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it had been in practice largely Brezhnev embracing Taraki only days before his overthrow lanat the Soviet bureaucracy in a move that might see them squeezed out of the Russian market on a long-term basis.

And the military moves have also been fraught with complex problems.

The most friendly response to Carter's hard line has come from states that offer him almost as much embarrassment as assistance.

Whatever the difficulties, it seems clear that the US is deter mined to pull together its available supporters in a new and more aggressive anti-Soviet alignment designed to curb the rise of revolutionary struggles.

The present Cold War, however, has definite limits.

In particular, the relative strength of US imperialism, both economically in relation to its European and Japanese allies, and militarily in relation to the USSR has declined dramatically since the 1940s, 1950s and even the 1960s.

And the world capitalist economy, far from being set on course for a 'long boom' in which the inflationary effects of huge armament spending could be minimised within a framework of expansion, is headed into a profound recessionary crisis, in which national rivalries and tensions between the imperialist powers themselves are already rising to the surface in the form of protective measures and competitive devaluations.

In several cases major imperialist powers depend for a substantial area of their export revenue or imported supplies upon trade with the workers' states, and are obviously reluctant to gamble on the outcome of breaking such links.

At the same time the extent to which such a Cold War situation can be pressed along its present lines is limited by the extremely limited objectives of the Kremlin bureaucracy itself, which moved. into Afghanistan for misguided defensive rather than aggressive reasons, and which is by no means embarked on a global policy of expansionism.

To maintain the momentum of his campaign of anti-Soviet hysteria, Carter needs to be able to point to continuing threats of such 'expansionism'-which are by no means likely to be easy. to find in the coming period.

WHY THE INVASION?

It had been plain to observers for some time that the Soviet-backed Afghan regimes of both Taraki and then Amin were losing the struggle for control of the countryside against imperialist-backed "Islamic' guerrillas-with less USS R -Badakhshan KABUL nis tan Paktia akis Karachi Gwadar Ka than 50% in government at the time of the invasion.

This crisis of political control was worsened by factional strife between the two main elements of the Afghan CP, and the massive and rising popular hostility to Amin, who had deposed Moscow's man Taraki less than a year earlier.

With the threat of an imperialist-leaning regime eventually defeating the Amin government and installing itself in this vital strategic cross-roads nation and on the very doorstep of the USSR itself--at a time of acute instability in Iran and signs of unrest among sections of the USSR's own 30-million strong Muslim population-the Kremlin leaders weighed their options for restoring stability.

The already increasing signs of a hardening US foreign policy had made ratification of the SALT Il treaty and any further moves to 'detente' unlikely.

And an imperialist military intervention in Iran could not be entirely ruled out-a move that would make conditions even worse in Afghanistan.

The Stalinist leaders moved therefore. with customary bureaucratic/military measures to impose an authoritarian 'stability' on the peoples of Afghanistan-with the use of tanks, rockets, helicopter gunships and unlimited military manpower.

Another factor in the invasion may well have been the breakdown of talks with the Peking Stalinists which had been aimed at reducing tension on the USSR's Eastern borders. The Afghan/Chinese border is reputedly close to key Chinese missile sites.

But it seems clear that the Stalinist leaders were surprised by the scale of the imperialist response to their invasion.

Though Afghanistan wasaccording to the reactionary post-war carve-up of the world between imperialist and Stalinist leaders-theoretically in the imperialist sphere of influence, dominated by the Kremlin tor over 25 years.

Moscow leaders appear to have genuinely approached the invasion as a routine bureaucratic policing exercise, though perhaps one that spelt out the status quo in slightly more concrete terms.

In circumstances other than the present acute and worsening political and economic crisis of imperialism, the Kremlin leaders may well lave uccu 1g u hora hoon right in their attitude that nothing very unusual had happened, and that no unexpected changes should arise from it.

WILL THE USSR TRY TO CONQUER IRAN?

It is clear that whatever secondary strategic advantages the Soviet bureaucracy may have derived from the invasion of Afghanistan have only been obtained at considerable political, economic and military cost.

Tens of thousands of men, tens of millions of pounds from an already tightly stretched budget, scarce resources in foodstuffs, and tons of highly sophisticated military equipment have been committed to a possibly open-ended military undertaking in a country that has a whole history of repelling invaders from every quarter.

Should the invasion be followed up by moves to assimilate the terribly backward Afghan economy into the Soviet system, the borders that the USSR is obliged to defend would effectively be extended by thousands of miles. Yet if no such moves are made, the problem of maintaining any kind of stability in Afghanistan could well prove insuperable.

And in an attempt to fore stall a prolonged radicalisation of Islamic reaction that might spread to the Muslim peoples within the USSR, the Moscow bureaucracy has risked an invasion that might well produce exactly that reaction and actually worsen its internal political problems.

We can. only judge, therefore, that in such conditions 1115-00 the invasion of Afghanistan was not an aggressive, but a defensive, move of last resort for the Soviet bureaucracy, determined not to sacrifice control of a vital buffer state to imperialism.

