– N. Ribar –
As U.S. imperialism kept a watchful eye over its operations in Afghanistan, funding the terrorists known as the Mujahideen, including its to-be arch-nemesis Osama bin Laden (a then CIA agent), all in order to weaken and dismember the Soviet Union, it was actively making preparations for Eastern Europe in the chance that they succeeded and the Soviets lost the Cold War. The implication here was deafening: the idea that Eastern Europe could never emerge as an independent force but had to be suffocated under the weight of this or that superpower. It was all laid out in U.S. National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 54, dated September 2, 1982, and signed by none other than President Ronald Reagan, originally labelled “SECRET” and declassified only after the dirty deed had been carried out.1
Right at its opening, the document defines hawkish U.S. policy to come clearly, stating that “the primary long-term U.S. goal in Eastern Europe is to loosen the Soviet hold over the region and thereby facilitate its eventual reintegration into the European community of nations.” Who are these countries? In a footnote, it defines them as Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Poland and Romania, additionally stating that Yugoslavia “will be the subject of a separate NSDD,” number 133 two years later to be precise. In these countries, the U.S. set out blatant interference in their internal affairs by attempting to undermine their legitimacy and sovereignty, violating every norm of conduct between countries as stated in international law.
Politically, it defined its aims as “Encouraging more liberal trends in the region… Furthering human and civil rights in East European countries… Reinforcing the pro-Western orientation of their peoples…” These “liberal trends”, “human and civil rights” and “pro-Western orientation[s]” they sought to advance are the typical language used on the eve of imperialist regime change. The U.S. imperialists knew very well that the people were relatively displeased with life under revisionist rule and exploited their discontent by planting their seeds and attempting to show that they were on the side of the oppressed, that being against their ruling classes meant being on their side. The “liberal trends” being typical western bourgeois organizations and parties meant funding an opposition to the hybrid capitalist-yet-economically-planned revisionist power. The “human and civil rights” meant rallying all those who had felt wronged by the regimes, not excluding prisoners but also not only meaning them — it included those bourgeois who had their property seized in times of genuine socialism. The “pro-Western orientation” was intended for all those internal elements who were closely linked with the NATO pact and the Anglo-American bloc, either by pure mental persuasion or those who were active agents, to spring into action and propagate against the system in power.
On the economic side, the document formulates its objective as “Encouraging more private market-oriented development of their economies, free trade union activity, etc.” While in many of these countries, such as Poland and Hungary, long were the states left at the behest of private market speculation and in specific predatory loans given by greatly U.S.-funded institutions like the IMF, this was not seen as sufficient. They needed another way to influence their internal affairs, and what better way than to encourage a bigger and bigger traditional western bourgeoisie opposed to the hybrid system of state power and determined to tear it down? This ultimately culminated in the famous “shock therapy,” a paradoxical name for something that ruined the lives of hundreds of millions of people and spawned the greatest humanitarian crisis in Europe in many decades. As for “free trade union activity,” this meant trade unions in the pay of U.S. capital that really did not represent the aspirations of the masses of workers, most notoriously Solidarnosc, the prototype which they hoped to launch in every Eastern European country. This Solidarnosc, once in power, proved itself to be more anti-worker and anti-social than all of the revisionist regimes combined, led by neo-fascist policies. A “free trade union” thus might very well mean Mussolini’s “workers’ corporations” or Hitler’s “councils of confidence.”
These previous goals, so in line with a “pure” and “humanistic” worldview of bourgeois liberal values, fall apart with the understanding that was reached by the U.S. militarily in their next goal. NSDD 54 reads: “Undermining the military capabilities of the Warsaw Pact.” While alone, the claim of weakening military capabilities of a sovereign state is unjust according to the very “international order” the imperialists so proudly talk about to this day, this was not all. It was to weaken the military of the entire Warsaw Pact. Taken along with their “loosen Soviet hold” primary goal, these actions had a definite role as a type of proxy war against the Soviet Union, having nothing to do with the liberties, safety or sanctity of the people they proclaimed to care about. It was to win an imperialist war.
But what about NSDD 133, the National Security Directive Decision on Yugoslavia? This one was dated March 14, 1984, stamped “SECRET” and “SENSITIVE,” again signed by President Ronald Reagan and declassified only in 1996.2
This document, just as revealing but using much more cloaked language, is brought out fully only when the actions of the U.S. and its international institutions are elaborated. It expressed a will to “seek to expand U.S. economic relations with Yugoslavia,” but not just in any way, and especially not in a way that was beneficial to the stability of the country. Despite the flowery language of the document, it is clear the NSDD meant to entangle Yugoslavia in the web of U.S. monopoly capital. The next line is even more open about its policies: “U.S. policy will be to promote the trend toward an effective, market-oriented Yugoslav economic structure.” The Yugoslav revisionist system subsisted on anarchy of production, western capital, billions of dollars in debt-accruing loans, and this was not capitalistic or open enough for the U.S. evidently.3 Not even the massive reserve army of labour, such as that not even seen in imperialist countries, with unemployment rates reaching a quarter in some regions, was enough to deter the quest for maximum profits.
