 There is a video built on Ukraine independence day, where Serkiy Starma is standing on a field and saw through a plane. Behind him, British troops are training Ukrainian soldiers, and you can see tanks in the background, hear military shots from weapons, and it seems like there's nothing in this world that makes Serkiy Starma more proud than to stand on that field, is rallying behind the British ruling class, condemning Russian aggression, and declaring his unshakable support for NATO. Flag-waving patriotic Serkiy Starma takes every opportunity he can to express his love for NATO. He is of the opinion that NATO is a defensive alliance that never provoked any conflict in him. And in this video, he announces that, written together with its NATO allies, are standing united against Russian aggression. He emphasises that the United Kingdom will never be politically divided on these questions. Serkiy Starma proudly stands hand in hand with the Tory government in his support for NATO, who supposedly are fighting for peace, freedom and democracy. Marxists, we are internationalists, we fight for an international socialist revolution that can overthrow the horror of capitalism. Marxists therefore can never be seen to take the side of any ruling class, of any country at any point in time. We stand on the side of the working class all over the world. This is not out of any sentimental reason, but a practical one. Capitalism is an international economic system, so the fight for socialism must be international too. And this may seem like a very obvious principle, but many people within the labour movement, this principle goes straight out the window, especially when war breaks out. And we have seen this many times through history, especially when it comes to the question of NATO. And NATO paints a very pretty picture about themselves, or being non-aggressive, working for democratic values, but if you scratch on the surface, you will quickly realise that this is just a pretty picture. The many NATO wars which have been carried out in the name of human rights, peace, democracy shows the real nature of this alliance. The reality is that NATO is and has always been a brutal weapon of Western imperialism, especially US imperialism. So to understand why the United States needs such a tool, we need to understand imperialism itself. Let me explain that imperialism is the highest and final stage of capitalism. It is based on the development of monopolies, where concentration and centralisation of capital is in the hands of a few capitalists and banks. Imperialism is the naked domination of finance capital. And as capitalism developed, production expanded, the market within the nation's state became too small, and the surplus of capital in the hands of monopolies and banks then began to be exported to other countries with the aim of making super-profit. These capitalist countries then start to dominate the world by dividing up territories and markets. Capitalism is not just an evil idea, it's the logical development of capitalism. The historic role of capitalism was to create the means of production into giant monopolistic firms and to establish an interconnected capitalist world market. And today, with the concentrations of capital in a few key monopolies and financial institutions, the capitalist nation-state is very much interlinked with these private and state monopolies. And instead of having this so-called free market and free competition, you have national states backing monopolies' interests in making profits. For example, companies from the United States and China are dominating finance global 500. Over two thirds of the total brand value in ranking is from these two countries. The US accounts for 49% of these values, China at 19. The United States is the biggest economic power in the world, and obviously America wants to keep it that way, and they have different tools that serve US imperialism. NATO is one of them. Because war is the natural outcome of imperialism and capitalism, let me explain that the course of war in a modern epoch is a division of world-competing imperialist nation-states. And conflict and war will inevitably erupt from the contradictions between these nation-states interests, which at the end of the day is the interest of finance capital. After World War II, the United States became the capitalist superpower on the planet. And one reason for that was that the United States had accumulated super-profits from the war production. And to further dominate the world market, the US pumping huge amounts of money through the famous Marshall Plan into countries like Germany, Italy and France. And they did so out of fear of the advancing Red Army, but also out of fear of revolutions in Europe. The aim was to secure capitalism in Europe and to tie it closer to US imperialism. And the distractions that were caused by war meant that huge reconstruction programme in Europe was necessary, and this laid the basis for the biggest economic boom in history of capitalism. But just like the US, the Soviet Union also came out strengthened out of the war because they had been the main force of beating Nazi Germany. This meant that the entire cause of international relationship was on one hand, dominated by US imperialism and on the other, Soviet bureaucracy. So the US find itself in need of a military alliance to fight the evil Russians. And on NATO's website, you can read the following. In 1949, the primary aim of the treaty was to create a pact of mutual assistance to counter the risk of that Soviet Union would cease to extend its control of Eastern Europe to other parts of the continent. NATO was founded as a weapon of US imperialism to fight the Cold War. It has remained a weapon ever since. Now, of course, it would be outrageous for NATO to openly admit that they are a tool of US imperialism. So it has to be covered up in lies. And one of the