But no such motives would explain a Soviet move into Iran.

Iran has since World War II Afghan right wing guerrillas been explicitly and without reservation a part of the imperialist spehre of influence: it is a strategic outpost and a key oil state which the imperialists could not afford to allow to be captured by the Soviet Union.

Any attempt to do so would provoke an open military battle that would almost certainly develop towards a Third World War. The Stalinist bureaucrats recognise this reality and will under no conditions move militarily into Iran.

Indeed, far from exploiting the mass struggles in Iran, the Kremlin bureaucracy distinguished itself at the height of the demonstrations and strikes against the Shah by sending birthday greetings to the butcher "king of kings' as he shot down workers and students in the streets.

As the Shah's control faltered and came to an end, the Kremlin leaders shifted their opportunist attentions to the reactionary Islamic leaders-a posture they have maintained to this day, with the aid of the Stalinist Tudeh Party.

There is no doubt that if it were possible through diplomatic manoeuvre, economic dealings and other means to consolidate a close bond between the Kremlin leaders and the Islamic Republic in Iran the Stalinists would eagerly seize the opportunity to secure supplementary oil supplies and to neutralise a potentially powerful anti-Soviet force in the Gulf. -whatever the upheavals that erupt within the Iranian borders.

What is not so clearly excluded-though still unlikely -is that the Soviet bureaucracy from its new advanced position in Afghanistan might-in order to divert the energies of the Zia dictatorship-continue its traditional policy of support for the national liberation struggle of the Baluchi peoples.

The Baluchis appear to have drawn renewed strength from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Such a policy could eventually open the door to a Sovietinfluenced breakaway Baluchistan-with the possibility of the much-feared Russian access to warm water ports on the Indian Ocean.

It is too early to predict what direction will be taken on this issue by a bureaucracy that is still plainly only just coming to grips with the new world posture of imperialism.

But we should not rule out an analysis of Soviet strategy that includes a willingness in certain favourable conditions to take advantage of imperialism's weakness, or to strike a bureaucratic/military blow in exchange for blows struck by imperialism.

What we must and • do exclude is the prospect of the Stalinist bureaucracy unleashing or mobilising the revolutionary potential of the working class either in the deformed and degenerated workers' states or in the countries in the orbit of imperialism.

Cold War or no Cold War, the Stalinist bureaucrats recognise as surely as the imperialists that the most dangerous enemy of their parasitic power and privilege remains the working class.

STALINISM AND IMPERIALISM: THE NEXT PERIOD We have tried to show the context in which the various limited moves in the 1970s by the Stalinist bureaucracy to extena 1s worla innuence nave 1 _11 :M... harr been taken under conditions of a retreat or defeats for imperialism.

context, in which the Kremlin Wollleal.

leaders (and, in their own way, their Peking colleagues) have attempted to safeguard their own unstable and parasitic rule by preserving a global balance of forces with imperialism-and to this end simultaneously restraining the struggles of the vase working class.

As a political current and as a key material force in shaping the international class struggle, Stalinism completely retains its driven to carry through measures that conflict with imperialism, it does so in such a bureaucratic/military fashion as to impede or even set back the development of proletarian political consciousness.

It is for this reason that the unfolding class battles on a world scale raise again and again the crucial question of constructing Trotskyist parties to carry through the struggle for the overthrow of imperialism and the fight for political revolution to liberate the workers and peasants in the Stalinist-ruled states from the dictatorial repression of the parasitic Unlike those • opportunist currents (as diverse as the International Spartacist Tendency and the US SWP) that pose as Trotskyists while they "Hail the Red Army" , the Workers Socialist League attributes no progressive historic role to the Stalinist bureaucracy or its police-military apparatus, either within the deformed and degenerated workers' states or in the international class struggle.

We defend unconditionally -against all forms of imperialist attack-the nationalised property relations of the workers states, which have their origins in the historic gains of the 1917 October Revolution, and the subsequent defensive expansion of the USSR in the post-war period.

We defend unconditionally all revolutionary and anti-imperjalist movements in the semi-colonial countries-from Ireland to the Sahara; from Eritrea to El Salvador; from Palestine to Namibia-against imperialist repression.

But in neither case do we in any way ally ourselves with the reactionary politics of the Stalinist bureaucracies, or with the bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalist forces that seek to iestrain workers' struggles while exploiting the power of the masses • for their own political objectives.

Our stance is first and foremost to assert, detend, extend and consciously develop the political independence and leading role of the proletariat in the struggle against imperialist oppression and Stalinist dictatorship.

To this end we have fought to develop-on the basis of the 1938 Transitional Programmeelements of a programme and perspective adequate to guide interventions into today's class struggle on a world scale.

Only such an approach can lay the basis for the building of a truly internationalist Marxist vanguard party as part of a reconstructed Fourth Inter-.

national.

Concluded

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