“NATO Expansion and the Tasks of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle” – 8th International Anti-Imperialist Conference
On June 22, the historic 8th International Anti-Imperialist Conference, organized by the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, was held in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The World Anti-Imperialist Platform, founded in October 2022 in Paris by anti-imperialist and revolutionary parties and organizations, upholds three major goals: the anti-imperialist struggle, waging the ideological battle, and strengthening the international communist movement.
Since its founding at the Paris International Conference, it has organized mass rallies, demonstrations, events, including subsequent conferences in Belgrade (December 2022), Caracas (March 2023), Seoul (May 2023), Athens (November 2023), Washington (July 2024), and Dakar (October 2024), and also the world anti-imperialist joint struggle.
The Amsterdam conference, held just eight months after the previous one, took place in the lead-up to the NATO Summit scheduled for June 24–25. It will be remembered as a historic gathering of revolutionary organizations from around the world, united in their struggle against NATO’s expansion and war provocations.
More than 40 political parties and organizations from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa took part in the event.
Participants shared a scientific understanding of the current situation and engaged in in-depth discussions on how to advance practical and united struggles against NATO and imperialism, especially in light of the escalating war drive of imperialist forces pushing toward a potential World War III, particularly amid rising tensions and the growing possibility of open conflict in East Asia and the Western Pacific.
The conference was composed of three sessions in total.
In the first session, presentations were delivered by the Baltic Platform, Jozef Bossuyt of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Belgium, Lasha Shavdiya from the Socialist Platform of Georgia, Haig Mkhitarian of the Communist Party of Armenia, and Stefan Petrov of the International Committee of September 23 Movement (Bulgaria). Statements from Aleksandar Đenić, Executive Secretary of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Serbia), and Dimitrios Patelis, representative of Revolutionary Unification (Greece), were read by Vukašin Žunić of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (Serbia) and Spiros Patelis of Revolutionary Students’ Unification, respectively. The Donetsk Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan submitted written statements. The session concluded with special statements from Bulgaria’s September 23 Movement, the Communist Party of Kenya—Marxist, and the World Anti-Imperialist Platform addressing the escalation in West Asia, particularly Israel’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In the second session, presentations began with video messages from the Communist Party of Kenya—Marxist, the Liberation Party of Argentina, the Movement of Socialists (Serbia), and Union Proletaria (Spain). They were followed by presentations from Victor Lucas of the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain, Edmundo Albornoz of the Communist Party of Ecuador, Hands Off Venezuela, Kommunistische Organisation (Germany), the Workers’ Party of Ireland, the Eastern Initiative, and Joti Brar of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist). Written contributions were submitted by the *Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action), the Peruvian Communist Party, the Party of Progress and Socialism (Morocco), the Pole of Communist Revival in France, and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (Guinea-Bissau).
In the third session, presentations were delivered by People for Peace (Netherlands), the Stop WW3 International Initiative for Peace, the Antifascist Former Resistance Fighters Netherlands, and Struggle Unity from Turkey. Video statements were presented by Committees to Support the Resistance for Communism, the National Coordination Against Nato (Italy), the Mazdoor Kisan Party (Pakistan), the Italian Communist Party, and the Communist Party of Galician Republic. Written statements were submitted by Popular Resistance (Italy), the Unitary National Democratic Assemblage (Bahrain), the Observatory Institution of the US military alliance (Japan), and the Philippines Communist Party [PKP 1930]. Stephen Cho, organizer of the Anti-Imperialist Platform and coordinator of the Korean International Forum, had his contribution read on his behalf.
In closing, the moderator declared:
“In June 2025, here in the Netherlands where the Hague NATO Summit will be held—we have convened the historic 8th International Anti-imperialist Conference to stand directly against imperialism and its war headquarters, NATO, which are igniting the Third World War by unleashing fascism. As the US imperialists and Israeli Zionists are carrying out an invasion of Iran, we are confident that the peoples of the world, united on the anti-imperialist front, will stop the war, defend peace, and hasten the day of anti-imperialist liberation. Our practical international meeting will continue tomorrow with the colloquium.”