main lies is that NATO is committed to the principle of individual liberty, democracy, human rights, the rule of law. And they repeatedly say that NATO is a defensive alliance who are committed to peaceful resolutions of dispute. According to them, NATO has never started a war. Instead, they argue if the chromatic effort fails, it has military power to undertake crisis management operations. So if you were to believe what NATO says about themselves, you would think that they are a peace-loving defensive alliance who's fighting for democracy. They even go so far that they say that they work for the women's cause and are engaged in the fight against climate change. But as I said earlier, you only need to take a quick look at NATO's war interventions or what NATO likes to prefer it to call crisis management operations in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya to see that their work for democracy is a complete lie. I don't think that any workers in these regions or these countries would agree that NATO bombing helped women there or implemented peace and democracy. The reality shows a complete opposite. Research from Brown University confirms that at least 929,000 people died directly due to the violence in wars led by the US in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. And many times more have died indirectly to these wars due to the effect of malnutrition, damage infrastructure, environmental integration. So so much for human rights and fighting climate change. These wars reveal the true face of US imperialism and NATO is a brutal killer machine. All these talks about human rights, non-aggression, crisis management operations are just empty words. NATO countries have shown count this time that they are waiting to kill civilians, destroy whole regions to get control over territories. But since the war broke out in Ukraine, the question about NATO and its involvement has come up and in order to defend themselves, NATO is answering what they call myths about NATO. So for example, they say that it's not true that NATO is a war with Russia in Ukraine, that NATO never promised Russia that they would expand up the Cold War. And they say it's just a myth that NATO is an aggressive threat to Russia. But just let's take a look at the role that NATO has played in the war in Ukraine. Because even though they plead to be innocent, it is clear that the West using NATO have been provoking the conflict for their own imperialist influence. From the start, this war has never just been about Ukraine and Russia, but a proxy war about market and military territories between Western allies and Russia. And this has been going on for many years where the Russian Ukrainian ruling class being divided and pulled in different directions. On the one hand, US imperialism and on the other hand, towards Russia. This erupted in 2014 when the pro-Russian Djurankovic regime was overthrown by a movement that was led and that was supported by the US imperialism. And since then, NATO has been trying to keep Ukraine firmly under the influence of US imperialism and not allowing any Russian interference. Since 2014, Ukrainian military has been armed and trained by NATO countries. Earlier this year at the NATO summit in Madrid, it was agreed that they will provide even more military help and support to Ukraine. Between 2014 and 2022, the US military aid to Ukraine amounted roughly to 3.5 billion dollars. And since the war started, Ukraine has been granted more than 13 billion dollars worth of military aid. In NATO countries, they see this as a very well-spent money because it's not because they care about Ukrainian people. US and Western imperialism only spend this money because they see Ukraine as key means of isolating Russia military and economically. The military support in itself won't put an end to the war while the arms industries are looking towards super-profits. The conflict is only being prolonged at the cost of millions of Ukrainians who are seeing their lives and homes being destroyed. But as I've said, NATO completely denies their involvement in the war. Instead, they argue that it was Russia that unprovoked attacks Ukraine. But this in itself doesn't explain anything. To find the root of the conflict, we have to go back to the time before the collapse of the USSR. In the late 70s and early 80s, the Moscow bureaucracy had become a complete better of Soviet Union and it had been disingenuous into crisis for several decades. But by the late 80s certain layers within the bureaucracy and the interbegancia they were moving towards a position towards support of market economy. At the same time, you have also had serious talk about unifications of East and West Germany. And by the late 80s, certain layers between Western capitalists then started to see basically the possibility of having market economy in the region. For them, this was a massive opportunity of crashing the Soviet Union and opening the doors to more profitable markets in the whole Eastern Europe. During this period you had the Soviet Union military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, that had their soldiers stationed out in Europe. And they were there as a guarantee against the Western attack but also to secure the control of the Soviet bureaucracy. And to make sure that the Warsaw Pact did not intervene in the process of capitalism returning to Europe, the Soviet Union were given several promises by Western leaders, but they would not threaten Soviet interest and securities. So Soviet Union leaders, they were led to believe that NATO would not expand in former East Germany or Eastern Europe. On the 1st of January 1990, the West German Foreign Minister, Genscher, said that in a speech in order to not harm Soviet security interests, NATO should rule out expansion of its territory in the East, i.e. moving closer to the Soviet borders. One month later, the US