For peace and disarmament and For an autonomous Europe free from Nato
The recent Caucasus war, the embittering tensions in Latin America, the progressive and permanent raising of the arm race on a global scale, are imposing to our party and to the anti-globalization movements, to focus again the discussion and the initiative on the issue of the struggle for peace and disarmament.
This is happening in a clearly visible moment of crisis of the capitalist globalization, that far to maintain its peace promises, has seen in the recent years the explosion on a global scale of ethnic, religious, fundamentalist tensions, in the framework of a generalized energetic, financial and food crisis.
The ongoing market de-regulation, the one-way liberalism, the imposing and wild process of economy financialization, together with the imposition of disastrous policies on a social and environmental level, are offering us a picture defined by an increasing alarming uncertainty and instability, from global arm race to war as ordinary instrument for relations regulation among states and at international politic level.
The claim to level toward a unique thought and a unique political and social model of globalised capitalism, through a governance made by not-democratic organism like the IMF, WTO, World Bank and G8 ( and on a military level NATO) has failed. A chaos instead a new world order. The explosion of subprimes mortgages crises and the financial crisis that have overwhelmed big US banks, is underlining how neoliberalist ideology and practice are not sustainable, with the overbearing return of state as the only remedy to bankrupts. Countries like China, India and Brazil are assuming an always more significant role in the world economy, emphasising the decline tendency of the US and European supremacy. The Georgia crisis, the Iraqi and the Afghan bog (linked to the destabilization of Pakistan) are demonstrating how the USA attempt to impose an order based on its own military supremacy is far to be realised. Vice versa, it has produced what it wanted to avoid, the return of a power policy by Russia, confirmed by the recent announce of imposing military investments and that remains out from the WTO.
The ongoing crisis is the result of a long term policy. The United States have tried to take advantage from its condition of unique global superpower after the URSS dissolution. First, through Clinton presidency, with the humanitarian war theory and the full involvement of NATO, secondly, after the 11 of September trough war against terror and unilateralism. The Iraqi war and the preventive war theory have been the characterizing elements of this administration. Washington and republican think tanks had theorized first and practice after a power policy that would guarantee to the USA e “New American century” in order to face the increasing influence of other global actors like China, India, Brazil and Latin America, European Union and Russia, and response to the decline of the economical and financial power.  
The control of the strategic areas for the energetic resources supplying is one of the fields where this challenge is going to be played. Linked to this, the intention of enlarging NATO to East,  towards countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact, together with the installation of the anti-missile shield in Poland and Czech Republic.
A result of this policy is the unprecedented arm race, with figures that are exceeding the ones of the Cold War, and a generalised nuclear race as the only way to guarantee and autonomy from not regulated powers which have become the only rules defining the international relations. Is a two weight – two measures policy carry out with arrogance, and that has lead to a progressive weakening of the United Nations, always more humiliated and put aside. All USA allies are allowed to breach the international law, all the other cannot. Is the case of Turkey, that during these days is still conducting an attack against Kurds in Iraqi territory, or to the ten-yearly Israeli occupation of Palestine. The last occasion was represented by the unilateral recognition of Kosovo.
If it is true that the neo cons have tried, clearly failing ,a quality improvement with Bush, and it is quite naïf to think that a change in the White House could modify a strategy aimed to confirm the US supremacy. Just an example, Barak Obama’s adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who theorize that USA’s goal is to control the Euro-Asiatic zone in order to guarantee United States’ hegemony. Position that has been confirmed by Joe Biden in Denver, during the democratic convention. The problem is that, for the Democrats, Bush was not wrong conducting its wars, he was wrong to choose which war needed to be conduct, which war was necessary to the US in order to affirm its supremacy.
So it is clear that the Caucasus war has to be positioned inside a very much complex framework,  and the force proof given by Russia marks the opening of a new phase.
For our Party as for the peace movements is not a matter of lining up with one superpower or another or re-proposing Cold War’s schemes, but to understand what happened and what this new situation has brought.  The fact on the ground policy, and the policy of forced modifications of borders and states are wrong. At the same time, in the specific case of the Russian-Georgian crisis it is necessary to reject the attempts of reversing all responsibilities, indicating Russia as the only guilty, making a Cold War caricature of the events that in this case was pushed forward by Western medias.  
The responsibility of the deep crisis opened on the 7 and 8 of August between Georgia and Russia, is clearly on the Georgian President shoulders, on its adventurism and its clumsy attempt to solve through an aggression, to which Russia responded, the Ossetia issue counting on the support of the United States.
Mikhail Shaakasvili, after been re-confirmed through dubious elections results, after having repress with strong hand the dissent demonstrations, after having gag the medias and the opposition, has focused its action on the anti-Russian and nationalist feelings, on the faith to the USA and to the request of becoming a NATO member. A faith that has been well paid back, if we consider that Georgia is the country, after Israel, who is nowadays receiving more aid from the United States, aids that ended mainly in the re-organization of its army. Putin’s Russia is not anymore a country in Western hands as it used to be in Boris Eltzin’s times. During these years, it has conquered, due to the control on the energetic resources, the capability to be financially and economically independent after the URSS collapse, and this autonomy allows her to aspire to play as a regional power and to give a concrete signal against the NATO and USA surroundings carried out in recent years.
The preventive attack carried out in South Ossetia by the Georgian army, together with the senseless recognition of Kosovo independence, offered to Medvenev and Putin this opportunity, after 16 years of freeze situation monitored by Ocse.
Also Putin bases its consensus on the renewed feeling of national proud. Even if the material conditions are not offering any input of improvement, in a country were the health and social systems are collapsing, the Russian population, frustrated by the lost of status and by the rubbery occurred after URSS dissolution, finds in Putin and Medvenev’s words an anchorage, an element where is possible to re-build a lost identity, and that is trustable  in order to regain the security of the past, even if the regime is assuming every time more a managerial character. But this is not the Cold War, with its ideological character, with its block clashes, of political and social systems, it is a matter of influential spheres, geopolitical borders, state reasoning.

