Warmongering Halifax International Security Forum

Warmongering Insecurity Forum Hatches Plots Against the Peoples


January 11, 2020. Halifax anti-war rally against U.S. imperialist aggression against Iran.

The Halifax International Security Forum (HISF), convoked November 20-22 in Halifax, is, in its own words, "the first major gathering of defence and security leaders since the United States presidential election." To its chagrin, the U.S. presidential election is not yet concluded. Only some 20 countries have recognized Biden as the new president of the United States, others are awaiting some sort of a formal announcement by an electoral commission of some sort. However, the U.S. institutions are mired in such crisis that they cannot decide who and what constitute that authority. 

Thus, far from the U.S. election opening a clean line of march for the warmongers gathered in Halifax, the dysfunctional U.S. democratic institutions are impossible for the HISF to surmount. From the get-go, the agenda of the HISF, based on the pretense that adopting good policies will get them out of the profound crisis they are stuck in, is mired in crisis.

Attempts to blame this or that individual for the crisis are not convincing. The crisis cannot be surmounted because the imperialists cannot surmount the conditions which have far surpassed their ability to control everything through their monopoly on the use of force. The HISF agenda speaks to problems the rulers are facing in deciding how to maintain the U.S.'s role as "indispensable leader." This is indicated in three main public sessions: "Democracy vs. Ourselves: Divided We Fall," "75 Years On: Re-Making The Democratic World Order," and "After 2020: The World With America."

The agenda betrays the increasingly grave problems of the ruling circles which are stuck with old forms that are anachronistic and do not suit their purpose today. Their model of nation-state was first established after the English civil war in the 1660s, perfected and imposed on the world in the form of liberal democratic states in the 19th and early 20th centuries, based on self-serving definitions of "peace, order and good government," then bolstered after the Second World War in the form of the social-welfare state based on anti-communist Cold War ideology and mechanisms and to keep the people disinformed and disempowered. Since the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, far from this imperialist democracy proving its superiority, it has shown its elitist, racist and fundamentally inhuman essence and inability to provide any justification for itself and its monopoly over the use of force, both domestically and internationally.

Intensifying conflicts among rival factions vying for power both internally over control of executive powers and the military, as well as internationally and especially within the NATO bloc itself, are giving rise to ever more dire expressions of a morbid preoccupation with defeat. Their desperation is palpable as they plot and scheme how to train women and youth to take over the functions of the bureaucracy to keep it going while also keeping the peoples dispersed and disempowered. Despite talk of finding peaceful solutions to problems, and ending the "endless war" scenario -- or keeping it under the hoax that it constitutes legitimate "robust anti-terrrorist" methods -- this fight is not about eliminating the war governments and war economies and all this means at home and abroad.

Canadians are demanding that Canada get out of NATO and NORAD as the very basis for a new direction for foreign relations, and for an economy founded in self-reliance and public enterprise to guarantee the rights of all. All attempts to impose NATO on the polity as a "Canadian value" and, even more, an integral part of the decision-making institutions, is against what Canadians want. To criminalize their opposition under the hoax that it is "foreign interference" shows how desperate the rulers are because no argument they come up with can justify their war economy and arrangements. Despite attempts by the NATO Association of Canada, echoed by the Parliament of Canada, to impose the view that opposition to NATO by Canadians amounts to foreign interference in Canada's internal affairs, this is not accepted. The criminalization of people's perceptions and voice by declaring them to be, willingly or unwillingly, "dupes of Russia," or "Chinese agents," and the like, will merely deepen the crisis they are in.

The spectre of China is once again in the crosshairs of the HISF as a tool to this end. It is beneath contempt. In conformity with its ballyhooed initiative to present a concerted, strategic trans-Atlantic plan against China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the lead topic of the sessions to be broadcast is "Democracy vs. China: The Greatest Game." This deliberately invokes the 19th century Eurocentric striving of Anglo-American imperialism called "the Great Game" -- to dominate Asia, its peoples and vast mineral wealth -- and "white man's burden." It merely reveals how bankrupt they are because this is the 21st century, not the 19th century and China has long since stood up. Try as the U.S. imperialists and their henchmen might, they cannot escape history and the peoples will not accept force and violence as the method of sorting out problems in favour of rival imperialist interests.


November 2009. Tony Seed addresses first anti-war rally outside the Halifax International Security Forum. Rallies have been held yearly since the forums began.

One of the important questions being discussed at the HISF and within the ruling circles concerns a narrative of "endless wars," also known as "forever wars." It is not an end to aggression and interference, rather a different form for it. Both Biden and Trump spoke demagogically against "endless wars" in the U.S. election. The Trump path of open destruction, use of force and elimination of rule of law, failed to succeed in uniting the vying factions, including the military. The Biden team, as with Obama who followed Bush's War on Terror and pre-emptive war based on "good versus evil" with his own doctrine of drone warfare, needs a legal and theoretical framework to justify what cannot be justified. This is Canada's endeavour as well: to justify in law the open violation of rights, which the U.S. Empire routinely practices.

The Biden phantasm also haunts the Trudeau government: to transcend the conditions by imposing an authority which is not on par with the needs of the times. They need a justification to quell the mounting domestic unrest and unify the rival factions in the U.S. ruling elite and also the "allies" of the NATO bloc, which are split and fragmented based on their own private interests. There is no consensus over U.S. demands to increase military spending, safeguard U.S. hegemony, perpetuate Cold War notions of "collective security" and "trans-Atlantic partnership." Their coerced "coalition of the willing" comprised of a mere 30 countries of the 193 member nations of the United Nations is not gaining traction but is, on the contrary, increasingly isolated and opposed. At a moment when the Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement operate within the bounds of the United Nations and the rule of international law as established in the post-World War II period and NATO does not, the conflicts are bound to increase. NATO is a rogue military alliance that flouts the rule of international law but whose aggressive activities are opposed by a majority of the world's peoples, who decry it as the "North Atlantic Terrorist Organization."

TML Weekly is carrying a supplement this week with informative material on the agenda of the 12th Halifax International Insecurity Forum.