15.11.2017, Russia.
The threat of a World War III is not illusionary, and left-wing movements must play an important role in its prevention, the writer and columnist, former member of the Secretariat and the Central Committee of the SYRIZA Greek left-wing party Dimitris Constantakopoulos said on November 5 at an open meeting of the Sofia Club, a correspondent of the Rossa Primavera Information Agency reports.
The world economic system is in a serious crisis now. As we can learn from history, all world crises usually ended with serious disasters which could change the international balance of power, Constantakopoulos believes. “There is a fraction within the current international system which needs the World War III because there is no other way, as they see things, to keep their hegemony,” Constantakopoulos said. This is what often happened in history.
As an example, the writer recalled Great Britain. “Until the British Empire accepted its decline, two world wars began,” Constantakopoulos said. For a long time, Britain did not want to share power with other states. The hegemon of today that does not want to share its power is the USA. The USA’s rhetoric is openly aggressive, and no one today opposes it.
“In 2003 we had millions of people demonstrating against the prospect of the US invasion in Iraq. We had Dominique de Villepin who urged to resolve the conflict in a peaceful way. Now we do not have anything. Donald Trump himself, speaking and the UN General Assembly, clearly threatened with extermination to a country of twenty five million people without any serious reaction from anybody in the world,” Constantakopoulos said.
The world has been at the edge of a World War III for a number of times. For example, during the Cuban missile crisis. There were forces in the USA who wanted a conflict between the USSR and the USA; however, the USA was led by the democratic and progressive President Kennedy, who did not want that war. Today, the American leadership is absolutely different. This is acknowledged in the US itself. “Mr. Corker, who is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently said that Trump will get us to the World War III,” Dimitris Constantakopoulos said.
Europe resists the USA’s hegemony. What we see today resembles the events of the beginning of the 20th century. Europe is now fighting for independence. Today, it is a Europe which does not want to be under the leadership of NATO, which means they need to have warmer relations with other centers, like Russia, the writer said.
He believes that left-wing movements must play an essential role in this resistance. “We need a kind of an international institute for producing ideas, we must campaign against the wars in Korea and Iran, we must begin to draw attention and produce alternatives.”
An open meeting of the Sofia Club took place on November 5 in Moscow. The topic of the meeting was “Left Alternatives for Europe”. The International Sofia Club was established in the capital of Bulgaria in 2013 on the initiative of Tatjana Ždanoka and Giulietto Chiesa, the deputies of the European Parliament, Sergei Kurginyan, the leader of the Essence of Time social movement, and Zakhari Zakhariev, President of the Slavic Foundation. Representatives from Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine participated in the discussion.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
