In Munich wars are prepared. The annual “Munich Conference for Security Politics” is not just for debating purposes. It’s where those responsible for war, destruction and poverty meet in order to control the present and to determine the future.
All those who do not want such a future, who are against war, who want to set limits to militarism, who do not want a society of racism and patriarchy, all those have to go out into the streets to protest against the meeting of the warmongers. From 6 to 8 February, 2004 the Nato-War-Conference which their representatives like to call “Conference for Security” will take place in Munich for the 40th time. Once again alliances will be strengthened, spheres of influence demarcated and competitors appeased. Once again enemies will be threatened, wars justified, strategic debates will dominate the agenda and new wars will be planned.
In 2003 according to their respective profits of the “war against terrorism”the USA, the EC, China and Russia had come to an agreement concerning their imperial interests – in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechenia or Tibet.
In this year’s meeting they will surely recapitulate the latest wars. They will have to come to terms with the problem that in spite of operational achievements they are not able to bring their wars to an end. In Munich the focus will be on the Iraq war and further military operations in this region.
The EC-states will explore to what extend independent war politics will be militarily feasible and politically accepted while the USA will enforce Nato as a stronger instrument of their war politics.
But not only wars will be prepared in Munich. A global social order will be secured and legitimated which is based on systematical exclusion, exploitation and appropriation of resources. This can only be guaranteed by wars. What kind of “peace” is it that can only be maintained by wars?

Munich 2004: For a radical resistance in our country

In 2001 only a few leftists were out in the streets to protest against the “Conference for Security”, in 2002 already 10.000 people joined the demonstrations. In spite of massive agitations from media and politicians and a total ban on demonstrations all over the city a demonstration did take place. In 2003 Munich’s Mayor tried to divide the mobilization against the “Nato-Conference for Security” by initiating a demonstration of his own in the course of the incipient Iraq war. This didn’t work out. An international leftist demonstration was organized against the Nato War Cnference and the war against Iraq, which with its 25.000 participants gave proof of the common interests between the movements against war and against capitalistic globalization. Even if it didn’t work out to stop at least one of the wars worldwide – even though protests against the Iraq war were virtually unparalleled – the political idea of joining extra parliamentary and emancipatory powers did work well.
Only an uncompromising opposition against all imperialistic wars meets the requirements of a leftist antimilitarism. If we don’t look at wars as single phenomena striking the earth like catastrophes but understand that war is an expression of permanent crisis management then leftist antimilitarian politics must express this understanding and prove it in daily politics. Antimilitarian politics must be developed locally from the particular conditions on the spot.

Global and local: antimilitaristic, radical, antipatriarchal!

Nowadays wars are also made in order to secure and assert the dominance of a capitalism built on sex hierarchies, exclusion, competition, inequalities, destruction, repression etc. They also continuously secure resources and control migration movements. Worldwide exploitation and war politics of the leading capitalistic states are two sides of one medal. That is why like in the past years together with the movement against capitalistic globalization we mobilize for protests against the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Nato Security Conference in Munich.
In the year 2003 there have been 43 wars worldwide in which the different procedures of securing the western interests could be studied. Some wars are conventional militarian confrontations (e.g. Iraq), in other wars mercenary companies based in western countries do the dirty work (e.g. Columbia and Nigeria), in some wars local warlords are supported to secure western interests (e.g. Afghanistan). All wars are about geostrategic interests, spheres of influence and re-colonization of the world. There is no peace without war for the “new world order”, played down as “globalization”: war is peace!
Even if the end of a war has been proclaimed, it is not yet finished as can be seen in Iraq. Nearly every day Iraqi civilians and US soldiers are killed and extended parts of Iraq have become no-go-areas for Iraqi women.

Against EC military power!

The governments of the EC states are continuously working and building up independent military powers as can be seen in the Maastricht convention and the EC summits in Cologne and Thessalonica. This has nothing to do with opposing a “civilian project” to US military expansion but to prepare for asserting their own interests in the context of growing inner-imperialistic competition.
In order to speed up the extension of the EC troops the European elites decided to focus on “European Security and Defense Policy”.
From 2003 on they unanimously have decided to build up starting European military forces which are “credible, disposable and powerful” as agreed in Helsinki in December 1999. The member states commit themselves to keeping forces up to 15 brigades (50.000 to 60.000 soldiers) which can be moved quickly and kept on the spot up to one year. Therefore transport capacities shall be built up just as joint systems for planning, leading, observation and communication. This stands for a break away process from Nato, which, until now, is the only supranational structure in Europe with such systems. In order to avoid the approval for each intervention of all states contributing to the troops they decided on a “structural collaboration”. This means that only those states have a right to vote that are part of the “Coalition of those willing to act”. Thus a military Europe gets possible as it has already developed in the cooperation between France and Germany.
For some time the EC has been working on a doctrine of its own, concerning a preventive war. According to the latest defence policy guidelines the German armed forces will join war operations throughout the world. Quote: “Future operations can neither be limited in their intensity nor geographically. The political purpose defines aim, place, duration, and method of operation.” Therefore a “European Armaments Agency” is being developed to end the confusingness (unbekanntes Wort) of the different armament systems and to intensify research work. It will dissolve the fragmentation of the European armament industries with their different projects in order to strengthen their competitiveness. Thus obstructing national restrictions on armament exports are repealed and the worldwide export of killing machines is boosted. Therefore Munich also is the place where military and armament lobbyists meet to evaluate the effectiveness of their latest armaments systems and strategies. Let’s put a spoke in their wheel! In Munich European military power will be negotiated within an international context. Let’s put up an international resistance to European military power!

