As hundreds of thousands of people across Europe prepare to march against President Reagan, John Ross looks at the significance of nuclear weapons to the military strategy of imperialism. He argues that socialists should fully endorse the demand for a nuclear free Europe from Poland to Portugal.
The possession of nuclear weapons by the imperialist powers, and above all by the United States, is key to their entire contemporary military strategy. Ever since the middle of the Second World War when it became clear that Germany would be defeated, the imperialists began to prepare both to prevent post-war social revolutions and for political and military confrontation with the USSR. This was the meaning of the continual delay in opening the 'Second Front' in Western Europe against Nazi Germany; of British imperialism's continued military policy of intervention in Southern Europe and Greece, [of] the US use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a demonstration of strength to the Soviet Union; [of the] continuation after the war of the US's massive B29 and B36 [illegible].
In the period after the war the US and other imperialist powers held back from war against the USSR for fear that a new world military conflict waged with conventional weapons [illegible] wars from the US working class. Further, following [illegible] as US Commander in Korea, the US ruling class concluded that the Soviet Union, despite itself having no significant number of nuclear weapons, could not be defeated militarily so long as the working class in the West remained undefeated and imperialism held only a limited arsenal of nuclear armaments.
In 1946 Lippman analysed that: 'No atomic bombardment could destroy the Red Army; it could destroy only the industrial means of supplying it. The Russian defence to atomic attack is therefore self evident; it is to over-run continental Europe with infantry, and defy us to drop atomic bombs on Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. The more [we] threaten to demolish Russian cities, the more obvious it is that the Russian defence would be to ensconce themselves in European cities.' Such a strategy would make it impossible for US imperialism to win the war as it would destroy its trade links and major bases of its economy.
Furthermore, at that time US imperialism did not possess the technical capacity to rapidly defeat the USSR even in nuclear war. The atomic bombs of the type dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while decimating in terms of human life, could not guarantee to destroy the mighty industrial capacity of the USSR: for example the US military estimated that within thirty days of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima some 74 per cent of its industrial capacity could have been resumed. Nor had the massive strategic bombing of Germany, which was on the scale equivalent to an atomic attack on the USSR with the then existing technology, seriously affected its industrial capacity — production of war materials continued to rise right up until August 1944.
'Official American figures show that the early types of atomic bombs produced about the same destruction as some 2,000 tons of ordinary bombs evenly spread over the same area ... more than 1000 atomic bombs of the Hiroshima type would have been required to inflict on Germany and the occupied territories the same industrial damage as was done by the 2.7 million tons of chemical bombs actually dropped on them.' US imperialism simply did not possess the capacity to successfully deliver 1000 atomic bombs against the USSR. It was therefore not any regard for 'peace' which held back the US ruling class from war with the USSR in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but rather a rational calculation that it would lose in such a confrontation. It did not possess the nuclear armoury to rapidly defeat the USSR, and a long drawn out war threatened both domestic unrest from the working classes in the imperialist countries and the rise of the colonial revolution.
Atomic Weapons and the USSR
Today the technical military capacity of US imperialism is considerably higher than at the end of the Second World War. Without the capacity of military resistance by the USSR, including through nuclear weapons, the US ruling class would be able to threaten rapid mass nuclear destruction of the USSR, bringing world war far nearer. The US ruling class has seriously debated using nuclear weapons on several occasions against the colonial revolution — Korea, Vietnam. Its threats have receded because the USSR now possesses nuclear weapons. Contrary to [the theory of] 'exterminism' and others, nuclear disarmament by the USSR while the US imperialists still possessed their nuclear arsenal would mean the inevitability of world war. It is a fact that US imperialism's threats of war against the USSR have decreased as the USSR developed nuclear weapons.
Such a recognition in no way implies acceptance of the guiding policies of peaceful coexistence and socialism in one country [nor] total reliance on a framework of military defence against imperialist aggression, rather than a fundamental political strategy of defence of the struggles of the international working class for socialism, within which framework military considerations are important but subordinate. The criminal policies of the Kremlin bureaucrats of stifling domestic repression and counter-revolutionary operations against the workers of Eastern Europe repel the workers of the West from socialism. Thus, defence of the workers' states from imperialism must not be confused with defence of the political or military policies of the Kremlin bureaucracy.
