On 4 April 1949, in Washington, the so-called Atlantic Pact, the founding treaty of NATO (acronym for North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a US-led imperialist alliance, was signed by twelve countries, including Italy. NATO on the political-military level and the Marshall Plan on the economic one were the tools that the Truman administration used, with the bipartisan support in Great Britain of both the Tories and the Labor Party in government, to impose US hegemony on Europe devastated by WW2, thus putting an end to the allied coalition against the forces of nazi Germany, fascist Italy and militarist Japan and inaugurating a new political course of rivalry against the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies of Eastern Europe, known as the “cold war “.
Officially formed to counter a non-existent threat of attack by the Soviet Union, i.e. for alleged defensive purposes, NATO in fact was immediately configured as an aggressive imperialist political-military organization, given the obligation for member countries to intervene alongside the US armed forces even in the event of a nuclear “first strike” launched unilaterally by them against the USSR. Six years later, after the Federal Republic of Germany joined NATO, the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies of Eastern Europe were obliged to form a political-military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, with defensive purposes in the event of aggression by NATO.
Actually, thanks to the deterrent capacity of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, for the entire period of their existence until 1990 NATO did not carry out military operations outside the borders of the member countries, but was rather used within them to counter a possible advance of the communist parties on the wave of the prestige that socialism, the Soviet Union and, personally, Stalin had achieved with the Great Victory over Nazi-fascism. For this purpose, using fascist and nazi cadres restored to positions of responsibility in an anti-communist function, NATO established stay-behind secret structures, trained in spying techniques, filing and terrorism, in all member countries and even in Switzerland, despite the latter’s neutrality. In Italy, NATO created “Gladius”, an undercover structure that used terrorism and fascist bomb attacks to create an atmosphere of tension in the country that justified an authoritarian shift in an anti-communist sense. In Germany, NATO and the CIA used the structures and members of the SS organization “Werwolf” and the “FHO” led by nazi general Gehlen who, in 1956, was appointed head of the BND, the intelligence service of Federal Germany, while the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) was outlawed.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, NATO has increasingly engaged in operations outside its institutional borders as the armed wing of Euro-Atlantic capitalism. The “fig leaf” of the defensive intent has fallen, revealing the brutal and aggressive face of NATO which serves the interests of capitalist monopolies with operations of intimidation, destabilization and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries and with direct military interventions, sometimes disguised by humanitarian pretexts, but always supported by relentless media campaigns based on lies and falsification of history and factual reality. The victims of the “defense of democracy” and “Western values”, who fell under the blows of NATO’s “humanitarian” bombs, currently number in the millions, from Iraq to Yugoslavia, from Afghanistan to Libya, from Syria to Sub-Saharan Africa, Somalia, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The continuous expansion of NATO towards the East and its interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine, to the point of having financed and provoked the coup d’état that brought the current fascist regime to power, are among the main causes of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
In addition to the costs in terms of human lives, we must take into account the costs caused by the destruction resulting from military interventions and those imposed on the working masses to prepare for and manage war. The resources allocated to the war, including the 100 billion euros over 5 years to be allocated to the Ukrainian fascists as proposed by the NATO Secretary General, the warmongering murderer Stoltenberg, are resources taken away from healthcare, education, culture, social services, wages and pensions, i.e. the essential needs of the proletariat and the popular strata. We reiterate once again that imperialist war is the path that the bourgeoisie takes when, faced with the incurable capitalist crisis, it has no ways other than the destruction of shares of capital to try to arrest the fall in the rate of profit but, doing so, it destroys also part of the productive forces. No advantage can derive from imperialist war for the working class and the employees, exploited in peacetime, sent to the slaughter for the interests of their exploiters in wartime
NATO is therefore an aggressive and warmongering, anti-communist and anti-popular imperialist alliance, as amply demonstrated in the 75 years of its existence. Its activity is a factor of global risk and destabilization. The presence of NATO military bases and installations in our country, in addition to taking away huge resources from satisfying the needs of the working masses and to having a heavy landscape and environmental impact, automatically transforms it into a target of possible retaliation. Furthermore, due to the decision-making mechanisms and chain of command of the NATO military structure, there is a real risk for Italy to be dragged into military adventures against the will of the majority of the people and out of the control of the parliament, in defiance to the current Constitution.
Strengthening the military structures of the EU, such as PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation) and CSDP (Common Security and Defense Policy), or creating new ones, as the European Army project that both the Democratic Party’s warmongers and the opportunist “peacemongers” like so much, does not represent an alternative to NATO, but a complement to its military structure with subsidiarity functions, which would sanction the definitive sinking of Europe into a war economy, with a consequent increase in military spending to be covered by further, unsustainable cuts of services, social security, healthcare and education: sacrifices and misery for the workers, super profits for the capitalists in the armaments sector.
We also reject as opportunistic the positions of those who, such as Rifondazione and the Party of the European Left, messianically await the “dismantling” of NATO as if the self-dissolution of imperialist organizations were possible. Instead of resting on unrealistic slogans, it is necessary to fight effectively for the unilateral exit of our country from NATO as a result of workers’ and popular struggles.
Therefore, the Communist Front reiterates once again that actively working for the defeat of our own bourgeoisie and its armed wing is the primary duty of every sincere communist and calls the working class and all employees, young people and women, to mobilize
- against NATO, its wars and its imperialist plans
- against the increase in armament spending
- against PESCO, CSDP, the European Army project and any warmongering plans of the EU
- for immediate disengagement from war missions abroad and from any military adventure
- for the closure of all NATO and US military bases and installations in Italy
- for our country’s exit from NATO, the EU and all imperialist organizations.
NATO MURDERERS!
ITALY OUT OF NATO! NATO OUT OF ITALY!
Rome, April 3, 2024
COMMUNIST FRONT (ITALY)
The Political Bureau of the Central Committee