 

The consequences for Europe
The drama of the Georgian war, a part from the civil victims, that as usual are the ones in contemporary wars to pay the highest price, is that announces a new season of arm race and power politic. Where the only one that dictate times and rules of the international law can be the military power and where the political Europe risks to become every time more not influential in front of the military superpower of the United States. To suffer and to be accomplice in some cases, first of the Iraq invasion and of the Great Middle East plan, then of the unilateral Kosovo’s independence (and the destruction of former Yugoslavia), of the installation of the Missiles in Poland, were the steps of Europe’s abdication from being an independent actor on the new global scenario, from be a negotiator force for the construction of a multipolar order. In this crises some autonomous elements have emerged, beside clear opposing positions among the “old” and the “new” Europe, with States like Germany that are aware of it will to avoide a frontal clash with Russia.
These are the signals of a division caused by the different interests of US allies, specially in the energetic field. Interests that are in contrast with a dominating Atlantic dependence. Times and modalities of the European Union enlargement to East have been built on fragile political bases, and have been the ones addressed by NATO as a pre-condition to aspire to become an EU member. The issue of the missile system shows that the new European States feel themselves first US allies, Europe is just a source of economical subsidies resources and not a strategic option. This subordinate relationship is written in capital letters in the former European Constitution, and nowadays in the Lisbon Treaty.
Instead of proposing itself as an alternative to a perverse and absurd logic like the one of arm race and the new tension’s season, proposing an international agenda for disarmament on a global scale, for the re-launch of the United Nation chart principles, the European Union, in the Lisbon Treaty, strengths its Atlantic links  and its militarization. It will be worth to notice how the actual status of common European defence will be modified toward the Atlantic alliance. The new formulation strongly links a future European defence to NATO: “The commitments and the cooperation in this field will remain coherent to the commitments undersigned in the framework of the Organization for the North Atlantic Pact, this remains for Member States the basis for its defence”.
Europe’s subordination to NATO represents for Europe a trap. We believe that only an autonomous and free from NATO Europe that works for disarmament and a multipolar order can try to recover from the disaster that the Caucasus war and its further developments have produced, establishing again the supremacy of the International Law and the UN principles instead of the one of power, the international resolution of conflicts logic instead of military power or NATO.
The opening crisis need to be solve by diplomatic, political and negotiating way. Like it has to be for the issues concerning borders and people self-determination; they need to be solved in the framework of  International Law, as the maintenance of the existing borders with exception of the agreements among the parts, avoiding any further modification through military way.
Latin America
In the world the answer to the crisis of the neoliberalist model of globalised capitalism is the one described above, while in the Latin American continent an extraordinary experience is taking place. Progressive and leftist forces are governing in a big part of the continent, bringing into life an unknown season of political and popular participation, of subordinate classes redemption. Is in that continent that the opposition to neoliberalism has seen the birth of Zapatism, Indigenous and Bolivarian movements, and the experiences of the social Fora.  A laboratory for a left exit from the crisis of neoliberalism and globalization.
What it used to be called “the US patio”, tries to build an unknown and autonomous integration path, based on the values of solidarity, social justice and equality. An integration that sees Latin American countries, after 10 years of disastrous reforms imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, building autonomous tools like Banco del Sur, Petrosur and regional alliances like Alba based on the solidarity principle. A real process of emancipation from the US covering, like confirmed by the Argentinean and Brazilian decisions of substituting the Dollar with their own coin in trade transactions.
So is not by chance if inside this framework tensions arises again, countries are hit every day by the attack of reactionary right-wing and North American empire. This is the case in Bolivia these days, where the United States are not hesitating supporting the reactionary and fascist right-wing in its intents of realizing a violent secession of the rich regions from the rest of the country. A clear support that pushed Morales to expulse the US ambassador, Goldberg, an expert in the Balcan region not by chance, and the Latin American states, first of all president Chavez, lining up in defence of Bolivia’s legitimate president and government. We express all our solidarity and support to Morales but we need as well to activate ourselves in the European Parliament, in the European Left, in the GUE/NGL, in order to avoid Europe to become an accomplice of a new Chile, and to support the Latin American people to be free to decide their own future, starting from Bolivia.