Against red-green war policy – come to Munich!

Germany is at war again. The German red-green government’s “No” to the Iraq war didn’t define an anti-war position but the beginning of a struggle to assert its own geostrategical interests. Apart from the USA Germany provides the biggest contingent in the worldwide military missions. Germany was the logistic nerve center for the US machinery of war, for transports of troops and armament into the gulf region. The German armed forces did and still do support the war, especially with German crews in AWACS airplanes, German tracker tanks in Kuwait, German Navy at the Horn of Africa and with thousands of soldiers guarding US military facilities. It was also the red-green government who in Yugoslavia started the first German war after the era of National Socialism. Even the new “guidelines for defense policies” of the government Schroeder/Fischer include preventive wars. The German defense minister Struck’s statement about the defense of German interests at the Hindukush expresses the endeavor after an unhindered access to worldwide resources. Social militarization increases at all levels. Changing the alignment of the German armed forces also means disposing of the lessons from the past. “No more war – no more fascism” became perverted to the statement that Germany has to accept its international responsibility by joining wars not despite of but because of Auschwitz.

Policy of austerity: Cut down your war

From all around we hear that we have to “save money and tighten our belt”, that we “lived beyond our means”. Therefore expenses are cut down on education, health care and social security. This is accompanied by increasing work pressure, loss of real wage, increasing competition based on sexual and racial exclusion and growing unemployment. To secure the profits of the capitalists yields become privatized, losses socialized, taxes reduced for industrialists, “locational conditions improved”.
Those responsible for the redistribution of social wealth from poor to rich also come to the Munich conference to make further plans. All these plannings swallow up money. More money is swallowed up by the realization of these plannings. The restructuring of the German Armed Forces, the investment in new armament systems, the maintenance of the task forces and the military operations devour hundreds of billions of Euros.
The policy of retrenchment establishes social priorities. It is our responsibility to demonstrate that the so-called “forces of circumstance” in truth are redistributions and alterations in social priorities and matter-of-facts. Resistance against shortage of social spendings is resistance against war, if it is combined with questioning of social priorities and social normality.
Let us therefore retort on the policy makers in Munich: as long as just one cent is spent on things whose only purpose is destruction don’t’ tell us about “tightening our belt”. Let us no longer accept shortages of social spendings and militarization – wherever they take place. War is no social fate but the result of political action. The logic of war again and again creates protagonists, responsibles, profiteers, administrators and informants. They hold political offices, they do research at universities, they chair offices and public relations departments and they are directors of companies and trusts. They are all interested in the undisturbed course of their war strategies and therefore society has no function as they like. Like the logic of economic constraints they want to implant the military logic in everyone’s brain.
An antimilitaristic movement must oppose this military logic in all social fields. We are not only talking about the armed forces and military objects. An effective anti-militaristic movement has to focus - in analysis and action - on companies, NGOs that willingly toady themselves to the interests of the ruling classes, media centers that propagate the alleged necessity of the present world order, genetic engineering companies and research institutes which speed up the armament of police and forces, control centers and offices for refugee matters which follow the aforementioned logic. An anti-militaristic movement wishing for an emancipatory social change has to face the fact that sex ratio radically influences the logic of war, respectively our way of acting. There is no war without patriarchy.
This example shows how much the unscrutinizing of normalities penetrates all our areas of life, our thoughts, feelings and actions. Let’s revolutionize our own way of life!
Let us not wait for the next war, let us not wait for better times. Wars do not break out all of a sudden, they are planned, prepared and implanted in peoples brains for a long time. An anti-militaristic movement has to be developed and anchored in every day life, to take the warriors’ weapons out of their hands in case of escalation. With protest campaigns and demonstrations in Munich we will express our uncompromising opposition to imperialistic wars.

Let’s act now!

Join the actions in Munich against the Nato

Protest will take place around the conference venue Hotel Bayerischer Hof on
• Friday, 6 February, 2004, starting at 4 o’clock p.m.

International demonstration:
• Saturday 7 February 2004, starting at noon in Marienplatz

The nationwide antimilitaristic coordination
KiF (Krieg ist Frieden = war is peace)