Oliver Tambo: War and Peace

Oliver Tambo: War and Peace

(Statement of O.R. Tambo, President ANC – SA – to the International Preparatory Committee of the World Parliament of the Peoples for Peace, Sofia, Bulgaria, 23–27 September 1980)

“On behalf of the African National Congress and the people of South Africa, I wish to greet the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Government and people of the Socialist Republic of Bulgaria, the land of Dimiter Blagoev, Georgi Dimitrov, the land of comrade Todor Zhivkov.

“We greet the World Peace Council and congratulate you on bringing together this great assembly of peoples. Our congratulations go particularly to you, comrade President Ramesh Chandra, who has built the WPC into a mighty world force for peace. Likewise we salute this great and historic assembly sitting at the World Parliament of the peoples for peace.

“I wish at this early stage of my contribution to acknowledge the support and assistance the ANC and the fighting masses in South Africa received from you gathered here from different parts of the globe, together representing a cross-section of the world. We take this opportunity to extend our solidarity with all peoples fighting against colonialism, racism, Zionism, fascism, neo-colonialism and imperialism, for national liberation, peace and social progress.

“In this connection, let me declare on behalf of our oppressed masses – the fighting children, youth, workers, women, churchmen, peasants, patriots of South Africa – our firm solidarity with the Palestinian people led by their vanguard, the PLO and its indomitable leader, Yasser Arafat. Together we share the common obligation to defeat the growing and dangerous racist-Zionist alliance of South Africa and Israel. As we have done before, we re-affirm our solidarity with the people of Western Sahara and the POLISARIO; FRELITIN of East Timor and the gallant peoples of Latin America, including the heroic Nicaraguan people, the people of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, North America and revolutionaries in Indo-China and other parts of Asia.

“Finally, we salute the heroic Namibian people, our allies and comrades-in-arms in the struggle against the fascist regime of Pretoria. In no way could I more fittingly underline the unity in struggle between SWAPO and the ANC, than by adopting in this statement, that portion of President Sam Nujoma’s address to this World Parliament which dealt with the situation in Southern Africa, in the course of which he correctly described the struggle in South Africa.

“This World Parliament of the Peoples for Peace convenes at a crucial and opportune moment in world politics when the international forces in favour of peace have great need to get together to examine once more the fundamental question of war and peace globally. It is clear to all of us present here and millions besides that international tension has increased sharply in recent times. The prospects for the maintenance of world peace seem much dimmer today than they were only a little while ago.

“We have convened here to examine this dangerous situation so that individually and collectively we can understand it better. Out of that understanding must come a response from this historic gathering aimed at saving mankind from the horribly destructive fury and the unimaginable consequences of a thermos-nuclear war. But whence this threat to international peace and security? It would seem to us that the world is entering a period not dissimilar to that which characterised the world scene for a quarter of a century prior to the end of the Second World War.

“World War II represented the most determined offensive by the forces of reaction to halt the progress of mankind towards a better life free from national and social oppression. Millions of people paid with their lives to save humanity from a reign of tyranny that would have been unparalleled in its savagery and brutality.

“Thanks to these sacrifices, the Second World War ended with the confirmation of the historical inevitability of man’s national and social emancipation. Among its most important results were the destruction of Nazism – the spearhead of international reaction, the wrenching from the oppressive and exploitative world imperialist system of a number of countries and the alteration of a number of countries and the alteration of the international balance of forces in favour of the national liberation movement in the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“The period of the ‘Cold War’ after the Second World War represented an attempt by world imperialism to negate these results and to retain and reimpose its hegemony over the peoples. Thanks to the strength of the socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union, and the vigilance of the world peace movement, the intentions of the imperialists to impose their will on the world by force of arms were foiled. For 35 years now mankind has managed to stave off a Third World War.

“The atmosphere engendered by the forces of reaction during the period of the ‘Cold War’ however created the possibility for international imperialism to unleash a destructive arms race, to conduct local wars, to intervene physically in many countries and to resort to gunboat diplomacy as a matter of course. This period saw the military occupation of South Korea by the United States, brutal United States aggression against heroic Vietnam and the people of Indo-China as a whole, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the policy of blockade, military confrontation and provocation with regard to Cuba, and the expropriation of vast Arab and Palestinian lands by the Zionist regime of Israel.

