July 11, 2016

A gathering  of the European Communist Initiative was held in Warsaw on the occasion of the NATO Summit. The slogan of the meeting was  “NATO and the EU are a permanent threat for the peoples. The way out is to be found in the struggle for peace, social rights, socialism”. Giorgos Marinos, member of the KKE leadership, headed the delegation of the KKE in Warsaw and spoke on its behalf.


We would like to thank the CP of Poland for supporting today’s event of the  European Communist Initative in Warsaw in order to denounce the criminal imperialist NATO organization and the Summit which it is holding in order to decide on very dangerous new measures against the peoples that will bring a generalized imperialist war closer.

The Warsaw Pact was signed here, in Poland’s capital, on the 14th of June 1955 (it was founded in May of the same year), the political-military alliance of socialist countries which constituted a strong pro-peace force against the imperialist aggressiveness and made an important contribution at the side of the peoples, refuting the slanderers and rewriters of history.

We denounce the anticommunism and persecutions carried out by the Polish government against the CP of Poland and our comrades, who are trying in very difficult conditions to defend the working class, the cause of socialism and the historical truth.

We thank all the Communist and Workers’ Parties that participate in today’s event and we want to note that the presence of the European Communist Initiative  in Warsaw is a significant internationalist step that is in harmony with the will of the peoples who have condemned NATO in their consciousness.


We are obliged to inform the youth, to inform the workers that NATO is the political-military apparatus that was formed by US and European imperialism in 1949 in order to threaten and undermine the Soviet Union, which had made the decisive contribution to the victory against Nazism and emerged from World War II with great prestige, successfully continuing socialist construction in a new environment in Europe, where a significant number of states were waging the struggle for workers’ power to pave the way for socialist construction.

NATO for decades relying on the military machine of the USA  and European capitalist states, many of which were members of the EEC, operated as a counterrevolutionary force, a gendarme of capitalism against the workers’-people’s struggle, a vehicle for imperialist wars, interventions and coups in many regions of the world.

It adapted to the new conditions after the overthrow of socialism and the counterrevolutions. The strategic line that it follows seeks to clear the path for US and European monopolies, by intervening decisively in the inter-imperialist competition with Russia and China, with new capitalist alliances such as BRICS, over the control of markets and natural resources.

Year in year out, studying and utilizing the experience from the imperialist interventions and wars, NATO refines and improves its strategy and tactics, forms modern military structures, modernizes its conventional nuclear weapons systems and arsenal.

In recent years, NATO has fulfilled its own murderous role in the imperialist wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Its member states intervene in Africa and other regions. It expands its military bases into the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, establishes new command centres, creates dangerous infrastructure in Europe, including infrastructure related to the storage of nuclear weapons.

A characteristic feature of the practice followed by NATO to justify its murderous activity is the creation of pretexts in order to manipulate popular forces and prepare the terrain for interventions and imperialist wars.

The pretexts are not limited to just the elaboration and presentation of false information about confronting, for example, chemical and biological weapons, terrorism etc., but extend to the use of provocations and even criminal organizations like the “Taliban” and the “Islamic State”, which are the creation of the USA and its allies.

These organizations are becoming autonomous or continue to have channels of communication with the US and NATO mechanisms and are used once again as pretexts for new interventions in the framework of a continuously more dangerous anti-people vicious circle.

A basic feature of NATO’s activity is its expansion all over the globe. With accession of Montenegro as its 29th member, NATO has a stronger foothold in the Balkans and in general attempts to spread its tentacles everywhere.

It establishes various allied formations, such as the falsely titled “Partnership for Peace” or “Neighbourhood Policy” with countries from the Mediterranean, Middle East, North Africa and Persian Gulf, and forms special relations with countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Sweden and Finland.

It has signed agreements with Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Latin American states etc. A characteristic feature of recent years is the US pivot to Asia-Pacific and the deployment there of significant military forces, in the framework of its competition with China.

NATO’s experience from the interventions and many (previous) years of occupation chiefly in Afghanistan and Iraq was codified in the strategic doctrine decided upon at the Lisbon Summit in 2010.On this basis, the strategy for the formation of Flexible Rapid Reaction Forces was reinforced, the foundations were laid for the creation of a Missile Shield, under the pretext of confronting Iran’s nuclear programme.

This course continued at the Summit in Wales, 2014, directing the NATO predatory alliance towards Eastern and Central Europe, the Baltic states, while maintaining its “interest” in the Middle East and North Africa.

Today, the Summit in Warsaw is elaborating, amongst other things, the experience of recent years in the light of the imperialist wars in Syria, Libya and the conflict in Ukraine, with the basic feature being the sharpening of the contradictions and antagonisms with Russia.