The conference concluded with the adoption of the Hague–Amsterdam Declaration: Disband NATO—the Imperialist War Headquarters, representing the unified voice of all participants.
The event ended with a standing ovation, followed by a collective singing of The Internationale.
Below is the full text of the declaration.
Disband NATO―the Imperialist War Headquarters
The imperialist forces are the common enemy of humanity and the main culprit of all wars. NATO is the war headquarters and an instrument of invasion and massacre for these very imperialists.
As early as 1944, amid World War 2, the imperialist forces began designating the socialist Soviet Union as a “threatening adversary,” promoting the formation of a “West European security group” and laying the groundwork for the creation of the anti-Soviet and anti-socialist NATO. Following the end of World War 2, former British prime minister Winston Churchill declared the “Iron Curtain,” and a year later, US president Harry Truman announced the “Truman Doctrine,” thereby formalizing the “Cold War”―the imperialist world domination strategy. Founded in April 1949, NATO played a leading role in realizing this “Cold War” strategy by intervening in the Korean War, which erupted as the US imperialist strategy for domination of East Asia and claimed the lives of 5 million Koreans.
The imperialist aggression forces, with US imperialism at the helm, prioritized the counter-revolutionization of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc as their primary strategy. They viciously advocated a “diversity” in ideology and a “pluralism” in politics, while threatening the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist bloc through the eastward expansion of NATO, driving them into a forced “armed race”, and plotting their military, political, and economic bankruptcy.
Since the counter-revolutionary turn of the Soviet Union and the Eastern socialist bloc in the 1990s, NATO has no longer concealed its aggressive nature. NATO, the spearhead of imperialist powers including US imperialism, scorned the agreement in 1990 opposing the accession of East European countries to NATO and prohibiting NATO’s eastward advance. By the early 2000s, it had incorporated the majority of Eastern European countries. It is no surprise that, in this process, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, which led the Visegrád Group, took the initiative in dismantling the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and committed anti-socialist crimes.
The cunning imperialist forces have persistently conspired to dominate the world by constantly adapting their hegemonic strategies to the shifting tides of history. After World War 2, as the red tide of socialism spread across the globe, they distorted this wave as a “Soviet threat” and maliciously portrayed a “defensive character of the Atlantic alliance” and “war prevention.” In April 1951, the establishment of the “Allied Command Europe” laid the foundation for NATO’s integrated military command structure. At the Lisbon Conference in 1952, NATO set its “strategic objective” of organizing over 100 divisions and reinforcing the conventional forces by 1954, thereby solidifying itself as the war headquarters of imperialism. During the same period, the US stockpiled over 300 nuclear bombs, enhanced its nuclear strike capabilities, and formulated the most heinous war plan―to drop 130 atom bombs on 70 cities across the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc in order to annihilate their defense. Actively adopting this plan, NATO devised the “Forward Defense Strategy” and posed a grave threat to the socialist bloc, advancing to the eastern frontiers of Germany in 1955.
Only a fear of the revolutionary and peace-loving masses prevented this plan from being put into action, which would undoubtedly have provoked the very revolution it aimed to suppress.
Having orchestrated and driven the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, imperialism adopted a new strategic concept at NATO’s London summit in 1990, emphasizing the potential for regional crises within and around the Euro-Atlantic area and the counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The aggressive nature of this decision was revealed in the US “Defense Planning Guidance” in 1992. This war scenario, which categorically rejected the emergence of any rival to US global hegemony and called for unilateral preemptive strikes even at the mere attempt to acquire weapons of mass destruction, became a reality in the 2000s.
Two events in particular laid bare NATO’s savage essence as the war headquarters of imperialism: its intervention in the Bosnian civil war and the Kosovo War. The Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, which was wholly manipulated by pro-imperialist forces, was exploited as a false pretext by NATO. It launched a massive three-week bombing from August that year to slaughter the Bosnian people. In 1999, NATO deployed over 300 fighter jets and bombers in the Kosovo War, later increasing the fleet to 1,200 aircraft. Even according to limited reports, more than 3,000 people were brutally killed, exposing to the world the barbarity and savagery of NATO.
