Behind Carter's Cold Offensive

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We reprint in these four pages an abridged version of the document 'Behind Carter's Cold War Offensive' , which formed the main resolution on International Perspectives at the recent Fourth Annual Conference of the Workers Socialist League.

Principal sections omitted from this version are: a historical account of the initial 'Cold War' period of the 1940s and 1950s; a statement of the WSL's published position on Afghanistan (which has already appeared in Socialist Press); and an examination of the mounting economic and political crisis of the Stalinist ruling bureaucracies in the USSR, AN IMPORTANT SWITCH The very series of events that have followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the verý end of 1979 indicate a substantial shift of policy by the imperialists in their moves to repress the growing tide of revolutionary and national struggles.

Why has this shift taken place?((...)

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan-which since as long ago as 1955 has been clearly in the grip of Soviet economic and military influence -came obviously neither as a surprise to the imperialists (whose intelligence networks must have been aware, well in advance, of preparations tor such a major military operation) nor as a dramatic change in the established balance of forces.

But it did serve to underline unmistakeably. 'the relative political and military weakness of imperialism: and it offered the US imperialists in particular a pretext for launching a largescale ideological offensive against the Soviet Union, as the back-drop to a major military build-up.

It was the dramatic and rapia worsening of the overall plight of imperialism in its struggle to contain the masses on a world scale, rather than the specific events in Atghanistan, which has caused a substantial reassessment by top military and political chiefs, and precipitated the latest "turn"

Indeed, though 1979 saw the emergence of mass struggles that toppled the Shah as a mainstay of imperialist strategy in the Gulf, and ousted Somoza, US imperialism's chosen despot in Nicaragua, the events of the past year must be understood in relation to the chain of events reaching back to the launching by Nixon and Kissinger of the policy of "detente" in the early 1970s, and even as far as the massive revolutionary upheavals of 1968.

Tha alace hattlas of Marr 1110 Class vallics vI June 1968 in France and of 1968-9 in Italy, together with the mass mobilisation in Czechoslovakia that was crushed by the Stalinist invasion in 1900 '1nr served as a stern warning to both. the imperialists and, importanuy, lo ue sidst 11. -bureaucracies.

The break-up of the long post-war economic "boom" heralded also a disruption of the uneasy balance of class torces established on the basis of the Yalta, Potsdam and Tehran agreements, and reestablished in the wake of the Cuban revolution.

And the increased combativity of the proletariat both in advanced capitalist countries and in the deformed workers' states called for new measures to nrevent an allnut nolitical LU imammad challenge in which revolution or Europe, Asia and Cuba.

political revolution would be posed.

IMPERIALIST RESPONSE TO 1968 For the imperialists, the first steps were towards increased repression of colonial liberation struggles, combined with legal and economic measures to cut working class living standards at home.

This attack was both driven on, and made more difficult by the mounting economic crisis, which ran on unchecked, leading by August 1971 to the devaluation of • the dollar and the ending of its 27-year link to gold.

In the underdeveloped economies, anti-imperialist struggles were met by the most savage military measures by puppet regimes-bringing the bloody war of liberation in Bangla Desh, and a vicious crack-down on the workers' movement by dictatorial regimes in Bolivia and Sri Lanka in 1971.

In Chile, the foot-dragging, anti-capitalist moves of the Allende "Popular Unity" coalition came under increasing imperialist onslaught in a campaign of conscious economic sabotage and reactionary mobilisation that was to lay the basis for the Pinochet coup September 1973.

But it was in Vietnam and then Cambodia that the most savage and barbarous measures Y/rE NEBARBE l were unleashed, in a last-ditch bid by imperialism to stem the growing tide of mass struggle in both the semi-colonial world and in the advanced capitalist countries.

Nixon's escalation of bombing raids, defoliation exerCuses. napalm attacks and chemical warfare, in addition to a further huge build-up of US occupying forces, proved beyond doubt the unspeakable barbarity of imperialism faced with a major threat to its control.

