What did they talk about at Rambouillet?
A den of thieves under fire
By Sam
Marcy
This article originally appeared in the Workers World of
Nov. 21, 1975. That Marcy was writing back then about a NATO
meeting in Rambouillet caught our eye, since it was the locale
of this February's meeting that laid the basis for NATO's
assault on Yugoslavia. There is more than coincidence of place
here, however. In this article, Marcy discusses NATO's role not
only as an imperialist instrument against the USSR but also as
a capitalist agent against the working class in Europe which
then, as now, faced a prolonged economic recession. In
particular, it was the revolutionary Portuguese workers who
were the target of NATO's machinations.
This weekend President Gerald Ford and the heads of the
governments of France, Britain, West Germany, Italy and Japan
met in a beautiful chateau some 35 miles from Paris. The
purpose of the meeting, according to the participants, was to
formulate a common strategy to solve the deepest economic
crisis since the early 1930s. Monetary matters, trade and
energy problems were said to be on the agenda, the details of
which were kept secret. Each government leader was supposed to
give one of the reports covering the problems posed on the
agenda.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Gerald Ford told the
press, "The people of our countries can look forward to more
jobs, less inflation, and a greater sense of economic
security." The other five imperialist representatives used
words to the same effect.
Not a word of this should be believed.
`Back channeling'
Ford's statement and the official press briefings on what
was discussed at the meeting fall into the category of putting
out a "cover story" while simultaneously "back channeling"--a
term that emerged from the recent CIA hearings to describe a
technique used by government officials, particularly the
so-called intelligence community. It means the practice where
by, while making one explanation for public consumption,
government leaders send private memos through "back channels"
to those individuals who need to be informed what the real
policy is.
While the conclave at the Chateau de Rambouillet did issue
some economic policies, it would be extremely naïve to
think that this was the real purpose of such a gathering. The
very idea that these six imperialist leaders were meeting in
order to find a solution to the devastating economic crisis
which has been raging for well over 18 months is the biggest
hoax of all. If any one of these leaders, or all of them
together, really had a plan to solve the economic crisis, they
wouldn't need a secret meeting.
If they had the answer to the question, why would they be
afraid to make it public? Are they afraid some smaller country
would rob the plan and solve the crisis by itself, starting an
economic recovery ahead of time?
The whole idea of a secret meeting to solve such a
stupendous problem over a single weekend, without their usual
hordes of economists, technicians and advisors, is ludicrous.
If an economic plan to really solve the economic crisis or even
seriously to consider it were under discussion, hundreds and
perhaps thousands of government economists employed by the
imperialists would not have been left home waiting for a press
release from Paris. Surely, some of them would have been
apprised of it in advance and it would have been a topic of
discussion somewhere publicly.
What would there be to hide, if it was for real?
The truth of the matter is that "solving the economic
crisis" is not what the meeting was about. These leaders of the
principal imperialist powers headed by Ford are completely
bankrupt when it comes to any real ideas for solving the
economic crisis and bringing about a recovery.
The agenda which they announced publicly is a "cover story"
calculated to take the public and working people off guard.
Question of Portugal and Angola
Of course, issues of the deepest significance to the
European, American and Jap an ese working class were discussed,
but they were not on the public agenda. One of the most urgent
items undoubtedly covered was how to deal with Portugal and
Angola. Ford was there to club the European allies into faster
and more coordinated action against the Portuguese and Angolan
struggles, under the threat of the U.S. doing the job
unilaterally.
Several weeks ago Ford blew the cover on two men who were
his colleagues at this conference: the "socialist" heads of
state of Britain and West Germany. He did this by planting a
story in the New York Times that the CIA was funneling money to
the Socialist Party in Portugal through social-democratic
parties and trade unions in Western Europe to foment subversion
in Portugal in the name of fighting communism.
The reason the cover was pulled was to goad them on to use
more forceful measures and to warn them that the U.S. would act
unilaterally unless they coordinated their activities with the
U.S. and carried through the overturn expeditiously.
Ford arrived in Paris barely one day after the Portuguese
workers, in a truly spectacular demonstration of strength and
solidarity, held Prime Minister Azevedo virtually a prisoner,
only releasing him after he capitulated to the workers on their
principal demand. Unquestionably, such a revolutionary
demonstration on the part of the workers, which bared the
inability of the rightist politicians and military camarilla to
do anything about it, was bound to receive the most urgent
attention from the conferees.
NATO vs. European workers
All of them, with the exception of Japan, are NATO partners.