“The invasion of the former Congo Kinshasa, now Zaire, the overthrow of Mossadeq and the installation of the Shah of Iran, the destruction of progressive governments in such countries as Guatemala, Brazil and Dominica in South America, all expressed the naked resolve of international imperialism to impose its diktat on the world. To this period belongs also the policy of the opening of military bases in many countries outside the imperialist countries themselves, as well as the formation of aggressive military alliances such as NATO, SEATO and CENTO.

“The historic victory of the Vietnamese people against the occupation forces of the United States and their puppets has a significance which goes beyond the fact that Vietnam is today free and united. Vietnam represented the all-round defeat of the bellicose policy of the imperialists in the post-war years in its entirety. Vietnam confirmed that the international balance of power had shifted irrevocably in favour of the forces of national independence and social progress, whatever reverses these forces might suffer here and there. Vietnam proved to the forces of reaction that the socialist community of nations, the rest of progressive mankind, and the world anti-imperialist movement, had sufficient political will and strength to resist and defeat the most desperate machinations of these forces of reaction.

“The rout of the US forces in Vietnam represented also the collapse of the policy of nuclear blackmail followed by the United States since Hiroshima. Vietnam opened the eyes of the ruling groups in the imperialist countries to the fact that vast numbers of their own peoples were no longer prepared to be dragged to the slaughter as feckless combatants in the imperialist wars. Representing the views of the saner circles within the US ruling class, Senator Edward Kennedy has observed that ‘the lesson of Vietnam’ is that the United States must shed the cumbersome mantle of world policeman.

“In place of that mantle, the perspective that peace-loving mankind offered the United States and its allies was that of peaceful coexistence and cooperation among states with different social systems, the limitation of strategic arms and the reduction of already existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons, détente and the solution of international conflicts by peaceful negotiation, and the recognition in practice of the right of each people to determine its own destiny.

“For a short while it seemed that imperialism had accepted that this perspective was the only rational one. It appeared that the ‘lesson of Vietnam’ to which Kennedy drew attention was at last beginning to form the foreign policy of the major Western countries. In this context, the vast majority of mankind welcomed the growing strength of détente which was exemplified and reinforced by such agreements as SALT I and II and the Helsinki Accords on European Security and Cooperation.

“At the same time, this period, characterised by movement towards the relaxation of international tension, saw a quickening of the process leading to the national emancipation of the peoples, the strengthening of democracy and the enhancement of the prospects for social progress in many parts of the world. Accordingly, not only were the countries of South East Asia liberated. That process also found confirmation in Africa with the collapse of the Portuguese empire and the birth of new independent African states, and recently, the birth of the new Zimbabwe. During this period, democratic revolutions took place in many parts of the world including Ethiopia and Madagascar, Afghanistan and Iran, Portugal and Nicaragua.

“At the same time the movement for a new and equitable international economic order gained in strength, characterised by just demands for greater control over national resources, against domination and exploitation by the transnational corporations, for less exploitative terms of trade which favoured the industrialised Western countries at the expense of the raw material producers, and for a redistribution of the world’s productive capacity to enable the poor nations to feed, clothe and house themselves. All these political and economic developments confirmed the correctness of the thesis that a secure, just and stable world peace favours the movement for national independence, democracy and social progress.

“The fact of the matter, however, is that the forces of reaction have themselves learnt this truth. They learnt it practically in such countries as Afghanistan, Iran, Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, and Grenada in the West Indies. In those countries they have found it impossible to repeat what they did in Chile. They learnt it also in Cyprus, where a combination of Turkish military invasion and an attempted coup d’etat by internal reactionary forces has failed to transform Cyprus into a NATO staging post.

“US President Carter describes this situation as ‘turbulent’ and the world as ‘a dangerous place’. In his address on May 9th this year to the Philadelphia ‘World Affairs Council’ he said: ‘The central reality that confronts America today is that of a complex world – a world that is turbulent because it is politically awakened for the first time in its collective history’. Recognising that the fact of the awakening of the peoples of the world constitutes a danger to continued imperialist domination, the force of reaction are trying to find ways to impose their own version of tranquility on the world scene.