By the late 80s, the largely U.S.-funded IMF, of which Yugoslavia was waist-high in debt, ordered the country to “restructure” (a cushiony euphemism of the time, among many others, for rapid and harsh privatization) its economy on a massive scale. One such implemented demand was for the privatization of every bank in the country, including even the National Bank of Yugoslavia and the banks of each republic, under the dictate (“guidance”) of the World Bank.4 In 1989 and 1990, 614,000 industrial workers were forcibly laid-off due to IMF-induced “trigger mechanisms” to cause unprofitable businesses to fold into bankruptcy. This represented nearly 25% of the entire industrial workforce, many of those did not see any wages in that time frame.5 And even those who remained employed were subject to wage freezes retroactive to November 1989 as inflation spiralled out of control.6 The country’s currency, the dinar, became so inflated that each newborn baby inherited about a million dinars of debt from the previous generations.
All this ultimately crushed and isolated the economy, stirred up the nationalist sentiments that were long ignored through simply proclaiming a naive and fictitious “brotherhood and unity,” and fractured the political system. Peoples who, in spite of great challenges, lived in harmony for many decades, were at once split along ethnicity and many of those who fell in between became stateless persons.
Make no mistake — this outcome was engineered by U.S. state policy. The Foreign Appropriations Act of 1991 lobbied by President George H.W. Bush prior to the collapse of Yugoslavia stated a motion which: “Prohibits, six months after this Act’s enactment, the expenditure of funds made available pursuant to this Act to provide assistance to Yugoslavia.” The modus operandi of the U.S. was made clear with this act — “we made your country dependent on our loans and ‘aids’ since the 1950s, and now we have cut you off, that is… unless you declare independence.” But this was not simply limited to U.S. funding, the act also “Directs the Secretary of the Treasury to instruct the U.S. executive directors to international financial institutions to oppose any assistance to Yugoslavia.” So the heavily U.S.-influenced institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, were also directed to cease dealing with Yugoslavia, again with the caveat that this would not apply to those countries who had declared independence.7 The options were two: stay in Yugoslavia and suffer economic devastation with our punishing hyperinflation or leave it and we will procure some economic “medicine” for you. This was a pure demonstration of the jungle law, might makes right dictum, great-power chauvinism, coercion and blackmail where no people can freely determine their destiny.
All this culminated in regime change and the beginning of the anti-social offensive at the dusk of the imperialist rivalry between the two superpowers. The world was passing into a new world order with “universal” values of the “free market” and “political plurality” enshrined in documents such as the Paris Charter. There was simply no room for any set of values that contradicted private property in the region earmarked for new sites for expansion and aggression to someday go East. The great hopes the people had in 1989-91 that they would constitute themselves the nation never came to pass because their power was co-opted, usurped, by U.S. imperialism who simply wanted to rush the demise of its superpower rival and, in the end, “loosen Soviet hold” over Eastern Europe by coming to dominate it themselves. The genuine discontent turned to colour revolution, where the “new” relations ended up being just as exploitative as the old relations, if not more exploitative.
Today, as much of Eastern Europe has joined NATO, the U.S. imperialists breaking their promises to Gorbachev not to “move one inch eastward,” we have a similar situation. While the two above-mentioned documents to destabilize and overthrow Eastern Europe were only declassified after their goal had been achieved, we do not even need to wait to find out what plans the U.S. has in store for Russia, which it very blatantly has sought to control and encircle. In 2019, the RAND Corporation released a very revealing report entitled Overextending and Unbalancing Russia.8
But firstly, what is the RAND Corporation? It was founded as a think tank to support the U.S. Army and is largely funded by U.S. state sources, including the Pentagon and CIA. Additionally, it openly admits that it is proud of its history, claiming that it oversaw and devised U.S. strategy in winning the Cold War, the very scenario the two NSDDs above dealt with. Their open “recommendations” should certainly be taken seriously by all who are researching the development of U.S. imperialism’s ever-greater hostile and aggressive actions before our eyes.