But it also proved the enormous resistance of the oppressed masses of Vietnam in their struggle for national liberation.

And, as the continued resistance of the NLF forces, combined with the sheer horror of the war served to destroy the morale of the US conscript army, so the devastating economic consequences of the war in the US itself made themselves unmistakeably felt at home and abroad.

In these conditions the mass anti-war movement had a substantially increased impact.

Nixon was forced to look for alternative means of controlling the Vietnamese masses and the world proletariat.

And in this search he found common cause with the Stalinist bureaucracy in both the Kremlin and Peking, who likewise saw the Vietnam war as a threat to the existing balance of class forces. STALNIST CRISIS The period following the Czechoslovak Invasion had proven to be a period of crisis for the Stalinist bureaucrats too.

Continuing unresolved economic and agricultural crisis brought the ever-present fear that working class discontent would erupt once more in anti-bureaucratic struggle. : In Poland this took place in the Gdansk uprising of December 1970.

But on a world scale, too, the Stalinists felt themselves, and the uneasy balance of class forces with imperialism on which their power and privilege rest, to be under threat from the growing militancy of mass anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggles.

Within many mass Communist Parties, including those in Western Europe the spectre of revolutionary struggles prompted a more energetic turn by leading elements towards Popular Frontist politics designed to sap the independent strength of the working class.

Such a political turn, later to be further developed by Carrilio, Berlinguer and others, rationalised in the reactionary "theories" of Eurocommunism, led rapidly in Chile to the catastrophe of defeat at the hands of Pinochet.

In China too, the Maoist bureaucracy feared an escalation of class struggle in Asia.

They recognised instinctively that under conditions of political and economic instability and crisis, such struggles could flow over to mobilise the vast Chinese proletariat and peasantry in anti-bureaucratic struggles.

Accordingly they began their own moves towards establishing a form of "detente" with imperialism at the expense of the masses, and feted butcher Nixon in Peking in 1972-at the height of the US bombing raids. on Hanoi and Haiphong.

In snort, the weakening grip of imperialism in the early 1970s and the inability of even the most unbridled savagery to tame the struggles of the masses, coincided with a profound insecurity in the Stalinist This situation brought together these two pinacles of counter-revolution in a renewed attemot to stabilise the existing Aurenatera balance of forces. Polish riots 1970 Thus began the period of "detente" -launched by Nixon's advances and 1972 visits to Moscow and Peking, and growing through the 1973 Helsinki "European Security Conference"-the task of which was to ensure the security of imperiai ist control-and the initial moves towards the Strategic Arms Limitation (SALT) Talks.

in the train of these more general overtures came succession of trade deals offering fat profits to capitalist monopolies, and much needed commodities and technology to the Stalinist bureaucracy.

January 27 1973 saw the signing of the Paris cease-fire agreement, in which Nixon made the first moves towards withdrawing US armies from Vietnam, looking principally to the Stalinist leaders to restrain the struggles of the masses, and thus safeguard the puppet Thieu regime in the South. Indeed the agreement made no call for the withdrawal of the North Vietnamese troops.

TIme 11. - .... yet the protound instability of the Thieu regime itselfwracked by runaway economic crisis and politically discredited by rampant corruption-left it no room for manoeuvre.

At the same time the NLF forces in the South, fighting for their survival, continued their heroic armed struggles against the massively superior fire power of the Saigon army, whose morale plummeted daily.

The dynamic of the Vietnamese struggle in the material conditions created by the 26 year war, made it next to impossible for any amount 'of round table horse-trading to hold South Vietnam in the imperialist orbit.

The moves to "detente" were in essence a recognition of this reality, and an attempt to limit the scope of the loss to imperialism. It at least enabled Nixon to withdraw the US army pror to the eventua aereat.. 11. 1.