Secretary of State James A. Baker promised Galba shoulder if Soviet Union accepted the new United Germany that they would join NATO. NATO would not expand one inch eastward. A treaty of Germany unification signed by two German republics, Soviet Union, France, United Kingdom, United States, in November 1990 stated that the new United German were free to join NATO, but no foreign troops will be stationed in Germany. Then the following year, just a few months before the Warsaw Pact ended, the John Major told Galba shoulder that we're not talking about strengthening NATO and on the question of NATO expansion he said nothing on that sort will happen. Obviously these promises were being broken a few years later and this goes to show the value of promises made by representatives of the ruling class. Gentleman's agreements are worthless. What really decides is the force on the ground, it's a truth on the ground and Putin, he has learned this from NATO. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia became now a playground for oligarchs and western finance capital. With the return of capitalism, Russia faced an even deeper crisis. For example, GDP fell 10% in 1991 and to tackle the crisis, President Jeltsin, who was the man who really opened up for capitalism, he asked West for aid and investment to help carry out his reform program and western finance experts, they estimated that what was needed to take Russia out of the crisis would amount between 76 billion dollars to 167 billion dollars each year for 15 years. But Western imperialism wanted to keep Russia and Eastern Europe economically weak and that plan was never to take Russia and Eastern Europe out of poverty. But to remain a weak region for US and Western imperialism to dominate and in the end, Russia was only granted six billion dollars to stabilise the ruble and a small loan of 24 billion from the IMF and both Jeltsin and Putin relied heavily on the West to maintain their rule. The return of capitalism to this point meant that it was US dominance over Russia. Moscow was being overrun by foreign businessmen and speculators and this is really what imperialism looks like. After the fall of the USSR, US became the superpower in the world. It allowed the US imperialism to intervene in former Soviet spheres of interests and American imperialism taking advantage of to start to see the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Iraq, places that they never dared to touch in the past. But it was not only US imperialism that had an interest in the East. Germany became a key player in the economy of Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans and they played a decisive role in the reactionary breakup of Yugoslavia. Sweden ramped up their investment in the Baltics. For instance, just two Swedish bank SEB and Swab Bank now own more than half of the banking system in Baltics. Eastern Europe industries began to buy up, no Western Europe industry began to buy up Eastern Europe. For example, the German Volkswagen to Goviskoda. But as the political and economic crisis in Europe, Russia developed, a split between the different wings of the rational rebirth began to occur because the Russian capitalists, they had their own interests which did not necessarily coincide with the West and when the Russian economy began to get back on its feet in the early 2000s, the Western imperialists felt the need of procuring their interests in the region. And in the years to come, the so-called defensive military alliance NATO revealed that they were an aggressive tool of US imperialism. In short order, it began from 1999 to 2004 to incorporate most of the former Warsaw Pact into NATO. The inclusion in particular of the Baltic space brought NATO right up to the border of Russia. And if anyone has ever doubted NATO's aggressiveness, they can take a look at NATO's 78 days bombing of Yugoslavia and Serbia which caused enormous economic damage in human life. NATO not only intervened in a non-NATO country, but took sides against the Serbs which were allies of the Russians and they did so without a United Nations Security Council approval. And this was followed by interventions in Kosovo and in The Independent you can read about NATO's aggressiveness. They say NATO promised to attack only military targets and for as long as they thought they could crack the Serb military, that was what they did. But now they're doing just what the Americans did in Iraq 1991, spreading the war to civilian targets, to bridges, to electricity stations, factories with the excuse that they are also used for the military. The war in Yugoslavia and Kosovo proved some is claiming that NATO never provoked a conflict, it's a complete and utter lie. NATO then continues its program of expansions and these provocations really enraged the military elite in Moscow because under Putin things began to change. He represented a section of the state and the elite which wanted to stop the decline of Russians in the world's relations and demagoguery. He appealed to the feeling of humiliation and hatred that the Russian masses fell towards the West for its conduct after the collapse of the USSR. And at the same time in the early 2000s the American was pushing even further to the near abroad of Russia and tried to incorporate the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Both of them bore the rights up to Russia and in the summer that took place in 2008 in Bucharest both Ukraine and Georgia requested to John NATO. And from Moscow's point of view this was one step too far and they did not hesitate to use military power. Russian's army was sent into Georgia and Georgia was swiftly crushed and this intervention really revealed on the one hand the limitations of US imperialism but also Russia's growing confidence and power. So when Ukraine raised their aspirations of joining NATO that did not go very well done with Russians. And let's