International relations and conflicts: the International Law (14)

Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mystification at the service of Imperialism

14 – International relations and conflicts: the International Law

Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo

The reality and foundation of the political and juridical international relations, namely: the principle of the violence and survival of the strongest (“Might is Right”), are being now manifested with an exemplary crudeness and cynicism to the service of imperialism and fascism. “The strange compulsion that leads humans to get one over the other, to dominate and destroy each other”, has once again made a fool of humanists, utopians, visionaries and revolutionaries; including the judgmental scientists of historical materialism. Crime, war, military occupation, genocide, State Terrorism, torture, and suppression of fundamental human freedoms and rights: procedures that are backed by the sympathetic and self-interested cross-recognition of their protagonists, are currently banal and honourable activities that the imperialistic, colonialist and fascist shamelessness strives to deny in the face of its defenceless, stupefied, resigned, complacent or accomplice victims.

In such conditions, even the nonsense and traditional ideological traps of imperialism – such as its trumpeted falsehoods about “non-violence, the right to life as sacred and supreme value, the dialogue and persuasion as means to solve political problems” etc. – continue having “legal tender” nowadays among the weakest social classes, whose critical capacity and spirit of resistance disappeared long ago as a result of the terrorist repression and psychological mass conditioning. The ideological production in the service of cloaking the imperialism and its methods is now a fully conscious and deliberate activity, functionally and accurately adapted and reformed.

Today, there is no left a theorist or ideologist naive enough as to believe in good faith in the rational or reasonable nature of international relations; and as to try to persuade consequently, with this deluded belief, the protagonists of the great enterprises of international aggression and predation, and of the main and unceasing conflicts that threaten and undo the peace and freedom of the international “community”. Trying to do so would be to forget the constituent and irremediably troubled reality of international society, which the economic and cultural development – the “supreme stage of capitalism” – has only but aggravate, enhance and put in evidence.

In the current reality, the “supranational” and international political relations are founded on the antagonistic violence between Nations; they are relations among Nations and States without any other “superior” instance of order and power. The States are always in position or disposition of “war of all against all”. War, oppression and destruction of the other Peoples and States by means of Violence, are characteristic of the “state of nature” in which the Nations live; a state that has not been limited but enhanced by culture and civilization, which have destroyed the conditions, safeguards and compensatory measures of primitive societies, without building nor providing new ones. Neither the limitation by the instincts, nor the emergence of reason, nor the invention of morality, nor the civilization and the cultural and technical progress, allow them to reach a higher theoretical and practical level but quite the opposite.

The international policy is the determination of the others’ behaviour by means of violence among Nations and States. The so-called “international law”: part and product of international policy, is the order – or disorder – of violence that the opposition of political forces determines among Nations and States; it’s the institutionally established domination of the strongest Peoples over the weaker ones. The international policy and law of the “great” Powers and of the satellites that serve them are the law of the monopolistic Force, Violence and Terror of State, and they will never change. The peace of international law is the peace of violence, actual and virtual. The traditional solution, that is: the “stabilization” by means of violence and war, is the only reality. The Peoples do not exist because they are “right”; they are right because they have strength for the attack and – incidentally – the defence.

The peaceful international community is structurally impossible. The policy consists of actual and virtual violence, which determines the behaviour and ideas of those who are its subjects; as it befits that advantaged cocoon of the evolution, chance and natural selection which is the human species. Policy does not begin where does begin freedom, dialogue and peace; it begins where those conditions have ended or where they have never existed. Policy tries to answer, one way or another, to the problems that exist in the world we live in, not to those that are supposed to exist in the Limbo of the Fathers, or of the fools, or of the lunatics. Those who seek to talk about policy or act in it should necessarily start from this “exorbitant” reality.

The pacifist, anarchist, humanist and universalist ideas, intentions, utopias and projects are perfectly acceptable and laudable as long as their exhibitors or apologists take this reality into account: whatever may be the moral or theoretical judgment that it deserves to them, the feelings that it inspires to them, and the projects, utopias or solutions of substitution that they put forward to get out of it. But if they intend to ignore, camouflage or replace this reality by presenting their own projects or valuations as actual law and policy; or by replacing these ones by their ideal or imaginary “model” of society, that is: what there is by “what there should be or what is going to be”, but having no other base of support for it than their own fantasy, then they may be crazy or sane but, in any case, they are agents and devious instruments of the political forces that they claim to be fighting. They then serve the imperialistic Violence as a real solution of the conflicts.

