Re: [Marxism] British SWP co-thinkers (not)

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Since when did State Capitalist governments (I'm thinking of Nazi Germany or
fascist Italy) pursue such noble and self-sacrificing foreign policies?
While we're at it, if the British SWP are such dedicated anti-imperialists,
why in Cuba, Ireland, and South Africa have they opposed revolutionary armed
struggle against imperialism from the sidelines?

<http://www.socialistvoice.com/Documents/Cuba-Africa.htm>


A History Worthy of Pride
by Dr. Piero Gleijeses,
Professor of US Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins University

[From Tricontinental Number 158, Year 38, 2004. Tricontinental is published
by the Organization of Solidarity of the People of Africa, Asia and Latin
America (OSPAAAL), an NGO with special consultative status in the Economic
and Social Council of the United Nations.

[Dr. Gleijeses is the author of Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and
Africa, 1959-1976, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002]

The role of Cuba in the world since 1959 is unprecedented.[1] For more than
four decades, Castro has challenged and humiliated the imperial arrogance of
the United States. In the 1960?s, the fear of a second Cuba in Latin America
dogged the leaders of the United States and impelled the creation of the
Alliance for Progress. Since the end of the 1970?s until the end of the
80?s, Havana maintained a strong presence alongside those who fought for
revolutionary change in Central America.

The arrival of 36,000 Cuban soldiers in Angola between November 1975 and
March 1976 astonished the world; however, it was only one stage along the
road beginning in 1959 that had taken the Cubans to Algeria, the Congo
Leopoldville (later called Zaire), the Congo Brazzaville and
Guinea-Bissau.[2]

At the beginning of the 60?s, the Cuban leaders saw similarities between the
Algerian revolution against French colonial domination and their own
struggle against Fulgencio Batista and the United States. In December 1961,
a Cuban ship took weapons to Casablanca for the Algerian rebels. It returned
to Havana with 78 wounded guerilla fighters and 20 children from refugee
camps. The epic struggle of Cubans in Africa had begun. The assistance
continued after Algeria achieved its independence in 1962. In May 1963, a 55
member Cuban medical company arrived in Algiers. Just as it would be for all
the missions that followed, up until 1978, the help was free. And in October
1963, when Morocco attacked Algeria, the Cubans rapidly deployed a
contingent of 686 soldiers with heavy weapons in defense of the Algerians.
This occurred despite the fact that Rabat had just signed a contract with
Havana for the purchase of a million tons of sugar valued at $184 million
dollars ? a considerable sum of hard currency in a moment that United States
was trying to paralyze Cuban foreign trade.

The concern of Cuba towards sub-Saharan Africa was intensified at the end of
1964. The guerilla fighters fought in the Portuguese colonies of Angola,
Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. In Congo Brazzaville, the new government
proudly proclaimed its revolutionary sympathies. Above all, there was Zaire
? where the armed revolt extended surprisingly quickly beginning in the
spring of 1964. This was a threat to the survival of the corrupt régime that
presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy had been able to impose. To save the
Zairian régime, the Johnson administration dispatched an army of a thousand
white mercenaries in a broad "covert" operation that everybody knew about ?
except for the US press. This produced a wave of indignation, even among
those African leaders who had good relations with the United States. For the
Cubans, the conflict was not only an African problem. "Our view was that the
problem of the Congo [Zaire] was a problem of the whole world," wrote Che
Guevara.[3]

.....................

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