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Superpowers Square Off: Japan Conference Down For Count

By VVAW

Two American officers are killed on the DMZ in Korea--a place where they have no business being in the first place--and the US military goes on "alert." Angola is still a point of contention and the struggles of the Black majority in South Africa grow each day, with the US government trying to find a way out to avoid another political defeat like the suffered in Angola. In Lebanon, the US backed Israeli's and the Soviet-Union-backed Syrians contend to see who will get the chance to try to suppress the struggles of the Palestinian people. Huge defense budgets gobble up vast amounts of the resources of both the US and USSR. While there's no way to predict exactly which spark of contention will erupt into a full-scale war, it's clear that both superpowers are armed to the teeth and preparing for another war.

Of course, like thieves always do, these superpowers try to disguise their war preparations, whether it's President Ford saying that we must have "Peace through military strength" or his opposite number in the Soviet Union saying the same thing in Russian. Neither one of these superpowers can afford to appear to the rest of the world as the bully it is.

To VVAW this became clearer during a recent Conference in Japan. This was the 5th time that a VVAW delegate has gone to Japan to attend the World Conference Against A&H Bombs. In the past it seemed to us that this conference was helping to build an international movement against nuclear weapons and for the cause of peace. But, at the 1976 Conference, the leadership of the Conference not only refused to discuss the increasing danger of war and its source, but actually helped the superpowers hide their war preparations. What we had hoped would be an honest and frank discussion of war and nuclear war, with people from around the world, turned out to be only the rubber stamping of the political view of the sponsoring organization, Gensuikyo (a Japanese Peace Group). Not only couldn't we reach agreement about the role of the Soviet Union and the mounting tension between the two superpowers, we couldn't even discuss it.

The organizers of the Conference made it clear that it was "okay to talk about US imperialism around the world, but didn't mention the Soviet Union." Gensuikyo used every trick in the book to sidetrack and suppress discussion. Once they postponed a discussion until a later meeting--which was never held. Another time they had a caucus meet secretly, without the VVAW representative, to vote down our proposal.

But we know that to fight against the danger of war we have to know the source. And that's why we talk about the two superpowers. Those of us who have bee in a position to have to serve the cause of the US ruling class--in Vietnam or Korea or wherever--have seen the face of US aggression: the bombing of villages, napalm, killing innocent women and children and all the rest. What we don't know quite so well is the role that the Soviet Union plays in the world today.

At the heart of the world disorder today is the growing contention for global domination between the two superpowers, the US and the USSR. This mounting tension and competition threatens to plunge us into another world war. The major fact being this has been the change of the Soviet Union from a socialist nation to a capitalist nation, a nation having all the many problems which we see in the US everyday. Crime is on the rise--a group of managers of one factory have recently been jailed after it was discovered that they were stealing money from the state and using it for a private recreation area for themselves and their lady friends (sound familiar?). There is unemployment and inflation, all the trappings of a capitalist state. Even more important that these outward signs, however, is the fact that the Soviet Union stations its troops throughout Eastern Europe just like the US does in the Western part of that continent. And just like the US, it has a huge military budget, one that is constantly growing.

As a country which operates under capitalism, the Soviet Union's new ruling class has to face the same problems as their counterparts in the US. Fundamental to this is that they must have their economy expand or die--they have to continually find new markets, new natural resources, new sources of cheap labor, new places to invest money at a profit to themselves. But, since the end of World War II, the US bosses have dominated the world scene; now the rising Soviet fat cats are trying to take charge. And this clash of vital interests, taking place in different ways all over the world, provides all the ingredients necessary to start a new war. Neither side can back down--their profits are at stake. And while the "new czars" in the Soviet Union are scouring the world looking for new economic conquests, the US ruling class is not only trying desperately to hold on to what they've got, but is trying to expand their influence.

When Conferences such as the Gensuikyo Conference is Japan or any other public forum look at the world situation and identify only one of the causes of world conflict, they are playing right into the ands of the Soviet Union. By saying, either openly or indirectly, that the actions and policies of the Soviet Union are "peaceful" they help to disarm people around the world as to the true source of danger.

There's another lie that this Conference is helping to spread. This issue of nuclear weapons is vital to the people of Japan, the only country where such weapons were ever used. So when Gensuikyo talks of nuclear disarmament and asks for a world conference to discuss this topic they get much support. Such a conference would be useful if it began wit the superpowers withdrawing their nuclear weapons from other countries (Europe, for instance) and guaranteeing they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. But a world disarmament conference which only serves as a smokescreen for the superpowers to talk peace while they arm to the teeth only misleads people around the world.

Each day's news makes it clearer that the danger of war is growing behind this growing danger is the clash between the rulers of the superpowers, both forced by their capitalist systems to try to grasp all they can. We in VVAW often have said "We Won't Fight Another Rich Man's War," and that hold true for any attempts by the rulers of the US to use us once again, this time to fight against working people in the Soviet Union.

The attempts to get us to do their dirty work again are well under way; the US rulers keep pointing out that the rulers of the Soviet Union are much worse than they are, that it's our duty to "defend our country" if there is a contest with the USSR. Or, to put it another way, we should go off once again to fight and die in their wars, only to return home to find the same bunch of bastards sitting on top trying to crush us. No way. If there is another war, a war between these capitalists, it's our job to take on the Rockefellers and their class. We will continue our struggle right here, against the US rulers, the same class which used us once and then threw us away.