Statement published on Workers World, October 28, 2023
Delegates from 40 organizations and individuals from 25 countries gathered in Rome on Oct. 27 and 28, 2023, to discuss the causes of the current war in Ukraine, the war’s impact on international peace, the dangers facing our people and the tasks of the movement for a fair and permanent peace. The following is their statement.
Our conclusions:
– The aggressive policies of the United States and its closest allies (the West) are the root causes of the war in Ukraine and, as we see in Palestine, are pushing humanity to the brink of a third world war.
– In order to maintain a unipolar world order, the West needs imperialist domination. It aims to transform the great majority of the world’s countries into vassal states, leading to a neocolonial international system.
– The imperialist elite uses the pseudo-progressive ideological mask of “democratic globalization,” the defense of human and civil rights and the overcoming of national states as a pretext for their domination. They use institutions such as the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and World Economic Forum to impose economic domination and NATO to impose military domination.
In this framework the West:
– Attacks Russia with the clear goal to destroy it as a sovereign state and split it into a collection of weak vassal states.
– Encircles China with military bases, warships and military alliances; escalates arms deliveries to Taiwan and continues provocations in the South China Sea in order to force China into a military response that can be used as a pretext for war. Continues war provocations around the Korean peninsula.
– Supports Israel, its main instrument for its neocolonial policy in the Middle East, in order to crush the Palestinian people and to force Iran into war.
– Maintains the occupation of Iraq and conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Lebanon — and above all continues the occupation of Palestine.
– Constantly plunders Africa and Latin America while imposing puppet governments and instigating its vassal states to invade independent countries — for example in the Sahel.
– Employs armed militias in regime change operations and organizes assassinations of Russian and Iranian intellectuals, politicians, scientists and journalists; commits terrorist actions like blowing up Nord Stream 2.
– Through illegal unilateral coercive measures (UCMs), tries to strangle the economies of the countries that resist imperialism, callously disregarding the catastrophic consequences for these countries’ populations and for the working class and all poor people in the West itself.
– Poisons and kills. The U.S. has already used nuclear weapons, not only in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also by using depleted uranium weapons (DUW) against Iraq, Serbia and now against Russia. DUW permanently contaminated the land and killed a yet uncounted number of people.
For these reasons, the Western elites pose a permanent threat against peace and development of the world and threaten the very existence of humanity.
Our stance regarding the current war in Ukraine:
It was not on Feb. 24, 2022, that the war in Ukraine started, nor even when the U.S. incited the 2014 coup, but further back in time, with the bloody expansion of NATO towards East Europe. The dirty wars in Yugoslavia and the disintegration of the once strongest Balkan state, and the instigation of wars in the Caucasus were all phases of the same project.
The war against Russia had already started right after the illegal dissolution of the USSR, which was imposed against the will of its citizens. The formation of new borders in Eastern Europe and Central Asia has been imposed outside the framework of international law.
NATO was and is the instrument of the U.S. to impose its control over all Europe. Its expansion to the East was illegal and presents a permanent threat against all sovereign and independent countries.
The Russian government tried to avoid the current phase of the war, but the West, through its proxies in Ukraine, has continued targeting the Russian populations and has refused any peace agreement based on equal security, as proposed by Russia. The West’s actions have made war inevitable.
The manner in which the West conducts the war shows that it aims at an unending escalation and to exhaust both Ukrainians and Russians to the maximum. The use of illegal weapons like cluster bombs and depleted uranium ammunition shows that the inhumane action of the Western elites has been without limits. Their efforts to involve all the Eastern European countries — as well as other countries — in the conflict show that the West’s leading elites are trying to use the European population as cannon fodder, just as they now use Ukrainians.
The only basis for solving international disputes should remain International Law, which has at its core the United Nations Charter. The will of the U.S. and its allies — the so-called “rules-based order” — should no longer be a compulsory rule for the world.
What the world’s people need:
– A defeat of NATO in Ukraine. Without this prerequisite there is no possibility for a durable peace. A Western victory over Russia would be a new disaster for humanity. It would become a starting point for new wars in the Balkans, the Middle East and the South China Sea, that is, a protracted third world war.
– A new framework of cooperation in East Europe and the Balkans, liberated from U.S.-EU control, based on equal relations and reshaping the catastrophic consequences of the West’s victory in the Cold War.
– A world of sovereign countries where peoples can determine their future, free of the global economic dictatorship imposed by the West, free of Unilateral Coercive Measures. The world needs trade, commercial, financial, communication and transportation networks free from the West’s control. In this direction, the formation of new organizations for cooperation between states, free from Western control, and the enhanced role of the Global South in the existing international organizations are positive developments.
– A new architecture in the U.N. reflecting the rights of the Global South and the principle of equal sovereignty for all states.
Our tasks
– We have much to do regarding information and education. There exists in NATO-EU countries and other U.S.-dominated countries a virtual total censorship. We should inform these populations that the West’s war in Ukraine is an unjust war.
– We must stop the dispatch of weapons, ammunition, equipment and personnel to the battlefield but,
– Our main task should be to liberate our countries from NATO membership, from U.S. control and from U.S. military bases. This will be the pinnacle of our solidarity to the resisting people of the world.
We have decided
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- To form a permanent international network to coordinate the above tasks under the name “Stop World Word 3-International Initiative for Peace.”
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- To organize international actions and solidarity delegations to Russia, Donbass and Palestine.
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- To organize the 2nd international peace conference by the end of 2024.
Approved by acclamation
Rome, October 28, 2023.