The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 10 The crisis between Israel and Iran, which began on June 13 th , took a qualitative leap with the American decision to strike three uranium enrichment sites just ten days later. The attacks were carried out with cruise missiles and strategic bombers and, at the Fordow site, which is buried under more than 100 metres of rock, four teen of the so-called MOABs (the mother of all bombs ) were used. This is the most powerful conventional weapon in the US arsenal. In 2017, Donald Trump authorized its use in Afghanistan against an Islamic State base. American military doctrine also provides for the use of tactical nuclear weapons for the same type of mission. In any case, writes the Beijing-based Global Times , Washington has set a dangerous precedent by attacking nuclear sites in a country that is a signatory to the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, with...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 9 Marx in 1850 and Lenin in 1905. The Marxist school has the tools to investigate the accumulation of tensions in the crisis in the world order , without falling into the trap of waiting for a mythical deadline for the breakdown of the order, or of inconclusive maximalism, according to which every upheaval is the decisive one. In 1850, Marx and Engels linked economic crisis, political upheaval, and great collisions on the continent in their prediction of the workers’ revolution in England. An incorrect prediction, comments Arrigo Cervetto in The Difficult Question of Times , due to the lack of coincidence between the Crimean War and the economic crisis of 1857. However, that consideration of interdependence would become part of the genetic heritage of strategy: In the thinking of Marx and Engels, the concept of crisis includes the economic cycle and the pol...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 8 The new conflagration in the Persian Gulf, the twelve-day war between Israel and Iran before the United States intervened with its bunker-buster bomb on the Fordow nuclear site, appeared to be a conflict between a State armed with nuclear weapons and one seeking to acquire them. There is talk of Benjamin Netanyahu’s gamble, which since October 7 th , 2023, has engaged Israel on seven war fronts and in a massacre in Gaza that has no end. But, in reality, Israel’s commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is a long-term strategic decision shared by all its political currents and known as the Begin doctrine . Wars are part of the revisions of history in political theories and strategies; this also applies to the norms and doctrines of international law, the paper walls of the liberal conception of internationa...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 7 II By combining papal “neutralism” and support for the national war effort on the part of various episcopates, the Catholic Church emerged strengthened from the First World War. The second imperialist conflict posed new problems. Historian Andrea Riccardi noted that Pope Pacelli (Pius XII) could however count on a Church “characterised by strong centralisation and compact unity”. The leadership of the religious “international” that is Catholicism, according to Riccardi, “was located outside the national sphere”. The Lateran Pacts of 1929 made it clear that “the central organs of the Holy See, the point of reference for the entire Catholic international”, were located “in the State of the Vatican City, under the direct sovereignty of the pope”. This was in line with a very long-term strategy of the papacy. Although for centuries the po...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 6 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement The depth of the contradictions within the German SPD, brought to a climax by the war, erupted in the Reichstag over the vote on war credits. Karl Liebknecht, who had reluctantly bowed to party discipline on August 4 th , 1914, openly expressed his rift with the Executive during the subsequent vote on December 2 nd when, acting alone, he rejected the war credits. On this occasion, the centrists, headed by Hugo Haase, maintained respect for party discipline. A legal opposition On February 3 rd , 1915, exploiting this centrist trend (which also gripped many old radicals), the Executive decided to authorise a legal internal opposition, thus allowing the deputies whose conscience rebelled against party discipline to absent themselves at the moment of the vote on...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 5 Three years of war in Ukraine have had deleterious effects on relations between Russia and Europe. The dramatic acceleration of European rearmament , as we defined it in Internationalism , April 2025, has raised the tension. The plans of the coalition of the willing in support of Kyiv in their military endeavours have also aroused Moscow’s reactions. In an interview published on March 21 st on the ministry’s website, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov recalled that in the past there was a unique Russia-EU format in the relations between Russia and the European Union, when summits were held twice a year, something the EU never had with any other country . This was evidence of a closeness and mutual interest between Russia and Europe. But, Lavrov complains, they are now telling us we have turned our backs on the West . Obviously, he glosses over t...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 4 From the series Assessment of a tactical choice The failure of the referendums promoted by the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labour) confirmed that this instrument cannot be a weapon in the trade union struggle, which is necessarily based on the power relations between capital and wage labour. We republish the leaflet of the workers of our Workers' Clubs on this subject below. Shifting the relationship to the terrain of parliamentarism is a recipe for disaster and is not part of the tradition of the trade union movement, which has always been vigilant against interference by the legislative and executive powers in their bargaining with the employers. The defence of migrants In the most recent referendum, there was an aggravating factor: the inclusion of the question of citizenship, a very sensitive and important issue for i...