The state of nature determines international relations of permanent conflict between Nations: the destruction of the others is their absolute, inherent and consistent objective, “in accordance to their essence”. The “global community” goes beyond the field of solidarity and recognition that the humanity is capable, which is in fact limited to the Nation and its relationships of proximity. To search, claim for themselves and use the highest possible capacity of actual and virtual violence within their reach, thus reducing or annulling that of the others: such is the fundamental norm inherent to the political reality between Nations, the only one that their actors – the States – do know, recognize and practice. It is the only form of coexistence that they are able to understand. The international law is its relatively stabilized form. “Whether we like it or not, so things stand.” And so they will continue standing; with the possibility that human species destroys itself, destroying the planet in the process and taking all its inhabitants ahead.

Despite all the terrible disasters and suffering that they have obtained as a result of their disgusting behaviour, humans are not only too harmful but also too incapable and stupid to discover, invent and adopt another. We are the only animal species able to destroy itself by its own intra-specific contradictions. “[...] most of us fail to realize how abjectly stupid and undesirable the historical mass behaviour of humanity actually is.” (Konrad Lorenz, ‘On aggression’, 1966.) They are not the reason, science, moral values and “universal human” principles that decide about the conduct, law, war and peace but the imperative – blind and without recourse – of the instincts of aggression, survival and domination of the effective symbiotic group of vital membership. It'saboutimperialisticNationalismoverthe others.

Unlike the horde or tribe: limited in number and space, the present human society has incessantly expanded up to finding no other limit than the planet. Its dimension and cohesion, along with its inherent diversity and conflict: exorbitant of any previous society, pose to it harrowing problems that is unable to resolve, in an economic and politically closed and unified world. And the purported solutions do never respond to the extent and intensity of the conflicts.

The “community of international law” does not exist. There are defective, deficient and incomplete systems of an “international law” that each State considers as an elongation of its own law, which they strive to assert it as common law. The main function of that “international law” is “to help to maintain the supremacy of the established force and hierarchies on the base of the power.” The international law has never gone any further. It is a primitive, defective, precarious, variable, compound and heterogeneous law.

In the reality of international relations and international law, the Peoples’ freedom and will do not count for anything, except insofar they are able to constitute the force with which they can realize them. In this matter, the historical research provides illustration much more than demonstration. Only are “fully” independent the great imperial or hegemonic Nations, the States capable of ensuring their international existence by themselves, with their own armed forces and, in the thermo-nuclear era, with the operational disposal of the atomic weapon. “It is only truly sovereign, it is only truly State, the powerful State”, qualified by “the number, the territory and the resources”.

In the reality of international law of imperialism (and in inevitable correspondence with the previously analysed identity between morality and legality under the nationalist totalitarianism), the justice and other virtues are the conformity with the violence of the strongest; conversely, delinquency and criminality are simply political weakness and are not another thing. The current international law reverences the despots and victorious conquerors, and has no pity for the incapable and the vanquished Peoples, no matter what their values out of policy may or may not be.

In the current international law there are no more delinquents and criminals – individual or “collective” – than the losers, the miserable ones, the poor and the helpless. The victors are good inasmuch they are stronger; the vanquished are bad since they are weaker. The strong and victorious Peoples and States escape all sanction or censure because and while they are strong, victors and winners; the other Peoples and States are delinquents and criminals because and while they are weak and losers. “The good, the justice, the truth” etc. have nothing whatsoever to do in this performance; even if the incessant propaganda of the angelic or hypocritical ideologists of imperialism and fascism make believe otherwise to their defenceless and stupefied victims. He who still has not learned this, does not know or does not want to know which world he lives in nor whom he is putting the people’s future at stake with. If furthermore he calls himself politician, then he can be an idiot, a psychopath or a phony, but he is, in any case, an agent of the imperialism: nothing has to do in policy, except as author, accomplice, agent or administrator of others’ policy.

The strong, powerful, dominant and imperial States, in their position as victors – or even when they are defeated – obtain the respect and recognition of everybody not in spite of their crimes of war, against peace and against Humanity but in consideration to them. And the individuals, Peoples and States that are weak and incapable of historical life are considered undesirable delinquents or criminals of political and international law, bandits, thieves and murderers, despicable cannon fodder, candidates to end up in gallows, in gaol or in genocide because they are not capable of murdering, stealing, oppressing, destroying, deporting, excluding, torturing, raping or exterminating others as their aggressors do, who – on the contrary – do all this to their victims to a sufficient degree so as to be considered honourable subjects of policy and law. This is the devastating reality that operates in “international law”.