This report, long covered up by the bourgeois press, reads like a playbook for the present. Specifically, many of the actions to counter Russia which are deemed “high risk” have been taken up over the past year with a renewal on NATO militarization of all sectors of life. 1. “Impose deeper trade and financial sanctions” — the new sanctions against Russia are some of the deepest in the world, even taking the unprecedented step of removing them from the SWIFT system for international banking transactions. 2. “Provide lethal aid to Ukraine” — the U.S. and the West collectively are sending billions upon billions in lethal aid to Ukraine all the time, so much that the U.S. government has been unable to account for where much of this aid has gone.9 3. “Promote liberalization in Belarus” — even before Russia’s involvement in the war in Ukraine, this plot was put into motion, with a coup attempt against President Lukashenko after the 2020 election, where the second-place candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (who finished with little more than 10%) unceremoniously declared herself “National Leader of Belarus.” 4. “Deploy additional tactical nuclear weapons” — NATO is placing B61-12 nuclear weapons specifically designed for first-strike scenarios throughout Europe.10 5. “Break out of the nuclear arms control regime” — relations have deteriorated between the U.S. and Russia to such a point that the two countries which possess 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons only have a single arms control treaty active, the New START.11
As it turns out, the RAND Corporation is as closely connected with U.S. ruling circles as it likes to claim. They’ve taken the riskiest decisions and plunged humanity back into the dark danger of nuclear war hanging over all our heads, and in this regard the U.S. still holds by far the most aggressive nuclear policy in the world, reserving the right to use it first and without any real aggression against them. The anti-Russia hysteria of today was all part of a concerted plan.
Where else can we find “secret” U.S. plans out in the open? One of the most blatant is the question of the existence of biological research labs funded by the U.S. on Ukrainian soil. On Wikipedia, for example, this is named with contempt as the “Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory” and not given serious consideration, attempting to create a smokescreen against certain established facts.
On March 6, 2022, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation released documents purportedly from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine dated February 24, 2022, the day Russia began its involvement in the present war, ordering the destruction of “biological pathogenic agents,” including some purely research intended bacteria, but also salmonella and other deadly bacteria.
Are these documents legitimate? One thing is for certain: there has been not only a wholesale dismissal of these documents, but an active cover-up and total censorship of their existence. We cannot say they are genuine, but we also cannot say they are not genuine. Upon their release, the whole western press made a clamour about false Russian disinformation on the topic. To their dismay, Victoria Nuland, the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs who is famous for her involvement in the Nuland-Pyatt call planning the coup of Yanukovych, announced that not only do these facilities exist, but that the U.S. was actively working with the Ukrainian government to keep dangerous materials out of the hands of Russia.12 What that means can only be inferenced by one who reads against the grain.
Later, Russia announced that the U.S. funded and was involved in the development, upkeep and research at these biolab facilities. Once again, the western press raised the issue of Russian disinformation, and fact-checkers came out in droves to say that there was no evidence of Russia’s claims. Yet on August 29, 2022, the U.S. Department of State released a statement about these biolabs, which, while denying the existence of any biological weaponry, said that: “Our governments [the U.S. and Ukraine] have partnered openly and transparently through the Biological Threat Reduction Program.”13
The crux of the problem now seems to be the existence or non-existence of weapons in the Ukrainian facilities, but we should note that Russia’s attempt at the UN Security Council to create an international committee for its investigation was vetoed by the U.S. What is the U.S. hiding in Ukraine? We do know that it is the only country in existence today that has provably used bacteriological and chemical weapons against civilians. Most notably, they directly sprayed infected insects, dropped thousands of packages, nets, bombs, etc. containing plague, cholera, anthrax and bacteria causing gastrointestinal infections in Korea as part and parcel of their genocide of the Korean people during the early 50s.14 A similar use of weapons is well-known in the U.S. war of aggression against Viet Nam. One might very well ask: if there do exist biological and chemical weapons, a claim which has some evidence and has not yet been disproven, was this an element of a U.S. proposed plot in an eventual proxy war with Russia, such as the one that is ongoing, and in specific against Russian civilians? Was this part of many U.S. plans regarding Russia, such as the one the RAND Corporation outlined?
At the very least, it has been made clear that the western monopoly press is not objective, as they so proudly claim to be. They cannot even be relied upon for basic facts. When its “facts” are disproven, it does not issue corrections or inform its viewers in any way that they had given false information. This is the method of the Hearst Press and its famous yellow journalism, which was plain sensationalism to arouse imperialist and warmongering sentiment with no regard for the truth. Nor can the U.S. government be relied upon, though occasionally it is only slightly more transparent about its activities. Everybody paying close enough attention has seen that the U.S. has been caught red-handed in Eastern Europe, for its intrigues against the pro-Soviet countries and Yugoslavia during the 80s and today against Russia.
The question of how to proceed is a question of outlook. The graciousness of the U.S. imperialists, that country which smashed Yugoslavia, causing millions to have their lives destroyed, put hundreds of millions of Eastern Europeans and Soviet citizens in all-encompassing poverty, cannot be called graciousness at all. Though it would like us to remain docile and swallow its propaganda about human rights whole, we know for a fact that it is the greatest abuser of human rights since the Second World War.
