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From The Militant, Vol. X No. 14, 6 April 1946, pp. 1 & 7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Last week Wall Street’s deliberate, cynical and ruthless campaign to prepare public opinion in this country for the outbreak of the Third World War moved into high gear with the convening of the so-called “United Nations” Security Council in Hunter College, New York City, on Monday, March 25.
The stage was set with the ballyhoo, lavishness and care that Hollywood reserves for the super-colossal productions. Nothing was overlooked in order to build up the fraudulent solemnity and “drama” of the occasion.
Every trivial detail – the rose-colored hall, the chairman’s shining mahogany desk, the semi-oval conference table, etc., etc. – everything was played up amid the blare of publicity and the glare of floodlights. The American imperialists do not propose to miss a single trick as they speed up their entire vast propaganda machine.
The press, the radio, the pulpit, the newsreels and every other visual and oral medium of influencing the human mind worked In unison aiming and hitting at one and the same target, namely: the USSR – via the pitiful plight of poor “little Iran.”
To be sure, among themselves the real directors of this “war of nerves” do not hesitate to assay the Iranian question as a detail. Thus, on March 31, the N.Y. Times, the most authoritative organ of U.S. imperialism carried an article under the heading: “MAIN PEACE PROBLEMS WILL COME APTER IRAN.” In plain language this means that no matter how the Iran issue is resolved, it actually solves nothing fundamental in the relations between the Big Three.
The Times article blandly dismisses Iran as an “accident of time.” But it adds in the same breath that “Iran is of course the most dramatic and vital of today’s troubles.” Why so? Why should any “accident” dominate “main problems?” The explanation for this is not difficult to find.
All capitalist regimes, which rest on violence and deception, “have at their disposal only a limited stock of political ideas, however much “democratic” imperialists may perfect their political techniques and vary the forms, the political substance of their war preparations remains monotonously the same.
It wasn’t so very long ago that a similar cry was heard about “poor little Finland.” And before that – over “defenseless Poland.” And in 1914, it was “poor little Belgium.” In this sphere they can invent nothing more effective. In their contempt for the masses these warmongers invariably rely a great deal on the shortness of human memory. Hence the current beating of the war drums around “poor little Iran.”
Could there be a more obscene spectacle than that of a spokesman of American imperialism – today trampling throughout the world the right of peoples to self- determination – cast in the role of champion of the rights of “little nations,” and in particular Iran? But Wall Street’s representatives are brazen enough to top even this. For in the sessions, of the Security Council, figuring in this role has been none other than Secretary of State Byrnes. He is one of the Southern Bourbons, one of the avowed oppressors of the colored racial minority at home. Obviously, these warmongers feel free to get away with anything.
They are flushed with unprecedented victories and unparalleled power. No other imperialism in history ever enjoyed such overwhelming preponderance, up to and including their present monopoly of atomic weapons. They possess an additional advantage in having, for their war preparations, the sounding board of a “world organization” – the UNO. They and their spokesmen can thus pretend to speak not alone in their own name but in the name of “51 nations.” It is hardly surprising therefore that they have chosen the UNO as one of the principal instruments and covers for preparing World War III.
No viler crime can be committed against the American people and the peoples of the world, no greater aid can at this time be given the warmongers than to paint up the UNO or spread any illusions about it and its war role. Yet who is in the forefront spreading such illusions?
Every one of the wretched diplomatic subterfuges of Gromyko, the Kremlin’s representative, has played the game of the warmakers. From his initial attempt on Monday to exclude Iran from the agenda on grounds of procedure, through the equally impotent dodge on Tuesday of trying to postpone it, to the action of walking out on Wednesday from the Security Council – his moves have provided the best means of heightening the “tension” and the “drama” and thus making it easy to stir up interest and put across the war propaganda. In summing up last week’s sessions, the N.Y. Times noted with satisfaction: “Day by day the drama mounted.”
Gromyko, however, was only following orders. If by his actions he builds up the prestige of the UNO and the grisly farce enacted in its name, it is because such is Stalin’s course.
On the eve of the current sessions, Stalin endorsed the UNO as a “valuable instrument of preservation of peace and international security.” He has since then, in the midst of the “walkout,” supplemented his verbal endorsement with the action of paying the full year’s dues to the UNO.
Stalin still hopes to cheat history by striking a deal with Washington, and in the process deals blow upon blow to the security of the USSR and of civilization as a whole.
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Last updated: 16 October 2018