End NATO’s Proxy War in Ukraine! Disband NATO! Canada Out of NATO!

Bolshevik Tendency speakers’ remarks to protest against NATO’s Proxy War in Ukraine – Toronto on 1 October

The BT is pleased to be in the Toronto Coalition Against NATO, a united front based on three slogans: End NATO’s Proxy War in Ukraine! Disband NATO! and Canada Out of NATO! While all the organizers of this demo oppose NATO’s role in Ukraine, there are some important differences between us.

Right from February 2022, the Bolshevik Tendency has argued that the international working class has an interest in a Russian military victory. In our initial statement, we observed that Russia’s “Special Military Operation” is tactically aggressive but strategically defensive. No serious bourgeois analyst believes the hysterical propaganda about Putin invading Europe. The axis of this conflict, from the outset, has been about whether Ukraine will become a “frontline” NATO state on Russia’s border.

On Sept 7, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, said that Putin:

“wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO ….We rejected that.
“So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”
(Not About NATO?)

Russia has good reason to be concerned about NATO, because for three decades US strategists have been openly mooting plans to solve the “Russian problem” by breaking it up into several smaller, more easily controlled (and looted) statelets. This is sometimes described as “decolonizing” Russia. Two of the best well-known advocates of this were Zbigniew Brezinski (Jimmy Carter’s Nt’l Security Adviser) and Dick Cheney—Defense Sect’y and later Vice President in the two Bush administrations.

NATO is an aggressive imperialist military alliance led by the US with major Canadian involvement. NATO destroyed Libya and Iraq and is today doing the same to Ukraine by using it as a proxy against Russia. Vladimir Putin is an anti-working class reactionary and a homophobic Great Russian chauvinist. Yet Marxists oppose imperialist aggression against dependent capitalist countries or neo-colonies, however reactionary their regimes. We did not like Gaddafi, or Saddam Hussein and we do not like Putin—but revolutionaries side with any of them militarily against imperialist aggression.

Ukraine is literally being destroyed—but this is of no concern to the imperial strategists. The US invested $5billion in setting up the 2014 Maidan coup according to Victoria Nuland. The result was a fascist-backed, pro-imperialist regime. NATO built up Ukraine’s military with intention of using it to weaken Russia. But that is not how things have worked out. NATO itself is being severely weakened in this conflict, both politically and in terms of military capacity, while the Ukrainian army is taking horrendous casualties and being ground up.

While Russia is NATO’s immediate target, it is not the ultimate objective. A Russian defeat would open the door to future military aggression against China to overturn the collectivized property system. It would weaken the position of the world’s other deformed workers’ states (Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea) and vastly increase pressure on Iran, Venezuela and other neo-colonial countries targeted for regime change.