And 'detente' was a real attempt by the imperialists to seek a nolitical accommodation with the Peking and Kremlin leaders in order to redefine and uphold peacefully coexisting "spheres of influence".

The arantunl failro of thair dhc cvod vàvv vn approach was due not to any cynical breach of agreement.by tha Ctnlininto hut lornalu in tha u wialioro vul langury tu day inexorable rise in the militancy of the international working class.

But there is no doubt that the dramatic blow struck to 11.imperialism by the capture of Saigon by Stalinist-led forces in April 1975-and the subsequent victory of the Khmer, Rouge in Cambodia, served to shift the balance of class forces on a world scale.

This effect was heightened

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Cuban troops in Angola by the blow struck to the stability and confidence of Western capítalism by the massive upsurge that followed the military overthrow of the Caetano dictatorship in Portugal in April 1974.

The sheer scale and scope of the Portuguese events following the April 1974 overthrow of fascism brought back: to the capitalists agonising memories of the French 1968 General Strike.

Portuguese workers once apparently firmly under the fascist jack-boot, were suddenly breaking down all kinds of cherished barriers-occupying factories, forming their own workplace committees, marching in their hundreds of thousands, publishing capitalist bank-accounts, forming joint committees with students and even with rank and file soldiers, and jointly patrolling the streets armed squads to protect against fascists.

The bourgeoisie • was terrified. They needed political answer to this mass movement of the working class:

Eventually the answer to this dilemma was to be found in the reformist and Stalinist labour bureaucracy -but not until after the imperialists had begun seriously to question the commitment of the Stalinists to the preservation of capitalist stability in Portugal and West Europe as a whole.

"..'ndeed, it looked on number of occasions as if the Stalinists might be about to lose control of the Portuguese masses, particularly when, in November 1976 the CP resorted to the unorthodox tactic of an ultra-left move in order to sabotage the mass struggle.

But the commitment of the pro-Moscow CP to the preservation of the "peaceful coexistence" framework of the Helsinki accords vas proved in practice.

Portugal demonstrated beyond doubt to Marxists, that, MILL Eritrean liberation firhters no matter how "left" its rhetoric, no Communist Party offers workers any alternative or independent road.

But for the imperialists the Portuguese events showed once more the risks involved in placing reliance on the labour bureaucracy as a last ditch defence.

There remains in such a strategy the ever-present danger, should an alternative leadership be developed, that the Stalinists and reformists can be swept aside by the movement they are attempting to control and restrain.

AFRICA 1974 also marked a new stage in the weakening of imperialist control in Africa, as in Ethiopia a mass movement against the autocratic regime of Emperor Haile Selassie grew rapidly in scale and scope.

As the struggles mounted throughout the country the power of Selassie-a key ally of imperialism in the strategically vital Horn of Africavisibly crumbled.

Yet US imperialism, still licking its wounds from the Vietnam defeat, and particularly reluctant to provoke the black masses of the USA by engaging in a military intervention in Africa, was forced simply to watch as Selassie was eventually ousted in September 1974, and the Armed Forces Coordinating • Committee, known as the Dergue, came to power, talking of "socialism"

The petty-bourgeois leaders of the Dergue at once revealed their hostility to the mass movement of the workers and peasants-banning strikes and demonstrations and rounding up political activists. Yet the revolutionary tide that had created the conditions to topple Selassie remained as a massive pressure on the young officers of the Dergue, and an obstacle to their instinctive moves to cement relations with imperialism.

The first three months of 1975 brought a succession of far-reaching nationalisations of banks, insurance and credit institutions, of companies owned by the royal family, of gold and silver mining, utilities, transport firms and other enterprises, and a sweeping land reform in the countryside.

These moves were a blow to the imperialists and inflicted material losses, particularly to US interests.

But they also took place from above, in an attempt to contain and control the massesand the US imperialists at first attempted to reinforce the Dergue's control and buy their support, by doubling military aid and arranging to sell a package of $150 million worth of arms, including tanks and jet fighters.

