreras contra la intervención de sus Estados burgueses en la región, que como quedó demostrado en Kosovo, sólo sirve para aumentar las masacres y las penurias de los trabajadores y el pueblo pobre. Nuevamente, y de manera cada vez más urgente, llamamos a impulsar una Conferencia Internacional a todas las corrientes revolucionarias que defienden la necesidad histórica de la dictadura del proletariado y luchan por la reconstrucción de la IV Internacional.

   

  Publicado en www.cor-digital.org, 21/10/2020.

• For the defeat of Imperialism in the Middle East

  

  For the defeat of Imperialism in the Middle East

  Stop USA’s war machinery

   COR Argentina - January 2020

  Thursday 2nd January at dawn. Assassin drones sent by Trump under the advise of the Yankee military high command shoot on the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who dies along with several collaborators. Soleimani was in Baghdad and was executed with no previous trial, like many others under imperialist fire. But in this case, we are talking about an officer of a foreign State and within the territory of another State –in the papers independent, although it is clear that the occupation of Irak on behalf of the Yankees has never ceased.

  Trump hesitates. His policy was to withdraw the American troop out of the Middle East, including Afghanistan and Iraq. He wants to take advantage of the fact that the USA don’t depend so much on the oil of the region, thanks to the “fracking revolution” within their own territory and an eventual “recovery" of Venezuela. But the high commands of the Pentagon convince him of responding to the attack on the American Embassy in Iraq, that took place the last day of 2019. This attack had peculiarities: it was a popular demonstration against the American presence in Iraq. Trump accepts that its necessary to respond and orders the assassination of the Iranian General. It is an act of war against another State, outside any umbrella of imperialist international legality. It is a brutal demonstration of force on behalf of the imperialist Power that leads the world.

  But the killing actually shows the weakness of the US. Of course, not from the military point of view, where its supremacy is uncontestable, at least in the mid-term. It is a weakness of its position in the State system, configured as superstructure of global capitalism. It is a structural weakness, due to the deepening of imperialist decomposition, and it’s as well determined by the dangerous cracking of the postwar balance. The attack against Soleimani was not included in any action plan. The events that happened later show it. The Iraqi Parliament voted a request for the Prime Minister “in charge” (a definition itself) Adel Abdul Mahdi –that had given up the job under the pressure of the popular demonstrations in November- to start the process of American troops out of the country. The high command of American forces in Iraq answered in a letter that they would get out, but they requested that they did it in order. Then the Pentagon discredited they command “in the field”, denying any initiative of troops withdrawal. Of course, that withdrawal would ultimately configure a resounding victory for Iran and a huge defeat for the USA.

   

  Mass processes

   

  The American weakness doesn’t contradict the weakness of the Iranian government itself. Obviously, it is a semi-colony that cannot confront imperialism in an open war. But this weakness also finds its roots in the situation of national sub-bourgeoisies within the capitalist crisis, who receive the pressure of imperialist aggressions, on the one hand, and, on the other, of mass mobilizations –that in Iran took were very strong in November, in the frame of a regional process that also crosses Lebanon, Iraq and, at the same time, there are class struggle processes going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, Hong Kong, Africa, Europe, etc.

  The element of mass processes is qualitative to analyze the ongoing conflict. If we go back to the previous processes (2010-2011) that took place in the region after the economic outburst of 2008, with the downfall of many dictators that governed their countries with iron fist (Ben Ali in Tunisia, Gaddafi in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt) we may see how those processes leaded to several failed way outs –from the coup in Egypt to the Tunisian semi-democratic semi-Bonapartism. But what predominated was the decomposition of the States in their most brutal way: civil war in Syria and the upsurge of ISIS, an actual anti-State. This decomposition blocked out the paths for mass processes through cooptation by counterrevolutionary bourgeois or petty bourgeois leaderships. Once again, the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat has appeared as the crisis of humanity. The confusion of aims of the new generation of fighters in this crisis situation determines the tortuous element of the process.

  Now, the upraise of ISIS and the civil war in Syria forced imperialism to agree with old enemies in order to try to stop the threat of this monstrosity, against the very idea of nation-State, that is the form of class domination of the bourgeoisie. So, the anti-ISIS fronts and the compromises with Russia (and Iran) are born to limit this. In the middle, there are other very important events like the failed coup in Turkey and the development of autonomic experiences in Kurdistan, which we will not deal with in this article. It is important to underline that the current stationing of American troops in Iraq happened under the pretext of this war against ISIS. In 2019 imperialist forces announce the end of ISIS. But with its defeat, any of the contradictions in the region have been closed and this is proved by this current military escalation with Iran.