On this basis, the Summit will plan the activities of NATO for the next period and reinforce those plans that already underway, by taking the following additional measures:

Concentration and transfer of battle-ready military forces to countries that border Russia, completion of installation and operation of the so-called “Missile Shield” with bases in Romania and Poland, naval support and more general infrastructure connected to the use of nuclear weapons in a destructive confrontation.

Creating and strengthening a permanent NATO presence in the Black Sea, the Aegean and Mediterranean, for the latter two using the pretext of controlling the refugee flows that are caused and reinforced by the imperialist wars and their painful consequences at the expense of the peoples.

In practice, NATO’s presence in these regions is connected to the continuation of military operations in Syria, the preparation of a new intervention in Libya and the step by step monitoring of Russian military moves and political aims.

Another basic issue for the Warsaw Summit will be the strengthening of NATO’s military cooperation with the EU in order to serve their common, despite the contradictions that manifest themselves, aims to promote the interests of US and European monopolies.

NATO’s cooperation with political-military apparatus of FRONTEX is already being promoted as an achievement. This apparatus is being used by the EU in the Aegean to control the borders and is in the process of being replaced by the stronger apparatus of the “European Border and Coast Guard”, with the potential to intervene in the internal affairs and activity of the member-states and even counter to their governments’ decisions.

The imperialist interventions via FRONTEX and the “European Border and Coast Guard” are promoted for other regions as examples of NATO-EU cooperation, while NATO forces in the Mediterranean and Libya also cooperate with the EU’s military mission, called SOPHIA, and are preparing a new intervention in Libya, under the pretext of confronting the jihadists and supporting the Libyan government.

Of the 29 NATO member-states 22 are members of the EU. The NATO apparatus remains the basic military pillar of support for the Euro-Atlantic operations, but at the same time the EU also follows its own autonomous course and is forming its own military apparatus.

This course will possibly depend on the developments in Britain and its relationship with the EU, as 50% of the EU’s military spending comes from the British budget.

In any case, Britain plays  and will continue to play an important role in the NATO predatory alliance after the referendum result (BREXIT), for as long as capitalist ownership of the means of production and bourgeois power remain in place, state and governmental policy will work against the interests of the British and other peoples.

The developments are very dangerous, the inter-imperialist contradictions and antagonisms constitute the basis for wars and substantiate our concern regarding the danger of a generalized military conflict.

Our party denounces the political line of the bourgeois parties and governments, of ND, PASOK and SYRIZA, which entangles our country in the inter-imperialist antagonisms and  assimilates it even more deeply into the imperialist predatory alliances of NATO and the EU.

We note that the self-styled left government of SYRIZA, which deliberately fostered false expectations amongst our people, is following the classical path of a social-democratic party, a manager of capitalism, that represents and advances the interests of big capital and from this standpoint seeks the “geostrategic enhancement «of the country.

At a time when our people are suffering due to poverty, the SYRIZA-ANEL government continues the tradition of the ND and PASOK governments and spends more than 4 billion Euros a year -2.38% of the GDP- for the needs of NATO, occupying the second position behind the USA in terms of percentage of the GDP spent. The total amount spent by Greek governments in the period 2009-2016 (the period of the capitalist crisis) is calculated at being 38.8 billion Euros and this is a major scandal.
The SYRIZA-ANEL government makes the Suda base in Crete, other bases and Euro-Atlantic command centres available for the success of NATO, US and EU operations.

The KKE fights on a daily basis against NATO and the EU, against imperialist wars and interventions, demands that there should be no Greek involvement in these plans, for the return home of military forces that are abroad on imperialist missions.

The struggle as a whole will become more effective to the extent, through the leading contribution of the communists all over the world, the labour and people’s movement will be strengthened and acquire an antimonopoly-anticapitalist orientation and will aim to eradicate the root causes that give rise to wars, poverty, unemployment and refugees.

The developments require the strengthening of the struggle of the working class, the leading class in society, in coordination and alliance with the oppressed popular strata to overthrow capitalist barbarity, to conquer workers’ power for the construction of socialism, the disengagement from NATO and the EU and the creation of a higher form of international relations that will be based on mutual benefit and the people’s interests.

The European Communist Initiative   from the very first day of its foundation has formed a front against NATO and the EU and plans new interventions in the next period, which will particularly focus on the removal of Euro-Atlantic bases from each country.”

The representatives of the CPs of the European Communist Initiative, in the framework of their presence-intervention in Warsaw against NATO, participated in contingent of the World Peace Council at the anti-NATO demonstration in Warsaw on July 9.