The international justice is only applied to the losers. Seldom has a State or a Government been brought before an International Court, or excluded from the international community, unless it has been previously defeated. (Notably, the USSR was expelled from the League of Nations on December 14, 1939, just two weeks after its aggression against Finland on November 30, in the Winter War.)

The attempts to overcome this defencelessness through the establishment of a universal – socialist or democratic – political instance have clashed in the 20th century with the reality of the rapport of imperialistic forces and the international political structure of the States, independent but in a perpetual opposition.

Because if, even when they are subjects, “this can be said of men in general: that they are ungrateful, fickle, hypocrites and dissemblers, avoiders of dangers and greedy for gain” (following Machiavelli’s wise affirmation); and – in addition to all this – that they are selfish, dangerous, aggressive, false, liars, cheats, treacherous, thieves and murderers, what will they not be when they have in their hands the destructive capacity that provides international policy! The altruistic sentiments and behaviour: which can be found in the natural relationships of family and proximity, are rarely present in civil society and completely absent in international relations. Human persons are sometimes capable of spontaneous honesty; Nations and States, never. The international morality does not exist but as an ideological instrument of the general rapport of forces.

“[...] Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre as is of every man against every man. [...] For as long as every man holdeth this right of doing anything he liketh, so long are all men in the condition of war.” (T. Hobbes; Leviathan, 1651.)

 

“[...] The state of peace among men living side by side is not the natural state (status naturalis); the natural state is one of war. This does not always mean open hostilities, but at least an unceasing threat of war.” (E. Kant; Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, 1795.)

 

“The war was as old as the simultaneous existence of several groups of juxtaposed communities.” “The war is the mother of all things.” “The war will last as long as the world.” “I came not to bring peace but to bring a sword.” “The trial by the weapons is the final judgment”; however, “only in the long run the judgements pronounced by the god of battles appear as the judgments of God”. “The builders of Empires, by definition, generally overcome on the battlefields or in any case, win the last battles.” “The war is a conflict between great interests that is paid for with blood, and only in that it differs from other conflicts.” “The destruction of the enemy forces is the cornerstone of all action of war, the last support of all combinations, which rest on it like the arch on its points of support.” “The decision through the weapons represents for all action of war, big or small, what the payment in-kind represents in financial transactions. However vague these relationships may be, the payment cannot be completely missing, even if it is rare.”

On today’s world reality, the “international community” does not and cannot exist: its construction is not only very difficult, is structurally impossible. The absence or disappearance of the imperialistic policy is pure speculative theory, with no real or objective practical purpose. Under these conditions, and contrary to what the monopolies of imperialistic propaganda disseminate, the political conflict is inherent in the international relationships, inherently unstable. The balance, the federation or the escalation from the hegemony up to constitute themselves in a “universal” Empire, with all its consequences, are the only political solutions that the dominant Nations have looked for and found to their ambitions and concerns. But a supranational, federal or imperial political order are theoretically and practically impossible, contrary to the nature and structure of the international reality: composed of free Peoples and their legitimate States, founded on the principle of equal rights and Self-Determination or Independence of all Peoples (and not on their domination), which affirm their indefeasible rights of self-determination or independence and territorial integrity.

The only alternative to the current imperialistic order and its structural instability lies in the respect for and observance of the right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples: constantly affirmed and reaffirmed by the Resolutions of the UN General Assembly as an imperative or peremptory norm of universal force (erga omnes).

The war – implied in the fundamental right of legitimate self-defence – is the supreme reason and the only guarantee of policy and law among States. The “absolute” war is defined by the ilimitation of the ends; the “total” war, by the ilimitation of the means. In a total war, the human rights disappear. The war is not breach, accident, offence, defence or restoration of the international law. The war – actual or virtual – is the foundation, constituent factor, supreme reason, and only warranty of policy and right between totalitarian States that, by their own nature, tend to the repression, oppression and destruction of all political otherness by means of criminal Violence. The international relations can only be faced from this reality and within it.

“Aggression is the most serious and dangerous form of the illegal use of force” [UNGAR 3314 (1974)]. The war of aggression and the traditional “right to war and right of conquest”: typical of the “international law” of Western Powers, were formally excluded by the postulated international law formulated between the two World Wars, and finally by the contemporary International Law of the United Nations.

