! HAD been snowing the right before and neither ases nor trains were run1g. Copenhagen was at a However, ound the Parliament.
of demonstrators already gathering, over city. banners demanded week, issal of Schlüter, the minister, the openof trade union strike a campaign that has real historic significance.
some extremely embarassing truths.
military sovereignty pletely destroy Western therefore political (and economic) sovereignty.
In other words, West European imperialism will nave ceased to be avning more than a satellite anc Lilt US Thirdly, Gorbachev is say. ing to the West European establishments that there is all alc nauve. arew red. tionship with the USSR in which the freedom ot ac tion of the West European states would be teed, they could do what they liked as capitalist and imperialist states, provided only that they respected the security interests or the USSR.
This Soviet campaign is being launched against the background of the Geneva talks and the US drive to complete cruise and Pershing deployments and carry through the Star Wars research development. MIKHAIL GORBACHEV's 7 April declaration of a unilateral Soviet freeze on deployment of medium range missiles in Europe was the first public move in What the Soviet leadership is doing is essentially speaking to establishment, right-wing opinion in Western Europe and in private, through diplomatic channels it is telling West European foreign offices In the first place, it is pointing out that the West European states have for centuries accepted the idea that the political sovereignty of states depends upon freedom of decision over fundamental issues such as whether to go to war or not. In the second place, the Soviets are pointing out that the US's present military drive - cruise and Pershing, but also above all Star Wars — will comEurope's military, As to whether the West European states will tually break ranks with Washington over the negotiations another matter. They are terrified of doing so, not on the whole because they fear the USSR's future behaviour but because they trembling over Washington's response As the Economist puts it:
It is European weakness, Europear sereneur. that is likely to thwart Mr Gorbachev's hopes of detaching Europe America. The US business, media lobbies in Western Europe, not to mention the power of the US state, powerful forces for any West European rightwing leader to take on.
ing to establish a common West European response through the Western European Union.
The idea is that all the sevel West states will have against the US on military their Star Issues. and wil share al Wars information, participating jointly in the US's research programme. But this HaN alrady raised Washing ton's anger, producing a formal diplomatic note of protest against the West Europeans discussing their own military policy without the Nothing could be a 1 more direct challenge to the will of the West establishments. WEU meeting is scheduled for the end of this month, involving foreign defence ministries. Will they back down over their joint scheme or not?
In principle, of course, the left has no objection states as military perialist But does object to this work being done by Washington for the following reasons:
it • involve the continued barbaric UN drive in the Third World;
second, by threatening th security of the USSR, i aids continued oppressive Soviet model and Soviet control in Eastern Europe; third, the subordination of Western EuroDe CLO USA will involve stepped-up drive by West capital against workers of eurone None of this means the left should turn itself into a mouthpiece of the new Soviet leadership. It would be the height of folly to imthat Soviet diplomatic manoeuvres will necessarily coincide with the interests of the left. But in this particular case Soviet attempts to pull the West states over to its opposition to Star Wars are very much in the interests of a very wide spectrum of otherwise hostile currents opinion in Western Europe.
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first, will
Western the