"On the struggle of the Communists against the EU, its war economy and the involvement of bourgeois governments in imperialist wars"
Contribution by Gerry Grainger, International Secretary of the Workers Party, to the European Communist Action meeting in Athens (16th February, 2025)
The Workers Party conveys its thanks to the comrades of the KKE for facilitating this meeting. It occurs at an important juncture, being on the occasion of the third anniversary of the beginning of the imperialist war in Ukraine and the Munich Security Conference 2025.
The EU is a Militarised Imperialist Centre
The EU is an imperialist centre which, in common with the US and NATO, supports aggression, increased militarisation, intervention and war.
The first phase of the development of the so-called European project commenced with the adoption of the Treaty of Rome in 1956 by the original six members of the Common Market to the adoption of the Single European Act of 1987. The next phase of development of the EU project – turning the then EEC from a “Common Market” to a unified political and military bloc moved through several phases were marked by the Maastrict Treaty, the Nice Treaty, the adoption of the Euro, the massive expansion of the group of ten, and the European Union Constitution / Lisbon Treaty.
One of the stated objectives of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) which was negotiated in Maastricht in 1991 was to assert the identity of the European Union “on the international scene, in particular through the implementation of a common foreign and security policy which shall include the eventual framing of a common defence policy”.
The Single European Act ensured that European common foreign policy provisions became a part of European law. The Amsterdam Treaty in 1992 added defence policy provisions and in 1999 the EU established the Political and Security Policy and Security Committee and agreed to establish an EU military capability, including the creation of an EU “Rapid Reaction Force”. In December 2001 the EU declared itself to be “militarily operational”.
The Lisbon Treaty reinforced the concept of the EU as a distinct legal entity, separate from and superior to, the individual member states which were required to support the EU’s foreign, defence and security policy. Increasingly, the EU, as an inter-state capitalist union, continued to play a greater role in the EU/US/NATO axis.
In June 1992 the Lisbon European Council set out the objectives for joint actions and particular regions designated for joint actions were Central and Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union and the Balkans, the Mediterranean, the Maghreb and the Middle East.
In 1994 NATO launched the so-called “Partnership for Peace” (PfP). It was proposed as a US initiative at the meeting of NATO defence ministers in Germany in October 1993, and formally launched in January 1994 at a NATO summit in Brussels. The involvement in Pesco and the Partnership for Peace by Ireland undermines any pretence at a commitment to neutrality and places Ireland at the service of imperialism.
In 1998 the Saint Malo Declaration, which constituted another step towards increasing European military capacity, stated that the EU: “must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so …” This device was characterised as a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP).
The EU and NATO have 23 members in common. Since 1989 all new members of the EU have become members of NATO. Accession countries are accordingly required to align their “defence and security” policies with those of NATO. NATO members are responsible for around 70 percent of the world’s annual military expenditure.
NATO-EU cooperation stretches back for decades. Cooperation further developed with the signing of the NATO-EU Declaration on European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in December 2002, affirming the EU’s access to NATO’s planning capabilities for its own military operations, and the agreement, in March 2003, of a framework for cooperation. EU defence spending reached a record €279 billion in 2023 and was projected to reach 326 billion in 2024.
The EU continually presses Member States to invest significant sums to increase military spending, to bolster military capabilities and support the associated scientific, technical and industrial machinery to encourage member-states to integrate “standardisation and interoperability” into their military designs.
Eastward Expansion
Imperialism, as the final stage of capitalism, is not simply an instrument of aggrandisement, it is an essential device for preserving the interests of capital and the monopolies. The drive to competition is a permanent and inherent feature of imperialism. The counter revolution in the Soviet Union and socialist countries and the subsequent restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe enabled imperialism to go on the offensive and led to increased inter-imperialist conflict. The US, EU and NATO which actively promoted and supported the counter-revolution in Europe sought to increase their advantage by pressing further east. In Ukraine the capitalist crisis led to a political crisis within the Ukrainian bourgeois class concerning its orientation and international alliances.