Subsequently (16-X-1975), in its Advisory Opinion given to the request of the General Assembly of the United Nations concerning Western Sahara, the International Court of Justice came to confirm that the territories inhabited by indigenous Peoples (who obviously have their own social and political organization) cannot be considered a territory belonging to no one – terra nullius– even if the case be about nomadic Peoples. It was thus also formally excluded the so-called “doctrine of discovery”, on which was based the criminal rapine of the imperialistic European Powers over the Continents that they pretentiously affirmed to have “discovered”; being so that they were territories already occupied by indigenous Peoples, holders of an imprescriptible right of self-determination, and States with right to peace and integrity.

However, the “international law” has never been opposed to violence or war in general; otherwise there would not be international law. There is no other social peace than that established by means of legitimate violence – actual or virtual – against those who aspire to violate it for their own and criminal benefit. The peace without violence does not exist but as a weapon of fascist propaganda to mislead the unwary, or in the green meadows of Utopia. The only peace that the world has known and does know is the peace of law, that is: that of an order of balanced or unbalanced violence.

“The international law does not forbid the war.” In fact the international law does not and cannot forbid the war, since the international “prohibitions” are constituted by resorting to war. According to the cases and the “international law” that are taken as reference, the imperialism, the aggression, the war, the conquest and their consequences have been or are licit or illicit; and have conditioned or do condition positively or negatively the repressive violence of the established order. War and reprisals are the only possible sanction between independent States. For the International Law, there are legal and illegal forces and wars. Countless provisions expose the cases “in which the use of force is legal”. [UNGAR 2625 (1970)]

Death and other physical punishments are the actual and virtual reaction of State policy, founded on the deadly effectiveness of the weapons of individual or mass destruction that constitute their monopoly of violence. “The sanctions of the general international law: reprisals and war”, “do not represent less the withdrawal of goods by force.” “These sanctions consist, the same as the sanctions of the State law, in the withdrawal – by force, by coercion – of life, freedom and property, in particular of the economic goods of humans; accordingly, the prohibition of the recourse to violence cannot be but limited.” “Violence, to deal with violence, does arm itself with the inventions of the arts and sciences. It is accompanied by negligible restrictions, hardly worthy of being mentioned, which are imposed under the name of law of nations – ius gentium– but that, in fact, do not weaken its strength.”

The only more or less lasting peace that has been achieved is not result of harmony but rather of the balance of violence and terror; an always-precarious balance pursuant to the evolution of the rapport of forces. Even though the objective conditions and the humanist, humanitarian or democratic currents made it possible to soften or disguise some elements of the international relations and law, the fundamentals of these do nevertheless remain the same. Thus, the contemporary development of the means of aggression, repression and Terrorism of masses, in the hands of the Great Powers, has allowed the States to recover and exceed the lost ground. Nowadays, those “negligible restrictions, hardly worthy of being mentioned”, of which violence is accompanied in the war “under the name of law of nations but that, in fact, do not weaken its strength”, are not less but more negligible, not more but less worthy of mention. “The wars of the civilized Nations” are not much less but much more “cruel and destructive than those of the non-civilized Nations”.

A worldwide State, in its different hypothetical versions: universal empire, federation etc., is not only utopian; it is contradictory of all reality and, therefore, unattainable. The vital problems that the human community needs to resolve are founded on the fundamental contradictions of a world without distances, limited, closed and globalized but diverse, changing, evolving and conflicting. A world where the global order and organization, even though “necessary” for the survival, appear to be not just difficult but without possible realization in the face of intra-specific contradictions unparalleled in the animal Kingdom; in the face of the interests, priorities, oppositions, fears, obsessions and precarious securities of the national States.

The relatively unstable and ever-changing rapport of forces, the unstable and precarious balance or imbalance of forces, the political peace of balance or imbalance between the Nations, and the resulting conflicts in a closed world of “independent” States, without a “superior” instance of order and power, are resolved in imperialism, war (cold or hot, offensive, defensive or preventive), conquest, submission and destruction of Nations and States, and in hegemonic domination or universal empire; with a defective so-called “international law” – that has never gone any further – as a poor result. The imperialism is not an eventuality or a particular case, an abnormality or an exception in the international relations.

