EDITORIAL
Seven at one blow
George W. Bush resembled not the valiant
tailor of legend but an open-armed spider as he welcomed the
prime ministers of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to the web of intrigue and
military aggression known as the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).
The gap between Bush's rhetoric and the reality of this
event was as great as his credibility gap regarding Iraq's
alleged weapons of mass destruction and the cost gap for
Medicare prescription drugs.
To understand what's behind Bush's obvious joy over this
event and why these countries' prime ministers go along with
it, a quick historical review is needed.
Before 1989 the people living in these seven entities were
part of the socialist camp. Bulgaria and Romania were
independent countries. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were
republics in the Soviet Union. Slovakia was part of
Czechoslovakia. Slovenia was the richest republic in
Yugoslavia.
All the people had access to free education, medical care
and close to full employment. Capitalists could exist only on a
very small scale and pay differences were relatively small.
Though all except Slovenia were members of the Warsaw Pact, the
only ones who might have been engaged in military combat were
those from the three Soviet republics, fighting against the
counter-revolutionary insurgency in Afghanistan.
Now education, medical care and everything else is subject
to the capitalist market, dominated by the imperialist
monopolies. The few very rich people are rich because of their
connections with those monopolies. There are many unemployed
and otherwise very poor workers. Living conditions, especially
for women workers, have deteriorated sharply. Ordinary soldiers
face duty as colonial troops in Bush's "Coalition of the
Willing."
The governments, those who accepted all the requirements for
entering NATO, want the alliance membership for future
protection should the working class in their countries
revolt.
Washington has other reasons. These countries' membership in
NATO strengthens the U.S. relative to Germany and France, U.S.
imperialism's "Old Europe" rivals. It puts U.S. forces on
Russia's border, with air bases only five minutes from St.
Petersburg. And young workers in these countries are an
additional source of cannon fodder for U.S. military
occupations. They already are stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Yugoslavia.
Bush must find the new expanded NATO to be an excellent
solution for his "endless war" plans. He expects U.S.
imperialism to suck these countries dry. Then again, some
Bulgarian troops have already refused to go to Iraq. Bush may
be underestimating the potential for resistance in these new
NATO members, just as he did in Baghdad.
Reprinted from the April 8, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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