But the evident inability of the Dergue to control the anti-imperialist masses-and in particular its failure to contain national struggles by Eritrean and other peoples-brought in 1977 a switch of US policy. Aid and arms shipments came to a halt. * Attention was shitted to cultivating alternative allies-in particular the Somali dictatorship.

Dergue leader Mengistu promptly approached the Kremlin bureaucracy to make good this shortfall.

And the Kremlin leaders, readily seizing the chance of a military/diplomatic outpost in such a strategic position on the African continent as a means of compensating for the growing internal problems within the Warsaw Pact and the unpredictable line of the "Eurocommunist" CPs-at once obliged.

In consolidating their at first uneasy alliance with Mengistu the Kremlin leaders were able, by despatching Cuban troops and Russian 'advisors, to combine their military-strategic objectives with tangible moves, alongside the Derg, to repress revolutionary struggles by the Eritrean and Ethiopian masses that threatened the balance of class forces throughout the African continent.

They secured this crucial bridgehead and base of operations without in any way coming into conflict with imperialism: rather the Stalinists moved into the vacuum left by the withdrawal of imperialist ANGOLA AND AFTER A rather different development occurred in Angola and Mozambique, where the direct imperialist withdrawal was the consequence of the Portuguese revolution of 1974 and where Stalinist-backed nationalist liberation forces stood ready for the drive to power.

But in Angola the presence of rival nationalist forces seemed to offer the imperialists and the South African regime an opportunity to prevent an outright defeat by interveningunder cover of the FNLA/ UNITA forces-to install a predictably tame pro-imperialist Such a solution held few attractions for the Stalinists. They would lose out on a possibly vital opportunity to establish a further strategic military/diplomatic outpost in Africa; and they knew that any attempt to impose such a government would prompt a prolonged civil war in Angola, which they would be called upon to support, and which might well radicalise the black African masses in more profound revolutionary struggles.

It was public knowledge that the post-Vietnam US imperialists were powerless to intervene militarily in Angola beyond the funnelling of CIA finance and clandestine operations; on the other hand the MPLA forces victory.

In this situation Cuban troops were despatched to assist in the MPLA's final drive to power in Angola.

This intervention was motivated not to further the struggles of the Angolan masses (whose struggles against Neto have subsequently been repressed with the aid of Cuban troops) but for the self-preservation of the Stalinist bureaucracy on a world scale in its diplomatic and military balancing act with imperialism.

But the intervention had nevertheless a profound impact on anti-imperialist struggles throughout Africa.

The smouldering bush war in Zimbabwe was rekindled into the flame which has since forced dramatic political concessions from the white racist regime in a bid to stabilise bourgeois rule; and the mass black proletariat of South Africa has, since the Soweto events, begun to flex its muscles-to the alarm of the South African capitalists and world imperialism.

Yet the Stalinists have done everything in their power to contain such developments and to prop up the petty-bourgeois MPLA government-making no attempt to transform it into a Cuba-style deformed workers' state.

Peaceful co-existence remains the watchword of Stalinism in Africa. The squalid betrayals by the petty bourgeois Patriotic Front leaders in the Zimbabwe struggles must be seen in the context of Soviet, Cuban and East German influénce on the guerrilla war-in which adequate supplies of arms and equipment have been consciously withheld in order to force a reactionary 'negotiated' settlement designed to leave Zimbabwe firmly in the imperialist orbit.

In South Africa, too, the Stalinist/ANC strategy of sporadic isolated guerrilla warfare linked to popular frontist alliances stands as a major barrier to the advance of the political independence. of the black working class.