do a little thought experiment of how the US would react in a stimulus decree. Let's say that China are forming an alliance in defense of peace and justice together with Cuba and Mexico with the aim of having also including Canada. They start to invest millions of dollars in a pro-Chinese party inside Canada. That party led an insurrection that resorted the overflow of Justin Trudeau's government. And this pro-Chinese party put themselves into power. Once in power they began to ban American accents, start oppressing Americans and say that Canada we have now aspirations of joining this Chinese military alliance. Then China start to place weapons station troops permanently, carry out exercises with over 30 000 soldiers right on the border to the US. What do you think would happen? Would Joe Biden just say, let it be, don't worry about it. And countries like Canada are free to join any military alliance if they wishes to do so. Everyone has free will and can do whatever they want. Sovereignty for the Canadians. And you can see basically that this, you would not let this happen. You can see how the US is reacting to foreign countries placing missile closer home. For the US the whole America is a no-go zone while they clear this country. During the Cuban missile crisis the US threatened with nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missiles and troops on Cuba. And this little fault experiment is basically what happened in Ukraine 2014. For years the US have tried to influence politics in Ukraine and make it more friendly to the EU and NATO. The US Assistant Secretary of State admitted having spent five billion dollars to secure independent to get their policies implemented. But in the last decade there has been a relatively decline of US imperialism. And in 2008 you started to see clear symptoms of that. Where for example the economic crisis costful and unsuccessful war in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria. So with this relatively decline of US imperialism we have seen countries like Russia and China flexing their missiles. And when 2014 Crimea was joined with Russia following the referendum the US ruling class could do nothing but just raise their anger in words. The United States of course the world still that the world's greatest economic and military power is annual military spending roughly equals the top 10 countries combined. So on the world scale there's no power whatsoever that can challenge the United States. But on a regional level the US can no longer claim to be the strongest power everywhere. And this was reflected in the last NATO summit in Madrid earlier this year where they discussed the question of China. What worries the United States is that the potential dominance of economic dominance of China basically. And they're also worried about Russia now becoming a closer ally to China in order to what they say undercut rule-based international orders. And at the Madrid summit countries like South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand were invited. None of these countries are members of NATO. Inviting them is the provocative move against China. So again again all this talks about NATO being a purely defensive alliance posing no threat whatsoever it's just platitudes. The reason why NATO is raising this question about China is because it is the main competitor of US imperialism. Last week Joe Biden produced this document called the American Security Strategy Government where he outlined that Cuba is the most serious challenge facing them. Biden said that the US is trying to fight countries like China and Russia by quote investing in American power and influence, building strong coalition to shape the global strategic environment and strengthening the military to ensure it is equipped for an era of strategic competition with major powers. Biden then went on to say that the US would act to ensure that it was out competing China in the technological, economic, political, military, intelligence and global governance domain. And this document is a very good description of what imperialism really is. And as Marxists we can have no illusions whatsoever that NATO or ever give our support to this alliance that we can have no illusion that they will ever bring about peace, democracy and so on. If we did give illusions we will be siding with American and Western imperialism, we will be siding with the Tory government and the British ruling class. The British working class interests has nothing to do with this. They are the ones who cry crocodile tears over Ukraine and Ukrainian migrants. The ruling class and the Tory party, they don't care about Ukrainian whatsoever. Britain together with the US were the ones who were ramping up the conflict in the first place because as you remember the war had a very convenient effect of cutting across the scandals that Boris was facing at home at the time with the party gay scandals. Trapped workers from the problems at home. And now the government is aiming to show that they are the most loyal members of NATO spending more money on the fence. Less trust, she said earlier this summer that the two percent of GDP on the fence should be the floor not the roof. At the same time they turn a blind eye to the bad migrants from Africa and Middle East who are fleeing wars and conflicts caused by Western imperialism and NATO interventions. So to not side with the ruling class should be crystal clear for anyone who say that they are acting on the interests of the working class. But instead we see many examples where there has not been the case. Jake Circus Damer for example who said that to condemn NATO is to condemn the guarantee of democracy and security in France. He even threatens to kick out MPs who has a position against NATO from the party. Now it's not very surprising that this comes from Circus Damer. He's after all an agent of the class. What might