According to President Carter at the same Philadelphia meeting to which we have referred, the contemporary world: ‘requires confident, stable and powerful American leadership to shift the trend of history away from the spectre of fragmentation and toward the promise of genuinely global cooperation and peace’. Earlier in the year Carter’s National Security Advisor, (Zbigniew) Brzezinski, had expressed the same sentiments when he said that 85 per cent of the world’s population is seeking ‘a significant redistribution of political economic power’. He went on to say that: ‘If (in this process) American power is overshadowed, there is the real danger that this process of global adjustment which is so far-reaching and which is of unprecedented magnitude, will gradually degenerate into anarchy and violence and can be exploited by our adversaries for short-sighted ideological ends’.

“Representing the view of powerful business interests, the US magazine ‘Business Week’ observed in an issue during March 1979 that between its collapse in Vietnam and the fall of the Shah, the United States had been ‘jolted by a series of shocks signalling the accelerated erosion of its power and influence’. ‘Business Week’ went on to point to the absolute independence of the United States on international markets and foreign raw materials, and said that US leaders were convinced that the ‘reaffirmation of American influence was necessary if the US was to preserve the way of life that had been build after the Second World War’ (See: Afrique Asie, No. 220, 1980).

“Speaking for the military circles of the United States, Defence Secretary Brown told the New York Chamber of Commerce in June of this year: ‘There is (today) among the US public a better recognition that the United States does have vital interests extending well beyond our shores to distant and sometimes unfamiliar parts of the world. There is a greater willingness to protect these interests and to assume our proper role as a world leader. There is renewed understanding both of the need for the military and the needs of the military. Indeed public opinion polls show the highest level of support for increased defence spending since 1950.’

“For his part, Samuel P. Huntington, former assistant to Brezinski and now Director of the Harvard University Centre for International Affairs, speaking in the same vein as an important section of the US academics specialising on strategic and foreign policy questions says that: ‘the general (US) public is clearly unhappy with (the) decline (of US power and influence) and wishes the United States to reassert itself in world affairs … there is renewed support for the military forces and related instruments necessary to support a firmer stand against the Soviets’. (The Washington Quarterly, Autumn 1979).

“We have quoted at this length from US sources to give this Parliament a view of what constitutes what the ruling group in the United States calls a ‘new national security consensus’, and because we believe that the prime source of the present international tension and threat to peace is exactly this ruling group. The United States, leader of the world imperialist forces, constitutes today the spearhead of the international forces of reaction. According to the calculations of Washington, the only way to fashion an international order that accommodates the interests of imperialism, is openly to resort to the threat or the use of force to an extent equal to or surpassing that achieved at the height of the Cold War.

“In pursuit of this policy, the Carter Administration has decided inter alia on the following measures:

“(a) the abandonment of military détente in Europe through what the US describes as ‘modernisation of theatre nuclear weapons’ (Muskie. US News and World Report, August 18, 1980). In fact this means the introduction of new weapons into Europe, especially the Pershing II and Cruise missiles. This has been accompanied by attempts to strengthen NATO and to enhance its aggressive stance. As part of this operation special attention is being paid to Turkey to reinforce her as a NATO base. Further, there are ongoing discussions to increase the importance of Portugal within the NATO deposition of means and forces and to bring Greece back to the NATO fold. In this process the United States has taken many steps which effectively seek to turn many countries of Western Europe into vassals of the United States, compromising their sovereignty and using them as instruments for heightening confrontation with the Soviet Union and other European socialist countries;

“(b) the further enhancement of the military power of the US in the Middle East through a policy which aims to strengthen Israel as well as integrate a number of Arab countries in the military schemes of the United States. Already Egypt has been ensnared into these schemes. The United States is arming Morocco, enabling her to continue her illegal occupation of the Arab Democratic Republic of Sahara. The support given to Morocco however also aims at giving the US the possibility to use the Moroccan armed forces and Moroccan territory in its global strategy. Reinforcing these forces is of course the US Sixth Fleet based in the Mediterranean;

“(c) the transformation of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean into a vast military base of the United States. According to the international press there are, in the vicinity of the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, the largest concentrations of US air and naval forces that this century has seen (Afrique Asie, No. 213, May 1980). Oman is being transformed into a principal strategic base. Military facilities have been sought in some East African countries. Most important, also, the US and Britain are cooperating to build the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia into a huge air and naval base for US forces. Already the US has placed large forces in the Indian Ocean and continues to raise their strength. France also has, according to the US Defence Secretary Brown ‘a powerful naval force in the Indian Ocean’ (Speech to the ‘World Affairs Council’, Los Angeles, April 7, 1980).