The issue of the true role of NATO was bound to be discussed
and reviewed. The question was not, however, NATO's posture
toward the USSR, although it's true enough that NATO was
conceived as an imperialist military instrument against the
USSR. However, that is not its only function--certainly not
now. The problem for the imperialists now is how to convert
NATO ever so clandestinely, or if need by openly, into a
continental counter-insurgency force to be utilized in the near
future against the revolutionary workers in Southern Europe,
while not excluding the possibility of social disturbances of a
working-class character in all of Europe. A discussion on how
to meet the threat from the working class was a principal
reason for the meeting in France. This explains why Italy was
invited to the meeting, although originally opposed by
France.
The French had wanted a narrower agenda concentrating on
some monetary problems in which the U.S. has continually been
putting the squeeze on France and pushing it to the wall.
(It was not without significance that the French announced
just the other day that they now regard themselves as the third
nuclear power, having in their view surpassed both Britain and
China. The purpose of the announcement on the eve of Ford's
coming to the conference was to tell Ford, "Don't push us too
hard; we are stronger than you think.")
Italian, French CPs
swear off revolution
It would have been highly appropriate at the time this den
of thieves was meeting for the Western Communist parties to
hold a parallel conference to expose the counter-revolutionary
machinations of the imperialists and unmask their lies.
Unfortunately, the two numerically strongest European CPs, in
France and Italy, instead chose precisely this moment to issue
a joint statement which, while paying lip service to the
struggle against imperialism, pledged to work within the
democratic (electoral) system.
Also, under the cover of phrases proclaiming autonomy and
independence, they in effect disavowed class solidarity with
the USSR. This is described as rejecting the "domination of
Moscow" by the bourgeois press.
But it is much too late in the day for the Soviet
bureaucracy to exert any real domination over the French and
Italian CPs. Their real motivation for this statement was to
ingratiate themselves with the bourgeoisie, particularly that
element which wears the democratic mask.
The Italian CP, it should be noted, has been groveling at
the feet of Wall Street and the Pentagon, hoping they will give
a signal to the Christian Democrats to take the CP into the
Italian government in what is being called the "historic
compromise."
But the contempt with which Washington treats the Italian CP
was shown when a leading representative invited to address the
Rockefeller-dominated Council on Foreign Relations couldn't
even get a visa to enter this country, although at the same
time an outright fascist from the so-called "Social Movement"
was accorded a lavish reception by both the Pentagon and the
State Department.
Middle East
Also on the agenda must have been the role of the NATO
countries in the Middle East. Here they have tremendous
contradictions and varying degrees of interest in the event of
a Western-coordinated attack on the Middle East. There's no
fundamental disagreement on the need to remold into pliable
tools the oil-producing countries with their limited national
sovereignty and tremendous potential for revolutionary ferment
among the masses. The question is: how can this be done without
incurring a dangerous response from the USSR or provoking a
monumental revolutionary upsurge?
Also under consideration, but of subordinate significance at
this meeting, was how to divide up the booty which these
imperialist pirates are conspiring to grab. Such secret
agreements to divide or redivide world markets and sources of
raw materials are not a novelty or a departure for them. On the
contrary, that's what the conventional diplomacy of the
imperialists has always been about.
Ford was bound to take the Japanese prime minister to task
for consistently driving the U.S. out of lucrative markets in
southeast Asia, particularly Thailand.
Also on the agenda, and this further explains the
participation of Japan, was how to exploit the growing
antagonism between the Soviet Union and China.
Ford the `tough guy'
The meeting of course did not overlook the economic
problems, but they were considered in the light of how to throw
the onus of the economic crisis on the shoulders of the working
class. Here Ford had to play the role of "tough guy" and brag
about his tough handling of the economic crisis in the U.S.,
with growing cutbacks, layoffs, attrition, and sharp cuts in
services.
He would urge a tough course by the ruling classes of
Western Europe and Japan against the workers and chide them for
their "soft" policies and for "socialist" hangovers on the part
of Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Chancellor Helmut
Schmidt.
But despite all their secret plans, wily maneuvers and
desperate gambles for counter-insurgency, this den of thieves
is economically bankrupt and politically under fire by the
popular masses in each of the countries they presumably
represent.
Their meeting was not an international gathering responding
to the fundamental needs of a significant portion of humanity,
but was more in the nature of a conclave of international
mobsters.
Only the world's working class and oppressed people have the
objective capability of truly serving the needs of the world
community on the basis of unbreakable working-class solidarity
and socialist internationalism.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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