have surprised a few people on the left were the fact that social democracies in Finland and Sweden and decided to apply for NATO membership. These countries have for years been holding up this act of being neutral and keeping away from conflicts. Especially Sweden who's been dragging that we have not been in war since 1814. But the truth is that Sweden is not very peaceful as they say they are. While Swedish imperialism is too small to play in a significant role in war interventions their main role has been to export weapons to those wars. Last year Sweden sold most of their weapons to United Emirates who are at the moment killing the Germanite people. Sweden the Swedish imperialists they have their own reason of why they want to join NATO. As they are advancing their financial interest in the Baltics and by formally joining NATO they can have a certain influence over this alliance and defend basically their interests and profits in the region. So with the invasion of Ukraine it has been a massive propaganda campaign to rally Swedes behind the Swedish European and American imperialism. They have deliberately also ramped up they are already ongoing anti-Russian propaganda and claiming that Putin is going to invade Sweden by taking over Gothenland island in the Baltic Sea. This is of course outrageous it won't happen but the real aim is really to scare the workers into a membership of NATO. Earlier this year you had the social democracies. Democratic leaders in Sweden and Finland had a meeting where they discussed the question of NATO membership and present at this meeting was the head of the families in Sweden the main capitalist family in Sweden Joakob Vallemberg who owns SAB which is the biggest Swedish exportable arms. This family also owns the bank SAB which I mentioned before has major interest in the Baltics. So it makes it very clear that under bourgeois democracy it is the finance capital that dictates the politics. The social democratic governments has been studying faithfully behind the Swedish ruling class. They are the party who was leading Sweden into NATO sending arms to Ukraine and increasing their military spending 2% of the GDP and this is of course a complete betrayal by Swedish leaders of the workers movement who ends up defending their own bourgeoisie and Western imperialism. And as you might remember Turkey wanted to use the situation to strike a blow against the Kurdish struggle. In order for Sweden and Finland to join NATO Turkey wants Sweden and Finland to give them full support against the threat of its national security. i.e. they want to have Sweden and Finland giving them full support to Arhugam to brutally oppress the Kurds and this is very ironic that NATO is being portrayed as this alliance against oppressive autocratic ruthless regime in Russia. These same ladies and gentlemen are blissfully contained that one of their own key members in NATO Turkey are in prison torturing and killing the Kurdish people. It is scandalous that these leaders of the labor movement is giving Turkey a hand of oppressing the Kurds in order to join NATO and this shows the upper hypocrisy on the one hand by the labor leaders but also by Western leaders of imperialism and it shows their true aims. We can have no illusion whatsoever that NATO will bring peace, human rights, democracy. You have people like for example NATO defender Paul Mason who calls himself the Marxist but he always ends up on the side of imperialism and the British ruling class and he says we need to strengthen NATO but we need to also make it more democratic so he puts forward a program for us. It is laughable really to think that you can reform the weapon of US imperialism to become a defender of democracy but Marxists don't just say no to NATO our slogan doesn't end with abolish NATO in the last analysis NATO is just a cover for US and Western imperialism. Trump a couple of years ago you might remember he threatened to pull out of NATO would that mean the end of US dominance and Western alliance military? No probably not they would just find another way to defend their interests maybe for United Nations to fight NATO means fighting against imperialism and capitalism and Marxists we are not pacifists we not just abstractly are against war for example you have people like Jeremy Corbyn and Sotna war coalitions who calls for negotiations and diplomatic solutions and saying that war is unnecessary we just move together around the table and come to an agreement but no diplomatic solutions is ever going to be able to stop the real cause and the underlying cause for war which is capitalism as mentioned before these gentlemen's agreements are completely worthless they don't change any of the contradictions of war in the government pacifism calls for inaction and you cannot fight for peace by doing nothing so at the end of the day pacifism ends up defending imperialism for us it will never be the question of taking one side of the ruling class against another the war in Ukraine is a reactionary periodist war on both side one of Russia and one of NATO for Ukraine NATO will never bring peace an imperialist peace will only continue by war of other means in time prepared for future war in the future the real alternative is to struggle against imperialism and to overthrow capitalism and that's why we say no war but class war our starting point must always be the class question this task is to expose the hypocrisy of the ruling class especially our own capitalist class the main enemy is a home the best way to help the working class encounters like Ukraine, Libya, Syria is to take up the struggle against their own bourgeoisie and call the workers of the world to do the same against their own ruling class the struggle for imperialism against the imperialism and capitalism must therefore be based on international working class solidarity and a program for socialist revolution