“Needless to say, apartheid South Africa forms part of the imperialist build up in this area. Certainly, as US Presidential candidate observed recently, ‘nobody can doubt South Africa’s strategic importance’ which is confirmed by the continuing contacts between the United States and Pretoria in the nuclear field.

“(d) the domination of South East Asia and the Far East through a continued US military presence in the area and the incorporation of military powers in Far East Asia as allies of the US. As the then Assistant Secretary of State for South East Asia declared in February last year: ‘I believe that the essential fact is that, for the first time this country, the United States has established bonds of cooperation with the two giants of Asia: Japan … and China … This is of great strategic importance which is truly colossal. The position of the United States in South West Asia is today stronger than it has ever been for twenty or thirty years’ (Afrique Asie, No. 205: Jan-Feb, 1980)

“(e) the frustration of all genuinely progressive change in the Caribbean and South America. For this purpose the policy of confrontation with socialist Cuba is being refurbished. The United States is once more resorting to the promotion of coups and the support of the most reactionary regimes in this area to defeat the struggle for the social renewal of this region. The most recent and current results of this policy are the coup in Bolivia and US arms deliveries to the reactionary regime of El Salvador.

“(f) the deployment of US troops so that they are available on the spot or can reach quickly any area that Washington may determine. In August this year United States Secretary Muskie announced that ‘the (NATO) allies agreed in May to give us greater flexibility in deploying our forces outside the NATO area’. (US News and World Report, August 18, 1980).

“Consequently the US has constituted a ‘Rapid Deployment Force of 100,000 men capable of reaching any part of the world quickly and at short notice. This has reactivated the policy of acquiring bases and other military facilities to service its mobile air and naval intervention forces. The mobility of other US forces is also being enhanced. This includes such measures as the prepositioning of equipment, especially naval vessels.’

“The totality of these measures has raised alarmingly the military profile of the United States and its allies in international politics. Many countries are faced with the direct and immediate threat of Western military intervention. By these actions the forces of reaction led by the United States have considerably increased international tension in the hope that in the atmosphere it will be possible for imperialism to impose a path of evolution on the peoples that will not threaten its exploitative and oppressive interests.

“It is this which threatens world peace and not some fictional ‘expansionism’ of the Soviet Union. It is to the defeat of this aggressive stance of international imperialism that this World Parliament must address itself. It would seem to us that among the issues to which we must address ourselves as a matter of urgency are the following:

“1) the building up of the peace movement especially in the imperialist countries in defence of détente in Europe, between the Soviet Union and the United States and throughout the world, for disarmament and the ratification of SALT II;
2) the launching of a struggle for the withdrawal of US forces back to their bases in their own country;
3) the intensification of the struggle for the transformation of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf into a Zone of Peace by the withdrawal of imperialist troops and bases from the area;
4) further reinforcement of the struggle for a just and lasting solution of the Middle East problem including the fulfilment of the national aspirations of the Palestinian people under the leadership of the PLO;
5) intensification of the struggle for the liberation of Namibia and the destruction of the apartheid regime of South Africa as part of the struggle to restore peace in Africa and to demilitarise the Indian Ocean;
6) the strengthening of the movement for solidarity with all the peoples such as those of Indo-China, who are daily being confronted with acts of aggression aimed at restoring imperialist hegemony over their countries;
7) the raising of the level of support for the peoples of South America and the Caribbean who are threatened by the reactivation of the ‘Monroe doctrine’ which seeks to maintain this area as an extension of the US economic and political system;
8) the strengthening of the struggle for a new international economic order which would benefit from the implementation of an actual programme of disarmament and would itself add immensely to the securing of world peace and security.

“We believe that victories in our common struggle on all these fronts would achieve the purpose for which we are gathered here has the task to find the ways and means of achieving these victories.”

– Oliver Tambo (23–27 September 1980) –

Source;
Oliver Tambo, “War and Peace”, Sechaba, January 1981, pp. 4 – 11.

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!