In a system of balance “the law is conservative”, although not static or unchanging; its capacity of reaction on the political rapport of forces is very low. “If, for example, we considered the different States that today make up Europe”, it still can be seen, “without speaking of a systematically regulated balance of Powers and interests (which does not exist and which is therefore frequently and justifiably refused), that undoubtedly the great and small interests of the States and Nations are intertwined in the most changing and complicated way”. At every point in which these interests cross, an increasingly strong knot is formed, because the tendency of the one counter-balances the tendency of the other. These knots end up by creating a more or less tight interconnection of the whole, and in order to make in it any modification it must be partly overcome this interconnection. So “the total sum of relations of all States among them serves to maintaining the status quo of the whole more than to introducing changes into it; that’s to say that the tendency is to maintain the status quo. It’s so that is to be understood the idea of the Powers’ balance. This balance will always be established, everywhere where several civilized States have many points of contacts.”

The systems of balance or the universal Empires thus created avoid or try to avoid war; but, when they cannot succeed in doing it, they produce the most destructive wars as a result of the constitutive equality of balance of forces, or of the limitations and contradictions of the Empire. The crisis of those systems results in the attempt either of a new system of balance, or a new “universal” Empire, until the next crisis.

All the theoretical and practical attempts made in order to avoid, improve, overcome or solve in a different way this fundamental reality have failed, and we have just assisted to the collapse of the last of them. The League of Nations (LN), the United Nations’ Organization (UNO), and various continental regional organizations have served to deceive for some time to the unwary of always. The contemporary scene has finished with the last fantasies in this regard.

The critical periods: of war, post-war, end of a political régime or of mode or cycle of production, present the need and conditions for changes of structure, renewal, innovation, improvement and adaptation of the existing troubled and outdated systems.

The preservation of the status quo is now not the tendency but the rule of behaviour of the international organizations. In the past two centuries, the “points of contacts among the civilized States” have been extended to the whole world by the imperialism, colonization and globalization. “The Great Powers do nowadays wage an imperialistic war in order to reinforce the oppression of the other Peoples, and oppress the majority of Nations of the Earth and most of the population of the globe.” The great movements of relative decolonization in the post-war period do not prevent them, in the present time as they did it in the past, from showing the predatory instincts and – if they get the slightest chance – the militarism and the impulses to war and domination that made their empires.

They were not the progress of sociability, the humanism, the altruism and the philanthropy, the factors that allowed some progress of human rights in the successive periods from the 18th century but the general balance and the special imbalances of the armed peace, the absolute and relative war, the nuclear duopoly and the cold war. Currently, the breakdown of these mechanisms founds the return of the reaction and the new imperial or hegemonic barbarism in the face of the precarious, circumstantial or apparent progress of three centuries. The civilization, after barbarism, has not removed the despotism, imperialism and war but quite the opposite. Revolutions and World Wars have ruined the illusions in this regard.

And this is so because no free Country or State recognizes or accepts the institutionalization and the actuation of alien political organizations in its territory, since these are simple colonial extension of those of the metropolis, on which they depend for everything; with the auxiliary support of native Renegades, Collaborationists and Accomplices: whether they be bought or alienated. Should they do so and accept those facts, then there would not be Peoples, nor States, nor freedom, nor their right of self-determination or independence. This imperialistic interference, and its recuperation, usurpation and falsification of the signs of national identity, does count – in order to be operative – on the necessary and unfailing support of the indigenous Collaborationists and Accomplices, without which they would not deceive anyone. All the history of contemporary wars and conflicts shows the different ways of facing the colonial problem that adopt or accept the “great” Powers, whose decisive intervention is exercised according it’s convenient to their interests and those of their allies and protégés.

“Led” by a political and ideological pseudo-class of hypocritical, venal and subnormal autochthonous elements, the Basque People is doomed – through that corrupt political sub-class – to be manipulated by interests and objectives alien to its own ones; which does fatally lead to its liquidation, and to remain permanently as a mass of inert and complementary manoeuver within the sociological wholeness of the “Spain, one and indivisible” and the “République française”, in whose magma its disappearance as a People is something ineluctable. Under these conditions, its international non-existence is total; and all its contributions or achievements – scientific, artistic, sporting or of simple solidarity, either in organ donation or in the hosting of refugees – are and can only be presented as “Spanish” or “French” achievements.