Pressing forward with plans to enlarge the EU eastwards to include Ukraine with the concomitant requirement that accession countries had to align their “defence and security” policies with those of NATO, and deliberately disregarding the history of the region, the EU and US through their interventions provoked a situation in Ukraine which led to a coup d’état, and the violent accession to power by a rightist elite (which contained a number of neo-fascists) in Kiev.
This, in turn, led to anti-communist repression, the legitimation of fascist forces by the regime and bitter fighting in the country. This intervention by imperialism took place in the context of competition with Russia.
War in Ukraine
Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe after Russia by area. The industry, coalfields and rich mineral resources in the east of Ukraine and the fertile soil provided the basis for a society to benefit its working people. Most of the country was bilingual, and Ukrainians inter-married, working and living alongside each other regardless of linguistic background.
Ukraine’s size, geography, valuable mineral resources and strategic location rendered it attractive to the monopolies. Bourgeois nationalists and various oligarchs began to foment reactionary ethnic and nationalist divisions. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Russia had actively considered a new alignment involving strengthening economic bonds and relations between with the EU, even extending to a potential military alliance.
However, the expansion of NATO posed a direct threat to Russia and, in particular, the invitation for Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO intensified imperialist rivalry. The European Union founded the Eastern Partnership (EaP), targeting six former Soviet states with the aim of countering Russia’s influence in Eastern Europe, enhancing Western imperialist reach beyond NATO’s eastern borders.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine provided a further pretext, not that any pretext was necessary, for further and increased Euro-Atlantic intervention in the region permitting the EU to proclaim its central role in European “security”.
The Workers Party has believed from the beginning that the war has an interimperialist character and opposed the Russian invasion but also has pointed out the dangerous role of the US, EU and and their involvement in the causes and escalation of the war. The Atlantic alliance, Russia and China, and other regional powers, have their own economic and geopolitical interests in a region of great significance.
The interests of the working class and the peoples of Europe and the world require an unrelenting struggle against imperialism in all its forms and the demand that class struggle and socialism represent the alternative.
The interests of the working class and the peoples of Europe and the world require an unrelenting struggle against imperialism in all its forms and the demand that class struggle and socialism represent the alternative.
Imperialist war is a product of the conditions of the imperialist stage of capitalist development and is waged for the political and economic exploitation of the world, for the control of export markets, for the sources of raw materials, the spheres of influence and investment of capital and for the control of transport routes.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has, unfortunately, led some communist parties into the error of supporting the positions of their own bourgeoisie rather than adopting a genuine socialist and anti-imperialist response. Some forces which regard themselves on the “Left” have shamelessly adopted pro-NATO positions while others have supported the Russian intervention ignoring the basic tenets of class struggle and socialist internationalism.
The Highest Stage of Capitalism
Communists cannot ignore, as the Second International did, the treachery of their own ruling class. Bourgeois Russia is not the Soviet Union. This is not a war in defence of a socialist state. The delusional positions adopted by the so-called World Anti-Imperialist Platform ignore the class nature of the Russian state and the fundamental principles set out by Lenin in his seminal work: Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Opportunism preaches class collaboration and national chauvinism under the guise of “patriotism” or “anti-fascism”.
The attitude of communists towards imperialist war is clear. We understand that that the threat of imperialist war cannot be permanently removed until capitalism is abolished and socialist society built on workers’ power is created.It is the task of the communists to expose the imperialist character of the European Union and the position of its bourgeois governments in the imperialist war machine.
It is our task to resist the imperialist narrative of “just” war and the opportunists’ false analysis which divides workers and undermines the class struggle. It is our task to take every practical step available to us against our own bourgeois governments, including our actions on the streets, to resist the war economy, to disengage from every attempt to strengthen all imperialist alliances, to uphold and advance the principles of class struggle and proletarian internationalism and the revolutionary Leninist tradition of unceasing opposition to aggression and war for capitalist profit and to declare that peace and an end to imperialist war can only be achieved under socialism-communism.
