The Central Committee of the Young Communist League has issued the following statement in response to the announcement of the new AUKUS nuclear aggression pact.
The YCL completely opposes the reckless and aggressive actions of Boris Johnson’s Tory Government, at the command of their US puppet masters in the White House and the Pentagon, to create a new hostile pact aimed at attacking China and exerting imperialist control over South East Asia.
We are told the so-called ‘AUKUS alliance’ will begin with the sharing of military intelligence and weapons between the USA, the UK and the other junior imperialist partner, Australia. This will include the building of new nuclear submarines for Australia not just in South East Asia but around the world. As with the UK’s own armed forces and nuclear weapons, these will in reality always be controlled and directed by the foreign policy of the United States.
While the AUKUS leaders cynically failed to mention China by name, the People’s Republic of China is clearly the target of this aggressive new nuclear alliance. This is another dangerous step in the USA’s campaign for a New Cold War. The United States continues to be threatened by China’s model peaceful development and the fact that it is being replaced as the world’s leading economic power. They are determined to provoke an arms race, surround and isolate China with hostile bases and undermine the country internally and externally.
History has shown us that it is not China that is the threat to world peace, but the imperialist United States, a country that has never known peace and whose wars and interventions continue to lead to genocide and war crimes to this day.
The world will be a more dangerous place for working people and the youth as a result of this nuclear pact. It will lead to more war games and more provocations in South East Asia and globally. More UK and US soldiers will be sent abroad, tens of thousands of miles from the countries they’re told they’re helping to protect. More nuclear submarines will be prowling the world’s oceans, with greater risk for confrontations and accidents involving a military technology with poor record of safety.
This focus on war and military provocation from the two chief imperialist powers comes at a time when we face environmental catastrophe in our lifetimes and are still gripped by pandemic.
The US and UK militaries are some of the world’s biggest polluters, a position which this development will only aggravate. Imperialism is suicidal in its drive to dominate and oppress.
In Britain, more cuts to services and regressive tax rises are being imposed on working people, we are told to pay for the cost of the pandemic response. Yet at the same time we spend hundreds of billions to maintain nuclear weapons and an aggressive military – and are now committing to spend billions more on military intervention on the other side of the planet. Warfare over welfare.
It is clear that imperialism, led by the United States, is growing increasingly dangerous and reckless in its desire to reassert dominance across the globe and to attack and contain the socialist camp. We have also seen the sharpening of inter-imperialist rivalry and competition. France, who had been determined to sell their own submarines to Australia, have protested the betrayal by their imperialist partners. This also tells us who the real winners of war mongering and militarism are – the arms manufacturers and monopolies who lobby governments so vigorously in favour of military expansion and intervention, all to make billions in profit.
The youth of Britain and the youth of the world have nothing to gain from imperialism’s reckless drive to war – a drive to war which deprives our communities, divides our planet and threatens the existence of humanity. Britain’s Young Communists, hand in hand with our comrades across the world, are determined to oppose warmongering and the anti-Chinese racism which is being used to justify it.
We’re calling for:
- A foreign policy which is based on peace, cooperation and international development, not war and extortion.
- Immediate withdrawal from AUKUS, NATO and the web of US imperialism.
- Unilateral nuclear disarmament by the UK.
- Withdrawal of all UK military personnel from abroad and the closure of all foreign bases.
- The removal of all US and NATO bases from Britain.
- The reallocation of the defence budget for peaceful purposes including health, education, housing and job creation.
No to AUKUS, war and imperialism!
Join the struggle for lasting peace!
In comradeship
Central Committee
Young Communist League
17 September 2021
London, Britain
