ESCALATION!
[The following appeal to revolutionary militants and workers of all. countries was issued October 3 by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. ]
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During the past twenty months, the Fourth International, the World Party of the Socialist Revolution, has repeatedly called attention to the incalculable consequences that could arise if the escalation of the imperialist aggression in Vietnam did not meet with a sufficiently energetic rejoinder to stop it short and cause it to fall back. :
Today the Fourth International again appeals to you in face of the threat that a new step will soon be taken in the imperialist aggression against the Vietnamese revolution.
The first aim of the imperialist aggression against the Vietnamese revolution was to prevent a quick victory of the National Liberation Front which at the time seemed inevitable within a short period. Despite their heroism, unparalleled in recent history, the Vietnamese revolutionists are no longer on the-verge of overturning the rotten regime of Marshal Ky, the admirer of Hitler, whom the colossal military power of the United States has undertaken to maintain in Saigon at any price.
The imperialist aggression aimed secondly at preventing a rapid extension of the colonial revolution in Southeast Asia as a whole. Although courageous revolutionists have unleashed an anti-imperialist struggle in Thailand and have resumed combat in the Philippines, this aim, too, has largely been attained. The revolution suffered a very heavy defeat in Indonesia and ceased widening in this part of the world, a consequence, at least partially, of the imperialist aggression.
The third aim of the imperialist aggression was to intimidate the colonial revolution on a world scale. By intervening on a massive scale in the Vietnamese civil war, American imperialism served warning, particularly to the revolutionists of the entire world: if they place the capitalist system in danger anywhere in the world, Washington has arrogated the right to intervene and pour torrents of fire down on them.
It cannot be said that the revolutionists have let themselves be intimidated. The masses, their vanguard organizations and courageous groups of guerrillas are pursuing the anti-imperialist struggle on a more or less vast scale and with variable results in a number of countries in the world, from Mozambique to Guatemala and from Colombia to Southern Arabia.
But the fact that American imperialism was able to intervene in Vietnam with impunity and has been able to continually increase its counterrevolutionary intervention at no higher cost than a moderate inflation and a growing opposition against the war among its own people and in international public opinion, has unquestionably contributed to emboldening and strengthening the reactionaries, the military caste and the oligarchical camarillas of all stripes.
The fourth aim of the imperialist aggression was to prepare a step by step "roll back".of the workers states in Asia. The strengthening of these states is considered to be a mortal threat to the imperialist empire in the Pacific, even to the survival of capitalism throughout Asia. Hence the direct military attack against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Hence the increasing preparations for war against the People's Republic of China.
Washington is acting in this in accordance with a method whose logic is obvious from the viewpoint of the class interests of Big Capital. Washington is not deliberately choosing the road to a nuclear world war. Such a decision, a last resort, would be taken only when all seemed lost. Washington will not even deliberately take the road to an armed conflict against the collective might of the workers states. It seeks to advance step by step, reducing and then overcoming one by one the obstacles in the way of reestablishing its domination throughout Asia. It is ready to retreat if suddenly confronted with energetic countermeasures. But so long as energetic countermeasures are not taken, the Pentagon is inclined to see no reason for not seeking first to liquidate the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, then to bomb out
of existence the industrial centers of China, above all her nuclear centers.
The heads of the Soviet bureaucracy seek to justify their criminal passivity in face of the imperialist aggression, invoking the necessity of "safeguarding the peace." These arguments are false. History has shown many times that to back down in face of an aggressor does not appease his hunger, but on the contrary only sharpens it. By delaying energetic countermeasures that could have stopped the imperialist aggression in Vietnam, the Kremlin objectively facilitated extension of the war against both Vietnam and the Chinese revolution. At the same time it facilitated a relative weakening of the fighting Vietnamese masses. This could end in enabling imperialism to obtain through diplomatic means what it could not obtain in the field.
