Federal Government Goes Over to Openly Imperialist Foreign and Military Policy - Acute Danger of World War Evoked by Imperialists

1. With the decisions of 26/27 February 2022, the Federal Government makes the turn towards an openly aggressive imperialist foreign and military policy. It is actively preparing for war. For decades, it preached its fundamental fiction of pursuing a peaceful and humanitarian foreign policy, supposedly accomplishing change through trade. Now a very large coalition of SPD/Greens/FDP/CDU/CSU decided to send 1,400 anti-tank weapons, 500 surface-to-air missiles and nine howitzers with ammunition to the war zone in Ukraine. The Bundestag also decided to establish a special fund of 100 billion euros for the Federal German Army and wants to amend the Constitution for this purpose. The MLPD condemns these decisions in the strongest possible terms.

2. One must speak of the acute threat of a world war. The danger of a 3rd World War has never been as great. Ukraine is the site of a war between two imperialist camps - USA/NATO and Russia - which currently show that they are prepared for everything. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is preparing to cancel the NATO-Russia Founding Act, in which NATO pledges, among other things, not to deploy nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe. New-imperialist Russia is also increasing its threats and putting its nuclear forces on alert. SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that for "nuclear sharing" he would further develop the Eurofighter for use with American nuclear weapons. The German government thus reaffirms its readiness and demand for access to the use of nuclear weapons.

3. Scholz went on to say, "Without any ifs or buts, we stand by our obligation to provide assistance in NATO. ... President Putin should not underestimate our determination to defend every square meter of alliance territory together with our allies. We are very serious about this." What is Germany doing "on every square meter" of Eastern Europe? It is also an commitment from the lessons of Hitlerite fascism that German troops have no place abroad. The CDU/CSU, supposedly the opposition in the Bundestag, declares unrestricted support for Scholz and tops it off with its hard-liner Friedrich Merz: "Today's decision can only be the minimum." It is no coincidence that the government also receives full support from the AfD on the issue of expanding armaments. What was unthinkable just a few weeks ago has been evoked by massive psychological war preparation and war rhetoric on the part of German politics, its institutions and monopolies, and the bourgeois media.

4. The Ukrainian Selensky government is neither democratic nor worthy of support. It is a reactionary capitalist government that seeks to enter imperialist alliances like NATO and the EU. The working class and broad masses there are exploited and oppressed as in all capitalist countries. The population of Ukraine is one of the poorest in Europe, despite the country's wealth in raw materials. Displaying communist symbols is prohibited under penalty in Ukraine. In 2018, there were legal torchlight marches in Kyiv honoring Hitler collaborators, and the government has integrated the fascist Azov regiment into its army. Last summer, Volodymyr Selensky personally fell in the backs of striking miners in his hometown of Kryvy Rih and backed the mining oligarch's brutal repression of strike leaders. And now he is suddenly supposed to be a representative of these people and these workers? The KSRD in Ukraine, which is closely linked to the MLPD, writes on 27 February 2022: "We think that this is a clear and unfortunately tragic example of a struggle between different imperialists. It doesn't matter which of these imperialists is ' worse ' - every imperialism brings suffering and death." Our solidarity and support belongs not to the reactionary Selensky government, but to the Ukrainian workers, the mass of the population, who are under fire and fleeing in the tens of thousands.

5. The German people and working class must - like the peoples and workers of other countries - unmistakably emphasize: We keep it with the KPD founder Karl Liebknecht, who in 1914, under the slogan "Not a man, not a penny for this system!" was the only one in the Reichstag to vote against the war loans: "The vital interests of the proletariat (working class) in all countries are equal and common. They require that the proletarians of all countries, by the most vigorous development of the class struggle, unite their efforts to put an end to the barbarous slaughter of human beings as soon as possible and to impose upon the belligerent governments their common will for peace." (Collected Speeches and Writings, Vol. 8) [own translation]

6. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) declares that the war loans are "an investment in our freedom", in "our order of values". The international working class follows a different order of values than Mr. Lindner. His phrases about freedom and democracy are nothing but demagogic fraud. All bourgeois parties in Germany are service providers of the dictatorship of the monopolies; bourgeois democracy is their shell. Everything is subordinated to the interests of the leading monopoly capital. This system does not ensure freedom and democratic values, just as the government does not keep its promises of social change and resolute environmental protection. The social, political and ecological achievements and demands are now to be plowed under with the course for war.

7. NATO is not a peace alliance! The current conflict was prepared and evoked not only by the new-imperialist aggressor Russia, but also by the USA, as the main global warmonger, and NATO. It was U.S. President Donald Trump who canceled international disarmament agreements such as the INF Treaty and two other arms control agreements, which President Joe Biden did not reactivate either. Making Eastern Europe a NATO deployment area was not a peacekeeping measure. What is happening now is an expression of the failure of previous bourgeois diplomacy and imperialist pacifism. That means: preaching peace in words and pursuing imperialist policies in deeds.

8. Times of war are always also times of psychological warfare, and today's debate in the Bundestag was no exception. Theatrically, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock campaigned for Germany's expanding of armaments, saying that a decision had to be made "between war and peace, between the aggressor and children in subway shafts." But neither NATO, nor the U.S., nor Germany is on the side of peace and children in Kyiv subway shafts. Neither of these governments stands for peace, the aggressors are on both sides of the front. This imperialist war is being fought, as always, on the backs of the masses of people and the working class of all countries. They are the decisive protagonists against this war!

9. The MLPD calls on all peace-loving people to keep a clear head, to take a proletarian class standpoint, not to swear to "national unity" with warmongers and not to be infected by the war hysteria! The 500,000 people who demonstrated today in Berlin stand for the great desire for peace of the mass of the population. At the same time, consciousness must be considerably sharpened not to side with any imperialist warmongering.

10. Chancellor Scholz calls for a "national exertion of force". The working class and the masses of the world are not ready to pay for the imperialist war policy! This, while others are enriching themselves from this war. For example, the German armaments company Kraus-Maffei-Wegmann, with dollar signs in its eyes, offered a special delivery of 50 tanks. The invocation of "national unity" is typical of those in power in wartime. We, on the other hand, organize workers' unity across national borders.

11. At the beginning of World War I, the German Emperor called on all parties to a Burgfrieden (truce). We are currently experiencing a kind of modern truce policy in Germany. Politicians with a left-wing image from the SPD, the Greens and even parts of the Left Party are siding with NATO's armament policy. During the election campaign, the Greens demanded in their election program a "new push for disarmament" and "no weapons in war zones", with which they won many young voters. What the MLPD advocated, not only in the election campaign, is now being confirmed: the opportunism of these parties, which "help shape" capitalism and imperialism, leads in times of crisis and war to social chauvinism and to the open betrayal of the interests of the workers', environmental and peace movements.

Develop active resistance against the acute danger of a 3rd World War !

Russia and USA/NATO: Hands off Ukraine! Stop the Russian bombardments and withdraw the Russian troops!

Onto the streets against the war and the armament plans of the German government: The latest decisions must be taken back!

No German exports of arms, no soldiers to Eastern Europe! Withdrawal of all German troops from abroad!

The main enemy is at home!

Dissolve NATO and all imperialist military alliances!

Strengthen the Internationalist Alliance as an organizational form of the new peace movement!

Strengthen the revolutionary workers' party MLPD and its youth league Rebell!

Fight for the right of self-determination of peoples, for peace, friendship among peoples, genuine socialism!

Workers of all countries, unite! Workers of all countries and oppressed, unite!