U.S. military bases, economic sanctions and blockades pose a threat to peace, stability and development on every continent, even where they have not yet inflicted the enormous level of brutality and
devastation that major U.S. wars have in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Iraq over 1 million have died. More than five million are refugees. U.S. occupation has laid waste to the entire country.
In already impoverished Afghanistan, the U.S./NATO occupation has brought not progress and development but even greater destruction and chaos. NATO has expanded military strikes to Pakistan and militarized
the entire region.
Mass opposition to these occupations must grow and grow stronger. But international attention is needed also to stem Washington’s “silent” interventions, which inflict pain and promise chaos.
Foreign troops on a nation’s soil force a surrender of sovereignty. Foreign bases mean constant intervention in a country’s politics and policies, whether these are publicly acknowledged bases or the semi-secret “privatized” U.S. bases called Cooperative Security Locations depending on “contractors. “
The U.S. maintains an intrusive network of military bases in more than 70 countries. New Collective Security Locations are being established in up to 100 other countries.
Today there are U.S. bases and CSLs throughout South and Central Asia along with U.S. / NATO bases in almost every country of Europe – east and west. U.S. military presence and influence in Colombia is the
greatest threat to peace and stability in the Western Hemisphere.
Countries that have resisted the basing of foreign troops and bases on their soil, attempted to pursue independent development or resisted the policies imposes by the IMF and international finance capital are increasingly targeted with severe forms of sanctions, economic dislocation and political sabotage.
In a world based on unequal and globalized trade, the threat of U.S. sanctions and blockades is a sentence of underdevelopment and hunger. Sanctions create wrenching economic dislocation and spiraling inflation that strikes the harshest blow on the most defenseless, the poorest, the oldest and the youngest – bringing hunger, malnutrition, sickness and death.
The ever more hostile U.S. blockade of Cuba has continued for 50 years. U.S. sanctions–an act of war–hit Syria, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Serbia, and Myanmar among others. Washington’s sanctions are also used to bludgeon others into submission—for fear of suffering the same fate as these U.S. targets.
U.S. military aid and technical assistance creates dangerous influence and causes aggression. U.S. military aid to Israel has fueled 60 years of aggression and suppression against the Palestinian people and neighboring countries that was not otherwise possible. It must be ended.
Washington also demands that the UN Security Council approve international strangulation of targeted countries. Similar U.S. pressure is placed on other countries, on international trade organizations, banks and lending institutions to participate in the economic sabotage.
It is past time to expose these policies before world opinion and mobilize the peoples of the world to combat these attacks on the sovereignty of nations. This task is an urgent responsibility of the
progressive movement world-wide.
Already, mass opposition to existing U.S. bases and the building of new bases and basing agreements is growing from Poland, the Czech Republic, to Philippines and Ecuador. Each of these separate movements deserves international support and solidarity.
All U.S. military presence must be removed from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and from the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia. The escalating threats of attack on Iran must end.
Each battle against sanctions deserves the same support. International solidarity is the best weapon against sanctions-enforced isolation.
Do you want to strengthen the international movement for peace, justice and solidarity? Do you want to help countries defend their sovereignty? Then take the first step.
Join the fight against U.S. bases and sanctions!
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