For African Liberation Day, we say: Abolish NATO! US/AFRICOM out of Africa NOW!

FOR AFRICAN LIBERATION DAY, WE SAY: ABOLISH NATO! US/AFRICOM OUT OF of AFRICA NOW! Deja Gaston. May 16, 2025 This May 25 marks 62 years since the founding of the Organization of Africa Unity and the commencement of the pan-African holiday, African Liberation Day. For masses of African people, this holiday is a reaffirmation and commitment to the total liberation and unification of Africa under the banner of socialism. It is a reminder of the victories and struggles against colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism which continue to intervene in Africa’s development toward sovereignty, security, and self-determination today. As many social movements and political organizations prepare to mobilize this month, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will host its Spring 2025 Parliamentary Assembly in Dayton, Ohio between May 23-26. This marks 22 years since NATO last hosted a summit in the United States. With NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly falling on African Liberation Day, it’s critical to understand how the U.S./AFRICOM and NATO relationship towards Africa is defined as one of intervention, regime change, bombing campaigns, resource extraction and much more. Socialism in the 20th century The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution broke the yoke of Tsarist imperial ambition forging a multinational state led by workers and peasants. This revolution shattered the imperialist idea that economically backward and culturally repressed peoples were incapable of any such movement let alone have the ability to govern for themself on the foundations of a socialist society. The Bolshevik Revolution unleashed new horizons for Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Movements for national liberation, decolonization and the construction of socialism grew in resistance to the centuries-long plunder by Western imperialist nations. This sweeping revolutionary fervor was especially prominent by the close of World War II. In 1945, the Soviet Red Army defeated fascism — liberating Europe from Nazi Germany. The Vietnamese, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, declared independence from French colonial rule, just hours after Japanese surrender. Workers and peasants established the People’s Republic of China (1949) while Ghana was the first African country to gain independence from its colonial ruler (1957). The culmination of anticolonial struggles is what led to the famous 1955 Bandung Conference of African and Asian nations that called for sovereignty and peace, and planted the seeds for an international economic order based on developmental cooperation. NATO: An ‘offensive’ military alliance At the end of World War II, the United States stood on the ashes of former Western imperialist powers as a victor. While Europe’s capitalist economies lay in financial ruin, the U.S. began to reconstruct an international world order that ensured U.S. hegemony for both the Global North and South. The Bretton Woods Conference (1944) was a critical component in creating the International Monetary Fund and World Bank — finance institutions that pegged countries’ currencies to the U.S. dollar. Confronting the rise of U.S. hegemony and the imperialist camp were the Soviet Union and its allies. It is in this context that NATO was founded in 1949 as a “defensive alliance” against the supposed “Soviet threat” facing the West. It grouped major imperialist powers together with the Anglo-American core comprised of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The initial European core was France, Italy, Portugal, Luxembourg, Iceland, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, and Denmark (Germany joined in 1955). Despite the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO – led by the United States – has increasingly repurposed itself to contain the Russian Federation. It’s worth noting that the Russian Federation is capitalist but remains independent of Western powers. Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and President George H.W. Bush famously assured Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not move “one inch eastward.” Washington has since expanded NATO over time by incorporating 19 former Eastern Bloc countries with five formerly part of the USSR. Motivating NATO’s expansion and campaigns of intervention is the need to expand U.S. imperialist influence in geostrategic regions across Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. This has led to devastating campaigns under the pretext of “humanitarian intervention” in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. AFRICOM: an imperialist tool for U.S. and NATO Hegemony The starkest example of this expansion has been on the African continent. The U.S. and NATO have sought to utilize the world’s second-largest continent, with a population exceeding 1.5 billion, as its breeding ground for a New Cold War against Russia and China. In a 2024 Meeting of NATO Ministers of Defense, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg paternalistically referred to Africa as its “Southern neighborhood” when expressing ‘concern over Russia and China’s growing influence in Africa’. In 2007, the U.S. Africa Command was established “in response to our expanding partnerships and interests in Africa.” AFRICOM’s expansion today consists of at least 29 bases across 15 African countries and maintains a presence in about 38 African countries. This military network covers 60% of the nations on the continent. AFRICOM claims to “work with African partners for a secure and prosperous Africa,” yet this very same institution is responsible for turning countries like Libya – once the highest-ranked African country on the UN Human Development Index – into a failed state with constant civil war, return to open slave markets, and armed militias terrorizing civilians. As of May 8, 2025, AFRICOM under General Michael Langley, stated they will be on track for a “record high” of airstrike numbers in Somalia, exceeding the 63 strikes it launched in the country in 2019. Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross have recorded dozens of civilians that were killed by U.S. airstrikes while AFRICOM reports minimal to zero in official reports. Washington’s rhetoric of ensuring a “stable and prosperous Africa”’ is undermined in their own explanation for the creation of AFRICOM: “Allies and partners are critical in realizing our shared vision … maintaining superiority over competitors, … and protecting U.S. interests.” It is no wonder that the growing anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements in places like the Sahel and the formation of the Alliance of the Sahel states (AES) ring alarms for U.S. imperialist interests in the region. Burkina Faso President, Ibrahim Traore, exemplifies the defense of Africa’s sovereignty. In reaction to the growing popularity and rise of the AES, U.S. General and commander of AFRICOM Michael Langely accused Traore’s government of nationalizing gold to steal the reserves to “sustain his military rule.” The strong backlash to Langely’s remarks prompted the general to issue an apology to the young Burkinabe president. The U.S. and NATO’s attitude towards the continent has been rightfully condemned by several heads of state and the masses of people for disrespecting the sovereignty of African nations. AFRICOM serves to maintain U.S. hegemonic presence across the continent by bringing in NATO members to exercise restraint on any African country that dares to assert economic independence. Abolish NATO and AFRICOM! Africa for the West has been a relationship of resource extraction, overexploitation, infantilization, and weaponization for geopolitical interests. As more African nations begin to assert their sovereignty and revitalize the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist spirit of their predecessors, the US and Western Europe become more isolated. African nations are determining their political and economic relationships on the basis of win-win cooperation. As NATO prepares for its 2025 Parliamentary Assembly in Dayton, Ohio, it is imperative that people of conscience across the state of Ohio reject their presence. Veterans, students, workers, and organizers across the state and region are mobilizing to Dayton to reject NATO’s presence. For African Liberation Day, it is our duty as those living inside U.S. imperialism to commit ourselves to the fight against any and all tools of imperialism! Together we will: Oppose war, militarism, and corporate greed Build a movement of resistance against the existential threat posed by NATO aggression Fight for the unity of all oppressed people to assert sovereignty and self-determination across the globe! The people say: Stop the endless wars! Abolish NATO and AFRICOM! Liberation News Newspaper of the Party for Socialism and Liberation