Cyprus International Conference: Confronting Imperialism’s War Machine — The Global Struggle For Peace, Social Justice, National Sovereignty And The Environment
The conference seeks to create a broad, unified anti-imperialist front at the global level. Stopping the US war machine will require unity across nations. This Conference constitutes a qualitative leap toward achieving this goal.
The Cyprus International Conference is jointly organized by the World Peace Council and the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases. It is the culmination of serval years of work by both organizations to create broad anti-imperialist unity across continents and nations.
The unified and coordinated action of all forces opposing US/NATO militarist action is a fundamental requirement for a successful struggle to put an end to the military, economic, and environmental war that is being waged against all of humanity. The Cyprus International Conference Against Imperialism is a response to this historical necessity and a significant step toward creating a broad, unified international front against imperialism.
Join Us At This Important Conference “Confronting Imperialism’s War Machine — The Global Struggle For Peace, Social Justice, National Sovereignty And The Environment,” On March 27-29, 2020, In Larnaca, Cyprus. Register Here.
At the time of this writing, close to one hundred participants from about forty countries have registered to attend the Conference, and the list is growing. It is indeed a significant achievement that twenty-seven of the forty participating countries (close to 70 percent) are from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East — all, one way or another, victims of imperialist aggression.
It is for the first time that such a large number of peace organizations from every oppressed region of the world are participating in an international conference specifically organized to address the issue of imperialism head-on. This is an unprecedented historical achievement that we need to value and build on.
Yet, this achievement has not come easily. Rather, it has been the result of years of dedicated but difficult struggle by the World Peace Council at the global level, and the U.S. Peace Council and its anti-imperialist allied organizations in the United States.
As we are all well aware, a significant part of the peace movement around the world is under the influence of social democratic parties and governments of Europe, which are close allies of the United States in NATO and other similar aggressive treaties. In addition, many of the social-democratic forces in the peace movement are receiving financial support from numerous foundations affiliated with these parties and states. This social-democratic influence and the financial support that has accompanied it have had a negative impact on the peace movement globally. Most of these forces, concerned about losing the political and financial support from those funds, parties, and governments, have for decades refused to take an anti-imperialist position. And this has created a deep division between the social democratic wing and the anti-imperialist wing of the global peace movement over the very issue of imperialism.
With the help of massive political and financial support these forces have been receiving, they had managed to ignore and even in some cases isolate the anti-imperialist wing of the peace movement in almost every country, especially in the United States. And it was not easy for the anti-imperialist forces, with their limited resources and access, to overcome these negative influences in the movement.
However, the new wave of U.S. and NATO attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and many other countries after September 11, 2001, exposed the true nature of imperialism to many sincere peace forces who were under the influence of social democratic forces. They began to consider working with the anti-imperialist peace forces on various issues related to war and aggression. And this, for us, was the beginning of the long process of collective work that has now culminated in the convening of the Cyprus Conference.
In the U.S., our collective work began on Syria with a small number of anti-imperialist peace organizations. From there we decided to expand our anti-imperialist coalition by organizing a national movement against U.S. foreign military bases. This led to the creation of the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases consisting of close to twenty anti-imperialist organizations in the United States, which was joined by the World Peace Council immediately.
This new coalition organized the First National Conference Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases in Baltimore, Maryland in January of 2018, in which the WPC played a key role. However, for us, the focus on military bases was just a step toward our ultimate goal of uniting and elevating the global peace movement to the level of direct struggle against imperialism itself. The Baltimore Conference called for an international conference against US/NATO bases, which was held in November of the same year in Dublin, Ireland, hosted by our sister organization, PANA.
In both cases, we faced fierce resistance of the social democratic wing of the peace movement. They first refused to sign our unity statement and join these conferences unless we equally included China and Russia as similar threats to world peace as the United States and NATO. However, the resistance was broken as a result of the endorsement of these conferences by a good number of their member organizations from around the world. It was a great victory for us and the anti-imperialist movement as a whole that they finally participated and even spoke at these conferences.
However, although these two conferences were significant victories that took us a step closer to our ultimate goal, they were limited in that they did not address the issue of imperialism directly.
Join Us At This Important Conference “Confronting Imperialism’s War Machine — The Global Struggle For Peace, Social Justice, National Sovereignty And The Environment,” On March 27-29, 2020, In Larnaca, Cyprus. Register Here.
And herein lies the historical significance of the Cyprus International Conference Against Imperialism. This Conference is the final step in our long and difficult struggle toward the creation of a unified global front against imperialism, a front that includes not only the members of our WPC and No Bases Coalition anti-imperialist family but the broadest possible number of peace forces from around the world.
We are proud of what we have been able to achieve so far. But there is still a long and difficult struggle ahead of us. The peace movement is still too weak and too divided to be able to defeat the imperialists’ military, economic and environmental war machine. The imperialist states are acting globally in a united way in their effort to dominate and exploit all nations of the world. Only a globally unified, well-coordinated anti-imperialist peace movement will have the strength to put an end to the present madness that is pushing our world to the brink of total destruction.
It is our hope that the Cyprus International Conference Against Imperialism will be able to respond to this historical necessity
Bahman Azad is the Executive Secretary of the U.S. Peace Council and coordinator of the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases.