November 21, 2009. Demonstration against the first Halifax International Security Forum
demands "Warmongers Out of Halifax!"
From November 20 to 22, the 12th Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) convenes as a platform for warmongering and empire-building of U.S. imperialism and the NATO bloc, in which the Trudeau Liberal government is fully embroiled. The HISF is being convened in a virtual format. For the 12th consecutive year, the anti-war forces in Halifax are organizing to oppose it. On November 20, No Harbour for War organized a public anti-war webinar. On November 21, a rally is organized at Halifax Peace Park across from the venue of the HISF.
 Peace activists in Halifax are joined by others across the country to firmly reject their city and our country being used as the venue for this war conference and a base for war preparations.
This is not a Halifax -- let alone a Canadian -- event. It is a NATO bloc event, which it officially sponsors and directs. Its virtual format is organized from NATO's Washington, DC headquarters. The majority of its sessions are private and classified as "informal." The eight "plenary sessions" are broadcast in Canada by CPAC, owned by the Rogers telecommunications monopoly.
The HISF describes itself as "non-partisan" and "independent" but it is a U.S. imperialist enterprise -- lock, stock and barrel. An instrument of the U.S. state, its credo is "Halifax creates opportunities for leaders to learn, generate ideas and put them into action." The word "security" in HISF's name is informed by NATO's warmongering definition, namely protecting and advancing Anglo-American imperialist political and economic interests to the detriment of the peoples of the world, including those of the United States, Canada and Europe itself, in addition to those of Asia, Oceania, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. This is dangerous and puts Canadians and peoples everywhere in harm's way.
There is nothing honourable, "internationalist" or "multilateral" in the way that the Trudeau Liberals are funding and promoting this venue on Canadian territory, just as the Harper Conservatives did before them. Not only is everything related to foreign relations a prerogative power over which the people have no say whatsoever, but Canada plays no independent role. In fact, both its defence minister and armed forces are subordinate to the U.S.
Commander-in-Chief through both NATO and NORAD command structures.
Who adopted the "Global Canada" conception which is being pushed? Who agrees that Canada's government should be set up as a war government with a war economy?
The "security" this conference is based on is a Cold War definition of "collective security" which does not respond to Canada's defence needs or the demand of the peoples of the world for peace and the peaceful resolution of conflicts within and between nations. It responds to the demands of the U.S. imperialists through NATO and the biggest arms monopolies and other private interests to increase military spending, step up war preparations and control all interests which clash with their own.
 In line with the Liberal government's public relations approach, Canada's participation in the HISF and launching of wars is presented as a factor for a "more stable and peaceful world" and a "rules-based international order." It is not. The great insecurity felt by the world's peoples today is a direct result of the U.S.-led imperialist wars that have devastated and threatened countries and whole regions. Against this warmongering path -- which does not contribute one iota to solving the serious problems humankind is facing due to the neo-liberal destruction of the natural and social environment, betrayal of the nation, and issues such as poverty, hunger, and the COVID-19 pandemic -- the forces which genuinely stand for peace demand concrete measures to make Canada a zone for peace by getting Canada out of NATO and NORAD, and demilitarizing the economy and changing its direction to make it pro-social so that it can meet the needs of the people.
The HISF attaches high significance to its initiative to bring together the movers and shakers of U.S. imperialist attempts to dominate the world. But no matter how much they give rise to refurbished notions of old theories, they cannot overcome the imperialist security dilemma formulated as far back as 1957 by none other than Henry Kissinger when he was still a professor at Harvard University.
"But so far as the effect on our national policy is concerned, the stalemate ... has been with us ever since the explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To be sure, in the first postwar years it was not a physical stalemate. For nearly a decade the United States was virtually immune to Soviet retaliation. It was a stalemate, none the less, in the sense that we never succeeded in translating our military superiority into a political advantage." (emphasis added.) Kissinger adds, [O]ur atomic monopoly had at best a deterrent effect."
This describes the problem the Anglo-American imperialists have had all along -- that their military superiority does not provide political advantage. It does not do away with politics. Sovereign countries continue to exist with their own right to be and right to decide their own affairs. Thirty NATO members out of 198 countries in the world do not the world make. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the onset of the neo-liberal nation-wrecking agenda, the security dilemma facing the imperialists can only continue to get worse so long as their neo-liberal agenda does not recognize international relations based on territoriality and nation-states have been usurped by very narrow private interests which operate internationally as cartels and coalitions vying for control. What they cannot control, they seek to destroy. No matter what choice the imperialists and their henchmen make, in the absence of politics all they have left is "endless war" -- states of exception and the use of force to try to control what they cannot control through threats, anarchy and violence coupled with attempts to justify what cannot be justified.
In 2016, it was the missile defence shield to contain Russia. Now it is a global handbook to contain China.
The fact remains that the greatest insecurity is that people are disempowered, the prerogative power gives them no say whatsoever over foreign affairs and defence policy. This makes gatherings such as the one organized by No Harbour for War very significant because its aim is to provide those who are on the front line fighting for peace with information and assessments of the war preparations by the HISF, Canada and NATO. To share and exchange experiences, and work out a new direction for Canada is important work. Canadians should demand that the HISF be banned, along with demanding that Canada get out of NATO and NORAD and that they be dismantled. No foreign troops should be permitted to operate on Canadian territory and Canadian forces should be brought home to operate only in defence of Canada based on how the Canadian people define that need, not the U.S. imperialists, NATO and their so-called intelligence agencies. No foreign warships, whether or not they carry nuclear weapons, should be permitted to use our harbours. All foreign think tanks and NATO-sponsored Canadian academic institutions should be dismantled. All front groups and non-governmental organizations which promote imperialist war aims must be rejected by the people.
With a pro-social aim and new direction for the economy, other uses can be found for that social wealth and the human productive force released from the war economy. Needless to say, the suggestions to humanize the social and natural environment are unlimited in their scope.
Ban the Halifax War Conference and Oppose the Government of Canada's War Aims!
No Harbour for War!
Make Canada a Zone for Peace!
(TML Weekly Supplement, November 21, 2020 - No. 45)
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