A special consideration should be given to the contributions made in Euskera. Certainly the Basque Language can be – and has been – used to make anti-Basque policy and to disseminate imperialistic ideology; just in the same way as the Spanish and French can be used to fight against the Spanish-French imperialism. But our Language is in itself irrecuperable for the French-Spanish imperialism. On its part and since the French “revolution”, the French imperialism had already disowned the Basque language, which honestly had described it as a “foreign language”. Instead, Spanish imperialism tries to recuperate it as just “another Spanish language more” through the trick of hiding the Spanish language behind the names “Castellano/Castilian, Gaztelania or Gaztelera”. (The corresponding Francien” for the French dialect, has not had the same fortune nor has found the same complicities.) A deception that not a few Basques, due to their natural aversion to admitting that they are under Spanish domination, do unwarily adopt without realizing the ideological manoeuvre of recuperation that it entails; a certainly ambiguous one, as is any recuperation. However, the European Constitution: whose Rapporteurs did not feel like wasting time with tricks and misunderstandings of local use even if they were for Spaniards, did also fix at this point the Spanish Constitution, unequivocally calling “Spanish” the official dialect that the ideologists and propagandists of the Spanish imperialism call in all those indicated forms when it suits them.

So, if – as the theology of National-Catholicism taught us – we cannot access to Heaven just as Basques but we must enter it as Spaniards or French, in the same way we can only achieve our good deeds in this world as Spaniards or French. (Surely, the actions with which they can discredit us they will be glad to say that we perform them as Basques.)

In this task, the imperialists are effectively assisted by a band of “abertzale leaders and intellectuals” of the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites: currently Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroa bai and the rest of the cultural, social and sports associations and foundations that cover them. The crisis and complexes of these “leaders”: ideologically induced by an imperialistic propaganda whose offensive are unable to resist (let alone dismantle), lead them to attribute to this People, as if they were the product of its own independent State policy, activities that were and are carried out under the complete Spanish or French domination, and by decision and interest of country squires – jauntxos-Junkers-young lords – or of a bourgeoisie totally removed from the national interests of the Basque People, and fully incorporated into the interests and objectives of the imperialism of Spain and of France.

Their denunciations range from the “Basque participation” in the “discovery” and plundering of America, to the current “Basque arms industry” with its manufacture of weapons “Made in Basque Country”, as they say; which is a blatant and malignant falsehood, in a rabidly Nationalist French-Spanish régime where all Basque products – even txakoli wine – must be compulsorily labelled as “Product of Spain” or “of France”, and that does not recognize as Basque even the game of Basque ball. The task of those sectors in the service of the confusion and demoralization of the Movement of Resistance and National Independence against the French-Spanish imperialism is revolting and utterly fascist.

That is why (there is nothing strange about it) it is those “leaders, historians and intellectuals”: purported revolutionary and patriot guys who “shake our conscience” (so as to sap it in the service of the imperialism), who have been collaborating for almost fifty years with the imperialistic Spanish régime that they are hiding and admitting it as democratic, and calling to participate in what they admit as “democratic elections” of the Second Francoism on each occasion that it deems appropriate to convene them, in order that we continue giving cover to it, participating as Spaniards – or French – in its “democratic” farce, and reinforcing its imperialistic State and market that annihilate and destroy us as a People. They are precisely those same “revolutionary leaders” who prove to be unable to apply the historical materialism in order to highlight the international class struggle, the inevitable, usual and well-known alliance and identification of some indigenous classes of the occupied Country with the occupying Power, and the perverse consequences of the imperialistic domination over the Peoples whenever and wherever it occurs.

Infantized and incapacitated under the incompetence, corruption and betrayal of its political and spiritual “leaders”, the Basque People is paying very dearly its credulity, its humanism, its inter-nationalism and its pacifism, and is delivering only to one-way and without the least recognition its spontaneous solidarity with other oppressed and colonized Peoples, from which in these circumstances it can only receive the perverse result of a “recognition” as “Spaniards or French”; which involves our not-to-be and pushes us to sterility. Now then, how would anyone recognize us in a different and correct way, if we ourselves do not recognise us in the continuity of our own State, the Kingdom of Nabarre independent from Spain and France?

The affirmation of the Basque People’s right of self-determination, that is: of its independence from French-Spanish imperialism; and of the continuity and restoration of our own historical State: the Kingdom of Nabarre, along with the rejection of the imperialistic States of Spain and of France, are inescapable conditions for making it possible our own contribution to the world. There is no possible loophole or escape that allows to avoid that task, because, on the one hand, the Spanish and French imperialism and colonialism are not going to retreat voluntarily; and, on the other, they will make sure that there is no such escape unless we ourselves do categorically affirm our Basque national and State reality.