 

Rifondazione’s tasks
Inside this framework, for our party results crucial to understand how to elaborate all the new elements emerging from this picture. It is necessary to go in depth on the analysis of the ongoing processes, we need to better understand the structural trends going on during this period of capitalism transition, and promote other occasions of study and acknowledgement.

On the political level, we need to focus our initiative on the struggle for peace and disarmament. The decisions taken in the European Left congress of Prague of working for a campaign against the missile shield and against NATO enlargement to East, have a strategic value. As it has the opposition against the militarization of the European Union.
The PRC needs to commit itself, in the framework of the pacifist movement, in every struggle against the wars around the world, against NATO and against the foreign military basis. For this reason the idea of holding a Referendum in Italy on the Vicenza base and against the installation of the new radars in Sigonella need to be supported.
In Europe, we need to join the mobilizations launched and stressed in the last European Social Forum for the 60th anniversary of NATO, for its overcoming.
In Italy we need to push forward the popular initiatives’ laws that have been deposited in the parliament for a country free from nuclear, to join the struggle against the irresponsible hypothesis of returning to the civil use of atomic energy, to pursue on the request of dismantling the US basis bombs in our territories . We need as well to put in the priority agenda the of withdrawal of our troops in Afghanistan.
Rifondazione Comunista needs to re-launch the idea of an autonomous Europe, a Europe for peace and disarmament, alternative from the one defined by the Lisbon Treaty. An alternative social model in Europe, starring a reform of the economic and financial global system, based on neoliberalism and economical neo-colonialism.

 

Concerning Latin America, in the framework of the relations’ consolidation with the Sao Paolo Foro and the movements, we need to strength our active solidarity with Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba, still today victim of an unjust embargo, and with all the people under systematic attacks of the US administration. In this destabilization strategy, a particular role is played by Colombia and the Uribe government, faithful Washington ally. To pursue a political and negotiated solution for the armed and political conflict that Colombia lives since 40 years represents a contributions not only to offer a hope to get out of the nightmare of narco-capitalism and paramilitary and state violence against trade unionists, journalists and human rights activists, but a contribution to all Latin America in its path toward a regional, autonomous and independent integration  .
In this direction we need to follow up the peace campaign for Colombia launched by the Sao Paolo Foro. The PRC stresses its commitment for a political solution of the ongoing conflicts and its support of the peace processes. In particular, for the Mediterranean area, is important to take initiative in support of the Palestinian, Kurdish and Saharawi people. We stress our commitment to question the EU black list logic related to these cases, together with the Colombian one, as it is the result of an ideological imposition, obstacle for negotiations.