The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the World Federation of Trade Unions have issued statements ahead of the upcoming NATO Summit being held in Vilnius, Lithuania July 11-12 condemning plans that include expanding the imperialist alliance, raising the numbers of NATO troops deployed in Eastern Europe, pushing for increased military spending in member countries and deepening involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.
The NATO Summit in Vilnius (Lithuania), which is due to be held on 11–12 July 2023, will add further fuel to the fire of imperialist wars and rivalries. These rivalries are currently manifested in the fierce military conflict in Ukraine, as well as in the tension in the Indo-Pacific and other regions, where the struggle over raw materials, energy, the transport routes of the commodities, market shares, i.e. for the division of capital’s profits, is escalating.
Specifically, based on the statements of NATO staffs, it is expected that:
- NATO’s involvement in the war in Ukraine will deepen, with further political guarantees, new military aid to the reactionary Zelenskiy government and the establishment of a “NATO–Ukraine Council”;
- the Ukrainian forces will be equipped with new, modern NATO weapons and that military forces will receive training;
- NATO’s multinational forces and “regional plans” will be bolstered by increasing the number of NATO combat forces to 300,000 and reinforcing them in areas neighbouring Russia and Ukraine. New NATO forces are being deployed both in the Baltic and the Balkans;
- NATO’s enlargement will take place with the access of Finland and Sweden, which, in addition to NATO’s encirclement of Russia, is also linked to the dispute over control of the Arctic, given that after this development 7 out of 8 Arctic countries will be NATO members;
- military expenditure of the member states will increase, with a threshold of 2% of GDP, placing new financial burdens of billions of euros on the people’s shoulders, in order to serve the aggressive plans of the Euro-Atlantic monopolies;
- NATO will expand cooperation with countries in the Indo-Pacific region involved in US-NATO plans such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. NATO’s new military confrontation with China, which has been described as a threat in “NATO’s Strategic Concept”since last year, has been brewing up in that region;
- NATO will prepare for the use of nuclear weapons in the fields of imperialist conflicts.
The New Democracy government, with the support of other Euro-Atlantic parties such as SYRIZA and PASOK, bears huge responsibilities for the implementation of these dangerous plans. It has sent weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, it has enhanced the US-NATO bases in the country, it has provided Greek military forces to staff NATO formations, it has increased spending on equipment for NATO’s needs and it has made ports and airports available for criminal plans that target our people.
This policy, which serves the interests of the Greek bourgeoisie and its allies, turns against our people and the sovereign rights of the Greek islands and the country in general, foreshadowing developments in Greek-Turkish relations towards a painful compromise in the Aegean. It is no coincidence that the Republic of Cyprus has disappeared from NATO documents and the reference to it is being replaced by geographical coordinates, while the Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits are being christened ‘Turkish Straits’ on the initiative of the USA.
Our people must now strengthen their struggle for:
- Greece’s disentanglement from the imperialist war in Ukraine;
- the closure of US-NATO bases in our country;
- the deployment abroad of Greek military forces and weapons systems to stop,
- the disengagement from NATO and the EU, with the people being masters in their own land and holding power in their own hands.
The World Federation of Trade Unions, on behalf of its 105 million workers who live, work and struggle in 133 countries of the 5 continents strongly condemns the imperialist plans of NATO and considers the 2023 Summit which is going to be held July 11-12 in Vilnius, Lithuania, one more blatant provocation to the whole peaceful humanity.
The peoples all over the globe know we well the bloody mission of this imperialist alliance is to maintain, and expand if possible, the existing favourable correlation of forces for the NATO countries in order to safeguard the profits of their monopolies. In the imperialist system which is characterized by the fierce competitions of the imperialist forces for geopolitical control and the control of energy resources and their transport routes, both the peoples of the member-states of NATO and the other counties’ peoples have nothing to expect from the imperialist alliances and wars except death, suffering, poverty, and misery.
The class-oriented world trade union movement, the militant unions, and those who truly want peace consistently and continuously struggle against NATO which constitutes an aggressive war machine in the service of the interests of the imperialist countries of the alliance. The peoples of the world have a first-hand experience of NATO crimes and they know that NATO means nothing but interventions, wars, juntas, refugees, starvation, destruction, and death.
The WFTU condemns the continuation of military interventions and wars, the accelerated militarization of international relations, and the soaring military expenditures; it demands an immediate end to all imperialist armed conflicts, full respect for the sovereignty, independence, and right of every people to freely choose their present and future.
We denounce the exclusions, discriminations, embargoes, and sanctions imposed by the US, NATO, and the EU against various countries, as they negatively impact the standard of living of low-income families, workers, poor small farmers, and popular strata in general.
The international trade union movement denounces the intention of the NATO Summit to add new Regional Plans but also to define a minimum limit of 2% of GDP in military spending, which sharpens the confrontation and deepens the preparations and the risk for a generalized imperialist conflict with disastrous consequences for the popular strata and the ordinary people.
In addition to conditions of generalized price rise, inflation, and the long-term austerity policies that have shrunk all the expenditures linked to popular needs and workers’ living standards; In an era where all workers’ demands for education, health, social security, and dignified living conditions, are rejected by bourgeoise governments under the pretext of lack of resources, etc, the further increase in military spending is provocative as well as revealing of their intensions.
The World Federation of Trade Unions firmly believes military spending deprives people of the fundamental right to live with dignity and that NATO destabilizing the world and demand unconditional and urgent dissolution of NATO. The WFTU calls upon the workers all over the world to fight against imperialist wars and the system that creates them, to struggle for world peace and the solidarity among the peoples, to oppose the waste of resources and money for military purposes, to demand the dismantling of nuclear weapons and the immediate disengagement from NATO.
The peoples of the world, the workers of the world have nothing to divide them and they can live in peace, solidarity, and cooperation.