And in Zaire the mere empty imperialist threat of reprisals against the Stalinists should they assist the struggles against the corrupt Mobutu despotism brought immediate apologies and disavowals from Cuban and Kremlin leaders, who pledged Attempting a carve-up through their support for 'stabilisation and the struggle against subversion' IMPERIALIST WEAKNESS CAUSES UNEASE The military intervention in Zaire b also spotlighted the massive problems faced by the imperialists in any challenge to Stalinism -particularly in the wake of the Vietnam defeat.

The US imperialists themselves had to sit on their hands, unable to send troops and were forced to do no more than supply cash and transport planes. The job thus fell to the second-string imperialist powers, France and Belgium.

These states themselves could not move until the Stalinist leaders of Cuba and the Soviet Union made it clear they would under no circumstances support or defend the rebel But even here, with the mobilisation of only a few hundred troops to intervene in Africa, thousands of French and Belgian workers took to the streets in protest.

And, even while the operation was taking place, the class struggle in France erupted into strikes on wages at naval dockyards and munitions plants, with riot police called in to break up the illegal mass meetings.

If all this happened with only a few soldiers committed to a brutal but short and small-scale military intervention, what chance have the imperialist nations got of carrying through the huge task of directly controlling events throughout the vast African continent. by military force?

S.E. ASIA: ANOTHER WARNING TO CARTER The growing unease of imperialist chiefs at the power of the Stalinist forces and their apparent readiness to use their own massive military machine to secure their political objectives was underlined at the very beginning of 1979 by the lightning-fast invasion of Kampuchea by the Vietnamese armed forces with Moscow's support.

Long-term hopes that the imperialists no doubt cherished of moving (perhaps through their growing links with the Chinese bureaucracy) towards a link-up with the barbaric Pol Pot bureaucracy to threaten the gains of the Vietnamese revolution were rudely shattered.

Imperialist impotence in S.E. Asia was heavily underlined.

And despite Chinese moves to draw the fire of the Vietnamese forces through a punitive incursion into North Vietnam, the feared and hated Pol Pot leadership proved itself incapable of mounting substantial resistance to the invasion.

For the American warmongers the lesson was twofold.

On the one hand renewed efforts needed to be made to develop the anti-Soviet political and military links with the Chinese Stalinists as the only possible challenge to Soviet influence in S.E. Asia.

The Chinese bureaucracyseeking massive economic assistance-were obviously wide open for such an approach.

On the other hand the S.E. Asian events demonstrated the imperialists' own military and political weakness, and increasingly unfavourable balance of forces within which they were forced to struggle to retain political control of the semi-colonial countries of Latin Ámerica, Asia and Africa.

1979 BODY BLOWS:

But if things looked bleak in the already largely-lost corner of S.E. Asia, this was nothing to the body-blows suffered by imperialism in 1979 in Iran and in Nicaragua. Two chosen and groomed gendarmes of imperialism in crucial strategic zonesboth armed to the teeth-were within a matter of months toppled by mass anti-imperialist struggles in which the US imper¡alists felt unable to intervene.

The political implications of each of these setbacks have been immediate and widespread, particularly at a point where the galloping world recession throws the entire capitalist and semi-colonial world into the most acute economic, political and social crisis.

Throughout Central and South America-from El Salvador to Panama, from Bolivia to Chile, from Brazil to Guatemala, the oppressed masses in struggle against Somoza's fellow US-backed puppet dictatorships have drawn strength from the Nicaraguan revolution-which was carried through without intervention

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Hednesday April 23 1980 Page 7 Anti-American demonstration in Tehran hough on the very doorstep of he American imperialists. Unstable military and 'demoiratic' • regimes are quaking hroughout the sub-continent: here is alarming evidence of the enewed strength and combatvity of the Chilean working lass, of workers in Brazil, and he resurgence of mass struggles h Bolivia and Peru.

Despite the political shortomings of the petty bourgeois ficaraguan FSLN leadership, herefore, their humiliation IS imperialism has acted to oth highlight and further levelop the offensive of the ppressed masses.

But such a development will rovoke little joy among the italinists .of Moscow and lavana.

