For immediate release
Contact:
Joanne Landy, Co-Director, Campaign for Peace
and Democracy
jlandy@igc.org
Tel (212)666-4001;
cell (646)207-5203
NEW YORK, N.Y., March 10, 2008 - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk will meet with President George Bush on Monday, March 10, when one of the main agenda items will be the proposed U.S. military base for ten interceptor missiles in Poland. The New York-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy has sent an open letter to Prime Minister Tusk expressing support for people in Poland resisting the base. The letter is signed by five U.S. peace organizations (Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Humanist Movement/U.S., Physicians for Social Responsibility/NYC, and Peace Action (national and New York State), along with 65 intellectuals and leading anti-war advocates, including Stanley Aronowitz, Phyllis Bennis, Vinie Burrows, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Ariel Dorfman, Carolyn Eisenberg, Richard Falk, John Feffer, Bruce Gagnon, Thomas Harrison, Adam Hochschild, Doug Ireland, Pedraic Kennedy, Joanne Landy, Jesse Lemisch, John Leonard, Staughton Lynd, Kevin Martin, David McReynolds, Katha Pollitt, Danny Postel, Jennifer Scarlott, Stephen Shalom, Alice Slater, Meredith Tax, Lois Weiner, Chris Wells, Cheryl Wertz, Reginald Wilson, Julia Wrigley and Howard Zinn.
Jan Tamas, the leader of the "No Bases Initiative" movement against the proposed companion radar base in the Czech Republic, will be also arriving in the United States on March 10. The Czech radar is designed to work in conjunction with the Polish missile base. Mr. Tamas will be meeting with the media and Congressional offices during the week, and is available for interviews with the press. He can be reached through the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, contact information noted above.
Under pressure from the Bush administration, the Czech and Polish governments hope to finalize an agreement on the bases with Washington, but this expansion of the U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe is far from a done deal. Grassroots movements in both countries continue to build popular pressure against accepting the U.S. bases, and have called for a referendum on the issue.
Jakub Gawlikowski from the Polish Campaign Against Militarism declared, "As Mr. Bush and Mr. Tusk meet in the White House on March 10th, the Polish Campaign Against Militarism would like to remind them both that according to recent public opinion polls, the majority of Polish people still reject their plans to build a US missile base on Polish territory." Information about demonstrations planned for March 29 against the Polish missile base can be found at cia.bzzz.net/english_news.
Jan Tamas, speaking in the same vein on behalf of the Czech No Bases Initiative, stated, "The bases are being installed to militarize and control space. More than two thirds of the Czech population is against the installation of United States military bases on Czech territory. Despite this, the Czech and US governments are continuing the negotiations which are by now reaching their concluding phase." He went on to say, "The U.S. government must clearly understand that it is not carrying out a dialogue with the Czech people, but with a minority that does not represent the will of the majority of Czech citizens. For this reason, any agreement will have no legal value. Americans must clearly understand that their government's policies are generating a widespread feeling of 'anti-Americanism' which was not present before in Czech culture, and in this way, these aggressive policies will only turn against the United States."
The text of the U.S. open letter to Prime Minister Tusk follows:
We are writing you as individuals and organizations based in the United States committed to human rights and peaceful relations among nations. We have been dismayed by the attempts of both the Polish and Czech governments to negotiate deals with the Bush administration to establish military bases in your countries despite the fact that these bases are opposed by a majority of your own people. The U.S. bases threaten to restart a Cold War between the United States and Russia. They have nothing to do with genuine defense and much to do with an aggressive U.S. military policy.
The proposed bases -- ten interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic --combine to produce a dangerous military escalation. The U.S. government claims that the anti-missile system is aimed against Iran, but there is no credible evidence that a missile threat from Iran today exists. As far as Poland is concerned, in January of this year your own Foreign Affairs Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said publicly, "This is an American, not a Polish project. We feel no threat from Iran."
The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released in December 2007 undermined any remaining credibility for the claim of a proximate Iranian nuclear threat by stating that Iran had discontinued its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. And far from protecting against such a threat in the future, the anti-missile system and other nuclear escalations will only create even stronger inducements for Iran to seek nuclear weapons.
A radar station in the Czech Republic and ten missile interceptors in Poland don't constitute an immediate challenge to Russia's nuclear deterrent, with its thousands of warheads. But there is a clear long-range threat that these U.S. bases will be upgraded. Official U.S. documents bear this out. National Security Presidential Directive 23, signed by President Bush on Dec. 6, 2002, stated that the United States would begin to set up missile defenses in 2004 "as a starting point for fielding improved and expanded missile defenses later." This presidential directive was preceded in January 2002 by a memorandum from Donald Rumsfeld, at the time Secretary of Defense, directing the Missile Defense Agency to develop defense systems by using whatever technology is "available," even if the capabilities produced are limited relative to what the system must ultimately be able to do.
Washington's scheme has already produced an ominous response from Russia, which has threatened to direct its missiles toward Poland and the Czech Republic if the U.S. proceeds with the system. Moscow has also threatened to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and to suspend participation in a treaty limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe.
No nation -- including the U.S., Russia, and Iran -- has the moral right to possess nuclear weapons, which by their nature are weapons of vast and indiscriminate mass destruction. The U.S. and other nuclear powers can best reduce the danger of nuclear warfare by taking major steps toward both nuclear and conventional disarmament and refraining from waging or threatening 'preventive' war -- not by expanding the nuclear threat. Such steps by the existing nuclear powers would create a political climate that would powerfully discourage new countries from developing their own nuclear weapons.
The only objection your government seems to be raising to the US missile system is that Washington is not offering enough in the way of military modernization for Poland. But the provocative bases are wrong on principle, and we would all be simultaneously safer and more prosperous if both Washington and Warsaw invested in social needs rather than new weaponry.
The democratic movements of 1989 are dishonored by the attempt to integrate the countries of central Europe into the network of more than 700 U.S. military bases around the world. We stand with today's popular movements in Poland and the Czech Republic that are refusing to cave in to the pressure from the Bush Administration to accept this dangerous anti-missile system. And we welcome their support for our work for a new democratic, just and peaceful U.S. foreign policy.
THE CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY (CPD) advocates a new, progressive and non-militaristic U.S. foreign policy -- one that encourages democratization, justice and social change. Founded in 1982, the Campaign opposed the Cold War by promoting "detente from below." It engaged Western peace activists in the defense of the rights of democratic dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and enlisted East-bloc human rights activists against anti-democratic U.S. policies in countries like Nicaragua and Chile.
Campaign for Peace and Democracy, 2790 Broadway, #12, NY, NY 10025. Tel (212)666-4001, Cell (646)207-5203, Fax (212) 866-5847. Email: cpd@igc.org Web: www.cpdweb.org