The problem is that, with the “leaders” of the purported “official Basque nationalist political class”, not only the implementation but even the formulation of this task is impossible. It is so from the moment they recognize that the criminal French-Spanish imperialistic, colonialist and fascist régime of military occupation of our Country, as well as its totalitarian States, are legitimate, democratic and their own ones. And they do so in spite of the fact that the French-Spanish National-imperialistic juridical fictions called as their – formal and secondary – “Constitutions” (which this alleged official “Basque political class” has accepted as legitimate and democratic and which are founded on the military occupation and the imprescriptible crimes that constitute the real and primary constitution of their domination over the Basque People and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre), do officially and expressly establish that in the dominions of Spain and of France there is no other nation or people, one and indivisible, than those of Spain and those of France.

And now, almost fifty years after that official “Basque nationalist political class” recognized as legitimate and democratic the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime that does militarily occupy our Country and does “constitutionally” deny the Basque Nation, the president of the so-called “Basque nationalist party”, Andoni Ortuzar, has just stated (October 22, 2023) in the Spanish television that they call “Euskal telebista” that “we must start calling things by their name, because a nation is a nation, and we believe that ‘Euskadi’ is a nation”. “Euskadi”, that is: the “tri-provincial Spanish autonomous community” that the Spanish regime and the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites call like that; and with which all of them – in addition to supplanting the Euskadi of its creator, Sabino Arana – supplant the Basque People/Euskal Herria to which they never mention or refer.

As if it was not enough to say fifty years later that “we must start calling things by their name” (with which he admits that this is not what his party has been doing all that time), and that “we believe that ‘Euskadi’ is a nation (thereby he does not affirm it, he only says that he believes so), the president of the party that does itself call “Basque nationalist” continues to hide the Basque People, the Basque Nation and its imprescriptible international rights of self-determination or unconditional and immediate independence, as well as its own State, the Kingdom of Nabarre. He continues to hide the fact that they have accepted as democratic etc. the Spanish (and French) “Constitution”, which does not say that it “believes” that the only nation is the Spanish (and the French) one but it affirms in a concise and unquestionable way that the only nation is the Spanish (and the French) one. And above all, he continues to call the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation: which does “constitutionally” deny the Basque Nation, not by its name of fascist imperialism but by that of “legitimate and democratic regime”. He does so with the insane and hypocritical hope that this régime will thus admit to recognizing “Euskadi” as the nation that he says he believes it to be; which the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime: comforted for half a century now as legitimate and democratic by these traitorous “Basque nationalists” who deny with their actions what they falsely affirm now – late and badly – to our Country with their lying words, will never admit.

Thus, getting rid of this sub-class of traitorous “Basque nationalists” in service of the French-Spanish imperialism: whose function is both the denial of the right of self-determination or independence of the Basque People and its State, as well as the affirmation of the Spanish-French imperialistic régimes of military occupation and of their totalitarian States as the régime and “the State” of our own, non-Nationalist, non-violent, legitimate, and democratic, is therefore the inescapable requirement for any democratic political regeneration.

In a society of national and State juxtaposition, the solidarity in the international struggle against the imperialism does not exist. If, on the one hand, the solidarity, understanding or recognition gained from the oppressors towards the oppressed is certainly a futile and inept dream, on the other, the solidarity of the poor, the oppressed, the colonized and the damned of the Earth it is an old myth, a romantic tale for to deceive and squeeze the eternal dreamers. It’s a principle perchance assumed by the Basque People, which has thus earned a little enviable worldwide reputation of naivety or incapacity worthy of the most general international contempt, with all its consequences.

“As for the so-called ‘international community’, nobody should be deceived as regards its attitude towards the dominated Peoples. An island-People has no ‘natural’ allies. Nor does it have them artificial ones, since all political power – even reduced, recent or incipient – seeks the alliance with the powerful and despises the weak. For an oppressed People, any international alliance: either with the strong or with the weak, is circumstantial, volatile, temporary and precarious; it must be transformed urgently into a reinforcement of its own strategic core before it is too late, and it is almost always late. Otherwise, neither the ‘alliances’, nor the efforts and sacrifices consented to in the internal order in accordance with the former, are of any avail, because the dead ends lead nowhere. There is no possibility of alliance or negotiation but based on one’s own independent resources and alternative. Alliances cannot alleviate one’s own political weakness: only one’s own strength and determination do allow alliances. And if a People does not have or obtain by itself that strength and determination of its own, nobody will do it for it.

