People are rightly sickened by the kind of wars carried out not only by Russia, but by the U.S. and other imperialist powers (go here, here, here, and here to read just a few of the war crimes committed by “our” imperialists). The unceasing attacks on non-combatants, the mass slaughters and war crimes, and the unconscionable production, deployment and real possibility of using nuclear weapons, as well as chemical and biological weapons.
As Bob Avakian explains in the film Why We Need an Actual Revolution and How We Can Really Make Revolution, these can only be stopped by revolution. And once the revolution is made, while there will continue to be a need for the new socialist state to maintain a defense force to deal with the remaining capitalist powers in a hostile world, these will be organized on a different basis, with a different purpose, and fighting in a different way that reflects the values of the world we are fighting for—a world, ultimately, that does away with war altogether, along with all relations of exploitation and oppression and all antagonistic conflicts between different groups of people. Read this excerpt of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, to get a beginning sense of what this would be like:
C. Defense and Security.
1. The basic components and structures of the armed forces and militia and other organs of public defense and security of the New Socialist Republic in North America will have been brought into being through the course of the revolutionary struggle for power, once the conditions for that struggle had emerged: the development of an acute revolutionary crisis and the emergence of a revolutionary people, in the millions and millions, who have the leadership of a revolutionary communist vanguard and are conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it. With the establishment of this Republic, these institutions of public defense and security will be further developed in accordance with their essential purpose and role: to defend and safeguard the New Socialist Republic in North America and the security and rights of its people, in furtherance of the aims of this Republic and in support of the masses of people in carrying forward the revolutionary transformation of society, and contributing as much as possible to this transformation throughout the world.
2. In keeping with this purpose and role, and in accordance with its internationalist orientation, the New Socialist Republic in North America will dismantle all remaining bases of the former imperialist USA in other countries and will renounce all treaties and agreements, military and otherwise, which were imposed by that imperialist state on other countries and peoples or which in any case served to impose and enforce the domination of the imperialist USA. The New Socialist Republic in North America renounces all wars of aggression and domination, and all occupation of other countries in pursuit of such domination and aggression, and will not station its forces, nor establish bases, in another country, except in circumstances where this is clearly in accord with the wishes of the masses of people in that country and where such action would actually be a manifestation of the internationalist orientation and other fundamental principles and objectives set forth in this Constitution and would contribute to the advance of revolutionary struggle in the world in accordance with these principles and objectives.
3. The New Socialist Republic in North America will not develop, and will not use, nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. It will wage a determined and many-sided struggle to rid the world of all such weapons—and it will do this as part of the larger, overall struggle to defeat and dismantle all imperialist and reactionary states and forces and to advance toward the achievement of communism, throughout the world, which will finally make it possible for the desires and dreams of countless human beings throughout history, and the fundamental interests of humanity, for a world without war, to at long last be realized.