Yet the greatest blows to imperialism, which have limited its war threats against the USSR have precisely come from the extension of the workers' and peasants' revolution. It was the long drawn out and finally successful war of liberation led by the NLF in Vietnam which brought about and combined with the US anti-war movement to defeat US imperialism in South East Asia. This profound shock was decisive in preventing US military intervention in the Angolan civil war, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, and the defeat of Somoza in Nicaragua. It is a major factor in the continuing difficulties which US imperialism faces in the current war in El Salvador. The international extension of the class struggle is the only path to peace. The current build-up of US military force in Europe is essential if US imperialism is to overcome the USSR's capacity in the event of war to seize the key economic areas of Western Europe and the Middle East and colonial oil and raw materials supplies to the US, thereby crushing the US economy. Military domination of Western Europe is a prerequisite for any credible imperialist threat to wage war against the USSR.
The official codification of US post-war military policy, National Security Council document 68, called for 'an immediate and large scale build-up in our military and general strength, and that of our allies.' This calculated up to 20 per cent of US production in peace time could be used for military production. In the words of one of the original formulations of this doctrine in the 1950s: 'The year of decision was to arrive when Western rearmament on land had gone far enough for the West to be able to repulse a Soviet counter-thrust into Europe. When the West had acquired this adequate strength on land, it would be able to use its nuclear power to force the Soviet Union to accept the Western terms or be bombed.' Imperialism's military policies in Europe following the Second World War notably the decision to rearm Western Germany, were dictated by this goal.
The ability of US imperialism to pursue these objectives in the 1950s-70s was thwarted by the shift against it in the international relationship of class forces. The victory of the Chinese revolution and of the first stage of the Vietnamese revolution reinforced the fears of US imperialism that war would lead to a huge wave of the colonial revolution, threatening or destroying US world political domination and raw material supplies. Economically and technically the advance of the Soviet Union was also more rapid than anticipated, allowing it both to produce nuclear weapons far earlier than expected alongside a major conventional weapons superiority in Europe. Finally, to maintain political hegemony and stability inside the imperialist countries, the ruling classes had made major economic and political concessions to the working class throughout the postwar boom. This set objective limits on the ability of the ruling classes to expand the scale of the armaments and militarisation programme sufficiently to gain the necessary superiority over the USSR to guarantee victory in war. President Kennedy's massive military build-up in the early 1960s aimed to overcome this situation.
The culmination of the new US armaments drive from 1960 onwards was the Vietnam war. US imperialism deployed the full weight of its military apparatus in an attempt to show it could crush any colonial revolution. In fact the three sectors of the world revolution combined to defeat it. The depth of the revolutionary struggle in Vietnam allowed the NLF to make military successes and to prolong the war far longer than US imperialism had calculated. The US economy was unable to take the strain of such a prolonged war without producing massive internal discontent and upheaval which finally made it politically impossible for the ruling class to continue. Finally the military aid of the workers' states, and above all the USSR, while far less than should have been supplied, was sufficient to enable the NLF, at the cost of appalling suffering and the devastation of the country, to defeat US imperialism and its South Vietnamese puppets. In particular the supply of military equipment from the USSR made possible the decisive military victory of 1975.
The centrality of Cruise, Pershing and the Neutron Bomb
Since this time US imperialism has embarked upon a major campaign of rearmament, particularly aimed at Western Europe. Militarily, it hopes thus to be able to achieve such overwhelming superiority, far greater than at the time of Vietnam, to rapidly win a war before opposition mounts inside the United States. Politically, it aims to use the crimes of the Soviet bureaucracy, which conveniently provides it with regular new material as with Czechoslovakia and Poland, to discredit socialism and the colonial revolution, thereby strengthening imperialism's ideological hold over the working class and extending its room for manoeuvre before domestic opposition to war develops.
The immediate target of imperialism's attention is the colonial revolution rather than reconquest of Eastern Europe of the USSR. However a major element in the colonial revolution is the supply of weapons and military support from the workers' states. A key goal of imperialist policy is to block this aid to the colonial revolution, through threats of war against the USSR — this was Nixon's policy in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war for example. But for this threat to be credible imperialism must possess the military strength to either win a war in Western Europe, or to be capable of defending it against a defensive counter-attack by the USSR necessitated by US imperialism's declaration of war.
This is the context in which the imperialists are planning to introduce the US Neutron Bomb, and Pershing and Cruise missiles into Western Europe. To achieve sufficient superiority in conventional military terms to defeat the USSR in a war in Western Europe would require a level of armaments expenditure, conscription in the army, and cuts in living standards, [illegible] the difficulties of the imperialists in Europe in even achieving NATO's projected 3 per cent increases in military spending this year [illegible].
