Against the Relocation of Nuclear Weapons to the Araxos Airport Base, in Greece

The generalized crisis of the world of the State and the Bosses leads with mathematical accuracy to one direction, unless a wide and international front of struggle and resistance is created. To war societies, to the generalization and intensification of geopolitical antagonisms and war conflicts till the verge of a great war and the establishment of the state of emergency as the iron fence of control and repression on every aspect of social activity.

War and Fascism, this is the system’s ‘answer’ to its generalized and profound crisis, to its own controversies, caused by the incurable conflict imposed by its basic principle, the exploitation and repression on one human being by another.

Abstracts from the declaration of the 2^nd Congress of the Anarchist Political Organization, 2016

The Greek Prime Minister’s recent visit to the US sealed in the most characteristic way the renewed Greece-US defense agreement signed on August 29, 2017. Besides from the Greek government’s commitment on improving the F-16 airplanes that cost 2 billion euros, the upgrading of the NATO’s naval base in Souda and its role in the wider region, as well as the transportation of “special weapons” (in war terminology), basically nuclear warheads, in the Araxos airbase was also verified. The last few months, the preparations for the base’s upgrading have already started, through refurbishing the iron fencing and repairing its interior. Also, recently, a classified document- a letter sent by the NATO congress in Brussels to the Greek Ministry of National Defense, which explicitly defined the preparations of Araxos airbase to receive nuclear weapons, leaked, while aerial photos, which have been published in the media of the base, also confirm the preparations.

For almost fifty years, the Araxos airbase has been used as a temporary storage of US’s nuclear weapons, while the wider region of Western Greece (the military airport bases of Araxos, Andravida and Aktion, and the ports of Patra and Igoumenitsa) has been functioning as the operating base for the American and NATO military forces in their war expeditions in the Balkans and the Middle East. After long-term struggles of the anti-war movement, the nuclear weapons were removed from Araxos through a secret operation organized by NATO in 2001, and were initially transferred to Italy and then to an unknown location. Today, the relocation of B61 nuclear bombs from Incirlik in Turkey to Araxos, is intensively discussed. After all, the base has always been standing ready to receive aircrafts suitable to load these bombs, according to NATO, while, from time to time, there have been trial operation exercises of its underground nuclear storage facilities.

Moreover, the discussion that took place between Trump and Tsipras during their meeting also included the extension of the agreement on the use of Souda naval base, as well as the possibility of establishing a new military base in southern Crete. The official agenda of this meeting (similar to the one of Obama’s visit a year ago in Athens) outlines its real implications for the field of authoritarian administration, imposition and antagonism: geopolitical balance of power, the refugees’ issue, the economy, the energy resources.

The deterioration of the US-Turkish relations, after the recent shift of the Turkish government in a series of sectors towards Russia and Iran, has led to the reinforcement of Greece’s role in the wider region. This becomes quite evident from the planned relocation of war equipment from the Turkish base of Incirlik to Souda in Crete, but also from Greece’s active role in the regional developments and the promotion of collaborations with a series of neighboring countries. The trilateral (Greece-Cyprus- Israel, Greece-Cyprus-Egypt) and quadrilateral summits (Greece- Serbia-Bulgaria-Romania), as well as, the common military exercises in the Cypriot EEZ are a clear proof of it.

It is an unquestionable fact that at a global level the political and economic bosses have unleashed a relentless attack towards the people and the regions of the capitalist periphery. An attack which involves war operations, the imposition of dictatorships and theocratic regimes and the overthrowing of others, the instigation of civil conflicts, the destruction of productive forces, the control of resources, the economic draining of whole populations, the environmental destruction of entire regions and a huge number of lives lost. This condition creates endless deserted areas, ready to be plundered and “reconstructed” in order to control the populations and regions, to increase profits and expand the economic activities of the global elites and to rearrange the geopolitical balance of power within the context of inter-state antagonisms, between global, peripheral and local powers. The upgrading of military bases (in Greece and elsewhere) and the reinforcement of Frontex and NATO’s roles is part of the preparation for a generalized war. A war declared by the domination and expressed mostly in the areas where the antagonisms between the most powerful blocs of authority take place, the Middle East and the Southeastern Mediterranean, while the bleak prospect of a global conflict is remerging in the forefront and the plans of the military-political staff. In this context, the US is the leading power of the Western bloc, being at the forefront of the campaign to impose modern totalitarianism internationally. In the same direction, the powerful “defensive” bloc, NATO, which is led by the US – using as an ideological vehicle the “war against terrorism”- has attempted to expand its power and to extend its “vital space” setting constantly regional “powder kegs” on fire. The two wars in Iraq, the war in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan but also the creation of the state of modern apartheid, Israel, are a few characteristic examples. The war expeditions in the capitalist periphery, as well as the deepening of repression in the interior of the Western societies, the aggravated plundering of the social majority and the destruction of the natural world are the results of the diachronic goals – and the insoluble controversies which emerge from– the state-capitalist system.