The brutal aggressiveness of the imperialist war machine was repeated in the same form in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which US imperialism launched under the pretext of the “War on Terror” in the 2000s. Under the World War 3 situation, it is being horrifically reenacted in the wars in Ukraine and West Asia (the Middle East)
In Africa, the imperialist war machine wages its campaigns under the guise of “counterterrorism” and “security cooperation.” Through instruments such as US AFRICOM and the web of French military bases, NATO-aligned forces have transformed the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and Central Africa into zones of continuous war, occupation, and plunder. The imperialists orchestrate coups, prop up comprador regimes, and militarize local conflicts to entrench neocolonial domination. But the peoples of Africa are rising once again. From Mali to Congo, from Sudan to Kenya, revolutionary uprisings, anti-French expulsions, and renewed Pan-African resistance are confronting the imperialist war apparatus head-on. Africa is not a passive victim—it is an active battlefield in the world anti-imperialist war.
NATO, through its relentless eastward advance from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Europe to Asia, has finally reached the “Pacificization of NATO” and has been transformed into the truly imperialist headquarters of World War 3. While pushing forward World War 3 through the war in Ukraine in 2022 and the war in West Asia in 2023, NATO simultaneously brought Japan, the “Republic of Korea,” Australia, and New Zealand―its “Indo-Pacific Partners (IP4)”―into its summit for three consecutive years up to 2024. At the Washington summit in July 2024, it politically declared the “Pacificization of NATO.” At the same time, NATO member states led by the USA conducted a series of multinational joint military exercises across the Pacific from June to August 2024—including “RIMPAC,” “Pitch Black,” “Pacific Skies,” and “Pacific Dragon”—in coordination with pro-US belligerent states in the Western Pacific. Through these exercises, the “Pacificization of NATO” was militarily reinforced. The US and NATO have now laid bare their ambitions that they are openly designating East Asia and the Western Pacific as the third and final theater of World War 3, following Eastern Europe and West Asia (the Middle East).
NATO, as the principal instrument of imperialist aggression, stands as the gravest catastrophe threatening the annihilation of humanity and the foremost enemy of the world’s peoples. This reality is clearly reflected in the agenda of the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, which centers on the Ukraine situation and increasing NATO defense contributions. In order to sustain the false pretext of a so-called “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” which is the imperialist justification for its war provocations, NATO is frantically seeking to prolong the anti-Russian war in Ukraine by backing the neo-Nazi forces. The increase in NATO member contributions reveals the imperialists’ sinister intent: to intensify the exploitation of European populations, plunder their public wealth to finance foreign invasions and civilian massacres, and further entrench the military-industrial complex, the military and economic foundation of the imperialist aggression forces.
Though the histories and environments of each people may differ, our common cause remains the same: we must all unite in the struggle to disband NATO, the war headquarters of imperialism. The world anti-imperialist camp must raise high the banner of resistance against imperialism and spare no effort to prevent war and defend peace in the face of World War 3 being waged by the imperialist aggressors through their war machine NATO. If war proves inevitable, forced by imperialist aggressors and their fascist puppets, we must turn it into an opportunity for peace and revolution through all-out struggle, ensuring that the tragedy of war is never repeated.
Bringing an end to the wars and domination of the imperialist forces and ushering in a new era of peace and justice is the sacred and historic mission of all anti-imperialist and independent forces. In the current conditions of World War 3, dismantling NATO and defeating the imperialist aggressors is, in essence, the same task as the destruction of fascism during World War 2. Just as humanity prevailed in the great anti-fascist war by building an anti-fascist united front, we shall form an anti-imperialist front and achieve victory in the anti-imperialist war.
We pledge to stand at the forefront of this historic struggle, leading the way until NATO, the war headquarters of imperialism, is disbanded and imperialism is brought to its final ruin.
Disband NATO, the Imperialist War Headquarters!
No to War! Defend Peace!
Down with Imperialism and Fascism!
Victory to the Anti-imperialist Struggle for Liberation!