Though Sandinista forces ave been trained at various oints by the Castroites in Cuba here is no evidence that Castro provided more than the most oken military or practical aid b the determined final offenive of the FSLN guerrillas gainst Somoza.

Indeed, Castro's attempts to ecure the liting of the rolonged US trade embargo on luba and to secure 'peaceful existence' with the oil-rich nd right-wing Mexican governient have been in no way ssisted by the Nicaraguan revoltion.

The development of a rofound economic and blitical crisis in Cuba itself now lakes it even more certain that he Castroite • bureaucracy's jain interest in the Nicaraguan volution in the next period rill be to help contain it withi the limits of petty bourgeois ationalism, and to assist the SLN to channel the energies ad independence of the masses Cuba-style-into bureaucraticIly dominated organisations.

Most of all they, together ith the Moscow bureaucracy, ill applaud the FSLN's explicit fusal to attempt to spread the volution to the other untries of Central America.

Such a development would it only increase pressures towps political revolution in iba, but also disrupt the entire lance of class forces in the b-continent.

Yet the imperialists can set no store by such Stalinist treachery. After all, Moscow and Havana could not prevent the overthrow of the Shah or Somoza; can they prevent any similar overturns in El Salvador or elsewhere?

And since the imperialists cannot convince themselves that the answer is 'Yes, they are forced to consider measures which they feel can be employed to combat and defeat revolutionary : and liberation struggles in Central and South America-in the Middle East, in Africa and in Asia.

1979 BODY BLOWS: IRAN But if Nicaragua represents a major political blow to US imperialism in its own backyard, it is dwarfed in significance by the threat that would be posed to Us and Western capitalism should a workers' and peasants' government emerge from the tumultuous struggles in Iran.

The balance of forces and the political situation throughout the Middle East have been completely transformed by the Iranian revolution.

It would be difficult to overstress the geopolitical importance of this region. As the site of the world's largest currently exploitable oil reserves, the Gulf area is of crucial international economic importance.

But the military significance lies, in its position at the very borders of the Soviet Union, with Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan flanking the southern underbelly of the degenerated workers' state.

Throughout this century, the Middle East has been an area of immense political turbulence which has constantly challenged the hold of imperialism.

Historic struggles against colonial rule, the military creation of the Zionist state by imperialism and the continuation of neo-colonial oppression and exploitation all have their living continuity in today's struggles of the Palestinians and Kurds to achieve self-determination for their peoples.

The overthrow of the Shah pitched this state of permanent tension into a new level of crisis, and inflicted a major defeat on imperialism while simultaneously dealing blows against the ruling Stalinist bureaucracies (in both Moscow and Peking).

The revolution brought problems to the rulers of every state in the region and objective ly strengthened opposition to their power within a very wide spectrum.

In the Shah the imperialists lost an invaluable ally -the trusted captain of the principal regional fortress and police force and a reliable merchant of precious oil supplies.

The conditions of his overthrow were even more disturbing to the imperialists: whatever the success of the counter-revolutionary leadership of Islamic clergy and their petty-bourgeois allies, the undoubted anti-imperialist zeal of the mass mobilisations, and the organised participation of the proletariat through strike action offered an example to workers and peasants throughout the Middle East of the revolutionary power which lay in their hands.

This factor was no less threatening to the Stalinists, who had long before achieved a comfortable understanding with the Iranian dictatorship.

Mass mobilisations against tyranny and imperialism, haunted by the spectre of independent political leadership from the proletariat, alarmed the Kremlin bureaucracy quite as much as it did the feudal lords, petty bourgeois bureaucracies and military dictatorships of the region.

TURNING FROM DETENTE TO "CONTAINMENT' In this worsening world situation for imperialism Carter and the US imperialist war chiefs (with enthusiastic sideline applause from Thatcher) have embarked upon at least a partial reversal of the tactic of detente.

