(The following article appeared in the February 17-23 issue of Rouge, weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Claude Poperen, a member of the political bureau of the French Communist Party, stated on Sunday, February 12, on a local radio station in Versailles, that his party's position on the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan is the same as on the French intervention in Chad.
"In both cases," he said, "the two countries were called on to send troops by governments that are in place, governments put in place under conditions that one could discuss, but that are recognized internationally." So Poperen comes right to the point. But what are we to make of this curious comparison? Does he want to justify the Soviet intervention by making reference to the obvious legitimacy of the French intervention in Chad. Or does he want to justify the Chad intervention by lending the Soviet invasion an exemplary and universal character?
In any case we are further and further from the slightest anti-imperialist position by the CP on the Chad question. We are even quite far from its initial "misgivings. " Will we one day hear a CP leader claim that France has as much right to do in Africa what the United States does in Latin America and the Caribbean? After all, there too there are "legitimate" governments "recognized internationally.