It is not concerned for the peoples of the world, and today especially not for the people of Ukraine, who it threw into a grave crisis in 2014. It is not disinterested but very interested in everything it does — its foreign policy remains the rapacious control of foreign markets, while its internal policy remains the maximum exploitation of its people. It does not shy away from war, even in its false post-Soviet “new age of peace,” simply to secure these markets. Indeed, its official ideology since the new century has been elevated to a point where if they cannot control markets, they simply destroy them along with the nation, with no regard for the human catastrophe in the fallout. Ongoing examples of this are the experiences of Syria and Libya, formerly independent countries which have been carved up by terrorist and revanchist forces, subjugated by imperialism and more or less wiped off the map.
So, where must the people and, first of all, the working class stand? We must see all these events not as the product of a battle of just versus unjust ideas or democracy versus dictatorship, but by observing the material contradictions which are now crystal clear. The international antagonisms are ripening to the ill fate of U.S. imperialism, which has attempted to keep them at a dull roar for the past 30 years. As a result, in its utter desperation it has launched an even sharper offensive against the people. Real wages are decreasing with rapid onset inflation and stagnant pay, standards of living are plummeting, 2022 saw the second largest percentage drop in real disposable income ever (only behind 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression) and an astonishing 35% of U.S. adults are reliant on their parents for bills.15 All this while trillions are being spent on militarization and intrigues of various kinds. The imperialist state is not out to protect the people, but to plunder them to use for such nefarious aims.
We must take up the cause of smashing the real disinformation campaign waged by U.S. imperialism, unveiling the truth about their involvement and interference around the globe and for what purposes they are there. But, fortunately for the working class, the crises like the one we are seeing at present are a sign of moribundity and decay in the extreme. These kinds of ultra-destructive scenarios can only be the sign of a dying system barely hanging on, fighting to its last breath for every last second of state power. Indeed, the bourgeois system cannot be innovative at all at this stage, as shown by its need to destroy that which it cannot control. In that sense, the old is already dead, but the new has not come into being. The work for us is to prepare the subjective conditions in the form of a mass communist party, activate the peoples’ consciousness and prime the situation for the end of exploitation of persons by persons. Fidel Castro has said: “Crises are not resolved by either administrative or technical measures, because they are systematic and each time they affect the economy and globalization of the planet.”16 The need is to act now, with an aim against a self-cannibalizing system, and consciously. The many plots the U.S. has prepared and executed in Eastern Europe cannot pass!
Notes
1 NSDD 54, United States Policy Towards Eastern Europe, https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-54.pdf.
2 NSDD 133, United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/public/archives/reference/scanned-nsdds/nsdd133.pdf.
3 See Enver Hoxha, Yugoslav “Self-Administration” — A Capitalist Theory and Practice.
4 Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, 2nd ed., Global Research Publishers, Montreal 2003, p. 263.
5 Chossudovsky, Ibid., p. 264.
6 Chossudovsky, Ibid., p. 261.
7 H.R.5114 – Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1991, https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/house-bill/5114.
8 RAND Corporation, Overextending and Unbalancing Russia: Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10014/RAND_RB10014.pdf
9 Drago Bosnic, Pentagon Cannot Account For $20 Billion Worth of Weapons in Ukraine While Another $19 Billion for Taiwan Is Missing, https://infobrics.org/post/37191.
10 Manlio Dinucci, The B61-12 Mini-nukes “Made in America” to be Used in “A Nuclear First Strike”. Coming Soon to Italy, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands., https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-b61-12-mini-nukes-made-in-america-to-be-used-in-a-nuclear-first-strike-coming-soon-to-italy-belgium-germany-netherlands/5786765
11 Drago Bosnic, US Arms Control Talks Offer to Russia – Genuine Move or More Hot Air?, http://infobrics.org/post/36310.
12 Tyler Durden, Nuland Warns Russia May Seize Ukraine Biolabs, Could Stage False Flag Using Bioweapons, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/nuland-warns-russia-may-seize-ukraine-biolabs-stage-false-flag-using-bioweapons.
13 Joint Statement on the Contribution of Cooperative Threat Reduction Partnerships to Global Health Security, https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-the-contribution-of-cooperative-threat-reduction-partnerships-to-global-health-security/.
14 Chinese People’s Commission for Investigating the Germ Warfare Crime of American Imperialists, Report on the Crime of American Imperialists in Spreading Bacteria in Korea, Peking 1952.
15 Michael Snyder, We Just Witnessed an Economic Sign That Hasn’t Happened Since the Peak of the Great Depression in 1932, https://www.activistpost.com/2023/01/we-just-witnessed-an-economic-sign-that-hasnt-happened-since-the-peak-of-the-great-depression-in-1932.html.
16 Fidel Castro, Obama’s Song, http://en.cubadebate.cu/reflections-fidel/2009/04/03/obamas-song/.