Instead, the Cold War term of 'containment' of revolution through an anti-Soviet political and military offensive is being increasingly used to describe US foreign policy.

And whoever wins the coming US elections, this policy is certain to be maintained.

As more and more evidence has exposed the critical weakness of the allies and gendarmes of imperialism in the semi-colonial countries, so the insecurity of the capitalist class has increased, and with it the pressure towards a new military build-up and aggressive policy to contain anti-imperialist movements.

The first move to such a response-at the time of the Zaire events in 1978-petered out.

CalLCE • sabrerattling had apparently yielded prompt results-since Zaire was in any event never a part of Soviet strategy in Africa, ana therefore nothing was to be lost by their making a rapid statement to that effect.

But even while the SALT talks, trade deals and other aspects of 'detente' resumed their course, the US military lobby was beginning to pile on pressure for the introduction of new missile bases in Europe, for the building of the new MX missile system and for preparations to intervene in liberation struggles.

The fall of the Shah; the failure of Carter's half-hearted gunboat diplomacy to impress either the Iranian masses or the new Khomeini regime; and the potential threat to Western oil supplies and economic stability brought such pressures to a new peak.

Carter himself unveiled plans to compensate for the loss of Iran as a vital Gulf outpost through establishing a 150,000strong tactical strike force for use in the Middle East or the Gulf-or, obviously, anywhere else in the world.

The SALT Il agreement, drawn up amid fanfares was stalled in the US Congress, as imperialist warmongers pressed the campaign to persuade European governments to accept Cruise and Pershing missiles.

US Embassy in Iran einbarase ingly tweaked the nose of the imperialist generals, the clamour for military action grew. Yet the political and practical obstacles to such a course still seemed all but insurmountable.

At the very point that the dilemma looked most desperate for Carter and imperialism, however, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan presented them with a custom-built excuse for an orgy of the most frenzied jingoism, anti-communism and militarism-in an offensive that as yet shows no signs of abating.

Indeed, the pretext

Afghanistan as a larinch-pad for aggression has many advantages for the imperialists over the pretext of Zaire in 1978.

As an obvious direct invasion by the Red Army it can be pointed to as a clear example of 'Soviet expansionism' and aggression against a supposedly 'independent' nation.

At the same time the invasion-designed to crush "Islamic' right wing guerrillashas helped to drive a wedge between the Soviet bureaucracy and the 'left' Islamic nationalist leadership of Khomeini and Ban Bani Sadr in Iran.

It has even created conditions where imperialist propaganda can hope to sway the potentially anti-imperialist Musli Muslim masses of the East against 'atheistic' communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular.

This is entirely unlike the Zaire events, in which imperialism ineptly wound up identify. ing itself embarrassingly with the hated Mobutu dictatorship, thus effectively turning Mobutu's many opponents towards the Stalinists as forces supposedly fighting for his overthrow!

And, again unlike the Zaire episode, the imperialists have this time been able to exploit the so-called 'Soviet threat' to break out of their isolation and take steps towards new anti-working class alliances with bonapartist and feudal regimes around the Gulf area.

The additional advantage is that a military build-up that is supposedly aimed directly at combatting a ruthless move by the Red Army towards world conquest also creates favourable conditions for McCarthyite witch-hunting of . political opposition to such measures at home.

CONTRADICTIONS WITHIN THE NEW TURN All this is not to suggest that Carter and his fellow imperialists will be able to carry through such a switch of policy without major problems at home and abroad.

The first and foremost problem is the fact that the Soviet invasion was not an entirely new development, but merely an indication oi what had long been effectively the balance of forces both in Afghanistan and in Central Asia. No matter how much the imperialists might like to restore their prestige by administering a set back to the Soviet Union in this respect, there is no way they can hope to recapture Afghanistan, whie even prior to the invasion their intervention had been limited to the surreptitious arming (with aged weapons) of the reactionary guerrilla bands of the Afghan landlords, drug traffickers and feudalists who masquerated as 'Islamic' freedom fighters.

