Neil Clark: WORLD WAR ONE- AND HOW WE CAN END TODAY'S WORLD WAR THREE
Activities - The Great War and the Beginning of a New World |
Neil Clark
The centenary of the outbreak of hostilities in World War One, was commemorated by special events in Belgium attended by among others the British Prime Minister David Cameron and members of the British Royal family. At a service at Westminster Abbey members of the UKs political elite sat solemn faced as first hand testimony of war experiences and moving war poetry was read out by distinguished actors.
The talk was all of the horrors and tragedy of war- of hope shining through and how the anniversary of the Great War could help bring people together.
The 'Great War' was supposed to be 'the war to end all wars'. Yet at the same time these services to mark its centenary were going on, war was raging in many areas of the world.
In Gaza, over 1,500 people had been killed by the Israeli offensive (the number later passed 2,000). In Iraq, the violent jihadists of IS were murdering their opponents. A similar story in Syria- where according to the latest UN figures, around 191,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict since 2011.
And here in Europe, thousands have been killed or injured in the conflict in Ukraine, which was provoked by western powers who financed and supported a coup against a democratically elected government.
As the journalist Christopher Booker put it, writing in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper:
‘ How odd it has been to read all those accounts of Europe sleepwalking into war in the summer of 1914, and how such madness must never happen again, against the background of the most misrepresented major story of 2014 – the gathering crisis between Russia and the West over Ukraine’
In the end of his great novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), set in the period before the outbreak of World War One, Thomas Mann expresses a hope: 'Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount'.
Thomas Mann died in 1955, but if he were to return to earth today, he would, I am sure be greatly saddened by the way war -and the threat of war- still plagues so many lives. The position I would argue, is actually worse than it was in 1914. It is fashionable to scoff at the leaders and the generals of 1914-18 and say 'well it wouldn't happen today' because today we are much more 'enlightened' but the actions and policies of today's warmongers, are I believe, even more reprehensible than the policies of those who led their countries into the Great War 100 years ago. Western imperalism is more brutal (and its brutality much more cunningly concealed) than it was 100 years ago.
For all the horrors of WW1, there was actually more honour in the governing elites of the time in the west than there is today. Warfare, though terrible, as all warfare is, was more honest too in the sense that war was openly declared between countries.
Also, the families of the ruling establishments of the time, and members of those elites, did put their lives at risk on the front line too, unlike today.
World War One began with an attack on Serbia, and today’s undeclared World War Three began with an attack on Serbia/FR Yugoslavia, in 1999.
We cannot underplay the importance of what happened here in Serbia in 1999. Fifteen years ago, the US and its NATO allies launched a war of aggression against a sovereign state, the FR Yugoslavia which threatened no other. This attack took place without any UN Security Council approval and was even in contradiction of NATO’s own founding constitution- which said that NATO was a defensive and not an offensive military organisation.
In 1999, the Rubicon was crossed. Those of us who warned of its significance at the time and what dangerous ground we were entering have been proved right by subsequent events. The bombing of Yugoslavia ushered in a new period of international lawlessness- a period we are still living in today.
The imperial strategy of the United States and its closest allies- including the EU(and its very important to understand that the US and EU are working together in this as we have seen from recent events in Ukraine)- has been to target any independent, strategically important country. The first step in the ‘war’ against these countries is economic warfare- the imposition of sanctions. A wide number of reasons, or should we say excuses, are given for the sanctions- but the real reason, namely that the country concerned is independent from Washington and the EU and must be ‘punished’ for its independence, is of course never openly stated. There is the generous funding of ‘opposition’ groups and NGOs to try and topple the government- we saw that here in Belgrade in the late 1990s and in 2000, and also recently in Ukraine. The US spent around $5bn on ‘regime change in the Ukraine, while the EU has spent around 496m Euros on setting up 200 ‘ front’ organizations in Ukraine. 496m Euros of taxpayers money. As a citizen of a EU country I find it scandalous that our money- the money of the people, is being spent to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations and to cause chaos and upheavals in those countries
Where deemed necessary, there is also the backing of terrorist proxies- who are of course labeled ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘rebels’ to attack government forces and to help start a civil war- with the hostilities then being used as a pretext for a ‘humanitarian intervention’ as happened here in Yugoslavia in 1999. Everything is done to destabilize the ‘target country’. There is a relentless propaganda war waged- with the leader of the targeted country routinely demonized as the ‘New Hitler’ and called a ‘monster’.
Let me here add a personal anecdote. When I came to Yugoslavia in the summer of 1998 I spent a day at the horse races at the Hippodrome in Belgrade. My Serbian friends pointed out to me a man who was in a box in the balcony, drinking champagne, smoking a big cigar and surrounded by some beautiful Serbian women. He looked to be having a great time. ‘Do you know who that man is?, my friend asked me. ‘It’s Zoran Djindic, the opposition leader to President Milosevic and probably his biggest critic’.
