A letter to the AFL-CIO on NATO expansion

By George Meyers

This article was reprinted from the March 28, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

George Meyers, chair of the Communist Party Labor Commission and a retired textile worker sent the following letter to Jay Mazur, president of the Union of Needletrades Industry and Textile Employees. Mazur chairs the International Affairs Committee of the AFL-CIO Executive Council.

Dear Brother Mazur,

I am writing this letter as a member of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Organization of Retirees, (ACTOR) and past president of Local 1874, Textile Workers Union of America, CIO.

I want to express serious differences with the resolution adopted at a recent meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council expressing support for the expansion of NATO. Fortunately an attempt to slip this monstrosity through the U.S. Senate failed when its full meaning became known. Touted as a way to "build democracy and freedom abroad," it has been revealed as little more than a cold war scheme to further consolidate the role of the U.S. multinationals around the world, and enrich the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Feature articles in such conservative newspapers as the New York Times and Baltimore Sun list the following facts:

In order to qualify for membership in NATO, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary must substantially upgrade their military capacity. (For what purpose remains unknown.) However, these three countries lack the funds to do so. This is where the measure now before the Senate comes in.

The United States government will lend these countries unstated hundreds of billions of dollars to bring their military capacity up to NATO standards. (Both papers flatly declare the loans will never be collected.)

In turn, these countries will use the loans to buy the required military hardware from U.S. arms makers. Is it any wonder that top brass of Lockheed Martin and other members of the military-industrial complex are leading the campaign for Senate ratification?

The resolution adopted by the Council seeks to justify AFL- CIO support for this rip-off with the declaration, "The AFL-CIO has always been committed to building democracy and freedom abroad."

Is this intended to include AFL-CIO involvement in the brutal destruction of the duly elected Allende government in Chile and the terrible blood bath that followed? Or the acceptance of hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from CIA sources? Or the support given to the war in Vietnam - to its bitter end - by top AFL-CIO officials?

I strongly urge the AFL-CIO Executive Council to reverse its support of NATO expansion. It smacks of a return to the discredited cold war policies of past leadership. Those policies benefited only the U.S. multinational corporations and resulted in the export of U.S. jobs to low-wage countries at the same time our trade union movement was being driven into a dangerous decline.

The new AFL-CIO leadership's rejection of backward policies of the previous forty years has been widely hailed in the ranks of Labor and among Labor's warmest friends. The trade unions are on the move. Let's not reverse the momentum.

Fraternally,

George A. Meyers