And while this was the state of play in Afghanistan, things are not much brighter for imperialism elsewhere.

The revolutionary and national struggles that the US strike force is likely to have to combat if the new turn is actually implemented rest solidly on a mass base of support-in many cases involving wide layers of the proletariat (El Salvador).

And the global nature of the capitalist crisis that is now fuelling anti-imperialist struggles in every continent means that the US . warmongers must stand ready to intervene in' several widely separated areas simultaneously, and to wage what in many cases will turn out to be prolonged, agonising colonial wars on the Vietnamese pattern.

Such wars would consume manpower, machinery and money in huge quantities-with no more certainty of ultimate success than in the Vietnam war itself, but with the certainly or an immediate recurrence of the immense social tensions that helped destroy the American war effort then.

Even Carter's talk of estab lishing a register preparatory to conscription has at once brought the re-emergence of the embryonic anti-war movement, with . demonstrations in a number of US universities.

In addition, ' the immense financial cost of the new weaponry and other expenditure in the military build-up already mean the complete abandonment of many of the social reforms promised by Carter in the last election, and a further twist to double-digit inflation in the US itself.

There is little doubt that further moves towards military adventures at the expense of the American working class will (as during the Vietnam - War) prompt mass struggles-and possibly even a break towards political independence-from the trade union movement.

The fact that the imperialist leaders seem little daunted by these problems and determined to press ahead with their new attempt to repress the movement of the masses is a further reflection of the fact that they are determined-no matter what the odds-to cling to their crisis-ridden system of exploitation and oppression.

Marxists must of course objectively recognise the successive setbacks inflicted on imperialism by the mass struggle of the workers and peasants of the world; and we must consistently show how these victories reaffirm absolutely the revolutionary potential and power of the working class, and the necessity for a leadership capable of tapping that potential.

But there must be. no illusions that, under pressure of such deleats,. imperialism on a national or international scale will simply give up the ghost, or peacefully and gradually disappear from the scene. Any scenario which depicts a dwindling imperialism finally handing over power to the working. class is a deadly, reformist illusion refuted by Marxism and refuted by the whole historic experience of the working class.

It is precisely in its hour of greatest weakness, when most threatened by the revolutionary movement of the masses and by its own internal crisis that imperialism reveals its most deadly characteristics, its most barbaric capacity and willingness to destroy the means of production and human beingsif need be by the thousand and the million in its struggle to retain power.

The only way in which the threat of such imperialist atrocities can be lifted is through the fight for social revolution in both the imperialist and semi-colonial countries, and for political revolution to unleash the revolutionary potential of the proletariat in the deformed • and degenerated workers' states.

LIMITS OF THE CARTER DOCTRINE' In the 1980 Cold War there are no US troops being despatched Korea-style to fight the Red Army in Afghanistan; and there is of course no immediate Kennedy-style threat of a nuclear holocaust along the lines of the Cuba missile crisis. Toppled: Somoza But the moves taken Carter do reflect a serious shift of policy and amount to a package of offensive moves against both the USSR and the world's working class.

The economic sanctions already taken include an embargo on grain sales and agricultural goods that could seriously disrupt Soviet agriculture; a suspension of licences for high technology exports aimed particularly at setting back Soviet oil production; drastic restrictions on Soviet fishing rights; and of course the sabotage of the summer Olympic Games, which will not simply create an acute embarrassment for the Kremlin bureaucrats, but is also an economic sanction -leaving them holding a huge bill for specially-built facilities, without the compensating tourist boom.

There have been limited moves by Carter's fellow imperialist leaders to back up these sanctions-in particular the Olympic boycott and the grain em bargo.

It is on the question of restricting technological and other industrial trade that the ranks_are most clearly splitwith French, German, Japanese and even US capitalists reluctant to sacrifice lucrative

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