Carter and Brezhnev in new balancing act

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forces. Breżhnev and Carter The existing military balance increasingly "hawkish" Carter could be preserved at less administration and by the know that such a course also material cost, placing the Thatcher government, however, brings political problems to the bureaucracy under less pressure seems likely to ensure that the imperialists who, with their own at home. Brezhnev scheme will be economic difficulties at home;

NATO tanks on manoeuvres in Germany Recent comings and goings on the military front offer an indication of the way in which both Stalinist and imperialist leaders are attempting to preserve the existing balance of forces.

Each feels threatened by the revolutionary upheavals of the working class, which on the one hand shows the possibility of the complete overthrow of capitalist exploitation in the dependent economies of Central and Latin America, Africa and Asia, and on the other jeopardise the power and privilege of the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy in the deformed and degenerated workers' states.

Under the innocuous slogan of "peaceful coexistence" , the "Communists" of the Warsaw Pact, Cuba and S.E. Asia remain firmly committed to the preservation of capitalist stability over the majority of the earth's surface.

This is their way of protecting their own unstable position, balanced as they are between the external force of imperialism and the power of the working class in their own countries.

Offer to withdraw

It was, therefore, no contradiction whatever for the Kremlin bureaucracy to extend its recent offer to withdraw troops and tanks from Eastern Germany in exchange for an agreement by the NATO alliance not to deploy updated Pershing missiles and nearly six hundred deadly ground-launched "cruise missiles'" in Europe.

For while the Stalinist bureaucracy are obliged to defend the nationalised property relations that form the material base of their privileges, they seek to carry out such defence not by revolutionary meansthe mobilisation of the international working class against the capitalist class in each country-but through bureaucratic, diplomatic/military Last week's referendum on the 'Statute of Autonomy for the Basque country (Euskadi) has provided the hard pressed methods.

And at a time of economic dislocation within the USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries in which they plainly fear growing working class militancy (hence the wave of show triats), it makes sense to the bureaucracy to attempt to carry out such defence as cheaply as possible.

Cutback

Were NATO to accept Brezhnev's proposal, the Warsaw Pact would not only be spared the added expense of countering the new missiles, but could also cut back on the deployment of conventional ground Intensive lobbying by an rebuffed.

Yet the Kremlin leaders are far from unanimously enthusiastic about • publicly embarking on a further lap in the "arms race"

Leading West German social democrats, including Willy Brandt and party manager Egon Bahr are arguing for Brezhnev's plan to be accepted and other NATO governments have shown themselves reluctant to have the new US missiles based on their soil.

Why, then, is Carter so intent upon pressing home this enormously costly arms buildup?

The answer clearly lies in the increasingly desperate plight of post-Vietnam US imperialism, faced with a world-wide upsurge of revolutionary struggles in the semi-colonial countries.

Carter's regime has been forced impotently to witness profound setbacks in Angola, in Iran and in Nicaragua. In mineral-rich Zaire, pro-imperialist dictator Mobutu had to be bailed out by French and Belgian intervention.

Despite noisy sabre-rattling the US is politically unable simply to dispatch the marines to impose a military solution in almost any part of the world.

So with the whole of Central America now a potential powder-keg of revolutionary struggles Carter has been looking for means of reasserting US military authority, and flexing his muscles without actually being forced to follow through with an actual major confrontation.

Humiliated

Prudently rejecting advice from defence advisor Brzezinski to send US troops to intervene in crisis wracked El Salvador, Carter has nevertheless been publicly humiliated following his ludicrously inept handling of the "revelation" of 3,000 Russian troops in Cuba during the Havana non-aligned summit.

The noisy and well publicised landing of a few hundred US marines, tanks land apparPershing missile ently a battalion of TV cameramen) on the long-standing US Guantanemo base on the tip of Cuba was a pathetic and inadequate face-saving attempt.

And even this gesture was out-trumped by Fidel Castro's triumphant return to the United Nations, where he drew rapturous applause from a packed assembly chamber for a 2½ hour speech.

Drum up support

This is why the NATO missiles plan has become: so important to Carter, and why US military advisors have been jetting around European capitals attempting to drum up support.

The blunt rejection of Brezhnev's proposals on East Germany is designed to reassert imperialism's authority-and also to make a positive impression on the average American red neck, whose anti-communist vote Carter is keen to attract in 1980.

And, after all, even if he were to get reelected, Carter need hardly worry about the colossal cost of the new missile batteries: taken on top of the recessionary policies imposed by his administration, and historic levels of inflation that are already eating deep into workers' living standards, the added cost to US workers of financing this latest lethal threat to their own own safety will scarcely be noticed.