CP of Brazil, Contribution to the Athens Meeting 21J2002

by Jose Reinaldo Carvalho -
Vice president and person in charge of International
Relations

Notes to the Seminar of Communist and Labour Parties -
Athens, June 21 to 23, 2002

In the name of the Communist Party of Brazil I greet the
board of the Communist Party of Greece for its great
initiative on organising this seminar. I am sure that the
discussions carried out here will largely contribute to
enhance the Labour and Communist Parties' understanding of
the present international situation. Being among the
participants and sharing the worries we have in common is a
great honour to the Brazilian communists. The Brazilian
delegation bring the following notes to the debate:

A situation characterised by imperialist aggressiveness and
increased conservativeness

Important changes are taking place in the world since the
attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 last
year. More than ever crisis, lack of safety and instability
prevail and threaten world peace, democracy and the
independence of countries and peoples.

On the pretext of fighting terrorism, which is a dreadful
phenomenon that communists and revolutionaries condemn, the
US imperialism is carrying out an unprecedented offensive
intended to affirm an imperial and tyrant superpower on a
global scale based on raw power and militant and nuclear
superiority. It is necessary to stress that such tendency
was already present before September 11 and even before the
beginning of Bush administration. The fact that the
nineties were marked by the war in Iraq and by the US
intervention during the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo is a
clear evidence of that tendency.

However the world has definitely changed the attacks on
September 11. And it has changed for the worse as the most
aggressive traits of the US imperialism were enhanced. The
US war on Afghanistan was clear sign of that change. The
United States have forced consensus and silence on the
international community taking advantage of the impact of
the events and manipulating carefully the local
geopolitical interests.

The development of the events have shown that the excessive
action taken by the most colossal war machine ever seen on
one of the poorest countries in the world, a country
exhausted by long internal conflicts, was intended to
capture Osama Bin Laden and bring down the Taleban regime.
The action involved the US imperialism's great economic and
geopolitical interests regarding the control of energetic
resources and of a region of strategic importance - Central
and Southern Asia, where the different interests of Iran,
India, Russia and China are present.

After the occupation of Afghanistan, the United States is
revealing by means of the bellicose rhetoric of its
president and concrete actions the true nature of its
plans, making the political situation tenser and more
dramatic. The North-American superpower has proclaimed that
it will fight a long, hard and broad war that will be
different from all others, implying the use of all
necessary weapons. This war has very broad targets. After
the attacks on New York and Washington, the US government
has even listed more than 50 countries that would be
�Terrorist or terrorist-permissive countries�, therefore
liable to being attacked at any moment. Its intelligence
agencies have classified dozens of organisations as
terrorists, among which organisations involved with
revolutionary political movements. Then they coined the
phrases �outlaw states� and so-called �axis of evil�,
including Iran, Iraq, Syria, and two socialist countries -
North Korea and Cuba. It was revealed lately that the
Safety Council of the White House and other US government
agencies are working on the details of a new military
doctrine that will involve the principle of �preventive�
action in any part of the world against groups suspected to
plan terrorist actions and/or countries that offer any kind
of harbour or support to them. During a speech to cadets at
the West Point Military Academy, President George Bush has
defended the idea that the United States will fire first
and ask questions later whenever they suspect the
preparations for acts hostile to its territory or against
US citizens. We can see that the United States are tending
to substitute discussion - a characteristic trait of the
Cold War era - for unilateral action with the right of
using force. We have never seen before the dominant forces
of the United States equalling �national safety� to
interventionism and use of direct military power against
other countries. These forces are convinced that a new
imperial stage has come and are willing to do anything to
exert their power. The world is threatened by the creation
of state of global totalitarianism.

This threatening situation in which the democratic and
social rights of peoples are menaced is aggravated by the
increasing strengthen of the right-wing forces in several
European countries. A conservative tendency is taking hold
of the continent, which new undergoes a political
retrogression while the power is occupied by the right-wing
and reactionary forces.

The imposition of the US superpower is an unmistaken
reality and political conservativeness thrives in an
environment characterised by shallow political conscience
and lack of clear alternatives to the peoples. Nevertheless
it would be a mistake to think that the new world order is
definitively established since it involves unsolvable
contradictions and conflicts of different natures,
including competitions between imperialist forces. There
are tendencies and forces making moves to create several
regional or international power poles that objectively
conflict with the US orientation of exerting its unilateral
hegemony over the world. The most of these tendencies do
not go against the world capitalist system since they are
manifested between imperialist nations of blocks, but they
must be taken into account as we approach the present
international situation. By the way, the importance of the
role played by Socialist China among the international
scenery is increasing more and more. It cannot put away the
possibility of countries with their continental areas and
economical potentialities, as Brazil, to have their
political orientation changed and to act in a
differentiated way in face of USA in Latin America.

The results of a world order under the hegemony of the
United States can be seen in the aggravation of conflicts
that threaten world peace, such as the conflict between
India and Pakistan, and in the repeated humanitarian crises
and genocide acts. The best example of this world order is
the Palestinian situation as Israel feels comfortable to
commit all sorts of crimes against a martyr people that
only wants the fulfilment of a right that has already been
recognised by the United Nations - the right to have their
own sovereign and independent National State. Israel, being
supported by the United States, has transformed military
occupation and individual terrorism into a routine act.
Acts of State terrorism and genocide are legitimised in the
name of fighting terrorist acts performed by individuals or
groups. The fact that no voice is raised with vehemence to
manifest indignation about the attempts at exterminating a
people and no hand make a move to detain the murderous arm
of Sharon government is actually terrifying.