The heads of the Chinese bureaucracy refused to set up the united front which is so necessary for all the workers states in aiding the Vietnamese revolution, alleging that it is impossible to unite with "revisionist accomplices of imperialism" and that revolutionary victory in each country is essentially the concern of the people of that country. Behind these false arguments lies the understandable desire of the Peking leaders to delay an imperialist aggression against their country. But far from achieving this aim, Peking's stubborn refusal to place the so-called "allies. of imperialism" -against the wall by proposing- concrete measures -to-them for: amplifying the anti-imperialist struggle in Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia made it more difficult to help the Vietnamese revolution, in effect encouraging imperialism in its preparations for aggression against China.
The balance sheet speaks eloquently, moreover, on the ineffectiveness of the policies touted in both Moscow and Peking. The purely verbal countermeasures, material aid measured out with an eyedropper, have not at all prevented American imperialism from taking one step after another in escalating the war up to now. After having submitted south Vietnam to fire and sword; after having poisoned trees and rivers and massacring the inhabitants; after having begun with impunity to bomb the sovereign state of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and extending the bombings to the big urban centers of Hanoi and Haiphong, Washington is openly preparing, in full sight of the world, the next stage of “escalation." After the November elections in the United States, Washington is preparing to land troops in north Vietnamese territory, toinvade the territory of Laos and Cambodia, to bomb the dikes protecting the rice paddies of the Tonkin plain. At the same time, the repeated violations of Chinese air space, the bombing of Chinese villages "by error," the numerous attacks against Chinese vessels, add up to provocations and test runs to determine just how far things can be carried with impunity.
it is vital for the future of socialism, for the revolution and mankind as a whole, for the working masses and the workers states to react vigorously and in time against this escalation which threatens to hurl humanity into a nuclear holocaust. If imperialism is not stopped now, it will continue the escalation, it will attack China. The USSR itself will end up, first isolated, then threatened and attacked; and the inescapable rejoinder will occur under such conditions that the most terrible means risk being employed by both sides. Quick and energetic countermeasures by the workers states constitute the only means of stopping the aggression at a time when the threat of nuclear war is not yet actually before us.
During recent months, others have independently reached similar conclusions. Fidel Castro called for the workers states to back Vietnam with all their nilitary might. Progressive figures like Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre called on the USSR and China to send large numbers of MIGs and missiles to Vietnam, and to answer the imperialist escalation with a counterescalation. The Communist party of North Korea called for sending large numbers of volunteers from all the workers states to south Vietnam.
All these different voices express one and the same indignation over the passivity which those, claiming to be for socialism, display in face of the crimes imperialism is committing daily against the Vietnamese revolution. All these different voices express the same anguish, the anguish of seeing this passivity encourage the escalation up to the point of no return -- when a nuclear world war becomes inevitable.
Thus once again we repeat. our appeal:
Support and help the heroic Vietnamese revolution by all possible means!
Send them all the help you can get together in the way of volunteers, arms,
matériel, medical supplies and money!
Combat the imperialist aggression by bigger and bigger mass mobilizations, by street demonstrations, strikes, refusal to transport imperialist soldiers and arms to Vietnam! ;
Develop your actions against the war more and more into actions against the imperialism and the capitalism responsible for the aggression. Warn the American officials in this way that the longer they prolong the war, the more revolutionary struggles will flare up in various areas of the globe, the more the aggressors will be compelled to disperse their forces!
Exert the maximum pressure on the Kremlin and on Peking to increase the aid to Vietnam. Le em send the most modern arms and in sufficient quantities. Indepenently from eir different ideologies and policies -- which can continue to be debated -- let them form a united front to help the Vietnamese revolution!
Demand everywhere and on every occasion that the Kremlin publicly and vigorously reaffirm that it will support without reservation and with all its means the Peopte's Republic of China in case of aggression by the U.S.! ,
Time is growing short. Act before it is too late. What is involved is the fate of the Vietnamese revolution, the fate of the Chinese revolution, the fate of all the revolutions in the world, the fate of all of humanity!
. United Secretariat of the October 3, 1966 ; Fourth International
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