In this attempt of the authoritarian brutality to colonize every aspect of the social life, the US has played for many decades a leading role. It has been central in empowering the global restructuring processes of the state-capitalist world through the creation and upgrading of the supra-national repressive mechanisms, functioning as a “archetype” repressive laboratory. The ‘anti’-terrorist crusades which have led to thousands of deaths and massive expulsions of large populations, the mass murders of Black Americans, the institutional ‘fortification’ of the regime through special legislation, prisons and militarized repression squads, are the articulations of the generalized war, which the US, as the avant-garde of global domination, have declared both within its territory and internationally. Attacking the poor and the outcasts is its response to the system’s generalized crisis. An attack which is intensively conducted by the international political and economic elites, with the Greek state as a part of them. The common ground of this uneven alliance is the maintenance of the authoritarian organization of societies, the intensification of the conditions of modern slavery, the dissolution and the repression of social and class resistances, as well as, the preservation of the primacy of the Western bloc of domination and the growth of its power in the field of international geopolitical antagonism. The military, political, economic and cultural expansionism of the Western authoritarian bloc attempts to draw legitimization and consent by the destitution it is producing globally. War, expulsions, poverty, social cannibalism are both the products of the state and capitalist system and the ‘scarecrows’ against the impoverished masses. The ideological aspect of this expansionism incorporates the projection of the state-capitalist world as an inescapable reality in which only democratic pseudo- dilemmas of managing the generalized authoritarian decay can exist.

The Greek State, as a member of the European Union and NATO, is steadily aligned with the aims of the dominant political-economic elite. Today’s government (as all the previous ones) fulfilled and continues to fulfill its mission, which is no other than the endless effort for the unrestricted imposition of the modern dictatorship of the State and the Capital, of Modern Totalitarianism. This common pursuit, which links the Greek state and the US, is the basis of every authoritarian alliance. The convergence of direction between the international and the local economic and political elites outlines the bleak reality of the repressed: poverty and impoverishment, constant trivialization of human life, either as a ‘silent’ suicidal death in the apartments of the metropolis, or as a ‘loud’ drowning in the Aegean Sea or inside the concentration camps, unemployment or unpaid slavery for some, exhausting ill- paid slavery for the rest. Under this condition, we have the duty to organize our resistance. To put up barricades to block the plans of the global domination that promises only death, poverty, wars, misery and impoverishment. Picking the thread from and inspired by the antiwar mobilizations of the previous years, we have to build a strong internationalist movement from below against war, against modern totalitarianism. Towards the direction of building this movement, the resistance against the installation of nuclear weapons in Araxos, as well as, against the wider effort to upgrade the role of the Greek state in the international war setting, is another important battle we must give.

This is the time to connect with the comrades and the people of the struggle globally, in order to face this common attack, we are receiving. Along with the exploited and the repressed of this world, we have to resist to the murderous plans of the State and the Capital. We have to build a wide and international front of struggle and resistance against war, poverty, impoverishment, racism and state and parastatal terrorism. Against the attack of the decayed authoritarian world, we juxtapose the solidarity of our common struggles. Against the dystopia of modern totalitarianism, in which the social majority is impoverished and submitted, we put forward the libertarian society, organized through federal communes “for the Freedom of each-one and for the Equality of all”.

AGAINST STATE AND CAPITALIST BRUTALITY, THE LOCAL AND SUPRANATIONAL BOSSES

ORGANIZATION AND INTERNATIONALIST STRUGGLES AGAINST WAR AND MODERN TOTALITARIANISM

FOR SOCIAL REVOLUTION FOR ANARCHY AND LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM

Anarchist Collective “Dissinios Ippos” – member of the Anarchist Political Organization-Federation of Collectives (Greece)