United States rule over Latin America

The present situation of Latin America is also an
emblematic example of that new world order. The
consequences of the US offensive are particularly rough
here. The US policy regarding the region maintains its
conservative and reactionary traits. The United States used
its influence on puppet governments in the region in order
to approve a resolution against Cuba in the United Nations.
The Bush administration follows a path that was
historically abandoned even by sectors of the US
establishment. The embargo on the revolutionary Caribbean
island is a countersense and now is used more as an
accusatory act of Bush's reactionary policy than as an
effective weapon to defeat Cuba. The CIA prepared a coup
against the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, repeating
the worst moments of a period that the Latin American
peoples thought was past. The continuation of hostile acts
of a retrograde right that is broadly - supported abroad
confirms that the Untied States are still willing to bring
down the legitimate Venezuelan government.

The political interventionism is accompanied by military
action. The Colombia Plan acquires now a different form and
new contents after the elections of a president that
defends extreme positions regarding the solution for the
armed conflict that has developed during four decades.
Uribe speaks the same tongue as Bush. In this situation,
the United States has strengthened its positions not only
in Colombia, where it maintains military bases and
specialists, but also in Ecuador, Peru, Suriname and
Panama. Its objectives are the revolutionary movement and
the occupation of strategic positions in the Amazon,
affecting the Brazilian interests in full.

Along with its efforts and its political and military
presence in Latin America, the United States intensify the
pressure for the implantation of the FTAA, the so-called
Free Trade Area of the Americas. The FTAA shall become
effective in three years and is much more than a commercial
integration of the formation of a �common market� of the
Americas, as well as it has a much deeper sense than a mere
juncture-related economic orientation. It is, in its
essence, a strategic project of the US imperialism with a
view to increase its dominion over Latin America as the
United States faces an economic and commercial competition
with Europe. It is the most ambitious and broadest plan of
Panamericanism and submissive ever conceived by the United
States since its ascension as an imperialist country. It is
a project of servitude, of neo-colonialist domination, in
which countries that take part in it - and it be will all
of them according to the �agreements� except Cuba - will
become appendages of the United States. The FTAA project is
part of the neoliberal globalisation that constitutes the
prevalence not of free market, but of monopoly and
protectionism where economic policies are formulated by
international economic organisations that translate the
will of the great multinational industrial and financial
enterprises for making huge profits. The block policies
that are objectively based on the present stage that
capitalism undergoes demand bringing down national
barriers, denationalisation of economies, adoption of
neoliberal policies regarding the free flow of
multinational financial capitals, all sort of
deregulations, reduction of public expenditure for social
ends, liquidation of the rights of the works and fiscal
responsibility for the religious payment of debts. All
these measures take each dependent country to an unbearable
situation of foreign vulnerability as we can see in the
dramatic situation of Argentina. This is something that
tends to be repeated in Brazil, where the public debt
increased five times in the last decade and now corresponds
to 60 percent of the Gross Domestic Production. All this
politics is in detriment of sovereign and independence of
Latin American countries and peoples.

The struggle for an alternative

The aching contradictions of the contemporaneous world
engendered by the imperialist world order and by
globalisation create immense dissastifaction all over the
world and inevitably will raise revolt, protest and the
struggle of peoples and working masses. Although we still
live in a period where the unfavourable correlation of
forces is marked by the defeat of socialism and the
revolutionary movement, a moment marked by the exercise of
the huge power of the US imperialism and further
conservative forces, determining a differentiated and
prolonged process involving the accumulation of forces by
the revolutionary movement, the present moment is
characterised by the appearance of struggles - whether
spontaneous or not - for social rights, democracy,
development, peace, sovereignty and independence.
Historically, the capitalism in its phase of imperialist
globalisation, it is unable to solve the serious problems
of humanity. Only the renewed and reinforced socialism with
the knowledge got with the lively experience is able to
promote the advent of a just world order.

From the perspective of a Party which action takes place in
a so-called third world country that is chronically
dependent and extremely vulnerable to the ups and downs of
the international financial crisis, we concentrate our
efforts on the struggle for sovereignty and national
independence. This struggle is obviously connected to the
struggle for democracy and social progress which main
objective is the social emancipation of workers and opening
new paths to achieve socialism under the concrete
circumstances of our country.

We think that it is necessary to make efforts with a view
to build a broadly-based anti-imperialist unit in a global
scale in order to detain the aggressive US policies and
develop international solidarity with countries that are
victims of interventions of aggression. Therefore,
Brazilian communists add themselves to the fraternal
struggles of the Latin American peoples from Argentina,
Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador among others, and
reiterate the solidarity with the socialist countries;
strong denounce the genocide of the Palestinian people by
the Israeli government with the American imperialism
blessing and grant their total support to the
Arabian-Palestinian cause; and incorporate themselves top
the movement against globalisation and to the Social World
Forum demonstrations such as those that took place in
Seattle, Prague, Nice, Davos, Porto Alegre and Genoa, among
others, as one of the components to the struggle of workers
and peoples for another world order involving peace,
development, sovereignty and social progress.

The people ask themselves - how long humankind will remain
in the present trance and if it would be possible to avoid
the barbarism that the international potencies engender.
Maybe it will be painful, but not long-standing and
definitely not infinite. There are sovereign countries that
resist, there are socialist countries that keep developing,
there are popular, socialist, revolutionary and communist
moving forces. That is where our trust, hope and reasons
for being optimists lie.