The radicalisation of the global political process, clearly expressed in the West’s military and political adventure in Ukraine and the new iteration of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has significantly increased the degree of strategic instability in the world. Realising the decline of its hegemony and the collapse of Pax Americana – the American-style world, the US and its junior NATO partners are naturally resisting the trend towards the formation of a just multipolar world with the participation of Russia, China, India and a number of other countries. Nevertheless, the crucible of the new global confrontation is expressed not only in the build-up of military-industrial complex production, the formation of alliances and power rhetoric, but also in the inevitable demand for peace. A prime example of this is the recent anti-war pacifist conference held in Rome with delegations from more than 30 countries, including Russia, the United States, China, Morocco and other European states.
Anti-war rally in Rome on 28 October 2023 Source photo: internationalpeaceconference.info
The international conference for peace, held in Rome from 27-18 October, was organised by the political organisation Dissent Front, which gathered like-minded people from anti-war associations and anti-NATO movements. The aim of the meeting is for its participants to “create an international network of coordination to achieve specific goals.” “This forum, which was supported by many organisations from different countries, has been in preparation for almost a year. Initially we focused on the crisis around Donbass, on the unjust destruction and disadvantage of the local population, to which the SMO of the Russian Federation was the answer, but now the Palestinian issue has been added. The main thing that unites us all here is opposition to imperialism so that it does not lead to the unleashing of new conflicts,” Gaia Fuzai, coordinator of the Dissent Front, told TASS news agency.
Characteristic of the delegates’ speeches were the theses that the conflict in Ukraine is in fact a war against NATO, as well as a warning to the rest of the world about the continuing aggressive imperialist policy of the United States. Washington’s actions still threaten to ignite old and new conflicts against the shifting of the world pole from west to south and east. As the delegate from South Korea pointed out, the US is seeking destabilisation in the Asian region, to which the Chinese representative said: “No NATO in Asia”.
Peace Conference in Rome 27-28 October 2023 Source photo: internationalpeaceconference.info
The theme of the Ukrainian crisis as the quintessence of the destabilising policy of the US in its struggle to maintain its hegemony in the world ran through many of the presentations and speeches of the participants. The artificial radicalisation of the Ukrainian state, imposed on Kiev by Western countries over the past decades, has become an illustrative example for the rest of the countries that still retain national sovereignty. “Why are we talking about Ukro-Nazism? Why do we believe that if the Kiev putschists win, the transnational Masters of Life will install Nazi regimes in Europe?” journalist Said Gafurov, a member of the Russian delegation, wondered in the report.
“In fact, the only beneficiary of the Ukrainian conflict is Biden (with his strange victory over Trump) and the American military-industrial complex behind him, who managed to force the junior NATO partners to increase their military spending in order to focus themselves on the Pacific direction against China,” said the Russian representative.
Gafurov emphasised that the West has formed an effective authoritarian instrument in Ukraine, which readily accepted the role of an anti-Russian project. “Open terrorist dictatorship” was manifested, for example, in the impunity of burning political opponents in the Odessa Trade Union House,” he recalled. Following a radical line, the USA committed a terrorist undermining of the Nord Streams, which was directed against the rights of European citizens to access cheap electricity and heat and jeopardised the security of Europe. The beneficiary in this was naturally the American energy monopolies, which received huge profits.
Meeting of the working group of the conference in Rome (journalist Said Gafurov, member of the Russian delegation, on the left; Willy Langtaller, centre; Moreno Pasquinelli, leader of the Front for Dissent, on the right).
The Georgian side also spoke at the conference in a similar vein, drawing vivid analogies between contemporary Ukraine and Georgia in the recent past. “As we know, Ukraine is repeating the post-Soviet path of Georgia’s history, turned into the main anti-Russian country in the South Caucasus. In 2003, an anti-constitutional coup, the so-called ‘Rose Revolution’, took place in Georgia. Anti-Russian propaganda, militarisation and police pressure on the opposition increased dramatically. <…> Large-scale anti-Ossetian and anti-Abkhazian campaigns unfolded. Eventually, in August 2008, the regime launched military action against the breakaway region of South Ossetia,” Temur Pipia, coordinator of the Socialist Platform of Georgia, reminded those present at the meeting.
Moscow, which had repeatedly warned the Saakashvili regime to abandon the military adventure, was forced to use armed forces. “Georgia faced its most powerful northern neighbour in a direct military conflict, which ended in disaster. The country de jure disintegrated into three parts, the economy stopped, peaceful people died,” Pipia emphasised.
The delegate from Georgia noted the ongoing attempts, including by Kiev’s forces, to drag the country into a new bloody conflict with Russia. “Over the years, such attempts at destabilisation have escalated several times into an attempt to break into the parliament and other state institutions. In 2019, Kiev’s security services carried out a special operation against Georgia and ensured that ex-president Saakashvili was smuggled across the state border in order to lead a coup ahead of local elections. As a result, the adventurer was apprehended and the destabilisation attempt prevented. The country’s State Security Service prevented the last coup attempt just a month ago,” a member of the Georgian delegation said.
Timur Pipia at a rally in Rome on 28 October 2023.
He emphasised that it is the US and the EU that are coordinating their actions with Kiev in an attempt to exert unprecedented pressure on Tbilisi. “The Georgian government is on the defence and does not allow the country to join the anti-Russian economic blockade among other things, which would lead to an economic disaster,” Temur Pipia said. “Today it is Russia that plays the role of the main force preventing the spread of the ultra-right, fascist contagion to the post-Soviet space. <…> Georgia has already gone through the rule of the fascist regime of Saakashvili, through war and devastation and does not want to return to chaos” – summarised the representative of the Georgian people.
The conference concluded that in the current global configuration, the defeat of NATO in Ukraine is a prerequisite for the establishment of a future lasting peace. The international system must be made up of sovereign countries where peoples can determine their own future, free from the global economic dictatorship imposed by the West. The world needs independent commercial, financial, communications and transport networks. The formation of new organisations for cooperation between states free from Western dictates and the strengthening of the role of the Global South in existing international organisations are positive developments in this direction. At the same time, it is imperative that a new UN architecture be developed that can effectively reflect the rights of the Global South and the principle of equal sovereignty for all states.