The new weapons deployed by US imperialism are designed to shift the military relation of forces to allow it to 'win' or 'draw' a conflict with the USSR in Europe. US imperialism cannot credibly threaten the USSR with all-out military conflict, with the certainty of the destruction of the US economy which this entails, over every development in the colonial revolution. It must rather be able to threaten more limited military conflicts when its interests are seriously threatened. Hence the apparently 'wild talk' by Haig and Reagan about conventional war in Europe, a 'limited' nuclear war in Europe and the like. They are threats designed to show US imperialism's preparedness to wage a war with the USSR short of 'mutually assured destruction' to blackmail the USSR into ceasing its interventions into the colonial revolution.
For this reason the Neutron Bomb, and Cruise and Pershing missiles are not something incidental to US policy, but absolutely central to its global strategy. They cannot and will not be abandoned by the US ruling class without the threat of a major shift in the relation of forces against it. Fortunately such a shift may well occur as hundreds of thousands of people correctly recognise that these weapons bring the threat of war significantly closer, and understand the relation between this drive to war and the second prong of the capitalists' offensive, the drive to cut the living standards of the working class.
The importance of the anti-nuclear movements
It is no accident that the movement against the missiles and nuclear weapons is the largest international movement in Europe since the Second World War — qualitatively larger than the Vietnam war movement, nor that it has begun to find an expression even in the imperialist heartland of the United States itself. The strength of the anti-militarisation movement in Europe stems from its particular combination of all three sectors of the world revolution. First, the domination of the imperialist ruling classes has been weakened by the heightened exposure of their brutal nature in the Vietnam conflict, and by the profound crisis of the capitalist economies themselves. These have combined to produce a wider pool of discontent than even at the time of the Vietnam war.
Secondly, the developing colonial revolution continues to sap the political strength of imperialism. For example the majority of the American people would be openly cynical about official explanations for an intervention into El Salvador and at least a vocal minority would actively oppose it. Finally, despite overwhelming hostility to the repression of their bureaucratic rulers, the strength of the workers' states is clearly shown by the mass fear of their military might. No significant section of the workers in the West seriously believes that a nuclear war with the USSR could be 'won' in any meaningful sense of the word. Indeed the majority of the population know that they would die in the attempt. It is the combination of these factors that fuels the anti-militarisation movements and explains their enormous scope even in countries where the economic crisis is not relatively deep. It is vital that revolutionary Marxists support these movements to the maximum.
The starting point for any Marxist view on militarism is the class character of the state. It is impossible for the working class to disarm the ruling class under capitalism as this would be the [illegible] of capitalist [illegible] on violence against the working class [and] the oppressed. All weapons possessed by the ruling class will be used against the workers of the world. In that sense [illegible] socialists do not oppose 'excessive' armaments [under] capitalism, but rather demand the total disarming of the ruling class through socialist revolution. That is why revolutionaries refuse to vote for any war budgets and expenditure [illegible]. [illegible] struggle [illegible] of the fight against militarism and capitalism — from extending civil and political rights within the military, abolition of separate systems [illegible]. Every concession wrung from capitalists weakens their military apparatuses. It is the same with nuclear weapons, which we have shown play a central part in the military strategy of the imperialists. In fact nuclear weapons are in many ways capitalist weapons par excellence, allowing the maximum destructive power to be technically concentrated in the minimum number of hands, thereby offsetting the numerical superiority and strength of the working class. Even the total 'abandonment' of nuclear weapons by the capitalist classes would be fraudulent as they would still retain the technical means with which to rapidly remanufacture them. But hindering their ability to use them gains precious time for the working class and alters the relation of forces in its favour. Hence the struggle of the working class against capitalism is inseparable from the struggle to remove the imperialists' [illegible].
Military relations between imperialism and the USSR and the other workers' states have to be approached in this framework. While the latter must be defended against imperialist aggression this in no way implies acceptance of the military or political policies of the Soviet and other bureaucracies. In fact the relation of class forces on an international scale is not the same as that between imperialism and the so-called 'socialist camp'. The only two camps which exist are those of different classes — the international working class and the international ruling classes. The military strength of the workers' states is an important factor within that framework — without it, Hitler would never have been defeated in the Second World War, the revolution would never have been victorious or have been maintained in China, the Cuban revolution would long ago have been destroyed by US imperialism, and the Vietnamese would never have won their war against US imperialism. But the struggle against imperialist militarism cannot be reduced to reliance on the military strength of the USSR, or the false idea of the USSR defeating the imperialists militarily. The destruction of the military apparatuses of the imperialists is a task which can only be carried out by the international working class as a whole, and by the working classes in the imperialist heartlands in particular.