   

  Vietnamization

   

  A lot has been said about this term to describe Iran’s policy in the region in the last years. Superficially, it is described as an asymmetric war policy between a military weak State and the main world Power, only considering the field of tactics. Vietnamization so understood would be the use of guerrilla war or “proxy” confrontation (through others). Without denying this tactic element, Soleimani was the General in charge of a more complex challenge: to unify the different ethnic and religious factions in Iraq and, in a more general way, of the whole region with the only aim of freeing it from the “great Satan" that is America. In fact, that is the official line that Iran has made public with the declarations of Ayatollah Jamenei. So we are talking about a policy that aims to give a national liberation goal to the religious movements by building up the so called “resistance front", that includes Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and other bourgeois or petty bourgeois groupings. This policy on behalf of Soleimani, and its relative success, could be one of the most important motives for his assassination, above all, taking into account the immediate cause that lead to it was the demonstration against the American Embassy in Baghdad, that made the American administration evacuate its diplomatic staff. Now, the Iranian’s government policy does not aim national liberation of the peoples of the Middle East, but rather the strengthening of a semi State able to bargain with imperialism, using as cannon fodder the heroic resistances of Palestine and Iraq, and supporting without hesitations one of the main war criminals in the region, Al Assad, only after Trump, Obama and the Israeli  governments. The negotiations for the nuclear plan are a good example of the class character and the counterrevolutionary nature of this policy.

  The quagmire in Iraq resounds like the situation in Vietnam, that is real. As we said before, even with a Trump administration looking forward to leave the occupation behind, it can´t be done now, nor any way put can be found to withdraw without that being understood as a huge defeat for imperialism. Therefore, now it is possible that the ongoing conflict continues to escalate. Specially now, after the first Iranian response, that consisted in a bombing of two military bases in Iraq on Janury 8th, that although quite limited were still a humiliation for the US. Trumps response has limited to minimize the damage caused by these bombardments and to announce new economic sanctions; while he asks the rest of the imperialist Powers to commit to isolate Iran and abandon the nuclear agreement by imposing sanctions, and request the NATO a more active intervention in the region.

   

  Uncertain scenario

   

  A lot has been said about the American domestic front as a reason for the attack. We mean the consideration regarding the impeachment process against Trump and the presidential elections. Although this might have an influence, the strategic elements (or of weakness of this strategy) we believe are more important so as to develop a characterization of the possible new war of American imperialism. And here there exists a determining factor of the so-called domestic front, which is the inability of the imperialist State to win over a solid social base –in which the labor aristocracy must play a role- to launch a large-scale military offensive. We think that the conquest of such a social base, which was one of Trump’s aims, has not been achieved, as we can see in the development of a variety of labor conflicts in industry, services and public workers, and as it is also shown by demonstrations against an intervention in Iran that took place the first weekend of January, immediately after Soleimani’s killing, in many cities of the US. For the time being the demonstrations have not been massive, but they open the possibility of the development of a mobilization against a greater imperialist intervention.

  Another important factor are the economic consequences of the war, that could accelerate the entrance in a recession of the global economy, which has been forecasted and, up to now, is being retarded. Geopolitical instability has shaken financial and commodity markets. This instability becomes uncertainty and it is pointed put by the withdrawal of some NATO allies of their troops in Iraq, the European lack of definition in face of the events and even Israeli hesitations towards the assassination of Soleimani. If for some time we have been assessing the contradictions of Trump’s policy at implementing a turn of imperialist policy, today come up some doubts about the possibility of a failure that leads the cracking of the postwar balance to a much more chaotic world situation.

   

  Out imperialism of the Middle East

   

  Iraq has been military occupied for the last 17 years. Palestine, since 1948, by the Israeli creature that responds to the imperialist needs of control over the Middle East. Imperialist plundering of the region has been going on for a long time, but the ongoing imperialist decomposition, worsened by the global crisis, accelerates the situation of unbalance of the system of States and the decomposition of the nation-State. In face of this, mass responses have not missed. They have come out in a spontaneous way and with confusion of aims, which allowed counterrevolutionary leaderships to lead the different national processes to dead ends. But imperialism has not been able to close the crisis and, therefore, the processes open up again placing before revolutionaries the main challenge to intervene decisively in them, so as to draw lessons from the previous defeats and make them useful to develop a transitional program between the current capitalist decomposition and the socialist future of humanity. The centrality of the working class in these processes is marked by the need to dispute bourgeois and petty bourgeois leaderships the leading role against imperialism. For that, internationalist policy and leadership are needed, working for the unity of the proletariat of the region, centered in the oil workers, along with the working class of the imperialist countries, especially the USA. Therefore, it is necessary that revolutionaries fight for the American and European unions to declare the stoppage of the imperialist war machinery, by occupying factories and blocking the supply of troops established in the region and Israel. In the Latin American countries, besides developing street demonstrations and denounce the complicity of Fernández, Bolsonaro, Piñera and other sepoys, we must propose the stoppage of imperialist industries against the intervention in the Middle East. This struggle is linked to the fight against the IMF’s reforms that those governments intend to apply in our region. We must develop the organization and the struggle to force all the imperialist troops to withdraw from the Middle East and the other semicolonial countries. For the military defeat of the US in Iraq and Iran. For the destruction of Israel. For a Federation of Socialist Republics in the Middle East. For the reconstruction of the IV International.