THE outgoing US president, George W Bush, has spent the entire week pledging a Nato expansion eastwards, and that states such as Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Georgia and the Ukraine would be joining this allegedly defensive alliance that is shortly to have missile radars in Poland and the Czech republic.
It is hard to find anybody who is prepared to defend Bush’s proposition that such a massive alliance is not being directed at the Russian Federation, which contains a treasure trove of natural resources.
The more that George Bush keeps repeating that ‘The Cold War is over and Russia is not our enemy’, the less people believe that such a gigantic military machine is being constructed to fight Al-Qaeda, the Taleban or even Iran.
In this case it would equal the construction of a gigantic hammer to smash a nut.
Russia has responded by stating that such expansion plans will ‘not go unanswered’.
Yesterday the NATO council decided on a relatively cautious approach and not to invite the Ukraine, Georgia and Macedonia to join the alliance, but to recruit the right wing regimes of Croatia and Albania. This was a defeat for the super aggressive Bush and US imperialism.
Moscow however said, that Nato’s promise that Georgia and the Ukraine would join one day, was in fact a ‘huge strategic mistake’.
In the anti-Bush camp were France, Germany and Greece.
Arriving for the summit, Germany’s Chancellor Merkel said that now was not the time for Membership Action Plans (MAP), the ‘gateway’ to NATO membership, to be handed to Georgia and the Ukraine.
The French prime minister Francois Fillon said that inviting Georgia and the Ukraine to join NATO was ‘not the correct response to the balance of power in Europe.’
Fillon clearly understands that the move is to do with the balance of power in Europe, ie about Russia, and is fearful that annoying the Russian bear could be very risky when it is supplying you with your gas.
Greece meanwhile refused to support having Macedonia in NATO, fearing that the creation of mini states, where once stood Yugoslavia, will see the new state of Macedonia claiming the northern Greek province of the same name as its territory, possibly with NATO support.
Greece is also wary of Albania absorbing Kosovo, and claiming parts of Macedonia and Greece that have Albanian minorities to form a Greater Albania, that will be a key American ally in the region.
The Greek government fears that NATO’s destruction of Yugoslavia will open up the way for a new series of Balkan wars.
For Russia and its ruling Stalinist bureaucracy the stalling of Bush’s drive to bring Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO gives it a little more time to make its defensive arrangements.
Among these are likely to be the extension of its support for Serbia, with the stationing of Russian missiles and troops on Serbian territory, and moving to admit Iran into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which has a membership of Russia, China and a number of gas rich central Asian states, and the guaranteeing of the territory and resources of all of its members.
However, such an alliance will not be able to prevent the drive towards an imperialist war that is being fuelled by the financial crash of capitalism.
The only remedy for this is the victory of the world socialist revolution in the major capitalist states, where the ruling classes are preparing to dump the entire burden of the crisis onto the working class and the middle class.
The general strikes in Greece show what the response of the working class will be.
No amount of demonstrations alone can halt the drive to war. There has to be the building of sections of the Fourth International, in all of the major capitalist states, to prevent a new imperialist world war by leading the struggle to overthrow capitalism to go forward to world socialism.