The fundamental policy for the struggle against militarism and the threat of war is support for and advance of the world revolution in all its three sectors — the colonial and neo-colonial revolution, in the workers' states and in the imperialist centres. The idea of bourgeois, social democratic and Stalinist forces that the class struggle 'provokes' wars and militarism is false. It is only the advance of the class struggle that stays the hands of the imperialists, any retreat and abandonment of class struggle makes war more likely. Just as the renunciation by the working class of revolution leads to the inevitable bloodbaths of the Chilean type, so the retreat from class struggle encourages the imperialists to launch bloody wars. It was the failure of the social democratic and Stalinist parties to take up arms to crush fascism before it came to power that allowed the Second World War to be prepared — with a loss of life incomparably greater than would have been needed to crush Nazism in its embryo in Germany. It is extension of the international class struggle that alone can prevent world nuclear wars.
Every defeat for imperialism by the colonial revolution weakens its future ability to wage wars, discredits its military apparatus, and exposes the real goals of the imperialists to ever broader sectors of the population. It is precisely in the arena of the colonial revolution that the imperialists intend the most serious use of military force against the international working class over the next years. Solidarity with the colonial revolution will therefore be a central issue for the anti-militarist movement, most immediately that means defence of the revolutions in the Caribbean and Central America against threatened military aggression by US imperialism. It was Che Guevara who put forward the essential strategic line of march for the colonial revolution with his famous slogan: 'Create two, three, many Vietnams'. The best way to maximise the chances of victory and to minimise the losses in any struggle with US imperialism is through stretching the US military machine to its utmost, to divide its strength between a series of different conflicts.
Support for political revolution in the workers' states
The struggle for peace in the deformed and degenerated workers' states means resolute support for the anti-bureaucratic revolution. This is not because the bureaucracies threaten war against the capitalist states — on the contrary they have no such interests or intentions — but because their policies of repression in their own countries and collaboration with imperialism in the colonial world and the imperialist centres which provides the greatest single support on a world scale to the imperialist war-mongers. Stalinism is the best weapon the imperialists have both to discredit socialism in the eyes of the working classes and to justify their own militarism.
Every victory for the bureaucratic repression in the workers' states is therefore also a victory for the imperialists, increasing their ability to wage war and utilise nuclear weapons. The single biggest blow to the anti-militarist movement in recent months was the crackdown against Solidarnosc by the Polish and Soviet bureaucrats. Indeed the more cynical ruling class spokespersons in the West openly speculated on how best to use the military crackdown to disorient the anti-war movements and to ideologically sharpen their polemics with 'communism'. The extent of the imperialists' concern for the Polish workers can be gauged both by the measures they proposed to respond to the Polish crisis — cutting off economic links and aid, which imposed further suffering on the Polish people — and by the fact that it is the imperialists who have hundreds of nuclear missiles pointing directly at the Polish people, threatening them with daily physical annihilation.
It is vital that the international labour movement comes forward as the real champion of the cause of Solidarnosc and that the anti-militarist movements defend the interests of the workers in Eastern Europe. Failure to take such a lead will both reinforce the credibility of the bourgeoisie's ideological stance against the USSR and Eastern Europe, and weaken the links between the workers of the West and the East, seriously undermining the appeal of the anti-militarist and peace movements.
Class struggle in the imperialist countries
For revolutionary socialists campaigning against the military drive of the imperialists goes hand in hand with promotion of the overall class struggle in the capitalist countries. They do not accept that 'peace' can be achieved outside the framework of the overthrow of their own ruling class. From that point of view linking the struggle against militarism to that against austerity is vitally necessary. It is no accident that the theme of 'Jobs not War', 'Jobs not Bombs', 'Butter not Guns' has appeared in the anti-militarist movements of the major imperialist countries. Every defence of working class living standards against austerity makes it more difficult for the imperialists to finance their war plans, and strengthens the anti-militarist movements.