Well, here I was in the capital of a country that had been portrayed in the west as Europe’s equivalent of Nazi Germany, a country run by a brutal dictator- and here was the opposition leader having the time of his life, smoking cigars, drinking champagne and being surrounded by beautiful women at the races! In Nazi Germany there were no opposition leaders, and if there were, I doubt if they’d be able to enjoy themselves like Djindic was!
I realised how much of what we had been told about Yugoslavia in the 1990s had been a lie. Yugoslavia was no ‘dictatorship’ but a democracy in which numerous political parties and their leaders freely operated. But the problem for the west was that it was TOO democratic- that people voted for parties that the west didn’t like. So we had to have war and ‘regime change’.
The hypocrisy here is off the scale because if we look at it objectively, the real heirs of Adolf Hitler in the international sphere are the leaders of the countries who are doing the threatening and the truly monstrous thing is the non-stop warmongering. A full-scale military attack or invasion of the country concerned is the last step to bring the country into line- but it’s important to understand that the other methods described above, are forms of warfare too and need to be condemned.
The list of independent countries across the world that have been targeted by the serial aggressors is long and growing. Among them- and this list is far from exhaustive- are/were Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Belarus, Sudan, Libya, Syria, and now Russia itself, subject to the economic warfare of sanctions- and of course the demonization of its leader. It’s crucially important to understand that the attacks on these countries were all connected- they are all part of the same ongoing, undeclared war. Again, there is much less honesty than in 1914- today’s western elites pose as peacemakers and ‘humanitarians’- while waging endless war.
Make no mistake, today’s US-led imperialism is undoubtedly the biggest threat to peace on the planet.
Millions have died, millions more have been displaced and whole regions have been plunged into chaos because of the aggressive, interventionist policies of the US and its allies. We’re hearing a lot at the moment about IS and we must remember that the rise of Islamic jihadism is directly linked to these policies of the US and its allies- the US has sided with radical Islamic jihadists and extremists across the Middle East to help them topple secular, independently minded governments, such as the one in Syria.
The imperialists of 2014 seek to extend their hegemony by picking off independent countries one by one. The goal is sometimes not merely ‘regime change’ but in some cases an even more pernicious one: namely to destroy or ‘Balkanize’ the country- so that it can never again be a regional or global player. This is the fate which befell not only Yugoslavia, but Iraq and Libya.
It is important to understand that this war which is being waged today is a war on democracy- on genuine democracy. It’s about destroying alternative systems, alternative ideas.
How can we derail the western war juggernaut? How can we stop this undeclared World War Three against Independent countries?
New political alliances, both within countries and between countries are crucial.
An anti-war alliance is growing, bringing together the genuine antiwar antimilitarist and anti-imperialist left and sovereigntists of the genuine conservative right- and we see this growing alliance in evidence at our conference. The divide in international affairs today is not between Democrats or Republicans, or Labour and Conservative, but between those who believe it is right for the US, the EU and their allies to ride roughshod over sovereignty of others- to ignore international law and bomb or attack any countries they wish- and those who believe that international law and national sovereignty should be respected- and that every country of the world, whether big or small should be free to follow its own path- to adopt its own economic or political system. Whether we are socialists, communists, paleo-conservatives, or moderate nationalists, let us agree that we stand together against war, and support the right of all countries in the world to follow their own path, without bullying and interference from outside forces.
We must oppose all breaches of international law- whoever commits them. We also need- and this is very important- new defensive alliances formed between countries which are currently targeted to deter military aggression. There is also an urgent need for a more effective United Nations.
The end of World War One saw the setting up of the League of Nations. But that body proved totally ineffectual in dealing with the aggression of the Nazi/fascist powers in the 1930s.
Alas, today the UN has also proved ineffectual in deterring today’s serial aggressors.
The basic problem is that there are certain countries who think they are above the law- above the UN. Certain countries want us to forget the words of Robert Jackson, prosecutor at the post WW2 Nuremberg war crimes trial that to launch a war of aggression was "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole"
This undeclared World War Three- which started with the assault on Yugoslavia- must be exposed and by exposing it we can help bring it to an end.
We urgently need to return to a world where all countries are equal under the law- and where no country is allowed to threaten war against another.
That surely would be the best – and most appropriate way of all of marking the centenary of ‘the war to end all wars’.
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Overstatement from Davos 2017. |
Liberal corporative capitalism, for reasons of lowering traveling costs, proposed not to travel to history alone but packed togather with NATO, EU and unipollar World Order. Workers participation has good chances to step in provisionally, buying time for full scale workers selfmanagment. |