“Israel, which maintains its ‘independence’ and its Jewish, racial, linguistic and cultural identity under the protectorate of the USA, did have a political, ideological and economic role of first order in the conservation and renewal of the Francoist régime, which had kept in reserve its trump-card as the sole Government established by the Axis which did not deliver the Spanish Jews refugees under its power; the sole one also in surviving the defeat of its Nazi-Fascist German-Italian protectors. (The National-socialists of Falange/PsoE maintain within them two sectors perfectly complementary and well attuned, which respectively support the Jews’ and Muslims’ positions.) In any case, those who believe that Arab Muslims are going to support us for the sake of freedom, thus jeopardizing their ‘privileged’ relations with Spanish and French Christians: established on the basis of centuries-old invasions, wars, conquests, persecutions, massacres and expulsions, they have really had it.

“The Sahrawi People has its own self-proclaimed State; and this, when it comes to pass the alms box and raise funds between the Peoples subjugated by the Spaniards, sends its ‘Delegates for Spain’ to our Country, where the gang of traitors, cretins or in any case corrupt ‘Basque politician’ scoundrels that form the bureaucratic-liquidationist mafia of ‘the Basque moderates and radicals’ Pnv-Eta and their satellites, Ea-EhBildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc., support and recognize them whereas, on the contrary, they do not recognize our own State, the Kingdom of Nabarre, historically constituted and recognized for a thousand years. Quite differently, it’s half a century now that these ‘Basque’ agents at the service and in the payroll of the French-Spanish imperialism are admitting and recognizing the criminal fascist régimes and States of Francespain, which militarily occupy our Country and destroy the Basque People/Euskal Herria, as their ‘own States’: non-violent, non-Nationalist, legitimate and democratic.

“The ‘Slavs of the South’ – i.e. Yugoslavia – or the Baltic Countries (which under the military occupation of the Soviet Union voted 90% for their annexation to it), showing the concept they maintain on the ‘solidarity among the oppressed’, do recoil in horror if it is suggested that human rights are valid for all; that their violation invalidates and makes null and void ‘annexations and unions’ everywhere; and that in the ‘democracies’ of the West there are Peoples as much or more defined and oppressed than they have been. And Portugal, which only escaped from the Spanish imperialism thanks to the British protectorate, has always supported repression and war against the other peninsular Peoples.

“The oppressed Peoples: which as for weakness have enough with their own, do always seek the protection of the strongest ones and avoid like the plague being in the fearsome and demeaning company of the weakest. They prefer being in the company of the powerful, questionable or degrading though it may be, to the sympathy of other Peoples that suffer from alien domination; without prejudice to obtaining or expecting from the latter all the accessory contributions that can be obtained. But this, always and to the extent that it does not impair their preferential relations with the former, to whose slightest signs of pleasure or displeasure they do immediately sacrifice their interested, precarious and rhetorical affinities with the Peoples that are struggling for their freedom that is being crushed by the mighty ones.

“The weak seek and expect getting more benefits from the hard than from the naked Peoples, especially in international policy. No sooner have they been released, and even before, than they feel no more pressing need than getting both the approval from the imperialistic Powers, and the prophylactic and disdainful distance towards the lousy remaining Peoples, who have the unheard-of aspiration of being as free and equal as themselves, and holders of the same universal rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence than the others.

“The international solidarity among Peoples should not be confused with an undignified, humiliating and sterile unilateral service for others; with a recognition on one-way only; or with the granting of support towards others without the corresponding reciprocity, which hides one’s inability to defend the own freedom and, therefore, that of others. The freedom of everybody begins with the freedom of oneself. It has as a condition the knowledge and recognition of the other, since there is no possibility of a free and equal international society if there is no alterity – otherness – among free and equal Peoples. On the contrary, ignorance, contempt and hatred towards the other: even the denial of its very existence, are the characteristic of imperialism and colonialism.” Etc. (See Chapter XVI –‘Self-determination of Peoples and continuity of their States’, of our work: ‘EUSKAL HERRIA AND THE KINGDOM OF NABARRE, OR THE BASQUE PEOPLE AND ITS STATE, AGAINST FRENCH-SPANISH IMPERIALISM’.)

The solidarity in the international struggle against the imperialism is a chimera: the Nations and Peoples, free or subjugated, do mind of themselves and of their own affairs and interests; they little care if it is at the expense of the others, about whose oppression they could not care less. None of them will sacrifice their real or imaginary possibilities of obtaining the support of a State, to the unpresentable and ruinous company of a small, weak, and ideologically and politically underdeveloped People. Our history is eloquent on the subject: French against Spaniards; English and Portuguese – allies of the Spaniards or on their own account – against French; National-socialist and Fascist Germans and Italians (allies of the Spaniards) against the others, have passed on our Country always slaughtering us.

(From: ‘Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mystification at the service of Imperialism’.)