-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 31, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
EDITORIAL:
Imperialism & the Kursk tragedy
The submarine Kursk may have sunk and its
118 sailors perished because it collided with a U.S.
or British submarine, according to Russian
media reports that are being spread across the
Internet. Russian Defense Minister Marshall
Igor Sergueyev raised this possibility at a news
conference broadcast on ORT, the main
Russian TV channel, Aug. 21. Sergueyev said that
Russian
sailors spotted part of a buoy with British
colors near the crash site.
Such collisions also happened during the
Soviet era, though the imperialists never admitted it.
Whatever the cause of the Kursk tragedy, the
big-business media from the United States to
Germany have used it to attack the Russian
government and its head of state, President Vladimir
Putin.
First they charged that the Russians waited
too long to call in help from British and Norwegian
ships in the area. Then the media--including
a lead New York Times editorial Aug. 23--went out of
their way to hit Putin for failing to rush
to the area to publicly show his concern.
U.S. capitalist politicians always feign
concern for fallen soldiers. That doesn't mean they
promote
relief for veterans suffering from Agent
Orange or Gulf War illnesses.
There are lessons from this event and the
media's handling of it that shouldn't be lost:
* There is no longer a Soviet Union, and
Russia has a pro-capitalist government. But the
Western
imperialist powers want a subservient
Russia, not a capitalist competitor.
* If the Russian Navy goes on maneuvers to
defend its seas, NATO forces still spy on it. Two U.S.
submarines and a British submarine were
reported in the area.
* There is no such thing as a humanitarian
rescue by NATO. We saw how "humanitarian" they were
during the brutal bombardment of Yugoslavia
last year. If British imperialism tries to save
Russian sailors, it is also spying and
trying to humiliate the Russian military.
* The imperialist governments have shown
they are unhappy with the Putin leadership. Not
because he is moving toward socialism, but
for steps that he has taken to assert independent
Russian policies, whether it be toward
eliminating sanctions on Iraq, trading with
Yugoslavia,
making agreements with the People's Republic
of China or strengthening the Russian military.
Perhaps the greatest danger of the Kursk
sinking is that the most rabid militarist sectors of
U.S.
imperialism will take it as a sign of
Russian weakness and push harder to threaten Russia
militarily. The anti-war movement in the
United States should be on alert to combat this danger
as
it would any other possibility of U.S.
military intervention.
- END -
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