Revolutionary socialists not only fight against any attempt at imperialist war, but also try to show that the struggle against militarism will only be finally successful through the revolutionary socialist overthrow of the ruling classes. Such an approach affects tactics and orientation within the anti-missiles movements. For example they show how the bourgeois forces who come behind the 'peace' bandwagon fear and oppose the most effective proletarian methods of struggle to win it — mass extra-parliamentary action by the labour movement. Socialists direct their demands towards their own ruling class above all, for unilateral disarmament, as well as supporting every partial demand against nuclear weapons and imperialist militarism. The achievement of the demand for a nuclear free Europe from Poland to Portugal would be an enormous shift in the international relation of forces, and would gigantically weaken the imperialists militarily. It would also be a huge step forward in the defence of the USSR, which maintains crucial superiority in the field of conventional weapons in Europe and continues to have this possibility as long as the working classes in the West are not crushed (this is why incidentally even the Soviet bureaucracy supports this demand). Furthermore, it would mean the nuclear disarming of the two most powerful bourgeoisies outside the United States that possess nuclear weapons — the British and the French — reducing them to client powers in the military field. For this reason the achievement of this demand is extremely improbable. Maintenance and extension of its nuclear policy in Europe is so crucial to imperialist policy that it would entail the most enormous working class victory against imperialism to force its abandonment.
The demand for a nuclear free Europe from Poland to Portugal is so dangerous to imperialism because it cannot be confused with general calls for 'disarmament' East and West — the middle-class utopia which concretely lets the imperialists off the hook of unilateral disarmament. Rather it is a demand for unilateral disarmament by the European imperialist powers and for an end to US imperialist nuclear plans for Europe, without demanding an end to Soviet nuclear weapons prior to complete imperialist disarmament. The demand is also against European imperialism in that it rejects European nuclear weapons to replace US ones in Europe. Precisely because the demand is so antagonistic to imperialism it is in practice not fought for by reformists such as E P Thompson, who instead support the 'zero option' of accepting existing US and European nuclear weapons in Europe while demanding the USSR gives up its most advanced weapons.
The achievement of the demand for a nuclear free Europe from Poland to Portugal would qualitatively strengthen the military defence of the USSR against imperialist aggression. Though as we have already insisted such an argument in no way endorses the foreign or domestic policies of the Soviet bureaucrats which undermine the gains of the workers' states. Indeed the USSR would powerfully aid the anti-militarist movements in the West by campaigning on its 'official' support for the devastatingly simple demand for the renunciation by all sides of all nuclear weapons worldwide. Such a demand would completely undermine the entire military strategy of imperialism without jeopardising the USSR's defence, as well as powerfully attacking the ideological justification of the imperialists for nuclear weapons — the so-called 'Soviet [threat]'.
Of course the demand for a nuclear free Europe from Poland to Portugal must go alongside those for unilateral disarmament in each country, which remains the immediate priority, [illegible]. While a non-nuclear NATO might be unthinkable militarily for imperialism, nevertheless any illusions in NATO's 'conventional' weapons, armies and 'defence' systems should be exposed within the anti-militarist movement, which at this stage is really united only around opposition to the next generation of nuclear weapons — Cruise, Trident, Pershing and the Neutron Bomb. But whether all the supporters of the demand for a nuclear free Europe realise it or not, their demand would in fact represent a mortal blow to NATO strategy.
The importance of the demand within the growing movement against militarism should not be underestimated. The fact that over a million people demonstrated against the missiles over a period of a few weeks in European cities last autumn, and that hundreds of thousands more are expected to greet Reagan's visits to European capitals in June this year, shows the growing international trend of this movement. Such a development should be welcomed as the campaign against imperialist war-mongering entails not just international coordination and campaigns but also such international demands to unify the movement. Opposition to the missiles, the Neutron Bomb, and NATO, combined with the demand for a nuclear free Europe from Poland to Portugal can provide such a unifying campaign.
Further, this demand has the added usefulness of uniting both the working classes of Eastern and Western Europe. This is vitally important for any revolutionary strategy for Europe to create an internationalist consciousness within the working class vanguard of Europe as a whole. It is also necessary to solidify the links between mass opposition movements in Eastern Europe such as Solidarnosc with their Western European working class counterparts.
JOHN ROSS is a leading member of the Fourth International and a regular contributor to International.
References
1. [illegible]
2. Horowitz, [illegible]
3. Rise of Globalism, American Foreign Policy 1938-80, Ambrose, p164.
4. Horowitz, op cit, p264.